Plague Ship (24 page)

“Sorry, boys. Literally,” Juan said, and relieved them of their weapons. They carried mini-Uzis, which were terrific close-work guns but useless at any meaningful range. He tossed one to Eddie and the other to Linc, who was a better shot carrying a man on his shoulder than Murph was at a firing bench with his gun bolted to the table.

The black Robinson R44 suddenly roared overhead, flying so low that the skids nearly knocked tiles off the roofs. George Adams pirouetted the chopper above the compound, using the rotor’s downwash to kick up a sandstorm. The maelstrom of grit served to cover Juan and the others, as well as keep the guards pinned.

Amid the deafening throb of the blades beating the air and the chaos all around them, no one knew where a fresh burst of gunfire originated. A flurry of white spiderwebs suddenly appeared in the chopper’s windshield and the copilot’s window. Embers of hot metal peeled away from the aircraft’s skin as bullets tore through its hull. George ducked and weaved the helo like a prize-fighter in the ring, but the stream of tracers continued to pour in until a gush of smoke erupted from the engine cowling.

Juan frantically changed frequencies on his radio, shouting, “Get out of there, George. Go! Go! Go! That’s an order.”

“I’m outta here, sorry,” Adams drawled. With that, the chopper turned like a dragonfly and veered back over the wall, trailing smoke that was blacker than the night.

“Now what?” Murph asked the Chairman.

Seventy-five yards of open ground yawned before them, and already the Responsivists were up and getting organized. The Corporation team had cover in a shallow drainage ditch, but it wouldn’t last long. Already, guards were forming search parties, their flashlights lancing out into the darkness.

“Where are you, Linda?” Cabrillo asked.

“Just outside the wall, not far from where you guys blew it open. Can you reach me?”

“Negative. Too many guards and not enough cover. I swear, this place is more like a military barracks than a wacko retreat.”

“Then I guess its time for a diversion.”

“Make it good.”

Over the radio, he could hear the sound of an engine accelerating, but Linda didn’t respond.

Thirty seconds later, the compound’s main gate was torn off its hinges and the back end of the van they had rented burst through, its bumper hanging askew. The dozen or more guards covering the facility turned at once. Some began running toward this latest threat, not noticing the shadows rising out of a culvert and racing for the breach in the wall.

Guns opened up on Linda’s van, forty holes appearing in its sheet-metal hide before she could wrestle the transmission back into drive. The tires kicked up feathers of gravel before regaining traction, and she drove out of the withering barrage.

As they ran for the wall, Juan called to Linc and Eddie. “Switch to plan C, and I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Where are you going?” Mark was panting.

Cabrillo thought idly that they really did need to get Murph to the ship’s exercise room. “They got one of Linda’s tires. There are jeeps in front of the main building. They’ll catch us before we make it a half mile. I’m going to delay them so you can get to the bridge.”

“That should be my job,” Eddie said.

“Negative. Your responsibility is with Max’s son. Good luck.”

Juan angled away from the smoking pile of rubble that had once been the wall. The ATV was still on its side, exhaust curling from its tailpipe. He turned to see his men climb through the gap before grabbing the handlebars. He goosed the throttle and worked the wheel, using the four-wheeler’s power rather than moist his strength to right the six-hundred-pound vehicle. It bounced onto its rubbery tires, and he threw his leg over the seat, gunning the motor before he was settled in.

The machine’s 750cc engine growled as he took off across the lawn. A detachment of guards ran for the open-topped jeeps, while those closest to the wall turned to resume their hunt of Juan’s team.

Cabrillo maintained the advantage of his night vision goggles, but more lights were being turned on all around the compound. The pole-mounted spots cast blinding pools of incandescence. He had a minute or less before they recognized it wasn’t one of their own driving the ATV. He tore around as if searching for the intruders while trying to find a guard farthest from any illumination. He spotted a man taking cover behind one of the desiccated trees near where two of the perimeter walls met. He raced over, pulling off his goggles but pausing in a shadow so his face remained hidden. Not knowing what language the guard spoke, Cabrillo waved him over, indicating he should hop on the back of the big four-wheeler.

The guard didn’t hesitate. He ran to Juan and jumped onto the seat behind him, bracing himself with one hand on Cabrillo’s shoulder while clutching a machine pistol with the other.

“Not your lucky day, pal,” Juan muttered, and torqued back on the throttle.

“I’ve got everybody,” Linda Ross called. “We’re on the main road now.”

Glancing at the jeeps, Juan saw that the first one was ready to head out in pursuit. Apart from the driver and the guard in the passenger seat, there were two other armed men in the back, clinging to the metal roll bar. He knew his people would make a good show of themselves, but they were virtually unarmed, in a van with a flat tire that couldn’t do more than fifty miles per hour. The outcome was inevitable, especially when the other jeep took off after his team, too.

It was time to level the playing field.

The guard riding the back of Cabrillo’s ATV tapped him on the shoulder, pointing, that they should head toward the back of the dormitory. Juan seemed to comply, accelerating evenly across the smooth terrain. He could feel the eyes of the other guards watching him, so he waited until the last possible second to crank the handlebars hard to the right. The balloon tires tore furrows out of the ground, and had Juan not thrown his weight in the opposite direction the four-wheeler would have flipped. Coming back down on four wheels and pointing straight at the breach in the wall, Juan put on the power. He wrenched the guard’s mini-Uzi from his hands and jammed it into his own belt. The guard was confused for a second but quickly recovered. He threw his arm around Juan’s neck, his ropy bicep crushing Cabrillo’s larynx and windpipe with unholy strength.

Juan gasped and choked, working his powerful lungs to draw in little sips of air while keeping the ATV accelerating toward the gap. The hole had a ragged six-foot diameter, and, beneath it, was a jumbled pile of shattered cement blocks and loose mortar. They were barreling in at forty miles per hour, with less than fifteen yards to go, when bullets began to strike the wall. The Responsivist guards had seen the fleeing vehicle and assumed the two men sitting astride it were the ones who’d infiltrated their lair. Cement chips and dust erupted from the wall as rounds were sprayed at the ATV in a punishing fusillade.

Juan could feel the heat of the bullets whizzing all around them. He even felt one graze his artificial leg but ignored the distraction, keeping his diminishing focus on the hole. His lungs convulsed from lack of oxygen, as the guard redoubled his hold, bearing down with every ounce of his strength, trying to choke the life out of his prey.

Come on, you bastards! Shoot straight for once!
Juan thought as his peripheral vision vanished into a rapidly expanding darkness, as though he were looking down an ever-lengthening tunnel.

Do it!
Cabrillo knew it could be his last thought on earth.

Then he felt a powerful jolt, as if he’d been sledgehammered in the spine. The guard’s tenacious grip came free. He made a gurgling sound as he slumped over the Chairman, blood from his ruptured lung spilling from his mouth. The burst of autofire from the Responsivists had struck their own man. He fell off the back of the quad when Juan hit the base of the pile of debris. The fat tires found easy purchase on the loose rubble. He shot up the incline and through the gap, ducking so as not to tear his head off. He soared out the other side, instinctively rising from the seat just before landing, to absorb the shock.

The big Kawasaki bounced on its suspension, bucking Cabrillo so he almost flew over the handlebars. His radio earbud popped free and dangled across his chest on its wire. He held on grimly, struggling to refill his lungs through his damaged windpipe. As soon as the ATV settled firmly again, he twisted the handlebars hard over, turning so he could get on the coast road leading to Corinth, twelve miles away.

He hit the pavement just as the first jeep burst through the ruined gate and tore down the road. Linda and the others had maybe a half-mile head start. Not nearly enough. A switch on the handlebars disengaged the ATV’s front wheels, giving Juan a burst of speed. He accelerated down the road along the outside of the wall.

The gate was twenty yards away when the second jeep careened through, its tires kicking up dirt before they hit the blacktop. There were only three guards in this one, a driver, passenger, and a man standing in the rear clutching an AK-47.

Juan had the advantage of momentum and raced up behind the jeep before they knew he was there. He kicked himself up so he was standing on the saddle seat, the wind stinging his eyes. Slowing only slightly so that he was going just a few miles per hour faster than the jeep, he crashed the front of the ATV into the jeep’s rear bumper.

The impact launched Cabrillo off the Kawasaki, his shoulder slamming the guard standing in the rear. The man’s face smashed into the roll bar with teeth-splintering force, and he was bent backward until it seemed his heels would touch his head. If the collision hadn’t killed the guard, Juan was still certain the man was out of the fight. Juan untangled himself enough to kick out with his artificial leg, a sweeping arc that caught the guard in the passenger seat on the side of the head. With the jeep’s doors removed, there was nothing to keep the man from tumbling out of the vehicle and cartwheeling down the road.

Cabrillo had the barrel of the mini-Uzi pressed to the driver’s head before he was fully conscious of what had happened.

“Jump or die. The choice is yours.”

The driver did neither. He crushed the brake pedal to the floor. The tires lit up as the rear of the jeep nearly lifted free of the road. Juan hit the windshield, folding it flat, and he tumbled across the hood, falling over the front so quickly he didn’t have time to grab the grille.

As soon as Cabrillo had vanished from sight, the driver released the brake and mashed the accelerator again, knowing the man who’d attacked them was lying helplessly on the road.

CHAPTER 14

THE OREGON’S BOW CUT THROUGH THE DARKENED waters of the Ionian Sea with ease. Her revolutionary magnetohydrodynamic engines could have pushed her through four feet of pack ice just as effortlessly. They were just west of Corinth, having rounded the Peloponnesian Peninsula, and were driving due east to get into position. There was little maritime traffic around the ship. What showed on the radarscope were a couple of coastal fishing boats, probably trawling for squid feeding near the surface at night.

For the moment, Eric Stone was pulling double duty. Seated in his navigator’s station, he had control of the ship, but he had turned one of Mark Murphy’s computer monitors toward him so he could take over flying the UAV still circling over the Responsivist complex. When they got closer to shore and steering the ship would demand his full concentration, he would turn the drone over to Gomez Adams, who was on final approach in the damaged Robinson.

“
Oregon
, this is Gomez.” Hali had put the helicopter’s comm channel on the overhead speakers. “I have you in sight.”

“Roger, Gomez. Commencing deceleration,” Max said from the captain’s chair. “Five knots, if you please, Mr. Stone.”

Eric made a few keystrokes to slow the volume of water gushing through the
Oregon
’s drive tubes until he could reverse the pumps and drop the ship down to the required speed. They had to maintain some headway in order to keep the ship from rolling with the swells and complicating Adams’s landing.

Max spun his seat so he could see the damage-control officer standing at his station at the back of the room. “Fire teams ready?”

“In full gear, sir,” he said immediately, “and I’ve got my fingers on the triggers for the water cannons.”

“Very good. Hali, tell George we’re ready when he is.” Max keyed the intercom to the hangar where Dr. Huxley was standing by. “Julia, George is only a couple of minutes out.”

A bullet had only grazed the pilot’s calf, but Max Hanley felt as guilty as if the entire team had been wiped out. No matter how anyone tried to rationalize it, Juan and the others had put themselves in danger because of him. And now the mission, which should have been simple, had thoroughly fallen apart. So far, George’s flesh wound was the only injury, but Juan had dropped off the tactical net and Hali couldn’t raise him. Linda had Linc, Eddie, and Kyle with her in the van, and they reported a heavily armed jeep in close pursuit.

For the hundredth time since the Chairman was first ambushed, Max cursed their decision to use only nonlethal weapons. No one had expected an army of armed guards. Hanley still hadn’t yet considered the implications of so many weapons at a cult’s compound, but it didn’t bode well. From everything he’d heard and read since his ex had called him, the Responsivists weren’t violent. In fact, they eschewed violence in all its forms.

How this connected to the mass murder aboard the
Golden Dawn
, he didn’t know. Were the Responsivists at war with some other group? And, if so, who were they? Another cult no one had heard of, a group willing to kill hundreds of people just because the Responsivists believed in population control?

To Max, none of it made sense. Nor did it make sense that his only son would get mixed up with a group like this. He so wanted to believe that none of it was his fault. A lesser person would have been able to convince himself of just that. But Max knew where his responsibilities lay, and he had never shied away from them.