Checkmate (6 page)

Quick and quiet, Sam
.
Go
.

He tensed his abdominal muscles, drew his knees up to his chest, then hooked his ankles over the pipe and began inching his body along it until he was tucked tight against it. He looked down. The diver was almost directly beneath him.

With one palm pressed against a neighboring pipe for leverage, Fisher rolled his body until he was balanced lengthwise atop the conduit. He went still again. The diver’s flashlight appeared again, closer yet, casting slivers of light and broken shadows through the understructure.

Fisher closed his eyes and willed himself invisible.

Nothing here but us pipes, pal,
Fisher thought.
Swim along now
.

After what seemed like minutes, but was likely less than twenty seconds, the diver clicked off his flashlight and finned away. Fisher let himself exhale.

 

 

 

WITH
nothing to do until the security sweep was completed and the stand-down order given, he had to choose between sitting still and waiting it out, or doing a little exploring. He decided on the latter.

A quick check of his OPSAT confirmed what he’d predicted: The pier’s understructure wasn’t included in the dock’s blueprints. He scrolled through the schematics to be sure. There was nothing.

He set out.

He crawled along the maze of conduits until he intersected a grated maintenance catwalk. All around him he heard the gurgling of water through pipes, the hissing of steam, and the low hum of electricity. The ceiling, a mere four feet above the catwalk, dripped with condensation and was covered with tiny stalagtites of mineral deposits. In the distance he could hear the crackle of acetylene cutting torches.

He keyed his subdermal: “I’m back.”

Grimsdottir said, “Thank God. I was worried.”

“Didn’t know you cared.”

“Dummy. Sam, I don’t know what went wrong. I was sure I’d covered the alarm redundancies.”

“The curse of modern technology. No harm done.”

Lambert said, “Are you in or out? Scratch that; dumb question. What’s your status?”

“Doing a little spelunking while they finish their security sweep.”

“Okay, stay—”

A voice came over the dock’s PA system. Fisher told Lambert, “Wait,” then listened: “All hands, security alert stand down. Security Alert Team report to control for debriefing.”

Lambert said, “I heard. Stay safe and stay in touch.”

Fisher signed off.

Hunched over, occasionally ducking under valve junctions or cloverleafs of piping, he began picking his way down the catwalk. He paused every few seconds to switch his trident goggles to infrared for a quick scan of the area ahead; with the swirling steam, he found the NV unreliable. Aside from the red and yellow heat signatures of the conduits, he saw nothing.

With a screech, a parrot-sized rat scurried across his path and darted down the catwalk. Fisher realized he’d drawn his SC; he holstered it. Constant training made for good reflexes and a lot of almost-dead rats.

After another fifty feet he came to a T-intersection. He switched to IR. Clear. Ahead, the catwalk continued to who knows where; to his right, a ladder rose from the catwalk and disappeared.

Thank God for maintenance hatches
.

The ladder was but a few rungs tall and ended at a manholelike opening. He took out his flexi-cam, plugged the AV cable into his OPSAT, waited for the image to resolve on the screen, then snaked the camera through one of the cover’s holes.

It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. A boot; a black leather boot. He froze. Standard Navy-issue Chukka, size 12. He knew the model only too well. He’d worn out three pair during BUD/S, the Navy’s six-month SEAL boot camp.

Ever so slowly he eased the flexi-cam back through the hole.

Above him, the sailor’s boot was joined by a second. Fisher could smell the tang of cigarette smoke. “They find anything?” the first sailor asked.

“Nah. You know how it is: They always say, ‘This is not a drill,’ but it almost always is.”

“Yeah. So what’s the deal with this ship? What’s with all the guys in space suits?”

“That’s biohazard gear, idiot. The Master Chief says its an exercise, but I don’t buy it. I think there’s something—”

A grizzled voice interrupted. “You two! Got nothing to do, I see. Follow me. I’ll find you something.”

“Come on, Chief, we’re just taking a break.”

“Break’s over, ladies. Back to work.”

Fisher waited for the count of thirty, then slipped the flexi-cam back through the hole. The boots were gone. He switched to IR and did a 360 scan. There was nothing. No bodies, no movement.

Using his fingertips, he gently lifted the manhole cover, slid it aside, and crawled out.

HE
slid the cover back into place, crab-walked four steps to his right, and ducked behind a pallet of crates. Now that the security sweep was over, the dock had returned to normal work lighting. Sodium-vapor lamps hung from cross-girders high in the vaulted ceiling, casting the dock in gray light. Farther down the dock, amid the loading derricks, a group of sailors moved crates around on a hand truck. Here and there he could see the sparkle of welding torches, could smell the sulfer stench of acetylene.

To his right was a familiar sight: the
Trego
. She was moored bow-first toward the dock door. Her deck hatches, portholes, and windows were covered with yellow plastic sheeting and sealed with red duct tape. At the midships hatch a tentlike structure had been erected—the decontamination entry and exit, he assumed. As he watched, a pair of NEST people in white biohazard suits stepped out of the tent. They were met by a trio of similarly dressed figures who began hosing them down with a foamy liquid.

Fisher felt a flutter in his stomach. Grimsdottir had assured him the radiation levels aboard the
Trego
were well below a risky dose, but watching the decontamination procedure made him wary. His harness was fitted with a pen-sized quartz-fiber dosimeter linked to both his subdermal and his OPSAT, so he would get plenty of advance warning if he were taking on a radioactive load. Or so the theory went.

This is why you’re paid the big money, Sam,
he told himself.

He scanned the dock and the
Trego
in both infrared and night-vision modes until satisfied he knew the positions and movments of all the NEST people, then chose his best route.

Sticking to the shadows, he moved down the dock, heading toward the
Trego
’s stern. Once he drew even with it, he crept to the edge of the dock, grasped the aft mooring line in both hands, and began shimmying his way over the water. Twice he had to pause as biohazard-suited figures shuffled across the deck and through the decon tent, but at last he reached the railing, swung his legs over, and dropped to the deck in a crouch.

He took two quick steps, mounted a ladder on the superstructure, and started climbing.

HE’D
gotten only ten rungs when he heard the scrape of a boot.

He froze, looked down.

Below him, a NEST person was standing at the rail. The man pulled back his hood and titled his head backward, gulping fresh air. A tinny voice called, “Len, where’re you at?”

The man pulled a portable radio off his belt and replied, “Main deck. Taking a breather.”

“When you’re done, come over to starboard midships. I’ve got a team rotating out. They need a wash down.”

“On my way.”

The man pulled his hood back in place and walked off.

Fisher kept climbing.

 

 

 

ONCE
on the superstructure, it took but two minutes for him to find the deck scuttle he was looking for. While a main deck hatch would have provided him a more direct route to the engine room, his penetration of any of the quarantine barriers would not only raise immediate suspicion but also prompt another security sweep.

The scuttle he’d chosen was similarly sealed, but the duct tape separated from the deck’s nonstick coating easily. He turned the wheel and lifted. Inside, a ladder dropped into darkness. He did a quick IR/NV scan, saw nothing, then slipped his legs through the opening and started down. He paused to close the scuttle behind him, then dropped to the deck.

“I’m inside,” Fisher radioed.

Lambert replied, “According the radio transmissions we’ve been monitoring, most of the NEST personnel are in the forward part of the ship. Whatever the radioactive material is, it looks like it’s somewhere in the bow ballast tank. Grim’s updated your OPSAT; the waypoint markers will take you to the engine room.”

“Been there before.”

Grimsdottir said, “I’ve analyzed the paths the dock workers have been taking. My route will skirt those areas.”

Fisher checked his OPSAT. The
Trego
’s blueprint, shown in a rotatable 3D view, was overlayed with a dotted amber line, starting with his position—shown as a blue square—and ending at the
Trego
’s engine room—shown as a pink square.

“Got it,” Fisher replied. “Grim, just so we’re clear—”

“You have my word, Sam. The inspectors have to wear those suits. Government regs. Hell, you know better than anyone how persnickety government is. I’ve done the calculations backward and forward. As long as you’re out of there in an hour, you’re fine.”

And at sixty-one minutes?
he thought.

Over the years he’d faced every nightmare an operator can imagine, but like most people, radiation held a special, dark place in his mind and heart. Invisible and virtually inescapable, radiation mutated the human body at the core level, destroying and twisting cells in monstrous ways. He’d seen it up close and in person. It was a horrific way to die.

His mind immediately went to Slipstone. If in fact the town’s water supply had been poisoned with some type of radiation, he hated to imagine what the surviving residents were going through: nausea, vomiting, skin burns, hair loss, lungs filling with fluid, accelerated tumor growth. . . .

The bottom line was he trusted Grimsdottir and Lambert with his life and had done so dozens of times before. He would do so again now. “Okay,” he said. “I’m moving.”

 

 

 

TO
avoid interfering with the NEST team’s equipment, the
Trego
’s generators had been powered down and switched over to the dock’s power grid, so the passageway was darkened, lit only by red emergency lanterns affixed to the bulkhead at ten-foot intervals.

With one eye fixed on the OPSAT and one eye scanning for movement, Fisher padded down the passagway to a T-turn. Right led further aft; left, forward to the bow. He went left. The engine room was eighty feet forward of his position and down three decks. To get there he’d have to navigate five ladders and two deck scuttles.

As he reached the next intersection and started down a ladder, the OPSAT’s screen flickered. The
Trego
’s blueprint began to pixelize before his eyes. He pressed himself against the bulkhead and got on the radio: “Who forgot to pay the cable bill? My OPSAT’s losing signal.”

“Grim was afraid of that,” Lambert replied. “The NEST people are degaussing.”

Degaussing was a fancy term for demagnetization. Over time, steel-hulled ships pick up a magnetic charge that can interfere with radio and navigation systems. In this case, the charge was making it hard for the NEST inspectors to nail down the signature of whatever material was hidden in the
Trego
’s ballast tanks, so they were using degaussing emitters.

“Switch to internal,” Grimsdottir said. “You’ll still have the blueprint, but no overlay.”

“No problem,” Fisher said. “I’ll improvise.”

 

 

 

HE
returned to the head of the ladder and drew his SC- 20 from its back holster.

Compact and lightweight, the SC-20 was equipped with a flash/sound suppressor and it fired a standard NATO 5.56mm Bullpup round. That, however, was where similarities to other weapons ended. The SC-20’s modular under-barrel attachment gave Fisher an unprecedented array of options, including a gas/frag/chaff grenade launcher; LTL (Less-Than-Lethal) weapons such as ring airfoil projectiles (RAFs) and sticky shockers; an EM (Electro-Magnetic) pod with a laser-based directional microphone, a signal jammer, and a laser port sniffer for at-a-distance data transfers with IR computer ports; SPs (Surveillance Projectiles) such as a self-adhesive remote camera nicknamed, predictably, a “sticky cam,” and finally a gadget Fisher had dubbed the ASE, or All-Seeing-Eye, a micro-camera embedded in a tiny parachute made from a substance called aero-gel.

Consisting of ninety percent air, aero-gel could hold four thousand times its own weight and had a surface area that boggled the mind: Spread flat, each cubic inch of aero-gel—roughly the size of four nickels stacked atop one another—could cover a football field from end zone to end zone. In the case of the ASE, its palm-sized, self-deploying aero-gel chute could keep the camera aloft for as long as ninety seconds, giving Fisher a high-resolution bird’s-eye view of nearly a square mile.