The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery, #2)(59)

Shaw pulled her toward the flames.





David leaned against the doorframe of the operations center at the top of the control tower.

One of the Berbers ripped the tape off Rukin’s mouth and shoved him toward the microphone.

Rukin eyed the chief, then David, and finally began speaking into the microphone. “Attention all Immari forces. This is Major Alexander Rukin. I am ordering you to surrender immediately. Lay down your weapons. Ceuta has fallen…”

David tuned Rukin’s words out as he surveyed the carnage the screens depicted: around the base, beyond the wall, and on the water.

What have I done? he wondered. What you had to, he told himself. Across the room, Kamau’s eyes met his. The African seemed to know what David was thinking. He gave him one slight nod.





Kate closed her eyes as Shaw pulled her past the fire, and then she was at the edge of the hall and the walls on each side of her were gone and they were falling—

She landed hard on her feet; her knees buckled and she rolled across the deck. Shaw was already getting to his feet. The guy was like a super-soldier. Above her, Kate saw Martin, Chang, and the other man fly out of the flaming opening, falling toward the deck below. They crashed down around her a second after she rolled out of the way. The three men were alive, but Kate suspected there were broken bones. She threw her backpack off and began crawling over to them, but an explosion overhead sprayed pieces of the ship into the air. The debris fell in piles, raining down on them. Kate curled into a ball, trying to protect herself.

Shaw pulled her up. “We have to jump!” He pointed at the water below.

Kate’s eyes went wide. It was twenty feet or more. A massive fire burned over the water, ringing the ship. “No. Freaking. Way.”

He grabbed her backpack and threw it over, then grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the edge. Kate closed her eyes and inhaled.





David took the Styrofoam cup of coffee from the soldier and thanked him.

He sipped it as he watched the screens around the room. The disarmed Immari soldiers were filing into the citadel. They would be the new inhabitants of the pens.

Two technicians were zooming in on the burning plague barge, assessing the damage and rate of disintegration, trying to decide whether they needed to hit it again.

On the screen, explosions blew out one side of the ship. An Immari soldier dragged a woman through the flames and threw her onto the deck below. She curled into a ball, then the soldier stood her up again.

David froze. Her hair was dark… but he knew her face. It was impossible. Yet, there Kate was. Or had David finally cracked? The pressure of the battle, of his choice, finally shattering reality. Was he seeing what he wanted to see?

He watched Kate fight with the Immari soldier, then he threw her into the water below, likely to her death.

David raced to the tech’s station. “Rewind that feed.”

The frames zoomed back.

“Stop.”

David leaned closer. He was sure of it now. It was Kate. And a soon-to-be-dead Immari soldier that had tossed her about like a rag doll and thrown her from the ship.

He spun around and said to the chief, “You’re in command until I return. Do not fire on that plague barge. No matter what.”

He was out of the control station and down the first flight of stairs in seconds.

Kamau called down to him. “David! You want some help?”





CHAPTER 55


Former Immari Operations Base at Ceuta

Northern Morocco


At the harbor, David surveyed the boats. There were a slew of fishing boats, but only a few motor yachts. David tried to think. What was the priority? Range or speed? He needed both, but how much of each? There was a Sunseeker 80 yacht. He tried to remember the specs. He had looked at buying one two years ago. It was twenty-four and a half meters long, cruised at twenty-four knots and could do thirty, he thought. The range was maybe three hundred fifty nautical miles. But there was a monstrosity on the end, a forty-meter Sunseeker. With luck, it would have a submersible on the back dock. He nodded to it. “We’ll take the larger motor yacht,” he said to Kamau.

A few minutes later, the forty-meter yacht was cruising out into the Mediterranean, toward the cruise ship burning in the night.





Kate’s arms and legs were tiring. She could barely keep her head above the water. The ship continued to spew smoke into the air and spit splintered pieces of wreckage into the water, almost taking her under every few seconds.

But they had nowhere to go: a wide wall of fire burned over the water, a ring that trapped them in a small area of water close to the ship.

Her body ached all over and her lungs hurt just to breathe.

Shaw was swimming for something—a piece of wreckage. He towed it back to her and the three men. “Grab on. We’ll have to wait the fire out, then try to swim to shore—”





David surveyed the listless cruise ship. It burned like a wildfire on the water. The ship was collapsing in on itself, and periodically, explosions erupted from random places. The gas tanks that fueled the turbine engines had ruptured at some point and the gas burned over the water in a stunning half-ring of fire around the ship. People jumped from all decks, some no doubt to their deaths. They disappeared into the water beyond the wall of fire. David didn’t see how they could get out. They certainly couldn’t swim through the fire, and the field of flames was too wide to dive under.