“Nine-millimeter, side pocket!” Maddock couldn’t resist, plucking it out and tucking it into the front waistband of his shorts while he covered the aggressors with his K5.
He slid the other gun across the floor toward his intended exit, ran to it and picked it up. Carrying three pistols on the run without a holster seemed careless and probably unnecessary, although he would like to give one to Bones if he got the chance, but he definitely didn’t see the need to leave it behind for them to use on him again, either. Nor did he want to take the time to put it into his pack. Eyeing the dark ocean over the side of the ship as he emerged out of the break room onto the upper walkway, he did a double-take. The ship was moving. Maddock threw one of the weapons overboard, leaving him armed with matching K5s, so much the better for dual-wielding should it come to that.
Back in the room he heard the first pair of crew find their associates on the floor, a loud verbal exchange ensuing. Maddock moved fast along the walkway, trying to look ahead as he went. To the right was only a long drop to the deck and ocean just beyond that, while to the left ran the steel side of the superstructure, a couple of doorways set into it up ahead. Beyond that, the walkway descended in stair-step fashion to the deck.
He glanced back but didn’t see anyone following him yet. He supposed that, having been disarmed, they knew he now had control of up to three guns, and for them discretion was the better part of valor. He continued to slink along the walkway until he reached the first of the two doors. It was locked, but a small porthole set into the door revealed a fluorescent-lit room that looked to Maddock’s cursory glance like a spartan office, all folding furniture and bare walls but for a single, blank whiteboard. No one was inside.
He decided to keep moving. He reached the second door set into the wall on his left, just before the walkway led into a descending staircase. He could hear people down on the main deck but not see them. He was so intent on listening to the far-away activity he almost failed to notice that the door next to him was ajar. Instinctively, Maddock crouched down low and leaned in closer to the open gap into the room.
This one was not empty. Inside, Tomoaki paced the length of a table while he yelled at the two men seated at it. Two guards with automatic rifles stood guard behind him. And, seated at the table, where a large satellite photo print of the island lay spread out before them, Fred Spinney yelled while Steve Carlson pointed dramatically at a forested area.
“They must have hidden them in there somewhere!” He poked the map for emphasis. “That’s where I’d look for those crates, if you idiots haven’t burned them up already.”
Tomoaki’s features contorted into a mask of rage and he moved toward Spinney, gun in hand. Maddock shrank back from the door, weapon ready but held down. If Tomoaki was going to shoot Spinney, he would have to intervene. Distaste for the egocentric expedition leader aside, he could not stand still and watch while another human being was executed. But then Tomoaki shifted the gun’s grip in his hand, holding it barrel first. Maddock maintained his stance, watching as Tomoaki pistol-whipped Spinney in the head.
Chapter 29
Maddock withdrew from the slightly open door. He was pretty sure he hadn’t been spotted and the men seemed unaware that shots had been fired on the ship, but the adrenaline was still surging. From the looks of things, Tomoaki continued trying to get information out of Carlson, information the researcher did not have, but that Maddock did, much of it carried right on his back. Spinney, meanwhile, was still conscious but slumped over on the table, head on his elbows like a sleepy school kid. Except that sleepy school kids did not have blood trickling down their foreheads. Maddock sure as heck did not want to end up sitting at that table next to the EARHART Group men, where he would be hated by both parties in the room. At least he was now armed, and with the element of surprise he might even be able to eliminate Tomoaki and his goons with an offensive attack, but if that failed he was ridiculously outgunned.
Instead, he opted for continued stealth in pursuit of a satellite phone. He wasn’t looking forward to breaching the radio room, where more machine-gun toting lackeys likely waited, but he was all too aware that as long as they remained aboard, it was only a matter of time before either he or Bones was discovered. Mission success depended on making that sat-phone call.
Maddock slipped very quickly past the door, conscious of the fact that even though he turned his face away as he passed, the sight of a barefoot, shirtless man with a backpack would raise suspicions immediately. He paced down the remainder of the walkway until he reached the stairs leading down, recalling the voices he’d heard just before reaching the room with Spinney and Carlson. But now nothing disturbed the near-silence.
Wait…not silence…a sound. A voice? It was eerie, an ethereal wail, coming from what sounded like it might be underneath him. He crept down the stairs, head on a swivel, alert for any human presence. The ocean rushed by on his right, the ship now at cruising speed. He wondered fleetingly where they were going, but had no time to ponder it as he reached the bottom of the staircase and looked behind him. A cavern-like space yawned beneath the overhang of the stairs and superstructure above, dominated by a large-diameter pool five feet high above deck, filled with water.
In the pool a black fin sliced through the water. Maddock moved to it for a closer look, noting the single, closed door set into the wall behind it. He moved to one side of the pool so that should someone emerge either out on deck behind him, or out of the door, he could duck behind the pool’s side for cover.
He walked up to the edge and peered over. For a moment, he entertained the possibility that this was perhaps a shark, but no…it was a small whale. As if to confirm this fact, the whale exhaled a plume of mist with a breathy gasp.
And not just any whale, Maddock realized, following the animal’s circular pattern with his gaze. The black hide, the rounded melon, rows of peg-like teeth…this was a pilot whale. The pilot whale, Maddock corrected himself. Shankey survived the explosion that sent the plane over the ledge!
Unless they had a second pilot whale? This small holding pen looked barely big enough for one whale, much less two, not that he would hold Mizuhi Corp to high moral standards. But looking closer, Maddock examined the ridges of the dorsal fin. He knew that, much like human fingerprints, dorsal edge patterns were unique to individual whales. He recalled from their close scrapes with Shankey that there was a distinctive triple-notch sculpted out of the top edge of the fin, just below where it curled over. There it is. This was definitely Shankey.
Although knifeless at the moment, the whale was currently outfitted with a new explosive. An LED light on the disc-shaped device blinked green, which Maddock knew meant the explosive was not currently armed.
Looking more closely at the tank, Maddock could see that a plastic chute was gated off inside of it. When the gate was lifted, though, he could see that the whale could slide through the tube, which went through the ship’s side and overboard. He heard the ship’s engines change in pitch. The motion of the vessel changed, too, becoming more rocky as it slowed. Cautiously, Maddock moved to the rail near the opposite side of the tank so that he could look off the ship. Expecting to see only choppy, open ocean, he had to make himself look twice at the land mass now not far in front of him, brimmed with orange fire.