Chapter 47 - Mutiny on the Frozen Deck
The alarm klaxons began to wail—a deep, rhythmic maritime horn that shook the hull plates beneath our feet.
*WARNING: SONAR CONTACT. MULTIPLE VAMPIRES INBOUND. RANGE: TWELVE MILES.*
The salon’s automated blast shutters slammed down over the floor-to-ceiling glass, cutting off the view of the burning blizzard and locking us inside an iron tomb lit only by the pulsing amber glow of tactical emergency lights.
Suddenly, the catwalk snipers above didn't fire at Sofia. They fired at Marcus.
High-caliber suppressed rounds tore through the mahogany desk, shattering Marcus’s crystal tumbler and shredding the edge of his woolen blanket. Christian Vane—the polite, cultured executor who had extracted us from Geneva—stepped backward into the catwalk elevator, a submachine gun in his hands and a cruel, triumphant smile on his lips.
"I apologize for the premature transfer of power, Marcus," Christian’s voice crackled through the salon's public address system. "The Iron Accord offered me something you never could: eighty percent of the Siberian vaults, and the coordinates to the Greenland gold stores."
Sofia was already moving. With ruthless, terrifying precision, she fired two rapid double-taps upward. One sniper plummeted from the catwalk, his body crashing through a glass coffee table in a shower of blood and tempered glass.
Marcus pulled a silver Colt .45 from beneath his tartan blanket, his old hands remarkably steady as he fired upward toward the elevator shaft. "Traitorous dog!" he roared, blood spitting from his lips as a stray ricochet grazed his shoulder.
"Victoria!" Sofia yelled, grabbing my arm, dragging me toward an armored bulkhead behind the bar. "Christian’s men have taken the bridge! The crew is compromised! We have to move!"
I clutched the baby against my chest with my left arm, pulling the compact Beretta I had taken from Monaco from my pocket with my right. "Where?"
"The lower engineering deck!" Marcus gasped, dragging himself out of his wheelchair, his legs surprisingly functional despite his age. "The master biometric terminal is by the nuclear reactor! If Christian gets the boy's DNA sequence, he doesn't need us! He'll scuttle the ship and fly out on the ice-skiff!"
The heavy steel door of the salon buckled inward with a thunderous *CRACK*.
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A thermite breaching charge was burning through the hinges, molten white sparks raining across the parquet floor.
"Move!" Sofia screamed, laying down covering fire through the glowing seam of the door as it blew open.
