The Fire Ship (19 page)

They tacked in the darkness off Zarakkuh at 2
A.M.
precisely, having established their position by dead reckoning and checked it by the stars. As they settled into the long upwind reach, their speed fell off initially, but the northerly was steady at about force five on the Beaufort scale, more than enough to keep them creaming along until the first few gusts from the south came over their shoulders soon after dawn. It had been obvious from the outset that they had three watch teams of two. Richard and Robin took charge of their progress from Fate to Zarakkuh, then woke Salah and C. J. The four of them oversaw the tack and then the English couple went to bed.

Weary and Chris were up with the dawn, refreshed by a long sleep. Doc came-to knowing who he was, even after the better part of twelve hours’ rest, though Chris, at his side even before his eyes opened, was haunted by the way he kept looking for Sam Hood. They did not relieve Malik and Martyr at once, preferring to do odd jobs around the boat and double-check everything that might let them down at the last moment.

As soon as the southerly puffed into existence, Weary retrimmed the sails, and the multihull took off like an express train. The wind rapidly built to force seven,
twenty-seven knots without variation, and
Katapult
’s knot meter raced past thirty as she exploded joyfully through the white-backed waves. It was only then that the two senior watchkeepers retired, salt-rimed and soaking, to get what rest they could below in a hull that reverberated like a gong as she smashed through every comber. It was exhilarating sailing, the kind
Katapult
was built for—and she still had not reached the limits of her specifications. Richard and Robin rose for lunch and the four of them spent an exciting couple of hours as though they were boating off Portland Bill with no dangers approaching and no deaths at their door.

At two, twelve hours after the tack at Zarrakuh, they tacked again onto the other side of the downwind reach. Weary spent five minutes fine trimming the sails while Richard held the con, then suddenly, Doc hit Chris on the shoulder and they were off, agile as monkeys, about some business they had secretly planned. Chris passed down the side of the forward boom while Doc vanished momentarily from Richard’s dazzled sight, only to reappear halfway up the mast, climbing rapidly, a block and tackle over his shoulder, trailing ropes.

“Good God, they’re…” He turned, speaking, to Robin, but she had guessed what they were up to at the same moment as he had, and was gone to help them.

High on the mast, Weary made the block and tackle secure at the base of the damaged section, then shinned back down again at top speed, to career across the bucking, spray-washed deck. Chris ran back and hit a button on the dashboard that Richard had hardly noticed, and from the forecastle head, a jib boom began to telescope outward. Robin was laying out the ropes ready. Lazy sheet, after-guy, fore-guy down the midships; the sheet and the lazy guy. It was all ready with amazing rapidity, as though the four of them had crewed
round-the-world racers together for years. Then they were back in the cockpit again, Weary beside Richard at the helm. “Now, Captain, you just keep your eye on the knot meter, please,” yelled the Australian over the sound of the wind and the sea. “I want a witness to this.
Go!
” And the three of them were heaving on the ropes as Richard fought to keep the wheel from chucking him overboard. Miraculously, breathtakingly, beyond the luff of the foresail, reaching out on that new boom and spread across the wind at once, soaring up to that straining tackle high on the mast, bloomed the spinnaker.

Katapult
flew.

Her attitude changed. Her head lifted. It felt as though the whole of her central hull jumped out of the water and soared from wave crest to wave crest leaving only the outriders in contact with the sea. And the knot meter,
Katapult
’s speedometer, clicked up remorselessly. Thirty-five knots. Thirty-seven. Thirty-nine. Forty. At forty knots she held steady and Richard felt her settle into it. The exhilaration was complete. The captivation of his senses total. It was an experience so real, so superreal, it had a dreamlike quality. It was impossible that such ecstasy should last. But last it did, with the wild spume flying; the rigging howling; the winches, cleats, plates, and blocks that held it all together, all groaning to break free; the slap and thunder of the waves against her; the ecstasy of holding the thrilling helm-spokes in his fists: all of it lasted and lasted.

Martyr and Salah came up, dazed, into the grip of it and stared about themselves in dumb wonder. All of them stood or sat, lost in the wonder of it, for fifteen minutes, twenty, thirty; until
Prometheus
came into view.

Instantly the mood changed. Martyr and Malik leaped up onto the afterdeck and opened the hatch. Mar-
tyr went down, and, within minutes, the guns were being handed up. Then the thunderflashes. Malik passed them forward and down to Chris and Robin, who put them on the cockpit sole to keep them dry. Then the two men came forward again and began to fit the long clips of ammunition into the guns. Loosening the harnesses so that the light, robust assault rifles could easily be slung across their backs. Salah disappeared down into the forward cabin to reemerge with the Heckler and Koch MP-5 machine guns.

Robin went to relieve Richard at the wheel. Chris took the spinnaker ropes from Doc. They had talked it through. They all knew what to do. The men went down into the forward cabin and quickly changed into shirts, jeans, and silent-soled footwear. Grimly they began to arm themselves. Each slung a Kalashnikhov across his shoulders. Richard and Salah also took a machine pistol each. They had been up before. They were going first now. Martyr and Doc took portable radios. They all took thunderflashes and went up on deck. Last out, Weary took
Katapult
’s handgun and laid it on the table, beside the last two Kalashnikhovs, in case the women needed an extra edge. Then he changed his mind and put it instead beside the radio where they were due to be monitoring transmissions while the four men were aboard the tanker.

He got up into the cockpit just in time to hear Richard ask, “Did you ever get a chance to test these out?” He was holding a thunderflash.

Martyr shook his head. In all the confusion, it was the one thing they had forgotten to do.

Richard looked up at the rapidly closing hulk of his tanker, then he twisted the top of the grenade he was holding and dropped it overboard. Three seconds later, the sea behind them lit up for an instant soundlessly.
Richard nodded once, in terse satisfaction. The attack had effectively begun.

The reality of it hit Robin like a truck. That gigantic hull bearing down on them at more than forty miles an hour held twelve trained killers, armed to the teeth, each one of them ready and able to kill any or all of the four men going in against them. And what of those men? Weary at least was a trained combat soldier, but how his damaged brain might function on the firing line, there was no way of predicting. And Salah—dear Salah—what was he capable of? If his reputation was anything to go by, he was battle hardened and every bit as fearsome as the other terrorists aboard. And yet he had always seemed to her the gentle diplomat, never the wild-eyed fanatic. And C. J., like a father to her: she had seen him move like a panther along dangerous decks before. But never against men like these.

And Richard. What she thought about Richard was dictated by heart, not head. Never in all the years she had known him had he let her down. She had fallen in love with him at the age of sixteen when he had appeared like a film star beside her father’s yacht in St. Tropez, and she had loved him ever since. The thought that he might fail was completely foreign to her nature. But the odds against him were so high.

Then she thought of John Higgins and Asha Quartermaine; Bob Stark and all the rest. The men and women on
Prometheus,
pirated, kidnapped, terrorized. Of her own father, perhaps aboard with all the rest. And her rage gave her new determination. They would break free at the first chance, she knew. No matter who stood against them. As soon as they realized help was at hand, it would no longer be four against twelve, but twelve against forty-four. And God help the terrorists then!

“Easy…” said Weary, fussing.

“We’re going to the downwind side of the hull,” she said. “We have a quarter of a mile of wind shadow, Doc. I’ve got to keep her speed up.” Even as she said it, they flashed past the stern and
Prometheus
came between them and the wind like a fifty-foot-high wall.

Inertia took them past the absolute stillness of the bridge-house—the wall rising to more than a hundred feet there—then some light air refilled the top of the spinnaker, enough to stop it flapping as
Katapult
’s speed picked up again. “Wait for it,” called Robin, in charge now, as the men lurked on the companionway.

“Nobody on the port bridge-wing,” called Chris softly, not quite as preoccupied with the spinnaker ropes as she might have seemed.

The Sampson posts flashed by and they were halfway along the deck.

“Wait for it,” called Robin again. “Just a little longer…”

“Keep saying to yourself,” hissed Weary, “ ‘This boat is worth a quarter of a million. This boat is worth a quarter of…”

“Let go!”

“…a million.’”

The spinnaker flapped up, whipping clear of the boom in a trice, anchored only by the block at the top of the mast. As the way came off
Katapult,
Robin spun the wheel and the starboard outrigger slid neatly under the anchor chain and stopped. The loose spinnaker floated like a magic cloak a hundred feet above, hiding the forecastle head completely under its billows. Both women were on the afterdeck at once, presenting an eye-catching display of maximium distress and minimum clothing. “It had better be worth it,” said Chris grimly. “I swore I’d
never
do this sort of thing again!”

Richard went up the chain first, sliding through the hawse hole and rolling back against the pulpit wall, machine gun at the ready in case there was a watch up here after all. There wasn’t. He waited where he was for an instant until Salah came through. Salah rolled over the other way, and the two of them knelt tensely, waiting for Martyr and Doc. Richard’s mind was racing, adapting to the situation at lightning speed. They could afford to get sorted into teams up here instead of on the main deck as planned because the spinnaker, one of the flying guy ropes wrapped around the flagpole at
Prometheus
’s head, continued to protect them from prying eyes.

The wait was not long. Both Martyr and Weary came through quickly and quietly.
Prometheus
’s forecastle head was massive but it was packed with equipment. The two anchor winches were here. The spare anchor. Bollards. Housings. Vents. Cover of every sort. Richard raised his hand, and they paused for a micron more. Richard gestured. Weary fell in behind him. Martyr joined Salah and Richard led off.

The four of them slid out from under the after edge of the spinnaker and into the forest of hiding places. Guns at the ready, they worked their way forward toward that avenue of clear foredeck concealed from the bridge by the pipes and the walkway above them. Then they ran forward in single file, lowered themselves down to the main deck, and plunged into that avenue of cover. There was no point in being shy about their movements here. It was highly unlikely that they would be spotted. They ran forward quickly, therefore, careful only to pace themselves to avoid arriving exhausted at the other end.

The pipes ended twenty feet in front of the bridgehouse. Under the last of the cover they paused again.
Then Richard gestured and the two teams went in opposite directions. Each team consisted of two men identically equipped: one man with a Kalashnikhov and a machine gun, the other with a Kalashnikhov and a radio to keep in contact with the other team and with
Katapult.
Ten seconds later, Richard flattened himself against the wall outside the port door onto A deck. He had rounded his back carefully so that the Kalashnikhov slung over his shoulder made no sound against the white-painted metal. His mouth was open so that he could breathe silently. His eyes followed Doc’s balletic movements as he whirled and crouched, covering the door with his gun. Richard held his Heckler and Koch MP-5 ready in his right hand and grabbed the handle with his left. A nod to Weary and he swung it wide, and they both leaped over the high metal sill, into the corridor, side by side.

It was bright. Cool. Almost silent.

The generators were throbbing. The power was on. Weary slapped his radio to his mouth. Pushed
SEND.
“IN!”
he whispered.

“In,” it said in return: Martyr’s voice, whispering in answer. There was a stairwell immediately to their left. Richard went up first, freezing to a crouch in the angle of the turn, MP-5 machine gun pointing up. Weary went past him like a ghost, freezing just in sight above, rifle pointing up. Richard ran past him into the threshold of the B deck corridor. He thrust his head out at foot level. Look left. Right. Nothing. Out he went into the corridor itself, whirling round at once, MP-5 pointing up. Weary slipped past him noislessly.

C deck was empty as well. The doors to all the cabins and suites stood ajar.

Next deck up was the bridge-deck. There had to be a watch here. He checked the safety and tightened his
hold on both the machine gun’s grips. Arms straight, letting the gun lead, he went. Fast and silent up to the first angle. Crouch. Freeze. Empty steps, linoleum covered, reaching up to a corner. And suddenly Weary was on that corner, still, Kalashnikhov rifle pointing up.

Bridge-deck corridor. Left. Right. Empty. Silent. Doors ajar. Bridge door opposite. All along the rear of the bridge, windows onto this corridor. At each end of those windows, doors out onto the bridge and bridgewings. Ajar. Not a movement. Not a whisper.

Weary at his shoulder. One meaningful glance. Weary nodded: understood. Off they went, one each way. Pause at the bridge door looking in. Instruments, chart table, nothing more. Whisper of sound. Stirring of air. Weary gone out onto the starboard bridge-wing. Count of three.