Buzz Cut (43 page)

While he scanned the other boats, one of Gavini's first officers jogged up, halted a foot from Thorn, and ordered him to proceed immediately to his fire drill station. Thorn looked at the young man and shook his head.

"I'm staying," he said. "I'm with security."

"It's a full evacuation. No one's allowed to remain."

The officer was an inch taller than Thorn, about his weight. He had what looked like gym-swollen arms and the inflexible voice of command. Thorn said no, he wasn't leaving.

The man reached out for him and Thorn fanned away his hand. And he swept off his next grasp as well, coming around to face the man, letting his legs go limber, assuming the position. It took two more swats before the officer saw it was useless.

"If you persist, sir, the management of Fiesta Cruise Lines cannot guarantee your safety."

"They haven't been doing such a great fucking job so far." Thorn turned his eyes back to the exodus.

He watched the boat he thought was hers work its way slowly across the harbor. For the next hour he kept his vigil at the railing, continued to scrutinize every life raft, until the last ones were lowered. The white uniforms, the gold braid, Gavini riding down with his men. He saw the officer he had brushed aside staring up at him from two hundred feet away, and Thorn could feel the smolder of his gaze.

The last lifeboat was a hundred yards from the
Eclipse
when a grating noise began to resonate from somewhere in the distance. Warily Thorn eased forward along the rail toward the ratcheting grind. Not till he was at the foremost rail, leaning precariously over the bow tip, was he sure what he was hearing.

The anchor motor had engaged and the two-ton galvanized steel hook was rising from the harbor floor. Around the chain the clear green water boiled and a plume of gray foam swirled. All the marl, the loam, the ancient tombs of clams and oysters and nameless crustaceans were being violently exhumed, dragged to the surface for one final look around.

Blaine Murphy was going to be a hero. It was printed in the heavens the day he was born. That's what he believed. That's what his mother believed too. It was possible even his father believed it as well, though he'd never said the words aloud. Blaine was their only son and he was going to be their hero. He had all the prerequisites. He was a loner. He had a very high tolerance for pain, an unquestioning faith in God, and no taste for alcohol. He was smart and focused and every molecule in his body was ambitious. His goal in life, his dominant aspiration, even more than becoming chief engineer, was to return home from a tour of duty, sit down at the breakfast nook with his mother and father, and for his father to lower his newspaper and lock eyes with Blaine for the first time in his life and say, "Son, I'm proud of you. And I love you dearly."

That was all. Didn't sound like much really. He could probably go home now and spell it out for his dad and the words would get spoken. But that wasn't the point. It wasn't the words so much, it was the unsolicited nature of the event. He simply wanted one single time for his father to give him what his mother gave him every second. Uncritical, outspoken approval.

He had always believed it
would
happen, and now he knew exactly
how.
His moment of heroism was at hand. The incident growing larger with every passing hour. People dying, the ship foundering, the captain giving up, abandoning the
Eclipse,
taking the crew and first officers with him. At every juncture, Blaine's role was growing larger. Until now, four o'clock in the afternoon on Monday, with all the passengers gone, all the crew and officers fled, it had fallen squarely to Blaine Murphy to face off against Butler Roger Jack and rescue the
Eclipse,
perhaps even save Fiesta Cruise Lines from financial disaster.

This time his father would have to lower the paper. He would have to look him square on. "You are a grind, son. Your best feature is that you're too stupid to see how stupid you are."

That's what he'd said a year ago. Blaine standing at attention in front of his father's desk. His father puffing on one of his many pipes, looking up from his stock portfolio, replying to Blaine's announcement that he'd been promoted once again.

But this would change everything. This would lower his paper, keep it lowered. Blaine saving a four-hundred-million-dollar ship, coming to the rescue of a company worth several billion dollars. Those were numbers he would appreciate. Morton Sampson, one of the world's richest men, everlastingly indebted to Blaine Murphy. His father would see what he'd accomplished printed in unforgettable headlines.

"How long will it take?" Sugarman said.

They were in the control room. Morton Sampson standing stiffly near the door. Sugarman, Lola. Half an hour earlier, after the anchor drive had come alive, the big motor hauling up the two-ton hook, the ship had begun to idle out of the harbor. The last of the crew had escaped just moments before the ship started churning toward open ocean. Moving like magic, no one at the helm.

Murphy looked up from page ten of section 2 in the ship's engineering schematics. His gaze flicked from Lola's red and swollen eyes to Sugarman's scowl, which seemed to be set in cold marble.

"Well, what I have to do, I have to trace the steering gear remote control system from the bridge all the way to the rudder room. There's gotta be a device along that line that's intercepting the bridge controls, overriding them. Probably another autopilot unit like the one I tore out of the chapel ceiling."

"How much of a job is that, tracing the steering gear system?"

"Can't be sure. Far as I know no one's ever done anything like that."

"An estimate," said Sugarman.

"I've got to crawl through spaces like that one above the chapel, some even smaller. I might have to go all the way from bow to stern. Close to a quarter of a mile. I can't risk missing a single inch. So, it could take a while. Hours."

"How can we help?"

"You?"

Sugarman nodded. "Yeah, me. Thorn, the rest of us."

"First off, you're all too big. You'd never fit in the spaces that need checking. And second, you wouldn't know what you were looking for. It's mine to do. I'm the only one the right size. I'm the only one who knows the ship well enough."

"Anything we can do to speed this up?"

"You could locate Butler Jack, beat it out of him."

Sampson winced, shook his head in disgust, and stalked over to glare at the wall of circuit breakers. Lola continued to study the gunmetal gray door of the control room.

Sampson said, "What about the goddamn engines?"

"What about them, sir?"

Sampson swung around and glowered at Murphy. His perpetual smile seemed to have gone into remission. "Just shut them down, goddamn it. Why can't we do that? Go down in the engine room, pull the plug wires off, switch off the fuel lines."

"Nobody told you, sir?"

"Told me?"

"We can't do that, sir. Can't get in there."

Sampson glared at him as though he'd spoken gibberish.

Blaine said, "As the ship was pulling anchor and getting under way, the engine room fire alarm went off. The room's filled with C02 gas."

"Jesus Christ." Sampson stabbed a look at Lola, but she was still watching the door. He turned back to Murphy, his face tight and red. "It's got to be cleared by now."

"No, sir. It could take several hours to clear."

"Hours! What about the air pumps?"

"Dead," Blaine said. "We couldn't get in there without oxygen tanks. And we don't have any onboard as far as I know. So the engine room is off-limits until tonight, maybe tomorrow."

"Holy God." Sampson made a fist, glanced around as if searching for something to punch. Then he snarled and flattened his palms together, pressed them to his chest like a kid kneeling by his bed to pray. Dark veins rising in his throat.

"How the hell did he accomplish this? How the hell did that idiot manage to tamper with so many fucking operations of this ship? Tell me that."

"I was thinking about that, sir," Blaine said.

Sugarman made a small underhand wave. Hurry up with it.

"The
Eclipse
was in dry dock in Baltimore nine months ago, sir. You may remember we were installing the variable pitch propeller system and the manual rudder wheel you wanted. The ship was up on dry dock for two and a half weeks. He may have managed to get aboard during that interval, sneak around, tamper with things. Security can be a little lax at dry dock. That's been my observation, sir."

Sampson eyed Murphy while the flesh around his throat jumped and quivered like the lid of a boiling pot.

"That would square with our information," Sugarman said. "We think Butler sabotaged another ship when it was in dry dock last week in Baltimore."

"What!" Sampson swung his stare to Sugarman. "How do you know that?"

Lola slapped her hand hard against the wall beside her. She steered a furious look toward her husband. "What difference does it make, Morton? If Sugarman said he sabotaged another ship, then he did it." She drew a breath and took a moment to master her anger. She turned on Sugarman. "Let's just get on with it. Send this young man on his way, find the units, whatever they are, and be done with this."

Sugarman took a step in her direction. He drew a plastic drinking straw from his shirt pocket. With his right hand, he kinked the straw into segments, folded them over. He and Lola in an eye duel.

"You should've gone ashore, Mrs. Sampson," he said quietly. "Back in Nassau. There was no reason for you to stay. We can still put out a distress call, have you evacuated. We're close enough, they could send your chopper for you."

She watched him give the straw a workout for another second, then shook her head. "Is that what you think? I'm supposed to sneak away, let the men handle things? Is that your take on me? Hustle the old broad off to the back lines, keep her safe, our little China doll. Is this how you've turned out, how you see women?"

Sugarman held her angry eyes. Something passing between the two of them that Blaine Murphy didn't understand. But the heat of it, the invisible steam rising between them, that he recognized.

"How I've turned out, Lola, doesn't have anything to do with you. Not a damn thing."

The color drained from Mrs. Sampson's face, and she looked for a second like she would rush across the room and fall on Sugarman in a flurry of fingernails and teeth. Sugarman held her gaze for a few seconds more then seemed to grow bored with the exercise and swung around to face Murphy.

"Which end will you start with?"

"Well, now, that's the big question, isn't it? Butler could have planted the unit dead in the middle of the ship or toward the bow or stern. It could be right in the rudder room itself. If I choose wrong, it could take ten, twelve hours. Choose right, I could find it in a few minutes."

"What about help?" Sugarman turned to Sampson. "What about flying in some of the engineering staff from other ships, give Murphy a hand, speed this up?"

"No," Sampson said.

"Why not?"

"I told you already. I don't want anyone else involved in this. As of this moment, I believe we've contained our problems. I spoke to Brandy Wong before she went ashore. I convinced her to sit on the story at least for a while. Promised her an exclusive interview when this whole thing is over.

"We've found hotel space on Paradise Island, two-night stay for the passengers. We're sending in another ship to take them for the rest of their cruise. I think we can get out of this without having a major public relations embarrassment. Maybe even find a way to turn it to our credit."

"You stupid, stupid, stupid, son of a bitch," Sugarman said. "We've got five people dead. We're a floating morgue out here, and you think this isn't going public? Christ, your own TV show exploded in your face. You got three thousand people swarming over Nassau who heard an extortion demand over the intercom. Everyone knows something's gone haywire."

"Look, let's just get going, how about it?" Sampson said. "Let's hop to. Yank Butler's little toys. You let me worry about managing the public relations."

"There could be explosives," Sugarman said. "There could be a timer for all we know."

Blaine blinked, swung his eyes to Sugar. "A bomb?"

"We have no idea what we're dealing with. He said in his message he'd destroy the ship. Explosives come to mind."

"Pay the money, Morton," Lola said. "Just make the phone calls. Pay the damn money."

"I wouldn't do it even if I could," said Sampson. "How the hell would I get fifty-eight million dollars together in less than twelve hours? How the hell would I do that, Lola? Do you have any idea? Tell me. You know the books better than I do. You know our friends at Suisse Credite, Citicorp. You have that kind of money tucked away in one of your jewelry boxes, do you?"

"There's Wally Bergson."

Sampson scowled. He worked his tongue against the inside of his front teeth like he was trying to dislodge a kernel of corn.

"Bergson," he said finally. "Fuck Bergson. I can manage this."

Sugarman patted Murphy on the shoulder. "Go on, Murph. Get started. Rub whatever good luck charms you got, rub them twice, and move your ass."

***

In the two hours since the ship had gotten under way, Thorn had used the passkey on every cabin. He'd discovered seven people still aboard. His tablemate, the TV lawyer, had left his kids behind in the game room. Each of them was hard at work with the joystick of a fighter jet simulator. Thorn watched the boy destroy a half-dozen villages and several vicious-looking tanks. His sister was even more deadly. Stacked on the lids of each of their machines were a dozen rolls of quarters. There were candy wrappers and potato chip bags at their feet. Thorn decided not to try to wake them from their reverie.