Chapter 26
When they reached the first level of the dining room, Norton broadcast, “This is Coppertop. Deck one. Over.”
Anderson replied, “Roger, Coppertop. Kitchen to your port side. Over.”
Fisher guided Pena’s team while Anderson guided theirs. They worked their way toward the kitchen. Hundreds of abandoned cellphones littered the hallways.
“Trout to Colada. Move to starboard and standby. Over.”
Jerry mentally blocked the sound of Fisher’s voice, focusing only on Anderson as he cleared rooms for them.
“Coppertop. Heisman. Bow clear. Port and starboard clear. Over.”
“Heisman. Coppertop. Roger. Moving toward bow. Over.”
“Coppertop. Heisman. Possible bandit to your twelve. Bandit is prone in the kitchen. Over.”
They stacked and breached the kitchens. The smell of burning food mingled with the scent of recent death.
In the kitchens, they found the corpse of a crewmen.
The murdered chef had taken a round to the forehead.
Nothing they could do for him. As Jerry went by the smoking oven, he turned the burners off.
Brock whistled and held up a baggie of heavy-duty zip-ties. Norton nodded once and threw up a thumb.
Through the kitchens, into a large corridor, and on to the end. They moved in a tight group, their upper bodies barely moving, their legs moving almost synchronously beneath them, carrying them smoothly down the corridor.
“Colada. Trout. All clear to stern. Lift clear. Over.”
“Trout. Colada. Moving to lift. Over.”
Norton waved the team to the entrance of the freight elevator. They stacked until it arrived, cleared it, and breached as soon as the doors opened. It smelled of produce and seafood. Jerry kept his foot in the threshold, keeping the elevator on their deck and the doors open.
“This is Coppertop. Set. Over.”
“Colada set. On your mark. Over.”
Norton replied, “Roger, Colada. On my mark. Over.”
Norton broadcast to Pena as he pushed the “1” button. “Mark, mark, mark.”
With the group in a defensive posture and Anderson speaking into the comms, they silently emerged from the elevator, weapons ready.
They could hear the high-pitched whine of a light-duty electric forklift rolling through the space, stacking cargo to port and starboard.
The intruders had packed their end of the cargo bay with row upon row of large crates stacked up to eight high.
The crates would certainly affect Jerry’s ability to maneuver and fire within the target space.
Conversely, they would provide adequate cover and concealment, preventing their opponents from freely maneuvering as well.
Anderson signaled, “Coppertop. Heisman. Four armed Bandits to your eleven, twelve, and one. Be advised. Colada to your twelve. Over.”
Instantly, Fisher signaled, “Colada. Trout. Three armed bandits to your twelve and one. Be advised. Coppertop to your twelve. Over.”
Norton whispered, “Alright, ladies. Check your targets on every shot. Just like we’ve done a thousand times—except no gear whatsoever.”
They nodded.
Pena broadcast, “Colada to Trout. On your mark. Over.”
Fisher, keeping his voice needlessly low, broadcast, “Roger. Standby.”
Norton whispered, “Tighten up.”
Jerry already felt relatively tight.
A few very long seconds later, Fisher, hypothetically waiting for the opportune moment to strike based on what he and Anderson could observe through the cameras, finally broadcast, “Mark, mark, mark!”
Both teams instantly opened fire with their noisy borrowed Benelli shotguns.
In confined spaces, the shotgun’s semi-automatic design allowed for rapid target acquisition and follow-up shots.
The tight spread of the eight double-aught buckshot pellets in each shell allowed for a wider impact area at close range, without traveling far beyond the target.
As available weapons went, the shotgun worked for close-quarters combat by limiting the risk of friendly fire.
Also, they epitomized overwhelming violence, often making opponents freeze or hesitate after the opening salvo.
“Contact right!”
Jerry, crouching behind a crate, peered around it, firing two shots in rapid succession, then moving to the next crate.
“Strike one!”
“Contact left!”
“Strike two!”
They spoke into their comms, filtering out the explosions of shotgun blasts and men yelling, moving with precision and purpose.
Jerry emerged from behind the row of crates and suddenly pain sliced through his left cheek. He reacted, spinning to find the target, firing two shots at a woman with black and gray dreadlocks just as she brought her pistol to bear again. She gasped and fell backward without firing another shot.
Back behind cover, Jerry swiped his left hand to his cheek.
He could feel the blood and the burn. Thankfully, it felt like the bullet had just grazed him, although the pain seemed disproportionate to a flesh wound.
Annoyed, he superfluously used his sleeve to swipe at his face.
He heard one of their opponents open fire with an automatic weapon.
He moved back out from behind cover, his shotgun at the ready.
When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, none of the armed enemy surrendered. They had to take out all the armed opponents. Finally, the six remaining unarmed enemies threw up their hands.
Menacing them into compliance with their shotguns, Pena’s team shouted orders, “On your knees! On your knees! Hands on your heads!”
Brock set all his weapons on a crate and retrieved the zip-ties he had acquired in the kitchens.
He towered over the prisoners, each of whom individually he outweighed by a hundred pounds or more.
They did not resist as, one by one, Brock zipped their hands and ankles together.
He then zipped them together in pairs. Pena kept them covered the entire time, his eyes hard.
When the second-to-last captive started to speak, Brock shoved him to the deck. Staring into the man’s eyes, Brock raised a finger to his lips in the universal symbol of silence. The man never said another word.
“Guys,” Swanson broadcast. “I have a bit of a personal problem.”
Meanwhile, Jerry and Norton verified that the casualties the team had shot were all beyond saving. They were. Special Forces soldiers never trained to wound. They trained for lethality and their real world execution of that training followed suit.
As they confirmed the elimination or capture of all potential threats, Waller’s voice came over the comms. “Bourbon here. We need Ozzy, over.”
Jerry rushed from behind the crates and dashed to where the team medic knelt over Swanson.
“Talk to me,” Osbourne said over the comms.
“Pot Pie caught one. Lower right abdomen. We need more than compression.” Jerry could hear the tension in Waller’s voice.
Ozzy responded, “Roger. Meet me in sickbay. Trout. Walk me in.”
Waller looked up at Jerry as he pressed on Swanson’s wound. “Nice face, Maguire. You need anything?”
Jerry realized that the wound on his face must look terrible. He felt blood sliding down his neck and into his dress shirt. He shrugged. “I’ll be fine. Just a graze.”
Marie sprinted across the loading dock of the cruise ship, her boots pounding the smooth deck.
The clamor of forklifts beeping and the ocean slapping against the hull of the ship drowned out the sound.
She lunged forward, fingers clamping around Henri’s arm like a vice, yanking him mid-stride from his inventory checks. “You need to go right now,” she hissed.
Her nephew’s eyes—wide, dark mirrors of her own—flared with instant alarm, the tremor in her grip translating straight to his bones. Without a word, he slapped the tablet in his hands to the top of a nearby crate.
“Where?” he demanded, already pivoting toward her, his lanky frame taut as a bowstring.
“Tell these men to get serious,” she gestured toward the six guards idling nearby. “Then, go to the cargo ship.” She jabbed a finger toward the hulking silhouette of their cargo vessel rafted up alongside the cruise liner, its ramp connecting the two vessels.
Marie spun away, eyes raking towering stacks of containers. There—Julien, hunched over the controls of a forklift, its yellow arms laden with a crate of ammunition. She bolted toward him, waving her arms like signal flags. He slammed the brake.
“Auntie Marie,” he called, twisting in the seat. His face creased with confusion, sweat beading along his brow in the humid press of the afternoon. “What’s the matter?”
“We have to go right now.” The words tumbled out sharp and unyielding.
He frowned. “But—”
“Now, nephew.” She vaulted onto the step beside him in one fluid surge, her face inches from his, nose brushing close enough to catch the faint soap scent clinging to his skin. “We are all about to die. This is a fail. Come with me now.”
“I don’t understand.” His voice cracked, gaze darting past her to the oblivious bustle of the workers unloading the cargo ship, searching for the threat. “Where’s Henri?”
“Already safe. Come on.”
He powered down the forklift and hopped down. “Where are we going?”
“Follow me.” She seized his wrist and led him to the cargo ship.
Jean stood near the ramp that spanned the gap between the two vessels. Henri stood before him, one arm jabbing back toward the dock in urgent arcs, his words spilling fast and heated, swallowed by the noise of loading dock.
“We need to get you out of here,” Marie cut in, her voice slicing through like a knife’s edge, halting Jean mid-sentence as she closed the distance.
Jean shook his head. “What is going on?”
“We don’t know.” She gripped his elbow. “Security force of some sort. They’re about to take the loading dock. We already lost the armory, communications, and the cargo bay.”
Jean pressed his hands to the sides of his head, fingers threading through his hair as if to hold his skull intact against the fracturing of his world. “Daphnée is in the cargo bay.”
She stepped closer. “Jean. We have to go.”
“I can’t leave her!” The yell tore from him, raw and guttural, propelling him toward the ramp in a blind surge.
Julien lunged, arms wrapping around Jean’s waist in a vise, hauling him back with a grunt, their boots scuffling in a tangle of desperation.
Marie’s voice lashed out. “Daphnée can take care of herself. She knows as well as I that you are the face of this movement. We need to get you to safety. If we lose you, the movement dies.”
She didn’t release her hold on his arm, steering them away from the cruise ship toward the lifeboat davits slung along the cargo ship’s rail—a bulky orange shell swaying gently on its falls. “We will regroup and save Daphnée,” she said as she wrestled the release pins free.
“What about Hao?” Henri asked, his voice suddenly small. “Shouldn’t he come with us?”
Marie’s stomach clenched as she pictured the blood pouring out of his head and Ming and Reginald Hall dragging him between the two of them. “Hao is deeply undercover,” she forced out. “We can’t risk that right now. As long as he is not compromised, he’ll be fine.”
She bundled them into the boat, Jean’s resistance crumbling into numb compliance as Julien and Henri clambered over the gunwales.
Marie shoved off as Henri lowered the small engine into the water.
The air filled with the smell of the small engine fuel as he started the engine. It made her stomach churn.
Just as the gap widened to safety’s illusion, an explosion erupted behind them, followed by the sound of yells, confusion, two more explosions, then the sound of gunfire.