“Their lifeboat,” Cesar said. “It exploded.”
Brian scanned the surface. One of the survivors swimming toward the
Nokomis
suddenly disappeared, sucked below the surface, a massive swirl marking his location. A moment later another survivor disappeared, this one giving a strangled cry before disappearing behind a wave. When the wave passed, all that remained was half of a life jacket, ripped into shreds.
“What is this?” Cesar said.
Only two people were left in the water. One was swimming toward a piece of the lifeboat’s hull; the other bobbed in his life jacket, head down, unconscious. The remaining lifeboat was still motoring away from the
Nokomis
, battling the waves. It was grossly overloaded, the small Honda outboard pushing the boat forward at only a few knots.
“Look,” Cesar said, pointing. “What the hell?”
A massive green-black back broke through a wave twenty yards behind the boat, water shearing off its hide. There was a fresh chorus of screams from B-deck, men and women alike. Water frothed along its sides as it plowed through the waves, the long body moving sinuously. Then it disappeared underwater, its tail breaking the surface far behind the rest of it.
The skipper on the lifeboat heard the commotion and glanced behind him, just before the kronosaur disappeared. He turned hard to starboard, nearly tipping the small boat, then overcorrected, whipsawing the tiller back toward port and causing the people in the lifeboat to throw their hands out in an attempt to regain balance. The lifeboat rocked hard, one gunnel nearly dipping underwater, and rocked back to center.
There was time for everyone to take a breath, then a curtain of saltwater erupted behind them. Inside the spray of water was a wedge-shaped head, the width of it roughly the same length as the lifeboat. Its jaws opened, and the neck bent as it dove in on the lifeboat.
Someone tried to stand, perhaps meaning to dive, and he was still standing when the entire lifeboat disappeared into the creature’s mouth, the curved teeth clamped firmly around the aluminum.
The deck of the
Nokomis
was silent except for a few sobbing women. Brian could hear Cesar mumbling Hail Marys.
A moment later, part of the lifeboat bobbed up to the surface, the outboard prop spinning in a high-pitched whine. Then the engine coughed, spluttered, and died. After a few more seconds, a person broke the surface, then another. In a moment, there were a half dozen people around the lifeboat, two of them apparently unconscious. A middle-aged man with a short beard flapped weakly at the surface, his face pale. In a few seconds he slumped over, rolling in the water, and Brian saw the stump of his arm spurting blood into the water.
Two others started to splash toward the
Nokomis
, battling the swells and the cheap life jackets that had been stocked aboard the lifeboat.
“Life rings!” someone shouted below them. “Throw the life rings!”
The two swimmers were halfway back to the
Nokomis
when the creature emerged again. It had moved off a short distance and was whipping its great head back and forth. After a moment, the remains of the aluminum boat went flying, shook loose from its curved fangs. It landed with a splash, bobbed on the surface for a moment, and slowly sank.
The kronosaur slid back into the water, already turning toward the
Nokomis.
It was headed toward the swimmers, who were close together. One of its flippers broke the surface and made a tremendous splash, sending water thirty feet into the air. The rearmost swimmer had turned to look behind him and went stiff as he saw what was coming, his upper body bent back away, one hand splayed out in front of him. The other swimmer was still flailing at the water, head turned sideways, eyes squinted nearly closed.
There was the tinny pop of a handgun from the deck, and a divot appeared in the water in front of the creature. The pistol fired again, and this time Brian could clearly hear the thwack of lead hitting flesh, a sound he remembered from deer hunting, a sound unlike any other. The creature disappeared.
Below and aft, Frankie stood at the edge of the ship’s railing, his pistol smoking, the slide locked back.
“He hit it,” Cesar said. “He drove it—”
It came out of the water teeth first, jaws agape, enormous nostrils flared like manholes. The two swimmers, only five feet apart, tumbled into its maw at the same time. The kronosaur continued out of the water for twenty feet, its jaws crunching shut, the massive teeth closing like an enormous bear trap. It surveyed the
Nokomis
with its good eye, even as its gullet contracted and expanded, and hit the water with a huge splash, leaving the
Nokomis
completely silent.
“Look,” Cesar said. “There is still one left.” A woman was still clinging to the side of the lifeboat.
It looks like death, Brian thought. Death incarnate. But it has weaknesses. It bleeds, it’s missing an eye. It had missed him as he swam alongside the
Nokomis
to retrieve Gilly’s body, it had missed him again when it had lunged at him on the deck way after Destiny and Wells had pulled him to safety. It might miss the woman, whom he now recognized as Ashley, as long as her body blended into the hull section of the ruined lifeboat.
“Don’t move!” he shouted down to her. “It can’t see you if you don’t move! Not a muscle!”
His was the only voice in the silence, carrying well above the wind and waves. The woman looked up at him. He sensed rather than saw the rest of the people following her gaze, and he felt Cesar stiffen beside him. Frankie Rollins stepped out from behind his men, his pistol at his side, and nodded in their direction.
“Stupido!”
Cesar hissed.
“Shit,” Brian said. “No!”
The woman let go of the lifeboat and swam toward the
Nokomis
. She had gone only a few yards when a wake appeared behind her. The mound of water built, the wall of water surging higher and then flattening out, spreading over the waves. The woman did not turn but she must have sensed it, and she broke left at the last moment, just as the gaping mouth of the kronosaur emerged out of the water. She fell into it with a rush of seawater, and the kronosaur’s jaws flexed and shifted, pushing its prey to the side of its mouth where it could be broken down. Then it slid back below the surface.
They waited, still silent. The sea was empty of life, the wreckage from the two ships quickly scattering downwind and then disappearing.
Brian looked down at Frankie, who was shoving in a fresh clip and barking orders. Thor and Kharkov were nearby, but their blank faces were still watching the seas. Frankie slapped them, each in turn, the sound of his palm on their cheeks carrying up to Brian and Cesar. Which was where Frankie was now pointing, his words indecipherable but the meaning clear enough.
Cesar tapped the barrel of his pistol against the side of his leg. “No more rescuing,
hombre
. We just
go
.”
They turned and ran as Thor and Kharkov started toward them from the front of the ship.
Chapter 26
F
rankie suspected he could have been a Patton, maybe a MacArthur or a Doolittle. In a situation where critical thinking mattered, where logic triumphed over chance, he knew how to handle shit. He wasn’t a bookish guy by nature, but he wasn’t afraid to put in research, to develop Plans B through ZZZ. He could see the different outcomes, could develop strategies through or around them. He could adapt. What he wasn’t good at, what he was afraid of, were the wild cards in the deck, the things outside his control.
And the fuckin’ thing beating hell out of this ship sure wasn’t going to take any orders from him. Neither was that goddamned Yankee fisherman yelling down at them like he was Moses come down from the mountain, with the Mexican—the one guarantee Frankie held as the most important, absolutely-can’t-fuck-it-up piece of the equation, his get out-of-an-early-grave-free card—now standing next to the goddamned Yankee fisherman.
Frankie’s only advantage was that Hawkins didn’t know the value of the card he held.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead and turned to Thor and Kharkov. “Kill the fisherman,” he said. “Shoot him and throw him overboard. The Mexican you
don’t
shoot, or I throw you overboard. Understood?”
“Yes,” Thor said. “And what do we do about the creature?”
“Not a goddamn thing,” Frankie said. “Tug should be here any minute, and that’ll keep everyone occupied. We get the Mexican back in a room, finish the card game, and after that, things go smooth. Or smoother.” He turned and saw the ship’s engineer standing at the railing, still looking down at the sea. “Wright! Get over here.”
Wright walked over to them at once. Frankie was glad he came; he’d entertained a brief, vicious urge to shoot Wright full of holes. Make a point about obeying orders in a timely goddamn manner.
“You know the ship best,” he said to Wright. “We seal the stairwell, they’re stuck up there. Right?”
Wright closed his eyes. “There aren’t many places to go,” he said. “A few rooms, but no exits. If they had a rope, I suppose they could swing over the side and down to B-deck or C-deck. D-deck is damn near underwater by now.”
“Is there rope up there?”
“A ship this size, there usually isn’t a lot of extra stuff lying around. They’ll probably either go into one of those rooms and wait for us, or they’ll try to go over the side.”
“Okay. What do you think, Thor?”
“I think,” he said. “This guy gets backed into a corner, he comes out like the
grävling
. The badger.”
“Teeth and claws first,” Frankie said. “You’re probably right. And our little Mexican might get scratched up in the process. We need to take them clean.”
“There is one other way off that level,” Wright said. He paused, scratching the whiskers on his chin. “Hell, it’s even possible they’ll see it. We push them to it, they’ll see it for sure.”
* * *
He sent Thor and his Kharkov as pushers, letting them advance slowly along the top level of the
Nokomis
toward the starboard corner of the stern. Frankie patted Thor on the shoulder before he left.
“Keep an eye on Kharkov. I don’t trust that bullet-headed prick.”
Thor nodded. He was no killer, Frankie thought, but he would obey, and would become a killer if Frankie told him he had to be.
“
Chef?
You are okay?”
“Fine,” Frankie said, shaking his head. “Go on, get them moving. They’ve likely got Hornaday’s pistol, so push them nice and light.” He turned to Wright. “You ready?”
He followed Wright back down to B-deck, then ran down the tilted deck way toward the starboard corner. They were on side of the ship that had tilted up, and he had to push himself away from the wall as they ran. Wright, with his steel-toed leather boots, seemed to be getting better purchase on the canted deck than Frankie was with his oxfords.
“There,” Wright said, panting.
Frankie nodded. Two vertical sheet metal ducts rose vertically to the top of the ship, the long rectangles recessed into the side of the ship. There were two pipes alongside the HVAC ducts, a waterline for fire suppression and the electrical conduit. The space between the pipes and ductwork was a bit wider than a man. Frankie could see at once how appealing it would be if you were trapped; simply press your back against the ductwork, walk your feet down the pipes, and slide down to B-deck.
Wright looked out to sea. “That goddamn thing. Just waiting for us to launch another boat.”
Frankie watched the shadow shift and flex under the water. A long dark cloud, right at the edge of the fog, moving in a slow gyre under the water. Coiling and uncoiling its massive body. Occasionally, some part of it would break through the trough of a wave, but for the most part it kept submerged. Too far away for the Glock, which he suspected would be useless at all but point-blank range.
“What’s it waiting for?” he asked. “It could sink us if it wanted.”
“I don’t know,” Wright said, touching the sidewall. “This old bitch is tougher than she looks.”
“Can she stay upright?”
Wright peered over the edge, glanced at the shadow a hundred yards off the ship. “We’re sitting too low. A few more collisions . . .” He held a hand out, turned it sideways, and flipped it upside down. “I been there before, in a little fishing boat off the Banks.”
“It flipped?”
Wright nodded. “Total clusterfuck. First mate hit his head on the wall, and the captain broke his arm. Then she spun back around topside and I ended up with the wheel in my face.” He touched his nose along the slight curvature. “Bled everywhere.”
“But you didn’t sink?”
“No, she was full of air, and when we rolled back upright, whatever water we took on we pumped back out through the bilges. Our dear
Nokomis
, on the other hand, doesn’t have much air left in her lungs.”
Frankie scratched the back of his neck. Only a half hour until the chopper took off. Out of reach of the ocean, away from this shadow with teeth. Just lift off and leave the fog behind, then back on land, money in his account, not too many regrets.
Above them they heard the soft pad of footfalls, then muted conversation. A moment later they heard scraping noises. “Son of a bitch,” Wright said, stepping back away from the railing. “Here they come.”
* * *
They backed away from the ductwork, the soft squeak of shoes pressing against metal coming from above. Frankie pressed himself against the wall, rubbing his finger over the safety on the Glock. He could see boots now, pressed against the pipes, coming down slowly. Galoshes, not boots.
Frankie raised his Glock. Hawkins’s legs dropped down, then his waist. Frankie slipped the safety off. One of Hawkins’s hands came down, gripped the water pipe. The other hand appeared and took hold of the pipe, a foot lower. Hawkins’s galoshes wavered a couple feet above B-deck, then dropped to the deck, facing away from them.
Frankie took a step back, moving into the alcove space that led back into B-deck, pulling Wright with him. A few seconds later, Cesar dropped onto the floor next to Hawkins, holding Hornaday’s pistol in one hand, his eyes looking everywhere at once; the space above them, the deck way, the ocean to their right. Turning around now, seeing their shapes out of the corner of his eye, the pistol coming up.
“Don’t,” Frankie said, stepping out of the alcove. Cesar’s gun hand continued on its arc, and without having made a conscious decision to fire, Frankie’s finger twitched. The Glock jerked in Frankie’s hand. Cesar flew backwards, his pistol clattering across the deck way, and came to a rest against the railing.
“Shit,” Frankie said.
Hawkins didn’t move, his eyes trained on the Glock. Frankie stepped onto the deck way, leaving Wright inside the alcove. Cesar was trying to pull himself up the guardrail.
“Turn around, Cesar,” Frankie said.
Cesar rotated his head around, his breath ragged. His right shoulder was leaking blood onto the railing, and through the hole in his shirt Frankie could see the splinter of shattered bones. Shit, he hadn’t expected the Glock to make that big a mess. The slug must have hit a bone, blown up an artery or something.
“Jesus Christ,” Wright said from behind him.
“Come on,” Frankie said. “We gotta get him to Christie.” He glanced at Hawkins, who was also staring at Cesar. The blood was bubbling out, spreading across his shirt. It looked like a grenade had blown up in his armpit.
“On second thought,” Frankie said to Wright. “Go get Dr. Christie. Hurry.”
“You mean Dr. Perle?”
“Christie,” Frankie snapped. “He’s my personal physician. Tall, skinny, looks like a mortician.” Wright took off.
“Your shirt,” Frankie said, pointing the gun at Hawkins. “Use it as a compress.”
Cesar had slid down, his unhurt arm still hooked over the side of the railing. “Easy,” Brian said, kneeling beside him. “We have to stop the bleeding.”
Cesar muttered something as Brian placed his folded shirt over the worst of the blood stream, the cotton fabric quickly turning red. Cesar’s mouth was moving, his dry lips moving next to Brian’s ear.
“What’s he saying?” Frankie said.
Brian didn’t look up. “That you’re an asshole.”
“You remember that,” Frankie said. “You start feeling like a hero, remember that assholes and heroes don’t mix.”
“He also,” Brian said, “says it sucks getting shot.”
“Remember that, too.”
* * *
He stood watching Brian’s shirt turn red until he heard footsteps behind him. Christie was hustling down the deck way, the doctor’s bag bouncing against the side of his leg as he ran. He nodded at Frankie and hunkered next to Cesar, asked a couple questions Frankie couldn’t hear, and lifted the compress. He placed the compress back on his shoulder. “Get him up,” Christie said to Brian. “We need to get him back to my room.”
“How bad?” Frankie said.
“Bad enough,” Christie said. “It’s the big arteries going into the arm. We need to work quick, before he goes into arrest.”
“Is the girl there?”
“Yes. I showed her how to do it, no problem. We’ve gotta move.”
Christie got under Cesar’s unhurt shoulder, leaving Brian alone. Without thinking too hard about it Frankie brought the pistol up, squaring the sights in the middle of the fisherman’s chest.