The Olympus Device: Book Three (38 page)

As they dashed toward the area of the missing lifeboat, Armstrong turned to one of his men and barked, “Get up to the bridge and tell them I want this ship stopped. Weathers can’t have drifted far; there’s no motor on these rafts. We have to find them.”

“Yes, sir,” came the reply as the soldier hustled off to execute the order.

Darting for the rail, Armstrong scanned the dark waters below, looking for any sign of a floating red lifeboat. A string of creative cursing sounded across
Parthenon
’
s
deck when he saw nothing but dark, empty ocean below.

The transfer from the smooth riding freighter to the wave-induced roll of the tiny lifeboat was quite a shock for Dusty and Grace.

The first few minutes terrified both, each rise and fall of the Pacific’s swells feeling like it was about to capsize their unstable craft.

After a few white-knuckled minutes of hanging on, they began to get the timing and feel of their new home and its buoyant tendencies. “I think we need a bigger boat,” Grace spouted, trying to relieve her tension with the line from the famous shark movie.

Dusty grinned, but the comic relief was short lived. “I don’t think sharks are our biggest problem right now,” he said. “At least not sharks in the water. We can’t be very far away from that ship, and I have a feeling Armstrong isn’t going to let this rail gun get away so easily.”

Not having anything better to do, Grace hurried about inventorying the supplies kept onboard. She found bottled water, an emergency medical kit, blankets, some sort of pre-packaged bars of food, and a canister-like device labeled “EPIRB.”

“What’s this?” she asked, holding up the heavy box.

Dusty, after a quick examination, said, “That’s the locator beacon. The initials stand for Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon, I think.”

“Should we turn it on?”

Scratching his chin, Dusty shook his head. “No. I think they have equipment on the bridge that can detect its signal. We might be helping Armstrong find us.”

The Texan returned to his task as lookout, scanning the darkness, fully expecting the massive hull of
Parthenon
to appear out of the night. His task was complicated by having lost his sense of direction during all of the raft’s tossing and turning.

Despite the rail gun ready in his hands, Dusty had never felt so small and insignificant. The night sky and ocean surrounding them appeared infinitely vast compared to their tiny, little speck of floating plastic and fiberglass.

Grace, sensing his uneasiness, moved to his side. She could feel the tension in his shoulders and wanted to help. “This wasn’t exactly what I expected for a honeymoon,” she teased, hoping to make him laugh. “But I’ve got to admit, boredom isn’t an issue with you around, Durham Weathers.”

Dusty grunted, but never stopped scanning their surroundings.

Grace decided maybe now wasn’t the right time for gallows humor, resolving to simply stay close to him for as long as she could. Time, she realized now more than ever, was a precious commodity.

Her withdrawal wasn’t lost on the Texan. He had a new thought, a way to make amends and perhaps improve both of their attitudes. Reaching into his pocket, he produced the wedding ring.

“Here,” he offered sheepishly. “I was almost late to the ceremony because I was down in the machine shop creating this. I know it’s not a proper diamond, but it was the best I could do given the circumstances.”

Grace held the ring up into the starlight, her smile seeming to illuminate the raft’s interior. “It’s perfect! Dusty, you’re amazing. I love you… so very much.”

Dusty rested the rail gun across his lap, taking the ring and sliding it over her finger. It seemed to fit.

“Okay,” she said, holding up her hand to gaze at the new addition wrapped on her finger. “Maybe this isn’t such a bad honeymoon, after all.”

Armstrong entered the bridge, stepping over the bodies that had yet to be removed. He sped to the radar station, growling when he found the unit wasn’t functioning due to damage suffered in the attack.

Studying the complex console of equipment, he sought out the ship’s primary GPS plotter next, watching the numbers adjust to display the ship’s exact position.

“We’re drifting to the southwest,” he noted. “That means their lifeboat will do the same.”

He then stepped quickly to the nearby chart table and began jotting down a series of calculations. “They should be here,” he said, poking the map with his pencil. “We’ll bring her about. Full power.”

The admiral watched as his men rushed to fulfill his orders, his gaze now directed toward the front of the ship. “I want our best shooters on the bow with night vision. If they spot that lifeboat, spray it down with small arms fire. This is going to be tricky at best. We want to kill the occupants, not sink the craft and its cargo.”

“Yes, sir,” came the response, another man rushing out of the bridge to execute the instructions.

“Where are you, Weathers?” Armstrong whispered.

Dusty heard the deep rumble of her massive engines before
Parthenon
appeared out of the darkness. “Oh, shit,” he muttered, pointing toward the huge bow barreling straight at them. “Get down.”

Next, a twinkling of light sparkled from the ship’s deck, followed quickly by the pop, whack, and ping of bullets striking the water around them. “They’re shooting at us,” he warned Grace, “find something to hide behind.”

On she came, barreling down on a collision course, her hull looming larger and larger as the distance closed. Another round of gunfire sent tiny geysers of water spouting skyward, a few of the bullets thumping into their boat.

Dusty raised the rail gun, centering the optic on the rapidly approaching wedge of steel streaming directly at them.

He fired.

Parthenon
seemed to hesitate, almost as though she’d lost all traction. In the low light conditions, the Texan would have sworn he saw her entire hull shudder for a nanosecond of time, and then she exploded.

“Get down!” Dusty yelled, the command wasted on an already cowering Grace.

A wall of furnace-hot air slammed into the life raft, lifting it from the surface and then rolling the hapless vessel and its occupants over and over again in the wake of the devastation.

The centrifugal force pinned Dusty and Grace to the raft’s hull, their brains nearly scrambled and pummeled during the few seconds the raft was airborne.

And then it landed, crashing into the ocean and skipping like a child’s stone skipped across a lake.

The two passengers were tossed and turned, hitting the sides and mashed against each other. When the turbulence finally subsided, they laid in a heap at the bow of the boat.

It seemed like every muscle in Dusty’s body had been tormented, stretched, and pulled. He remained absolutely still, not daring to move from the waves of pain generated by even the slightest motion.

Grace moaned, “Are we still alive?”

“You are,” he replied. “I’m not sure about me.”

“Oh my God, Dusty,” she managed. “Now I know how it feels to be a pair of tennis shoes in a dryer.”

Slowly, cautiously, they began to test their bodies.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve cracked a few ribs,” Dusty announced. “And one arm isn’t moving so well.”

Grace’s biological inventory yielded a similar report, no broken bones, but one knee was sure to be swelling. And numerous cuts and scrapes covered both passengers.

Dusty scanned the horizon, trying to find any sign of the ship that had been bearing down on their tiny craft. There was nothing, wall-to-wall water and sky.

“Now what?” Grace ventured, trying to sort through the jumbled mess scattered around the boat.

“I guess we drift and hope somebody finds us. I don’t know if the captain got off a mayday or not.”

Grace held up the emergency beacon, its plastic case shattered during the turmoil. “I guess this little thingie isn’t going to help us much now.”

A scowl crossed Dusty’s face at their next discovery. Holding up one of the broken containers of water, he announced, “Now this might be a real problem.”

“How much do we have left?”

“A gallon. We lost two-thirds of our supply.”

Apparently worried, Grace shrugged her shoulders in a helpless gesture. “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.”

Dusty scanned the ocean again, this time concentrating on where his internal compass believed was east. “The sun should be coming up soon. Maybe there will be a rescue. When
Parthenon
doesn’t show up at Pearl, they’ll figure something went wrong.”

“But that was supposed to be days from now. Will we last that long without water?”

“I don’t know, Grace,” he replied. “We’re in God’s hands now. Nothing much else we can do but wait and pray.”