“If things get ugly, let’s all jump overboard, agreed? You grab the nun and I’ll grab Lucia and the cat.”
“Lucullus won’t be too thrilled about swimming to shore. Me, either,” Prit shuddered. “I hate swimming when I can’t see the bottom.”
“Better saltwater than lead, Prit.”
“For now let’s play it cool.” The Ukrainian’s soldier-like gaze swept the area, coldly assessing our situation. “We’re too high up. They’d fry us before we hit the water. Look up there.”
I looked where he pointed with his eyes. Dressed in combat fatigues were a couple of sailors, stationed behind a heavy machine gun on a ledge about twenty feet high with a clear view of the entire runway. They’d know if we sneezed.
Lucia listened with a terrified look in her eyes. I sighed, downhearted. We had no choice but to accept what those people planned to do with us.
The first of the team in hazmat suits had reached us. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I guessed he was examining every member of my “family,” including Lucullus, who was squirming in Lucia’s arms. He studied us for a really long time. After all, we were a very colorful, almost shocking group.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pauli, Marcelo, and the two helicopter pilots head into the ship. Clad only in shorts and T-shirts, they crammed their flight suits into toxic waste disposal bags. This was just routine procedure to them.
“Don’t worry, Peninsula guys,” said Pauli as she walked by. “We’ll see you when you get out of quarantine!” With a cheerful wave, she disappeared through the door, followed by the sour-faced Marcelo.
Great. Now what?
“Welcome to Tenerife. I’m Dr. Jorge Alonso.” The filter in his suit distorted his voice. He seemed to be in charge. “Please stay calm. If you cooperate and follow instructions, everything’ll go as smooth as silk. This is a mandatory medical procedure, so relax and let us do our job. The sooner we finish, the sooner you’ll get out of quarantine. Let’s make this easy, okay?” His voice was conciliatory, but firm, as he pointed to the door the helicopter crew had passed through.
I nodded, too stunned to speak.
The corridors of the ship were painted regulation navy gray; dozens of pipes and cables crisscrossed the ceiling. We passed several doors that were locked tight. One of the doors had a porthole; three or four sailors had crowded around on the other side of the glass to get a look at the “survivors from the Peninsula.” I didn’t know what to think… Were we that bizarre? That could be good or bad. Very bad.
We stopped where two hallways intersected. Dr. Alonso took the lead again.
“Men here, women over there, please.”
“Wait,” I said. “We’d like to stick together. We came here together and we want—”
“I don’t care what you want or don’t want, sir,” he cut me off. “Rules are rules. Men down this hall, women and children down that hall. Please cooperate.”
“Hey, be reasonable,” I answered, summoning up my inner negotiator. “This is new to us, so if you wouldn’t mind, we’d rather—”
This time a tall guy, also in a hazmat suit, spoke up. “Look, friend. This isn’t a debate. It’s not even a discussion. Do what we say. End of story. Got it? If you don’t like it, I hope you know how to swim, because Africa’s a long way from here. So don’t fuck around and do what Dr. Alonso says. Men on the right, women on the left! LET’S GO!” he roared, brandishing an electric prod.
I raised my hands and headed down the hall on the right. After giving that guy a killer look, Prit joined me. I wouldn’t want to be in that guy’s shoes if he ever crossed Pritchenko’s path in a dark alley.
Sister Cecilia and Lucia went down the aisle to the left. Suddenly, Lucia broke away and planted herself next to me, setting Lucullus in my arms.
“Take him.” She gave me a quick kiss. “I haven’t forgotten what you said in Lanzarote.”
“Stay calm. It’ll be okay.” My voice broke. “Watch out for her, Sister!” I called after them as they walked down the hall. “Be careful! See you soon!”
“Don’t worry, my son! We’re in God’s hands!”
No, we’re in these people’s hands, Sister, I thought. And that might not be such a good thing.
“Where’re you taking them? What’re you going to do with us?” Pritchenko was pissed off.
Dr. Alonso shrugged. His soft, sweet voice gave me chills. “Like I said, my friend. To quarantine. Now, if you don’t mind, through that door, please.”
13
Basilio Irisarri was an alcoholic. When he went on one of his many benders, his shipmates would have to drag him back to the ship. Basilio didn’t know it but that detail saved his life.
Basilio was an old-school sailor: simple, direct, and crude. He first shipped out when he was seventeen. He became experienced and capable, having spent time on many ships, mostly as boatswain, in charge of maintenance. He was promoted to chief petty officer a few times, but his surly, belligerent personality coupled with his binge drinking always dragged him down. He was forty-five, tall, and carried a growing spare tire around his waist. His arms looked like pistons, and the knuckles on his huge hands were battered from fighting in ports all over the world.
A year and a half before, Basilio joined the crew of the Marqués de la Ensenada, an oil tanker in the Spanish navy, anchored in Cartagena, Colombia. Six hours after going ashore, Basilio and a couple of shipmates had gotten plastered and had wrecked a bar, broken a chair over a pimp’s head, and picked a fight with several Colombian police officers. MPs arrested them and sent them back to their ship, where they were locked up in their quarters.
Basilio spent the next forty-eight hours in the throes of a terrible hangover, but he heard a lot of voices screaming and sailors running around up top. Through the narrow porthole in his cabin, he watched Cartagena’s military port quickly become an anthill.
Many ships, packed with people, hastily weighed anchor and jammed the mouth of the port trying to get out. On land, thousands of people, mostly civilians, tried to reach anything afloat, no matter the cost. The authorities had planned to evacuate the city by sea, but clearly the situation had overwhelmed them. There were too many people and too few ships. Out his tiny porthole, Basilio watched the Colombian military scurry around, trying to bring order to the chaos, but the terrified crowd was out of control.
Basilio didn’t read newspapers, and he hadn’t listened to the radio or watched TV for days, so he had no idea that in the days leading up to the Apocalypse, chaos was rampant all over the world. At first, with all the gunshots and explosions throughout the city, he thought there’d been a civil war or revolution in Colombia. But the frantic activity of the soldiers convinced him it was something else.
Anchored next to the Marqués de la Ensenada were an American destroyer and a French frigate. Large detachments of their crews (except the sick or those locked up like Basilio) had gone ashore to join the overwhelmed Colombians in trying to control the panicked crowd. In horror, Basilio witnessed an avalanche of thousands of people sweep over those American soldiers and French sailors, as if they were toys, in their rush to the sea.
The shores had quickly become a hive of thousands of men, women, and children splashing and punching one another, trying to keep from drowning or being crushed by people falling on top of them. The water was churned up by thousands of arms and legs. People were knocked senseless when they stuck their heads up for air in the midst of that morass.
Someone panicked and started firing wildly into the crowd. Soon hundreds of people were exchanging shots, desperate to board the ships remaining in the harbor. Columns of black smoke rose across the city. Law and order was breaking down and nobody could stop it.