Noah's Ark: Encounters (19 page)

The second thing he noticed was that both his hands were empty. The Maglite had gone. It had either broken or been taken by someone, because there was no light to be seen in any direction. He knew the other hand had held something important, but his thoughts swam uncontrollably in his head. It was painful to concentrate, but that was what he had to do.

The gun.

He remembered the gun. Why had he been brandishing it? The door. The door had been open. He was trying to stop the prisoners from getting out, then something had happened and it had all gone mad.

Bembridge hauled himself up onto his hands and knees. His head still pounded but he tried to block out the intense discomfort. He shuffled forwards on all fours, feeling in front of him for a wall, the gun, the torch, or the door.

His outstretched fingers found a wall first, so he shuffled along it until he reached the opening to the hastily converted prison cell. It was wide open. The sickly smell of alcohol mixed with sweat wafted out. Rupert didn’t need a light to know that there was nobody inside.

• • •

“Are we hit? Did it hit us?” Jake found himself shouting, but the noise from the explosion had already subsided. The prevailing wind carried the falling spire of water away from the bridge and out to sea.

Vardy struggled to regain his balance. The ship had started to roll back again, causing yet more disorientation. He was winded, and spoke in barely a whisper. “No.”

Lucya was the only person who had seen McNair crash into the map table. She was nimble and light on her feet, and had survived the impact of the tidal wave better than the others. She was already on her way to help the injured helmsman.

“Are you sure?” Jake asked. He was gripping a secondary navigation console, his fingers turning white with the strain as the
Spirit of Arcadia
crashed back down into the sea, sending a shockwave of vibration through the ship. “Jesus!”

“I’m sure.” Vardy drew short, sharp breaths, refilling his lungs as best he could. “That was a non-contact explosion. I’ve seen them before, with test firings. Believe me, we’d know if we’d been hit.”

Lucya was down on her hands and knees, crawling beneath the table. McNair was twisted into a position that made her wince with pain just to look at. She checked his neck for a pulse. He was alive. Mercifully for him, he wasn’t conscious.

“What about the
Ambush
?” Jake asked. “Did it hit the sub?”

“No. I said it was a non-contact explosion.”

“So they got away?”

“Possibly.”

“You said non-contact?”

“If that went off in close proximity, they will have suffered. Hull breach, electrical interference, harm to the propeller, there’s all sorts of damage they could have endured.”

“We have to call them. Martin can get the battery backup online.”

“No.” Vardy snapped the word, taking Jake by surprise. “They can’t respond. Any transmissions from them and they’ll give away their position.”

“Who the hell shot a torpedo at us anyway? This makes no sense!”

“Guys? I need help here,” Lucya called from the floor at the back of the room. “McNair is injured.”

Vardy limped towards the table, noticing for the first time that he had hurt his leg on something. “Great, now I’m going to be walking like Grau, as well as running his medical centre.”

Jake checked himself over and was relieved to find he was in one piece and unscathed. He knew that wouldn’t be the case for everyone aboard. Medical would once again be overrun. The cuts and bruises of the masses would have to wait; the temporary hospital was already full of the
Lance
’s crew, and they had to take priority.

“We have to get him to medical,” Vardy said after taking a cursory look over McNair. “And we have to be very careful about moving him. We need a stretcher and trolley.”

“I’ll go,” Jake volunteered.

“I’ll come with you,” Lucya said. “I’m going down to engineering to see how long before they get the emergency power on.”

Vardy looked at her. “And?”

“Okay. And on the way I can check the classroom and make sure Erica is okay.”

• • •

“Dan, will you stop pacing, you’ll wear out the carpet….ooh!” Vicky’s last word twisted into a long and pained groan.

Dan ran to her, kneeling in front of where she was perched on the end of the bed. “That’s another one!” I should have timed it. How long ago was that explosion?

Vicky puffed and puffed, then let out a long sigh. “It’s not another one. It’s just cramp. Stop worrying, will you?”

“Stop worrying? Are you mad? That’s two contractions! You’re obviously going into labour!”

She eased herself back until she was lying on the bed. “Don’t be daft. It’s not due for another two weeks yet. It’s too soon. It’s just cramp. That explosion made me jump, that’s all.”

Dan started pacing again. He looked at his watch, spoke to himself, then out loud. “I think I should fetch Doctor Vardy. He’ll know.”

“No! Don’t leave me on my own.”

“Why? If it’s just cramp…”

“It
is
just cramp. But still, I’d rather you stayed with me. Look, if and when my waters break, that’s when we’ll call the doctor, okay? Listen, calm down. It’s not as if we have a long drive to a maternity unit ahead of us. We can be in the medical centre in minutes Or Doctor Vardy and Carrie can come here.”

“I’d like one of them to come here now.”

“There’s no point wasting their time over nothing. They’ve got those people from the other ship they need to be helping. They don’t want us getting in the way.”

Dan was far from convinced, but he knew better than to argue with his wife. “Just promise me, if anything changes, you’ll tell me and I’ll go and get Carrie, okay?”

She nodded, but avoided his eye.

• • •

The ability for rumours to spread like wildfire through the
Spirit of Arcadia
was both a good and a bad thing. As many untruths and half-truths were in circulation as facts at any one time. Misinformation was disseminated with alarming rapidity. On this particular occasion, the gossip network was something of a blessing. As Jake and Lucya made their way down to medical in search of a stretcher and trolley, they encountered people on every deck who were confused, injured, or both.

Everyone wanted to know what had happened.

“Is the ship sinking?

“Did someone attack us?”

“Was there an underwater earthquake?”

“Are we safe?”

“Why did the power go off?”

“Where is the
Ambush
?”

The couple quickly realised it was better they split up. By taking different routes they could more efficiently get the truth out. At least, as much as they knew of the truth.

“The
Ambush
was attacked. We don’t know by whom. They missed. We’re not sinking. The power will be back on soon.”

The majority of people were understanding about the lack of detail. Simply being told that they weren’t about to meet a watery grave was enough; the finer points could wait. Not everyone’s curiosity was so easily satiated though. From some, the questions kept on coming.

“Who attacked the sub?”

“Will they attack again?”

“Will they attack
us
?”

Jake was sympathetic to this need for information; he wanted answers as much as the next man. Replying — truthfully — that he didn’t have a response led some to question his leadership. But for the most part the community was too preoccupied with dealing with their shock, as well as their cuts and bruises, to be engaged in political shenanigans. Jake made it to the medical suite relatively unscathed.

He found Carrie on the floor with Coote.

“Jake! Can you help me get him back onto the bed?”

“Of course. What happened?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. He fell when the ship rolled.”

Jake outlined what they knew about the attack, while the two of them heaved the heavy submarine captain back up onto the bed.

“Is he going to be alright?”

“I think from the way he fell that his arm might be broken. I’ll need a second opinion from Doctor Vardy. If only we had x-ray equipment on board…and ultrasound. Poor Vicky Mitchell, we’ve no way of seeing her baby. I listened to its heartbeat and everything sounds normal, but it’s a long time since I did any midwifery. To be honest, I’m as nervous as anything.”

“You’ll do just fine. Everyone has risen to the challenges of our rather unique situation better than I could have imagined. I have no doubt you will be equally impressive. Now, I need to get back to the bridge with a stretcher. Our helmsman is in a bad way and Vardy wants to bring him down here. I expect he’ll need your help.”

“I’ll get some space cleared, get us organised.”

He turned to leave, pushing the trolley with him.

“Jake?”

“Yes?”

“Are they going to try again? Another torpedo?”

He hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. “What can we do? The
Ambush
is out there, somewhere. I just hope she can deal with whatever this threat is.”

Twenty-One

M
ARTIN
O
AKLEY
LOVED
the sea, as long as he wasn’t in it. As far back as he remembered, he had loved boats, loved engines, and knew that he wanted to somehow combine the two. When he was eight years old, he’d had the grand revelation that there was such a job as
marine engineer
, that it was possible to work on ships’ engines and get paid for it. But for all that, he preferred being on the water to under it. He rarely used any of the swimming pools on the
Spirit of Arcadia
, and never took holidays at the beach. As far as he was concerned, the sea existed purely as a means of making boats work.

Getting out of the sea was now his primary focus. All he had to do was swim to the tender platform that was suspended just above the water line, and climb out.

It wasn’t until he had swum half the length of the ship that he realised the tender platform had gone. Part of the metal staircase that descended from the deck-two hatch was still visible. The rest had apparently come loose and detached itself, along with the platform. Given that it was made from steel, it was, he realised with horror, on its way down to the seabed.

Martin’s limbs were already exhausted from his efforts to escape being crushed. Now it seemed he would have to swim all the way round the cruiser and try to board the
Lance
, whose hull was much lower and therefore a more realistic prospect for climbing.

He trod water as he considered the
Lance
. He’d walked all the way round her deck when he had been carrying out his inspection. He couldn’t recall seeing any ropes, ladders, or other means of getting himself up out of the water. Even if he did make it aboard, the walkway was now gone. He’d be out of the sea, but no closer to getting back to the
Arcadia
’s engine room.

Frustrated, he raised his head to the sky and shouted out in rage.

Which was when he saw the severed umbilical power cord, dangling impotently from the
Arcadia
. It was ten metres ahead of him, and the end was already in the water.

• • •

In her rush to get to the classrooms, Lucya had overlooked the small matter of the lack of power. On the upper decks it wasn’t so much a problem; daylight flooded in through the windows. The lower she descended, the darker it got.

She continued to be ambushed by questions on every level, slowing her progress. Whilst she tried to remain as polite as possible, her patience began to wear thin. There was confusion and injury on every deck en route, and the more of it she saw, the more worried she became about Erica and the other children. Vardy had been spot on: going to engineering had just been an excuse.

By deck three there was very little light at all. The one upside was that it was possible to pass straight through without being noticed, which meant no stopping to answer the same questions.

Deck two was lit by small portholes. The sun, which had trouble enough penetrating the ever-present thick cloud, didn’t get far into this gloomy area. Most of deck two was the kind of space where the lack of daylight wasn’t a drawback. The sterile conference rooms — now classrooms — the lower level of the cinema, a casino, and crew accommodation. Without power, this warren of corridors and passageways would have been unnavigable for most people. Lucya had been bunked down there for most of her time on the ship, so she could find her way round with her eyes closed. She went directly to the classroom that she had dropped Erica in barely half an hour earlier.

Her first instinct was to peer through the small window in the door. If Miss Linders had everything under control, there was no need to interrupt. The room was, of course, in almost total darkness. Being in the interior of the ship, it benefitted from no natural light at all. However, it looked like someone — Miss Linders, she presumed — had a torch. Its focussed beam was darting around, picking out the faces of children.

The youngsters looked terrified.

“Poor loves,” Lucya whispered under her breath. “Why doesn’t she bring them up to another deck?” She pushed at the door to go and suggest that to the schoolmistress.

The door did not move.

Lucya rattled the handle, but the room had been locked shut. She rapped three times on the glass panel. “Miss Linders? Can you open the door?”

• • •

Martin stood on deck four, hands on his knees, water dripping from his clothes, panting heavily. His head was spinning. The physical exertion had been too much. He wasn’t quite sure how he had managed to climb the electrical and navigation umbilical cord when he was already so drained, but he had. The thick plastic ties that clamped the bundle of cables together at regular intervals had been life savers. Every couple of metres he had rested his feet on them, taking the strain from his arms and hands, getting his breath back before pulling himself ever upwards. As he went, he had thought of Stieg. Martin had been in the water for no more than ten minutes and was already chilled to the bone. He couldn’t imagine how Stieg could possibly have survived more than an hour in such conditions.