okay.”
Odin nodded to Foxy. “Do it.”
“I’ll be ready to launch when you head down.”
McKinney sprayed him a double dose and watched him race off toward the starboard side.
Odin pulled her along, and in a moment they undid the latch on a waterproof door and entered the stairwell of the tower. McKinney pulled the door closed behind them with a clang. Almost immediately the deafening noise of the drones dropped to a tolerable level.
“God, that sound is from hell.” She gazed up the stairwell.
“There’s an elevator, but I don’t think we should risk it.” Odin smeared partially dried blood with the toe of his boot. The trail of blood led into the elevator lobby. He drew his pistol and motioned for her to follow him up the stairs.
Since they were both physically fit, they made quick work of the eight-story climb, and could now hear the penetrating hum of the drone engines return, along with a salt-laden breeze. Odin climbed the last stretch of stairs warily, with McKinney close behind. They emerged near the center of the ship’s bridge and could see the entire place was spattered with blood, broken glass, and bullet holes. A dozen small quadracopter drones and an even greater number of wire-cutter drones moved in and out of the control room through the blasted-out windows. A twenty-mile-an-hour wind was blowing through it, sending loose papers flying.
Odin led her up to the central console, but half the computer screens here were shot out. There were literally hundreds of bullet holes peppering the walls and equipment. “Goddammit…”
They stepped around the console to find a dead crewman on the floor. McKinney caught her breath at the sight of his mangled body. He’d been shot so many times in the face and upper torso that most of that portion was spattering the walls and floor around him, along with a five-foot-diameter pool of half-dried blood. What humanized him to her in a disturbing way was the man’s Felix the Cat wristwatch and bright green sneakers.
McKinney ducked down as one of the smaller quadracopters hovered toward them. She sprayed her and Odin with pheromone again, her fear coming back.
Odin spoke into the intrateam radio. “Foxy, the nav computer screen’s been shot out. Half the bridge controls are fucked. I’m going to redirect the ship manually.”
“Got it. Escape boat’s ready to go when you are.”
“I’ll be here awhile. I need to make sure we’ll hit those rocks.”
“Standing by.”
Odin stood up and started tapping buttons to disengage the autopilot. Chimes sounded. Then Odin moved to the ship’s surprisingly small rudder wheel. Closely watching the ship’s compass, he started spinning it to port. Slowly the ship began to lean slightly to the right as its massive length turned left, toward the east.
McKinney came up alongside him, looking down the length of the massive ship, covered and alive with the colony of drones.
He looked at her. “Take the pheromone capsule and get to the escape boat.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He regarded her and shook his head. Then he grabbed the MBITR radio. “TOC, this is Safari-One-Six actual. We have successfully redirected the Ebba Maersk. Abort your attack run. Repeat. Abort your attack run.”
“H allelujah! Hey, Mooch, Ripper, you hear that?” Smokey brought the powerful Bentley slaloming down a ramp and screeching around a pillar, while several of the lawn mower-sized quadracopters hovered down the ramp after him, opening up with machine guns as he passed. Seven or eight more drones were already on this deck, and their streaming bullets raked across lines of plastic-covered BMWs strapped in tight rows and pinged off the steel plating covering his windows and doors. “Goddammit!”
He keyed the radio. “You hear that, Captain Jonsson? Turn us to the mainland!”
There was a pause, and the captain’s voice came in. “We’ve got two feet of water in the engine room. We’re taking on water in three compartments. There are fires on four decks!”
Smokey cringed as he passed a garage compartment with dozens of sedans fully engulfed in flames-smoke billowing up through the powerful vents and fire sprinklers engaged. “Will the damned thing stay afloat?”
A pause. “It’ll stay afloat.”
“Then turn the damned boat!”
Smokey screeched around a corner, smashing a drone against the wall and smearing it to pieces in a shower of sparks. But then something caught under his wheel and the Bentley veered sharply and flipped onto its side as it slid down a ramp onto the heavy equipment deck.
“Dammit!” Smokey held on as the car rolled and landed against another pillar at the base of the ramp. It finally came to a stop, and already bullets were raking its sides. He keyed the radio. “Ripper! Mooch! I need help. I’m rolled!” He tried to kick the top door open, but the deck ceiling was too low with the car on its side to open the door.
Ripper’s voice came in. “Coming.”
Smokey tried to shrink his body to as small a silhouette as possible as hovering drones riddled the Bentley with gunfire. He grabbed the key and turned the engine off. Then he aimed his MP5 through a narrow view port in the steel, raking a quadracopter drone.
He heard a large engine headed his way and moved to the other side just in time to see the bucket of the front loader lowering and smashing into the side of his car, spinning it free of the ramp and sliding it across the decking on its roof before raising the bucket and flipping it right-side up. Inside he went sprawling against the door.
Smokey crawled back toward the front seat, shouting into his radio, “Goddamn you, Ripper!”
“You all right?”
“Yeah.” He watched the front loader smash its bucket down on top of a quadracopter drone firing at her, crushing it against the floor.
“ Die, fucker! Die!”
“You’re a sick lady, Ripper.”
E vans followed the captain up a narrow flight of steel stairs and gazed back behind them at rising, bubbling seawater amid thick pipes and machinery below. Adrenaline had by now made him almost completely sober.
The captain grabbed his sleeve, practically dragging him up the steps. “We need to seal this compartment. Where the hell is that other man?”
“He locked himself in the generator room.”
The captain stopped and pointed back down. “Go get him! I need to manage the bilge pumps to make sure we don’t capsize.” He shoved Evans. “Do it!”
The captain raced ahead and through the watertight door. Looking down again, Evans realized he could now see actual underwater cutting torches in the dark bubbling water. “Oh, no way…”
Suddenly Ritter scrambled through a side door some distance below. He was shouting, “Which way is out of this goddamned place!”
Evans nodded and started racing up the stairs. Ritter took off in his direction, mounting the steps as well.
Once he got to the watertight door, Evans turned to see the ocean surging upward now.
Ritter shouted, “No! Don’t close the door!”
Evans grimaced. “Nothing personal, asshole. Just business.” He slammed it shut and locked it down with the turn bolts. The metal was so thick he could barely hear the screams on the other side.
M cKinney and Odin remained on the bridge of the Ebba Maersk for nearly twenty minutes. The pheromone canister was getting low, but up ahead was the unmistakable outline of waves crashing against rocks. It stretched in a line across a third of the near horizon.
Odin had been manually adjusting the wheel back and forth for the entire run.
“Are we close enough to jump ship?”
“Just a bit more-we’ve come this far. We need to be sure. How we doing on pheromone?”
She shook the canister. “Not much. Maybe an inch left on the bottom, but at our consumption rate that
