The Darkness Drops Page 6

  “Captain,” Terry began, “let me square the yards while we may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.”

  He heard Thomas Washington gasp over the earphones. “Starbuck!” the man repeated weakly, as if recognizing an old friend in the entreaty of Melville’s doomed seaman against another deranged sea captain.

  Well, I’ll be damned, Terry thought, and quickly added. “We must stop this ship, Captain. Throw it into reverse!”

  “Reverse?” Washington sounded dazed. But at least he’d answered.

  “Yes, reverse engines, Captain.”

  “Engines? What engines?” Thomas’s words were tentative now, free of the defiance from before. They were also growing weaker by the second.

  Terry bent near the captain’s mouth, the better to pick up the dying man’s whispers. “Just tell me the passwords,” he urged,

  “Ah, yes, my passwords.”

  “That’s right, Captain.”

  “But our whaler can’t sail in reverse--”

  “Captain, you command a ninety-thousand ton, state-of-the-art warship, and we need the passwords to your computers. The lives of your crew, all five thousand of them, depend on it.”

  Thomas’s gaze floated somewhere above Terry’s head. “Yes, I remember . . .”

  “What are the passwords, Captain?”

  “Why, you know them already.”

  “Remind me.”

  “They’re your friends and shipmates.”

  “Which friends? Which shipmates?”

  “Your friends, Starbuck. Your shipmates. Ishmael . . . Queequeg . . . Elija . . .”

  They were names of crew members from the story! “Yes, Captain, who else?” Terry prodded, scarcely able to breathe.

  Thomas Washington shook his head. “But Starbuck,” he said, “so far gone am I in the dark side of earth . . .”

  His voice built to a booming basso as he resumed the former rant, his delusion reclaiming him. Its power invested his body with the strength of a madman despite so much blood loss, and he started to struggle.

  Terry grabbed his shoulders, desperate to snatch him back. “Tell me the names!”

  “. . . its other side, the theoretic bright one seems but uncertain twilight to me . . .”

  “The names, Thomas! All of them, and in the right order!”

  “. . . left me deepening down to gloom . . .”

  The general rushed over and knelt beside Terry. “Have you got something?”

  “The passwords are names of characters in Moby Dick. Try Ishmael, Queequeg, and Elija. But I don’t think I have them all, and their sequence is key.” He swung back to Thomas. “What you’re doing is murder, Captain!” Terry said, giving him a hard yank that set his head lolling back and forth. “Murder, you son of a bitch--”

  A shudder ran through the ship, then blossomed into a fierce shaking as if they stood on the back of some massive sea creature. The flight deck below became awash with running figures. Those who’d already streamed out from the superstructure lined the edges of the tarmac, thousands of them, a shadowy human fringe teetering above the water. All heads craned toward the bow, their gaze locked on the twinkling city. Over the black surface of the ocean, the shimmering reflection reached toward them like a multicolored oil slick.

  Above Terry’s head, the PA speakers crackled with frantic orders.

  “Drop anchor!”

  Good idea. It would serve as a tether if the claws hooked bottom with enough drag.

  “Manually release the starboard winch!”

  Even better. With only one of the thirty-ton monsters in the water, reining in all 90,000 tons of charging steel on the end of a giant link chain might pull the bow to one side, perhaps even wheel the whole ship around and point it back out to sea.

  Small groups of people broke off from the crowd, disappearing back into the superstructure through hatches near the bow.

  “Secure all munitions. Repeat. Secure all munitions for impact.”

  More figures left the perimeter of the flight deck and ran toward the superstructure.

  The missiles! Terry thought. The Reagan carried enough surface-to-air Seasparrows and air-to-air Sidewinders to level ten Honolulus.

  The captain resumed his monologue, that deep voice providing a base counterpoint to all the confusion.

  “I saw the opening maw of hell, with endless pains and sorrows there, which none but they that feel can tell.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” the general said.

  “We’ll die as sailors have always died, and the great shroud of the sea will roll on as it did five thousand years ago.”

  “Not if you crack open a nuke in it,” Terry muttered and leapt to his feet. “Protect the captain during impact, then take him to sick bay, if you can,” he told the medics. “I’ll go below to set up some kind of aid station for casualties.”

  They nodded but said nothing, their faces grim with fear.

  The general took him by the elbow. “Time to leave!” he ordered, his frequency cutting off Captain Washington’s dirge.

  “Leave?” They couldn’t. Not now.

  “We’ve lost this one, Ryder. You’ve a bigger war to fight.”

  A helicopter descended lower than the rest to hang directly overhead, its roar drowning out even the speakers inside his hood. Two lines, each fitted with a rescue harness, were dropped to the deck within reach. The general slipped into one, and held the other out to Terry.

  The nearby snipers and soldiers looked on with the collective gaze of doomed men, the flash of their eyes still visible behind the visors.

  Terry shook his head and stepped back. “No way, General! I’m staying. There’s going to be injured here. Maybe thousands of them.”

  The general gave a nod. Two of the snipers sprang forward and grabbed Terry by both arms.

  He immediately started to resist. “Hey! Stop! No! I have to help.”

  The noise of the rotors drowned out his voice.

  Two more men pinned his wrists behind his back and secured them in plastic ties.

  Everything began to rattle, and it became difficult to stand. A shriek of metal against metal crescendoed up from the ship’s innards, and the sea behind them churned white, then darkened, a black stain billowing through it. The entire length of the flight deck tilted to port and lifted skyward at the bow, throwing everyone off their feet.

  One of the sixty-ton propellers had just made contact with a shelf of lava rock. Just as quickly, those spinning giants chiseled through it. The ship broke free, righted itself, and plowed ahead.

  Terry used the confusion to writhe away from his handlers, but they scrambled to their feet and quickly strapped him into the harness.

  The general signaled the chopper pilots to reel them both up.

  As Terry slowly rose, he looked down at all the upturned heads, not just of those who’d been with him outside the bridge, but the bare, unconcealed faces of the thousands who stood on deck, everyone’s attention now riveted on his evacuation. They fixed their stares on him like tracers, as if to demand, Why should you live?

  Seconds later he was pulled roughly into the passenger compartment of the helicopter and dumped on the floor, his hands still tied. “Easy, Terry,” the general said, moving to his side. “I’ll undo your arms.” The craft banked south, withdrew a half mile, then continued to hover.

  Terry struggled to his knees even as his wrists were being freed and hobbled over to press against a window, eyes fixed on the illuminated carrier below. No more than three thousand yards separated it from the lit shores of Waikiki. Between the two lay an expanse of black sea creased with the luminous streaks of breaking waves. The vessel surged into their midst.

  The general had tuned the frequency of their headsets to the on board radio and was barking orders to PACOM at Pearl.

  “Activate the air raid sirens and emergency broadcast systems. If the reactors go, our first problem will be radiation. Tell people to stay inside,
to seal their doors and windows . . .”

  Carla! Terry thought. I have to warn her!

  He switched the frequency on his own headset so he could talk to the copilot. “I need a phone line.”

  “Sorry, Sir. Orders. All calls are channeled through Pearl.”

  “Then give me a line to alert ERs and public health units.” He’d get his hospital switchboard to put him through to her apartment.

  “That’ll all be handled through Pearl, Sir!”

  “Goddamn it--”

  “You know the routine, Sir! All outgoing information to be controlled from central command.”

  Yes he knew the fucking routine. He’d written the damn rules. Prevent unauthorized information from being leaked and causing panic. Good on paper. Screw ’em when they interfered with his protecting Carla. “Right, soldier. Just testing. Well done.”

  The general continued to spew instructions to PACOM.

  “We can sort out who has to be quarantined afterward. But whatever infected the Reagan is already on the island, so shut the airports down, nothing in or out. Jets without sufficient fuel to turn back, land them in Maui . . .”

  Terry returned to the window, thinking how he could get to his cellular without contaminating himself. It was inside his jacket pocket, under the biohazard suit. If he could work it free and slide it down a sleeve, then punch in her number by feel--

  He stopped midbreath.

  Below him, with a sudden blurring of detail, the ship began to shudder again, and the wake once more churned to black.

  Beams of light crisscrossed the deck. The angular gray planes, their wings folded upward like origami dragons, started to vibrate, broke their restraints, and shimmied across the tarmac to slide overboard, one by one.

  Between shifting pools of shadow, people ran to and fro seeking a place to ride out the crash.

  A pressure built at the back of Terry’s throat, bringing him to the verge of gagging. Don’t blow the reactors, he said over and over to himself, as if he could at least will Thomas Washington’s crazed crew from that final act of madness.

  The superstructure pulsed outward, like some metallic heart, and burst into a molten ball that lit up the entire city.

  “You sons-of-bitches!” he shouted.

  “Hang on!” yelled their pilot, banking right and streaking away.

  The concussion reached them seconds later, sending their craft gyrating wildly into the night, the recipient of an angry kick in the ass and a blast of sound that sealed their ears in a high-pitched whine.

  Terry and the general, thrown wall-to-wall during the careening ride, crawled back to the window as the pilot brought the craft under control.

  The tower had become a giant flare, pouring smoke and sparks up into the darkness.

  Other sparks seemed to race across the deck and leap into the water.

  “Oh, God, no,” Terry whispered, staring at them in disbelief, part of him refusing to acknowledge what he was looking at.

  “Maybe they only detonated the armaments on the bridge,” the general said.

  At the stern, a segment of the landing strip bulged upward in a giant tar-bubble, followed by a yellow flash that blew horizontally across the water, leaving the ocean aflame.

  “And that’s probably just jet fuel,” the general added.

  On went the vessel, slower now, belching more fire and smoke.

  The first missile left the conflagration in an arch that carried it out to sea.

  Three others curved inland, and came down somewhere behind the hotels along Waikiki. Their explosions rocked the night, and soon three apartment towers were in flames.

  Terry couldn’t be sure, but none of them appeared to be near Kapiolani Boulevard and Carla’s building.

  More rockets took off toward open water, then another massive explosion from within the hull brought the Reagan to a final, shuddering halt.

  Flame and smoke quadrupled as she rolled on her port side and settled, the flight deck still above the surface.

  Terry leaned forward.

  Volleys of missiles streaked out of the wreckage and fell into the ocean.

  He waited.

  The general stared down at the dying vessel with equal intensity. “Have we lucked out?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Terry said nothing, scarcely daring to breathe. Faces floated to mind. He saw the heavy, beefy features of Moose, Chrissy’s clear blue eyes, and the glittering stares of the men who’d stayed at their posts after sending him to safety. He didn’t see how any of them could have made it. Yet he’d be of the same mind as the general, and call themselves lucky if the damage stopped there.

  Then it happened.

  A fluorescent rip opened along the length of the ship’s remains, jagged as saw teeth, and a greenish glow appeared in the water. It created a halo around the burnt husk of what had been the hull.

  Within minutes the orderly, windswept progress of white caps toward shore roiled into a churning swirl of bubbles, sending tendrils of steam coiling skyward. The watery disturbance quickly expanded until the center of the bay became a frothing cauldron, the likes of which hadn’t existed in Waikiki since Diamond Head last poured it full of molten lava a millennium ago.

  Terry’s gaze swept back to where the sea glowed green in the immediate vicinity of the fractured reactors. Debris churned on the water’s surface like bits of dirty rice brought to a rolling boil. It took him a few carefully controlled breaths before he digested what his eyes saw but his mind refused to process.

  They were the charred, then scalded bodies of those who’d jumped.

  3:12 A.M. IPT

  Kapiolani Towers, Honolulu

  Carla Ho sat straight up in bed. Thunder must have wakened her.

  She looked to the open lanai where her white curtains flapped and twisted like dueling ghosts.

  The wind had come up. Better close the door.

  Once on her feet, she stood a moment, allowing the cool night air to whip through her long, black hair, and savored the caress of the strands against her skin.

  “Remember, this is your legacy from Princess Kauilani,” her mother had often teased while brushing Carla’s tresses when she was little. All girls indigenous to the islands had heard their mothers speak of the young heiress to the Hawaiian throne. Her beauty was legendary and she’d died tragically at nineteen before becoming queen. Many claimed a relation to her.

  Whether possessed of royal blood or not, Carla had kept her hair at waist length and never failed to feel regal when it tumbled free, especially when she surfed nude. Or made love. Glancing back at the rumpled bed, she hoped Ryder would return in time to fool around before dawn.

  The flash illuminated her apartment in a single pulse.

  Assuming it had been lightening, she started to turn her gaze back toward the balcony when the sound of the detonation hit, a solitary bone-rattling blast of noise that slammed windows and eardrums with equal force.

  What the hell--

  Two more flashes followed in quick succession, both localized among a group of high rises about half a mile away, and were accompanied by a double wham that hit with the force of a body check. Instantly, a cacophony of car alarms went off all over Honolulu. Seconds later, three distinct orange glows lit up the night, and the throaty, jungle-cat cries of fire-engine sirens revved to life. They were answered by a crescendo of earsplitting shrieks from what sounded like every emergency vehicle in the city.

  What had happened? A gas explosion? Some store full of fireworks caught fire? An armory?

  But the three sites were blocks apart.

  Car bombs, she thought.

  For years they’d been trained in ER to expect a terror attack.

  Whatever it was, there’d be injured. She quickly started to dress. The disaster preparedness protocol for any catastrophe dictated that all off-duty personnel must rush to the hospital. The fan out of phone calls would already be underway, but she wasn’t about to wait for it to reach her.
Pulling on a top and shorts, she ran out the door, cell phone in hand, and headed to her parking garage. On the way she pressed the automatic dial-up for the first nurse on her own list of contacts.

  “I’m already on my way, gal,” he said.

  “Who could have slept through that anyway?” snapped the second.

  “I’m in my car as we speak,” replied the third.

  She jumped behind the wheel of her pride and joy, a red mustang convertible, and squealed down the exit ramp, out onto Kapiolani Boulevard.

  She immediately smelt smoke on the night air.

  And the acrid hint of gasoline . . . no, more pungent than that, yet familiar. Jet fuel, that’s what it was, like out at the airport.

  Why would she smell it here? The wind was coming straight off the ocean, from the southwest. The fires and the airport were farther north.

  Running a red, she cornered right onto University and drove toward the freeway. It took a few presses of her scan button before she found a radio station that had interrupted its regular programming.

  “We’re receiving reports from hotel residents along the beach that a ship has run aground off Waikiki and exploded. Other callers from the downtown area say that at least three other explosions have set off fires in several nearby high-rises. And one person described seeing what looked like fireworks shooting into the air from the vessel that hit the reef. Again, we have no independent confirmation of these accounts . . .”

  As she raced up the ramp to the elevated H-1, it became possible to see snatches of the ocean between the buildings along Waikiki.

  A pyre of flame stood out against the black sky about a mile or two out to sea, and a circle of fluorescent green light illuminated the water directly beneath it. Smoke and mist streamed off the site and toward shore, propelled by the wind. Even as she watched, the tallest hotels along the beach became obscured from view, until it appeared that a thick, luminous blanket was unrolling itself over the city.

  Must be some mother of a fire to generate so much smoke. And all that green light? Maybe from rescue boats? But how many lamps would it take to generate something so bright? And if other craft were already on-site, the crash couldn’t have just happened. Could that be why Ryder was called in earlier, to deal with casualties from it?