CHAPTER 75
Cotton sat on the concrete floor with his gun ready.
The idea was to stay low, bang the door open, and catch his target off guard.
He’d already told Cassiopeia to do the same thing.
Since it didn’t matter whether the two men came out with or without holes, he’d leave it to them to determine their fate.
“Ready,” Cassiopeia said in his ear.
“Do it.”
“Nowhere to go,” he called out.
Two more rounds hit the door as he moved it outward.
The impacts sent the panel back his way.
He shoved it open, stayed low, and swung out, aiming his weapon down the catwalk and firing two rounds.
His weapon was not sound-suppressed so his shots banged through the museum’s cavernous interior.
The bullets struck nothing and careened off the inner stone walls beyond the catwalk.
He risked a look.
Twenty feet away the guy with the gun was leaping off the railing, propelling himself outward toward the crow’s nest at the top of the Vasa’s foremast. It was a good twenty-foot leap out and down.
The man still held the gun in his left hand, arms extended, and he hit the shroud hard, searching for a grip with his right hand, which he found.
The guy held on to the shroud’s thick hemp with one hand and fired a shot back toward Cotton with the other.
He ducked beneath the screened metal railing and the bullet flew high into the wall behind him.
No choice now.
He came up and shot the man as he scrambled down the shroud.
The guy cried out in pain and released his hold on the ropes, falling downward into a space between the ship’s forward deck and the viewing levels, finally smacking the tile floor at ground level.
Cassiopeia was pinned down from several sound-suppressed rounds that came from the man on her catwalk. Cotton was still dealing with the threat at the bow. Things were not progressing. She needed to end this guy, but she did not want to shoot him unless she had to.
“How about you put your gun down and come with me,” she called out.
His answer came with three more bullets that whizzed by the open doorway. The bad angle worked both ways, making it hard to shoot each other.
But enough.
Finger on the trigger, she stuck the gun out the jamb, pointed down the catwalk, and fired twice. Then she swung herself close to the jamb and grabbed a peek. The man was trying to escape, pivoting up onto the iron railing and attempting a leap down to the Vasa’s stern deck.
She shot the guy midair.
The body slammed into the railings that lined the top of the quarter deck. The gun released from his grip and fell all the way to the floor at ground level, clattering about.
Then the body settled onto the deck.
Not moving.
John made his way toward the center of the Vasa, staying off to one side among the exhibits. He caught a few shrieks of excitement from children enjoying themselves. He glanced up at the ancient hull, then the tall masts and riggings.
Two pops echoed throughout.
He stared up past the ship to a catwalk that ran near the top of the towering inner walls toward the bow. A door was swinging from open to closed. He heard more shots toward the Vasa’s stern, then saw a man leaping from another of the catwalks where a woman stood, gun pointed.
The man slammed into the Vasa’s deck.
Chaos erupted on the various viewing levels. Voices rose. People on the ground floor began to rush toward the main entrance and the other fire exits.
He decided to head the opposite direction.
And ran through the exhibits.
Toward the gun that had fallen to the ground.
Cotton could not see where Aleks, Monica, and Sandra were standing, even though he was high, as the ship blocked his view to the ground floor on its far side. Cassiopeia had been forced to deal with her problem in the same manner he’d been compelled to employ.
Both intruders were surely dead.
Threats eliminated.
Cassiopeia was about to flee the catwalk and head down to where their three targets were positioned, but before she turned to leave she saw John Westlake, twenty feet below, rounding the ship’s stern and snatching the gun from the floor.
His appearance was both a surprise and a concern.
Where had he come from? Why had no one alerted them?
And he was now armed.
No time to backtrack and use the stairs.
So she stuffed the gun at her waist, planted her right hand on the iron railing, and pivoted up and over.
Down to the Vasa.