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.“Is that Levesgue?”“No idea.Doesn’t quite sound like him.”Angelo bent over the running water in the sink and washed up, letting the cold water run through his hair.He spent a few minutes rinsing out blood and cleaning the wound.Then they broke through Dr.Kozcera’s quarantine to get to some antiseptics.The room smelled of damp and chemicals.The two from the pod, Adista and Tychasis, were still out, although it looked as if they had been moving around.Both had their legs hanging off the edges of the thin mattresses.Both had one wrist bound to the aluminum frame of their gurneys.While Angelo went through the wound-cleaning supplies, Wilraven dug out a scalpel, cut the plastic ties on their wrists, and moved each of them closer to the wall, lifting their legs back onto the thin plastic-covered mattresses.“If that’s Levesgue shouting.” Wilraven looked up from Tychasis, who was breathing in short rapid breaths, broken with seconds of no breathing at all, and some movement around his mouth as if he was speaking in a dream.“Royce is probably with him.” Angelo ducked into a wall mirror to apply a bactericidal cream from a plain white tube.“If Levesgue’s on the other side of Irabarren, we should see what he’s hiding.See if we can’t get ahold of a gun.”Wilraven gave it a moment’s thought, and then they were moving.What they needed was some clear advantage over the lone soldier, and they needed it before Levesgue dug himself in and started setting wires and traps all over the ship.“I’ve seen some of the hardware.Not keen to get a closer look.I do want to know what he has for radio gear.We may need it.” Not much of a gun guy, he still had to admit it.“Getting my Glock back would be nice.”Wilraven and Angelo made their way to Levesgue’s cabins with just enough speed and quiet to be able to listen for Levesgue returning.They had just reached the point in Marcene’s hull where it began curving toward the bow when the alarms went off, a high electronic buzz and a subsonic burst that rolled through muscles and organs and made Wilraven feel out of balance.He grabbed the railing to steady himself.Ahead of them a door swung open and Levesgue stepped out, scowling.A quick wave of suspicion passed over his features.His gaze narrowed, taking in the ship’s captain and first officer, and then he smiled and let out a laugh.“Lucky I was in, gentlemen.When I’m out, it’s not so much of an alarm as a boom.”He made an exploding gesture with his hands.The crazy in him seemed to have increased with rest.Wilraven held the man’s gaze, saw nothing but an implacable hatred there.The smile dropped off Levesgue’s face, tossed aside at the sound of yelling.His eyebrows ratcheted down and he was looking beyond them, toward the shouts on the crane platform.“Who the fuck is that?”He reached inside his cabin for something, came out with a compact black assault rifle, snapping open the stock as he jogged right by Wilraven, shouting over one shoulder, “The alarm’s still set.Go to the bridge or I just may come back and kill you both.” He sounded happy about that.Three minutes later Levesgue was shoving Royce and Jerry through the starboard side door, followed a minute later by the chief.Half the remaining crew of both vessels was on the Marcene’s bridge.They had left Miles and Tam on Irabarren, with the crane platform’s first mate and engineer still locked up.Levesgue had the stock folded on the assault rifle, and it was on a shoulder strap swinging at his back.He had his handgun out, waving it at the traitorous crane operator.“Tell them what you told me!”Royce was visibly angry, shaking.He turned on Jerry instead, apparently continuing his verbal barrage.“How could you not fucking hear something hitting the Ira?” He stabbed his finger repeatedly in the air.“Had to be big.Nearly took off half the edging, ten meters of fucking steel.Gone.”“Shut the fuck up, Royce!” Levesgue had the gun aimed loosely at him.There was immediate silence on the bridge.“I said: explain what is missing off the crane platform.To the captain and the first officer of this ship.” He jammed the gun toward the floor, indicating the Marcene.Memories flooded through Wilraven’s mind, a dump of activity over the last day that didn’t add up.Angelo directing the welders to put together long pieces of steel bracing, a gracefully curved arc of weather-pitted metal.Angelo had sent it below—to the Serina—using one of the ROV cranes.The steel had been ripped from Irabarren’s starboard side, the far side, where its absence would be less noticeable.He had wondered about the steel stores DuFour brought with them on the Irabarren.Nothing that big.Just angle, rod, and smaller stock.The captain grabbed the bridge controls, fingers clawing at the nav station’s thick plastic edge.His memory shifting forward to the Serina’s drop into oblivion.Adam’s experimental quick-release bolts firing.The Serina Beliz was finally free of the lines from the roller winches, in the depths on sling bags filled to keep the ship level and neutral.And somewhere below, in Cuban water, those big pieces of welded-together steel were tumbling through several thousand meters of sea.They had hit the floor close enough to be taken as edges of one large shape—the shape of a ship that by every reasonable assumption should have been there.No other explanation.Wilraven looked from Royce to the killer, with the memory of last night still running in his head.Levesgue slumped over the deep-sea viewer, pinging the floor repeatedly, searching the hi-res for what he desperately wanted to see there.The steel shapes had filled in the pattern so neatly.Levesgue had fallen for Angelo’s fakes, the pieces of steel with a ship’s hull curve, linear shapes, man-made patterns on the screen.It had all been there, and it had been enough to seal Wilraven’s plans and the Serina’s freedom.Royce didn’t get it.Levesgue did.He was looking right at Captain Wilraven, anger starting to brew, starting to roll off him like an engine’s thermal fins shedding heat.This was it.Time to die.He pivoted toward Levesgue, fists coming up, focus narrowed down to the raw animal hate on the soldier’s face.Wilraven wasn’t going to wait for death to come for him.He stepped forward, away from Angelo’s defensive motion he glimpsed to his side.Levesgue was ready, coming at him, handgun swinging into play.A quick elbow jab knocked one of the crew to the deck on his way.It was the chief, now sprawling on the floor.Levesgue came forward like a hunting cat.“What have you done?”The captain blocked a punch, twisting out of the way of another, before Levesgue got inside his defenses and hammered a palm heel into the side of his face.Another jab into already bruised ribs.It punched the breath out of him.Bloody nose gushing, dripping to the floor, Wilraven got halfway to his feet, opened his arms, trying for some kind of grappling maneuver.Levesgue danced aside, his gaze sweeping left.Wilraven went suddenly cold.The killer was going after Angelo.The captain’s voice came out threatening, threw another punch, a desperate swing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]