Chapter 25
The corpse of Baptiste Dumas lay in the corridor outside the ship’s armory. Marie knelt next to the still-warm body, examining the shots to the head and the chest. She checked his pockets. He still had a radio, but no weapon, no extra ammunition.
“Still warm.” She looked up at Ming, indicating how close together the entrance wounds were and their precise locations. “Obviously professional.”
He grunted and nodded but did not reply.
They turned the corner and stopped short. The Cybertruck from the casino raffle sat unmoving in front of the armory door, the doors open, lights still on.
They approached the open armory door with caution, guns out and ready. Marie hugged the wall next to Ming. He went in first, then came back out again, shaking his head. She could smell the gunpowder.
“What is going on?” she asked. She went into the armory and saw the other three bodies, the open security area, and the empty gun cabinet.
A very uneasy feeling wormed its way through her core, spreading up into her chest, making her heart race, her vision tunnel, and her mouth go dry.
She cautiously made her way back into the corridor. “Something is very wrong. Get an update from Ying Yue.”
Ming unclipped the radio from his belt and spoke in Mandarin to the MSS operative tasked with bringing the wedding guests to a waiting tender.
After several seconds, she replied. Marie waited for Ming to translate.
“She says there are more hostages than they thought, and it’s taking longer than it should. ”
She stared at Ming with narrowed eyes. “That’s what she said twenty minutes ago.” He gave a single stiff nod. “Challenge her.”
He spoke rapidly. Again, the reply took much longer than they’d expected. “I asked if she was Li Hua. She said yes.”
A sharp headache appeared behind her eye. She rubbed her temple. What to do? “We need eyes.”
Ming switched the channel on the radio and spoke into it. After about thirty seconds, he spoke again.
Marie shook her head. “We can’t wait here. Let’s go see.”
“That could be dangerous.”
“What other option do we have?” she snapped.
They took the staff elevator up to Deck Eleven, moving with more caution than before.
They exited the elevator with weapons at the ready.
They paused at every juncture, fingers on triggers, peeking around corners before going forward.
Outside of the comms door, blood spatter covered the bulkheads, and the carpeted deck had two big blood stains.
Marie reached over and tried to turn the door handle. It didn’t budge.
She rubbed her temple. “We need to speak with Hao.”
Ming shook his head. “That is against protocol.”
She grabbed the front of his shirt. “What does it matter now?”
They slipped down the passageway and went around the corner, then paused at the reinforced bridge door.
Marie used her fist to tap a code out on the door.
Seconds later, Hao Jun stepped aside on the threshold, his lean frame clad in his crisp white uniform, epaulets glinting under the bridge’s lights.
His sharp eyes swept the empty passageway behind them before he pulled the door shut with a decisive steel thunk.
“You two take great risk in coming here, Marie,” he murmured, his voice low and edged.
She reached up without hesitation, her palm cupping the warm plane of his cheek, thumb brushing the faint stubble there as she drew him down for a kiss. “We have a problem,” she whispered against his lips, pulling back just enough to search his eyes.
Hao arched a brow, a sardonic curl touching the corner of his mouth. “How could we have a problem when your brother so carefully arranged everything in his uniquely overbearing way?”
Marie let the barb slide past, her expression unchanging as she straightened, the weight of the mission settling back into her shoulders. “What do we know about our VIPs?”
He shrugged, the motion fluid and dismissive, then clasped his hands loosely behind his back. “A couple attended the captain’s table last night. One was a judge. He had no security. The other was a blonde American. She had two security agents.”
“Armed?” Her tone sharpened, eyes narrowing as she leaned against the edge of a chart table, the cool metal grounding her.
Hao’s gaze flicked away for a fraction of a second. “I didn’t ask.”
She followed his line of sight to the corner of the bridge, where the navigator’s body slumped against the bulkhead—limp, lifeless, a dark stain on his chest. The sight twisted something low in her gut. “I could have taken him to the island,” she breathed, the words barely audible.
“Reginald decided it was more expedient to remove him.” Hao slipped his hands into the pockets of his white uniform pants. “What is the problem?”
Marie pushed away from the table and crossed to the wide forward window, her reflection ghosting across the reinforced glass as she gazed out into the endless blue.
“The team sent to collect the wedding party with the VIP guests did not return,” she said, her voice steady but threaded with steel.
“Comms is not replying, and the weapons room has been breached.”
Hao gasped, the sound raw and involuntary, his composure cracking as he stepped closer. “How is that possible?
She shook her head, dark hair swaying against her shoulders, frustration coiling tight in her chest. “We can’t know. I was hoping you’d have inside information that you’ve not shared yet.”
From the captain’s chair at the heart of the bridge, Reginald Hall stirred—former MI-6 agent turned MSS sympathizer, his silvered hair cropped close.
He leaned forward, elbows on the armrests, his British accent clipping the words with dry precision.
“You’ve received all of the intel you need.
We don’t have any information on the VIPs despite our best efforts. ”
Marie whirled toward him, her lips curling into a sneer that bared her teeth, heat flushing her cheeks. “Perhaps you should have anticipated resistance.”
“Based on what?” Reginald’s tone remained even, unflappable, his pale eyes meeting hers without flinching. “We are dozens of armed, trained fighters. They are fifty unarmed wedding guests.”
“Unarmed?” She closed the distance in three strides, until her face hovered inches from his—close enough to feel the warmth of his breath, to see the faint lines of calculation etched around his mouth. She put her nose near his, voice dropping to a venomous hiss. “And now?”
He calmly shrugged, the motion lifting one shoulder as if shedding an unwelcome coat, his gaze steady. “Now we need to get more intel, obviously. If our signals weren’t jammed, I would try to search images from last night’s dinner and see if I can identify anyone.”
“Bah!” Marie spat the word like a curse, recoiling with disgust, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “Useless!” She turned sharply to Hao. “We have one of the wedding guests in the brig.”
His eyes widened, dark irises flaring with surprise. “Is that so?”
“Can you force her to give you information?” Her words came out urgent, laced with the desperation of a plan forming on the fly.
Hao thought about it, his brow furrowing as he rubbed a thumb along his jaw, the faint rasp of skin on skin the only sound for a beat. “Perhaps. If I were also a prisoner.” He turned to Reginald. “Knock me out. Make it bleed.”
Reginald rose smoothly from the chair, his movements economical, crossing to a nearby cupboard embedded in the bulkhead.
He swung the door open, revealing a toolkit for the endless minutiae of shipboard life.
His fingers closed around a heavy wrench.
He hefted it in his palm, as if testing its balance. “You might want to have a seat.”
Marie clutched Hao’s hand, her grip fierce, nails digging crescents into his skin as their eyes locked one final time. “I love you, Hao,” she whispered.
He nodded, a ghost of a smile touching his lips as he eased into the nearest console chair, the leather creaking under his weight. “Stay in earshot,” he ordered Ming. “I’ll let you know when I know something.”
She turned her back then, steeling herself, shoulders squaring as she stared fixedly at the blue sky. The wrench whistled through the air, a dull, meaty thud echoing off the bulkheads as it struck his head. She winced.
Jerry twisted the curtain strip into a makeshift rope, then secured the end of it to the column on the third floor of the dining room by tying a bowline knot.
He pulled and tugged hard, ensuring the anchor knot would stay in place and bear his weight.
He made an overhand knot in the tail about every three feet until he reached the end.
He glanced over at Brock, who nodded, then to Norton, who made an adjustment to his “rope” before nodding.
He didn’t look forward to this. They didn’t have gloves, and the friction burns on their hands were going to be real.
They also didn’t have boots on. No way these dress shoes would grip the “ropes” to provide friction and braking in any meaningful way, nor would they offer any cushioning or ankle support upon landing when they reached the steel deck below.
They quietly laid down their rifles and shotguns on the carpeted deck while ensuring their pistols remained secure and would not alert anyone below by falling to the deck.
Then Norton and Brock half-slid, half-climbed down to the second floor while he kept watch.
As soon as he got the hand signal from Norton down below, Jerry pulled both of their improvised ropes back up and secured the long guns to them.
One by one, he lowered the weapons down.
Finally, Jerry slipped over the railing and climbed down himself.
The faint, muffled creak of the curtain fibers straining under his weight whispered up the line, barely louder than his pulse thundering in his ears.
While not perfect, the knots he’d placed at intervals mostly helped reduce friction, protected his hands, and gave his shoes something to grip.
Mostly.
This time, the clang of the outer door slamming shut barely registered with Olive.
She rose alongside Emanuel, eyes fixed on Ming and another man as they hauled an unconscious figure between them—gripping his limp arms, his boots scraping lifeless trails across the floor.
Blood fell from the side of his head, pattering softly in their wake.
“Get back,” Ming said. He nodded to the other man, and they laid the body between them while Ming typed the code in the panel. The latch unlocked, and they dragged the man in, leaving him in a heap in the middle of the cell.
Olive charged toward the door. “Can you at least give me a first aid kit for him?”
The silver-haired man with Ming turned and looked at her. His expressionless eyes made a chill go up her back. Without a word, he went into the outer room. Ming followed him.
“This man is injured!” she yelled.
Seconds later, the man returned with a red bag, the white cross on the outside identifying it as a first aid kit. He unzipped the bag and removed the shears, checked the other contents, then tossed it in through the bars.
“Thank you,” she said.
He didn’t speak. Not long after he left, she heard the sound of the outer door clanging shut.
“Can you help me?” she asked.
Emanuel stepped forward and helped her roll the man over. He gasped when he saw his face. “That’s First Officer Jun,” he said.
The nametag on his uniform read, Hao Jun, Hong Kong.
“Nasty blow to the head,” Olive observed, pulling a pair of gloves out of the kit. She took his pulse first, then probed the wound. “Can you see if there is any superglue or butterflies or anything like that in the kit?”
While Emanuel searched, she took the bottle of saline and a stack of cotton pads and gently irrigated the wound, pushing the hair out of the way while checking for any kind of debris. Then she pressed a stack of pads against it and looked at the bottle that Emanuel held up. “This?”
She nodded. “Open it, please.”
She released the pressure on the wound and lifted the pads. The bleeding had slowed considerably. “I’m going to press the skin together. I need you to squeeze the glue along the top of the seam I’ll make.”
Emanuel nodded, and she pressed the wound together, then cleaned up the blood that covered the seam.
She nodded to Emanuel, and he squeezed the glue slowly along the gash, following Olive’s directions.
The sharp, chemical sting of superglue fumes bit her nostrils, mingling with the underlying coppery reek of fresh blood seeping through.
She maintained the pressure on the wound for about a minute, letting the glue dry. As she gently released it, she held her breath, praying that the glue would hold.
“Great job,” she said.
“First time I’ve ever done that,” Emanuel said, sitting back on his heels. “But this doesn’t look like your first day.”
She chuckled as she taped a cotton pad over the wound. “Correct. I’m a surgical nurse. This is not my first day.”
After she pulled the gloves off, she started to stand, but First Officer Jun moaned and his eyelids fluttered. She put a hand on his forehead, wanting to comfort him. Instead, he moved quicker than she would have thought possible and grabbed her wrist.
“Ahh,” she said, pain flooding her arm. She wrenched her hand free.
His eyes opened all the way, and he blinked, then looked at each of them. He muttered in Chinese. Olive shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I speak English.”
He moaned again and put his hand to his temple. “What happened?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
Emanuel put himself in his view. “We don’t know, sir. Two men brought you here already unconscious.”
“Two men?” He gasped and sat up quickly. “I was on the bridge. There was a ship, then I don’t remember anything else.”
“Where is the Captain, sir?” Emanuel asked.
“He...” he winced and touched the bandage. “He was at a wedding.”
Olive started to speak, but reconsidered. She didn’t know either of these men. If Jerry and his friends had managed to evade capture, she didn’t want to say anything that might put them in danger.