Chapter 88
One of the masked thugs had put a seventies rock track on the bar’s sound system. As “You Make Loving Fun” blasted overhead, Brady and Lazaroff lay next to each other on the deck, talking mouth to ear in the dark.
When Brady worked narcotics for the Miami PD, he’d worked with undercover cops, run stings with them, and led raids against drug traffickers. Cops got almost no training in hand-to-hand combat, but Brady had taken some training in mixed martial arts on his own. As for guns, he knew and could operate almost any weapon in current use.
His new friend aboard the FinStar, Brett Lazaroff, had been a Navy corpsman in the early days of Vietnam. He had been involved in search-and-destroy missions and worked with the Marines as well as local irregulars, going into villages and finding and killing guerrillas.
Lazaroff was in his midsixties and had arthritis all through his joints, but the two of them would make a good team.
And then there was Lyle.
Lyle was a nice kid, but that was all he had in his kit. He’d told Brady that he had held a variety of odd jobs over the past three years: washing cars and mowing lawns before moving to Alaska and getting a dishwashing job in a one-star hotel. He gave that up when he heard of an opening as a cabin steward on the FinStar.
Lyle’s no-forethought series of pickup dead-end jobs had accidentally positioned him to be a part of a life-and-death operation he could never have imagined.
After Brady and Lazaroff blocked it all out, Brady filled Lyle in.
“Lyle, you have to take us to the crew quarters. Lazaroff and I are going to keep you out of the way when the shooting starts.”
“My mom’s name is Leora Findlay. Hoboken, New Jersey. If I don’t make it, Mr. Brady.”
Lazaroff said in a husky whisper, “Lyle? It’s okay to be afraid. In fact, we’re counting on it. You won’t have to act scared and that’s good.”
Brady knew that there were three gunmen on the Sun Deck above them, a half dozen patrolling the Pool Deck, and others inside the body of the ship.
Their “pattern of life” was to make radio contact every half hour. Each gunman identified himself by position, not by name: Pool deck 4 to base. Veranda 2 to base. Roving patrol 1 to Sun Deck.
Brady watched for the pale-green light of the radio on the track to go out. Then he glanced at his watch. It had been five minutes since the start of the pirates’ last check-in. A pale gray line on the horizon in the east signaled morning getting ready to bust through some cloud cover.
It was now or never.
Over a period of ten minutes, Brady pulled the dead pirate’s lightweight, waterproof camouflage pants over his jeans, buttoned the shirt over his sweater, switched out his deck shoes for lace-up combat boots, and cinched the ammo belt around his waist.
Last, he put the dead guy’s walkie-talkie radio back in his shirt pocket and hung the rifle strap across his shoulder.
He covered Yuki’s cheek with his hand and kissed her. She held his hand against her face and trembled.
“I love you so much,” he said.
“Come back to me,” she said. “We have to make a life.”
Doubts saturated Brady’s mind. He was out of shape. He didn’t know the ship very well. There were hundreds of moving parts that could go so far out of control that people would die. And that would be on him.
“There’s no way I’m not coming back,” he said to Yuki. “Have you got that?”
He pulled on the black knitted mask that smelled of cigarette smoke, then signaled to Lazaroff and Lyle to stand.
When they were all on their feet, he said loudly, “Let’s go, assholes.”
He waved the rifle and Lazaroff and Lyle raised their hands. With Brady bringing up the rear, the three men stepped around the weeping, cringing clumps of humanity on the deck and made their way toward the Luna Grill doors and the interior of the ship.
Chapter 89
Brady led his group from behind, the three of them leaving the open Pool Deck and entering the Luna Grill, which was like a furniture warehouse now, piled with café tables and chairs from the deck outside. A gas lamp that had been placed on top of the piano threw a dim light over the formerly elegant room, which now looked debased, like a used-up exotic dancer turning tricks on the street.
Brady’s three-man resistance force walked around overturned furniture and garbage heaped on the plush carpets past curved windows reflecting the sputtering gas light.
At the far side of the lounge, an open doorway led into the public corridor. Lyle, in the lead, took them to one of the hand-painted murals lining the corridor walls.
He said, “This is how you get to the crew’s stairs.”
He pushed on a panel and a door opened into a wide metal stairwell that ran the entire height of the ship, from the Sun Deck down to the hold. Caged emergency lights on the walls lit the stairs with a flickering low-wattage light.
The three were on the stairs, the hidden door closed behind them, when a voice called out, “Yo. Wassup?”
Brady snapped around, flashed his light up, and saw a man in fatigues sitting on the landing one flight above them. The gunman was fully armed, but he’d taken off his mask, revealing him to be a young white guy in his early twenties with short blond hair.
Brady said, “Chief wants me to take these two to the hold. Cabin steward. And the old dude is an engineer.”
“Why bother locking them up? Why not just—pyewww?”
He put a finger gun to his head and pretended to fire.
“You want to ask Jackhammer?” Brady said. “Go ahead.”
Brady wanted to stop talking and start moving. He didn’t know how tight this unit was, whether they were a band of brothers or mercenaries recruited individually for this mission.
If the kid on the stairs challenged him further, Brady would have to shoot him. That would bring other gunmen rushing into the stairwell and that would be bad.
The young gunman scoffed at the idea of calling Jackhammer, saying, “Yeah, right. Go ahead. God, I was really hoping you were my relief.”
“Sorry, man,” said Brady. “Hey. Put on your mask.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Brady waited while the gunman masked up, then said to Lyle and Lazaroff, “Okay, you two. Down we go.”
Brady prodded Lazaroff and Lyle with the barrel of his AK, and they started down the stairs, one ringing metal flight after another times three sets of footsteps. They passed signs to various decks and public rooms: the Casino, the Spa, and so on, until they saw the arrow marked OFFICERS’ QUARTERS.
The arrow indicated a forty-five-degree turn to the right.
Brady knew that the crew slept in narrow, windowless cabins no wider than four feet across, with single bunks hung on the walls. He wondered how many crewmen were still alive in those slim, airless cells.
He and his team turned the corner and saw a brighter light at the end of this spur off the main corridor. The light came from a gas lantern on the floor next to a man in fatigues who was sitting in a folding chair, guarding the hatch door to the crew quarters.
The guard got to his feet. He was holding his radio phone, and Brady thought the guy upstairs had probably given this one a heads-up.
The guard said to Brady, “What’s up, brother? Who’ve you got there?”
He pocketed his radio and held his AK-47 with both hands.
Chapter 90
Brady knew with dead certainty that the guard positioned in front of the crew quarters would shoot without provocation. Shooting would be very, very bad. Gunfire inside this metal staircase would be like setting off a fire alarm.
Jackhammer’s entire crew would be on them in about a second and he would be dead.
Along with the AK-47 and the combat clothes, Brady had taken the dead gunman’s knife and belt, which he was wearing.
As he and his two wingmen closed in on the guard at the door, Brady still had hope that he could talk the guy into opening the crew door. If not, he would be bringing a knife to a gun fight. And he’d have one chance to pull it off.