Plague Ship (13 page)

“What are you going to do with the doc?” Robbie asked. “He could say we gunned down the old man.”

“He didn’t witness anything,” Scott said. “It would be his word against ours.”

“I guess,” Robbie agreed hesitantly. “But they might believe him—him being a doctor and all.”

“Well,” Scott said, after giving the matter more thought, “we can always cross that bridge later.”

“Yeah, later,” Robbie nodded, and when Scott wasn’t looking, he ran his finger across his throat and grinned menacingly at David.

We’ll never cross that bridge
, David thought to himself,
because I plan on killing both of you before you can kill me. And then I’ll put you two in body bags, right alongside Arthur Maggio, who you murdered
.

Scott gestured with his weapon to the staircase. “You can go now, Dr. Ballineau.”

David started up the stairs, slow and easy, not bothering to look back. He didn’t have to. He could sense the shotguns following his every step.

“And you’d be smart not to mention this to anyone,” Scott called after him.

“Right,” David said, deciding to kill the investment banker first. He’d pick the time and method later.

eighteen

“I’m dying!” Juanita groaned.

“No, you’re not,” David told her.

“I feel like I’m dying,” Juanita insisted.

“Feeling like it and doing it are two different things,” David said. “Now be quiet while I listen to your lungs.”

He placed his stethoscope on the nanny’s chest and heard scattered crackles and rhonchi, but now there were far more loud wheezes. It was an ominous sign that indicated Juanita’s airway was becoming obstructed with blood and mucus. And David knew the worst was yet to come.

“So?” Juanita questioned as she watched him put away his
stethoscope.

“So far, so good,” he lied.

“Hmm,” she moaned, not believing him. Juanita leaned back heavily on her pillow before saying, “I have become a burden.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“I was supposed to look after the Little One and now I can’t.”

“She’s doing fine, and she’ll continue to do fine until you get better.”

“Please, God! Watch over her,” Juanita prayed and crossed herself, then added, “with or without me.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” David said.

“That is in God’s hands,” Juanita said and gave him a very long look as if trying to read his mind. “You will remember where I am to be buried.”

“I will remember.”

“And the Little One is not to attend my funeral.”

“She’ll demand to be there.”

“You are her father!” Juanita raised her voice. “You will make that decision.”

David shook his head. “She’s Marianne’s daughter and just as headstrong.”

“She will cry.”

“Only if you die.”

Juanita crossed herself once more and said, “It is in God’s hands.”

David patted her shoulder reassuringly, but he was thinking that none of the sick aboard the
Grand Atlantic
were going to be buried where they wanted. In all likelihood, the dead would be incinerated, because it wouldn’t make sense to put the deadly virus in the ground where it could sit and wait to infect its next host and start a pandemic that would kill millions and millions. For a brief moment, David considered his own mortality.
Whoever thought it would end this way?
he asked himself as he reached for the door handle.
On a luxury liner with a deadly virus, for Chrissakes!

He opened the door and stepped out into the passageway, and came face to face with Choi. The stocky, muscular Asian was standing outside Kit’s cabin, with his arms folded across his chest. He stayed in front of Kit’s door, refusing to budge an inch.

“I’d like to see my daughter,” David requested.

“No,” Choi said curtly.

“What the hell do you mean,
no
?” David growled.

Choi uncrossed his arms and flexed his huge deltoid muscles. “Move on or you get hurt.”

Choi never saw the blow coming.

David’s fist caught him flush on the forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. Choi sank to the floor, stunned by the vicious punch. He tried to get to his feet as blood streamed out of both nostrils.

David smashed his fist into Choi’s forehead again, and the crewman fell to the floor in a heap. Quickly David reached in his pocket for a roll of duct tape and bound Choi’s hands together behind his back. He grabbed Choi’s collar and dragged him to his feet. A half-smile came to David’s face as he said, “We have a little business to attend to.”

Choi could barely stand, but David held him up by the back of his shirt and pushed him down the passageway into a waiting elevator. As the elevator ascended, Choi regained his senses and struggled mightily to free his hands.

He twisted and turned, but the tape held. Out of desperation, Choi tried to butt David with his head. David stepped aside and kneed the crewman in the groin, then watched the man bend over in pain.

“Be nice,” David said hoarsely.

Choi retched and brought up some bilious vomit, which he spat on the floor. He stared at David hatefully, then again twisted and turned in an effort to free himself from the tape.

David pushed Choi up against the rear wall of the elevator and said coldly, “I’ve got a surprise for you. I’m going to get you off this ship.”

The elevator came to a stop, and the door opened into bright sunlight. David pushed Choi out onto the deck. There were at least two dozen crewmen milling about the pool area or enjoying drinks at the bar. Every one of them stopped and stared at the pair by the elevator, unable to figure out what was happening.

“Take him down!” Choi yelled.

“One more word and I’ll snap your goddamn neck,” David said in a voice loud enough for everybody to hear.

None of the crew moved.

“Now we’re going over to the railing,” David went on, watching the crowd and trying to pick out who was the most likely to lead them. His eyes settled on a broad-shouldered deckhand with a jagged scar on his cheek and a sheathed knife hanging from his belt. “If you crewmen are smart, you’ll make way.”

The crowd of crewmen began to move aside, but the deckhand with the facial scar didn’t budge. Instead, he stepped forward, his hand now resting on the handle of his knife. “Let him go, doc, and we won’t hurt you.”

“Come get him,” David said evenly.

The deckhand was a large man, only slightly taller than David but at least forty pounds heavier. His face and posture indicated he’d been in more than a few fights. “Don’t do anything stupid, doc,” he warned in an Australian accent.

“Right,” David said and drove his fist into Choi’s ribs. Choi dropped to his knees and tried to catch his breath. “You stay put.”

“Bad mistake, doc,” the deckhand growled. “Now I’ve got to hurt you.”

He tensed his muscles and sprang forward with remarkable speed. But David anticipated the move and ducked under the deckhand’s outstretched arm, then delivered a powerful blow to the Australian’s trachea. The man dropped to the deck, clutching his throat and gasping for air. To make sure the deckhand remained down, David kicked him in the base of his spine and watched the man writhe in pain.

The crowd of crewmen froze in place, stunned by the doctor’s viciousness. Seconds ticked by before they began murmuring among themselves.

“Jesus Christ! Did you see that?”

“That was mean, man! Really mean!”

“What the hell kind of doctor is that?”

David leaned down and removed the deckhand’s knife from its sheath. It was a large knife, with a thick handle and a sharp, ten-inch blade. David held the knife up for all to see. “The next man who comes too close dies.”

The crowd remained motionless as they watched David reach for a large coil of rope and tie Choi up in a peculiar fashion. The rope went around Choi’s waist and between his thighs, then up the front of his body and over his shoulders before being knotted in the back.

“There,” David said and gave the rope an extra tug to make certain the knot was secure. “Now, as I promised, it’s off the ship for you.”

He lifted Choi up over the railing and slowly lowered him until he was halfway down to the waterline. After tying the rope to the
railing, David held the blade of the deckhand’s knife against the
knot and addressed the gathering of crewmen. “I want seven of you to go to the sick bay and help transport the ill passengers back to their cabins.”

Nobody moved.

“Or I start cutting through the rope,” David threatened.

Still no one moved.

David began to slowly saw through the rope. From over the side, Choi was yelling, but the wind was blowing and it muted his cries. “I’m about a quarter of the way through,” David called out.

“You can’t get all of us,” challenged a burly crewman, with very thick arms. He stepped forward, unafraid. “And you’re backed up into a corner.”

David recognized the crewman as one of the two he had seen earlier leaving the spa. “You didn’t want to lend a hand before, did you?”

“And I’m not going to lend one now.”

“Okay,” David said calmly and walked briskly over to the crewman, catching him by surprise. Before the crewman could react, David stomped down on the man’s foot and broke all the metatarsal bones. The burly man fell to the deck and, grabbing his foot, howled in pain.

“Now once I’ve cut Choi’s rope and he’s in the water, I’ll throw this dumb son of a bitch in after him,” David continued on. “And then I’ll come for all of you, until either you’re dead or I am.”

“He’s bluffing,” someone in the crowd said.

“There’s one way to find out.” David returned to the railing and began sawing at the rope again. “I figure I’m about halfway through, or maybe a little more than that.”

“Jesus Christ!” a voice muttered. “He’s really going to do it!”

“It’ll be murder!” another voice said.

“Who gives a shit?” a third voice joined in. “Unless we reach land soon, we’ll all going to be dead anyhow.”

The crowd of crewmen went silent, their collective gazes fixed on the doctor holding a knife against the rope. To a man they all wondered if he would cut through the rope and drop Choi into the ocean. And to a man, they all decided he would.

A lanky crewman, in his early thirties, with straight blond hair, moved forward and asked, “Do we have to touch these people?”

“No,” David answered. “All you have to do is push wheelchairs and stretchers back to the passengers’ rooms.”

“O-okay,” the crewman said hesitantly.

“And Choi stays where he is until all those people are cleared out of the sick bay,” David added.

“Okay,” the crewman said again. He walked over to the elevator and a half-dozen others followed him.

From the deck below, Choi was screaming his lungs out in a foreign language. His voice didn’t sound nearly as tough as before.

nineteen

Richard Scott glared at
David, who still had a knife on the rope that held Choi in suspension over the side of the
Grand Atlantic
. David stared back, his eyes on Scott’s shotgun that was pointed at him. The crew was now bunched up behind Scott, all silent and waiting to see which man would give in first.

“Pull Choi up!” Scott demanded.

“Not until every single patient has been moved out of the sick bay,” David told him.

“And what if I say that they’ve all been moved?”

“Then I say prove it.” In his peripheral vision, David spotted Robbie high up on the bridge, with his shotgun aimed directly downward. “And order your friend on the bridge to raise his weapon. It’s making me nervous, and I might accidentally cut through this rope.”

Scott signaled to Robbie, and the shotgun on the bridge disappeared from view. Then he came back to David. “You’re making a big mistake.”

“Not as big as the one Choi made,” David countered.

“Which was?”

“He wouldn’t allow me to see my daughter.”

“You should have brought that to my attention.”

“I did. That’s why we’re standing out here on the deck.”

A hollow smile came to Scott’s face, but it vanished quickly. “His mistake can be remedied. Yours can’t.”

David remained silent and wondered why Scott was dragging things out. The man was either waiting for the right moment to mount a surprise attack or, less likely, for convincing evidence that the sick passengers had all been moved. Which? A surprise attack, David decided.

“The giant mistake you made was dishonoring Choi,” Scott went on. “The Asians call it a loss of face. With them, that’s very important.”

“So?”

“So he’ll kill you the first chance he gets.” Scott paused for effect and glanced over his shoulder at the deckhands. “And the crew will be glad to help him because of the damage you did to their friends.”

The crew joined in, apparently liking the idea of tearing David apart.

“Yeah!” cried out a voice from the rear.

“Damn right!” bellowed another.

“Who needs a doctor now anyway?”

“You do,” David answered the third voice. “Because if you get sick, you’ll hope to God I’m here to help and maybe ease some of your suffering. And when the experimental drugs come to treat the virus, you’ll sure as hell need me to administer them.”

The crowd murmured excitedly at the glimmer of hope. A drug! Something that could save them!

“What drugs?” Scott pressed him.

“You’ll see,” David said vaguely, and knew he’d thrown the crew off balance. And David could see from Scott’s expression that the banker knew it, too. The crewmen would be harder to control now.

“You said experimental drugs,” Scott argued mildly. “Have they ever been tried in humans?”

David shrugged.

“They probably used the damn things in rats,” Scott reckoned. “And who knows what happened to those rats when they received the drug?”

“They seemed to improve,” David lied easily.

“I’m still in favor of getting off this ship,” Scott said. “I’m not waiting around to catch this killer virus, then be a guinea pig for some drug that might help rats.”

“I’m with you,” a voice in the crowd yelled out. “I’ll take my chances ashore.”

“Me too,” another chimed in. “I don’t want some drug that’s never been used in people.”

Scott nodded firmly, now certain he had regained control of the crowd. He gave David a stern look and said impatiently, “Get Choi up!”

David stayed motionless.

Scott raised his shotgun and aimed it at David’s head. “One last time,” he threatened.

David increased the pressure on the blade of his knife. A thick strand of the rope popped and flew up into the air. Choi must have sensed it because he started screaming again.

No one moved or even breathed. It was a Mexican standoff. Somebody was about to die.

Seconds ticked off. The tension in the air was almost suffocating.

David placed more pressure on the knife. Another strand of rope popped.

Suddenly the door to the passageway opened. The lanky, blond crewman who had volunteered to move the sick passengers hopped out onto the deck and announced, “The patients are all back in their cabins!”

The crowd collectively breathed a sigh of relief.

“I need proof,” David said at once, his knife still on the rope.

“The nurse knew you would,” the crewman said. “She told me to give you the password. It’s Beaumont.”

David took the knife away from the rope. He hadn’t discussed a password with Carolyn, but she knew he’d demand one.
Smart! She was so damn smart! And the word she’d chosen was known to only a very few aboard the ship.

Beaumont was the name of the private pavilion at University Hospital where Carolyn was head nurse. Finally, David said, “You can have Choi back now.”

Scott gestured to the crew with his shotgun, and a dozen men rushed over to the rope and hoisted Choi up. As he was lifted over the railing, the crewmen cheered, as though they were welcoming a hero home.

The tape was cut from Choi’s wrists, and he rubbed at them to get the circulation going. As the tangle of rope was removed from his torso, Choi turned to David and gave him a long, mean look. His thin lips seemed to disappear. There was only a slit where his mouth should have been. In a monotone, he uttered something in Korean. It sounded like a death sentence.

David raised the knife he was holding and expertly threw it down to the deck, just in front of Choi. It stuck straight up, deep into the wood. The message David was sending was clear.
Don’t fuck with me!

The message didn’t seem to bother Choi. His hateful expression didn’t change.

From high on the bridge, Robbie yelled down, “The CDC is on the line.”

“Let’s go,” Scott said and prodded David with his shotgun toward the elevator. The crowd parted to give them room. One of the deckhands reached out to pat Scott’s shoulder in a congratulatory fashion. Scott glowered at the man, who quickly backed away and disappeared into the throng.

“Move faster,” he ordered David and pushed him into the elevator.

As the elevator ascended, David concentrated on possible ways to alert the CDC that a mutiny was taking place aboard the
Grand Atlantic
. Maybe he could use a code word that they would hopefully understand.
But then again, they—

“You’re tougher than I thought,” Scott broke into David’s thoughts.

David shrugged.

“Ex-military, huh?” Scott asked and waited for an answer that didn’t come. “MP, right?”

David nodded slowly, as if giving out privileged information.

“Marines, I’d guess.”

David nodded again.

“Where were you stationed?”

This was not a casual conversation, but a quiz, David decided. Scott wanted to find out if David had in fact been an MP or something else, like a Green Beret or Navy SEAL. Someone he would really have to fear. Finally, David said, “A lot of places.”

“Where was your last assignment?”

“Pendleton,” David replied, figuring that an investment banker didn’t know much about a Marine base outside San Diego.

“Ah-huh,” Scott said, still measuring David.

The elevator came to a stop, and the door opened. They hurried through the bridge and into the small communications room. Robbie was standing off to the side, with his shotgun pointed at the chief radio officer. The light atop the speakerphone was blinking green.

“I’ve got the CDC on the line,” the chief radio officer called over.

As David sat, Scott reached out and put his finger on the phone’s hold button. “Remember, any tricks and the call ends.”

David again tried to think of a way to stealthily alert the CDC that the ship was now in the hands of mutineers. But nothing worthwhile came to mind. And a clumsy attempt was worse than no attempt at all. That would make future calls to the CDC very limited, and David needed all the help he could get.

He leaned forward and spoke into the phone.

“Ballineau, here.”

“Good afternoon, Dr. Ballineau,” Lawrence Lindberg said.

“There’s nothing good about it.”

“Well, it’s about to get worse,” Lindberg warned. “I’m afraid the virus is totally resistant to Tamiflu and Relenza, as well as all the other antiviral agents. We have a few experimental drugs we are now testing, but they’ve never been tried on humans.”

Scott nodded to himself. It was just as he’d thought. There
weren’t any experimental drugs to treat them, and there wouldn’t be any in the immediate future either. His plan to jump ship and get away from the virus was looking better and better. He jerked his head toward David, now aware that the silence on the other end was lasting too long. “Say something,” he whispered to David.

“Never been tried in humans, eh?” David asked hastily.

“Never.”

“Well, at the rate we’re going, there won’t be any humans left to test them on.”

“How many sick do you have?”

“Over a hundred and climbing,” David reported. “And we already have dozens dead, and only four of them had underlying conditions
that weakened their defenses. Two had HIV infections, one with dia
betes.”

“And the fourth?”

“A young boy who inhaled repeated, huge doses of the virus
from the dying bird.”

There was a long pause before Lindberg asked, “Are the other flu victims afflicted with the severe form of the disease?”

“So it would appear,” David answered. “Dozens more are dying, and dozens more will almost surely follow.”

“Bad, bad,” Lindberg muttered to himself, then raised his voice. “Did you receive the new supply of N-95 masks and body bags?”

“Affirmative,” David replied. “But they were dropped onto the deck by your helicopter, and the heavy crates split the already badly damaged heliport wide open. It’s totally useless now.”

“Unfortunate.”

Was it?
David asked himself suspiciously. He wondered if that was done on purpose, in order to make doubly sure no helicopters could land on the
Grand Atlantic
. David shook his head at his paranoia and dismissed the idea, but the useless heliport did make one thing certain. Now, badly needed doctors and nurses could not be airlifted to the ship under any circumstances.

“Ballineau?” Lindberg broke the silence.

“Yeah,” David answered, his mind going back to the fact that no antiviral agents were available to combat the virus. “Is some sort of vaccine possible?”

“It would take at least a year to produce, test, and distribute any vaccine,” Lindberg said. “With no guarantee for success, of course.”

“I figured,” David said sourly. “So we just make do and stay on our current course, eh?”

“For now,” Lindberg replied. “But there’s a storm warning in the Leeward Islands at present. It probably won’t reach you, but it’s a possibility. How is your weather?”

“Calm,” David said, and suddenly saw an opening to warn the CDC that the
Grand Atlantic
was in even greater distress now that a mutiny had taken place. “It’s like a day in May.”

Scott quickly reached over and punched the hold button on the speakerphone. “Don’t try that again,” he growled.

“What?” David asked innocently.

“That Mayday bullshit!”

“Christ! You’re paranoid!” David snapped, desperately trying to cover his clumsy, foolhardy attempt to warn the CDC. “That’s an academic doctor on the other end. He wouldn’t know Mayday from a day in June.”

“Maybe,” Scott said, unconvinced. “Now, finish your call and talk strictly in medical terms.” He reached for the phone and switched off the hold button, then aimed his shotgun at David’s head. “Strictly medical terms,” he repeated quietly.

David leaned to the speakerphone and said, “Sorry about the interruption, but I just got a call from the sick bay, where I’m needed. Is there anything else?”

“One final item,” Lindberg told him. “You’re going to have to establish a let-die list.”

“A what?” David asked, not certain he’d heard Lindberg’s instructions correctly.

“A let-die list,” Lindberg said again. “You should attend to only those who have a chance to survive.”

“There won’t be too many of those,” David said pessimistically.

“Would the number of survivors increase if we managed to get you some ventilators?”

David hesitated as he considered the offer. “The ventilators would help a lot. But the problem is we don’t have the staff to monitor the patients on them. And patients on ventilators need to be constantly monitored or they can develop all sorts of complications.”

“Can you do the monitoring?” Lindberg asked.

“Of course, and so can the nurse and anesthesiologist we have on board. But at best, we’ll only be able to monitor seven or eight patients, and that’s a stretch, particularly if they have to be intubated.”

“Then we’ll have a Navy ship ferry over eight ventilators, with the appropriate monitors.”

“We need more antibiotics as well,” David told him. “And a lot more body bags.”

“I’ll see to it,” Lindberg said. “Now let’s get back to the let-die list. These are patients who wouldn’t survive, even under the best of conditions. This group should include those on chemotherapy, transplant patients, diabetics, the elderly, and anyone with AIDS, cancer, or chronic pulmonary disease. You shouldn’t waste any of your resources or manpower on these individuals.”

“Are you saying to just move them aside and let them die?”

“That’s exactly what’ I’m saying.”

“Jesus Christ!” David groaned. “It’s like being on the train platform at Auschwitz and deciding who should live and who should die.”

“Sadly, yes, “Lindberg said. “It does resemble that.”

The phone went dead.