Hope to Die (Alex Cross 22)

“What the fuck is this?” he said, looking terrified. “Who the fuck are you? Some kind of pirate?”

CHAPTER

92

I TOOK IN THE rest of the room at a glance, seeing closed compartments and charts, a coffeemaker, and little else. “My name is Alex Cross. I’m a Washington, DC, homicide detective. You?”

“Creel,” he choked, staring incredulously at me. “Scotty Creel. I’m the captain.”

“Are you aware that your crew is dead?” I asked.

He stared at my gun now, looking shocked and almost frantic with fear. “Why’d you kill them?”

“No, I found them dead just now,” I said. “One in the engine room. One in the galley.”

“Hawkes?” Creel said in dismay. “Timbo?”

“Where’s Sunday?”

He recognized that name right away, and he looked stunned. “No—you think that guy—”

I cut him off. “Where is he?”

The captain’s hands were still raised as he gestured behind him, through the window. “Out there, checking up on his research project. What in God’s name is he—”

“Show me,” I ordered, and crossed the room.

Creel turned the chair halfway and stood uncertainly before pointing out the window and saying in a wavering voice: “See the one there with the solar panels? The single one forward on the main deck? It’s supposed to be some kind of refrigeration experiment.”

“Can you put the barge on autopilot?” I asked.

“On this stretch?” the captain said, incredulous. “No way. The river’s heavily silted, and sandbars are always changing. It’s a sight job the next twenty miles to Port Sulphur.”

“You have a gun aboard?”

“A real gun?” he said. “No. A flare gun? Yes. You want it?”

Shaking my head, I said, “What I want you to do is get on that shortwave of yours and call in the nearest law enforcement agency. Tell them to send a medevac unit.”

“Medevac?” Creel said, confused.

“There are people being held hostage in that refrigeration unit,” I said. “My family.”

“What?” he said, his expression twisting to disbelief as he looked from me to the window and then back. “No, I never heard … all this time he …”

Looking frightened again, he said in an almost tearful voice, “Look, Detective, I had absolutely no idea that anyone was holding anyone hostage on my boat. I swear to God, Sunday said it was a test trial, see if his solar—”

“Make the call and we’ll talk later,” I said, turning away from him.

“I’ll call the Coast Guard,” he said, sounding calmer. “They have a search-and-rescue unit out of New Orleans.”

“Perfect,” I said as I went out the door. “Tell them to bring an armed escort and to notify the FBI that this entire vessel is a crime scene.”

I could hear Creel calling behind me as I pounded down the staircase. “U.S. Coast Guard, this is the river barge Pandora, I have a medical and law enforcement emergency south of mile forty-six. Repeat, I have a—”

The door slammed shut, and I was left with deadly purpose that carried me down the staircase to the deck. I circled to the starboard side, jogged forward in a crouch tight to the stacks of containers. When I reached the corner nearest the bow, I took a quick look around, saw that the container car with the solar panels and the forward reefer unit was not fifteen yards away.

There was a hatchlike door below the reefer. It hung loose on its hinges.