Clive Cussler - Plague Ship

He almost missed a door to his right and had to stop to play the light across the stencil: WATERCRAFT

STORAGE.

“Bingo!”

“What is it?”

“Our ticket out of here,” Eddie said, and pushed open the door.

By the light of his torch, he could see a line of gleaming Jet Skis and two-person runabout boats. They were resting on specially designed cradles. There was a large hole in the ceiling the boats could be lifted through and a set of circular stairs leading up to the next level. He climbed, with the others in tow.

This was where passengers could rent one of the personal watercraft when the cruise ship was in port.

There was a registration counter along one wall, and posters everywhere with safety reminders. The floor was covered in a nonskid indoor/outdoor carpet, and on the outside bulkhead was a door sized like that of a suburban garage. A hydraulically controlled ramp was folded along the door’s length. When the door was open and the ramp deployed, it would act as a small dock.

Eddie tapped the steel door with the butt of his flashlight. Rather than return a sharp echo, it rang with a dull thud. He tried higher up and finally got the results he wanted. “The ship’s sunk to within two feet of the top of the door,” he reported. “When I open it, this room is going to flood.”

“Will we be able to get out,” Janni asked breathlessly.

“No problem.” Eddie smiled to reassure her. “Once the inside and outside pressure equalize, we’ll be able to swim away. And the beauty of it is, our suits will keep us afloat.”

“I’ll go downstairs and close off the door we came through,” Julia said, understanding that, in order for Eddie’s plan to work, the boat garage had to be isolated from the rest of the ship or water would just keep pouring in.

“Thanks,” Eddie said. He positioned Jannike away from the door and up against a railing so she could hold on as the room flooded.

The door was operated by a small electric winch but had a mechanical handle to crank it up or down in case power was ever lost. When Hux returned and was standing next to Janni to help hold her in place, Eddie bent and grabbed the handle. As soon as he put pressure on it, the door crept up a quarter inch and water started to enter the chamber in a flat rush. He was off to the side of the door but could still feel water sweeping by his lower legs as he cranked it higher.

The sea cascaded through the opening in the floor in a thundering waterfall.

Eddie had the door a quarter of the way open when the handle jammed. He pulled on it harder but couldn’t get it to budge. He looked at the door and saw what had happened. The force of water pressing against it had buckled the metal near the bottom and popped the guide wheels off their tracks. Even as he watched, the door distorted further, bending in the middle, as though it was being shoved by a giant hand.

He shouted a warning to Janni and Julia that was lost in the roar of water as the door failed completely. It tore free from its mounts and was tossed across the room as though it were a piece of paper. Free of the constraint, the ocean exploded through the opening in a green wall.

Julia and Janni were far enough to the side to be spared the brunt of the onslaught, but, as the room instantly filled, they were pummeled by the back surge of water. Had it not been for Hux’s presence, Jannike Dahl would have been lost in the tumult.

Shock waves continued to reverberate through the water, sending debris, including a Jet Ski, floating dangerously by. It was only when the water settled that Eddie was able to let go of the stanchion he’d been clutching. He immediately started floating for the ceiling. Like a cat in reverse, he flipped himself around as he sailed upward, to land on the roof on his hands and knees, his flashlight still gripped in his hand. He adjusted the airflow into the hazmat suit to reduce the pressure, and, thus, his buoyancy.

Otherwise, he’d remain stuck to the ceiling and immobilized.

He worked the light to spot Julia and their young charge, hanging on to a railing with their feet pointing up, the air in the suits ballooning the fabric around their legs. He crawled over to them and gently touched Hux’s leg, urging her to let go and float free. She did and rose up to join him. He did the same for Janni, and turned down the airflow from the tanks. He started crawling across to the open door but felt Julia resisting his help. She tapped him on the shoulder and pressed her visor to his.

“I lost the sample case,” she shouted, the vibration of her voice transferring through the plastic so he could hear the words. “We have to find it.”

Eddie looked at the mass of clutter swirling inside the garage: towels, life jackets, notebooks, bottles of sunscreen and water, coolers. It could take hours to find the case, and if it had been sucked back out the door it was already falling to the seafloor, some ten thousand feet below the ship.

“No time,” he said back to her.

“Eddie, we need those tissue samples.”

His answer was to take her hand and start toward the beckoning door.

The sudden influx of water that swamped the boat garage had shifted the Golden Dawn ’s center of gravity, and the vessel began to list more heavily. The stresses on her hull were pushing to the breaking point, and, deep along her keel, the steel began to tear. The sound of her death knell echoed over the ocean, as haunting as a whale song or funeral dirge.

Julia and Eddie towed Jannike through the opening. As soon as they were free of the ship, Eddie added air to his suit and shot for the surface.

Nearby, the Oregon was ablaze with lights. Searchlights pierced the darkness and roamed across the Dawn ’s deck and along her waterline. The Zodiac inflatable that had been tied off near the garage bobbed nearby, its painter pulled taut and its bow submerged by the draw of the sinking cruise liner. As Eddie untied the line from an eyebolt welded to the ship’s hull, one of the searchlights stabbing out from the Oregon swept past them and then returned, bathing them in a pool of incandescence. Julia and Jannike waved furiously. The light blinked in acknowledgment.

The Robinson helicopter swooped over from the far side of the cruise ship. George Adams held it steady over them long enough to see they were all right before moving off again to spare them the hurricane force of the rotor’s downwash.

Eddie rolled over the Zodiac’s side and hoisted Julia and Janni aboard. In seconds, he had the motor running and the little boat skipping across the waves toward the Oregon . The door over the tramp freighter’s amidships boat garage was open and a team in protective gear was standing by with spray bottles of concentrated bleach solution to decontaminate their suits.

Eddie idled the Zodiac just off the ship. With the radios shorted by prolonged immersion in the water, he couldn’t communicate with the orderlies, but everyone knew his duty. They threw over a couple of scrub brushes to the Zodiac and turned on the powerful jets of bleach. Eddie and Julia first scrubbed Jannike and then each other, making certain every square inch of their hazmat suits had been decontaminated thoroughly. Six inches of bleach sloshed across the Zodiac’s floorboards before they were done.

When Julia was satisfied they had killed any infection that might be clinging to the suits, she ripped away the duct tape over the zipper and freed herself of the claustrophobic garment. The warm, humid air was the freshest she’d ever tasted. “God, that feels good.”

“Amen to that,” Eddie said, peeling off his suit and leaving it in the boat.

He guided a still-suited Jannike onto the Teflon-coated ramp they used to launch the SEAL assault boat.