Down three metal and steel-mesh ladders, then through several more twists and turns he burrowed into the bowels of the enormous cruise ship. Soon he found the location he had memorized, a condensation reclamation pipe with a thick rubberlike join where it made an odd curve among the machinery.
There was no one in sight, just the humming of the mechanisms of the engines and pumps and vents that controlled the fluids of the modern vessel – hydraulic fluids, fuel, oil, air, and water. Spooky set the bag down and removed one of the horse-needle syringes they had prepared. Without hesitation he shoved the sharp metal tube through the soft joint, into the feed from the central desalination system that supplied the thousands of people aboard with water.
Water to drink, water to prepare food in the kitchens, water to bathe in and fill the swimming pools and jacuzzis. Water to spray from their showers, atomizing the virus mixture into the air of the enclosed stalls, so it would carry the Eden Plague to resting places in their lungs, where it would take root, invading their cells, bestowing its gifts and demanding its payments.
Leaving the syringe in after the initial injection, Spooky pulled out the plunger and attached a hose to the plastic tube. This ran to a two-liter soda bottle of the Plague solution, which Spooky taped inverted to the back of a nearby fitting. His carbon-fiber knife flashed, poking a tiny hole in the uppermost surface of the bottle, allowing air in, defeating the vacuum principle that would have impeded the flow down through the hose. Gravity would do the rest, dripping the virus-laden fluid into the vast clean-water tanks.
“Hey, you there. What are you doing?” The Afrikaans-accented voice was indignant, official.
Spooky turned around to placate whoever it was. He saw an officer of the crew with Commander’s stripes, sandy blonde hair, protruding teeth and a nametag that said “de Voort.”
“Just making a repair, sir,” Nguyen said in his best false British accent.
The man licked his lips. His eyes flicked over the tube running around behind the fitting, then focused on Spooky’s right hand. “What’s that you have there?”
“Just a tool, sir.” He held the thing up, showing the handle and concealing the blade behind his turned hand. But he had forgotten just how sharp the high-tech edge on this knife was, as the pressure of his own palm opened his flesh against it. Blood suddenly ran dribbling down his upraised arm.
Commander de Voort might be middle-aged and running to fat, a long ways from the South African Navy where he began and long unused to dangerous situations, but his instincts were still good. He turned and bolted for the nearest passageway, yelling for help.
Spooky leaped after him. If the commander sounded the alarm, the whole plan might come crashing down. Desperately he lunged, catching hold of the fleeing man’s uniform tunic.
De Voort yelled louder and spun, swinging Spooky painfully into the corner of a railing.
The little man hung on grimly with his one hand, bringing the knife up in the other, threatening. “Stop!” Spooky gasped, but de Voort ignored him. The bigger man pummeled the Vietnamese on the head and shoulders with his fists, bruising him.
Spooky dropped the knife to the deck with a clatter and struck the commander a foul blow with his free hand, perhaps four inches below his belt. The man folded up, gasping with shock. Picking up the knife, Nguyen put the blade to de Voort’s throat. “Be silent!” The ceramic-edged, razor-sharp blade was covered with Spooky’s own blood, which gave him an idea. He slid the knife down to slice a ribbon of skin on the other man’s forearm. The edge was so sharp that it was seconds before the commander even felt the sting. “Be silent or I will cut your throat! Turn over!”
De Voort rolled over to face downward on the deck.
Spooky wiped the blood off the blade then slid it back into his hidden sheath on his forearm; he carefully calibrated the force, as if breaking a board in the dojo, then drove a fist into the nerve plexus at the base of the man’s skull. De Voort went limp.
Just in time. A cry from down the passageway drew his eyes to a young woman, a crew member by her uniform, hurrying in their direction.
“He fell and hit his head,” Spooky said loudly. “He is injured. Run to call for a doctor, please.”
The woman nodded, breathless, dashing off for the nearest intercom handset.
Spooky made a quick inspection of the man’s arm where the knife had mingled both of the men’s blood. The slash was already healing, closing. The Plague had taken. De Voort’s body fat would keep him alive and recovering until medical help arrived, so looking around one last time to make sure he was not observed, Nguyen smashed a fist once more into the base of the man’s skull. He told himself that the result would be sufficient, that the man would be unconscious for long enough.
Leaping to his feet, he followed the trail of blood back to where the two men had met, then inspected his handiwork. The bottle was half empty. He debated with himself whether it would be better to leave the thing there and get every possible drop into the system, or take it down to remove all trace of it.
Finally he decided he had to take it down. They could not afford to risk a cautious captain or crew shutting down the main water system for fear of contamination, prohibiting showers and making everyone drink bottled water until the ship got into port.
He had to hope it would be enough.
***
The restaurants and buffets on the ship were humming that night, filled to capacity with cheerful, unusually energetic people. Every public space was busy and buzzing with conversation. Senior citizens with spry steps took moonlight walks on deck or visited the ballroom to dance to big band swing. Weary staff members found their twelve-hour shifts were not so odious and tiring after all. Pinch-faced losers at the casino smiled as their chips flowed away from them across the tables, shrugging and philosophical. The young and not-so-young partied long into the night, drinking less, talking more, retiring to their rooms by twos.
By morning, there were miracles.
Moshe Capernaum, eighty-nine years of age, blind, diabetic and wheelchair-bound, woke up that morning and walked the four steps to the cramped bathroom of his tiny lower-deck cabin, half-asleep.
“Moshe! What are you doing? Will you kill yourself? Sit back down before you fall.”
Moshe blinked clear brown eyes at his wife Miryam as she fussed him back to sit on the narrow bed. “You are so beautiful, my dear. I love you more now than the day of our wedding.”
“There is no fool like an old, fool,” Miryam said affectionately, holding his hand in her lap. “If only you could see me, you will see how foolish you have become.”
“But I can see you my dear. I can see you clear as the daylight coming in that porthole.” He reached out to touch her cheek. “I was blind, but now I see.”
She marveled, holding his ancient face in wizened hands, suddenly grown strong.
One deck above, Sergeant Jill “Reaper” Repeth, US Marine Corps, started the day as she always did, with a protein shake and one hundred pull-ups on a tension bar she had brought aboard and set up in the doorway of her room’s balcony. Facing out to sea looking over the railing, her head and shoulders rose and fell, eyes on the horizon. Her lungs expanded, pumping the fresh sea air in and out. It is great to be alive, she told herself. She believed it more today than on some other days.
Every day above ground is a good day. Every day I am not being shot at is a good day.
Repeth was one of the One Percent. It was something most Marines didn’t know about, because most Marines weren’t female. Only a small fraction of the Corps was women, because unlike the other services, the Marines didn’t bend its physical standards much to admit them. Measure up or leave.