Island 731

other crewmen in the wheelhouse just clung to their stations with white knuckles. There was nothing else to be done.

Hawkins nearly asked if they’d tried switching the ship to manual control, but decided the question would insult Drake. Of course he’d tried. An old sailor like Drake would probably prefer to spend the night behind the wheel, battling the storm on his own rather than let the computer take control. But there was another possibility. “Could it be a computer virus?”

Drake shrugged. “Not my area of expertise.”

“What about Kam?” Joliet asked.

“We sent Cahill to find him fifteen minutes ago,” Blok said as the ship rolled hard in the other direction. He stumbled, but Hawkins caught him by the arm and kept him upright.

Ryan Cahill was both the second mate and the ship’s medic. When the storm abated Hawkins thought the man would have his hands full. “We just came from the science quarters,” Hawkins said. “Cahill’s not down there.”

“Neither is Kam,” Joliet added. “We didn’t see either—oh, no…”

“What is it?” Drake asked.

Hawkins knew what Joliet was thinking and answered for her. “The stairwell hatch on the main deck was open. Took at least one wave, maybe two before we closed it. It’s possible one, or both of them, went outside.”

The ship tilted back as it rose up over a wave, spilling Daniel Sanchez, a deck hand, to the floor where he slid until he hit the back wall. His head struck the metal wall hard. He slumped to the floor. Bray made his way to the man and knelt down. “He’s unconscious.”

“Dammit,” Drake grumbled, then shouted to the other men. “I thought I told you three to strap in!” He turned to his new arrivals and repeated the message. “That goes for all of you, if you want to stay. Pick a seat and strap yourself in.”

“What about Kam and Cahill?” Joliet asked.

Drake gave her a look that said, Do not argue. “If they’re outside, they’re dead, and there is not a thing you can do about it. Now sit yourself down and—”

“Sir!” Jeff Allen, a young deckhand, shouted. This was his first long-term voyage aboard the Magellan and the storm had managed to bleach his normally tan complexion.

As the ship tipped forward over the crest of the wave, Drake made his way to the front of the wheelhouse. Ignoring the captain’s orders, Hawkins, Joliet, Bray, and Blok followed him to the front windows, where a battery of windshield wipers were losing the battle against the endless sheets of rain.

They peered out the fore windows and saw a curved, trash-filled ocean in the bright glow of the Magellan’s floodlights. The ship entered the trough between waves, leveling out, but the view didn’t change.

“Oh my God,” Bray said, backing away from the window.

Hawkins followed the vertical wall of garbage up. It disappeared into the darkness above the ship. A flash of lightning illuminated what Bray must have already realized—a fifty-foot wall of garbage-laden ocean was about to crash down on them. This wave couldn’t be climbed. The Magellan would have to go through it.

“Hold on to something!” Drake shouted as he dove to the floor and held on to the base of a bolted-down chair.

The last thing Hawkins saw was a frothy wall of white dropping on them like a mammoth curtain call. Then there was a sound like thunder, but louder, and a jarring impact that sent him sailing. He blinked once, caught a glimpse of a refrigerator, felt a momentary pain in his head, and then, nothing.

7.

Water lapped against sand. Sea birds called. The gentle undulation of a ship in water. Hawkins sensed all of this as he awoke, and for a moment, they combined to put his mind at ease. Memories of a two-week vacation in Bermuda, and the woman he’d met there nine years ago—what was her name?—drifted through his waking thoughts. Lazy days aboard a catamaran. Fishing. Snorkeling. Eating. Drinking. And the nights…. Where the days passed calmly, the nights burned with passion. Belowdecks. On deck with only the stars watching. Even in the water.

Water…

Memory of the crashing wave woke him fully.

Hawkins gasped and sat up straight. Pain bloomed immediately, pounding at the back of his head. He moved his hand back and found a lump matted with blood. He’d struck something when the giant wave had slammed into the ship, but had no memory of what it was.

He found himself against the back wall, his view of the wheelhouse impeded by a workstation and, to his right, a refrigerator. The fridge looked new. In fact, it was still wrapped in plastic. That’s how it had stayed afloat, he realized. The plastic had kept the water out, and the air trapped inside kept the fridge buoyant. It might have been floating in the Garbage Patch for years before being turned into a projectile. The top of the fridge was crumpled now, and smeared with rich, red blood that seemed to glow on the white surface. The blood made his stomach twist, not so much because it disgusted him, but because he knew it had come from one of the other crewmembers.

A seagull squawked so loudly that Hawkins surmised it was actually in the wheelhouse. He pushed himself up slowly, pausing to let his spinning vision focus. The first thing he saw was a blurry mix of bright green and blue. His eyes refused to focus on the distance, but Hawkins could tell they’d made it out of the storm and found themselves… where? At an island? The nearest island should have been nearly two hundred miles away. They couldn’t have covered that much distance overnight.

Turning his attention to the interior of the wheelhouse brought his eyes into focus. Bray lay on the other side of the fridge. He looked dead, but his rising chest revealed he was merely unconscious. Hawkins stepped over the fridge, into the center aisle of the bridge, and found Joliet on the floor.

The seagull stood beside her, violently tugging at her hair. What the hell? Hawkins had never heard of a seagull entering a ship, never mind trying to scavenge a meal from a living human being’s body. Was it rabid? He couldn’t be sure, but it was the biggest damn seagull he’d ever seen, a fact that didn’t slow him down as he charged the bird, waving his hands and shouting.

At first, the bird didn’t back down. It opened its wings wide and squawked at him.

“I don’t care how tough you think you are,” Hawkins said, unclipping his knife from his waist and drawing it out, “I’m not going to let you eat her.”

The seagull seemed to recognize the threat and, with one last angry squawk, spun around and flew out of the wheelhouse through a large hole in one of the big windshield windows. Given the size of the hole, the fact that it was bent inward, and the positioning of the fridge, Hawkins guessed that appliance had punched the hole.

Joliet stirred with a groan. “What happened?”

Hawkins helped her into a sitting position. “Not really sure. Just came to myself. But we’re safe now.”

He helped her into a chair where she sat, holding her head.

“I’m going to check on the others,” he said. “Don’t move.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” she said, rubbing her temples.

Hawkins went back to Sanchez, who’d been knocked unconscious just before the big wave struck. After checking for a pulse and finding one, he shook the man’s arm. “Sanchez.” He tried to wake the man as gently as possible, but Sanchez didn’t move. Hawkins pinched the man’s arm hard. Sanchez didn’t flinch. He was out for the count.

Hawkins moved to Bray next and smacked his cheek a few times. “Bray. Wake up.”

The big man grumbled.

“Wake up, Eight.”

Bray’s eyes popped open. He shouted in surprise and tried to scramble away.