Seawitch (23 page)

257

All stair MacLean

prise: but there wouldn't be any surprise this time."

"We don't need luck. Lord Worth wouldn't have had all those depth charges stolen and brought aboard unless one of your men is an expert in depth charges. You've got such a man?"

"Yeah." Palermo eyed him speculatively. "Cronin. Ex-petty officer. Why?"

"He could arrange the detonator setting so that the-depth charge would explode immediately or soon after hitting the water?"

"I guess so. Again, why?"

"We roll three depth charges along the platform to within, say, twenty-five yards of each of the legs. Your friend Cronin could advise us on this. My distance could be wrong. If Simpson detects anything on his sensors we just push one of the depth charges over the side. The blast effect should have no effect on the leg. I doubt if the boat with the divers would get anything more than a hard shaking. But for divers in the water the concussive shock effects could hardly miss being fatal."

Palermo looked at him with cold appraising eyes. "For a man supposed to be on the side of the law, Mitchell, you're the most cold-blooded bastard Fve ever met.'*

"If you want to die just say so. You'd find it a bit uncomfortable nine hundred feet down in the Gulf. I suggest you get Cronin and a couple of your men and get going on the depth charges."

358

Sea witch

Mitchell followed to watch Palermo, Cronin and two of their men at work. Cronin agreed with MitchelTs estimate of placing the depth charges twenty-five yards from the legs. As he stood there Marina came up to him.

She said: "More men are going to die, aren't they, Michael?"

"I hope not."

"But you are getting ready to kill, aren't you?"

"I'm getting ready to survive. I'm getting ready for all of us to survive."

She took his arm. "Do you like killing?"

"No."

"Then how come you're so good at it?"

"Somebody has to be."

"For the good of mankind, I suppose?"

"Look, you don't have to talk to me." He paused and went on slowly. "Cops kill. Soldiers kill. Airmen kill. They don't have to like it. In the First World War a guy named Marshal Foch got to be the roost decorated soldier of the war for being responsible for the deaths of a million men. The fact that most of them were his own men would seem to be beside the point. I don't hunt, I don't shoot game, I don't even fish. I mean, I like lamb as much as the next man, but I wouldn't put a hook in one's throat and drag it around a field for half an hour before it dies from agony and exhaustion. All I do is exterminate vermin. To me, all crooks, armed or not, are vermin.**

259

Alistalr MacLean

"Is that why you and John got fired from the police?"

"Do I have to tell you that?"

"Have you ever killed what you, what I, would call a good person?"

"No. But unless you shut up—"

"In spite of everything, I think I might still marry you."

"I've never asked you."

"Well, what are you waiting for?"

Mitchell sighed, then smiled. "Marina Worth, would you do me the honor—"

Behind them, Lord Worth coughed. Marina swung round. "Daddy," she said, "you have a genius for turning up at the wrong moment."

Lord Worth was mild. "The right moment I would have said. My unreserved congratulations." He looked at Mitchell. "Well, you certainly took your time about it. Everything shipshape and secured for the night?"

"As far as I can guess at what goes on in Cronkite's mind."

"My confidence in you, my boy, is total. Well, it's bed for me—I feel, perhaps not unaccountably, extremely tired."

Marina said: "Me, too. Well, goodnight, fiance"." She kissed him lightly and left with her father.

For once, Lord Worth's confidence in Mitchell was slightly misplaced. The latter had made a mistake, though a completely unwitting one, in

Seawftch

sending the radio officer off duty. For had that officer remained on duty he would undoubtedly have picked up the news flash about the theft of the nuclear weapons from the Netley Rowan Arsenal: Mitchell could not have failed to put two and two together.

During the third hour of Lord Worth's conscience-untroubled sleep Mulhooney had been extremely active. He had discharged his fifty thousand tons of oil and taken the Torbello well out-to sea, far over the horizon. He returned later with two companions in the ship's only motorized lifeboat with the sad news that, in the sinking of the tanker, a shattering explosion had occurred which had decimated his crew. They three were the only survivors. The decimated crew were, at that moment, taking the Torbello south to Panama. The official condolences were widespread, apparently sincere and wholly hypocritical: when a tanker blows up its motorized lifeboat does not survive intact. The republic had no diplomatic relations with the United States, and the only things they would cheerfully have extradited to that country were cholera and the bubonic plague. A private jet awaited the three at the tiny airport. Passports duly stamped, Mulhooney and his friends filed a flight plan for Guatemala.

Some hours later they arrived at the Houston International Airport. With much of the ten mil-

Allstair Mad-ean

lion dollars still remaining at his disposal, Cron-kite was not the man to worry about incidental expenses. Mulhooney and his friends immediately hired a long-range helicopter and set out for the Gulf.

In the fourth hour of his sleep, which had remained undisturbed by the sound of a considerable underwater explosion, Lord Worth was unpleasantly awakened by a call from a seethingly mad Cronkite, who accused him of killing two more of his men and warned that he was going to extract a fearful vengeance. Lord Worth hung up without bothering to reply, sent for Mitchell and learned that Cronkite had indeed made another attempt to sabotage the western leg. The depth charge had apparently done everything expected of it, for their searchlights had picked up the bodies of two divers floating on the surface. The craft that had been carrying them could not have been seriously damaged for they had heard the sound of its diesels starting up. Instead of making a straight escape, it had disappeared under the rig, and by the time they had crossed to the other side of the Seawitch it was long gone into the darkness and rain. Lord Worth smiled happily and went back to sleep.

In the fifth hour of his sleep he would not have been smiling quite so happily if he had been aware of certain strange activities that were tak-

a

Seawitch

ing place in a remote Louisiana motel, one exclusively owned by Lord Worth himself. Here it was that the Seawitch's relief crews spent their time off in the strictest seclusion. In addition to abundant food, drink, films, TV and a high-class bordello, it offered every amenity off-duty oil-rig men could ever have wished for. Not that any of them would have wanted to leave the compound gates anyway: nine out of ten of them were wanted by the law, and total privacy was a paramount requirement.

The intruders, some twenty in all, arrived in the middle of the night. They were led by a man named Gregson: of all Cronkite's associates, he was by far the most dangerous and lethal and was possessed of the morality and instincts of a fer-de-lance with a toothache. The motel staff were all asleep and were chloroformed before they had any opportunity of regaining consciousness.

The rig relief crew, also, were all asleep but in a somewhat different fashion and for different reasons. Liquor is forbidden on oil rigs, and the relief crews on the night before returning to duty generally made the best of their last chance. Their dormant states ranged from the merely befuddled to the paralytic. The rounding up of them, most of whom remained still asleep on their feet, took no more than five minutes. The only two relatively sober members of the relief crew tried to offer resistance. Gregson, with a

363

Aliatalr MaeLean

Seawitefa

silenced Beretta, gunned them down as if they had been wild dogs.

The captives were transported in a completely standard, albeit temporarily purloined, moving van to an abandoned and very isolated warehouse on the outskirts of town. Somewhat less than salubrious, it was perfectly fitted for Gregson's purpose. The prisoners were neither bound nor gagged, which would have been pointless in the presence of two armed guards who carried the customary intimidating machine carbines. In point of fact, the carbines too were superfluous: the besotted captives had already drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

It was in the sixth hour of Lord Worth's equally dreamless slumber that Gregson and his men lifted off in one of Lord Worth's helicopters. The two pilots had been reluctant to accept them as passengers, but Schmeissers are powerfully persuasive agents.

It was in the seventh hour of Lord Worth's slumber that Mulhooney and his two colleagues touched down on the empty helipad of the Georgia. As Cronkite's own helicopter was temporarily marooned on the Seawitch, he had no compunction in impounding both the helicopter and its hapless pilot.

At almost exactly the same moment another

helicopter touched down on the Seawitch and a solitary passenger and pilot emerged. The passenger was Dr. Greenshaw, and he looked, and was, a very tired elderly man. He went straight to the sick bay and, without even trying to remove his clothes, lay down on one of the cots and composed himself for sleep. He should, he supposed, have reported to Lord Worth that his daughter Melinda and John Roomer were in good hands and good shape, but good news could wait.

On the eighth hour, with the dawn in the sky, Lord Worth, a man who enjoyed his sleep, awoke, stretched himself luxuriously, pulled on his splendidly embroidered dressing gown and strolled out onto the platform. The rain had stopped, the sun was tipping the horizon and there was every promise of a beautiful day to come. Privately congratulating himself on his prescience that no trouble would occur during the night, he retired to his quarters to perform his customary and leisurely morning ablutions.

Lord Worth's self-congratulations on his prescience were entirely premature. Fifteen minutes earlier the radio operator, newly returned to duty, had picked up a news broadcast that he didn't like at all and gone straight to MitchelTs room. Like every man on board, even including Larsen

2O4

265

Alistair MaciLean

and Palermo, he knew that the man to contact in an emergency was Mitchell: the thought of alerting Lord Worth never entered his head.

He found Mitchell shaving. Mitchell looked tired—less than surprising, as he had spent most of the night awake. Mitchell said: "No more trouble, I hope?"

"I don't know." He handed Mitchell a strip of teletype. It read: "Two tactical nuclear weapons stolen from the Netley Rowan Arsenal yesterday afternoon. Intelligence suspects they are being flown or helicoptered south over Gulf of Mexico to an unknown destination. A worldwide alert has been issued. Anyone able to provide information should—"

"Jesus! Get hold of this arsenal any way you can. Use Lord Worth's name. Be with you in a minute."

Mitchell was with him in half a minute. The operator said: "I'm through already. Not much co-operation, though."

"Give me that phone. My name's MitchelL Who's speaking, please?"

"Colonel Pryce." The tone wasn't exactly distant, just a senior officer talking to a civilian.

"I work for Lord Worth. You can check that with the Fort Lauderdale Police, the Pentagon or the Secretary of State." He said to the operator but loudly enough that Pryce could hear: "Get Lord Worth here. I don't care if he's in Ms

26«

Seawiteh

damned bath, just get him here now." Back on the phone, he said: "Colonel Pryce, an officer of your grade should know that Lord Worth's daughters have been kidnaped. I was hired to recover them and I did so. More important, this oil rig, the Seawitch, is now under threat of destruction. Two attempts have already been made. They were unsuccessful. The Pentagon will confirm that they've stopped three foreign warships headed here for the purpose of destroying the Seawitch. I believe those nukes weapons are heading this way. I want full information about them and Til warn you that Worth will interpret any failure to provide this information as a gross dereliction of duty. And you know the clout that Lord Worth has."

There was a far from subtle change in Colonel Pryce's tone. "It's quite unnecessary to threaten me."

"Just a minute. Lord Worth's just arrived." Mitchell gave a brief resume of his phone conversation, making sure that Pryce could hear every word.

"Nuclear bloody bombs! That's why Cronkite said he could blast us out of the water!" Lord Worth snatched the phone from Mitchell. "Worth here. I have a hotline to the Secretary of State, Dr. Benton. I could patch him in in fifteen seconds. Do you want me to do that?"

"That will not be necessary, Lord Worth."

Z«T

Alistair MacLean

"Then give us a detailed description of those damned things and tell us how they work."

Pryce, almost eagerly, gave the description. It was almost precisely similar to the one that Captain Martin had given to the bogus Colonel Farquharson. "But Martin was a new officer and shaky on his details. The nuclear devices—you can hardly call them bombs—are probably twice as effective as he said. They took the wrong type —those devices have no black button to shut off in emergency. And they have a ninety-minute setting, not sixty. And they can be radio-activated."

"Something complicated? I mean, a VHP number or something of the kind?"

"Something very uncomplicated. You can't expect a soldier in the heat of battle to remember abstruse numbers. It's simply a pear-shaped device with a plastic seal. Strip that off and turn a black switch through three hundred and sixty degrees. It's important to remember that turning this switch off will deactivate the detonating mechanism in the device. It can be turned on again at any time."

"If it should be used against us ... we have a huge oil-storage tank nearby. Wouldn't this cause a massive oil slick?"

"Sir—oil is by nature combustible and much more easily vaporized than steel."