Islands in the Net (40 page)

Should be interesting. The pirates wouldn't like it much—their skin blistered under publicity. But at least they'd escaped the Grenadians.

There seemed to be an unspoken conviction among the Singaporeans that the Grenadians had finished. That with the Bank scattered, and the Government in ruin, there was simply no point left in their terror campaign.

Maybe they were right. Maybe successful terrorism had always worked like this—provoking a regime till it crumbled under the weight of its own repression. “Babylon Falls”—they'd bragged about it. Maybe Sticky and his friends would now slip out of Singapore in the confusion of the revolt.

If there was any sanity left in them, they'd be glad to run, puffed and proud, triumphant. Probably amazed to be alive. They could swagger back to their Caribbean shadows as true voodoo legends, new-millennium spooks nonpareil. Why not live? Why not enjoy it?

She wanted to believe that they'd do it. She wanted it to be over—she couldn't bear to think back to Sticky's feverish menu of technical atrocities.

A shudder struck her where she stood. A rocketing wave of intense, unfocused, ontological dread. For a moment she wondered if she'd been pellet-shot. Maybe Sticky had dosed her while she was unconscious and the fear drug was just now coming on.… God, what an awful suspicion.

She remembered suddenly the Vienna agent she'd met in Galveston, the polite, handsome Russian who had talked about the “evil pressure in a bullet.”

Now, for the first time, she was grasping what the man had meant. The pressure of
raw possibility
. If something was
possible
—didn't that mean that somewhere, somehow, someone
had to do it?
The voodoo urge to truck with demons. The imp of the perverse. Deep in the human spirit, the carnivorous shadow of science.

It was a dynamic, like gravity. Some legacy of evolution, deep in human nerves, invisible and potent, like software.

She turned around. No sign of Shaw. A few yards behind her, Bad Luck was retching, loudly, over the guard rail. He looked up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

She could have been him. Laura forced herself to smile at him.

He gave her a look of tremulous gratitude and came to join her. She almost fled at once, but he held up a hand. “It's okay,” he said. “I know I'm dosed. It comes in waves. I'm better now.”

“You're very brave,” Laura said. “I'm sorry for you, sir.”

Bad Luck stared at her. “That's nice. You're nice. You don't treat me like a leper.” He paused, hot little rat eyes studying her. “You're not one of us, are you? You're not with the Bank.”

“What makes you say that?” Laura said.

“You're somebody's girl friend, is it?” He grinned in a cadaverous parody of flirtation. “Lot of bosses on this ship. Top brass goes for those hot Eurasian girls.”

“We're getting married, la,” Laura said, “so you can forget all about it, fellow.”

He dug into his jacket. “Want a cigarette?”

“Maybe you'd better save them,” Laura said, accepting one.

“No, no. No problem. I can get anything! Cigarettes, blood components. Megavitamins, embryos.… My name's Desmond, miss. Desmond Yaobang.”

“Hi,” Laura said. She accepted a light. Her mouth immediately filled with choking poisoned soot.

She couldn't understand why she was doing this.

Except that it was better than doing nothing. Except that she felt sorry for him. And maybe the presence of Desmond Yaobang would keep everyone else at a distance.

“What do you think they'll do to us, in Abadan? Do
with
us, I mean.” Yaobang's head just topped her shoulder. There was nothing obviously repulsive about him, but the chemical fear had etched itself into the set of his eyes, the lines of his face. It had soaked him through with an aura of creepiness. She felt the strong, irrational urge to kick him. The way a flock of crows will peck an injured one to death.

“I dunno,” Laura drawled, contempt making her careless. She looked at her sandaled feet, avoiding his eyes. “Maybe they'll give me some decent shoes.… I'll be okay if I can make a few phone calls.”

“Phone calls,” Yaobang parroted nervously, “capital idea. Yes, get Desmond to a phone and he can get you anything. Shoes. Surely. You want to try it?'”

“Mmm. Not just yet. Too crowded.”

“Tonight then. Fine, miss. Splendid. I won't be sleeping anyway.”

She turned away from him and put her back to the rail. The sun was setting between two of the whirling wind columns. Vast under-lit cloud banks of mellow Renaissance gold. Yaobang turned and looked as well, biting his lip, mercifully silent. Along with the filthy brain buzz of the cigarette, it gave Laura an expansive feeling of sublimity. Beautiful, but it wouldn't last long—the sun sank fast in the tropics.

Yaobang straightened, pointed. “What is that?”

Laura looked. His paranoia-sharpened senses had caught something—a distant, airborne glint.

Yaobang squinted. “Some little kind of chopper, maybe?”

“It's too small!” Laura said. “It's a drone!” Light had winked briefly from its blades and now she'd lost it against the clouds.

“A drone?” he said, alarmed by her tone of voice. “Is it voodoo? Can it hurt us?”

“Shut up!” Laura shoved away from the rail. “I'm gonna climb up to the crow's nest—I want a better look.” She hurried across the deck, her sandals flopping.

The ship's foremast had a radar horn and video for the guidance computer. But there was access for repair and human backup: a crow's nest, three stories above the deck. Laura grabbed the cool iron rungs, then stopped in frustration. The damned sari—it would tangle her feet. She turned and beckoned to Yaobang.

There was a shout from above. “Hey!”

A man in a popsicle-red rain slicker was leaning over the crow's-nest railing. “What are you doing?”

“Are you crew?” Laura shouted, hesitating.

“No, are you?”

She shook her head. “I thought I saw something”—she pointed—“over there!”

“What did you see?”

“I think it was a Canadair CL-227!”

The man's shoes clattered as he came down quickly to the deck. “What's a canadare?” Yaobang demanded plaintively, hopping from foot to foot. He noticed a pair of Zeiss binoculars around the other's neck. “Where'd you get those?”

“Deck room,” said Red Raincoat, meaninglessly.

“I know you, right? Henderson? I'm Desmond Yaobang. Countertrade section.”

“Hennessey,” Red Raincoat said.

“Hennessey, yes …”

“Give me those,” Laura demanded. She grabbed the binoculars. Under the flimsy poncho, Hennessey's chest was padded and huge. He was wearing something. Bulletproof vest?

A life jacket.

Laura tore her sunglasses off, felt hastily for a pocket—none, in a sari—and propped them on her head. She focused the binoculars.

She found the thing almost at once. There it was, hovering malignantly at the twilit skyline. It had been in her nightmares so many times that she couldn't believe she was seeing it.

It was the drone that had strafed her Lodge. Not the identical one, because this one was military green, but the same model—double rotors, dumbbell shape. Even the stupid landing gear.

“Let me see!” Yaobang demanded frantically. To shut him up, Laura passed him the binoculars.

“Hey,” Hennessey protested mildly. “Those are mine.” He was a thirtyish Anglo with prominent cheekbones and a small, neatly trimmed mustache. He had no accent—straight Mid-Atlantic Net talk. Below the baggy plastic poncho there was something lithe and weaselish about him.

He smiled at her, tightly, looking into her eyes. “You American? USA?”

Laura felt for her sunglasses. They'd pushed the sari back, showing her blond hair.

“I see it!” Yaobang burst out excitedly. “A flying ground nut!”

Hennessey's eyes widened. He'd recognized her. He was thinking fast. She could see him shift forward onto the balls of his feet.

“Maybe it's Grenadian!” Yaobang said. “Better warn everyone! I'll watch the thing—missy, you go running!”

“No, don't do that,” Hennessey told her. He reached under his poncho and tugged out a piece of machinery. It was small and skeletal and looked like a cross between a vice-grip wrench and a putty applicator. He stepped near Yaobang, holding the device with both hands.

“Oh, God,” Yaobang said blindly. Another wave of it was hitting him—he was trembling so hard he could barely hold up the binoculars. “I'm frightened,” he sniveled. A cracked, reflexive, little-boy voice. “I can see it coming.… I'm afraid!”

Hennessey pointed the machine at Yaobang's ribs and pulled its trigger, twice. There were two discreet little coughs, barely audible, but the thing jumped viciously in Hennessey's hands. Yaobang convulsed with impact, arms flying, chest buckling as if hit with an axe. He fell over his own feet and hit the deck with a clatter of binoculars.

Laura stared at him in stunned horror. Hennessey had just blown two great smoking holes in Yaobang's jacket. Yaobang lay unmoving, face livid and black. “You killed him!”

“No. No problem. Special narcotic dye,” Hennessey blurted.

She looked again. Just for a second. Yaobang's mouth was clogged with blood. She stared at Hennessey and began backing away.

With a sudden smooth, reflexive motion Hennessey centered the gun on her chest. She saw the cavernous barrel of it and knew suddenly that she was looking at death. “Laura Webster!” Hennessey said. “Don't run, don't make me shoot!”

Laura froze.

“Police officer,” Hennessey said. He glanced nervously off the port bow. “Vienna Convention, Special Operations Task Force. Just obey orders and everything will be fine.”

“That's a lie!” Laura shouted. “There's no such thing!”

He wasn't looking at her. He kept looking out to sea. She followed his gaze.

Something was coming toward the ship. It was rushing over the waves, with astonishing, magic swiftness. A long white stick, like a wand, with sharp square wings. Behind it a slim straight billow of contrail air.

It rushed toward the bridge, at the stern, a needle on a thread of steam. Into it. Through it.

Raw fire bloomed, taller than houses. A wall of heat and sound surged up the deck and knocked her from her feet. She was down, bruised, flash-blinded. The bow of the ship bucked under her like a huge steel animal.

Roaring seconds. Pieces of plastic and steel were pattering onto the deck. The bridge superstructure—the radar mast, the phone antennas—was one vast, ugly conflagration. It was like someone had built a volcano in it—thermite heat and white-hot twisting spars of metal and lava globs of molten ceramic and plastic. Like a firecracker in a white wedding cake.

Below them, the ship was still pitching. Hennessey had lurched to his feet and made a run for the railing. For a moment she thought he was going to jump. Then he was back with a life preserver—a big ceremonial flotation ring marked in Parsi script. He stumbled and rolled and got back to her. There was no sign of his gun now—he'd folded it again, tucked it away.

“Get this on!” he shouted in her face.

Laura grabbed it reflexively. “The lifeboat!” she shouted back.

He shook his head. “No! No good! Booby-trapped!”

“You bastard!”

He ignored her. “When she goes down, you have to swim hard, Laura! Hard, away from the undertow!”

“No!” She jumped to her feet, dancing away from his lunging attempt to tackle her. The back of the ship was vomiting smoke now, huge black explosive volumes of it. People were scrambling across the deck.

She turned back to Hennessey. He was down and doubled over, hands knotted behind his neck, bent legs crossed at the ankles. She gaped at him, then looked to sea again.

Another missile. It slid just above the waves, its jet flare lighting the rippled water with flashbulb briefness. It hit.

A catastrophic explosion belowdecks. Hatch covers leapt free from their hinges and tumbled skyward like flaming dominoes. Up-leaping geysers of fire. The ship lurched like a gut-shot elephant.

The deck tilted, slowly, inexorably, gravity clutching at them like the end of the world. Steam rose with a stink of scalded seawater. She fell to her knees and slid.

Hennessey had crawled to the bow rail. He had an elbow hooked around it and was talking into something—a military field telephone. He paused and yanked its long antenna out and resumed shouting. Gleefully. He caught her eye and waved and gestured at her. Jump! Swim!

She lurched to her feet again, lusting blindly to get at him and kill him. Strangle him, claw his eyes out. The deck dropped under her like a broken elevator and she fell again, bruising her knees. She almost lost the flotation ring.

Her shins were wet. She turned. The sea was coming up over the starboard bow. Gray ugly waves thick with blasted chunks of flotsam. The ship was eviscerated, its guts spewing out.

Fear overwhelmed her. A panic strength to live. She ripped and kicked her way out of the enveloping sari. Her sandals were long gone. She pulled the ring over her head and shoulders. Then she scrambled to the bow rail, clambered over it, and jumped.

The water rushed over her, warm and dank. Twilight was leaching from the sky, but the ship's blaze lit the straits like a battlefield.

Another minor explosion, and a flare of light by the ship's single lifeboat. He'd killed them. Good God, they were going to
kill them all
! How many people—a hundred, a hundred and fifty? They'd been herded into a cattle car and taken out to sea and butchered! Burned and drowned, like vermin!

A drone hummed angrily just over her head. She felt the wind of it on her sodden hair.

She got the ring wedged under her armpits and started swimming hard.