As it turned out, so did another.

  “It’s time to end this,” Martin said to the man. “You can’t get away, and the little girl has done nothing to harm you. This has to stop.”

  The man ended his descriptive babbling and looked straight at Martin.

  “You’re right,” the abductor from the Horde said.

  Then, for me, time slowed. All the world narrowed down to a tunnel where I could only see the man holding Krista as he pulled the gun away from her head and put it to his own. Before anyone could do or say anything more, he squeezed the trigger and the side of his head opposite the revolver opened up with a shower of crimson and grey.

  Krista screamed as the man’s body folded down upon itself. I sprinted to the girl and snatched her up, no blood having splattered on her. Grace and Neil ran to meet me as I carried Krista away from the hellish scene. They both took her from me, holding the girl between them, parents, mother and father, in every way that mattered.

  “I left her at the church to get my rifle,” Grace said, the weapon discarded up the street where she’d dropped it when coming upon the terrifying scene. “I thought she’d be safe there.”

  “I’m sorry, mommy. I went looking for you. And the man...the man...”

  She dissolved into tears against her mother’s shoulder.

  “Take her home,” I said.

  Neil looked to me, tears filling his eyes. He nodded and put a hand to my cheek, some measure of gratitude being offered. For keeping him from doing something rash, I expected. After a moment he and Grace walked away, up the street, heading for home.

  “Eric.”

  It was Elaine. She was crouched over the dead man, Burke and Martin standing close, others a few steps back.

  I moved to join her, stopping next to Martin and looking at what Elaine had discovered under the dead man’s shirt.

  “A radio,” she said. “Transmit button is taped down.”

  “He was describing us to someone,” Burke said.

  “Marking us,” I suggested, a supposition at best. “Targeting specific people.”

  “For what?” Elaine wondered.

  Martin had nothing to add to the guessing game we were engaged in. He crouched and ripped the radio from where it was attached to the dead man’s belt, bringing it up to his own face, holding it there, as if to say something. But he didn’t. He squeezed the device in his hand and whipped halfway around, launching the radio at the wall of the corner building. It shattered and dropped to the ground as Old Glory flapped above.

  Forty One

  The town was on edge. People waited. Expecting something to come after the attacks and the infiltrations. Patrols were increased. The observation posts were reinforced. But nothing happened.

  Nothing on land.

  “They’re not answering,” Burke said past the half open door, hints of fog swirling in the street behind him. “The ship.”

  It was late, or early. One in the morning by the clock on the living room wall. I blinked the sleep from my eyes and nodded.

  “Give me twenty seconds,” I said.

  I made it out the front door in closer to fifteen, all I’d need for such a response kept just inside the front room. Boots. Jacket. Flashlight. Binoculars. Vest. And my weapons.

  We jogged up the street in the dark, a thin moon hanging high in the west, mist that might have blotted it from the sky dissolving in the night.

  “Who’s on the ship?” I asked.

  “Elaine, Mikey, and Ross.”

  Elaine...

  It shouldn’t matter any more that she was there. The potential danger faced by the others was no less real. But, still, a sharp pang stabbed at my gut when I heard her name listed among those aboard. That was the moment I knew. Like Neil must have known at some point in his travels with Grace. Beyond any ability to rationalize what I felt away, I couldn’t. Not right then.

  But I had to force the feeling down. All the feelings. There was no indication that Elaine felt anything similar toward me, despite Neil’s claim that he could see it in her. The complications of some one-sided romantic desire could wreak havoc on too many things. Especially when heading out to see just what was going on thirty miles from shore.

  Halfway down the block, fast steps behind made me look back. It was Neil, slipping into his vest as he ran, shotgun in hand. Beyond him, silhouetted by a dim light from within, Grace stood on their porch, watching us sprint up the block.

  “This ever happen before?” I asked.

  Burke shook his head, saving his breath to keep up the pace as Neil caught up with us.

  “Who’s got ship duty?” Neil asked.

  I filled him in, none of us saying any more until we reached the dock. Martin was waiting there with Jenny Martell, the latter getting the skiff’s outboard fired up.

  “They have three damn radios,” Burke said to Martin. “How does this happen?”

  “Micah said he’s picking up some sort of jamming,” Martin said.

  Neil turned to me, memories rising of the radio screeching at my refuge the day before the helicopter attack obliterated it. We both were thinking that, but here it made little sense.

  “Could it be the Horde?” Burke wondered.

  “I don’t know,” Martin answered.

  Burke started to get aboard the skiff, but a hand against his chest stopped him.

  “Not you,” Martin told the head of security.

  “What do you mean?” Burke protested.

  Martin looked to Neil and me, a grim truth in his gaze.

  “We can’t risk all three of you,” he said.

  It was a harsh assessment. A game of numbers. One that we could make no argument against. Neil and I had become integral members of the force defending the town. We’d been tested before arriving. We’d seen death. We’d killed. And we could so again.

  But I wanted things on our terms.

  “She stays,” I said, gesturing to Jenny.

  The woman looked to Martin, not used to taking orders from anyone else. He turned to me, allowing an explanation of my thinking.

  “Neil and I can run the skiff,” I said. “All she’s gonna be is another person to worry about out there. Another potential target.”

  Martin didn’t even have to think on what I’d said. He knew I was right. As right as his limiting of the risk was.

  “Go,” he said.

  * * *

  We ran the skiff at full speed, through sporadic remnants of fog that had earlier clotted the night, until the first hint of the ship became visible, the shadow of its bulk jutting up from the sea, spreading a black scar upon the starry horizon.

  “Get the paddles,” Neil said as he cut the outboard, giving us a chance for a silent approach.

  I took one and handed the other to my friend. We dug into the water beside the skiff, pulling the boat forward, foot by foot, until, a quarter mile from the Groton Star, we could hear it. A growling cough, like a huge beast trying to catch its breath.

  “Someone’s trying to start the engine,” I said.

  “Will that work?”

  “It shouldn’t,” I said. “That doesn’t mean it won’t.”

  Neil and I crouched low, paddling steadily in the light chop, the skiff riding easily over the ocean rolling low.

  “Can you see anything?” Neil asked.

  We had no night vision equipment. My personal one had been lost in the attack on my refuge. The only piece of optics able to cut the darkness, a thermal scope, was on the very ship we were approaching, potentially watching us at that very moment.

  As Neil paddled, I took my binoculars in hand and focused in on the ship.

  “She’s dark,” I said. “Blacked out.”

  That was not unexpected. To keep the vessel invisible at night, the most illumination to be chanced in an open space, like on deck or in the glassed-in bridge, was a chemical light stick. I couldn’t even make out the green glow one of those would show off when activated.

  “I have no movement,” I reported. “Not a th—”

  Thud.

  The impact was gentle, the sloped flat bow of the skiff seeming to ride up upon something it had struck. Neil stopped paddling. I crept to the front of the craft and peered over it, into the water.

  Mikey Winthrop’s dead face stared up at me.

  “Jesus...”

  Neil scooted forward and looked with me as I grabbed the young man’s jacket collar and held him close to the boat.

  “Shot in the head,” Neil said.

  My friend was right. By starlight and the scant glow of the slivered moon, the dark circle in Mikey’s forehead was stark against his pale, ghostly skin.

  I looked back to the boat, two hundred yards from us now as we bobbed gently on the water, my unaided vision detecting something now. A hint of movement at the rail where the rope ladder would usually be deployed.

  “Someone’s on deck,” I said.

  Neil looked, nodding a second later.

  “I see them.”

  There was no telling who it was from this distance, in this light. It might have been Elaine, or Ross Lane. But we doubted it.

  I looked down to Mikey a final time, putting my hand to his cheek as I let him go. His body drifted off to the side of the skiff and disappeared in the black water.

  “We need to get aboard,” I said.

  “We need to get close first and see who’s at that rail.”

  My friend was right. Impatience was not a strategy here. A killer was aboard the ship. Or killers. Rushing to stop them would likely only add to their body count.

  “Let’s head aft of the ship,” I suggested. “We can get a closer look up the side.”

  The starboard side, I reminded myself. That was the right side. We paddled steadily ahead, aiming for a point near one of the rear anchor cables, reaching it in less than five minutes.

  “You see it?”

  Neil nodded at my question. Tied to the side of the Groton Star, at the bottom of the deployed rope ladder, was a boat not unlike the one we occupied. A skiff too close in appearance to be coincidental. It was empty, riding high on the light sea, banging occasionally against the big ship’s steel hull.

  “If we try to get to the ladder, whoever’s on deck can pick us off,” Neil said.

  He wasn’t wrong. We’d have to find another way onto the ship.

  The answer to that dilemma presented itself hardly ten yards away.

  “You remember the rope drills Macklin had us do?” I asked.

  Our high school football coach, a tough and lovable SOB, had often worked us and our teammates almost into the ground, with a favorite drill to toughen us up being climbing ropes suspended from the ceiling of the gymnasium. Neil caught on, but eyed the angled cables doubtfully.

  “That was straight up,” he said. “This is a wet piece of steel. It’s basically a zip line we’d have to ride in reverse.”

  “It’s also the only option.”

  He thought for a moment, then put his paddle back into the water. I did, as well, and we moved the skiff close to the anchor cable, tying to boat off to the thick wire. I slung my AR and maneuvered myself under the cable, grabbing it with gloved hands and wrapping my legs around it as I pulled myself up the incline. Neil followed, our bodies suspended beneath the cable as we crept upward, foot by foot, closing in on the ship, the cable disappearing through a smallish hole cut in the hull.

  “Hang back for a minute,” I told my friend.

  Neil paused, anchoring his body to the slanted cable with the hook of his elbow latched over it. I wriggled my body close to the hull and wrenched myself over the top of the cable, groping for balance as I put a hand to the solid steel of the ship.

  That was when I slipped.

  My hand slid off the slick, moist steel, the rest of my body twisting over the top of the anchor cable and dropping like a rock toward the water.

  “Fletch!” Neil shouted in a hush.

  My right hand clamped onto the cable, a death grip that kept me from falling into the cold Pacific.

  “I’m okay,” I assured my friend, though I wasn’t certain of that myself.

  I got my other hand onto the cable, then swung my legs up and over it, repositioning myself for another try at getting aboard the Groton Star. The deck was maybe five feet above the penetration where the cable disappeared into the ship. With more attention to balance I again planted a hand against the hull and eased my feet onto the cable, positioning myself like a circus wire walker.

  “Careful,” Neil urged, maybe prayed, just to my rear.

  I teetered back and forth, sliding my front foot toward the cable hole, finally planting it there for a solid foothold, allowing me to reach upward and slip my fingers over the edge of the deck. Slowly, I raised my head until my eyes could just peer over.

  The fantail at the rear of the ship was empty, no sign of life there. But forward, past the vessel’s superstructure on the starboard side, I could now make out more clearly the shadowy figure at the rail. A man, I thought, tall and rail thin, a rifle in hand, held low as he paced back and forth near the rope ladder’s anchor point.

  I pulled myself carefully over the rail, staying low as I reached through the cross members. Neil slid forward on the cable and repeated the process I’d just completed, taking my hand. The boat rumbled, engine chugging, pistons throbbing deep in the hull somewhere, metal slamming against metal.

  “That’s not going to start,” Neil said as I helped him over the rail.

  “Keep hoping that,” I told him.

  We moved to the rear corner of the superstructure, a door there that I knew would let us in. But that was not the first move we were going to make.

  “Can you take him from here?” Neil asked.

  “We’re sure that’s not Ross?”

  It certainly wasn’t Elaine. Ross Lane was tall like the figure along the rail, but not as thin.

  “I’d bet cash money on it,” Neil said.

  That was good enough for me. I raised my AR, bringing the suppressed barrel in line with the target. The dim orange triangle in the sight danced lightly over the figure, settling to a point between his shoulder and his waist. The safety was already off. The selector was set to semi-automatic fire. My finger eased onto the trigger. I inhaled. Held the breath. Let it seep slowly out and put pressure on the trigger.

  The front of the weapon bucked slightly, just a quick rise as the bullet flew downrange. It struck the man, though I could not see precisely where. His body spun and crumpled, just a slight whimper cutting across the twenty yards to where he’d stood. I readjusted aim to his now horizontal form and fired a second shot, then a third, the final round penetrating enough to raise a spark and a quick clang from the metal deck as it exited his body.

  “Headshot,” Neil said.

  He might have been right. There was no further movement.

  “Inside,” I said.

  We turned to the rear door, both of us familiar with the layout of the ship’s interior after multiple times serving guard duty aboard.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded to my friend and reached for the door handle.

  Forty Two

  We stepped into darkness and closed the metal door behind, as quietly as we could, taking positions to either side of the short corridor we’d just entered. For a moment we stood still, letting our vision acclimate to the internal night. Listening for any hint of what might be happening.

  Neil heard it first.

  “Laughing,” he mostly whispered.

  I could just make out Neil pointing forward and down. Toward the hold.

  We advanced, stepping carefully, the barest ambient light trickling down the stairs from the bridge four decks above. At the base of the steps we stopped, our choice to move down toward the sounds, or up to the bridge. As it turned out, the choice was made for us.

  The bunk room door swung open just behind us. Reacting quickly, Neil and I turned in unison, seeing the woman step into the corridor as she saw us. Her face was marked with sores and cuts, hardly any flesh upon her. Bits of red chunks clung to her chin and stained the front of her threadbare clothing. In her right hand was a knife, its blade dripping something thick and liquid.

  Her mouth opened to scream, or yell, but she never got the chance. Neil slammed the butt of his Benelli across her face, knocking her into the wall. She bounced off of it and dropped to the floor, gurgling. Alive.

  Until he drove the butt again into her skull, cratering her head. She twitched for a few seconds, then went still.

  He looked to me, and then to the bunk room, its door still open. We eased toward it. I took my flashlight out as Neil covered the opening. A flick of my thumb on the switch lit the space up, revealing what we knew would be there—beds, communal table—and what we feared.

  Ross Lane lay face down on the table, his jeans removed and piled on the floor, a long strip of the flesh removed from the back of his thigh. All around him was a bloody horror, evidence of a meal interrupted.

  “Christ,” Neil said. “A whole ship of food and they do this.”

  “They have a taste for it now,” I said, my stomach sickening. “We have to find Elaine.”

  Neil nodded. I turned off my flashlight and stowed it. We moved forward again, to the stairs, and descended, coming to the catwalk level that gave access to the rear hold. The laughter was louder now, and with it we could hear the tearing of cardboard and the ripping of plastic.

  “They’re at the food,” I whispered.

  Neil moved a step ahead, taking point. Every few seconds I glanced behind, wanting no more surprises. We passed through the watertight door that was left open, our boots scuffing along the grated flooring. Just ahead the corridor opened onto the balcony over the hold. The level of noise increased, laughter and ripping and metal banging, indications of more than one person awaiting us.

  I wondered how many that skiff could have carried out to the boat, forcing down questions as to how they’d gotten aboard, much less close to the vessel. Some trickery, to be certain. In concert with the jamming Micah had detected. All seemed to point to a plan well thought out and perfectly executed.

  We reached the balcony, a light spreading beyond, flickering and yellow. A fire. Neil crept onto the overlook, crouching. I did the same, looking below to see a minor bonfire burning, pans placed close, water boiling. Packages of MREs were open and scattered at the feet of three men, each gorging themselves and dumping the contents of large cans of rice and dried beans into the frothing water.

 

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