“What happened to the lights?”
White Canary turned, hip tossing a thug to the ground. He bounced hard off the steel and tumbled away. The move put her close enough to Wild Dog to ask the question.
“Don’t know,” he grunted, kicking out at a henchman he’d just knocked down to all fours. His boot clipped the bad guy on the jaw, the impact shuddering up Wild Dog’s shin to his knee. “But I don’t like it.” He put his hands to his mouth and called out to Mister Terrific. “Hey, Hoss! How’s it coming?”
Mister Terrific waved his hand but kept his head down, looking inside the device Faust had left behind on the table.
Wild Dog turned back to her. “He’s got it though.”
White Canary grabbed his jersey, pulling him sideways as she pivoted and lashed out with a kick that took the legs out from under an assailant who had tried to drive a long-bladed knife into Wild Dog’s back. The henchman slammed face-first to the steel floor. The knife spun away toward the dark spot in the cargo hold.
“I’m sure he does,” she said with a crooked grin.
Wild Dog shouldered her to the side, stepping in front of the guy trying to zap her with a wide Taser. Rene clamped his hand on the henchman’s wrist and jerked the hand holding the weapon, shoving the crackling electrodes up under the man’s beard. His fingers squeezed the other man’s hand, depressing the trigger and sending electricity up into the bad guy’s jaw. The man’s boots jittered on the floor as his body locked in a convulsion.
He was out before Wild Dog let off the button.
Another light went out overhead.
“Still don’t like it,” Rene said.
* * *
Spartan gave the man a short chop, driving the grip of his pistol between the guy’s shoulder blades. The blow wasn’t hard enough to do any real damage, but it was enough to send him tumbling down the metal stairs Spartan had just climbed.
Diggle watched him bang his way down and sprawl at the bottom, and used the moments to catch his breath. Running up stairs like that was hard. His thighs burned and his lungs felt shallow from it, as if they couldn’t take in enough air. A band of tightness ran across his chest.
Shaking it off, he kept climbing, chasing after Faust.
Pulling himself up over the last step he found himself on a deck. Ahead he could see Faust undoing the rigging on a motorized lifeboat. He raised his gun and fast walked across the open space.
“Freeze!”
Faust stopped, hands remaining on the block-and-tackle pulley system used for lowering the boat. He looked over at Spartan, hair falling across his face.
“But, I’m almost finished,” he said. “A task only half started is a task undone.” He began working on the release of the boat, even though he kept watching the oncoming enemy.
“I will shoot you.” Spartan’s hand was tight on the pistol.
“I believe you,” Faust said. “I truly do, but I have this thing in my head, it’s a timekeeper, a tick and a tock and clickety clack that never stops, never stops, never stops, it just keeps going a click and a tick a second. Even when I sleep it’s there.”
“I don’t care.” The muscles of his shoulders started to burn, deep in the fibers of them, the same hot sensation that came after a long workout.
The boat dropped half an inch.
“Oh, you should,” Faust said. “Because of it I know we don’t have much time left, and I’d much rather be shot than stay for the inferno this boat is about to become.”
“That’s not going to happen.” The first micro-tremor ran down his tricep like a trickle of hot pain. He tightened his grip on the pistol.
“It will,” Faust replied. “It is inevitable. You don’t have anyone who can decipher the ignition I built for this occasion.” He stepped into the boat, one foot in it, the other on the deck.
The gun in Spartan’s hand rocked left then right as the micro-tremor slid down into his forearm. The carpal tunnel swelled shut and his fingers went nerveless and wooden.
He pulled the trigger.
Faust dropped into the boat, disappearing from sight.
Spartan lowered the gun, holding it close to his body to steady his convulsing arm.
Faust sat up. He reached above him, grabbing the end of the release rope on the block-and-tackle pulley. He grinned widely and waved as he yanked the release. The boat fell away.
Sprinting as best he could, Spartan reached the rail as the lifeboat splashed to the water below. Faust hit the ignition switch for the outboard motor and it fired to life with a throaty chugging. In seconds the lifeboat pulled away from the ship and disappeared in the dark.
Spartan holstered his pistol and turned.
Black Canary ran up from the stairs.
“He got away,” Diggle said.
* * *
Three klieg lights burned overhead.
Green Arrow hit the comms. “The lights are tied into the bombs?”
“We think they are the countdown,” Felicity’s voice said.
White Canary and Wild Dog stood a few feet away. Henchmen lay around them moaning. He moved over to them.
“You two need to get out of here,” he ordered. “In case the bomb doesn’t get disarmed.”
“What about them?” White Canary motioned to the floor full of downed henchmen.
“Corral them up to the deck and off the boat. They can carry their own.”
“Man,” Wild Dog said. “First we kick their asses, now we save their asses.”
“Wild Dog—” Green Arrow growled, the warning deep in his voice.
Rene threw his hands up. “I know, we’re heroes. I get it.”
“Come on, hero.” White Canary jerked her head to the side. “Let’s get these doggies rollin’.” They began pulling henchmen up to their feet, pushing them to the door of the cargo hold. Green Arrow watched them for a second, then turned toward Mister Terrific.
* * *
Mister Terrific didn’t look, even though he felt Green Arrow walk up like a high-pressure front. The man projected intensity twenty-four seven, but when he was in costume the intensity became nearly overwhelming, as if the hooded figure could bend the universe through sheer force of will.
Which was ridiculous. Physics didn’t work that way.
But if it did…
“Where are we at?” Green Arrow asked.
“Um, nowhere,” Curtis replied. “I mean, we’re on a boat with a lot of explosives, but—”
“Not talking to you.”
“Oh.”
Felicity’s voice came over their comms. “At present speed, you hit the cape in four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.”
“How much explosive is this?”
No one said anything.
Mister Terrific twitched. “Oh, you mean me?” he said. “Right.” He scanned the stacks, tallying mentally. “Assuming standard weight and consistency of—”
“How much?” Green Arrow growled.
“Looks like approximately six tons.”
“Overwatch?”
“One sec,” Felicity said. Time stretched as she calculated. “That much explosive will turn the ship into shrapnel. Anything past two minutes from now and there will be injuries. Probably twenty-five percent at that point. Every second after, multiply by ten percent ’til you reach one hundred.”
Green Arrow stood for a second, weighing the information.
“I can keep working,” Mister Terrific said. “I’ll get this.”
Green Arrow pointed to the center of the device. “Is that the pressure switch from a limpet bomb?”
“How did—”
“Yes.” Felicity cut off Mister Terrific’s question.
“That will detonate?”
“Yes.”
He motioned Mister Terrific toward the open cargo hold door. The room was clear save for them. “Let’s go.” He touched the comms, sending his voice out to the entire team. “Everybody off the boat and get as far from it as you can. Go now—we’ll catch up.”
Another klieg light snuffed out as they ran across the room.
* * *
They cleared the last doorway, moving out onto the empty deck. Green Arrow kept moving, talking over the comms.
“Sound off.”
Wild Dog’s voice came over the comms. “We’re gone. All cleared except you two. We left a boat for you.”
“Ninety seconds to the threshold,” Felicity’s voice said.
Green Arrow reached the controls to the cargo bay and pushed the big green button there. A deep rumble started up as the wide metal bay doors began to slide open.
“What are you doing?” Mister Terrific asked.
“Making a path of least resistance.”
“Ah, so the force of the explosion will go up instead of out.” Mister Terrific shook his head. “There’s too much material down there. The ship is still going to be wrecked.”
The cargo bay doors stopped moving, open all the way.
“Thirty seconds,” Felicity said, voice tight with worry.
Green Arrow unslung his bow, drawing out an arrow. “How deep do we need to be in the water to survive?”
Mister Terrific’s mind worked, calculating a hundred factors—exponential force, shear point for the ship’s steel hull, system momentum change, the insulation of water, the release of force going upward now against the buoyancy of the ship, and more.
“Thirty seven and a half feet minimum.”
Green Arrow nodded.
He notched the arrow and aimed down in the cargo hold, using the glow of the last klieg light to see his target.
He inhaled.
“Wait,” Mister Terrific said. “You aren’t—”
Exhaled.
The arrow flew.
Pivoting, the two vigilantes ran toward the rail and leapt, both of them flinging themselves out into the open air. They arced, falling, one with the grace of an Olympian, the other with the grace of a savage, splitting the water at the same time. Both kept their bodies streamlined, shooting into the murky depths.
Their momentum had just slowed when the thunder rumbled under the water and light flooded down on them, even through the dark water, as the ship exploded and sent down a fiery rain of burning metal.