FREEDOM
54
The Titan
Atticus took Andrea under the arms and dragged her up the steps toward the bridge. He pushed the metal door open, pulled her inside, and laid her on the floor. The click of a gun’s hammer being cocked froze him in place.
“Don’t move,” said a man with a shaky voice.
Atticus turned around slowly, raising his hands in the air. The floor was still littered with dead or incapacitated crew members, but the captain had not only gathered himself together, but he’d also managed to find the. 357 Magnum. It felt strange, having his own gun pointed toward him, like being betrayed by a close friend. Atticus took a step forward, blocking Andrea with his body.
“I said don’t move!” the captain shouted. “I’ve seen what you can do. Now stop moving.”
Atticus could see the captain then. His breathing was still labored, but he would survive the elbow Atticus had delivered to his throat during the earlier brawl. The captain sat behind the gun controls. Atticus could see through the targeting screen that Kronos’s fleeing body filled the view, lined up for an easy shot. The question was which trigger the captain would pull first.
“What’s your name?” Atticus asked, his voice calm.
“Just shut up!”
“Captain, I think you’re a good man who happened to take a job from the wrong billionaire.” Atticus turned so he was fully facing the captain, his hands still raised. “You saw the screens earlier. You know my girl is still alive.”
“You don’t know that,” the captain said, his voice shaking. “Trevor said that-”
“Trevor’s dead,” Atticus said plainly.
The captain flinched but kept the gun aimed. He looked at Atticus through twitching eyes. “You’re sure?”
Atticus nodded.
The man lowered the gun, his body deflated. “Thank God.”
Atticus could see that the man had never truly wanted to harm him or anyone else, that he probably regretted every moment of his life spent aboard the Titan. He didn’t have to ask what his motivations were to know Trevor held something over the man.
Atticus took the. 357 from the captain and holstered it. “I need you to disable the Titan ’s weapons.”
The captain nodded and set to work at the controls.
“Is there a med kit around?”
Without taking his eyes off the control panels, the captain pointed to the back wall, where three wall- mounted cabinets stood. “In the middle.”
“There morphine in it?”
The captain nodded. “Should be. But with this crew, you never know.”
Atticus stepped over the bodies of the dead and injured crew and ripped open the middle cabinet. He found the med kit buried beneath a stack of life preservers. He threw the preservers to the waking men. “Put them on and get out,” he said. Then he headed back to Andrea with the med kit and three of the orange life vests.
He dropped the vests next to the captain. Upon reaching Andrea, he opened the med kit, located the morphine, and prepared the needle. As soon as it was ready, he plunged it into Andrea’s leg and emptied the syringe.
The captain finished working the controls and picked up the intercom microphone. His voice boomed throughout the ship when he spoke. “This is the captain,” he said. “All hands abandon ship. I repeat, abandon ship.” Then, as though knowing his orders were not enough to make the men disobey Trevor’s will, he added. “Trevor Manfred is dead. Abandon ship now.”
He dropped the CB and took hold of the main cannon’s controls. Atticus watched as the cannon moved from a view of the ocean to that of the front deck. What was the captain planning to do? As the view shifted down, Atticus realized what the captain had planned. The front deck came into view.
The captain looked at Atticus. “The men on this ship are criminals and will probably fight for control of the Titan. The torpedo room is down there.” The captain nodded to the screen displaying the cannon’s suicidal aim.
Atticus nodded, and the captain wasted no time in pulling the trigger. The round from the cannon punched a hole in the deck, flew through every deck of the Titan, and out through the hull, but not before hitting a torpedo, which exploded. The front end of the Titan billowed out, then fell back down. The list became dramatic as the sea flooded into the newly formed breach.
“That did it,” Atticus said as he turned back to Andrea. She sat up, the effects of the morphine easing her pain.
“What’s happening?” Andrea asked.
Atticus helped her to her feet. “We’d like to thank you for choosing Titan Cruises,” Atticus said with the mock voice of a stewardess, though strained by his injuries. “We hope you enjoyed your stay, but it’s time to get the hell off this ship. She’s going down.”
Andrea flinched as the captain approached; carrying life vests and what looked like a thick yellow parcel.
“It’s okay,” Atticus said. “He’s with us.”
The captain slipped on a life vest and helped Andrea and Atticus put on theirs. “I deployed our emergency transponder and issued an SOS,” the captain said. “Help is on the way.”
A few of the crew jumped overboard, clinging to life vests or other floatation devices. Together, Atticus and the captain helped Andrea down the stairs from the bridge to the main deck. They half walked, half slid to the port rail as the Titan continued to list. When they stopped at the rail, Atticus took Andrea by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “Are you with me?”
She blinked away her grogginess and nodded. “I can make it,” she said. “I have a promise to keep.”
Atticus kissed her gently. “When you hit the water, swim for the surface, but let the life vest do most of the work.”
She smiled. “I’m in the Coast Guard you know. I jump into the water for a living.”
Atticus couldn’t help but return her smile. “Right.”
As a group, all three jumped over the side rail and plunged into the cold Atlantic below, where frigid water and a dark shadow awaited.
55
Gulf of Maine
The cold water over Jeffrey’s Ledge sucked the air from Atticus’s lungs as he plunged into the deep. As soon as he slid under, he kicked for all he was worth, but the effort wasn’t needed. His life preserver had already begun pulling him toward the surface. He took a mouthful of air upon reaching the surface and found himself face-to-face with the tilting hull of the Titan. He gazed at its gleaming white form, leaning toward him, threatening to roll down and crush him.
A loud puff and hiss of air caught his attention. He turned and found the captain floating next to an inflating emergency raft. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the captain shove Andrea up into the raft and climb in himself.
Wasting no time, Atticus struck out for the raft. Being a Navy SEAL and oceanographer meant that Atticus was just as comfortable swimming through water as he was walking on land. But the number of injuries he’d
