Jake breathed from the mask of a self-contained oxygen breathing apparatus. The OBA’s oxygen canister and heavy brass fittings bounced against his chest with each stride. He glanced down the tunnel.
A chill raced up his spine as he saw Bass on the floor. Tiger looked up, hollered, and charged.
“You are next, Slate!”
Jake ducked through the watertight door to the missile compartment and started to push the door shut behind him, then reconsidered.
He wiggled between pipes behind the door, held the door latch, and watched smoke race through the portal. Tiger grabbed the door’s opposite side and, coughing, battled Jake for control of it, but billowing smoke overcame the commando. The struggle ceased and Jake latched the door open.
He let his breathing slow and watched airborne poisons from the missile compartment rush into the engine room. When he was confident that the engine room had filled with smoke, he returned.
Walking over Bass’ body, he entered maneuvering and stared at a pond of blood draining from Gant’s neck. To avenge his colleagues, he targeted the two commandos in the engine room as his first victims.
Outside maneuvering, he stopped at an EAB manifold system air reducer. Groping through opaque smoke, he found machined cubes. He ran his hands over the system and shut an inlet valve. To be certain that he had sentenced Tiger and Leopard to death, he closed the outlet valve, too.
After breathing the scant air remaining in the header downstream of the reducer, the two commandos in the engine room would die of either suffocation or smoke inhalation.
Jake turned his thoughts toward the three Taiwanese men in the forward compartment. They would freeze to death within hours if he cut off their electrical power. Although he might be condemning McKenzie to death, he doubted that the machinist mate still lived.
He pushed through billowing clouds into the smoky cavern of the missile compartment and felt his way to one of the ship’s firefighting thermal imagers. He knelt by a box, removed its Velcro strap, and withdrew the missile compartment’s imager, then placed the thermal video camera against his facemask.
The missile compartment became an eerie light blue. The burning distant forward section of the compartment appeared white. Behind Jake, the open engine room watertight door appeared as a circle of cold navy blue. To his left, twin electrical distribution towers glowed azure.
He knelt between the towers and lowered the imager, then ran his fingers across Plexiglas shields until he found protruding knobs, which he twisted and removed. With the shields by his side and the breakers exposed, he depressed buttons. Springs hammered the breakers open.
Jake grasped the imager and returned to the engine room.
He retrieved spare OBA canisters, dropped them in maneuvering, and slid shut the maneuvering doors. He then reached overhead and rotated a lever. Seven-hundred pound per square inch air whistled into the tiny room.
Feeling his ears pop, he cracked open the starboard door. Air displaced smoke. Jake rolled the door shut again and sat.
He lifted his facemask. Invisible wisps of smoke invaded his lungs. After a fit of coughing, he breathed the pressurized atmosphere within maneuvering.
He calmed himself and grabbed a microphone. Unsure if it were a useless gesture, he broadcast his voice throughout the ship.
Sitting at the ship’s control panel, Scott McKenzie was terrified. He listened to Renard trying to calm Kao, but it sounded like empty diplomacy.
“We must be patient,” the Frenchman said. “They probably have discovered systems in need of immediate attention. If there were a problem, they would have notified us.”
Jake’s voice rang from the loudspeakers.
“Scotty, they killed Gant and Bass. Get back here if you want to live!”
McKenzie sprang for the staircase.
Jaguar, the only uninjured commando, dove for him.
Grasping hands sent a shiver up McKenzie’s spine, but Jaguar’s grip slipped off his shoulders.
Cheetah blocked his escape. The injured commando launched a side kick into McKenzie’s OBA breast plate, howled in pain, and fell to the floor clutching his side.
The kick knocked McKenzie’s wind out, and his vision blurred as he jumped down the staircase.
Fighting to expand his lungs, McKenzie sprinted for the watertight door. He ran as if in a nightmare — swimming through molasses.
Something snagged his ankle. The floor smacked him in the chin. His jaw ached, and a weight on his ankles climbed up his legs.
Terrified, he kicked, wiggled to the door, and hurled his arm upward to the latch. Heat from the missile compartment pushed the door open. The opening grew wider and a cloud of choking black smoke filled the passageway.
His legs freed, McKenzie climbed to his feet. He saw Jaguar stand and fumble behind his neck for his facemask.
Amateur, McKenzie thought as he ignored the straps, pressed the mask into a seal over his face, and escaped into the blackness of the missile compartment.
Heat burned through the soles of his sneakers as he slipped into the tight space between the missile tubes. He worked the straps of his mask, slipped on flame-retardant gloves, and walked a memorized path toward the engine room. He waved his hands in the blackness, reaching with each step for the phantom commando he feared chased him. Behind the after tubes, he stopped by a circuit phone.
“Jake? You there?” he asked.
“Scotty? You made it! Where are you?”
“Missile compartment third level. Jake, I’m scared.”
“Maneuvering’s pressurized. Get back here. We’ll be okay.”
CHAPTER 30
In the shadows of emergency lighting, Renard took Kao’s arm over his shoulder and inched him down the staircase. Doubled over, Cheetah hobbled below. Jaguar, his face covered with soot, arrived and helped support Kao. He exchanged words in Mandarin with Cheetah.
Renard debated his allegiance. The Taiwanese controlled the forward compartment and his ride home, but Jake controlled the ship’s power. Trapped by a fire on the Taiwanese side of the battlefield, he decided to side with Kao’s men — for the moment.
In the wardroom, Renard lowered Kao into a chair. He sat and watched the Sergeant shiver in the encroaching coldness. Just as he thought that Kao’s shallow breathing had stopped, the commando returned from death.
“What threat does Slate pose?” Kao asked, his voice almost a whisper.
Renard felt like a prisoner advising an enemy.
“From the engine room, he controls almost every resource on the ship — electricity, propulsion, air, water, hydraulics.”
Kao’s hand slipped from his wound. Jaguar returned from the kitchen and pressed a fresh towel against his leader’s forehead.
“Slate also carries the only keys to the gun lockers,” Renard said.
“Can we open the forward gun locker?” Kao asked.
“We would freeze to death before we could pick that lock. Slate has the advantage.”
Kao’s eyes had become slits.
“The men standing behind me are trained to kill,” Kao said. “They will take Slate down.”
Jake read terror in McKenzie’s eyes as he entered maneuvering, ripped off his OBA facemask, and coughed.
“What the hell’s happening, Jake? Bass is dead. You said no one would get hurt.”
“Mister Panther freaked out in the missile compartment. I tried to save him but the Taiwanese went nuts. We’re at war. I already got back at the two guys who did this to Gant and Bass. I checked. They’re dead.”
“What do we do?”
“I already cut their power. We just wait now.”