Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

Kristi realized she could smell smoke. She couldn’t remember an explosion, but the ship was definitely on fire. She remembered her husband telling her there were some waters of the world where terrorists planted mines. But it seemed not to concern him on this journey.

She tried again to stand, fell to the side, and knocked over a table upon which cans of soda stood. In the darkness she heard a strange sound, like marbles rolling around.

The noise moved away from her but continued until ending with several dull clunks. At that moment Kristi realized what had happened: the cans were rolling away from her, gathering speed until they hit the bulkhead.

Her equilibrium was definitely off, but so was the floor. The ship was tilting, listing. Panic gripped her. She knew now that the ship was sinking.

She crawled to the wall, bumped into it, and then followed it to the door. She pushed on the door. It moved a few inches and then hit something soft. She pushed again, leaning her shoulder into it and shoving it a few more inches. Trying to squeeze through, she realized the object blocking her way was the body of a man, lying against the door.

As she pushed, the man moved a fraction, rolling over and moaning.

“Who are you?” she said. “Are you hurt?”

“Mrs. Nordegrun,” the man managed to say.

She recognized the voice, one of her husband’s crew members from the bridge. A nice man, from the Philippines, her husband had said he’d be a good officer one day.

“Mr. Talan?”

He sat up. “Yes,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I have no balance,” she said. “I think we’re sinking.”

“Something happened,” he said. “We have to get off the ship.”

“What about my husband?”

“He’s on the bridge,” Talan said. “He sent me for you. Can you make it to the stairs?”

“I can,” she said. “Even if I have to crawl.”

“Is better that way,” he said, finding her hand and guiding her in the right direction.

“Yes,” she agreed. “We need to stay underneath the smoke if we can.”

Before getting married, Kristi had been a paramedic and then a trauma nurse. She’d been on the scene of many accidents and fires and even a building collapse. And despite her fear and confusion, her past training and experience were kicking in and taking over.

Together, they began crawling along the floor. Fifty feet on, they found another crewman, but they could not wake him.

Kristi feared the worst but had to be sure. She checked the man for a pulse.

“He’s dead.”

“How?” Talan asked.

She didn’t know. In fact, she could find no marks on him, and his neck seemed uninjured.

“Perhaps the fumes?”

The smoke was thicker here, but it didn’t seem dense enough to kill.

Kristi put the dead man’s hand back on his chest, and the two crawled on. They reached the stairwell and pushed the door open. To Kristi’s relief there was less smoke inside, and by holding on to the railing she could stand.

As they began to climb, a thin shaft of light shone down on them. In the hallway, some of the emergency lights were working while others were out, and at first Kristi guessed that this illumination came from an emergency light in the stairwell, but there was something odd about it. The light was whiter, more natural, and it seemed to dim and brighten sporadically.

Two levels up was a door with a tempered-glass window in it. Kristi guessed that the light was coming from there, but it made little sense to her. It had been dark when she’d gone to the ship’s pantry. How could it be daylight?

She knew there had to be another explanation. She kept climbing, trying to keep up with Talan. As they reached the landing at the top, daylight streamed in from outside, obscured off and on by waves of smoke that drifted by.