He moved the camera in search of Comfrey and her assistants. While he didn’t find the three women, he did find the rest of the Karaveht corpses. That’s when he realized every one of them was staring in the same direction.
What were they looking at?
He switched to the third camera and finally located Comfrey and her assistants. The three women were standing in the east corner, motionless, staring at the wall—which appeared to be where all the corpses were staring.
The mindless standing and staring were the only commonalities the three women shared with the Karaveht specimens. For one thing, unlike the naked villagers, Comfrey and the lab technicians were fully clothed—although their slacks and lab coats were rumpled and stained. The three women didn’t have any damage to their bodies either. No dried blood, no missing body parts, not even a single wound. Instead, they looked perfectly healthy...completely unharmed.
Other than their blank expressions and mindless staring, one wouldn’t know something was wrong.
He leaned in for a closer inspection. Had they even been infected? If they had, where were the signs of violence...of murderous behavior?
But if they weren’t infected, where was the horror at being locked in a room with a dozen reanimated corpses? Where was the terror at the possibility of becoming infected themselves? Comfrey had panicked during that last phone call. Where was that alarm now? She wasn’t even trying to get away from the dead villagers, and several of the Karaveht specimens were touching her.
Comfrey didn’t appear to care. Hell, she didn’t seem to notice.
Day 31
San Francisco Bay, California
The night was clear and cool. The bright sphere of the moon hung low in the sky, its platinum shimmer dancing across the smooth surface of the bay. The fresh, briny scent of the ocean filled Aiden’s lungs, and the spray from the Zodiac’s wash slipped over the gunwale, slapping him in the face.
Aiden braced his left hand against the boat’s inflatable side, his body swaying as he straddled the craft’s gunwale. The 55-horsepower, two-stroke engine screamed behind him. Wind pounded him. Engine vibrations numbed his legs and ass.
The sensations were as familiar as the moon above…as comfortable as a worn pair of boots.
How many times had he assaulted a target from the water, listened to the Zodiac’s scream, felt the ocean spray pummel his face? Fuck, more times than he could remember. This was familiar territory.
Yet not.
He’d never assaulted a stateside ship before. Never gone after a US citizen in US waters. Hell, regardless of how urgent the situation was, assaulting Malcolm Oura’s ship was against United States law. Hell, acting in a law enforcement capacity, even though it had been necessary, was exactly what had gotten Mackenzie and his boys 86’d from SOCOM.
As the wind slashed at him and the engine shrieked and the dark clad bulk of the Shadow Mountain warriors surrounded him, his sense of deja vu intensified. Yet he felt lost...alone. Like something was missing. Something essential. Because these men were not his teammates. His real crew had been stolen from him in the hills above Karaveht.
A tenth of a klick from their target, the Zodiac slowed. Cosky, who was piloting the craft, cut the engine.
In the middle of the boat, surrounded by warriors straddling or lying along the gunwale, sat Capland. His broad figure was huddled inside a black rainslicker. Aiden turned, watching the computer guru reach beneath the slicker and ease out a laptop. He opened it, turned on a small flashlight which he stuck between his teeth, and aimed it at the screen. His fingers raced over the keyboard and the hushed clickity-clack of computer keys filled the Zodiac.
Back on the chopper, after too much discussion, Wolf and Capland had chosen this location for the second attempt to hack the ship’s AIS. The farther the Zodiac was from Oura’s ship, the more likely it was to avoid detection, and the less likelyto become target practice. Assuming the huddled mass of the standing and staring brigade was capable of targeting anything.
As the computer dude tapped away at his keyboard, Mackenzie raised his head from the back of the boat, where he sprawled along the gunwale in front of Zane and Cosky. “You think any of those brainiacs up front have thought past hacking into the ship’s navigation?”
Wolf and O’Neill ignored the question. Capland continued tapping, while Aiden turned to the gleaming swath of water between them and Oura’s glowing cruise ship.
Aiden shrugged, his gaze drifting up to the sky, with its oversized, shining moon. “First things first. After we take control of the navigation, we can figure out the next steps.
Mackenzie grunted. “Someone’s bound to turn the navigation off once the Harbinger starts moving.”
True. Aiden shrugged again.
“It’s worth a shot. Worst case, we’ll switch to plan B.” Of course, it would help if they had a plan B. Which they didn’t. But hell, he was good at improvising.
“Even if we do grab control of that ship and pilot it out to sea,” Zane’s voice came from the back of the boat, “what then? We can’t abandon it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Someone will notice it sitting there and hop on board to investigate.”
“Can’t anchor it that far out, anyway,” Rawlings added. “What’s to keep it from driftin’?”
“Can’t blow the damn thing up,” Aiden pointed out. “Not when we don’t know if the crew is infected.”
An uneasy silence fell. Dealing with terrorists and mass murderers was easier. The gray areas were unconscious killers.
