Arisen, Book Six - The Horizon (23 page)

A swing and a miss could doom them.

There might be something pointier inside the pallets that surrounded them. But those were all sealed up tight with heavy plastic wrap – and she’d need at least a knife to get into them. In which case, she’d already have a knife.

And there was simply almost nothing else lying around. The whole place was weirdly squared away. Damn the sailors and their work parties and ship-shape ethos. But even as she thought it, she knew she wasn’t really mad at them.

She was mad at herself.

What the hell had she been thinking – coming down here unarmed? What was she doing bringing Park here at all? Dietz had sworn the ship was secure, and had been armed himself, so it sounded reasonable at the time – surely one armed guy was enough. But of course you could never absolutely depend on anyone but yourself. And because of what had seemed like an innocuous series of decisions, they now found themselves in a very, very serious situation. One they might not get out of.

It was only one goddamned zombie between them and safety.

But one was all it took.

It didn’t matter that it was the middle of the day, that there was bright sunlight falling on the flight deck, or that there were hundreds of armed friends within a half-mile radius. Because that flight deck was a hundred feet above their heads, and there were thousands of tons of steel between it and them, and all of that may as well be a million miles away in another time.

And in that impotent, frozen moment, she struggled to keep hope from draining out the bottom of her and into the bilge tanks below – which was the only thing between them and the pitiless black sea that surrounded them on sides, and was much closer than the sunlight up above. And Sarah Cameron was left with a single crushing thought. And it was this:

If Dr. Park dies down here in this damp, horrid hold…

…then I will have sacrificed my husband, and my own son, for nothing.

She had let them die, and she had to live with that.

But she couldn’t bear to let them die in vain.

That would be too much.

* * *

The aircraft rolled to a stop a few feet from the big nylon barrier net, which had been put up at the end of the angle deck – just in case. Tailhook or no, however skilled the pilot, this was still a large and unusual aircraft to attempt a carrier deck landing.

The mixed crowd actually broke into applause – they knew what skill the landing had taken. Isabel clapped her little hands above Handon’s head. He gave her tiny ankles a squeeze, and they both watched the two big propellers start to spin down. Yellow-shirted aircraft handling officers raced forward to secure the plane with wheel blocks and chains. And then the passenger door at the rear of the fuselage cracked, withdrew slightly inside, and then swung open. Finally, stairs began to emerge and descend.

Only seconds after that, the pilot’s door at the front popped open, and a man climbed down from the cockpit. He descended facing away from the crowd, but when he hit the deck and turned toward them, Handon could see that he had a long, wild, and curly black beard, covering most of his face and descending to mid-chest. That was unusual. When he pulled off his helmet, he revealed a tightly-wrapped white turban.

That explains it
, Handon thought.

The pilot was a Sikh. There hadn’t been a ton of them around Fort Bragg, but Handon had been around the world, and he knew there were many in Britain – a hangover of the Raj, the British empire in India. This guy looked so traditional, Handon half-expected him to be wearing a scimitar, or at least a curved dagger. And then he saw he actually was – the little curving scabbard was taped to his chest rig, which also held his side arm in a shoulder holster, and spare magazines on the other side. Pilots rarely wore anything on their belts, for fairly intuitive reasons.

Handon had an instant impression of this man as a warrior.

But now three other men, very different in appearance, descended the ladder from the passenger compartment. They weren’t wearing flight suits, nor dress suits, but the sort of “adventure travel” fashion favored by civilians going on military attachment – khaki cargo pants, zip-up fleece jackets, desert boots. All three wore glasses and carried fat satchels, which presumably held laptops, and perhaps other research materials. Handon didn’t have to stretch too far to guess that these were the British bioscientists.

Drake stepped forward to greet them, briefly looking around for Park, who was still MIA. No one followed the three scientists out, and Handon wondered if they didn’t have some kind of military handler. But then the dramatically bearded pilot walked over and began speaking with Drake. And Handon got the sense he was doing double duty. Maybe there were issues with the max payload of the plane. He knew there was supposed to be a lot of scientific equipment on board, the weight of which Handon couldn’t guess.

And then, in the next few seconds, his sense of this Sikh pilot as a warrior grew enormously – and unexpectedly.

Gunfire rang out, stark and violent, cracking through the windy air over the carrier’s surface.

And bodies started falling and hitting the deck.

Instantly, Handon handed Isabel over to Homer behind him, who was already crouching down and covering Ben with his body, and now extended that coverage to the little girl. In almost the same motion, Handon pushed forward to the front of the crowd, which had begun to startle and surge. These were veteran military personnel, so they weren’t all running away from the shooting, but enough were to make Handon the spawning salmon.

Gunfire was still cracking, in a different caliber this time.

When Handon broke through into the open area between crowd and plane, he could see two of the scientists already down on the deck, unmoving, and Drake clutching his right upper arm with his left hand, bent over and looking around on the deck around him, and seeming really pissed off. It looked to Handon like maybe he’d got his side arm clear – but had then been shot in the arm and dropped it.

But, mainly, he could the Sikh walking forward smoothly, weapon pushed out before him in a solid two-handed grip, and firing into the crowd. Handon’s .45 was already in his own hand, unsafetied, hammer back, and coming on line with that big puffy beard.

His finger squeezed, taking most of the slack out of the trigger.

He hesitated.

Dove and Grenade

JFK
- Stores

Sarah bowed her head, and pressed her hands together – not in prayer, but in thought. She did feel as if she had much to atone for, getting Park into this shit situation in the first place. But she had to shove those thoughts aside. If there was going to be any time later for atonement, then she had be effective – now. She was going to have to operate their way out of there.

On her own.

Because waiting this thing out wasn’t working, and wasn’t going to. Calling for help was also a non-starter – making loud noises would have a definite tendency to be fatal. And those wall phones that seemed to dot the upper decks were nowhere to be seen down here. Maybe somebody would wander down eventually. But maybe they would just get themselves infected, and become another hazard Sarah and Park had to navigate. Maybe, together, they would all be the beginning of the outbreak that would take down the whole ship.

No, it was down to her.

She was beginning to formulate the outline of a plan – but it was still heavily dependent on what type of ex-human this damned thing turned out to be.

One of Sarah’s last lines of brainstorming involved simple distraction. She didn’t have to destroy the dead guy guarding their exit. She only had to get him the hell away from it, and only for a few seconds. Its type, and speed of movement, was still an issue. But less so if it was moving away from them, even if only temporarily.

Unfortunately, the same tidiness that made the place devoid of weapons also left her without many options for things to chuck, to try to generate some noise elsewhere. The best she could come up with was a heavy four-inch bolt she found lying on the deck in the shadows. While pretty much useless as a weapon, it would at least clunk and perhaps clatter if she hurled it. Then again, she didn’t know for sure if that would get its attention. Noise seemed to draw them. But, ultimately, it was prey they were after. A piece of metal hitting the deck might or might not sound like a live lunch.

She pocketed the bolt just in case.

And, finally, she considered the one noisemaker she had available to her that was guaranteed to raise the dead.

Her own voice.

She pulled Park’s head in tight again to hers, and started whispering urgently.

* * *

The Sikh was still triggering off rounds, and still walking forward smoothly, his expression focused but calm.

And as Handon looked on, he let off the pressure on his own trigger, though he kept his weapon trained on him – relieved that his instincts were spot-on.

Even if he hadn’t until then known why.

Because, as the sea of startled spectators flowed away, Handon could now see that the Sikh hadn’t been firing randomly into the crowd, as it had first appeared. And he almost certainly hadn’t shot the scientists who had gone down in that first hail of gunfire.

No, the one who had been firing randomly, or at least firing at the people getting off the plane, was actually now sprawled out on the flight deck, a pool of blood spreading out from underneath his body, an M9 service pistol lying out near his outstretched hand. He wore a Navy working uniform.

That was the shooter.

And, Handon instantly realized, some kind of assassin.

It was the Sikh who had seen this, reacted to the attack before anyone else, and fired to stop him.

He had efficiently and methodically put the shooter down.

* * *

Sarah pulled her head away from Park’s, just to look him up and down.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Got it?”

“Got it,” he whispered back, nodding tiredly.

He started to pull away, to move into position – but Sarah stopped him. Pulling him in close again, she started unbuttoning his shirt. She pulled it over his shoulders, then removed his left hand from the wound on his right forearm, and tied the shirt around it – tight. He now had both their shirts tied onto him.

And they were both topless. Plus cold.

He gave her a questioning look. She leaned in again and whispered, “You’re going to need to use your hand in a minute. And you might need both of them.”

She hesitated, before adding one last instruction. “If, for whatever reason, we get separated… you get yourself back to the lab. I’ll meet you there. And if things go worse than that… just start climbing, until you get to some part of the ship where there are people with guns.”

Park nodded. Sarah pulled away, to get in position herself. But this time it was Park who stopped her.

“I… I’m going to have enough time to make it there?”

“Absolutely.” She held his gaze, giving him her steeliest, most reassuring look.

“…And what about you? You’re going to make it, too?”

“Absolutely,” she said…

…Just as long as it’s not a Foxtrot.

She smiled at this unvoiced thought, and Park mistook the reason for it. She concluded with: “Don’t look back – okay?”

He nodded, she squeezed his arm, and they headed in opposite directions.

* * *

So the shooter was down. And the pilot of the Beechcraft had put him there. But were there other threats? Handon was far too experienced in close-quarters battle to assume the fight was over. Opponents rarely had the courtesy to “sound off” before beginning an engagement. And you always had to assume there was at least one more.

So he lowered his gun away from the pilot, who continued to advance, and turned and scanned around behind him – at the shifting throngs of alarmed sailors, down the flight deck, up at the rising shape of the island…

His next step was to move to the shooter and secure him. Because he also knew that down didn’t necessarily mean out. A wounded opponent could be just as dangerous – or even more so. And as he stepped toward the sprawled-out body, he saw something that caused a shout of warning to form in his throat – but the Sikh beat him to it. Again!

They had both seen the fallen man’s non-shooting hand, which was stretched out away from him on the deck, balled into a fist… but which now opened up, simultaneously revealing and releasing… a hand grenade.

The spoon popped audibly as he let it go and the explosive armed itself, and then commenced rolling and wobbling across the flight deck. Directly toward the plane.

And also directly toward the group of scientists. One was still standing, looking stunned but unhurt; one was prone on the deck, unmoving; and the third was down – but now hoisted himself up to his knees, looking dazed, bleeding but still alive.

None of them had yet clocked the grenade.

* * *

After maneuvering herself silently around to the right side of the maze of Stores, but still at the edge of the open area, Sarah picked out a pile of pallets that suited her and climbed to the top. Casting around, she could see she was a bit more than halfway between the middle, where they’d started, and the starboard-side bulkhead. That was probably about right.

She was also close enough to see Park peeking out of the rows of crates to the left or port side, about an equal distance from the middle. He was close enough for her to stay visual with him – but hopefully far enough away to keep the inconvenient dead guy from seeing him.

On the other hand, Sarah’s platform was only about eight feet off the ground. Which wasn’t necessarily going to be high enough to save her. But, then again, she didn’t have to save her. She only had to save Park.

Was character destiny? She didn’t know.

She only knew that this time, things would play out differently than they had at the cabin. She wasn’t going to get anybody else killed this time. And she wasn’t going to leave others behind, while she made her escape.