Assignment- Death Ship Read online

  Chapter 1

  Durell squinted into the Caribbean glare, searching the distance where the stricken liner Sun Rover could be expected to emerge from its shroud of salt haze. A Coast Guard cutter would be there, too, the Henry.

  They were being called death ships, floating tombs, but no one really knew why. Nor would they know until Durell and John Nelson and Maj. Charles P. Miller set foot on their decks.

  En route to St. Thomas after an overnight stay in San Juan, the Sun Rover had reported no problems, until a garbled transmission called on the Coast Guard to render emergency medical assistance. Despite repeated queries, its radio remained silent after that single call. Nearly the same had happened to the cutter. Its helicopter had flown west to Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico, picked up a medical team, landed on the Sun Rover, and fallen silent. All that was known after that was the Henry had arrived on the scene and dispatched a boat to investigate—and had not been heard from since.

  Durell glanced back into the helicopter’s shadowed cabin. The crew-cut, hard-jawed Nelson waited in grim readiness beside Chuck Miller, a paunchy man of fifty with a round, fatherly face and thoughtful eyes. Maj. Miller lifted his brows. Durell shrugged, not sure what he was questioning. Nelson stared out the window.

  Durell was chief field agent for K Section, an anonymous splinter of the clandestine services that formed the troubleshooting arm of the CIA. Nelson was a junior field officer in the same agency.

  Durell watched the horizon and exhaled slowly to dispel the anxiety he felt. It was a brilliantly sunny day, with visibility limited to about ten miles by haze. Durell’s was one of three Navy SH-3H choppers flying in V formation. The other two were along to observe and assist in returning survivors to Puerto Rico—if there were any.

  Aerial surveillance had followed loss of contact with the Henry. Durell had seen the photos upon his arrival at Roosevelt Roads.

  The decks were littered with bodies.

  And no one knew what had happened, or how, or why.

  Could be as many as a thousand victims. . . .

  The copilot tapped Durell’s shoulder and pointed into the haze on the horizon, drawing his attention to two vague, linear shapes that were the stricken ships. Durell pointed them out to Nelson and Maj. Miller.

  “They looked perfectly normal from here,” Nelson observed.

  “But something happened—something that apparently killed everyone aboard,” Maj. Miller said.

  Durell watched the approaching ships. “Finding out what it was is only the beginning. Who caused it is the next question.”

  “Terrorists.” It was Nelson, his jaw hard. “The world’s full of people willing to kill for attention.”

  “Never on this scale,” Durell replied. “No one’s taken responsibility.”

  “I wager they’ll crow before the day is over, the devils,” Maj. Miller growled, tapping an empty pipe on his palm in emphasis. He wiped flakes of black crust on his jumpsuit.

  Durell waited and worried. His would be the third party to board the Sun Rover, and the first to come back alive—if he were lucky.

  He was a big man with a lean and agile build. His eyes were the color of blue-black storm clouds, and the stormier his temper, the blacker they got. Despite the countless hazards he’d survived, the split-second judgments that had meant the difference between life and death—sometimes death, and he had to live with that, too—his face was youthful. His thick mat of black hair held only a sprinkling of gray at the temples. His grandpa Jonathan had reared him a gambler and a hunter, with a beached riverboat his home and the Louisiana bayous his stalking ground. The lessons had served him well in a game, covering the world, with stakes as high as they could get.

  The two ships were much nearer now. They shone like ghosts, their white sides radiating foreboding as they drifted.

  “Ready with the suits?” Durell asked calmly.

  “Roger, Sam,” Maj. Miller replied. Lovingly, he raised a silver-colored suit designed to cover a man from head to toe for protection from biological or chemical agents. Built into the hood was a breathing mask shaped like a rat’s nose, with enormous round goggles. “Get into this, and I’ll check you over,” he said. He also gave one to Nelson.

  When all three of them were clad in the baggy garments, they tested the built-in transceivers and looked each other over. Durell’s suit was cumbersome; the freon-cooled air of its self-contained breathing pack chilled the sweat around his collar and under his armpits, and it smelled of rubber. He felt the weight of an autonomous transmitter in a pocket on his sleeve. It would radio continuous readings of the suit’s interior, environment, plus his pulse and respiration, to a console in one of the other helicopters. In case he was overcome while alone, the others could be alerted and perhaps save his life. Of course, the suit was meant to preclude any problems, but he didn’t mind the backup. Maj. Miller was familiar with the gear. All NASA spinoffs. Durell was content to let him be the expert.

  The major was more scientist than soldier, having earned a doctorate in biochemistry from MIT. A bachelor, he’d spent most of his working life in laboratories. On the flight from Washington, he had told Durell that women were the cause of most of the troubles in the world. “Science,” he’d added with a chuckle, “has caused most of the rest. ”

  Durell hadn’t pursued it.

  “Look. We’re passing over the cutter,” Nelson said.

  The three looked down, then at each other after the Henry had flashed by. “Must have been twenty, thirty men lying on the deck,” Maj. Miller said. “What’s the Henry's complement?”

  “Fifteen officers and a hundred forty-nine men,” Durell said. “If the rest were all right, the dead would be off the deck by now.”

  “Whatever hit them must have been brought back from the Sun Rover by their boarding party,” Maj. Miller said.

  Durell said, “Maybe they found a canister of poison gas or nerve gas—something really lethal, like Sarin—and took it back and accidentally popped the cork.”

  “Maybe,” Maj. Miller said. He was thoughtful. “I certainly know of no disease that kills so quickly.”

  “If it’s gas, it’ll be dispersed by now, but what if it is a disease?” Durell asked. “The chopper crews aren’t protected, and they’ll have to get in close to drop us off; couldn’t they catch something from germs in the air?”

  “Most germs don’t live long in air and sunlight, Sam. They’ve got to have an organic medium, whether it’s a body or a body’s excretions, humus, filthy water—it depends on what kind of bacteria it is, of course.” Maj. Miller took a breath. “Some sort of pathogen could have been blown through the ship’s ventilating system initially, but only by quickly finding host organisms—the bodies of the passengers—could it have survived.”

  “But the Henry’s boarding party—” Durell began.

  “Undoubtedly tried to aid the passengers, touched them, their body products, breathed their exhalations—remember, a sneeze throws out millions of germs, although most of them may survive only briefly,” Maj. Miller said.

  “Then you think it was a germ?” asked Nelson. He liked things pinned down.

  “My God, man, how could it have been? There is no germ that could have done that,” Maj. Miller said.

  Nelson blinked at the outburst, then turned his hardened face back to the window.

  Durell heard the helicopter’s rotor make a flat whacking noise as they began to hover. They were over their destination. The pilot’s voice came through the headset. “It looks mighty grim, gentlemen,” he announced.

  A crewman opened the door and assisted Durell with the sling he would ride down to the deck. “Nelson, you come next,” he said, and swung into the air and down.
Five hundred miles north of Venezuela, it was a perfect Caribbean afternoon—until he looked down. The sight brought a bitter taste to the back of his tongue.

  Bloating corpses littered the hot decks of the luxury liner. He noticed the women first, in their gaudy holiday dresses with the sun shining on their wind-tossed hair. Both sexes were scattered everywhere, many in contorted poses, knees drawn up tightly from their last moments of agony. Few huddled together, as if pain had blotted out any pretty thoughts of accompanying each other into death and left them writhing alone, like poisoned ants. Here and there Durell picked out the white uniforms of ship personnel. All in the same awkward attitudes of strewn mannequins. In the emerald water of the swimming pool corpses floated or lay darkly against the bottom, fully clothed.

  Among the hundreds of figures, not one stirred.

  Lowered slowly through the turbulent air, he thought how the Sun Rover’s winter-weary passengers—mostly from the New York City region—must have thought they were living a sunny dream—until it had turned into a nightmare.

  He glanced at the chronometer strapped to his wrist: barely six hours had passed since the ship’s sole call for assistance.

  The captain must have waited too long to request help, when minutes had counted. By the time the signal was authorized, it already was too late.

  The American public knew nothing of this, Durell remembered. Maybe it never would. Sugar Cube and the joint chiefs had been kept posted hourly.

  Behind the frost-coated windows of the nation’s capital the top levels of government had been jolted by the tragedy. Hurried meetings and hushed conferences had been convened in the greatest secrecy.

  How could such loss of life have been engineered?

  Who had perpetrated it?

  Why?

  The leaders of America waited in their plush Washington offices for the other shoe to fall. . . .

  Durell waited beneath the hovering helicopter until Nelson came down beside him. He liked Nelson, who was young and ambitious and seemed to spend more nights with dossiers and training manuals than with his petite wife. There wasn’t a manual for everything, but Durell hadn’t told him that; he’d have to get more years of experience under his belt before he’d be ready to believe it.

  The enveloping suit made the scene beyond Durell’s goggles a dreamlike one of flags fluttering silently in a breeze he couldn’t feel. Gulls wheeled. A ship’s newspaper flapped past his feet.

  Nelson’s voice was edgy. “I’ll start below decks,” he said.

  “Right. I’ll head upstairs. I’m making an announcement on the PA, so there’s no need to look in every room. Just get through it; get the pictures. Any survivors can assemble on the foredeck.”

  “Survivors? Sure.” His tone was sarcastic, doubtful. Then he added, “It’s a big ship; I can’t believe they’re going to send her to the bottom.”

  “They can’t take a chance on contaminating a port.”

  Durell sounded matter-of-fact. “Better get moving. There isn’t much time.” He watched Nelson pick his way through the bodies that littered the deck. Vision, especially downward vision, was poor in these masks. Nelson’s silvery form reminded him of some sort of graveyard apparition among the dead.

  “Maj. Miller?” Durell called.

  “Yo, Cajun.” The scientist used Durell’s code name.

  “Come down for your samples when you get the all-clear. Should be shortly.” The threat of attack was only a distant possibility, but the major was too valuable to risk.

  “How about now? I have work to do.”

  “You’ll get it done,” Durell said. He started for the bridge, a feeling of threat weighing against him. Death was all around, with no visible cause. The suit was cumbersome and heavy; it made him feel vulnerable. Climbing stairs in the boxy shoes was difficult. The ocean shimmered far below; his airpack chilled the sweat popping out on his brow. Gulls made white trails around the black-topped funnel, where thin smoke still swirled. But the vessel had no motion at all.

  The eerie feeling persisted—he took comfort from the heavy .45 automatic strapped to his hip, even though his usual weapon was a snub-nosed .38 S&W revolver.

  Nelson’s flat voice came through the earphone. “God! Vomit and shit everywhere. We aren’t going to find anyone alive on this tub, Cajun.”

  “Just keep looking. Are you getting the pictures?”

  “Sure, but I don’t know who’d want to see them.”

  “You’re not taking them for the six o’clock news,” Durell said.

  The photos would be a record for secret archives buried deep in the Virginia countryside. They might not be made public for a hundred years, if then; or, if there should be a criminal trial, they could be submitted as evidence.

  The ship and all it held would be long gone.

  Durell put all his weight against the wheelhouse door and shoved. He found a dead deck officer blocking it; the helmsman was crumpled behind the wheel. The captain was alone in his quarters, lying on the floor. His knees were drawn up and his elbows were turned in over his belly, almost touching, as if to fend off cramping. The blotched flesh of his face held the remains of a grimace; the whites of his eyes showed a bloodshot yellow.

  Durell’s measured breathing sounded in his ears. The deck trembled minutely to vibrations from machinery far below.

  There was no clue to the disaster in the log.

  He thumbed the PA switch, announced for survivors to assemble on the foredeck, then began working his way through staterooms, lounges, restaurants, deck by deck, moving swifdy.

  Nothing happened.

  “Maj. Miller?” he called.

  “I’m still waiting.” He sounded annoyed.

  “You may come down now.”

  Durell kept moving, knowing that Maj. Miller knew what to do. Since taking corpses ashore presented an unacceptable degree of hazard to the health of the populace, the scientist would collect tissue and blood samples on board and deliver them to agency pathologists. He would also attempt to find the source of whatever it was that had killed these people.

  Durell stepped past a fallen steward.

  Victims slumped where they had died sitting against the corridor wall.

  Nelson’s voice broke the silence. “Infirmary’s full, all dead.”

  “I read. Keep moving,” Durell replied.

  “Right. I’m getting the willies. Let’s get finished,” Nelson said. “Must have been some panic down here. I found a piece of a dress snagged on an open porthole. I guess she must have jumped.”

  Durell looked grimly about him, at the grandparents and honeymooners, the lovers real and hopeful who last night had danced in San Juan moonlight.

  Their teeth gleamed dryly.

  Maj. Miller’s words came through. “I’ve found it; it’s in the ventilating system, sure enough. There’s a timer, a bottle fixed with a spray nozzle, and a fired C02 cartridge. It blew the solution in there and it was all over the ship in no time.”

  Nelson spoke. “Solution of what?”

  “Wouldn’t we all like to know,” Durell said. Directing his words to the other, he said: “Bag it, major. Good work.”

  “It must be incredibly potent. The whole apparatus fits in my palm,” Maj. Miller said. He sounded admiring in spite of himself—and a bit fearful.

  Durell addressed the pilot of the helicopter. “You may lower the specimen locker.” Then, to Maj. Miller: “Got your slides yet, major?”

  “Roger.”

  “Very well. Everybody to the foredeck.” He felt the grip of tension begin to loosen. The Sun Rover was accursed, but at least his party would leave it alive. He had been taking stairs two steps at a time when Nelson’s voice suddenly stopped him.

  “Hello!” There was surprised disbelief in the word.

  Durell waited in suspense.

  “I won’t harm you; what are you hiding?” Nelson said.

  Durell broke in. “Who do you have, Nelson? Where are you?” He was apprehensive.
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br />   “A survivor,” Nelson replied. “Pretty, too. I don’t think the sight of this bio-chem suit is helping, though. She looks scared crazy. Freaked out.” His voice became tense, coaxing. “Give it to me. Give it here, miss. She’s got a knife. . . .”

  “Be careful,” Durell said. “Don’t try to disarm her until I get there.” He looked back and forth through the big goggles, annoyed by their limited vision, twisting his shoulders awkwardly. “I said where are you,” he repeated.

  “I can handle it, Cajun.”

  Durell heard a hard gasp, a distant, muted cry which must have come from the woman, and Nelson’s panting. “I got her. We’re coming up. ” There was something in his voice. . . .

  “Are you all right?” Durell asked.

  “I got a little cut on the arm. Just a scratch.” He spoke lightly, but his voice shook.

  Durell cursed silently. He could do nothing more. He went and stood below the beating blades of the helicopter, waiting for the others, wondering what would happen to Nelson. Maybe nothing. Maybe whatever had wiped out life here had done its work and died, or dissipated in the air. Maybe—by some miracle—the knife wasn’t contaminated. He also remembered that Maj. Miller carried a selection of antidotes for just this eventuality. They could only shoot Nelson full of them and hope for the best.

  A specimen locker dangled beneath the helicopter, awaiting the arrival of Maj. Miller. It would be decontaminated, along with everything else, before being hauled into the aircraft. Every possibility of contaminating the helicopter had been guarded against, even to the extent of changing and showering in a chamber lowered by a support chopper before leaving the ship.

  Maj. Miller came out of the superstructure. Durell saw the concern in his eyes, even through the goggles. The scientist held up two bags, showing them to Durell. One was for tissue and blood samples, the other for the spraying mechanism. He placed them in the specimen locker and signaled for it to be cranked up to the helicopter.

  “No idea what was in the bottle?” Durell asked.

  “None, sorry to say. Only a laboratory investigation will come up with an answer.”