‘Right!’ snapped Richard. ‘We go back. Now. If Sittart’s involved personally and directly then that changes the game. Gets rid of the rule book, for a start. And makes our car accident, Nic, look a lot less accidental. But Sittart’s not going to risk drowning himself – even for a fortune in lottery winnings! He might be ruthless, sadistic; murderous, even. But he’s not barking mad!’
The Changhe lifted, turned, began to race back the way she had come. Sittart’s chopper did the same. As they sped towards their next move in this strange, deadly chess game, Richard continued planning aloud. ‘But he’ll have other tricks up his sleeve. Lucky that chopper of his doesn’t look powerful enough to carry anything heavy, or he’d be dropping one of Dagupan Maru’s lifeboats right on top of the bottle next. But he can’t. He could drop a swimmer or a diver I suppose but he’d have a hell of a job retrieving them – even if they could survive in that mess for long enough to find the bottle. So if he wants to go in at sea level he’ll have to wait till the freighter’s closer and lower a boat from there. And lifeboats aren’t noted for their speed. Which explains why the freighter’s running at the top of the green. Straightline, do you think we could risk one of Poseidon’s Zodiacs? They’re faster than lifeboats.’
‘I wouldn’t like to put an inflatable into that,’ cut in Captain Chang decisively. ‘Even the Kevlar-reinforced sides would stand very little chance. I would hesitate to permit you to try it – and I would forbid my crew outright.’
‘Right,’ said Richard. ‘That settles that! Flank speed for the moment, please, Captain and get ready to try Plan B as soon as we land.’
‘Flank speed?’ spat Chang across the airwaves. ‘Not through this, Captain Mariner. I go safe speed, thank you very much. Still plenty fast though!’
‘No,’ said Richard gruffly twenty minutes later, sounding a lot like Captain Chang. ‘Even if you have got her prepped and ready, it’s too risky for you to take her out, Nic, even after Liberty. We stick with what we discussed at breakfast and on the flight back in. I don’t mind running the risk of dropping Neptune overboard without slowing down but if you go out in Salacia, we’ll have to heave to. And you know we can’t afford the time. Not only that, but Salacia is our camouflage. She’s positioned between Neptune and Dagupan Maru. She’ll mask what we’re doing and give us an element of surprise. But if we deploy her, that will simply give our hand away. Besides,’ he continued, moderating his tone, ‘you know we’ll be more flexible if we’re all still aboard. Far more use to both of our girls if push comes to shove . . .’
Nic turned mutinously and strode across the foredeck until the port-quarter safety rail stopped him. He stared out into the gusty grey morning as though he could see Flint in the distance racing towards them along her southerly tack. But all Richard could see over his friend’s shoulder was the restless ocean with Dagupan Maru still well to the north smashing relentlessly southward, and Katapult running up towards her, ready to change tack – perhaps for the last time before she reached the bottle. The wind battered fitfully under the upturned hull of Poseidon’s port-side Zodiac and howled in the equipment supporting Salacia above Nic’s head. The starboard gantry above Richard groaned as it jumped into motion, swinging Neptune out over the littered surface. Then Nic turned back. ‘When you’re right, you’re right,’ he said, decisively. ‘Let’s get to work.’
He joined Richard at the starboard rail, and they felt the deck angle slightly as Neptune swung out over the water. Then the pair of them watched with sharp-eyed concentration for a relatively clear bit of ocean. Richard didn’t mind taking the risk of dropping Neptune while her mother ship was still running, but he was not about to drop the precious remote vehicle on to a solid container or into a cat’s cradle of tangled netting.
Then, ‘There!’ called Nic, and Richard saw what he was pointing to: a patch of water that seemed to be soiled with nothing more substantial than a rainbow skim of oil. Richard raised his hand and the team in charge of the gantry tensed at his signal. ‘Three . . . Two . . . One . . .’ he growled, then slammed his arm down. And started swearing at the sudden pain that seared through his shoulder. Neptune dropped.
Richard hurried down to the control room in Poseidon’s bulbous bow where Ironwrist sat waiting for him to fill the second operator’s chair. The Chinese controller was flooding the submersible’s tanks at the same time as running through the speediest of start-up routines.
Richard took over as soon as he arrived, pushing the throttles to maximum even as the lights came on and the video-feeds from the on-board cameras went live. The first thing the submersible saw was the stern of her mothership departing in a swirl of bubbles as Poseidon raced on forward. Richard and Ironwrist angled Neptune’s crablike body like the well-practised team they were, following Poseidon as faithfully as a duckling chasing its mother, checking for a safe depth without losing too much forward motion, but staying on the surface for the moment. At full speed, Neptune could manage ten knots, a fantastic pace for a submersible, and one that Richard had found useful in the past. Ten knots was about half the velocity the cautious captain was currently allowing Poseidon to do. And just comparable with the ten knots Sittart’s freighter was capable of. But they needed more of an edge than that.
‘Monitors on,’ said Nic’s voice in Richard’s headphones, confirming that they had visual on the bridge.
‘Looks like we’re clear from about three metres down,’ said Richard, checking the range of readouts on the screens in front of him while pushing Neptune forward in Poseidon’s churning wake, relying on the adapted frigate’s hull to keep things clear ahead for the moment. ‘There’ll be one or two containers and maybe some drifts of netting sitting that deep, but not much.
‘Now, let’s get to work. Straightline, you keep me updated on the location of the bottle and I’ll get that precisely factored in to Neptune’s GPS guidance. Nic, you keep me up to speed with both what you can see on the red-dot display and out of the clearview. I suspect we’re getting close to the point where eyes in your head will be more useful than eyes in the sky. Or eyes under the water, for the moment. Going for a basic series of remote arm and gripper tests as long as they don’t slow us down any. Fatfist, are you ready with the after line?’
‘Ready,’ came the crisp reply.
‘Engage,’ ordered Richard. And three decks above his head, the whole length of the sleek hull astern, Fatfist Wu fired the magnetic bolt on the end of the long line that would join Neptune to Poseidon until Richard chose to break contact and set his little command free to do her underwater work. The bolt flew like a harpoon from an old-fashioned whaling gun and hit squarely on the magnetic link pad on Neptune’s broad yellow bow where it held as though superglued in place. At once, Neptune was jerked forward through the water at twenty knots as Poseidon pulled her forward. And at last, having calculated the safe depth for their vessel, Richard and Ironwrist angled the planes and finished flooding the tanks while Fatfist played the ungainly remote vehicle like a fish on the end of the towline. ‘It should be me up there,’ mourned Ironwrist. ‘I’m the big fisherman aboard Poseidon!’
‘No can do,’ said Richard, rising slowly and giving the readouts one last scan. ‘I need both of you exactly where you are. I’ll be back when it’s time to cut her loose. Until then, you’re in full charge of the Neptune, Captain Wan!’
Richard’s next port of call was the afterdeck where he checked that the Changhe was being refuelled and that Fatfist was doing a good enough job of keeping Neptune safely in place three metres below Poseidon’s screws, thirty more behind her square stern. He rested his hand on the thrumming tow rope and looked narrow-eyed into the water it was cutting like a cheese wire. Then he returned to the bridge and joined Nic and Chang watching narrow-eyed as the red dots on Straightline’s display converged, and the vessels they represented began to come together.
Both Flint and Katapult were on the radio now that range was short and line-of-sight signals easily received; Liberty and Robin offered running commentaries on progress as they made their final tacks and began their closing runs in across the suddenly sporadic northerly from the north-east and the south-west, both fiercely fixated still on being the first to recover the bottle, neither of them welcoming the distraction of incoming contact. Richard and Nic talked to them when permitted, but their advice like their eyes focused on the looming bulk of Dagupan Maru. The nearer it came, the more threatening it seemed. Richard had taken for granted that the massive freighter could run over Katapult or Flint with ease, but now he was beginning to wonder whether those brutal bows could smash even Poseidon to kindling.
As he wondered, so Nature began to take a hand in the already tense situation. The clouds thinned and the sky began to clear with unsettling rapidity while the wind, already fitful, became sporadic, falling through three on the Beaufort scale disturbingly quickly. Then two. Amid howls of frustration from both Liberty and Robin, an almost dead calm descended. Air stilled. Clouds vanished. The sun came out hot and heavy.
The yachts were slowed to a dead stop, their sails drooping emptily, flapping fitfully as the wind deserted both of them. But, while they lost their forward motion and settled to a standstill like two more bits of flotsam in the huge Sargasso of plastic, the powered vessels continued to surge ahead. Dagupan Maru and Poseidon began to close together on the central dot that gave the position of Tanaka’s Cheerio bottle.
Robin broke first, but only by moments – probably because she had Dagupan Maru closing relentlessly from the north and Poseidon powering in from the west while the wind had utterly abandoned her. ‘Katapult’s in motion,’ observed Straightline suddenly and Richard crossed to the console. ‘She’s started her motor,’ he deduced. ‘And there goes Flint.’
‘You can hardly blame them,’ said Nic defensively. ‘They’ve come so far and now . . .’ His voice trailed off and he looked out of the clearview at the burnished blue sky, the white disc of the sun, the utter calm of the littered water – stirred now only by the long deep-ocean rollers and the relentless approach of the two motor vessels. Beginning to steam a little in the humid heat. ‘I’d fire up the on-board motor and cruise for the last couple of miles.’
‘Me too,’ admitted Richard. ‘What’s the old saying? “If at first you don’t succeed, cheat!” That’s one of my favourites. Captain Chang, can you swing Poseidon to the south? It looks as though there’s clearer water there; we can maybe push our speed up a notch or two. Then we’ve maybe got enough sea room to swing round on to a northerly bearing. I’d rather be head to head with Sittart than have him coming at my beam like a Roman galley at ramming speed.’
‘Shi,’ nodded Chang. ‘It is so.’ Poseidon swept south, accelerating into an area of clear water and racing up towards her at full speed then swung on to a northerly bearing, so that the disposition of the five dots on Straightline’s schematic looked roughly cruciform. Dagupan Maru and Poseidon were facing each other and closing on a north-south heading. The two yachts were coming in north and south of the east-west axis, depending on the last tack they had taken before the wind deserted them. And the red dot of Reona Tanaka’s bottle sat squarely in the middle.
‘Nic,’ said Richard, ‘come with me. It’s time we got an overview of this situation. Bring the binoculars.’
Side by side they hurried along the length of the adapted frigate until they were standing on the afterdeck between the helicopter and the line holding Neptune in place. ‘You go up and I go down,’ said Richard. ‘One way or another we need to know every move they make from here on in. Whether they know it or not – whether they like it or not – the girls are depending on us now.’
Nic nodded decisively and climbed aboard the Changhe holding the binoculars in one white-knuckled hand. He pulled on the headset and settled the stalk of the mic. ‘Ready,’ he said and his voice echoed through the loud-hailing system, then he cinched his seat belt tight and raised his empty fist.
As Nic went up in the chopper with the binoculars to take the high ground, Richard went below. He first checked on Ironwrist in the control room, then he returned to the bridge where he could watch what was going on. No sooner had he arrived than Straightline said, ‘Dagupan Maru’s slowing . . .’
Richard could see that the telltale white line of the freighter’s bow wave was thinning. ‘He’s up to something,’ he said.
And Nic’s voice came through on the radio. ‘He’s dropping lifeboats. I count three. All packed with men and they all look armed to the teeth!’
‘That’s one for Katapult, one for Flint and one to recover the bottle,’ snapped Richard. ‘Warn the women, Nic.’ He clapped his hands and rubbed the palms together. ‘Let’s get busy,’ he muttered, speaking almost exclusively to himself. ‘I’m off below,’ he said more loudly to Straightline. ‘I’ll want pretty precise bearings that will get me to the lifeboat that’s after Flint first,’ he ordered brusquely. ‘Then we’ll take it from there.’
A couple of moments later he settled in beside Ironwrist. ‘I think I’d better do this bit,’ he said. ‘It could get nasty and it could get legal later.’
‘OK,’ said Ironwrist, as though he knew exactly what the mad gwailo giant was talking about. But to be fair, he had been one of the first to call him the Goodluck Giant – and he had never had any cause to change the nickname.
Neptune was three metres below the littered surface of the battleground, powering forward at her full ten knots. With Straightline calling course and bearings from a combination of GPS readings, red-dot sightings and simple observation, the remote submersible headed unerringly towards the becalmed and helpless Flint. Nic supplemented Straightline’s directions because, from the high ground of the chopper, he could see what those on the water could not – and he got occasional glimpses of the daffodil-yellow vessel as she raced though the water ten feet beneath the thick-piled garbage. Richard was surprised by how quickly the GPS showed his remote vehicle was close to Liberty’s command. Then, again taking his directions from Straightline and Nic, he headed towards the nearest lifeboat. As he pushed Neptune towards her limit he caught himself wondering whether he should get Nic to call some kind of warning on the chopper’s loud hailer. But then the distraught father made up his mind for him. ‘Richard! They’ve opened fire! Shit, Richard, they’re shooting! At both Liberty and me! The bastards didn’t even give a warning . . .’
‘You OK?’ asked Richard, his focus exclusively on what Neptune could see.
‘Yeah. And the girls seem OK too. But Jesus . . .’
‘Hardball it is, then,’ said Richard. ‘Tell them to forget the bottle, Nic. Head for Poseidon now! No argument. No excuses! And tell Katapult the same.’
Even as Nic’s orders to Flint came through on Richard’s headset, the picture on Neptune’s screen showed the keel of the lifeboat coming into view, punching through a solid ceiling of rubbish that looked thick enough to conceal the submersible from above. Richard angled the vessel down a little, then swung her round until she was following just behind the lifeboat’s propeller. Holding his breath with the tension he unfolded one of Neptune’s mechanical arms and pulled out one of the magnetic explosive charges she used for deep-water demolition work. It took less than a moment to attach it to the metal blade of the lifeboat’s rudder. Then he said to Ironwrist, ‘Dive, dive, dive!’ and hit the remote detonator button.
The explosion was supposed to disable the vessel but instead it blew the entire stern off the lifeboat and sent the warlike crewmen straight into the water. ‘My God! That was more than I expected!’ said Richard. ‘Still, with any luck it should distract their mates for as long as it takes to pick them up . . .’
‘I don’t think so,’ came Nic’s distant voice. ‘Neither of the other boats has turned off course. Liberty! For heaven’s sake do what I say. Head straight for Poseidon! Now!’
‘A friend in need is a friend indeed,’ observed Richard cynically. ‘Is Katapult coming in?’
‘No,’ said Nic. ‘She’s still going for the bloody bottle.’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Captain Chang. ‘Captain Mariner says if you watch her back for five more minutes . . .’
‘It won’t be as easy this time. They’ll know I’m out here somewhere . . . I’ll bet they’re keeping careful watch now. Anything else I should know?’
‘Wind’s picking up again,’ Straightline said. ‘It’s from the south this time.’
‘That’ll slow Katapult big time,’ said Richard grimly. ‘Especially if it picks up. She must be heading directly into it. She can’t start sailing and tacking across it again. She’ll just have to go full throttle, hell for leather, and hope . . .’
‘The other lifeboats are closing up with her though,’ warned Nic. ‘With those three hulls of hers she’s got three times more exposure to the rubbish than the lifeboats have. I’d say at least one lifeboat’s going to catch her before she gets to the bottle, let alone before she gets to Poseidon.’
‘Bloody woman!’ swore Richard. ‘Straightline! Get me to the nearest lifeboat and I’ll try kicking ass again . . .’
‘You’d better hurry,’ warned Nic. ‘They’ve opened fire again . . .’
‘Christ!’ blasphemed Richard. ‘How’s Flint?’
‘Coming in pretty quickly now, thank God. She’ll be alongside Poseidon in five minutes,’ Nic called.
‘Right. So, where’s the nearest lifeboat to Katapult?’
‘Dead ahead, Captain Mariner,’ answered Straightline. ‘If you keep going on that course . . .’
Richard could see the turbulence generated by the lifeboat’s propeller in the distance. He pushed Neptune to maximum revs and was pulling up towards it in a matter of minutes. He checked all around him on the remote vehicle’s sensors. The ceiling above him was still thick with plastic debris and even though the lifeboat was making enough way to create a considerable wake, he calculated that, as with the first, he would be able to sneak up behind it and blow the stern off. ‘Update me, Straightline,’ he ordered as he came closer.
‘Flint is almost alongside Poseidon,’ Straightline answered. ‘Katapult is still after the bottle and the two lifeboats are closing with her.’
‘I have one in my sights,’ said Richard. ‘Closing now.’ He brought Neptune up under the stern of the second lifeboat and placed the second mine. Mildly surprised at getting away with the same trick twice, he detonated the charge. A moment later, the second lifeboat was sinking like the first and all of its crew were in the water. Then, emboldened by the success of his strategy so far, he went after the third boat. The one still relentlessly closing in on Katapult.
Using Straightline’s directions, he swept beneath Katapult’s triple hull and closed with the last lifeboat, swinging under her stern. But this time, as he reached out with his last charge, Neptune’s articulated arm was roughly caught by a brutal hook. The whole vessel was jerked up to the surface and Richard found himself looking at a face familiar from the mugshots Jim Bourne had sent of Dagupan Maru’s officers. This one was called Sakai Inazo. He was first officer. Even as Richard recognized him, Sakai started shooting at Neptune, point-blank. Richard lurched back in his seat as though the bullets could hurt him. And then he leaped to his feet with shock. The screen before him exploded into dazzling brightness and for an instant he thought the shots must have smashed Neptune’s video. Then he saw the figures from her onboard temperature gauges and realized the truth, even before he recognized that Sakai’s burly figure was wreathed in red and yellow flames. He was halfway out of the door when the alarms started and Chang’s voice bellowed, ‘Captain Mariner to the bridge! Captain Mariner to the bridge!’
On A deck he met Nic and Liberty, also rushing upwards. The gaping bulkhead door behind them showed Flint etched against a wall of fire. ‘Everyone off Flint?’ he gasped.
Liberty nodded, her eyes huge. ‘Just . . .’
‘Then it’s Katapult next . . .’ he grated. And realized they couldn’t hear him; he could hardly hear himself because of the simply appalling noise coming in from outside.
The three of them burst on to the bridge, adding some disorder to the ordered pandemonium there. Captain Chang was rapping out orders at the top of her voice and everyone there was bustling to their emergency stations as Poseidon, partway through her fastest and tightest emergency turn, tore away southwards. And away from Flint. The abrupt manoeuvre had simply snapped Flint’s mooring line. Poseidon was racing on to a southerly heading at the kind of speed the captain had refused to countenance less than half an hour ago.
The entire ocean to the north of them seemed to be on fire. From east to west, almost as far as the eye could see, the surface of the water was a sheet of flame. And only the southerly wind was keeping Poseidon safe. For it was blowing the wildfire up towards Dagupan Maru in a wall that reached more than fifty feet high in places and was already pouring thick black fumes hundreds of feet further up into the wide blue sky.
But Richard wasn’t worried about the Japanese freighter. He had much more immediate concerns. For there, just ahead of the wall of flame, just behind Poseidon’s racing stern, came Katapult. Sails in, poles bare, pushing forward into the southerly gale as fast as her onboard motor could move her. Richard hesitated for a nanosecond, his mind racing. ‘Cut speed,’ he called to Chang. ‘Give her a chance to catch up . . .’
‘Why risk my command?’ snapped Chang ruthlessly. ‘It is lost cause.’
‘I think I can get a line to her,’ answered Richard desperately. ‘We can tow her out.’
Chang hesitated. Her face twisted with disbelief. Then they both were distracted by a cry from Liberty. Pushed by the strengthening southerly, Flint was drifting into the fire wall, and even as they watched, the flames seemed to leap out and claim her. The sturdy composite hull seemed to wilt. The tall mast toppled and she exploded into a ball of flame.
‘Very well,’ snapped Chang. ‘I give you five minutes. Take headset. Stay in contact for my orders. Remember, Captain. You are owner. I am commander!’
Richard and Nic ran side by side on to the poop deck, past the Changhe with its floats still attached and down to the ship’s square stern. Even as they were racing aft through her bridge house, they had felt the way come off her as the motors powered down. And now, they saw all too clearly the risk that Captain Chang had agreed to run for them. The heat was astonishing. The noise disorientating. The wall of fire simply petrifying. And there, between the high stern of the adapted corvette and the terrifying flames, came Katapult, doggedly, refusing to give up. Her decks steaming, her tall mast seeming to writhe and waver as the heat fought the brutal headwind and sought to claim her at last. And there, like some kind of figurehead at her forepeak stood the flame-haired figure of Florence Weary. ‘Captain Mariner!’ barked a peremptory voice in Richard’s ear. ‘You running out of time!’
And he wasn’t the only one.
Suddenly the radio operator came on to the captain’s waveband and into Richard’s headset. ‘Captain! I have a helicopter asking permission to land. It’s from Dagupan Maru. There’s a man and two women aboard as well as the pilot.’
‘No! We are wasting enough time already. I would have to throw our own chopper overboard to give him room. Tell him he cannot come aboard.’
And that was that, thought Richard as he grabbed the handles of the gun Fatfist had used to fire the magnetic bolt at Neptune and took aim. Sod off, Sittart. Then he dismissed all thoughts of the professor and focused on the job in hand. Dismissed also all thoughts of Robin and her crew – thoughts that would simply incapacitate him if he indulged in them now.
He knew there was nothing metallic aboard Katapult for the magnetic bolt to fasten on to. But Flo was no fool. If she saw a line coming aboard she would certainly secure it to something. The wind pounded him distractingly on the back like a drunk in a bar. Somewhere deep in his subconscious he calculated that the breeze blowing up from the south must be strengthening pretty rapidly as the updraft of the colossal fire sucked yet more air in to feed the furnace at its heart. Would that work to Katapult’s advantage? Or add to the likelihood of her destruction? Robin’s life hung in that terrible balance . . .
‘Captain Mariner . . .’ came Chang’s voice. ‘Time’s up!’
And he fired.
The bolt flew straight and true, the line arching behind it, streaking off the spool beside the gun. It slammed into Katapult’s central deck and Flo dived desperately after it. Richard felt Poseidon’s deck shiver as the engines raced up towards full power once again. Flo was on her knees, securing the line to the starboard cleat and Richard let the line continue to run as the corvette gathered way. Playing the beautiful multihull like Ironwrist playing a fish. As soon as Flo rolled clear, he eased the brake on to the line, watching it come taut and quiver with the strain. The three forepeaks behind him rose and three white bow waves added their complications to Poseidon’s racing wake.
Away to the north, behind the scarifying wall of flame, something exploded like an atomic bomb, sending a mushroom cloud to tower high against the smoke clouded sky. That would be Dagupan Maru, he thought numbly. Her hold packed full of thousands of tons of priceless timber and the temperature around it reaching 350 degrees Celsius, hot enough for spontaneous combustion. The power of the explosion was so colossal that it seemed to suck the flames northwards towards the massive vacuum so much instantaneous devastation must have caused. A wind thundered northward, to fill the vast vacancy at the heart of the explosion even as a blast wall ran counter to it, making the flames gutter and die for a moment. Richard was thrown back and forward like a puppet. So were Poseidon and Katapult.
Then the pounding on his shoulder stopped being the wind. It was Nic. He let go of the gun handles, looked dazedly down at his blistered palms; up at his beaming friend; out at the brave vessel that held his wife still safe.
‘Katapult secured, Captain Chang!’ he bellowed into the headset.
‘Good job!’ she answered. ‘We go full ahead now.’
The captain must have switched on to a general band then, for Richard suddenly found himself in the middle of a conversation between Poseidon’s radio operator and Robin. ‘. . . reporting all aboard Katapult well . . .’ came her familiar voice. ‘A little scorched, and smelling more like Sunday roast than sailors, but we’re fine. Glad to hear Liberty and the girls are safe and that Ironwrist thinks he can get Neptune back in one piece. Sorry about Flint though . . .’
‘Robin?’ he said hesitantly, suddenly choked and shaking.
‘Hello, sailor,’ she answered, her voice softening. ‘Good thing you were here after all, eh?’
‘Looks like it,’ he answered, suddenly feeling very sore and shaky. Looking for a place to sit down.
‘We’d never have won without you,’ she persisted.
‘Won?’ he asked, simply astonished. ‘What do you mean you won?’
‘We have the professor’s bottle, of course,’ she chuckled. ‘Not that it was worth all this trouble in the end. What price glory, eh?’
Now Richard really did need to sit down. ‘Robin, do you know what that thing’s worth?’ he gasped.
‘I dunno,’ she answered dismissively. ‘A battered old second-hand plastic drink bottle? Not a lot, I’d say . . .
‘Now what on earth’s amusing you, Richard? What are you laughing at? Come on, you bloody man, share the joke, why don’t you?’