Sandstorm (Sigma Force 1)

Omaha turned and showed his empty palms. They had been forced to abandon all personal arms before boarding the ship.

She scowled and hurried to the foot of the narrow stairs. She used the hilt of her knife to shatter the single bulb that lit the corridor. Darkness fell.

The footsteps rushed toward them. A shadow appeared first.

Coral seemed to read something in the shadow, subtly changing her position, widening her stance, lowering her arm.

A dark figure stumbled down the last of the stairs.

Coral kicked out a leg, cracking the man in the knee. He fell headlong into the corridor with a cry. It was only one of the crew. The ship’s galley cook. His face struck the planks with a crack, snapping his head back. He groaned but lay still, stunned, dazed.

Coral crouched over him with her knife, unsure.

Spatters of gunfire continued above, but only sporadically now, sounding more deadly, purposeful.

Omaha pushed forward, eyeing the stairs. “We have to get to the others.”

To Safia.

Coral stood up and blocked him with an arm. “We need weapons.”

A rifle blast sounded above, loud in the tight space.

Everyone took a step back.

Coral met Omaha’s eye. He stared up, caught between rushing to Safia’s rooms and proceeding cautiously. Caution was not at the top of his core values. Still, the woman was right. Fists against bullets was not a good rescue plan.

He swung around. “There are rifles and ammo stored in the hold,” he said, and pointed to the floor hatch that led down into the bilge compartment. “We should be able to crawl through there and get to the main hold.”

Coral tightened her grip on her knife and nodded. They crossed to the hatch, threw it open, and climbed down the short ladder to the low-ceilinged bilge. It smelled of algae, salt, and oak resins. Omaha was the last through.

A fresh barrage of gunfire erupted, punctuated by a sharp scream. A man, not a woman. Still, Omaha cringed and prayed for Safia to keep her head low.

Hating himself, he closed the hatch. Darkness fell over them. Blind, he dropped down the short ladder, landing with a tiny splash in the bilge.

“Anyone bring a flashlight?” he asked.

No one answered.

“Great,” Omaha muttered, “just great.”

Something scurried over his foot and disappeared with the sound of tiny splashes. Rats.

1:58 A.M.

P AINTER LEANED out one of the ship’s windows. A two-man Jet Ski buzzed below, sweeping under the overhang of the protruding forecastle. It fled past with barely a whine, exhaust muffled, leaving a V-shaped wake across the waves. Even in the darkness, he recognized the design.

DARPA-engineered, experimental prototype for covert ops.

The pilot crouched low behind the windshield. His passenger sat higher, manning a swivel-mounted assault rifle in the rear, gyroscopically stabilized. Both men wore night-vision goggles.

The patrol whined past. So far he counted four. Probably more circling outward. Across the dark sea, he saw no evidence of the main attack ship, the one that had surely off-loaded the assault team. Most likely it had moored to one of the ship’s flanks, then raced away afterward, maintaining a safe distance until it was time to recollect the team.

He ducked back inside.

Kara crouched behind a sofa, looking more angry than scared.

As soon as the first explosion rocked the ship, Painter had checked outside the cabin. Through the deck hatch, he’d spotted a curl of smoke and an ominous crimson glow from the back of the ship.

An incendiary grenade.

Even that brief glimpse almost got him killed. A man in black camouflage gear suddenly appeared in the doorway, steps away. Painter ducked back inside as the man strafed the opening. If it hadn’t been for the metal reinforcement of the Presidential Suite door, Painter would’ve been chopped in half. After bolting the door, he gave Kara his assessment.

“They took out the radio room.”

“Who?”

“Don’t know…paramilitary group from the looks of them.”

Painter abandoned his post by the window and crouched beside Kara. He knew with certainty who led the team. There was no doubt. Cassandra. The Jet Skis were stolen DARPA prototypes. She had to be out there somewhere. Possibly even on board, leading the assault team. He pictured the determined glint in Cassandra’s eyes, the double furrow between her brows as she concentrated. He shoved this thought away, surprised by the sudden pang, something between fury and loss.

“What are we going to do?” Kara asked.

“Stay put…for now.”

Barricaded in the Presidential Suite, the two of them were safe from immediate harm, but the others were at risk. The Omani sailors had been trained well, responding quickly to the threat, putting up a fierce firefight. But the sailors aboard the ship were mostly young, only moderately armed, and Cassandra would know all their weaknesses. The ship would soon be hers.

But was that her goal?

Painter crouched beside Kara. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He needed a moment to stop reacting and to think, to concentrate. His father had taught him a few Pequot chants, his weak attempt to imbue his one son with tribal tradition, usually done while his breath reeked of tequila and beer. Still, Painter had learned the chants, whispering them in the dark when his parents fought, yelling, cursing in the neighboring room. He found comfort and focus in the repetition, not knowing the meaning—then or now.

His lips moved silently, meditatively. He shut out the spates of gunfire.

Again, he pictured Cassandra. He could guess the purpose of her attack. To obtain what she had been after from the start. The iron heart. The only solid clue to the mystery of the antimatter explosion. It still lay in the curator’s cabin. His mind ran along various attack scenarios, mission parameters—

In midchant, it struck him.

He bolted back to his feet.

From the start, he had been nagged by the sloppiness of the assault. Why blow up the radio room and alert the crew prematurely? If it was an ordinary mercenary group, he could blame the lack of planning and precision on inexperience, but if Cassandra was behind it…

A sinking feeling hollowed out his gut.

“What?” Kara asked, pushing up with him.

The gunfire beyond the cabin had gone deathly quiet. In the silence, he heard a telltale whine.

He crossed to the window and ducked his head out.

Four Jet Skis came sweeping in out of the darkness—but each was manned only by the pilot. No passengers. The rear assault seats were empty.

“Damn it…”

“What?” Kara asked again, fear entering her voice.