A guard jogged down the steps from the Sun Deck. He stopped outside the Spa’s shattered doors and pulled off his mask. White-blond hair spilled onto his shoulders.
Brady. Oh, my God, it was Brady.
He’d been shot. Blood ran down the side of his face and the shirt he was wearing was dripping red. He didn’t see her.
Brady shouted, “Passengers. I’m a passenger, too. The crew is now armed. Lie flat. Keep your head down.”
The double doors opened out from the Spa and the Luna Grill at the same time.
Men in whites ran out and took positions where they could find them. They were ordinary men, pot-bellied, gray-haired, and some of them were holding rifles, others handguns. Yuki recognized them as ships’ officers.
Looking around, she saw six men in fatigues, all of them finding cover. There was shooting, and people yelled and cursed. Glass shattered. Bottles flew through the air. Yuki squatted behind the bar, hands over her ears when Becky grabbed her arm.
“Yuki. Come with us. Run!”
Yuki said, “That’s Brady. My husband.”
But Becky was already heading for the Luna Grill, her arm around her ten-year-old son, her husband corralling them from behind. A blast of gunfire came from a gunman kneeling beside the bandstand outside the Grill, and Becky’s husband went down.
Becky’s screams were lost in the commotion on the deck, but even in the gray dawn, Yuki saw that the passengers were fighting back with guns, knives, and glass shards—whatever they could throw, swing, or stab with.
Yuki looked for something she could use to arm herself. There was a bottle of champagne deep in the back of the bar and she grabbed it by the neck. She found a paring knife in a drawer, and slipped it into her pocket.
She looked for Brady. He’d been right there! Suddenly, a hand in her hair pulled her from behind the bar. She kicked out, dropped the bottle, and punched air, and then she was dragged to her feet.
It was Brady who yelled, “Put her down!”
The voice belonging to the man who held her asked, “Is this your wife?”
Yuki recognized the voice: It was Jackhammer’s.
The realization rose in her from her feet to her throat, as if her body had filled with frigid water. She wasn’t going to be saved. This was her last moment on earth. She looked at the pink line of sun rising over the railing. She thought of her dead mother, Keiko, holding out her arms to her.
She looked at Brady for the last time.
She focused on her husband’s eyes and heard Jackhammer say into her ears, “Here’s my little volunteer. Just in time.”
CHAPTER 95
CAPTAIN GEORGE BERLINGHOFF ran out onto the deck from the Luna Grill at the bow, four of his officers behind him, men who’d never been in battle, men with wives and children and aspirations.
Maybe they thought of the ones they loved as they stared out at the chaos and the bloodshed, the downed passengers crawling, trailing blood, the nearly dead and the clearly dead, innocent people in pajamas, many of them fighting back with fists and bottles and whatever they could find.
As the captain of a tourist ship, he was going by Brady’s plan and a lot of old war movies he’d seen from his couch. He waded into a battlefield, armed with one of the dead commandos’ assault rifles.
He did what Brady had said to do.
He assessed the situation and he looked for opportunities. And then he saw Brady, frozen in place right at the foot of the stairs.
Incongruous music from the speakers in the bar wafted across the deck.
As Berlinghoff tried to put the scene together, he saw that Brady was advancing on the overturned bar. Actually, he was coming toward one of the terrorists, who was holding a woman in front of him, using her as a shield.
He heard the gunman shout at Brady, “Is this your wife?”
Berlinghoff slung the AK and pulled his handgun from his belt—the old revolver with one round in the chamber.
Jackhammer was occupied with Brady and didn’t see or hear Berlinghoff come up from behind. Berlinghoff looked over the gun sight to the back of the commando’s neck. He was too close to miss.
He had his finger on the trigger—when suddenly shots rang out and his gun spun from his hand. Blood spurted from his wrist, and he shouted, “Damn!”
He gripped his wrist but blood pumped out between his fingers. More bullets punched into him.
Mother of God. He was hit.
CHAPTER 96
BULLETS CHATTERED ACROSS the Pool Deck. Pop music blasted out of the bar speakers. But despite the terrifying and discordant sights and sounds, Brady’s focus was on Yuki in Jackhammer’s headlock, staring at him as though she was already a ghost.
Jackhammer had pulled Yuki tight to his body and he leaned over her shoulder. Brady thought he was talking to her.