Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure (33 page)

Richard went back to work. He prowled the forecastle head, trying to work out whether he could in fact drop the port anchor in the hope that it would catch on the sea bed and slew
Sayonara
's head round to the seaward side. But of course, even if that proved possible, he would have to make sure he dropped it at the last minute so
Sayonara
's treacherous programmes could not pull her back on line. Turning these thoughts over, he walked out to the forecastle head and looked forward. Right on the rim of the horizon dead ahead he saw the brightness of Kujukuri, telling him that
Zemlya
was still supplying power to the floating city. And that she was still dead ahead, just under an hour distant.

In a frenzy of impatience, he ran back up on to the bridge. Macavity had taken all of the kit he and Richard had brought aboard, but he'd talked a radio out of the lieutenant and discovered that Ivan had done the same, so he was able to keep abreast of Harry's attempt to replace all of Rikki's polluted mother boards with virgin daughters and SSDs. Meanwhile, he assembled a kind of council of war to discuss options once again. There was no use shorting out the computer again, even supposing they could. There was little point in checking the helm or the engine room telegraph – though they did so every five minutes. Watanabe took the Mitsubishi engineers down to the engine room with the lieutenant as communications officer. But although they knew how to go about switching off the engines, their knowledge all revolved round using the engine room telegraph to ‘stop engines' and eventually to ‘finish with engines' which had already proved to be so fatal. It occurred to Richard that they could open the sea cocks and hope that
Sayonara
would settle beneath the ocean before she collided with
Zemlya
. But the sea cocks, like all the other controls, proved to be firmly in the power of the computers. And there was some question in Richard's mind – and then in Watanabe's and Endo's, not to mention the men at NIPEX – of whether
Sayonara
would sink or, buoyed up by her five great tanks, simply proceed half submerged to her doom.

In the end, it all turned on Harry and Robin. As the last twenty minutes ticked up on
Sayonara
's chronometer, so Harry came through on Richard's radio. ‘I think we have partial control,' she said. ‘We've been concentrating on the engine and navigation systems which will give you control over the helm. It's too late to piss about with anything else. You'll just have to turn the helm as hard to port as you can and hold it there. You'll have partial rudder control, but you won't be able to play around with the propellers like you did when you turned her in the typhoon. It's the best we can do at this stage. Good luck.'

Richard took the helm himself and did as Harry advised, swinging it over to port with all his strength. He could see the gathering brightness of Kujukuri's floating city and, for the first time, found that he could distinguish the lights of
Zemlya
where she sat fifteen minutes dead ahead. He placed the Galaxy on the control surface beside him, near the useless engine room telegraph. He dialled Robin's cellphone and left the channel open as the machines tried to make contact. Teeth gritted, eyes narrow, he glanced up at the heading monitor above him. One degree to port, it showed. Two. The helm would move no further. His arms ached. His shoulder joints tore. He thought his back would break as he strained against the recalcitrant wheel. His forehead was abruptly slick with sweat. His breath came short and ragged.

Suddenly Robin was there. Her face filled the screen. ‘I'm delivering my end of the bargain,' he grated. ‘Two degrees to port and ten minutes out. How are you doing at your end?'

‘Both tugs at full throttle,' she answered. ‘We're pushing in towards the shore. I have no idea how far. We'll be hard up against the first section of Kujukuri any minute, then things'll slow. Not even
Erebus
and
Terror
will be able to push a floating city ashore. Though God knows, they're trying hard enough.'

‘Right,' said Richard. ‘Ask
Erebus
to try even harder. It's only for a few minutes and if we survive I'll pay to have her motors fixed myself.'

Richard broke contact then and concentrated. Sweat was running into his eyes but he disregarded it.
Zemlya
's rear wall suddenly seemed very near – and very tall. He could see
Erebus
on the near side, straining to pull the power station out of his way, smoke belching as her captain obligingly burned her motors out, adding as much extra thrust as he could. And
Zemlya
was answering, swinging round to an increasing angle across his starboard quarter, inch by inch. He felt
Sayonara
continuing to pull to port. But there was no doubt in his mind that they were going to crash. ‘Stand by for collision,' he called. ‘Captain Ito, sound the ship's alarm.'

Alarms began to sound right throughout the ship, but Richard hardly heard them. He was rapt in the finest calculations of velocity and angle, vector and impact, as though he were playing billiards with balls of unimaginable scale, and with a cue over which he had very limited control.
Zemlya
's rear wall, a steel cliff reaching five decks straight up out of the sea, was coming round to an angle of maybe twenty degrees away from
Sayonara
's course. And
Sayonara
herself was bearing further and further away. But it was all too little, too late. He closed his eyes.

The LNG tanker, moving at twenty-two knots, impacted with the nuclear power station, her starboard forequarter smashing against the wall that towered four more decks above it, as high as the ship's command bridge. The flare of the forecastle head buckled, screaming and juddering. The starboard anchor tore off and took several metres of chain with it before the force of the collision snapped the steel links and let the ruin fall. The whole starboard quarter of the forecastle head buckled and tore. The deck rose in waves that reared and froze. The starboard anchor winch broke free and rolled across the corrugated helipad until the port winch brought it up short. But the impact on the forecastle head soaked up the energy of the collision before it could do any serious damage to Moss tank number one.
Sayonara
's head bounced off
Zemlya
's back and the whole ship juddered round to port, pausing only to tear off the starboard bridge wing before she was clear. Then the engines stopped.

The loss of the starboard anchor tripped Macavity's carefully hidden impact trigger. Electrical impulses raced along the copper wires towards the detonator the Pitman found when she was exploring beneath the forward tank. Down the forward wall behind the bulbous bow they went like lightning along the wire, across the deck and down. Down to the open area beneath the massive downswell of the tank. And here they shorted, sparked and died. Because the detonator, like the bomb, had gone.

Richard stood, held erect only by his iron grip in the helm, looking over the rest of the bridge watch who were rolling like skittles across the deck, as his brain slowly registered that there would be no explosion resulting from the collision after all. Sometime during the collision his Galaxy had gone skittering across the engine room telegraph and he had caught it automatically without realizing. Suddenly it began to ring. The screen went blank. He hit reply, thinking it must be Robin. But no. ‘Hello,' he said. ‘Hello. Is there anybody there?' There was nothing on the screen or in the sudden massive silence around the ship. Except, perhaps, a distant flicker and a rumble as though thunder was threatening away to the east. Then Robin came through at last. ‘You bloody man,' she said. ‘Just look what your big rough boat has done to Anastasia's poor little power station!'

Richard was gasping as though he had just run a marathon. ‘Look what her big rough power station's done to my poor little boat,' he croaked.

And she smiled, her eyes full of tears, her joyous expression filling the whole screen, and then some. ‘Hello, sailor,' she said. ‘Welcome home.'

The ocean-going gin palace that Richard had noticed earlier is called
Volante.
She sleeps ten passengers in palatial splendour, has berths for eight crew and she is Francisco Lazzaro's pride and joy. Since the typhoon, which
Volante
rode out safely in Sendai harbour, Lazzaro himself has captained her out to shadow
Sayonara
with only a two-man skeleton crew to help. The 'Ndrangheta chieftain has revelled in the challenge of watch-keeping and helming his pride and joy for two days and nights, in eight-hour rotations with the others. And it was Lazzaro, in fact, who was at the helm when
Sayonara
's lifeboat came alongside and the pirates Richard simply knew as Macavity's men came aboard. Then, of course, Lazzaro had been happy to hand over command to the lieutenant from the South African navy. From being all-but deserted,
Volante
had become overfull, so crowded that even the wounded had to double bunk. Thus their kit remains in the twenty-four-seater lifeboat which remains secured to
Volante
's stern. Because, Macavity has explained to his employer, if
Volante
is to shadow
Sayonara
to her final cataclysmic meeting with
Zemlya
, she will have to stay far out to sea, where a lifeboat this size might be the difference between life and death for so many men on board.

At the moment
Sayonara
and
Zemlya
come together, to the very second as plotted on Macavity's MTM military chronometer, he and Lazzaro are on
Volante
's bridge, watching the western horizon for the blinding flash and mushroom cloud that will tell them their plans have come to fruition; that they are one hundred and twenty-five million dollars richer. That Bashnev/Sevmash and Heritage Mariner are theirs for the taking. That they are all made men. They already hold wide, flat glasses of Niccolo Rizziconi's Dom Perignon brought all the way from Moscow for the occasion, ready to toast their fortunes made. But something keeps the glasses from their lips. Darkness at the point where
Sayonara
and
Zemlya
have met. Darkness and silence.

But the second of convergence passes. And the next second. And the next. Lazzaro swings round to face his South African henchman. ‘Something's wrong,' he snarls. Near-priceless champagne slops out of his glass like icy, golden tears.

The lieutenant blenches, despite his special forces training. When things go wrong in Lazzaro's world, people begin to meet lengthy and ugly deaths. That is why he put the insurance of the huge C4 device beneath tank number one. That is why he put in place a back-up in case the impact trigger behind the anchor failed. Ultimately, that is why he gave Richard Mariner his Galaxy back. ‘Just a moment,' he says. ‘The game's not over yet.' He takes out his cellphone. ‘I can trigger it with this.'

‘But they can trace the call, you fool,' snarls Lazzaro. ‘Since Al-Qaeda started using cellphones as detonators, the companies log calls and alert the CIA and the NSA. It is one of the things that Snowden revealed before he vanished into Russia. They'll know it was you. And, through you, me!'

‘I thought of that,' Macavity swears. ‘This phone will contact Richard Mariner's Galaxy. When it does, it will switch on a programme I inserted myself. When he calls back,
he
will trigger my bomb beneath tank number one.' He speed-dials Richard's number and hears the Galaxy respond. ‘Now!' he says. ‘
Kabloom!
'

And Richard indeed replies. The signal from the Galaxy streaks at the speed of light to the detonator beside the C4 explosive. But while Macavity, Richard and the teams under the pirates' guns were searching the chain lockers and the rest of
Sayonara
back to the engine spaces and beyond, the Pitman, Harry and Ivan were hidden in the one place Macavity dared not look – beneath his secret bomb. They used that time to disarm, dismantle and move it. And, under the Pitman's careful guidance, pack it aboard the lifeboat they knew they would use for their escape, filling the bilge beneath the removable decking with all of the C4. And the Pitman, being a fan of retribution, has replaced the cellphone detonator she found, purposely leaving it on.

So that the instant Richard replies, the detonator explodes, setting off the huge bomb. But not on board
Sayonara
: in her lifeboat, immediately below
Volante
's stern. The lifeboat erupts into a ball of fire that towers a hundred feet in an instant, so powerful that it almost attains a mushroom shape. The blast tears
Volante
apart even before the flames can consume her. The explosion is so sudden that no one on board even realizes they are dying before they are dead. Even the speed-of-light communications of the cellphones is overcome. As Macavity, Lazzaro,
Volante
and all on board are blasted out of existence, Richard is still saying, ‘Hello? Hello? Is anybody there?'

But no one is. Except, after an instant, Robin.

L
ittle Rat Cay lies one hundred and twenty-five miles south-east of Nassau. On the northern side of the cay there is a white sand beach protected by Rat Cay proper, which sits little more than three hundred metres north-east across a deep-water channel called Rat Cay Pass. Behind the beach stand a couple of mahogany-walled huts which look like shanties roughly fashioned from the cascarilla and strong-back elder scrub that clothes the low hillock of the cay. The shanties are strengthened with timber from the coconut and banana palms that fringe the beach and roofed with their leaves. But the appearance is deceptive. Inside, the huts are havens of modern convenience, floored and walled with red cedar; fitted with stainless steel, marble and tile. Cookers are fuelled by gas canisters, as are the water heaters for basins and showers. Refrigerators, televisions, lights and the huge fans that turn lazily above massive, down-stuffed beds are powered by generators puffing discreetly in the brush; generators which also support the solar-powered distillation units that supply fresh water when the rainwater butts run low. The tallest and straightest by far among the palm trees is a disguised aerial, which receives and transmits as necessary, radio, TV, cellphone signals and wifi. The huts have wide verandas of Caribbean pine and candlewood and supporting hammocks woven from sisal; they look out over the flat white sand and the deep blue pass to the low green heave of Rat Cay.