“Remember you got fiancée now, Larry.”
“You see a ring on this finger?” He laughed. “All right, all right. We both know I ain’t cheatin’ on Shawna, even for the good cause of spreadin’ the stuff around. You know back in the day, you would never have even brought that up.”
“Back in the day we had no Eden Plague. No use complaining now. I have no such inhibition. I have no commitment to stop me from ‘spreading the stuff around.’”
“Damn, Sam, you gonna rub my face all up in that, huh? Buddy’s only half a word aroun’ here.”
“So solly, Larry-san,” Spooky mocked. “Here, I got girlie disk for you. Asian hotties.” Spooky tossed a DVD at his friend.
“Great. Just freakin’ great.”
***
In one of the enormous buffet cafeterias Larry sat methodically shoveling food into his maw while staring out over the moving ocean. The Bahamas receded in the distance; tomorrow morning they would arrive in Cancun, Mexico. Normally he would be ecstatic to go on a cruise like this – meet women, play some poker in the ship’s casino, eat and drink his fill. This time his mind was taken up with more important things.
That didn’t stop him from enjoying the food.
He wondered how DJ was getting on, then pushed it out of his mind, feeling a trifle guilty. Here they were, living it up, while Daniel was driving across the country along the southern route, mostly I-10 and I-20, toward the opening salvo in their battle to make a better world. He laughed silently at himself; it sounded pretentious even in his own head.
He firmly quashed his doubts and went back for more. The fish was excellent.
Spooky came in with a full tray and sat down across from him. “Almost showtime.”
“Yep. You got your man picked out?”
“Yes. Piece of cake.”
“You ain’t got no cake on your tray.”
Spooky scowled, mock-serious. “You a funny spook, Larry.”
“And you a funny gook, Spooky. When do you want to nab him?”
“End of his shift, two hours. I told him to come by our cabin, we play Mahjong for money.”
“How’d you convince him to risk getting in trouble for doing that?”
Spooky stared at Larry, cocking his head in disbelief. “What, you kidding? I told him we play Mahjong for money. That like telling you a hottie waiting in your room in the bed.”
Larry choked back a laugh, covering his face with his napkin. “That was the old me.”
“Okay then, like telling you Shawna waiting in your room in the bed; how is that, smart guy?”
“I get it. You know your people best.”
“He is not my people, he is Chinese. I am thuong Degar, from Vietnam.”
“You little guys all look the same to me.”
“Yeah, you big guys too. If you not black I forget who you are.”
“You never used to talk so much before the Eden Plague.”
Spooky stared hard at Larry, then smiled faintly. “Before, I have too much confusion in my mind. To kill many, many men is…disturbing. Now the confusion is lifted. Everything is clear.”
***
Spooky, dressed in the clothing of the man they had sedated in their suite, walked brazenly into the ship’s lower-deck service area, a place the paying customers would never see. Spacious carpeted corridors and pleasant colors gave way to rubber and metal and harsh white lights, cramped passageways and the hustle and bustle of the enormous cruise ship’s below-decks. He turned sideways repeatedly to slide past as other similarly-dressed people, many Asian and even smaller than he was, hurried about their tasks.
He turned down each corridor in turn, comparing the numbers and letters written on the walls against the route he had memorized, until he came to a hatch marked “Crew Only.”
Stepping through the hatch, he ducked behind an enormous painted pipe. Setting down the nondescript utility bag he carried, he pulled his staff server’s tunic over his head and stashed it, revealing a white naval style uniform with Lieutenant’s banded epaulets very like the ones worn by the real crew. It wouldn’t pass close inspection but he hoped it would at least keep a casual observer from alerting to him right off.
Down three metal and steel-mesh ladders, then through several more twists and turns he burrowed into the bowels of the enormous cruise ship. Soon he found the location he had memorized, a condensation reclamation pipe with a thick rubberlike join where it made an odd curve among the machinery.
There was no one in sight, just the humming of the mechanisms of the engines and pumps and vents that controlled the fluids of the modern vessel – hydraulic fluids, fuel, oil, air, and water. Spooky set the bag down and removed one of the horse-needle syringes they had prepared. Without hesitation he shoved the sharp metal tube through the soft joint, into the feed from the central desalination system that supplied the thousands of people aboard with water.
Water to drink, water to prepare food in the kitchens, water to bathe in and fill the swimming pools and jacuzzis. Water to spray from their showers, atomizing the virus mixture into the air of the enclosed stalls, so it would carry the Eden Plague to resting places in their lungs, where it would take root, invading their cells, bestowing its gifts and demanding its payments.
Leaving the syringe in after the initial injection, Spooky pulled out the plunger and attached a hose to the plastic tube. This ran to a two-liter soda bottle of the Plague solution, which Spooky taped inverted to the back of a nearby fitting. His carbon-fiber knife flashed, poking a tiny hole in the uppermost surface of the bottle, allowing air in, defeating the vacuum principle that would have impeded the flow down through the hose. Gravity would do the rest, dripping the virus-laden fluid into the vast clean-water tanks.
“Hey, you there. What are you doing?” The Afrikaans-accented voice was indignant, official.
Spooky turned around to placate whoever it was. He saw an officer of the crew with Commander’s stripes, sandy blonde hair, protruding teeth and a nametag that said “de Voort.”
“Just making a repair, sir,” Nguyen said in his best false British accent.
The man licked his lips. His eyes flicked over the tube running around behind the fitting, then focused on Spooky’s right hand. “What’s that you have there?”
“Just a tool, sir.” He held the thing up, showing the handle and concealing the blade behind his turned hand. But he had forgotten just how sharp the high-tech edge on this knife was, as the pressure of his own palm opened his flesh against it. Blood suddenly ran dribbling down his upraised arm.
Commander de Voort might be middle-aged and running to fat, a long ways from the South African Navy where he began and long unused to dangerous situations, but his instincts were still good. He turned and bolted for the nearest passageway, yelling for help.
Spooky leaped after him. If the commander sounded the alarm, the whole plan might come crashing down. Desperately he lunged, catching hold of the fleeing man’s uniform tunic.
De Voort yelled louder and spun, swinging Spooky painfully into the corner of a railing.
The little man hung on grimly with his one hand, bringing the knife up in the other, threatening. “Stop!” Spooky gasped, but de Voort ignored him. The bigger man pummeled the Vietnamese on the head and shoulders with his fists, bruising him.
Spooky dropped the knife to the deck with a clatter and struck the commander a foul blow with his free hand, perhaps four inches below his belt. The man folded up, gasping with shock. Picking up the knife, Nguyen put the blade to de Voort’s throat. “Be silent!” The ceramic-edged, razor-sharp blade was covered with Spooky’s own blood, which gave him an idea. He slid the knife down to slice a ribbon of skin on the other man’s forearm. The edge was so sharp that it was seconds before the commander even felt the sting. “Be silent or I will cut your throat! Turn over!”