Sunny wasn’t certain what was going on when a group of four former prisoners rushed through the watertight door. Several of them carried weapons, and Sunny prepared himself for the worst.
“Do come right in,” greeted Dennis Liu, completely unconcerned by their presence.
Kristin and Ricky hovered at the group’s rear. She seemed to be in their midst by choice, and Sunny got the distinct impression that something was seriously wrong. Then he suddenly remembered the bomb ticking away on the opposite bulkhead.
“Comrade Liu, the bomb!” reminded Sunny, pointing to the vat where the soft glow of the digital timer was barely visible.
The SEAL team accessed the aft portion of the Engine Room by way of the after tunnel escape ladder. Lawrence Laycob led them down the steep, narrow shaft, with the assault train reforming beside the shaft’s dual pitch-control levers.
As they worked their way forward, it was Laycob who noted first that their intended route was blocked. “Damn!” he cursed. “They’ve closed the bloody watertight doors leading into the Engine Room.”
The team assembled in front of the massive steel doors that extended all the way to the ceiling.
“Looks like we have no choice but to return topside and access the Bridge via the exterior passageways,” offered the senior SEAL.
“We’ve got no time for that,” Laycob replied. “Besides, now that they’re aware of our presence, an exterior approach is much too risky.”
The SEAL pounded on the solid-steel door with his fist. “Then we’re going to need an acetylene torch to cut through all of this metal.”
“There’s supposed to be an emergency circuit panel built into each of the watertight doors,” offered Laycob, his flashlight sweeping the door.
“If we can find it, and trip the circuit, we should be able to open the door manually.”
Thomas Kellogg’s reaction to the warning of a bomb was motivated by pure instinct. Without considering the dangers involved, he sprinted past the collection of weapons pointed his way, his concerns focused on the explosive device that was soon before him.
Thomas studied the IED. The digital timer had just passed five minutes.
It was a relatively simple affair, whose potential destructive power didn’t necessarily correspond to its lump-sized piece of plastic explosive. If this bomb were to indeed detonate, it would surely ignite the tons of volatile fuel oil that lay in the bunkers below, and whose presence Thomas couldn’t miss smelling.
“Go ahead, comrade. Try to defuse it,” dared Liu, his voice barely heard over the engines. “If you fail, we shall die. If you succeed, we will all fall, including the leaders, in the battle that I assure you will ensue. Either way, my friend, I win.”
Thomas was unable to get a good look at the manner in which the wires were connected to the detonator and its nine-volt battery. Pulling out a wire at random was tantamount to suicide, and he listened as Dennis Liu declared:
“If only I had a camera to record this scene for posterity.” Then with a demented laugh, “And to think that this great ship shall serve as our tomb for all eternity!”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to bank on that, lad,” shouted Lt. Col. Lawrence Lay cob from the dark recesses of the compartment.
From out of this same veil of blackness, an eerie collection of needle-thin red beams projected. As they moved forward, sweeping the room, Thomas saw they originated from the laser sights of SEAL Team Two’s weapons, which finally locked on the foreheads of Sunny, Ping, Monica, and Dennis Liu.
Of the foursome, only Liu displayed the reflexes needed to leap away in time, as a deafening volley of shots rang out. In a bare millisecond, three of Liu’s closest associates were dead.
Like a cornered animal, Liu’s pained voice cried out in rage, and he charged into Thomas’s stunned group, wielding his Sterling like a go stick, his hands and feet whirling. With the intensity of a buzz saw, he cut down Tuff, knocked out Robert Hartwell, and sent Vince sprawling, leaving Thomas alone to face his fury.
Thomas oddly enough found himself more concerned with the ticking time bomb than the enraged terrorist who now stood before him. Barely aware of the odd gutter al sounds emanating from Liu’s throat, the blood that gushed from his shoulder wound, and the constant windmill motion of his arms and legs, Thomas lowered his head and blindly charged.
This attack coincided with the arrival of a massive sea wave and Dennis Liu was thrown off balance as the ship rolled hard on its side.
His momentary loss of equilibrium allowed Thomas, to whom the pitch leant momentum, to hit Liu full in the gut with his head and shoulder.
The force of this blow was enough to drive Liu’s body over the protective curved-steel cowling set up against the outer edge of the bulkhead. An anguished wail sounded, followed by a horrible crunching sound, and Thomas fought his way over the pitching deck to see what had happened to his adversary.
Halfway across the compartment, Thomas remembered what this cowling was designed to protect. Peeking over its lip, he saw the bloody remains of Liu, torn to bits by the QE2’s spinning propeller shaft.
Thomas fought back the urge to vomit, his thoughts redirected by the concerned voice of his brother.
“Thomas,” he shouted. “The bomb!”
Desperation guided his steps. He crossed the deck and returned to the explosive device. Vince was at his side as the digital display dropped below one minute.
“You’re the fucking bomb expert, little brother. For God’s sake, do something!”
Tuff offered Thomas his pocket knife, saying, “Will this help?”
Thomas waved away the knife. “They only cut wires in the movies, Tuff.
One wrong slice, and we’re history.”
“Then what other choice do we have?” Vince asked as the timer passed forty-five seconds.
As Ricky, Kristin, and the emerging SEALs led the nine statesmen forward through the airtight door, Thomas cocked back his head to determine his alternatives. He briefly shut his eyes to aid his concentration. As he opened them again, he spotted the metallic spigot of what appeared to be a fire-extinguisher nozzle, protruding from the ceiling above them.
“What’s that?” he queried while pointing upward.
“It’s part of the compartment’s halon fire-extinguisher system,” revealed Tuff, who was more concerned by the digital timer’s breaking of the thirty-second mark.
In a flash of sudden awareness, Thomas shouted, “Trigger the fire extinguisher, Tuff! Activate the damn system!”
Spurred on by the utter intensity of the atf. agent’s command, Tuff sprinted across the deck and smashed the glass window of the nearest fire alarm. The automated system was designed for nearly instantaneous activation, and before Thomas could get out of the way, a torrent of thick, white foam poured out of the overhead spigot.
The halon that dropped onto the bare skin of his neck burned with a fiery intensity, and he felt as if he had been struck by a hot poker.
Yet what Thomas initially mistook for heat, turned out to be produced by a frigid temperature of well below minus-one-hundred-degrees Fahrenheit.
Oblivious to his frostbitten skin, Thomas shielded his eyes to get a look at the bomb’s digital display. Although halon wasn’t as cold as Danny Lane’s liquid nitrogen, the freon derivative hopefully would do the trick. For a terrifying second, he saw only the single figure 1 glowing from the frosted display window. Thomas instinctively held his breath in anticipation of the upcoming blast, when he saw that the 1 appeared to be frozen in place. This joyous realization was confirmed as the soft light of the display abruptly blinked off, its power source deadened by the enveloping foam.