Infection Day Minus Seven.
“Mister Nightingale? Mister Nguyen?” The gate agent was perky, professional. “You’re traveling together? How nice to see. Here’s your passports and your cabin assignment. One of our Premier Suites. This packet has everything you need to know, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask one of the staff or crew. Welcome aboard Royal Princes Cruise Lines’ Royal Neptune, and have a wonderful cruise.”
Larry and Spooky took back their passports and put on their best smiles, but declined the standard picture-taking as they boarded. Port Canaveral, Florida was perpetually sunny, the air fresh and sweet rolling in off the Atlantic.
Larry adjusted his sunglasses. “I guess Vinny spoofed their computers all right. That was the hardest part of this whole gig, sweating in line, waiting to get matched against some kind of watch list.”
“Yes. My nephew is very competent, if undisciplined. He say it is easier to hack into cruise line computers and make software ignore us than hack into government computers and take us off the lists.”
They proceeded through ornate and luxurious spaces toward the rear of the ship, where their cabin sat facing aft. One of the first-class suites, it was second only to a few exclusive and unadvertised luxury living spaces above them, cleverly designed to be difficult to find unless you knew where to go, and hard to see into from the surrounding balconies and observation decks.
Opening the door with his keycard, Larry found their luggage already in place inside. “Compliments of Royal Princes! We livin’ large now,” he cried as he picked up a bottle of champagne cooling in a bucket on the table. He put it down to lift a suitcase onto one of the luggage caddies, unlocking it with a combination.
His eyes roved over several plastic bottles that had been carefully opened, filled with Eden Plague solution, and repacked just like new. To any inspection they would appear to be just bottles of popular soft drink. They had even added some food dye to complete the illusion. Many people brought their own particular favorite drinks or foods on a cruise; it would arouse no suspicion, and the bottles could be carried around openly.
Spooky reached over and pulled a clean new laptop out of the suitcase, packed next to the bottles; it was a powerful model with tremendous graphics capability. It booted up quickly and soon a flash drive on his key fob dumped stolen plans of their ship into the computer’s memory.
No firearms this time; it was too risky, though he had a ceramic and carbon-fiber knife that was virtually invisible to the luggage scanners. Nguyen strapped it onto his forearm. He took out another laptop, booted it up and hard-linked it to the first machine so there was nothing to intercept over a wireless connection. He immediately started reviewing their intended actions, taking himself on yet another virtual rehearsal.
“I’m hungry,” complained Larry.
“You always hungry, Larry. But you right, I’m hungry too. Nothing is open yet during boarding. Here is food.” He opened one of his smaller cases, turning it around to show its load of high-calorie, high-protein snacks.
Larry looked at the selection with distaste. “I’m so sick of nuts and protein shakes I could puke. I’m gonna go through the buffet like a buzz saw through balsa wood.” He unenthusiastically picked up a plastic bag full of trail mix and began eating, washing it down with champagne.
Spooky grabbed a big bag of wasabi chips and munched while staring at his computer screen. “I gonna do all the hard work this op, I think.”
“It’s not like I can blend in with the service staff below-decks, Spooky. How many three-hundred-pound – well, two-sixty now – black men do you think they got cleaning rooms or waiting tables? Ze-ro, that’s how many. I’m just here to be a jailer, and enjoy the par-tay.”
“Remember you got fiancée now, Larry.”
“You see a ring on this finger?” He laughed. “All right, all right. We both know I ain’t cheatin’ on Shawna, even for the good cause of spreadin’ the stuff around. You know back in the day, you would never have even brought that up.”
“Back in the day we had no Eden Plague. No use complaining now. I have no such inhibition. I have no commitment to stop me from ‘spreading the stuff around.’”
“Damn, Sam, you gonna rub my face all up in that, huh? Buddy’s only half a word aroun’ here.”
“So solly, Larry-san,” Spooky mocked. “Here, I got girlie disk for you. Asian hotties.” Spooky tossed a DVD at his friend.
“Great. Just freakin’ great.”
***
In one of the enormous buffet cafeterias Larry sat methodically shoveling food into his maw while staring out over the moving ocean. The Bahamas receded in the distance; tomorrow morning they would arrive in Cancun, Mexico. Normally he would be ecstatic to go on a cruise like this – meet women, play some poker in the ship’s casino, eat and drink his fill. This time his mind was taken up with more important things.
That didn’t stop him from enjoying the food.
He wondered how DJ was getting on, then pushed it out of his mind, feeling a trifle guilty. Here they were, living it up, while Daniel was driving across the country along the southern route, mostly I-10 and I-20, toward the opening salvo in their battle to make a better world. He laughed silently at himself; it sounded pretentious even in his own head.
He firmly quashed his doubts and went back for more. The fish was excellent.
Spooky came in with a full tray and sat down across from him. “Almost showtime.”
“Yep. You got your man picked out?”
“Yes. Piece of cake.”
“You ain’t got no cake on your tray.”
Spooky scowled, mock-serious. “You a funny spook, Larry.”
“And you a funny gook, Spooky. When do you want to nab him?”
“End of his shift, two hours. I told him to come by our cabin, we play Mahjong for money.”
“How’d you convince him to risk getting in trouble for doing that?”
Spooky stared at Larry, cocking his head in disbelief. “What, you kidding? I told him we play Mahjong for money. That like telling you a hottie waiting in your room in the bed.”
Larry choked back a laugh, covering his face with his napkin. “That was the old me.”
“Okay then, like telling you Shawna waiting in your room in the bed; how is that, smart guy?”
“I get it. You know your people best.”
“He is not my people, he is Chinese. I am thuong Degar, from Vietnam.”
“You little guys all look the same to me.”
“Yeah, you big guys too. If you not black I forget who you are.”
“You never used to talk so much before the Eden Plague.”
Spooky stared hard at Larry, then smiled faintly. “Before, I have too much confusion in my mind. To kill many, many men is…disturbing. Now the confusion is lifted. Everything is clear.”
***
Spooky, dressed in the clothing of the man they had sedated in their suite, walked brazenly into the ship’s lower-deck service area, a place the paying customers would never see. Spacious carpeted corridors and pleasant colors gave way to rubber and metal and harsh white lights, cramped passageways and the hustle and bustle of the enormous cruise ship’s below-decks. He turned sideways repeatedly to slide past as other similarly-dressed people, many Asian and even smaller than he was, hurried about their tasks.
He turned down each corridor in turn, comparing the numbers and letters written on the walls against the route he had memorized, until he came to a hatch marked “Crew Only.”
Stepping through the hatch, he ducked behind an enormous painted pipe. Setting down the nondescript utility bag he carried, he pulled his staff server’s tunic over his head and stashed it, revealing a white naval style uniform with Lieutenant’s banded epaulets very like the ones worn by the real crew. It wouldn’t pass close inspection but he hoped it would at least keep a casual observer from alerting to him right off.