Plague Ship Read online

  “That was a hell of a thing.” Max grinned. “Never seen anything like it in my life. You came out of that funnel like a cork out of a bottle of cheap champagne.”

  “I managed to climb almost to the top,” Juan said. “But then I got jammed up. I couldn’t budge, and the water was rising faster and faster. Rather than deflate my suit, I inflated it as far is it would go, to completely block the exhaust stack. Air forced up the funnel by the flooding in the engine room did the rest.”

  “Looked like one wild ride.”

  “How high did I go anyway?”

  “At least twenty feet, and you cleared the rail by fifteen.” Max then seemed to remember his original question. “You said something about Responsivists?”

  “Yeah, Miss Dahl mentioned the ship was on a charter for them. From the Philippines to Athens.”

  “Piraeus, actually,” Eric corrected automatically. “Athens is inland. Its port is the city of Piraeus.”

  Murph smacked him on the shoulder. “Do you honestly think we all don’t know that?”

  Julia couldn’t suppress a smile, more certain than ever that neither of these paramour wannabes would get very far with Janni.

  “I talked to my ex again,” Max said. “This really wasn’t a kidnapping at all. She said that to light a fire under my tail. Kyle has always been a follower—you know, someone easily swayed by peer pressure. He fell in with the wrong crowd in high school, and that’s how he ended up busted for drugs. His rehab counselor told me Kyle doesn’t have an addiction problem; he has a self-esteem problem. Anyway, he met up with this group at some demonstration and within a few days he declared himself a Responsivist. He even went so far as to see a urologist about a little snip-snip and is now in Greece. Apparently, they have some sort of compound on the Peloponnesian Peninsula.”

  “He had a vasectomy?” Julia asked. “He’s only twenty-one or twenty-two. There aren’t many doctors who will perform one on a man much before thirty unless he already has a family.”

  “Kyle’s twenty-three, and the Responsivists have their own doctors that do nothing but vasectomies and tubal ligations all day long.”

  “I hadn’t heard of Responsivists before Jannike mentioned them,” Juan said.

  “I don’t know much myself,” Max admitted. “Just what Lisa told me.”

  “You guys need to read more Hollywood gossip,” Julia said. “Ever heard of Donna Sky?”

  “The actress?” Mark asked.

  “The highest-paid actress in history, as a matter of fact. She’s a Responsivist. So are a lot of people in the film world. It’s the newest thing in Hollywood.”

  “Is it a church or a cult or something?”

  “No one is exactly sure. At least, no one on the outside,” she replied. “It was started back in the seventies by a geneticist named Lydell Cooper. Cooper had been instrumental in developing cheaper drugs to fight malaria and smallpox. Some credit his work for saving hundreds of millions of lives.

  “He didn’t see it that way, at least not after a while, as he watched population explosions all over the globe. By eradicating diseases, he had helped remove one of the natural checks and balances in human population control. People weren’t having more children, but more of the ones they had were living, and then more of their children were surviving, too. Without disease, he started to argue, humanity was doomed to extinction because of our swelling numbers.

  “He wrote a book on the subject, and began to crusade for family planning on a global scale. He founded a group of like-minded people, the Responsivists, which comes from ‘those who are responsible.’ Soon, the movement was known as Responsivism, and it began to attract some big-name people from all walks of life, politicians, sports stars, actors and actresses. Cooper died about ten years ago, but the movement’s flourished under a husband-and-wife team. I don’t know their names, off the top of my head.”

  “What does this group do now?” Juan asked.

  “They operate family-planning centers all over the world, providing free condoms, abortions, and reproductive surgeries to men and women. They’ve been in a long-running battle with the Catholic Church, as you can well imagine, and with everyone on the right side of the political spectrum.”

  Juan looked around the room. “Next question is, what have the Responsivists done to make someone wipe out a cruise ship full of its members?”

  No one had an answer to that.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE CIRCLING PAPARAZZI HELICOPTERS WERE FOILED by the snowy white tent erected over the manicured lawns of the Beverly Hills estate. The tent was easily twice the size of the nearby azure Olympic-sized swimming pool. When a Los Angeles County sheriff’s Bell JetRanger appeared, as per their instructions, the two hired choppers took off before their tail numbers could be identified for later prosecution for encroaching on the no-fly zone. The pilots weren’t going to risk arrest, no matter how much the photographers tried to bribe and then harangue them.

  The pampered guests under the marquee were accustomed to such intrusions of their privacy and paid scant attention to the drama. The sound of the aircraft faded, and the buzz of conversation returned to its normal level. The band, on a raised wooden platform at one end of the tent, resumed playing, while toned starlets in skimpy bikinis, de rigueur for any Hollywood party, ventured back to cavort around the swimming pool.

  The house looming over the expansive backyard was a faux Mediterranean villa encompassing nearly forty thousand square feet of living space, with a separate guesthouse twice the size of the average American home. The underground garage could accommodate twenty cars. Two multimillion-dollar properties had been bought and leveled to give the new owners what they wanted, and crews had worked nearly around the clock for three years to complete the walled compound. In a town accustomed to garish displays of wealth, the estate had sent chins wagging since it was first proposed.

  The owners were Thomas and Heidi Severance. They weren’t actors, nor were they moguls in the film industry, although Thom Severance had worked as an executive at a studio for a couple of years. They were the benefactors and guardians of the estate of the late Dr. Lydell Cooper, the founder of Responsivism, and they now headed the growing institution. The money to build the house, which doubled as the group’s California headquarters, had come from donors from all over the world, although the bulk had been raised among the Hollywood elite who flocked to Responsivism in ever-increasing numbers.

  Thom Severance had been among the first to recognize the brilliance of Dr. Cooper’s breakout book, We’re Breeding Ourselves to Death, and had sought the author out to help spread the word. It was natural that Thom would find a kindred spirit in Cooper’s daughter, Heidi. They were married after a two-month courtship, and it was their boundless energy that had grown Responsivism into the worldwide phenomena it was today. They had taken over, as Cooper had wanted, upon his death, and continued his work. Their charisma had especially attracted followers in the entertainment industry, and when Oscar-winning actress Donna Sky had admitted to the world she had been practicing Responsivism for many years, the group’s popularity exploded.

  Thom Severance stood at a solid six feet, with surgically enhanced features that gave him a commanding aura. He was fifty-three, yet his sandy hair had yet to thin and his eyes had lost none of their compelling appeal. The cream linen jacket he wore was cut too large for his frame, but rather than detract from his exercise-hewed body the effect made him look even more well muscled. When he laughed, which was often, his white teeth contrasted with the permanent tan he sported.

  Heidi stood at his side. She was only a couple of years younger than Thom but looked to be in her late thirties. She was the quintessential California girl, with perfectly tinted blond hair, radiant blue eyes, and the figure of a professional athlete. Her neck was her greatest asset, long and graceful, and she took full advantage of it by wearing low-cut tops and necklaces laced with flawless diamonds.

  Individually, Thom and Heidi were attractive
people. Together, they made such a striking couple that it was little wonder they were always the center of attention. And no more so than here, at a Responsivist function, to celebrate the grand opening of their new headquarters.

  “Congratulations, Thom,” a famed director said, sidling up and kissing Heidi’s burnished cheek with easy familiarity. “You, too, Heids. You should both be very proud of yourselves. I know Dr. Cooper would be.” He spoke the name reverently. “Future generations will look back at this center as the place where the dark tides of overpopulation were finally pushed back.”

  “It will be a beacon of hope for the world,” Heidi Severance replied. “As my father told us, the beginning of the struggle will be the most difficult. But as word spreads and people begin to understand what is at stake, ours will be seen as the responsible lifestyle.”

  “I read in Generations about the declining birthrates in the villages around our new clinic in Sierra Leone,” the director went on. Generations was the group’s biannual magazine.

  Severance nodded. “Sited far from where Christian and Muslim missionaries have plied their trade and corrupted the people with their lies, we’ve done better than we hoped. We’re getting the villagers to understand that preventing unwanted children raises their standard of living more than handouts and platitudes from churches.”

  “The article didn’t say if we’re explaining how our lives are influenced through intra-brane interference and how we can fight back against it.”

  This time, Thom shook his head. “The fact that an alien presence exists in a dimension of the universe parallel to our own isn’t something we feel they can handle just yet. Our guiding philosophy will come a bit later. For now, we’re just content to lower the regional birthrate.”

  The director accepted this, and saluted the couple with his highball glass, before drifting off into the crowd so the others in the throng hovering around the Severances could add their congratulations.

  “He’s a good man,” Heidi whispered to her husband.

  “His last film grossed over two hundred million, but his contributions over the past twelve months are down five percent.”

  “I’ll talk to Tamara.” Tamara was the director’s new trophy wife and one of Heidi’s protégées.

  Thom didn’t seem to hear as he was reaching into his jacket pocket for a vibrating cell phone. He folded it open, said his name, and listened for a minute without changing his facial expression. “Thank you,” he said at last, and refolded the phone. He looked at Heidi. Her shining eyes and smile were brighter than the eleven-carat diamond at her throat. “That was Kovac,” Thom said quietly, so no one else could hear. “A freighter just reported spotting wreckage floating in the Indian Ocean.”

  "Oh my God!”

  “It was positively identified from a life raft as the Golden Dawn.”

  Heidi Severance’s hand went to her neck as her skin grew flush.

  “There were no survivors.”

  Her smile blossomed, and she gushed, “That is wonderful, simply wonderful.”

  Thom looked as though a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. “A few weeks, darling, and everything we and your father have worked for will come to pass. The world will be reborn, and this time we won’t screw it up.”

  “It will be reborn in our image,” Heidi added, taking his hand. She gave no thought to the seven hundred and eighty-three men, women, and children who had perished on the cruise ship, many of them members of her organization. It was only a tiny fraction of the deaths to come.

  CHAPTER 11

  LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS AFTER REPORTING THE sinking of the Golden Dawn, admitting nothing about their foray aboard, Cabrillo and his team hadn’t yet formed a cohesive plan, but they had a direction. That they were going to get to the bottom of this mystery was never in doubt.

  The Corporation ran strictly as a for-profit enterprise, but they were guided by Juan Cabrillo’s moral compass. There were jobs they wouldn’t take, no matter how much money was offered. And then there were opportunities to do the right thing, regardless of profit. As he had done in the past when there was no chance of a payday, Juan had offered his crew the chance to leave the Oregon until the current mission was complete. He had no qualms putting himself in harm’s way for the sake of what was right, but he would never demand it of his crew.

  Like the few times before, not a single man or woman aboard ship had accepted the offer. They would follow Cabrillo to the gates of hell. As proud as he was of the technological marvel that was the Oregon, that feeling paled next to what he felt for his crew.

  They might have been mercenaries, but they were also the finest people he had ever worked with. And while they had amassed a fortune over the years, it was the unspoken truth among all of them that they put themselves in harm’s way again and again for the same reasons they had during their years of government service. They did it because the world grew more dangerous every day, and if no one else stood up to face it, they would.

  The ship was charging hard northward, having cut through the choke point of Bab el Mandeb, or the Gate of Tears, that separated Yemen from the African nation of Djibouti. They were in the Red Sea, and Cabrillo had already called in enough favors with Atlas Marine Services, the Egyptian company that ran the Suez Canal, to see that his ship would be part of the next morning’s only northbound convoy.

  It would take eleven hours to transit the one hundred and one miles from Suez to Port Said, but once they were clear their final destination was only a day away.

  With the number of vessels heading into and out of the Suez Canal, the shipping lanes in the Red Sea were heavily congested. So as not to arouse undue suspicion from passing ships, Juan had posted a watch on the bridge, even though the Oregon was being piloted from the Op Center belowdecks.

  He was on the bridge now, overseeing preparations for taking on a canal pilot in the morning. Sandstorms raged in the western sky over Africa. The sun setting through burnt sienna clouds cast the bridge in an otherworldly glow. The temperature remained near eighty degrees, and wouldn’t get much cooler when the sun did finally settle over the horizon.

  “What a view,” Dr. Huxley commented as she emerged from a secret doorway in the chart room at the back of the pilothouse. As she stared at the distant storm, the ruddy sky made her face glow like a Plains Indian’s. The kind light helped hide her deep exhaustion.

  “How’s our patient doing?” Cabrillo asked, unfurling a dog-eared chart across an old, scarred table.

  “She should be fine,” Julia replied. “If she’s still asymptomatic by morning, I’ll let her out of isolation. How are you?”

  “There was nothing wrong with me that a hot shower and some rack time couldn’t cure.” Juan used carpenters’ C-clamps to secure the wrinkled map, as the clips built into the chart table had been intentionally snapped off to make the Oregon look as dilapidated as possible. When it came to camouflaging his ship’s true nature, there were no details too small for Cabrillo’s discerning eye. “Have you learned anything more about her experience?”

  “Linda’s compiling a report right now of everything we’ve gotten so far, not just my notes but the stuff Mark and Eric have been able to piece together, too. When I spoke with her, she said she should be ready in a half hour.”

  Juan glanced at his watch without really looking at the time. “I didn’t expect anything definitive for a few more hours.”

  “Murph and Stone are more motivated than usual.”

  “Let me guess: they want to impress Miss Dahl with their sleuthing abilities?”

  Julia nodded. “I’ve taken to calling them the Hardly Boys.”

  It took a moment for the joke to register, and Juan chuckled. “That works on so many levels.”

  When Julia smiled, her nose crinkled like a little girl’s. “Thought you’d like that.”

  An ancient intercom mounted on a bulkhead squawked like an asthmatic parrot. “Chairman, it’s Linda.”

  Juan mashed the T
ALK button with the heel of his hand. “Go ahead, Linda.”

  “I’m set up in the boardroom. Eric and Murph are here already. We’re just waiting for you, Max, and Julia.”

  “Hux is with me,” Cabrillo said. “Last I saw Max, he was in his cabin, arguing with his ex-wife again.”

  “I’ll send Eric to go get him. I’m ready anytime.”

  “Be there in a minute.” Juan turned to Julia Huxley. “Go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”

  She thrust her small hands into the pockets of her lab coat and stepped onto the elevator that would take her down to the Op Center, the most direct route to the boardroom.

  Juan walked onto the bridge wing, the wind ruffling his light cotton shirt. He could taste the distant desert in the back of his throat as he drew a deep breath. Though drawn to the sea since he was a boy, the desert also held a similar fascination. Like the ocean, it was an element that was both inhospitable and indifferent, and yet, since time immemorial, men have ventured across it both for profit and exploration.

  Had he been born in a different time and a different place, Cabrillo could see himself leading camel caravans across the trackless Sahara or through Saudi Arabia’s Rub’ al-Khali, the Great Empty Quarter. It was the mystery of what lay beyond the next wave, or the next dune, that drew him.

  He didn’t yet know where delving into the deaths on the Golden Dawn would lead. But the mass murder of hundreds of people was an injustice he couldn’t let go unpunished. His crew had been working tirelessly on gathering background material, and, in a few minutes, they would have their plan. Once their strategy was set, it would be executed with military precision. It was what they did best. Standing at the rail, his hands gripping the hot iron, Juan could allow himself the last moments of unrestrained emotion. When the briefing began, he would direct his feelings, use them to drive himself onward, but for now he let them boil inside his skull—the rage, the rampaging anger at the senseless deaths.