Odin led her up to the central console, but half the computer screens here were shot out. There were literally hundreds of bullet holes peppering the walls and equipment. “Goddammit. . . .”
They stepped around the console to find a dead crewman on the floor. McKinney caught her breath at the sight of his mangled body. He’d been shot so many times in the face and upper torso that most of that portion was spattering the walls and floor around him, along with a five-foot-diameter pool of half-dried blood. What humanized him to her in a disturbing way was the man’s Felix the Cat wristwatch and bright green sneakers.
McKinney ducked down as one of the smaller quadracopters hovered toward them. She sprayed her and Odin with pheromone again, her fear coming back.
Odin spoke into the intrateam radio. “Foxy, the nav computer screen’s been shot out. Half the bridge controls are fucked. I’m going to redirect the ship manually.”
“Got it. Escape boat’s ready to go when you are.”
“I’ll be here awhile. I need to make sure we’ll hit those rocks.”
“Standing by.”
Odin stood up and started tapping buttons to disengage the autopilot. Chimes sounded. Then Odin moved to the ship’s surprisingly small rudder wheel. Closely watching the ship’s compass, he started spinning it to port. Slowly the ship began to lean slightly to the right as its massive length turned left, toward the east.
McKinney came up alongside him, looking down the length of the massive ship, covered and alive with the colony of drones.
He looked at her. “Take the pheromone capsule and get to the escape boat.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He regarded her and shook his head. Then he grabbed the MBITR radio. “TOC, this is Safari-One-Six actual. We have successfully redirected the Ebba Maersk. Abort your attack run. Repeat. Abort your attack run.”
* * *
“Hallelujah! Hey, Mooch, Ripper, you hear that?” Smokey brought the powerful Bentley slaloming down a ramp and screeching around a pillar, while several of the lawn mower–sized quadracopters hovered down the ramp after him, opening up with machine guns as he passed. Seven or eight more drones were already on this deck, and their streaming bullets raked across lines of plastic-covered BMWs strapped in tight rows and pinged off the steel plating covering his windows and doors. “Goddammit!”
He keyed the radio. “You hear that, Captain Jönsson? Turn us to the mainland!”
There was a pause, and the captain’s voice came in. “We’ve got two feet of water in the engine room. We’re taking on water in three compartments. There are fires on four decks!”
Smokey cringed as he passed a garage compartment with dozens of sedans fully engulfed in flames—smoke billowing up through the powerful vents and fire sprinklers engaged. “Will the damned thing stay afloat?”
A pause. “It’ll stay afloat.”
“Then turn the damned boat!”
Smokey screeched around a corner, smashing a drone against the wall and smearing it to pieces in a shower of sparks. But then something caught under his wheel and the Bentley veered sharply and flipped onto its side as it slid down a ramp onto the heavy equipment deck.
“Dammit!” Smokey held on as the car rolled and landed against another pillar at the base of the ramp. It finally came to a stop, and already bullets were raking its sides. He keyed the radio. “Ripper! Mooch! I need help. I’m rolled!” He tried to kick the top door open, but the deck ceiling was too low with the car on its side to open the door.
Ripper’s voice came in. “Coming.”
Smokey tried to shrink his body to as small a silhouette as possible as hovering drones riddled the Bentley with gunfire. He grabbed the key and turned the engine off. Then he aimed his MP5 through a narrow view port in the steel, raking a quadracopter drone.
He heard a large engine headed his way and moved to the other side just in time to see the bucket of the front loader lowering and smashing into the side of his car, spinning it free of the ramp and sliding it across the decking on its roof before raising the bucket and flipping it right-side up. Inside he went sprawling against the door.
Smokey crawled back toward the front seat, shouting into his radio, “Goddamn you, Ripper!”
“You all right?”
“Yeah.” He watched the front loader smash its bucket down on top of a quadracopter drone firing at her, crushing it against the floor.
“Die, fucker! Die!”
“You’re a sick lady, Ripper.”
* * *
Evans followed the captain up a narrow flight of steel stairs and gazed back behind them at rising, bubbling seawater amid thick pipes and machinery below. Adrenaline had by now made him almost completely sober.