Running Dark (23 page)

EMMA FINISHED HIDING THE VIALS. JANKLOW HAD LEFT TO GO
to the bridge. She stripped off the mechanic’s jumpsuit and shoved it into a drawer just as the electricity went off, plunging her into darkness. She fumbled along a wall to the exit.

The halls were slightly more lit than the cargo area. She made her way toward the bridge, running a hand along the wall to keep her bearings. She heard the fizz of electricity as it surged in fits and starts into the lightbulbs. The area in front of her flickered.

She turned a corner and stopped. People filled the small area, stretching in a long line thirty feet back from a door marked
NURSE.
Cindy and Marina were squeezing past the waiting patients. Cindy spotted Emma and gave her a nod.

“What’s this line about?” Emma asked.

Cindy looked uncomfortable. “Come over here.” She led Emma away from the entrance, stopping after they turned the corner. “That’s the line of people asking for drugs.”

“Drugs? What do you mean?”

“I mean drugs. Tranquilizers, sleeping pills, you name it. The nurse is pretty near the end of her rope.”

“Can I talk to her? I just need to ask her a question. Of course I’m happy to help in any way I can, but I’m not licensed to dispense medications, so there’s no way I can assist her with that line.”

Cindy started back toward the office door. “Follow me.”

They made it to the nurse’s office door. The people in the front of
the line frowned at their intrusion. One man said, “Get back in line. We were here first.”

Cindy put her hands on her hips. “She’s not here for medication, Captain Wainwright sent her. She needs to speak to Nurse Miller.”

The man subsided a bit. “Are the pirates gone? What’s the captain doing? We’re going to die out here! I tell you, when I get back to Phoenix, I’m demanding a refund. This trip has been a disaster.”

“I understand completely,” Emma sympathized. “Captain Wainwright is keeping a close watch on the radar. He’s an excellent captain.” Emma kept her voice soothing. The man seemed a bit mollified by her manner.

“He’s a good man, I know. I don’t mean to imply that he’s not, but I’m so anxiety-ridden over this situation that I can barely control myself. Why, just an hour ago I thought I would explode. I’m really here for my wife. She threatened to jump off the railing into the sea during the last attack.” The man’s eyes filled with tears. “She’s never done anything close to that before. I calmed her down, but I can’t watch her day and night. I came to see if the nurse can give her some anti-anxiety medication.” The man sighed a jagged sigh and then patted Emma’s arm. “You go ahead on in. I’m not usually like this, all teary-eyed and such.” He rapped once on the closed door before opening it for her. “I’ll wait till you’re done.”

Emma walked into a tiny waiting area with comfortable couches and a desk. Behind that was a hallway. A woman sat at the desk, writing on a small pad. She had chestnut hair that ended at a high widow’s-peak forehead and was pulled back into a severe ponytail. Her skin was so pale that Emma could see the blue veins underneath. She wore a white coat and a name tag that read
ANN MILLER
. She finished writing, ripped off the paper, and handed it and a small pill bottle to the female passenger sitting in front of her.

“Take one every four hours on a full stomach.” The woman, who looked to be about sixty, gripped the bottle so tightly that Emma could see the knuckles on her hands whiten. She opened the bottle,
took out a pill, and swallowed it right there. The move screamed desperation, and it stunned Emma with its intensity.

“Don’t you want some water?” Cindy sounded as shocked as Emma felt.

The woman colored. “No.” She mumbled the word, her head down, before bolting out the door. Ms. Miller frowned as she watched the woman leave. Two large creases appeared on her forehead, as if the skin were papery thin.

“Are you the chemist who boarded the ship?” she asked Emma.

“Yes.” Emma offered her hand to shake. “I’m Emma Caldridge. Is that line normal?”

Ms. Miller looked surprised. “Good heavens, no. These people are just begging for medications. They all want tranquilizers—I’m going to run out very soon—and most want sleeping pills as well.”

“They’re scared,” Cindy said.

Ms. Miller frowned. “So am I, but I can’t just dispense tranquilizers willy-nilly. I’m turning away anyone who has no history of needing them. But I must say, some of the reactions I’m getting are scaring me.”

“Scaring you? Why?”

She swallowed. “They’re insisting. Some are threatening violence if they don’t get what they want. Their behavior is strange, to say the least.”

Shouts of “Come on!” and “Where is she?” echoed from the hallway.

“They’re getting restless,” Cindy said.

“I’d better get back to work.” A look of exhaustion spread across Ms. Miller’s face.

Emma put a hand on the woman’s arm. “Ask each of them if they recall being stuck with a pen or feeling a jab at any time prior to their symptoms. Ask them if they recall feeling a rush from inside.”

Ms. Miller frowned. “You think they’ve been drugged?”

“I
know
they’ve been drugged. I would just like to know who’s do
ing it. Ask them all who was near them at the time of the stick. I’ll be on the bridge if you get any answers.”

Emma continued wending her way to the bridge, with Cindy and Marina accompanying her. They made it to Deck Three without incident and were fifty feet from the stairs that rose to the exit to the pool deck when a group of people poured into the narrow space behind them. All three women turned to look. They were face-to-face with a crowd of men, all led by one with a beer bottle in his hand and anger in his eyes. His face was flushed and his color high. Emma watched him labor for breath. Behind him the others jostled one another to get a look at what blocked their passage. All the men had wild looks on their faces. Two had facial tics. Emma watched as the muscles under their skin twitched in a regular rhythm.

“Where the hell you going?” the man with the beer bottle said.

Emma aimed for a soothing tone. “We’re just headed to the bridge.”

The man’s face flushed brighter. “Get out of our way. That’s where we’re going. We’re going to handle this situation for the captain. We’re done sitting here waiting for those pirates to come back and kill us. We’re gonna act.”

Emma hesitated. The last thing she needed was a confrontation. The lead man noted her pause.

“I said, get out of the way.” He moved closer, and the entire group shuffled along with him.

“Emma, let’s keep going up.” Cindy was behind her, tapping her on the shoulder. Emma could hear the strain in the woman’s voice. She didn’t want to alarm Cindy, but she wasn’t moving. This crowd was not going to the bridge—not past her, at least. She stood her ground as she spoke to the women behind her.

“Go tell Wainwright what’s going on here.”

The men moved closer.

Cindy’s hand clutched Emma’s shoulder. “Not without you.”

“Yes, without me.”

“Marina, go. I’m staying here.”

The men moved closer. Emma could smell the beer from the bottle. The lead man’s breathing hitched even more. She wished she could calculate how long it had been since he’d been stuck. If recent, he wasn’t going to come to his senses anytime soon.

“Just shove her out of the way!” a man yelled from the back of the mob. He spoke with an English accent.

Before Emma could react, the lead man did just that. He put his hands on her shoulders—the one holding the bottle was fisted—and he pushed. Emma staggered backward. She grabbed at a railing set along the wall. If not for that, she would have fallen. She regained her balance and continued to face the men but took one step back. She needed to stay upright. If she went down, she was sure they’d trample right over her in their rush to the bridge. The lead man moved closer. This time he took a final swig off the beer bottle and then raised it high.

“I don’t want to hurt you, lady, but you need to get the hell out of my way,” he said.

Before Emma could respond, a whizzing sound came from the back of the crowd. A man yelped. She heard something hit the carpeted deck with a thud. The entire group turned around to look at the new disturbance. Emma took advantage of the moment to move up the stairs, backward, keeping her face to the crowd. Cindy stayed right behind her, moving in unison with her. From this position Emma had the added advantage of being above the men’s heads and could see past them.

Sumner and Block stood at the far end of the hall. Emma made out the shape of a square device in Sumner’s hand that looked like a gun with a boxy muzzle. His face held its usual determined look as he calmly went about reloading the weapon. Block looked far less calm. In fact, he looked furious. His color was as high as that of the men around him, but Emma thought it might be induced from pure rage rather than a drug.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, pushing a woman?” Block’s voice pulsed with anger. Emma heard Cindy gasp. The men began to step toward him but stopped when Sumner held up the stun gun.

“Anyone comes closer and he gets to go lights-out courtesy of fifteen thousand volts.”

The men stopped. Sumner flicked a questioning look at Emma. She nodded to let him know she was unhurt. A man from the center of the group yelled in a language that sounded like Russian.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
Sumner said. The Russian shifted into German without missing a beat.

“
Ja, drecksack!
Get out of our way. We’re going to the captain.”

“You’ve all been drugged,” Emma said.

The crowd fell silent and turned back to Emma.

“What do you mean, drugged?” The beer-bottle holder spit out the question.

“Just what I said. Someone on the ship is drugging the passengers. I want you all to think—did you feel any type of stick or sting followed by a surge that might have been a chemical entering your system?”

A man in the center of the crowd spoke up. “I did. A guy fell against me. I felt the sting and the rush right after. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“What did he look like?” Emma asked.

The man, a younger passenger with ginger-colored hair and a large-framed body, hesitated. “He was a ship employee. He wore a white uniform. But I don’t know which one.”

Emma wasn’t surprised at this information. Only ship employees had access to the cargo bay where the vials were located.

But before she could respond, the ship’s alarm went off.

BANNER STEPPED INTO THE VIP LOUNGE. THE VIBE HERE WAS
completely different from the Eroscenter. This club evoked the feeling of men’s social clubs in an era gone by. Heavy paneling covered the walls, dark velvet draperies lined each window, and leather chairs with matching ottomans faced a fireplace with an elaborately carved mantelpiece. The smell of old cigars and new cigarettes permeated the air. Three silver-haired men strolled past the reception desk, headed up a flight of carpeted stairs to the second level. As in the establishment before, the VIP receptionist was a somewhat beefy man. Banner stepped up to him to begin his rap.

“I’m—”

“Here to check out the poker game.”

“The Eroscenter called you,” Banner said.

The man nodded. “You’ll need at least two thousand euros to join, but that will cover your initial chip allocation of five hundred, all your food and drinks, and one session with the girl of your choice after the game.”

“Steep,” Banner said.

The man shrugged. “It’s a good game. You could win, and if you don’t, at least you’ll leave here fed and happy.”

Banner chuckled. The man had a point. “Do you take credit cards?”

The man shook his head. “Not for this. The game’s off the books. We need cash.”

“I don’t have it.”

“There’s an ATM down the street to the right.”

“Don’t they usually have five-hundred-euro limits?”

The man nodded. “Maybe you come back tomorrow. Least now you’ve seen the place.”

“How about I give you five hundred cash? That will cover my chip allocation. I’ll pay for food on the card, and I won’t touch the women.”

“You’re gonna want to touch the women.”

“I don’t doubt that, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

The man considered the offer. “Okay. But you change your mind about the women, you’re gonna have to leave the game and go to the main area of the club. They take credit cards.”

“It’s a deal.”

The man pointed to the stairs. “Up there. Second door on your left. Give the guard the cash. Good luck.”

Banner thought he’d need it. He headed up the stairwell. At the top was a long hall with several doors on either side. A young man reading a paper sat in a chair with its legs tilted and its back against the wall. He dropped the chair legs to the carpeting when he saw Banner and stood. Banner handed him five hundred euros. The young man opened the door.

“Play well,” he said with a smile.

Banner stepped into a rectangular room. A circular table, positioned in the center, acted as a focal point. A stained-glass lamp hung over it, illuminating the green felt top. Five men sat with cards in their hands. Off to the right, three women, all dressed in thong bathing suits and high heels, hovered near a wet bar. They were model thin, on the verge of emaciation. Each one gave him an assessing look as he walked in, and each one smiled after the look.

Rickell was on the far side of the table. Deep circles rimmed his eyes, and his hair was plastered to his head as if by sweat. His skin was a pasty white, and his lips were cracked. He had a stack of chips
in front of him, but something told Banner he wasn’t winning. He didn’t have the look of a winner. Banner stepped closer to the table, into the light. Two of the men glanced up from their hands with irritated expressions on their faces. He was interrupting a hand. Rickell never lifted his eyes from his cards. When the other men halted, Rickell looked up. His face took on a resigned expression.

“So they’re searching for me,” he said.

Banner nodded. “Time to go.”

Rickell shook his head. “No.”

Banner had expected this response. Rickell probably viewed himself as Banner’s superior in many of the ways that counted. Without Rickell’s signature, Darkview wouldn’t land the lucrative DOD contracts that kept the company humming. Banner, however, viewed no man as his superior. Either they partnered with him in ventures where both gained something or they stayed away. Rickell’s office had hired Banner to bring Rickell out, and that’s what he’d do.

“We leave now. I haven’t much time.”

“No.”

The men at the table waited, watching them both with interested eyes.

“I’ll drag you out of here if I have to. I’ve been hired to get you, and, as you know, my company delivers. I can’t afford to fail. Not given the current climate surrounding Darkview. Plus, I’ve got mouths to feed.”

Rickell snorted. “You don’t have any children.”

Banner didn’t bother to correct him. “I’ve got office and equipment costs, three hundred and twenty operatives worldwide, a vice president, and a secretary with an expensive tattoo habit who’s putting herself through school.”

The player to Rickell’s right gave a soft laugh. He was one of the silver-haired men who had taken the stairs before Banner. His eyes sparkled with enjoyment. Banner was glad someone was having a
good evening, because it certainly wasn’t him. He took a step toward Rickell.

The men at the table shifted. The smiling man raised an eyebrow, lowered his cards to place them facedown on the felt, and spoke in German to the others. Their chairs scraped backward as the players stood. One of them indicated to the girls that they should leave.

“Schnell,”
he said. Even Banner knew that meant “fast.”

The girls moved with an alacrity that impressed Banner, given the shoes they wore.

Rickell rose, staring at him the whole time. He was two inches shorter than Banner’s six feet, but fit. Banner thought he’d be easy to beat. Unless the poison gave him superhero powers, Banner didn’t view him as any risk in a fight. None at all. His only problem was going to be subduing Rickell without doing any real harm to him. He would have to pull all his punches.

“I could beat you, you know,” Rickell said.

The other players’ heads swiveled to watch Banner’s response.

Banner kept a level stare. “You’ve got a lot of skills, Mr. Rickell, but fighting isn’t one of them. You benefit from living in a country where the rule of law prevails. I’ve spent most of my life infiltrating those where none exists. It’s going to be no contest.”

The smiling man gazed at Banner with a look of respect. No one spoke.

Rickell waved at his chips. A man emerged from a darkened corner at the back of the room. He placed a holder on the table, counted out Rickell’s chips, and wrote a number down on a pad of paper. He slid the pad toward Rickell and handed him a pen. Rickell signed the receipt without really looking at it.

“You keep that under lock and key?”

The banker nodded.

“Let’s go,” Rickell said.

Banner stepped aside. “After you.”

The other players seemed to sigh in unison. The smiling man caught Banner’s eye and nodded once. Banner returned the gesture.

They made it down the stairs, out the door, and into the narrow lane before they were attacked.

The man came out of nowhere. He raced toward Rickell, his hand outstretched. Banner caught a glimpse of a white-handled weapon in the man’s right hand. Rickell stumbled back as the man hauled off to stab him. Banner threw himself between Rickell and the attacker, knocking the man’s arm out of the way. He swung his left fist into the man’s temple. The attacker grunted, falling back, his arms flailing. Two more men came around the corner.

“Rickell, move!” Banner said. Rickell scrambled up. His expensive leather shoes slipped on the pavement, forcing him down again. Banner grabbed him by the arm, propelling him upward and dragging him down the street, in the direction of his car. He heard the men’s feet pounding behind them. Banner let go of Rickell while he pulled the ignition key out of his pocket. He hit the button to open the doors. The taillights flashed in response.

“You see that?” Banner yelled to Rickell.

Rickell angled toward the vehicle.

Banner was a foot from the car when the men reached him. He swung around to face them. They were two swarthy-faced foreigners with undisguised hate in their dark eyes. One carried a knife. Banner tried to see if the other was armed, but the man’s hand was covered in shadow. The knife wielder stepped forward, his hand flying out to stab. Banner stepped off the line of attack, grabbed the man’s arm, holding it away from his body while he pulled back to punch the man with his right hand. The man tried to yank his arm out of Banner’s grasp. Banner held it tightly while he pistoned his fist into the man’s nose.

The sound of collapsing cartilage echoed through the narrow lane. The second man was on Banner, grabbing him around the neck, doing his best to haul Banner’s face down toward the pavement. He
plunged a needle into Banner’s skin where the neck met the shoulder. Banner felt the surge of some unknown chemical enter his veins. His skin heated like it was on fire. It might have been adrenaline running in his system, but the force of it was unlike anything he’d felt before. He pulled out of the other man’s grasp with an ease he shouldn’t have possessed. The man had such a grip on Banner that the maneuver caused Banner’s flesh to twist as he wrenched his throat free. He felt his skin abrade from the friction, creating a burn across the back of his neck.

The Eroscenter door flew open, and the manager catapulted out of it with a policeman’s baton in his hand. He swung it in an arc, catching the first man across the arm that was still holding the knife. The attacker dropped the weapon with a cry of pain while blood poured out of his nose from Banner’s punch. He was off, running back down the lane. The second man released Banner in an instant. He sprinted away, following the other guy. Banner stood still, his breath heaving. The passenger door on the car opened, and Rickell stepped out. He gazed at Banner but remained silent.

“Are you okay?” the manager said. “I saw you being attacked. The camera recorded it.” He indicated the camera over the Eroscenter’s door. Before Banner could answer, Frau Kartiner stepped out of the entrance, a worried look on her face. Behind her hovered the young cocktail waitress.

Banner took a deep, steadying breath. The strange fizz ran through his veins, and his skin crawled. He wanted to continue fighting. When he saw Frau Kartiner, his urge to fight turned into something different. The force of his desire made his body heat up and his mouth go dry. He stared at her, unable to take his eyes off her.

Frau Kartiner’s eyebrows flew upward, and she took a step back. Color suffused her face. The cocktail waitress watched them both, but when she saw Frau Kartiner’s face redden, she bestowed a fascinated look on her boss. The manager stared, too.

“Are you injured?” Frau Kartiner’s voice was a whisper. Banner
didn’t trust himself to speak. What he needed was for her to move away.

“Thank you,” Rickell said. The waitress and the manager turned to acknowledge him. Banner and Kartiner stayed frozen. “We’ll be going now. Banner?” Rickell prodded Banner.

Banner swallowed a dry gulp. “I owe you all.” He was surprised at how normal his voice sounded.

Frau Kartiner’s face relaxed. She smiled a genuine smile. “You be careful. You are welcome. Anytime.” She emphasized the “Anytime.”

Banner slid into the driver’s seat, put on his belt, and drove out of the narrow lane. After a minute of silence, while he negotiated his way through the busy area, Rickell shifted.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“We’ve been poisoned.”

Rickell was silent so long that Banner thought he didn’t hear him.

“What are the effects?” he said at last.

“I’m not sure. Some sort of heightened fight-or-flight response. Old behaviors renewed—it’s why you gambled. Emma Caldridge, the chemist we’re using for the cruise-line rescue, thought maybe it was an adrenaline by-product, or a dopamine enhancer, she wasn’t sure.”

“Was she poisoned, too?”

“Yes. As were Cooley, you, and now me. You have a jet at your disposal?”

“I fly commercial. Why?”

“I need to fly to Berbera, and I need the
Redoubtable
to pick me up.”

“You found the cruise liner?”

“We did. It’s under attack, but well outside the zone. We need to finish this thing.”

Rickell hesitated.

“Don’t give me any more international-law craziness. It’s outside the zone. The insurgents can’t reach it for the moment. Please arrange
for the
Redoubtable
to send a helicopter to take me the rest of the way. It’s about time we shut this whole pirate crew down.”

“You had some intelligence about this ship before it sailed, didn’t you?”

Banner nodded. “But it was incomplete. The German conglomerate that owned the ship thought maybe one of the crew was dealing drugs from various ports. We heard that a group of European arms traders were on the ship in preparation to attend an auction to buy some more product. I borrowed an agent from the Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense Agency to sail with the ship.”

“Who?”

“Cameron Sumner.”

“The Colombian disaster.”

Banner sighed. “I wish everyone would stop saying that. The Colombian thing is over. We did nothing wrong.”

Rickell nodded. “I know. I’ll help wrap that up when I get back.”

They drove for a while, Banner navigating the narrow streets to hit the main road to the airport. He heard Rickell chuckle.

“I was losing that game, but I was ahead overall. For the first time ever, I was ahead. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have put it all back on the table. But thanks to you I’m ahead. It’s a good way to go out.”

A half hour later, Banner pulled the car up to a spot on a road near the runway at the Frankfurt airport. He killed the engine and sat in the silence.

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am to know that the gambling returned because of a poisoning,” Rickell said. “Have you ever had an impulse that you couldn’t control?”

Banner thought about the moment he’d wanted to continue fighting, and when he stared at Frau Kartiner. He’d controlled himself, but just barely.

“No, but I’ve been close,” he said.

“Well, it’s a frightening thing when your body craves what your mind rejects.”

Banner didn’t reply.

Rickell reached for the door. “Thank you for getting me.”

“You’re welcome.”