Lusana accepted the invitation of death. He threw Fergus a silent smile of forgiveness and then leaped toward the bulwarks.

Fergus pulled the trigger and sprayed a pattern of automatic fire. The sudden impact of three bullets in his side pitched Lusana forward in a shuddered dance that pounded the breath from his lungs. Miraculously, he stayed on his feet and staggered drunkenly on.

Fergus fired again.

Lusana fell to his knees, still struggling toward the edge of the deck.

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VIXEN 03

Fergus watched in detached admiration, vaguely wondering what drove the incongruously dressed black man to ignore at least a dozen bullets in his body.

With brown eyes glazed with shock, and with a determination known only to a man who could never quit, Lusana crawled across the deck, holding the canvas sack against his stomach, leaving an ever-widening trail of crimson behind him.

The bulwarks were only three feet away. He fought closer despite the blackness beginning to cloud his vision and the blood streaming from the corners of his mouth. Summoning an inner strength born of final desperation, he threw the sack.

It hung on the bulwark for an instant that seemed frozen in time, teetered, and then fell into the river. Lusana’s face sank to the deck and he passed the gate into oblivion.

The interior of the massive gun housing reeked of sweat and blood and the pungent odors of powder and heated oil. Most of the crew were still in shock, their eyes glazed, unknowing, dulled with confusion and fear; the rest were lying amid the machinery in unnatural poses, blood trickling from their ears and mouths. A charnel house, Fawkes thought, a damn charnel house. God, I’m no better than the butchers who slaughtered my family.

He peered down the center elevator tube to the magazines and saw Charles Shaba hammering away with a sledge on a shell cradle that had become wedged ten feet below the turret deck. The interlock doors, designed to prevent accidental breech failure from communicating explosive flash to the magazines, were jammed open, and to Fawkes it was like looking into a bottomless pit. Then the black void seemed to fuzz and he suddenly realized the problem. The air was too foul to breathe. Those who survived the concussion caused by the Satan missile were dropping from lack of oxygen.

“Open the outside hatch!” he roared. “Get some fresh air in here!”

“She’s buckled, Captain,” a voice rasped on the other side of the turret. “Jammed tight.”

“The ventilators! Why aren’t they operating?”

“Blown circuits,” another man said, coughing. “The only air we’ve got is what’s coming up through the magazine tubes.”

In the choking haze and gloom Fawkes could barely make out the form of the man who spoke. “Find me something to pry the hatch open. We’ve got to make a path for crossventilation.”

The Iowa 261p>