Sandstorm (23 page)

Even that brief glimpse almost got him killed. A man in black camouflage gear suddenly appeared in the doorway, steps away. Painter ducked back inside as the man strafed the opening. If it hadn’t been for the metal reinforcement of the Presidential Suite door, Painter would’ve been chopped in half. After bolting the door, he gave Kara his assessment.

“They took out the radio room.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know…paramilitary group from the looks of them.”

Painter abandoned his post by the window and crouched beside Kara. He knew with certainty who led the team. There was no doubt.
Cassandra.
The Jet Skis were stolen DARPA prototypes. She had to be out there somewhere. Possibly even on board, leading the assault team. He pictured the determined glint in Cassandra’s eyes, the double furrow between her brows as she concentrated. He shoved this thought away, surprised by the sudden pang, something between fury and loss.

“What are we going to do?” Kara asked.

“Stay put…for now.”

Barricaded in the Presidential Suite, the two of them were safe from immediate harm, but the others were at risk. The Omani sailors had been trained well, responding quickly to the threat, putting up a fierce firefight. But the sailors aboard the ship were mostly young, only moderately armed, and Cassandra would know all their weaknesses. The ship would soon be hers.

But was that her goal?

Painter crouched beside Kara. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He needed a moment to stop reacting and to think, to concentrate. His father had taught him a few Pequot chants, his weak attempt to imbue his one son with tribal tradition, usually done while his breath reeked of tequila and beer. Still, Painter had learned the chants, whispering them in the dark when his parents fought, yelling, cursing in the neighboring room. He found comfort and focus in the repetition, not knowing the meaning—then or now.

His lips moved silently, meditatively. He shut out the spates of gunfire.

Again, he pictured Cassandra. He could guess the purpose of her attack. To obtain what she had been after from the start. The iron heart. The only solid clue to the mystery of the antimatter explosion. It still lay in the curator’s cabin. His mind ran along various attack scenarios, mission parameters—

In midchant, it struck him.

He bolted back to his feet.

From the start, he had been nagged by the sloppiness of the assault. Why blow up the radio room and alert the crew prematurely? If it was an ordinary mercenary group, he could blame the lack of planning and precision on inexperience, but if Cassandra was behind it…

A sinking feeling hollowed out his gut.

“What?” Kara asked, pushing up with him.

The gunfire beyond the cabin had gone deathly quiet. In the silence, he heard a telltale whine.

He crossed to the window and ducked his head out.

Four Jet Skis came sweeping in out of the darkness—but each was manned only by the pilot. No passengers. The rear assault seats were empty.

“Damn it…”

“What?” Kara asked again, fear entering her voice.

“We’re too late.”

He knew with certainty that the grenade explosion hadn’t marked the
start
of the mission, but its
end.

He silently cursed his stupidity. This was all the endgame. And he hadn’t even been playing. He had been caught totally off guard. He allowed himself this moment of anger, then focused on the situation.

An endgame was not necessarily the end itself.

He stared as the four Jet Skis swooped toward the boat. Come to collect the last members of the assault team, the rear guard, the demolition team assigned to blow the radio shack. One of the Omani sailors must have stumbled upon these men, leading to the firefight on the deck.

More gunfire erupted, sounding farther away, more determined, near the stern of the boat. They were attempting to retreat.

Out the window, Painter watched the last of the Jet Skis circle wide, wary of the gunfire. The other Jet Skis, those with men manning the mounted assault rifles, were nowhere in sight. He also heard no sign of their engagement. They were gone. Along with the point team, Painter imagined. Along with the prize.

But to where?

Again he searched the water for the main assault ship. It was out there somewhere. But only dark waters lay beyond. Storm clouds now obliterated both moon and stars, turning the world black. His fingers clenched on the sill of the wide window.

As he searched, a flicker of light drew his eye—not
out
across the waters, but
down
below it.

He leaned farther and stared into the depths.

Deep in the midnight waters, a glow glided out from under the ship. It slowly slipped off to starboard and floated determinedly away. Painter’s brow crinkled. He recognized what he saw. A submersible. Why?

The answer came immediately with the question.

With the mission over, the sub and the main assault team were bugging out. All that was left was the cleanup. To leave no witnesses.

He knew the purpose of the sub’s presence. To come in baffled and silent, too small to detect…

“They’ve mined the ship,” he said aloud. He calculated in his head how long it would take for a sub to clear the blast zone.

Kara said something, but he had gone deaf to her.

Painter swung from the window and hurried to the door. The firefight seemed to have settled to a stalemate of sporadic shots. He listened at the door. Nothing sounded close. He slid back the bolt.

“What are you doing?” Kara asked at his shoulder, sticking close but clearly irritated by her own need to do so.

“We must get off this boat.”

He cracked the door open. A few steps away lay the opening to the middeck. The winds had kicked up as the edge of the coming storm brushed over the
Shabab Oman.
Sails snapped like whips. Ropes rattled in stanchions.

He studied the deck, reading it like a chessboard.

The crew had no opportunity to reef and secure the mainsails. The Omani sailors were pinned down by a pair—no,
three
gunmen—hidden behind a pile of barrels stacked at the far end of the middeck. The masked men had the perfect vantage point to guard the forward sections of the ship. One of the pair kept his rifle pointed toward the raised stern deck, protecting their rear.

Closer, a fourth masked gunman lay sprawled on the deck, facedown, blood pooled around his head, the body only a few steps from Painter.

He took in the situation with a glance. Similarly ensconced behind crates on this side of the middeck were the four Omani border-patrol agents, the Desert Phantoms. They lay on their bellies, rifles pointed toward the gunmen. It was a standoff. It must have been the Phantoms who had waylaid the assault team’s rear guard, pinned them down, kept them from escaping over rails.

“C’mon,” Painter said, and took Kara by the elbow. He dragged her out the suite’s door and toward the lower stairs.

“Where’re we going?” she asked. “What about getting off the boat?”

He didn’t answer. He was too late, but he had to be sure. He clambered down the stairs to the next landing. A short passage led to the guest quarters.

In the middle of the hall, bathed in the light from the single overhead lamp, a body draped across the floor. Facedown like the masked man above. But this was not one of the attackers.

He wore only boxers and a white T-shirt. A tiny dark stain marred the center of his back. Shot from behind as he attempted to flee.

“It’s Clay…” Kara mumbled in shock, hurrying forward with Painter.

She knelt near the boy’s body, but Painter stepped over him. He had no time for mourning. He hurried to the door toward which the graduate student had been heading, seeking a place to hide or to warn others. Too late.

They’d all been too late.

Painter stopped outside the door. It was cracked half open. Lamplight flowed into the hall. Painter listened intently. Silence. He steeled himself against what he would find.

Kara called to him, knowing what he feared. “Safia?”

2:02 A.M.

O
MAHA SHOVED
out an arm as the ship rolled beneath him. The darkness of the bilge threw off his sense of balance. Water sloshed over his shoes, chilling his ankles.

A crash sounded behind him…and a curse. Danny was faring no better.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Coral asked Omaha, her voice frosty, echoing a bit in the dank bilge.

“Yes,” he snapped back. It was a lie. He kept trailing one hand along the sloped wall to the left, praying he’d find a ladder leading back up. The next one should lead to the main storage hold under the middeck. Or so he hoped.

They continued in silence.

Rats squeaked in sharp protest, sounding larger in the darkness, as big as wet bulldogs. Their numbers multiplied in the imagination. Omaha heard their bodies splashing through the bilge waters, running ahead of them, likely piling into an angry mass at the stern of the ship. In an alley in Calcutta, he had seen a rat-gnawed corpse. The eyes gone, the genitals eaten away, all soft places gnashed. He did not like rats.

But fear for Safia drove him onward, his anxiety heightened by the darkness, the spates of gunfire. Bloody images flashed across his mind’s eye, too terrible to dwell upon. Why had he put off telling her how he still felt about her? He would gladly drop on his knees now to have her safe and sound.

His outstretched hand struck something solid. He reached out and discovered rungs and nail heads. A ladder.

“Here it is,” he said with more confidence than he felt. He didn’t care if he was right or wrong or where the hell the ladder led. He was climbing out.

As Danny and Coral moved closer, he mounted the rungs.

“Be careful,” Coral warned.

The gunfire continued above. Close. That was warning enough.

Reaching the topmost rung, he searched until he found the inner handle
to the hatch. Praying it wasn’t locked or weighted down with cargo, he shoved up.

The hatch flew open with ease, swinging back and crashing against a wooden support pillar.

Coral hissed at him. No words, just protest.

Blessed light flowed over him, blindingly bright after the gloom below. The smell was also refreshing after the salt and mold of the ship’s bilge.

Fresh-cut hay.

A large shadow shifted to his right.

He turned and found himself facing a huge horse, looming over him. The same Arabian stallion that had broken free earlier. It threw its head and huffed at him. Eyes white with terror, it raised a hoof in threat, ready to stamp out the sudden intruder into its shipboard stables.

Omaha ducked back, cursing their luck. The bilge hatch had opened into the stallion’s stall. He spotted other horses in neighboring stanchions.

He turned his attention to the stallion. The horse tugged at the lead tethering him in place. The spooked Arabian was better than any armed guard. But they had to get out and reach the crated weapons in the neighboring hold.

Fear for Safia fired his blood. He had come this far…

Trusting the ropes held the horse, he dove out of the hatch, rolled flat across the planks, and passed under the fence that closed off the stall.

Gaining his feet, he dusted off his bare knees. “Move quick!”

He found a horse blanket, brightly colored in reds and yellows. He waved it at the stallion, keeping it distracted so the others could climb to safety. The horse whinnied at his motions, but rather than growing more perturbed at the additional intruders, the stallion pulled at the ropes that secured it, drawn to the saddle blanket.

Omaha realized it must recognize its own blanket, a promising sign that someone was about to take it for a ride, to let it out of the stalls. Alarm heightened the stallion’s desire to break free.

With regret, he lowered the blanket back over the fence once Danny and Coral reached his side. The stallion’s large eyes met his, scared, full of the need for reassurance.

“Where are the guns?” Coral asked.

Omaha turned from the stall. “Should be over there.” He pointed past the ramp that led to the upper deck. A stack of crates, three high, stood along the back wall. A Kensington crest marked each one.

As Omaha led them across the hold, he kept his head low with each new burst of gunfire. A repeated exchange of gunfire, a volley back and
forth. The deadly match sounded like it was coming from outside the double doors at the top of the ramp.

He remembered Danny’s earlier question. Who was attacking? This was no mere band of pirates. This was too sustained, too organized, too damn bold.

Reaching the crates, he searched the stapled manifests. Having organized the supplies himself, he knew there should be a crate of rifles and handguns. He found the right box. Using a crowbar, he broke it open.

Danny took out one of the rifles. “What are we going to do?”

“
You’re
going to stay low,” Omaha said, grabbing a Desert Eagle pistol.

“What about you?” Danny asked.

Omaha cocked an ear to the fighting as he loaded the pistol on the floor. “I have to get to the others. Make sure they’re safe.”

But in truth, he pictured only Safia, smiling, younger.

He had failed her before—not again.

Coral finally rose from her own search of the crate’s contents with a single pistol. She quickly and efficiently loaded its magazine with .357 rounds, then slammed it home. Armed now, she seemed more relaxed, a lioness loosened up and ready for the hunt.

She met his eyes. “We should return forward through the bilge. Join the others from there.”

More gunfire spat just outside the double doors.

“We’d lose too much time.” Omaha glanced to the ramp that led directly to the heart of the gunfire. “There may be another way.”

Coral frowned at him as he outlined his plan.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Danny muttered.

But Coral nodded as Omaha finished. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Then let’s go,” he said. “Before we’re too late.”