Chapter 4 - The Blast Door Trap
The screech of descending steel bulkheads reverberated through the deck plates as the automated lockdown isolated Sector Four from the rest of the USNS Resolute.
I rolled out of the drainage trench, pressing myself flat against the cold metal wall just as a pair of armed security guards rounded the corner thirty feet away, their flashlights cutting erratic beams through the crimson-tinted gloom.
"Clear!" the lead guard barked into his radio, his rifle raised and scanning the shadows. "Sector Four is completely buttoned up. If she’s down here, she’s in a box with no way out."
"Check the auxiliary steam vents," Vance's voice crackled over their shoulder radios. "Kane wants her brought up breathing if possible—he wants to know what she transmitted. If she refuses to talk, make it look like a steam valve rupture."
They were closing in, methodical and lethal, treating me like a rat in a maze.
I looked up. Running directly overhead was the primary atmospheric exhaust trunk—a wide, circular ventilation duct leading upward toward the upper superstructure near the auxiliary engine control room. It was narrow, rusted, and vented scorching air from the lower turbine exhausts, but it was the only vertical vector left.
As the guards advanced closer, sweeping their flashlights across the floor where I had been hiding seconds earlier, I sprang upward, catching the lip of the exhaust vent with my bare hands.
My muscles screamed in protest, burning with exhaustion from the swim and the cold, but adrenaline overpowered the pain. I hauled my weight up, wriggling headfirst into the narrow metal tube just as a burst of automatic gunfire pinged off the bulkhead directly beneath my boots.
Clang! Clang!
"Up in the vent! She’s heading for the auxiliary stack!"
I scrambled upward through the dark, twisting metal pipe, ignoring the searing heat radiating from the steam lines running alongside it. The air grew thicker, tasting of copper and soot, but I kept pushing, pulling myself hand over hand through the claustrophobic maze until I reached a heavy maintenance grate overlooking the Resolute’s main engine control room.
I kicked the rusted screws of the grate with the heel of my boot. With a sharp snap, the metal gave way, and I dropped silently onto the catwalk of the engine room below.
Before I could catch my breath, a heavy hand clamped down hard on my shoulder, spinning me around.
I threw a vicious, defensive elbow, aiming straight for the throat, but a strong grip caught my forearm mid-swing, slamming me back against the railing.
I looked up, ready to fight to the death—and froze.
Standing before me wasn't one of Kane’s guards. It was Chief Engineer Miller, the man who had secretly slipped me the waterproof evidence key the night before we set sail.
May you like
And right behind him, holding a suppressed sidearm pointed directly at my chest, stood a woman I thought was miles away in a secure Honolulu safehouse: Special Agent Sarah Vance of NCIS counter-intelligence.
---
