Kill Decision (54 page)

Foxy nodded. “Bad for them, good for us. But we’re going to have to climb down. This gap is too big to jump, and we don’t have ropes.”

Odin started lowering himself over the side. “The containers have enough cross-braces and handholds for a free climb.” He looked up. “You okay with this, Professor?”

McKinney was already lowering herself down, searching for a leg hold. “I’ve done my share of rock climbing in the field. Let’s do it.”

All three of them started the long climb down, keeping close together and receiving frequent sprays from the pheromone canister. It was already more than two-thirds empty. It took them a good five minutes to descend to deck level.

When they hopped onto the deck, Odin led them toward a watertight door at the base of the massive white-painted steel bridge tower.

Foxy grabbed his arm and pointed to the escape boat a hundred feet to their right. “I’ll get it ready for launch while you redirect the ship.”

“What about the pheromone?”

“That escape boat should be nearly airtight. I’ll probably be safe in there. Just give me another dose for the run over to it.”

Odin glanced at McKinney. “Is he making sense?”

She nodded. “We’ll go through less pheromone, and if the boat’s watertight and he’s quiet, he should be okay.”

Odin nodded to Foxy. “Do it.”

“I’ll be ready to launch when you head down.”

McKinney sprayed him a double dose and watched him race off toward the starboard side.

Odin pulled her along, and in a moment they undid the latch on a waterproof door and entered the stairwell of the tower. McKinney pulled the door closed behind them with a clang. Almost immediately the deafening noise of the drones dropped to a tolerable level.

“God, that sound is from hell.” She gazed up the stairwell.

“There’s an elevator, but I don’t think we should risk it.” Odin smeared partially dried blood with the toe of his boot. The trail of blood led into the elevator lobby. He drew his pistol and motioned for her to follow him up the stairs.

Since they were both physically fit, they made quick work of the eight-story climb, and could now hear the penetrating hum of the drone engines return, along with a salt-laden breeze. Odin climbed the last stretch of stairs warily, with McKinney close behind. They emerged near the center of the ship’s bridge and could see the entire place was spattered with blood, broken glass, and bullet holes. A dozen small quadracopter drones and an even greater number of wire-cutter drones moved in and out of the control room through the blasted-out windows. A twenty-mile-an-hour wind was blowing through it, sending loose papers flying.

Odin led her up to the central console, but half the computer screens here were shot out. There were literally hundreds of bullet holes peppering the walls and equipment. “Goddammit. . . .”

They stepped around the console to find a dead crewman on the floor. McKinney caught her breath at the sight of his mangled body. He’d been shot so many times in the face and upper torso that most of that portion was spattering the walls and floor around him, along with a five-foot-diameter pool of half-dried blood. What humanized him to her in a disturbing way was the man’s Felix the Cat wristwatch and bright green sneakers.

McKinney ducked down as one of the smaller quadracopters hovered toward them. She sprayed her and Odin with pheromone again, her fear coming back.

Odin spoke into the intrateam radio. “Foxy, the nav computer screen’s been shot out. Half the bridge controls are fucked. I’m going to redirect the ship manually.”

“Got it. Escape boat’s ready to go when you are.”

“I’ll be here awhile. I need to make sure we’ll hit those rocks.”

“Standing by.”

Odin stood up and started tapping buttons to disengage the autopilot. Chimes sounded. Then Odin moved to the ship’s surprisingly small rudder wheel. Closely watching the ship’s compass, he started spinning it to port. Slowly the ship began to lean slightly to the right as its massive length turned left, toward the east.

McKinney came up alongside him, looking down the length of the massive ship, covered and alive with the colony of drones.

He looked at her. “Take the pheromone capsule and get to the escape boat.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He regarded her and shook his head. Then he grabbed the MBITR radio. “TOC, this is Safari-One-Six actual. We have successfully redirected the
Ebba Maersk
. Abort your attack run. Repeat. Abort your attack run.”

*   *   *

“H
allelujah! Hey,
Mooch, Ripper, you hear that?” Smokey brought the powerful Bentley slaloming down a ramp and screeching around a pillar, while several of the lawn mower–sized quadracopters hovered down the ramp after him, opening up with machine guns as he passed. Seven or eight more drones were already on this deck, and their streaming bullets raked across lines of plastic-covered BMWs strapped in tight rows and pinged off the steel plating covering his windows and doors. “Goddammit!”

He keyed the radio. “You hear that, Captain Jönsson? Turn us to the mainland!”

There was a pause, and the captain’s voice came in.
“We’ve got two feet of water in the engine room. We’re taking on water in three compartments. There are fires on four decks!”

Smokey cringed as he passed a garage compartment with dozens of sedans fully engulfed in flames—smoke billowing up through the powerful vents and fire sprinklers engaged. “Will the damned thing stay afloat?”

A pause.
“It’ll stay afloat.”

“Then turn the damned boat!”

Smokey screeched around a corner, smashing a drone against the wall and smearing it to pieces in a shower of sparks. But then something caught under his wheel and the Bentley veered sharply and flipped onto its side as it slid down a ramp onto the heavy equipment deck.

“Dammit!” Smokey held on as the car rolled and landed against another pillar at the base of the ramp. It finally came to a stop, and already bullets were raking its sides. He keyed the radio. “Ripper! Mooch! I need help. I’m rolled!” He tried to kick the top door open, but the deck ceiling was too low with the car on its side to open the door.

Ripper’s voice came in.
“Coming.”

Smokey tried to shrink his body to as small a silhouette as possible as hovering drones riddled the Bentley with gunfire. He grabbed the key and turned the engine off. Then he aimed his MP5 through a narrow view port in the steel, raking a quadracopter drone.

He heard a large engine headed his way and moved to the other side just in time to see the bucket of the front loader lowering and smashing into the side of his car, spinning it free of the ramp and sliding it across the decking on its roof before raising the bucket and flipping it right-side up. Inside he went sprawling against the door.

Smokey crawled back toward the front seat, shouting into his radio, “Goddamn you, Ripper!”

“You all right?”

“Yeah.” He watched the front loader smash its bucket down on top of a quadracopter drone firing at her, crushing it against the floor.

“
Die, fucker! Die!”

“You’re a sick lady, Ripper.”

*   *   *

E
vans followed the captain
up a narrow flight of steel stairs and gazed back behind them at rising, bubbling seawater amid thick pipes and machinery below. Adrenaline had by now made him almost completely sober.

The captain grabbed his sleeve, practically dragging him up the steps. “We need to seal this compartment. Where the hell is that other man?”

“He locked himself in the generator room.”

The captain stopped and pointed back down. “Go get him! I need to manage the bilge pumps to make sure we don’t capsize.” He shoved Evans. “Do it!”

The captain raced ahead and through the watertight door. Looking down again, Evans realized he could now see actual underwater cutting torches in the dark bubbling water. “Oh, no way . . .”

Suddenly Ritter scrambled through a side door some distance below. He was shouting, “Which way is out of this goddamned place!”

Evans nodded and started racing up the stairs. Ritter took off in his direction, mounting the steps as well.

Once he got to the watertight door, Evans turned to see the ocean surging upward now.

Ritter shouted, “No! Don’t close the door!”

Evans grimaced. “Nothing personal, asshole. Just business.” He slammed it shut and locked it down with the turn bolts. The metal was so thick he could barely hear the screams on the other side.

*   *   *

M
cKinney and Odin remained
on the bridge of the
Ebba Maersk
for nearly twenty minutes. The pheromone canister was getting low, but up ahead was the unmistakable outline of waves crashing against rocks. It stretched in a line across a third of the near horizon.

Odin had been manually adjusting the wheel back and forth for the entire run.

“Are we close enough to jump ship?”

“Just a bit more—we’ve come this far. We need to be sure. How we doing on pheromone?”

She shook the canister. “Not much. Maybe an inch left on the bottom, but at our consumption rate that should be plenty.”

The quadracopter drones were even then starting to investigate their human breath again. McKinney depressed the nozzle to spray another dose on them.

But nothing came out.

She shook it and tried the nozzle several more times.

He noticed her efforts. “What’s wrong?”

“Propellant. There’s no more damned propellant.”

They exchanged deadly serious looks and looked out at the thousands and thousands of drones around them. McKinney could see a quadracopter edging up over the windowsill of the control room, headed straight toward them.

Odin aimed the pistol and shot once, knocking it out of the air where it disappeared below the window. “Dammit!”

They could both see jagged rocks foaming in waves several kilometers ahead. He picked up a pair of range-finding binoculars in a holder on the console. He focused them on the rocks. “Two and a half kilometers. We just need to stay alive for about four more minutes.”

McKinney pointed as a dozen quadracopter drones in two sizes started gathering around the bridge. She turned back the way they had come, to see that direction being closed off by twice as many more.

Odin grabbed the canister and threw it onto the console. “Stand back!” He aimed the pistol obliquely at the metal and fired several shots in succession, finally causing the canister to rattle across the floor.

McKinney grabbed it, only to find the dents hadn’t penetrated.

Odin leaned down next to her. “Lean it against the wall.”

McKinney carefully placed it and glanced around to see now six or seven dozen quadracopter drones gathering around the control tower. “Odin!”

He was busy aiming at the nozzle tip of the canister. He fired a shot that sent it rolling across the floor again. He scrambled after it, only to pick it up and find the nozzle pinched completely closed. He swung it around, trying to drain anything out of it. But nothing came.

He pointed at her backpack. “Anything at all?”

She unzipped it to show the detector—which showed fairly high levels of perfluorocarbon—and the metal canister of oleoresin capsicum. “This just induces the attack signal.” She glanced around them as the quadracopters closed in. “And there’s about to be plenty of that around here already.”

He took it from her, then keyed the radio. “Foxy. If you don’t hear from us in two minutes, launch the boat.”

There was a pause of static, then:
“Fuck you. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Foxy, listen to me.”

“You’re breaking up.”

He sighed and looked to McKinney.

They couldn’t help but notice the solid wall of drones closing in around them. Their path to the stairwell was already blocked.

McKinney moved toward him, watching the drones move in.

Odin held her. They stood with their faces just an inch apart. The horrendous sound of the drone engines still hummed deafeningly all around them. A glance forward and she could see the rocks looming larger. “We did it. We stopped them—for now, at least.”

Odin nodded and kissed her.

McKinney felt tears welling up as he kissed them away. “I wanted a chance to know you, David.”

He nodded. “Then know this about me.” Odin hefted the canister of capsicum. “I don’t
ever
give up.”

He kissed her quickly, then turned and smashed the nozzle end of the capsicum canister against the console, breaking off the tip. With the full canister under pressure it started hissing madly.

“What the hell are you doing? That’ll enrage them!”

“I’m counting on it.” He turned and hurled the canister out the window on the opposite side of the ship from the rescue boat. The canister tumbled end over end, falling ten stories into the canyons of the shipping containers below—gathering a swarm of drones in its wake, even as it fell. The unprecedented concentration must have been like a beacon, because the power of the attack signal spread quickly and the entire host around the ship’s bridge plunged down after it, creating a dense, mad crowd that jostled each other in pursuit.

Odin grabbed her by the arm. “Run like hell!”

McKinney smiled in surprise even as he pulled her along. Odin shot two small lingering drones out of the air near the stairwell and motioned for her to take the lead as he covered their rear. As they descended the stairs, McKinney could see through the portholes as hundreds of drones streamed past outside the bridge tower in pursuit of the canister. McKinney couldn’t wipe the grin off her face as she circled down the stairwell. “Very clever, mammal!”

“Just keep moving.”

At deck level they pushed through the watertight door and sprinted across the crimson-painted deck. The roar of drone engines coming from the far side of the control tower had risen to a crescendo by now. The air there was black with drones. They dashed across the decking and up to the sealed door of the rescue boat. There was a round porthole above the door near the words
38 Persons.
Odin undid the latch and opened the door to reveal Foxy staring at him from the pilot’s seat.