The Zombie Game (20 page)

 Part 3

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Aft Deck, the
Royal Princess

Miami Harbor, Florida

6:20 a.m.

SO THIS IS IT.
This is how I’ll die? While watching a beautiful sunrise over the warm waters of Florida?

But my greatest fear was that when I died, they’d torture Keyes. I put the phone to my lips and pressed dial. A familiar voice answered—that of Roy Perkins.

I had but forty seconds to tell the CIA where the nuke was located. All the information I had at my disposal made me certain of the only place it could be. I had rehearsed and timed the words in my mind over and over again before this moment. Now, I said them boldly and confidently.

“General Perkins, this is Dr. Scott James. ISIS will detonate a nuclear bomb at precisely 6:30 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time. The bomb is aboard the
Royal Princess
, a 100-foot luxury yacht registered to a Jacob Abrams. It’s in the Government Cut headed for the heart of Miami. There may be nerve gas as well. Come fast.”

Fred’s face registered shock when I gave the position of the bomb—not inside the missiles fired from the
Ana Brigette,
but on the very boat we were on.

The rest happened so fast it was a blur. I hurled the phone as far out to sea as I could before it exploded. Fred aimed the gun at my chest. But as I’d guessed, he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer like the other men. He closed his eyes as he pulled the trigger. In that instant, I slapped the gun barrel and the shot went wide. I grabbed the gun and swung it, knocking Fred over the back of the boat into the water.

I spun around and fired a sustained burst from the automatic rifle into the group of four jihadis, cutting them down. Raman raised his rifle and then Keyes came out of nowhere. She wobbled out of the back doorway of the quarterdeck and flung herself onto Raman. His shots flew into outer space. I jumped forward and fired two quick shots into his chest, killing him.

Headquarters, North American Aerospace Command

Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado

6:22 am

Technical Sergeant Samantha Cimarron typed in “CVN-69,” and the system promptly tagged one of the hundreds of dots on the screen as the USS
Dwight D. Eisenhower
, call sign, Top Hat. She then highlighted the target ship. The carrier had gotten off two aircraft. They would get to the target long before the F-22s from Homestead Air Force Base. It was rather ironic to her that the
Ana Brigette
was actually running toward her own death. The hospital ship was moving at what was probably her top speed of twenty-one knots, directly at one of the US Navy’s most powerful weapons systems.

Sundowner 01

F-A 18 Aircraft
400 Miles Southeast of Miami

6:23 am

The radio squawked. “Sundowner Zero One, do you have radar contact with the target vessel?”

“Affirmative, Top Hat, radar contact.”

“Copy, Sundowner. Cleared hot to attack.”

“Top Hat, be advised that we have what appears to be a lifeboat three hundred yards from the target ship. Do you want us to take care of that as well?”

“Negative. I’ll drop a helicopter on that.”

Lifeboat
6:23 a.m.

Jakjak’s arms still cradled Lars Paulissen. The hard fall had jarred the Captain’s bruises and broken bones. He was moaning from the pain.

Jakjak looked out the window. They had gotten away, so far. The lifeboat was powered by a heavy electric motor that drove the little craft forward at three miles an hour. The swishing sounds of the propeller filled the stuffy interior of the little pod, and then suddenly Jakjak saw a flash through the porthole. There were three, near-simultaneous explosions, so close that the lifeboat rocked hard and flipped on its side.

The two men fell against the wall of the lifeboat. They shivered as they braced themselves for more explosions. A few seconds later, another barrage of Harpoon missiles from the American fighters exploded on the
Ana Brigette
. The lifeboat rocked again and righted itself.

Ignoring his pain, Lars got up on his knees to look out the window. His beloved
Ana Brigette
was engulfed in flames.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Aboard the
Royal Princess

Miami Harbor

6:23 a.m.

I LOOKED AT KEYES.
“No time for explanations. I’m certain the nuclear bomb is on this boat. We’re headed for the heart of the city.”

Three sirens blared from the direction of the Coast Guard station. The gunfire had alerted them. Then came the sound of jet fighters, followed almost immediately by a loud explosion within a half-mile of us.

Keyes steadied herself on her shaky legs and said, “You are absolutely right. That was a conventional weapon, fired from the
Ana Brigette
. The nuke is on this boat.”

Another explosion went off, but like the other one, it was no where near the American Airlines Arena. The missiles had landed in the opposite direction, behind us.

“We’ve got seven minutes.”

“It’s got to be in the front cabin, Farok’s master bedroom.”

“Go.”

I was surprised at the improvement in those “paralyzed legs” of hers. The adrenaline had taken over.

We ran to the front of the ship. Keyes stopped. “It’s gone!”

“What? Where?”

“The fore cabin. It used to be there,” she said, pointing to a blank wall with no door, no windows, and a half dozen framed seascape paintings hanging on it.

I ran to the wall and struck it with my gun. It was hollow. I stepped back and then threw my body forward and the thin plywood collapsed, exposing the locked cabin door.

“Careful,” she said. “There’ll be explosives.”

I broke the door lock and opened the door. The huge luxury bedroom had been greatly altered. All the furniture and cabinets had been removed. The room was now filled to the brim with fifty-gallon drums bearing bio-hazard labels.

A horrified look came over Keyes’ face as she took in the spectacle of thousands of gallons of biotoxin, all clustered around a thick, steel cylinder in the center. It looked like something from Hell. “Oh my
God
. Farok, you insane motherfucker. It’s a dirty bomb. It’s not a nuke. The whole thing’s been a ruse. He’s figured how to get everybody to look the other way while he sneaks in and parks this thing next to the Pope’s Mass ... and blows this shit all over everywhere.”

“Good God.”

“The wind will pick it up and spread it all over Miami within a day. It’ll kill every human, dog, cat, bird, goat—you name it—in its path.”

“We’re here, now, so what do we do?”

“That’s the detonator,” she said.

It was an impressive-looking silver canister, the size of a fifty-gallon drum, secured in a wood cradle next to what was obviously the bomb.

Keyes inspected detonator. “I gotta have some tools. Right now. To begin with, I need a Phillips screwdriver. I also need a pair of wire snips, the smaller the better.
Go.
”

I took off running to the engine room, grabbed everything I could grab in ten seconds, and sprinted back to Keyes.

She began by removing the heavy screws from the detonator’s casing. She spoke without looking up. “Farok’s put a lot of thought into this. This whole unit may be booby-trapped to keep someone like us from doing just what we’re about to do.”

“So you’ve done this before.”

“Can’t tell you all my secrets.”

With the panel off, she looked at the complex wiring. I looked at my watch. “Six minutes.”

“Don’t do that. It’ll take as long as it takes, no matter what time it is.”

I kept quiet, but kept looking at the watch.

Aboard the
Royal Princess

6:25 a.m.

The
Royal Princess
leaped forward, accelerating rapidly. The sudden motion threw me and Keyes backward, knocking the screwdriver from her hand. I retrieved it for her.

Is someone else on board, or is the
Royal Princess
being controlled remotely from another vessel?

We had barely accommodated the forward motion when we heard jets, gunfire, and boat engines in the water, about a hundred yards away.

Keyes steadied herself to her task. I spoke to her, but all her attention was on the bomb and on adjusting her hands to the speeding boat.

There was a lot of activity outside the
Royal Princess
. Several Coast Guard sirens were coming toward us on the water. We heard a helicopter make a low-level pass. I knew they were going to attack the yacht any moment now. I could hear my heart thumping in my chest. Keyes’ hands were deftly twisting the screwdriver into a deep hole between two wires. She was in a world of her own, a world she knew.

Suddenly machine gun fire erupted from a dozen guns on two boats. They were flanking us on one side. There was another burst of heavy machine gun fire and the whole yacht vibrated. They were shooting at the engine room and the pilothouse. Then we heard the distinct roar of two jets coming in. “If they fire their missiles,” Keyes said, “Farok won’t need a FUCKING DETONATOR!”

The jets roared overhead without firing. I started to get up to go on deck to try to signal them to stop, but Keyes said, calmly, “Help me.”

Keyes had determined which screws to work on, but they were in a bad place, too far in and too tightly screwed. The screwdriver couldn’t turn them.

I leaned in to the detonator and placed my thumb and index fingers around her hand and grabbed the screwdriver.

“Clockwise,” she said.

On my first attempt, my fingers slipped off the handle. I wiped the sweat from my hand and took the screwdriver from her. I squeezed as hard as I could and turned. It didn’t yield. I moved my index finger down a quarter of an inch. This time, I had leverage, and the screw began to move.

“Half a turn only,” Keyes said.

I twisted my entire wrist to complete the half-turn.

“Stop! That’s good.”

Aboard the
Royal Princess

6:27 a.m.

Two helicopters were roaring directly above the boat, but the shooting had stopped. We could hear the two flanking boats, close beside us now.

Three minutes. For God’s sake, don’t shoot missiles at us.

Keyes put her face near the opening of the panel and studied the interior of the casing carefully. She inserted the screwdriver, couldn’t get it to turn, and again asked for my help.

I put my thumb and index finger, bent at the first joint, on the screwdriver and twisted.

“Just a half-turn,” she whispered.

As I moved the screw, one of the boats outside barged up against our side. The yacht trembled and my hand slipped

“Careful Scott! Godammit!” Keyes blurted.

I reached back in, grasped the screwdriver handle in my hand, and turned the screw nearly a full turn. Keyes looked in and said, “Back a half-turn.”

Again the Coast Guard came alongside, but this time all we heard was a rubbing sound. They were going to board. They’d obviously decided against blowing up the boat. Overhead, we heard the
clump, clump
of men jumping aboard.

Aboard the
Royal Princess

6:29 a.m.

“Hurry,” I said, “they’re
going to come in shooting.”

Keyes frantically searched through a jumble of wires and circuit boards.

She placed her right hand on one of the circuit boards and tugged lightly. It didn’t budge.

We could hear the boarding party searching the boat. The sounds of frantic men were everywhere, running down hallways in heavy boots and kicking in doors. I looked at my watch:
Thirty seconds to go.
Sweat dripped down my face. I thought to start shouting to let them know we were friendlies, when Keyes said, “I see it!”

The door to the cabin burst open and three riflemen charged in. I jumped up to shield Keyes. “WE’RE DEFUSING A BOMB!” I shouted. My hands were in the air and I was screaming, “WE’RE DEFUSING A BOMB! WE’RE DEFUSING A BOMB!”

The lead rifleman reacted by pointing his gun in my face, then down at Keyes, then in every direction.

“WE’RE DEFUSING A BOMB!”

The three men crouched for a moment, aiming their rifles at us. My chest was heaving from the shouting and sweat was pouring out of me. There was dead silence in the room. I swallowed and then slowly lowered my hand to look at my watch. “Fourteen seconds,” I said.

“Oh
fuck
,” a coast guardsman whispered.

Keyes gently shook a circuit board inside the detonator, and tugged it. Nobody moved as she slowly lifted the component from the bomb.

I looked at my watch. Keyes stood up and dangled the circuit board from her fingers.

My mouth was completely dry from dehydration and screaming. I tried clearing my throat, but all I could manage was a scratchy whisper: “Will that do it?”

“Only if there’s no override, Scott. Only if this is the one thing Farok hasn’t thought of. I did what I could in seven minutes.” She looked at me and her eyes turned red. A tear ran down her cheek. “Time’s up.”

Funny how a few seconds can seem like an eternity. A bomb detonates quicker than human nerves can transmit the pain of the impact. The pain relay gets interrupted before the brain receives the signal, so there is no pain, and by the time the vision of the blast goes from the eyes to the occipital lobe for interpretation, the brain has been destroyed and with it the visual record of the blast. There is neither hurting nor sensory perception of the explosion. Just moving from the state of awareness to nothing. Nothing at all.

I swallowed again, and whispered in my raspy voice: “Five, four, three, two ... ”