Masterson came through the door. “How are you doing?” he asked.
Vinter could see that Masterson needed direction, encouragement. He grasped the man’s hand. “I’ll survive.” He hesitated, adding a little theater: “That is, if we can get the ship to Ushuaia.”
Masterson seemed to hesitate. “Those doors into the bridge—”
“Greg, I’ve got it all worked out. Oakes here managed to retrieve some C4 from the security armory. He knows how to blow those doors.” This wasn’t completely true, but Oakes had had some training in explosives in boot camp. “Blow the doors and then you all go in. You’ve got the numbers, you’ve got the momentum, and you’ve got the weapons.”
“I understand. But the bridge is now armed to the teeth.”
“If we don’t get this ship the hell out of here, we’re all dead. Fifty-eight hours to safety—keep that number in mind. Fifty-eight hours and this is over.”
Masterson nodded.
“You’re the leader. Everyone’s looking up to you. You started this, and thank God you did. Now get everyone together and finish it. Let me tell you my plan.” He leaned forward painfully. “Blitzkrieg is the way to go. And—this is important—to make sure the bridge is not damaged.”
He drew Masterson in still closer and began to explain how the mutiny was going to work.
Captain Tulley stood beside the helmsman. Like any good captain, he maintained a serene countenance, but inside he was seething. His ship was in chaos. Order had broken down. The worms were everywhere, at least in the lower spaces of the ship. The aborted mutiny had resulted in the death of both his chief officer and the officer of the watch, and the wounding of others; the blood was still on the floor of the bridge. The mutineers had managed to commandeer the ship’s intercom and were continuously recruiting, while all other communications had been jammed or shut down by saboteurs. There were reports of widespread vandalism. Security officers had defected to the mutineers. And many people appeared to be infected by the worms, although it was almost impossible to tell just who had been infected and who hadn’t.
Tulley was confident that the officers surrounding him were still clean; no worms had been spotted on the bridge. But, to be safe, he ordered all present to pair up and watch each other’s backs.
He glanced down at the orders he had received from Glinn, brought to him in a handwritten note by Manuel Garza. The mission was going forward: they were going to explode the nuke. The ship was to remain in place until the order was received to proceed full speed ahead on a true north heading, in order to escape the shock wave of the blast. Garza had brought with him two security officers to lead the defense should the bridge be attacked again. The two, Garza had explained, were all he could find; the rest were unreliable and possibly infected, had joined the mutiny—or both.
Tulley knew a second attempt was imminent. And even as that thought crossed his mind, a massive explosion rocked the bridge, knocking him to the deck.
64
THE NUKE HAD been lowered into the ROV’s titanium sphere and secured in the framework built to carry it. It took up most of the small interior space. Leaning in through the hatch, Gideon checked over the device one last time, examining the various critical components. It remained in perfect working order.
“Now to arm it and set the timer,” he said. “How long?”
“Time to get in position?” Glinn asked Garza, who had just returned from his mission to the bridge.
“About thirty minutes, give or take,” Garza replied.
“I might suggest a fifteen-minute contingency. More, and you risk being stopped by the Baobab. Less, and if you run into a glitch you might not be in position when the nuke goes off. You’ve shut off the bomb’s remote-control mechanism?”
Gideon nodded.
“Very well. You won’t be able to abort the countdown once you’re underwater. Once that timer’s set, there’s no going back.”
Gideon nodded again. Then he turned to the bomb, punched in the arming code. That activated the timer and LED screen. He verified that the nuke was armed, then carefully keyed in 45 MINUTES and pressed COMMIT.
Forty-five minutes left to live.
The handler shut and sealed the titanium hatch. Gideon turned and walked across the fantail deck to Pete, which had been rolled out and positioned under the crane. It gleamed in the morning light, yellow and white. Next, the ROV was attached to Pete using a heavy tow cable. The two would have to be lowered into the water in tandem—a tricky operation.
Gideon stared at Pete. The ladder was in place, the hatch open. It was all ready for him. But he did not move.
“I’ve manually disabled the Pete’s AI,” said Glinn quietly, standing by the DSV’s ladder. “I’ve done the same for the surface override—just in case somebody in mission control tries to stop you.” He paused. “It’s time…”
Gideon licked his lips, and then walked across the deck to the bottom of the ladder.
“Good luck,” said Rosemarie Wong.
“Good luck,” said McFarlane, with a wintry smile.
“Good luck,” Glinn echoed. He held out his hand and Gideon shook it. In silence, McFarlane did the same. Gideon then turned and grasped the cold steel of the ladder rung, hesitated just a moment, and then climbed up. The handler was busy manning the crane controls. The small remaining group—McFarlane, Glinn, Garza, Rosemarie Wong—were on the deck, watching. Garza raised his hand in a farewell gesture.
Gideon gave one last look around: at the morning sun rising in the robin’s-egg sky; the fantastically sculptured icebergs, licked by a slow and steady swell—and on the horizon, a distant ledge of dark cloud, heralding the approaching storm. He peered down the hatch into the dark interior of the DSV. Then he grasped the handhold at the top of the hatch, swung over, and lowered himself. As he took his place in the seat, he heard the hatch being sealed from above. Almost immediately he felt the crane lifting the DSV toward the ocean. By necessity, they were skipping the entire safety and operational checklist. Pete was a spare DSV; they hadn’t expected to use it. It had been last checked out at Woods Hole, two months ago. It might just fail.
In that case, Gideon thought, he’d be dead a few minutes earlier. Not worth thinking about. What was worth thinking about was Lispenard’s death. And her cruel life after death, her brain somehow preserved and still conscious, buried deep inside the Baobab. How strange and awful it would be, to be cut off from all sensory input, her mental processes co-opted by an alien life-form for its own “thinking.” It was a ghastly idea. But he could save her: with death.
He strapped himself in. This was going to be a lonely, one-way trip to oblivion.
Captain Tulley swam back into consciousness. He found himself lying on the deck, momentarily dazed, ears ringing, wreathed in acrid smoke. A moment later, as his head began to clear and memory returned, he fumbled for his sidearm. Two figures loomed out of the gray gloom. They grabbed him, disarmed him, threw him on his stomach, and he felt cold steel go around his wrists.