It was now or never.
Over a period of ten minutes, Brady pulled the dead pirate’s lightweight, waterproof camouflage pants over his jeans, buttoned the shirt over his sweater, switched out his deck shoes for lace-up combat boots, and cinched the ammo belt around his waist.
Last, he put the dead guy’s walkie-talkie radio back in his shirt pocket and hung the rifle strap across his shoulder.
He covered Yuki’s cheek with his hand and kissed her. She held his hand against her face and trembled.
“I love you so much,” he said.
“Come back to me,” she said. “We have to make a life.”
Doubts saturated Brady’s mind. He was out of shape. He didn’t know the ship very well. There were hundreds of moving parts that could go so far out of control that people would die. And that would be on him.
“There’s no way I’m not coming back,” he said to Yuki. “Have you got that?”
He pulled on the black knitted mask that smelled of cigarette smoke, then signaled to Lazaroff and Lyle to stand.
When they were all on their feet, he said loudly, “Let’s go, assholes.”
He waved the rifle and Lazaroff and Lyle raised their hands. With Brady bringing up the rear, the three men stepped around the weeping, cringing clumps of humanity on the deck and made their way to
ward the Luna Grill doors and the interior of the ship.
CHAPTER 89
BRADY LED HIS group from behind, the three of them leaving the open Pool Deck and entering the Luna Grill, which was like a furniture warehouse now, piled with café tables and chairs from the deck outside. A gas lamp that had been placed on top of the piano threw a dim light over the formerly elegant room, which now looked debased, like a used-up exotic dancer turning tricks on the street.
Brady’s three-man resistance force walked around overturned furniture and garbage heaped on the plush carpets past curved windows reflecting the sputtering gas light.
At the far side of the lounge, an open doorway led into the public corridor. Lyle, in the lead, took them to one of the hand-painted murals lining the corridor walls.
He said, “This is how you get to the crew’s stairs.”
He pushed on a panel and a door opened into a wide metal stairwell that ran the entire height of the ship, from the Sun Deck down to the hold. Caged emergency lights on the walls lit the stairs with a flickering low-wattage light.
The three were on the stairs, the hidden door closed behind them, when a voice called out, “Yo. Wassup?”
Brady snapped around, flashed his light up, and saw a man in fatigues sitting on the landing one flight above them. The gunman was fully armed, but he’d taken off his mask, revealing him to be a young white guy in his early twenties with short blond hair.
Brady said, “Chief wants me to take these two to the hold. Cabin steward. And the old dude is an engineer.”
“Why bother locking them up? Why not just—pyewww?”
He put a finger gun to his head and pretended to fire.
“You want to ask Jackhammer?” Brady said. “Go ahead.”
Brady wanted to stop talking and start moving. He didn’t know how tight this unit was, whether they were a band of brothers or mercenaries recruited individually for this mission.
If the kid on the stairs challenged him further, Brady would have to shoot him. That would bring other gunmen rushing into the stairwell and that would be bad.
The young gunman scoffed at the idea of calling Jackhammer, saying, “Yeah, right. Go ahead. God, I was really hoping you were my relief.”
“Sorry, man,” said Brady. “Hey. Put on your mask.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Brady waited while the gunman masked up, then said to Lyle and Lazaroff, “Okay, you two. Down we go.”