DeBlieu grunted as we heard that all Zodiac boats remained securely on board. “Lieutenant Peter Del Grazo to the bridge, please,” came a normal-sounding announcement, as if the guy was simply late for a shift.
DeBlieu said, “He was always helpful. Always volunteered to do extra.”
He’d ordered his searchers over his radio, “If you find him, we want to talk to him. But if you have to defend yourself, shoot.”
I kept thinking, What was Del Grazo doing with those patients when his back was turned from the camera? What the hell was he up to?
In all, at least forty people were scattered through the ship, looking for the fugitive. The Coasties were armed with M16s, but they were not warriors. They had not joined up to fight.
“At least he didn’t get a weapon.” DeBlieu sighed.
“That doesn’t mean he’s not armed. Do you search your crew each time they come on board when you’re in port?”
“No.”
“Do you sweep lockers, looking for drugs, weapons, contraband?”
“There’s no need…” he started to say, and stopped.
“Then he could have brought on a weapon at any time, or could have taken one from the Montana.”
DeBlieu headed into the bridge to join his officers, and I pulled out my Beretta sidearm and stepped inside and clomped down a stairwell. Now I was searching, too, for our human infection. Our saboteur. Our Chinese spy.
But the ship was a miniature city, and Del Grazo had a thousand places to hide, or to have stashed weapons. The Wilmington had multiple levels. It was stuffed with gear lockers and fan rooms, workshops, machine shops, store and supply rooms, prop shaft area, bow thruster room, twenty thousand cubic feet of cargo storage space alone. The ship’s planners had maximized the use of space. There were no spare inches.
I went cabin to cabin. I opened a door slowly; no one was supposed to be in the junior officer stateroom. I scanned empty bunks, a desk, a poster of the singer Adele, as a soundtrack left on played Kelly Clarkson doing “Stronger.” In the next cabin were books, Farewell to Arms, Old Man and the Sea, someone here taking the college lit class on board, taught by a professor from a university in Indiana.
A wallet lay on a deck. People here trusted each other.
No one under the bunk. Or in the shared bathroom separating two single-officer cabins.
In a male crew bunk room, twelve well-made steel berths were stacked in two-man tiers. It was quiet, except for the hissing of air whooshing from vents above the corners, and a muted scrape of an odd ice bit hitting the hull. For some reason, I smelled bananas.
I climbed through a hatch leading down — through a narrow hole, to a cargo hold. I stood amid a tumble of wooden crates and a thousand shadows.
Nobody!
“Level 04 clear, Captain, looks like!” my radio said.
You could search for a week and not find someone who knew the layout. You could search for two weeks if that someone kept moving, staying one cabin ahead, I thought.
If we find him, afterward we’ll try to disinfect. They must have bleach on board. We can wash down every wall, every cabin. But odds are we won’t get everything. Odds are the thing is out among the crew now.
Then my thoughts were interrupted. The ship’s alarms began ringing, as in the drills we’d practiced, except this time I had a feeling that Del Grazo was behind the alarm.
“Fire in the chief’s mess,” the overhead voice said. And then, sharply, no surprise, “This is not a drill.”
The chief’s lounge, most comfortable cabin aboard. The break room for lifers, petty officers. They’d had me in there once for a poker game. Best coffee. Best music. Plushest Barcalounger furniture. Either a football or a baseball game seemed to be playing at all times.
He’s not just hiding. But what is he doing?
Distraction? Sabotage? Escape?
Passages and stairwells filled with rushing, shouting figures in fire retardant suits, masks on, axes out, any panic on board previously now magnified. The danger was real now, and all anyone had to do to appreciate the extent of it was to see Marines, formerly quarantined, moving among the healthy crew.
Another announcement burst forth, five minutes later. “Fire in the radio room!”
Site of the long-range communication equipment and the cables running to the bridge.
The ship was a maze of machinery, electrical works, condensers. Fuel. Wiring. All vulnerable to fire. What had he done, I thought as I searched. Planted incendiary devices beforehand? Because the radio room was on a different deck entirely from the first fire.
It was always locked, but Del Grazo would have had a key and the combo to get in.
Four figures in fire-fighting gear unrolled a hose at the entrance of the science lounge. I glimpsed a sofa in flames, billowing black smoke. There was water on deck. The passageway smelled of burned foam. Maybe hell smelled that way also.
But I already knew that we’d sailed into white hell.
We’d done drills for accidental fires on the Wilmington. Drills for collisions and oil spill control, drills practicing fast boats down to evacuate a tour ship. Drills for ice hits, drills for heart attacks.
There were no drills for sabotage on the Wilmington.
I ran, Beretta out, down the main deck passageway, which connected — if you passed through a series of hatches — both ends of the ship, fore to aft. It passed the commissary and deck machinery equipment room and main generator room and auxiliary boiler room. There was a fire now in the engineering control center, up on level one.
SNAFU, situation normal all fucked up, as Eddie would say. At Quantico when we do searches we’re always in three-man teams. Watch your partners. Never go into a room alone. Always wait for the corner men to go in first.
Heart in my throat, I went into each room alone.
I was the corner man and also the main man. I opened the door of the commissary. I shoved it into the wall to make sure nobody was behind. I flicked on the light and advanced forward, pulse slamming. Inside were stacked shelves of logo T-shirts and sweatshirts, Wilmington hats, and red wool caps for designated “polar bears,” who had gone through the Arctic hazing. There were shaving kits for sale, and feminine hygiene products. There was no Peter Del Grazo crouching behind a stack of long-sleeved shirts showing a grinning walrus.
I continued aft, along the passageway. It was quiet at first down here, no footsteps, no shouting, but then I heard people coming and two burly white-suited figures with fire axes approached. I stared at the faceplates. It was impossible to see inside due to the sharp reflected overhead light.
I tightened my grip on the pistol. The figures came abreast, passed, disappeared. They were probably also checking compartments.
I kept going.
Ahead, on the right, three minutes later, I came upon a small bathroom, a head, in an isolated turn of corridor just before the hatch leading to the science area. I reached for the knob. The door creaked open. It was dark inside.
The light flooded on and I jumped. Five feet ahead I saw a figure but it was me, scared as shit, pointing a Beretta at a mirror.
But suddenly there was a white-suited figure behind me in the mirror, too, maybe one of the two guys who had passed earlier, except now his ax was raised, swinging down, toward me.