Artifact: A Daredevils Club Adventure Part 12

White metal rails ran like a spine down the center of the wide deck, flanking the catwalk connecting the fore and aft gantries. The two Daredevils avoided the catwalk and kept to the shadows of bulkheads, vent pipes, and cl.u.s.ters of fifty-gallon drums that held lubricants and waste oil, dirty rags, and powdered absorbents for deck spills.

Beneath the square tank hatches, the tanker deck throbbed as the big engines pushed the Yucatan through the calm water, heading into the open straits. Far in the distance to the west, Keene could make out the Venezuelan mainland-a dark line with few marks of civilization. Even without a moon overhead, the billions of stars were like pinp.r.i.c.k spotlights; the sparkling wire-caged bulbs scattered around the expanse of the giant ship shone down like guard posts around a prison, and the tall and bright Valhalla production platform was like a lighthouse towering over the water.

Looking at the receding platform, Keene figured that by now the disembarked members of the tanker crew, the lucky ones who had drawn R and R time aboard the Valhalla, would have noticed that the ship had pulled away from the loading derrick and lurched silently out to sea.High up, in the center of the top deck, fore and aft walls of windows glowed with yellow light, showing the ship's main control rooms. Keene looked up and saw shadows moving in the otherwise quiet bridge, two silhouettes inside the control deck, backlit by the fluorescents. One was the trim and compact figure of a woman, directing the show.

The woman leaned forward. Her voice came out of the 1950s-era public address system, old bell-shaped metal loudspeakers stationed along the deck. "Everything is secure. The crew has been eliminated. Dump all the bodies overboard. When Oilstar finally catches up with this ship, I want it to look like the Marie Celeste. They'll never know how many of their crew members were part of our operations, and they'll waste time and effort looking for traitors among their own employees."

"That must be Selene," Keene said. He had expected her to have a French accent, but what came through the speakers was a flattened version of Peta's Caribbean lilt with a few hints of Spanish.

Lucky for Green Impact that the production rig's efficiency stopped short of security, he thought. She didn't know that they had called Frik and that Oilstar had its security response on the way, but she must know that her group didn't have much time. "She's gotta act fast. It's not like you can hide an oil tanker, and these things don't get up a lot of speed."

Hunched in the shadows of one of the derrick brackets, McKendry nodded again, which was the usual extent of his conversation during an operation.

"I am afraid the oil load is not what we expected," Selene continued. "Apparently, the Yucatan docked at the platform two hours late, so there wasn't enough time to fill the storage chambers to the level we had hoped."

From his vantage point, Keene saw several members of Green Impact pause in their furtive duties by the equipment bunkers to look up at her. Before groans could ring out from her team members, she raised her voice. "There's enough to send a message around the world. Oilstar will never get this stain off its shoes!"

20.

Following McKendry's lead-which was mostly to remain flexible and mobile until something better came up-Keene worked his way into the shelter of the thick deck manifold tubing. There, safely hidden, they watched in angry horror as the terrorists emerged from the bridge housing and crew cabins, dragging limp bodies toward the railing as if they were out-of-fashion mannequins.

"Cleaning up their mess. The sharks will take care of the rest," Keene muttered as Selene Trujold's followers went to the white deck rails and, one at a time, wrestled the b.l.o.o.d.y forms overboard into the sea.

McKendry looked even more concerned. "They're going to get the captain, too. When they enter his cabin, they'll find the guy we left on the floor."

"c.r.a.p! They'll know we're aboard. Let's go."

McKendry put on a burst of speed, sprinting forward to where one lone man had wrestled the uncooperative body of a thin dark-haired crewman to the side. The terrorist used his shoulder to push the victim up and over and waited for the splash. He turned just in time to see McKendry and Keene closing in on him from both sides.

As if they had coordinated it ahead of time, Keene punched the terrorist in the jaw while McKendrysmashed a pile-driver fist into his gut, making the man retch. Then the two men picked him up and dumped him over the tanker railing to join the dead bodies he had dropped into the calm water.

Keene looked at his partner. "Pity he didn't have a chance to take off those b.l.o.o.d.y clothes. With so many hungry sharks around tonight, I'm sure he'll be quite the dining attraction."

Moving at its top speed, the tanker soon left the floating bodies behind.

They heard the ba.s.s chatter of helicopter blades, fast dark aircraft coming in from the main Oilstar complex on Trinidad. They saw lights in the sky drowning out the stars above the dark and quiet channel.

"Party's over. Good old Frikkie to the rescue," Keene said.

On the bridge, Selene's silhouetted form stood straight, like an empress surveying newly conquered territory. "Time to go. Set the detonators for twenty minutes."

With a click, she switched off the loudspeaker system. She and her companion on the bridge disappeared from the lit windows and came around the bridge housing, running down the outer stairs to the main deck level.

Once again hidden from sight, Keene and McKendry watched Green Impact troops drop packaged, blinking explosives through the flung-open hatches for the below-deck storage chambers. Top hatches led down into the crude-oil storage chambers, a honeycomb of tanks that comprised the Yucatan's cargo s.p.a.ce. Keene and McKendry saw the terrorists link the timers and detonation cables, rigging everything together on a small cl.u.s.ter of timers outside the top hatches.

"I thought the point of Green Impact was to protect the environment." Keene shook his head in disgust.

"Some conservationists."

The Green Impact members began to scramble toward the bow of the tanker. Selene gestured urgently for her team to hurry. Apparently the terrorists had boats tied up to the hijacked oil carrier. As each man finished, she signaled him to go over the side and climb down ropes tied to the anchor windla.s.s. When only one of her group remained, she waved to him and grabbed the rope herself. He gathered the wires from the explosives by the petroleum cargo hatches and ran back to the detonator.

That's some piece of work, Keene thought, watching Selene go over the side, moving with the sleek grace of an otter. At that distance, he could make out cinnamon-colored hair, cut short and practical, and skin the color of burnt sienna. He couldn't really see her face, but judging by her narrow frame he would guess that she had delicate features. Dangerous, beautiful, tough; doubtless a challenge for any man.

"There goes our chance to get Frik's Cracker Jack prize."

"I'm more interested in saving this tanker," McKendry said. "No matter what Frik tells us."

"Looks like now or never, Terris." Keene scanned the tanker deck frantically for a means to get to the linked detonators before all the bombs went off.

"Any ideas?"

"Got it." Keene pointed to two old company bicycles leaning against the fifty-gallon drums; the bikes were used for traversing the long deck on regular inspection runs. "There's our mode of transportation."

He grabbed one, holding the handlebars as he swung himself over and began to pound the pedals.

McKendry mounted a bicycle of his own. The dented wire basket rattled between the handlebars as they closed the distance.Keene's sense of the absurd made him wish he had a little bicycle bell to ring. "Not exactly James Bond style," he said, hunched over and gripping the handlebars. "More like Encyclopedia Brown."

McKendry grinned. "I vote for Harry Potter."

"We could sure use a bit of magic right now."

The thin tires hummed across the oil-stained plates of the deck, ignoring the painted boundary lines that made the Yucatan look like some child's board game.

"Here comes Evel Knie-." The chain slipped on Keene's bike. He skinned his ankle on the pedal but kept pumping until the bicycle got moving again. McKendry pa.s.sed him, saving his breath and using his stronger legs to push the bike for all it was worth.

They both picked up speed.

The lone terrorist at the front hatches heard the buzz of tires and looked up. He dropped the detonator box and slung the rifle off of his shoulder. Like an experienced professional, the man didn't call out, but simply aimed the weapon.

Keene ducked and swerved the bicycle, but the terrorist shot twice, coolly confident. The sharp crack of the high-powered rifle sounded simultaneously with Terris McKendry flying backward, as if someone had hit him with two sucker punches. Blood spurted from his back as he flipped off of the padded seat.

The bicycle coasted forward another five feet and crashed into a set of fifty-gallon drums.

McKendry's body bounced once on the deck and lay still.

Keene shouted his friend's name and skidded on the bike, wiping out as the terrorist fired one more shot and missed. The bullet punctured one of the big metal drums and spilled a harsh-smelling solvent.

Though he had seen his partner tumble to a b.l.o.o.d.y halt on the deck, Keene didn't watch to see if he moved or not. Though the terrorist had a rifle, he had no choice except to charge forward recklessly, yowling like a madman.

The chattering helicopters came closer, searchlights shining onto the tanker in the water. The terrorist, fixed on completing his mission, glanced upward, then at Keene, measuring the distance between them.

Scuttling backward toward the bow and his escape, the man grabbed a grenade from his belt, yanked the pin, and chucked it like an inexperienced baseball player down into one of the open hatches of the small forward oil-storage chambers. He was reaching for his gun when Keene barreled into him.

The man's hands tangled in the rifle's shoulder strap.

Moving in a blur, Keene wrapped a powerful forearm around his throat and yanked backward as he leaped up, pressing with his knee. He pulled back with all the strength in his shoulders until he heard the man's neck snap.

Keene grinned a feral snarl that wasn't at all a look of triumph. "There-"

The grenade went off inside the oil chamber.

Sealed by bulkheads, the explosion wasn't enough to rip through the double walls of the tanker. But the fire and the pressure wave vomited upward, a powerful geyser slamming like a hot avalanche and hurling Keene and the broken marionette of the already-dead terrorist off into oblivion.As he flew into the black void over the sea, he wondered if he would be meeting Satan or Saint Peter.

Whichever way he went, he hoped that Arthur and McKendry and the other departed Daredevils would be there.

The afterlife would be way too dull without them.

The Oilstar security helicopters came closer, but McKendry knew they would arrive much too late.

Selene Trujold and Green Impact had already gotten away.

He dragged himself forward on his elbows. He couldn't breathe. Redhot bands of pain tightened around his chest like a medieval torture instrument, and he could feel the gaping wet gunshot hole in his chest, the raw crater of the exit wound in his back. His right side seared where the other shot had grazed his ribs.

Shock had diminished most of the pain-that would come later, if he survived long enough-but he could hear the gurgling when he breathed that told him his lung had probably collapsed. He couldn't tell how much he was bleeding, only that it was too much.

The curtain of fire from the grenade exploding in the storage tanks had nearly blinded him, but he had seen it throw his friend and the last terrorist overboard.

There was no time to grieve.

The most important job right now was to save the tanker. He might die in a few moments from the gunshots, but that would be better than becoming part of the funeral pyre of an exploding oil tanker.

With his eyesight focused more by sheer determination than because of the quality of light, McKendry crawled forward. The terrorists had left the detonators behind. He had seen the man adjust the timers. At any moment, the explosions would go off, engulfing the Yucatan in flame.

Every movement was the greatest effort he had ever made in his life. Leaving a long trail of blood, like the markings of a scarlet garden slug, he reached the open fuel hatches and the hastily rigged box of detonators and timers that connected all the explosives dropped into the storage tanks. He felt dead already. Hoping to hang on for just a few more seconds, he made one last, impossible effort.

His outstretched hand touched the connected detonator boxes, and he saw the last few seconds ticking down: fifteen...fourteen...thirteen...

He worked with the big knife he had taken from the terrorist in the captain's cabin. The wide macho blade severed the first couple of wires. So weak he could barely lift the knife, he brought it down as if he were chopping onions, again and again.

Another wire cut, and another.

In his state, he could not tell how many connections there were, how many remained, but he couldn't bother with details. His vision was failing, and the blood did not seem to stop pouring out of his wounds.

The bright orange glare from the explosion at the bow continued to blind him.

Joshua Keene was gone, blasted far out into darkness.

Hoping he had done enough, McKendry raised the big dagger, point downward, and stabbed the central detonator box, skewering it like a bug on the end of a pin. A few sparks erupted, then died.

It was absolutely the last he could manage. Seeing the helicopters circle for a landing, he collapsed on adeck that smelled of oil and blood as the unmanned Yucatan continued to drift into the Caribbean night.

21.

January crawled toward February, and suddenly, unaccountably, Peta had been back in Grenada for three weeks.

The first week was spent informing Arthur's friends and relatives, and her own, about the explosion that had taken his life. The island buzzed with the news. Cried over it. Then, since the Marryshows were townies, they organized a ma.s.s at the cathedral in St. George's.

The second and third week, Peta kept to herself in her house in St. George's. She ate sparingly, slept little, and spent much time on her balcony staring down at the town and the shallow waters of the U-shaped inlet known as the Carenage. The small bay was filled with the movement of fishing boats, small yachts, water taxis, and the occasional ferry. Periodically, a cruise ship or schooner anch.o.r.ed in the deeper waters or sailed the edge of the horizon beyond. When she did go out to buy food or go to the bank or simply to take a walk, she found herself annoyed that life in Grenada continued as usual.

Preparations for February's annual Independence Day celebrations were in full swing. People loved and laughed, and fought and died, as if nothing had changed.

And for them it hadn't. At least not much. They had lost a hero. Some of them had lost a friend. She had lost so much more than that. Arthur had been her best friend, her mentor, a father figure after her own father's death; her lover. He had taught her to drive a car and fly a plane, to perform surgery, to live with losing a patient, and to feel humble when she saved one.

By the end of the fourth week, Peta was able to pull herself together enough to reopen her rooms and rea.s.sume the work of caring for her patients and Arthur's at the small clinic they'd shared. She asked the loc.u.m they had left in charge to consider a permanent position-something to which he readily agreed, provided a possible partnership was in the offing-and buried herself in work.

Now, standing at the end of Quarantine Point, she watched the sunrise brighten the rocks and the sea, and wondered if her life would ever return to a semblance of normalcy.

She remembered the day her family's house had caught fire when she was a girl of twelve. Her father had come back into the house and saved her, but his own clothes had turned into wicks that burned him like a giant candle.

That's when she'd first met Arthur Marryshow. He fought so hard to save her papa, but there was nothing anyone could do except promise that he would take care of Peta and see that no harm came to her.

What of your promise now? she thought. How can you protect me when you're dead?

Every week since her return, she'd checked in with the Manhattan precinct which was holding Arthur's few remains while-so she was told-they investigated the accident. Yesterday, they'd told her the investigation was officially closed.

Her fury knew no bounds. Arthur was gone and she'd never know why or by whose hand.

Below her, the Rasta who lived behind Bronze House tucked his dreadlocks into his turban and strode into the Caribbean for his morning bath. He must have felt her presence and turned to look upward and wave."Peta."

"Ralphie." She waved back at her old friend. He was a little older than she, but not much. An Oxford-educated geologist and son of a former deputy prime minister, Ralph Levine chose to live as a Rasta. He slept in a cave, ran a rudely built hut that he called his geological museum, and carved black coral into jewelry to sell to the tourists.

Beyond Ralphie, Peta could see the luxury of the Spice Island Hotel, and beyond that the medical school, which occupied the choicest piece of oceanfront property in Grenada. In another week or two the American students would return, and she'd resume teaching there. Those kids had better watch out, she thought. This semester she would brook no unruliness from those spoiled brats.

Holding her sandals in her hand, Peta footed it back to where the real road came up from Morne Rouge Bay. She walked past Mahogany Run and the Grandview Hotel, crested the ridge, and continued toward her rooms, which lay a mile or two down the road. Along the road she pa.s.sed several paw paw trees-papaya, as the Americans called them. The fruit on the plants was still small and green, but it reminded her that she was hungry.

She pa.s.sed Tabanca on her left and thought about going there for breakfast. Tabanca. Unrequited love.

Great view and excellent coffee, but the owner was a perpetually sullen German woman whose lover had sailed away and never returned. She lived there alone, growling at everyone except her large German shepherd. She was a downer, which G.o.d knew Peta didn't need in her life. Not today.

Reaching the Flamboyant, she made a left turn into the grounds, descended the few steps that led to the Beachside Terrace, their patio restaurant, and breakfasted on papaya and fresh bread and honey. She sweetened her coffee with condensed milk and drank it slowly, watching a small bird enjoy the crumbs at the far edge of the table. The Flamboyant was named after the scarlet trees that dotted the island. It provided its guests with a magnificent view of the three-mile horseshoe of Grand Anse Beach, with its white sand that extended almost half the distance from where she sat to St. George's.

This being a Monday, the manager came out to greet her and invite her to come to his regularly scheduled rum punch party. She did not answer him but merely shook her head, so as to discourage communication. After that, for a few minutes, perhaps even an hour, she felt more at peace than she had since New Year's Eve. Reluctantly, she walked the rest of the way up Camerhogne Park Road to her rooms at the Marquis Complex, put on her shoes and lab coat, and saw her first patient of the day.

Within minutes, she was absorbed in the work.