Sandstorm

10
Storm Surge

THEY WEREtoo late.

Painter approached the open door to Safia’s cabin. A lamp glowed from within. Despite the urgency, the certain knowledge that the ship had been mined, he hesitated a breath.

Behind him, Kara remained with Clay Bishop’s body. Painter feared finding Safia in the same condition. Dead on the floor. But knew he had to face the truth. She had trusted him. The deaths were all his fault. He’d not been vigilant enough. The mission had taken place under his nose, on his watch.

Standing to the side, he pushed the door wider. Unblinking, he searched the cabin. Empty.

Disbelieving, he stepped cautiously over the threshold. A scent of jasmine lingered in the room. But that was all that was left of the woman who had once occupied it. There was no sign of violence. Yet the metal suitcase that housed the museum artifact was nowhere in sight.

He stood, momentarily paralyzed between concern and confusion.

A moan sounded behind him.

He turned.

“Clay’s still alive!” Kara called from the passageway.

Painter stumbled back into the hall.

Kara knelt over the young man’s body. She held something pinched between her fingers. “I found this in his back.”

As he crossed to her, Painter noted the boy’s chest moving shallowly up and down. How had he missed that? But he knew the answer. He had been too rushed, too certain of their doom.

Kara offered what she held. A small bloody dart.

“Tranquilizer,” he confirmed.

He glanced back toward the open doorway. Tranquilizers. So they had wanted Safia alive. This was all a kidnapping. He shook his head, biting back a laugh-half in appreciation for Cassandra’s cleverness, half in relief.

Safia was still alive. For now.

“We can’t leave him,” Kara said.

He nodded, picturing the glow of the submersible in the dark waters, waking again to the urgency. How much time did they have? “Stay with him.”

“Where are-”

He didn’t explain. He rushed down to the lower deck and searched the rooms for the other members of the party: the Dunn brothers and his partner. Like Safia’s room, their cabins were empty. Were they all taken?

Below he discovered a cowering crewman, one of the galley workers, with a bloody nose. He tried to encourage the man to follow him back up, but fright kept the fellow paralyzed.

Painter did not have time to persuade him and pounded back up the stairs.

Kara had managed to get the student to sit up. He was groggy, head lolling. Unintelligible words mumbled from his mouth.

“C’mon.” Painter scooped Clay under one arm, drawing him to his feet. It was like maneuvering a wet sack of cement.

Kara collected his eyeglasses from the floor. “Where are we going?”

“We have to get off this ship.”

“What about the others?”

“They’re all gone. Safia and the others.”

Painter led the way up the stairs.

As they reached the last landing, a figure swept down toward them. He spoke rapidly in Arabic, too fast for Painter to follow.

“Captain al-Haffi,” Kara said quickly in introduction.

Painter had intel on the man. He was the leader of the Desert Phantoms.

“We need more ammunition from the stockpiles in the hold,” the captain said rapidly. “You must all go into hiding.”

Painter blocked him. “How long can you last with what you have?”

A shrug. “Minutes only.”

“You must keep them pinned down. They mustn’t leave the ship.” Painter thought quickly. He imagined the only reason the Shabab Oman hadn’t been blasted apart already was that the demolition team was still on board. Once they were gone, nothing would stop Cassandra from detonating the mines.

Painter spotted a slumped form by the doorway. It was one of the masked gunmen, the one he had seen sprawled on the deck. He lowered Clay to the floor and crept next to the man. Perhaps he could find something on the gunman that would help. A radio or something.

Captain al-Haffi joined him. “I dragged him back here, hoping he had extra ammunition on him. Or a grenade.” He said this last with thick bitterness. A single grenade would have ended the stalemate on the deck.

Painter patted the body down, ripping away the mask. The man wore a subvocalizing radio. He tugged it free and pushed the earpiece in place. Nothing. Not even static. The team had gone silent.

As he searched further, he pocketed the man’s night-vision gear and discovered a thick strap around the man’s chest. An EKG monitor.

“Damn it.”

“What?” Kara asked.

“Lucky you never discovered that grenade,” he said. “The men are rigged with status monitors. Killing them would be as good as letting them escape. Once they’re gone-overboard or dead-the others will blow the ship.”

“Blow the ship?” al-Haffi repeated, eyes narrowing, speaking English.

Painter quickly explained what he had spied and the implication. “We must get off this ship before the rear guard does. I saw a motorized skiff stowed behind the stern.”

“It’s the ship’s gig,” the captain confirmed.

Painter nodded. An aluminum runabout.

“But the infidels stand between us and the launch,” al-Haffi argued. “We could perhaps try to go under them, through the ship’s bowels, but once my men stop shooting, the others will escape.”

Painter abandoned his search of the gunman and peered outside the doorway to the open deck. The firefight had slowed, both sides running low on ammunition, needing to make each round count.

The Phantoms were at a disadvantage. They couldn’t let the gunmen escape-but neither could they kill them.

Another form of stalemate.

Or was it?

He swung around, having a sudden idea.

Before he could speak, a thunderous crash erupted from the aft deck. He glanced back outside. The lower hold’s hatch had been thrown violently open, shoved under the weight of a trio of horses. The Arabians galloped and bucked out onto the windy deck, smashing into crates and tangling through rigging. Chaos ensued. Lights shattered. Night fell darker across the ship.

One of the horses, a mare, trampled directly through the gunmen’s barricade. Shots were fired. A horse screamed.

Amid the confusion, a fourth horse appeared from the hold, galloping under a head of steam. The white Arabian stallion. It flew up the lower ramp and onto the deck, hooves pounding the planks.

But this time it was not wild and unguided.

Astride the stallion’s back, Omaha rose from the saddle, pistols in both hands. He aimed toward the nearest masked men and fired both guns, emptying them without mercy at almost point-blank range.

Two men fell as he rode past.

“No!” Painter called out, pushing out the door.

The barrage deafened his words.

Movement by the aft hatch revealed Coral sneaking into a sniper’s post. She had a rifle on her shoulder. She took aim at the only standing gunman. The man dove for the starboard rail, intending to leap overboard.

A single rifle blast exploded with a muzzle flash.

The gunman jolted in midair as if kicked by a phantom horse. The left side of his head exploded away. His body slid across the deck, coming to rest against the rails.

Painter bit back a groan. The stalemate had finally ended. With the rear guard dead, nothing would stop Cassandra from blowing the ship.