The Judas Strain - James Rollins [38]
At least the seas on this side of the island were clean of that toxic soup.
Monk turned to Graff. “I’m going to need your help.”
Eighteen minutes later, Monk rubbed his elbow across the grease-stained window in the roll-up door. His wet suit squeaked against the glass. Craning his neck, Monk waited for the helicopter to circle by overhead and swing back north toward Flying Fish Cove. The cove lay out of direct sight, hidden by Smith Point. All that Monk could make out of the war zone was the smudged pall of smoke rising over the ridgeline.
At last, the helicopter turned tail and headed back toward the cruise ship.
“Okay, here we go!”
Monk bent down and hauled the door up, snapping it into place overhead. Behind him, Graff lifted the trailer hitch, and Monk swung around to the front. He grabbed the back of the Jet Ski, and together they ran the trailer down to the water. The large rubber sand tires made it quick work.
Graff loosened the craft from the trailer while Monk ran back and hauled on his BC vest and tanks. Once outfitted, he slipped a souvenir Mango Lodge windbreaker over all his equipment.
Heavily burdened, Monk plodded back to the water and helped float the Jet Ski off its trailer. “Stay hidden,” he instructed Graff. “But if you can find some means of communication, a radio or anything, try to raise someone in authority.”
Graff nodded. “Be careful.”
In another minute Monk was gunning the engine to a high whine and racing off toward Smith Point. Behind him, Graff trotted the empty trailer back to its garage.
Monk bent lower in the seat and cranked the craft to full throttle. Flying faster, the windbreaker snapped in the breeze. Sea and salt sprayed. Smith Point grew in front of him. At last, he reached the rocky spur and, without slowing, sped around it.
On the far side of the cove, the Mistress of the Seas rose like a besieged white castle. Closer still, the waters burned with spills of flaming oil and smoking husks of ships. Even the jetty was a blasted ruin. And throughout the war zone, the roar of the pirates’ speedboats growled.
On the hunt.
Here we go.
Like a skimming torpedo, Monk shot into the fray.
2:08 P.M.
“THERE MUST BE something we can do,” Lisa said.
“For now, we sit tight,” Henri Barnhardt warned.
They were holed up in one of the empty outside cabins. Lisa stood near one of the room’s two portholes. Henri took a post by the door.
An hour ago they had fled through the ship, only to discover the place in full chaos. Uniformed crew and wild-eyed passengers, both the sick and the healthy, crowded the hallways. Explosions and gunfire were almost drowned out by the nerve-rattling klaxon of the ship’s alarm bell. Whether automated or purposeful, someone had tripped the ship’s fire doors, dropping them, isolating sections.
Meanwhile masked gunmen cleared the halls, one after the other, shooting anyone who resisted or moved too slowly. Lisa and Henri had heard the screams, the gunfire, the trampling feet from the deck above. They came close to being shot themselves. Only a swift race through the ship’s gilded showroom and down another hallway had saved them.
They did not know how much longer they could hold out.
The rapidity of the takedown of the Mistress of the Seas suggested some of the crew must have been involved.
Lisa stared out the porthole window. The sea was on fire. From this same window, she had watched a handful of desperate passengers leap from upper balconies into the waters, hoping to make it to shore.
But the gunboats swept the cove, peppering and strafing the water.
Bodies floated amid the flaming debris.
There was no escape.
Why was this happening? What was going on?
Finally, the alarm klaxon went silent, cutting off with a final whining squelch. The silence that remained felt heavy, a physical weight. Even the air seemed thicker.
Somewhere above someone sobbed and wailed.
Henri met Lisa’s eyes.
From the room’s speaker a stiff voice