Kurt looked around. They were being watched by a trio of Italian sailors. It was a cursory honor guard of sorts and the sailors didn’t seem all that interested in the duty. Two of them were leaning against the rail, talking quietly to each other, at the far edge of the deck. The third guard stood closer, smoking a cigarette, beside a small mechanical crane. “Think you can distract the guards?”
“Only if you promise to sneak past them, stir things up and get us into so much trouble that they decide to throw us off the boat,” Joe said.
Kurt raised a hand as if he were taking an oath. “I solemnly swear.”
“All right, then,” Joe said, finishing the rest of his coffee. “Here we go.”
As Kurt watched, Joe stood up and sauntered over toward the third chaperone, the only one near enough to actually matter. A conversation was quickly struck up, complete with Joe making hand gestures to keep the guard’s eyes busy.
Kurt stood and made his way forward, easing back into the shadows beside a closed hatchway and leaning against the bulkhead. When Joe pointed toward something high up in the superstructure, the guard tilted his head and squinted into the sunlight as Kurt pulled the hatch open, slipped inside and closed it silently behind him.
Fortunately, the passageway was empty. It didn’t surprise him. The supply ship was a large vessel, six hundred feet long, mostly empty space and probably crewed by less than two hundred men. Most of the passageways would be empty; the real challenge was to find the one that would take him to the infirmary, where he suspected Dr. Ambrosini would be found.
He started down the hall, heading toward the bow, where the decontamination procedures and testing had been performed. The sick bay had to be close by. If he found it, he’d knock on the door, fake a sore throat or maybe appendicitis. Something he hadn’t done since trying to get out of school in the eighth grade.
He grabbed a small box of parts that had been left outside the machine shop. Years in the Navy and traveling around the world with NUMA had taught him many things, one of which was that if you didn’t want anyone to stop and chat, walk briskly, avoid eye contact and, if at all possible, carry something that looks like it needs to be delivered ASAP.
The tactic worked like a charm as he passed a group of sailors without receiving a second glance. They disappeared behind him just as Kurt found a stairwell and dropped down one level, before continuing forward.
Things were going fine until he realized he was lost. Instead of the medical center, he was finding only storerooms and locked compartments.
“Some explorer you are,” he muttered to himself. As he tried to figure out which way to go, a man and woman in white lab coats shuffled down the stairs, talking quietly between themselves.
Kurt let them pass and then followed. “First rule of being lost,” he told himself. “Follow someone who seems to know where they’re going.”
He trailed them down two more flights of stairs and along another gangway until they disappeared through a hatch that closed softly behind them.
Kurt eased up beside it. He saw nothing on the door that suggested it was anything other than another storeroom, but when he opened the door a fraction and peeked through, he discovered how wrong he was.
A cavernous room spread out before him, lit from above by stark-white lights. It looked like a cargo bay, but it was empty except for hundreds and hundreds of bodies lying in cots or on mats laid down on the cold steel floor. Some wore bathing suits, as if they’d been collected from the beach, others were in casual shorts and T-shirts, and still others were in more official-looking clothes, including gray scrubs that matched those Kurt had seen on the staff at the hospital. None of them were moving.
Kurt pulled the door open wider and stepped through, moving toward this mass of people. It was not their presence here that surprised him—after all, someone had to collect the dead and helicopters had been taking off and landing all day long. It was the fact that many of the victims were now attached to electrodes, monitors and other instruments. Some had IVs hooked up to them, and still others were being poked and prodded by the medical staff.
One figure went into spasms as a technician jabbed him with electricity and then became still as the current was shut off.
For a moment, no one noticed Kurt—after all, he was dressed like a crewman and they were too busy doing whatever it was they were doing. But as he moved into the room and recognized Cody Williams and two other members of the NUMA team, Kurt gave himself away. One of them was being injected with something even as a set of electrodes was pulled from his head. Cody was being given the shock treatment.
“What the hell is going on here!?” Kurt shouted.
A dozen faces turned his way. Suddenly, everyone knew he didn’t belong. “Who are you?” one of them asked.
“Who the hell are you?” Kurt demanded. “And what kind of sick experiments are you doing on these people?”
Kurt’s booming voice rang through the cavernous hold. His angry demeanor shocked the medical personnel. A few of them muttered to each other in whispered tones. Someone said something that sounded German to him, while still another shouted for Security.
Instantly, a group of Italian military police appeared. They moved toward him from two sides.
“Whoever you are, you’re not authorized to be here,” one of the doctors said. His English was accented, but not in Italian; he sounded French to Kurt.
“Get him out of here,” another one said. To Kurt’s surprise, this doctor sounded as if he came from Kansas or Iowa.
Despite the warning, Kurt stepped forward, moving toward the NUMA personnel who appeared to be being experimented on. He wanted to see what they were doing to his people and put a stop to it. The MPs cut him off. Batons in hand. Tasers on their hips.
“Throw him in the brig,” another doctor grunted. “And, for goodness’ sake, secure the rest of the ship. How in blazes are we supposed to work like this?”
Before Kurt could be dragged away, a female voice intervened. “Do you really think it’s necessary to clap our hero in irons and bury him in the depths of the hold?”
The words were English but Italian-accented and spoken with just the right mix of authority and sarcasm to ensure they would be obeyed. They came from Dr. Ambrosini, who was now standing on a catwalk above them.