by Peter Tonkin
But Richard wasn’t listening any longer. ‘We have to shore up the stern sections just in case,’ he was saying to Robin as he hurried her off. ‘If one of those things came through the windows into our stateroom, say, it’d simply blow the whole ship up. I think it would be a good idea to bring down the storm shutters there, in any case - keep things cool and shady if and when it gets used as a hospital ward. When we’ve secured ours as best we can, I’ll have a word with Tom Olmeijer and Nils to see how we can protect the others back there.’ Full of decisiveness, action and energy as usual, he punched the button to summon the lift and stepped aboard as soon as the door opened. Robin, frowning, went along with him.
‘If these things are as fast and hot as the doctor says, Richard,’ she observed, ‘closing down some storm shutters isn’t going to help much. But I guess you never know...’
She was still darkly thoughtful when she followed Richard into their stateroom. And collided with his shoulder when he stopped with no warning whatsoever. ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he whispered. ‘Will you take a look at that!’ And, following his frowning glance, she saw with a genuine frisson of shock, that there were two praus grappled to Tai Fun’s stern like massive leeches sucking on the back of an unsuspecting swimmer.
It was the darkness that was so unsettling, thought Sailendra. It was simply disorientating to have the sun snuffed out in the middle of the afternoon. It made even the broad reaches of the seafront at Baya City, the harbour and the sea-roads beyond seem like a constricted, claustrophobic cave. It emphasized the simple power of the eruption and the powerlessness of the people caught up in it. It blew heavy walls of smoke even across the harbour mouth and it hid the rescue ships from view. And it had been the sight of those ships which had added so effectively to the growing calmness of the crowds. It also made the rain of flaky sparks look even more threatening than it was. He stood thought-fully in the back of the truck as it trundled back to the warehouse for the next load of bottled water.
Coming in through the compound gates, the prince was struck by how big the warehouse area was. Surely there must be something else there that he might make use of as well as water. He lifted the walkie-talkie to his lips and pressed button number 1. Twenty minutes later he was heaving cardboard boxes stencilled in Chinese characters on to the lorry beside the crates of water bottles. ‘What have you got there, Your Highness?’ asked Bambang, ever helpful.
‘Battery-powered Olympic torches, from the Beijing Olympics,’ answered the prince. ‘Push the button and they light up. They’re surprisingly bright. We’ll give them out with the water to combat the darkness as well as the thirst.’
As he spoke, he thrust one into Bambang’s hand and the boy flicked on the switch, illuminating the moulded plastic flame. He held the cheap plastic symbol high and it actually seemed to burn with a bright, undying confidence. Bambang used one of his favourite words from his American-English vocabulary. ‘Cooool!’ he said.
‘The Olympic torch certainly seems to be a success. And the first ship should be docking soon,’ said Sailendra to the perspiring Mr Pelajar. ‘That will really raise everyone’s spirits!’
But even as he spoke, something made him look up at the lightning-wreathed column of flame-streaked blackness pouring upwards out of his mountain. And there, defining the lip of the new-formed crater, the first red river of molten lava came pouring out on to the upper slopes.
Chapter 24: Heat
The first ships came in through the mouth of Baya Port an hour later on the back of the rising tide. The port itself was of a simple enough design. The harbour mouth opened into a wide bay which was divided from the mouth of the Sungai Baya River on one side by the levee that kept the river under some kind of control and prevented it from silting up the seaways. Opposite the levee right on the far side of the harbour was the warehouse section with its own deep-water access for loading and unloading. But the main port facilities consisted of the two long wide piers that projected straight out from the sea wall and port areas below the city itself.
It was rare that these piers were fully used - but today they were. The ships in the two parallel anchorages between the piers traditionally steamed straight in, and then reversed out. The vessels on the outer berths usually took advantage of the wider harbour waters, between berth 1 and the levee or berth 4 and the warehouse, to swing right round and berth ready to steam directly out again.
That was precisely what the harbour master directed - and it worked, hour after hour, from that first moment until the very end. While Sailendra and his team worked as the shoreside equivalent, moving between the patient lines of increasingly terrified people on to the piers, down to the berths and on to the boats, speeding their safe departure by quelling panic and spreading calming reassurance. Even after the lahar had come. Even when the deadly, glowing spectres of the terrible pyroclastic flows were on their way.
Each vessel could accept between three and five hundred. Each vessel took about an hour to dock, load and leave. The massive water-ballet that the harbour master choreographed speeded up the process as much as humanly possible, while Sailendra and his growing team of volunteers organized things increasingly efficiently on land, but the whole evacuation took between eight and ten solid hours. Hours the volcano had no intention of allowing them, any more than Vesuvius had at Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The next stage of the Plinian eruption of Guanung Surat was the rain of pumice. This started out as the occasional hot pebble and built towards an intense hailstorm of fragments heavy enough to hurt and hot enough to burn. Interspersed within this, right from the start, was the occasional heavier boulder of molten magma, still actually ablaze, which fell out of the roiling sky with the unexpected power and effect of a mortar bomb. It was one such bomb that exploded into the road immediately in front of Sailendra’s truck just as the first four ships were docking. He was just pulling out of the warehouse section to go down on to the berths where the chiefs of police and emergency were organizing the expectant refugees. But the bomb made him tap his ingenuity for one last time before getting stuck in to simple crowd control. ‘Stop the truck,’ he bellowed and the vehicle stopped obediently. Sailendra looked up fearfully, expecting a bombardment. But what arrived instead was the hot hail of pumice. He could see it sheeting down through the smoky red air that was illuminated now not by the late afternoon sun but by the fires up on the mountain.
Sailendra’s mind raced. There was nothing he could do about the bombs of molten magma. Anyone they hit full-on would die. He just had to hope that they would hit no one - or nothing - vital. But he could see all too clearly the effect of the hailstorm of hot pumice as the crowd seemed to shudder and heave as though it was one entire being. On the other hand, the numbers of people in that crowd holding Olympic torches gave him hope. If he could find in the warehouses something that would work as a fairly solid umbrella, they would add to each individual’s sense of protection while distributing them would give everyone something to get on with while they were waiting to board the rescue ships. He opened his mouth to call on the ingenious Bambang or his equally acute father for some inspiration. But then he stopped himself. The warehouses of Baya Port were the cross-roads between Japan, China and Tai Wan on the one hand, Java, India and points west on the other. There had to be a warehouse full of golf equipment somewhere close at hand. Golf clubs, golf bags, golf balls, golf shoes.
Golf umbrellas.
The moment Richard realized there were two praus secretly secured to Tai Fun’s stern, he took Robin - literally by the hand to begin with - and hurried straight for the bridge. The Mariners simply ran out of their stateroom on the uppermost deck and out into the smokily overcast afternoon, racing past the restaurant, beneath the tall shadow of one mast after another and straight into the bridge. But, unusually for people who had faced so many dangers so often in their lives, they were already too late.
The chef, leashed like a bellicose and ill-controlled dog, tried his best to keep Kerian a
nd his men away from any important people or tempting cargo for as long as possible. But, finishing his repairs to the hydraulic platform, he had not really been well focused on what had come aboard at Makassar or where it had all gone. And so, inevitably, he eventually brought the pirates to a large storage area which he had last seen filled with a thoroughly mundane mixture of bedding and beach equipment, but which was now packed tight with near-priceless medical equipment and drugs. Kerian’s narrow eyes swept across this treasure-trove while le Chef silently cursed himself and his luck.
He had good reason. For this area alone made Kerian change his plans entirely. It became instantly clear to the overpoweringly greedy man that he would never get all of this aboard his praus. And, indeed, he would never fit it all in his holds. And of course, this was only one storage area in a huge and unimaginably rich vessel. He must stop thinking about stealing the equipment and cargo she carried, therefore; he must steal the whole vessel. And as far as he could see, there was only one place aboard where such a feat could be achieved. ‘Take me to the bridge,’ he ordered, gruffly, in clear American-accented English.
Richard was too long in the tooth simply to run on to the bridge shouting a warning. But the simple fact was that when he checked the open bridge area everything seemed normal enough. Or it did so until he actually stepped into the command area. The moment he did so, a lean and dangerous-looking old man wearing a sarong and an evil grin stepped out of Eva Gruber’s chart area and pointed a very businesslike Browning High Power 9mm pistol at him. Richard’s first thought was of Robin, who was hard on his heels. And she was just behind him now, being threatened by, of all things, a Walther PPK - as though she was Pussy Galore and he was Auric Goldfinger. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I see you already know we have unexpected guests aboard, Captain.’
‘Sit,’ said the oldest of the pirates. He waved the Browning purposefully. Richard looked down and saw Larsen already on the deck with his back against the wall and a nasty welt across his head. The chef was seated beside him, trussed like a Christmas turkey. Richard made a meal out of obeying the curt command, his wise eyes busy. He had had dealings with a wide range of guns in his chequered past and could identify most of the major modern makes and models. As well as the Browning and the Walther, he saw a couple of half-familiar Russian models - Makarovs, maybe. Or Tokarevs - he wasn’t that knowledgeable. Several venerable Colt .45 automatics, which he had last seen John Wayne carrying as he was winning World War II for Hollywood, battling his way past here and on to Iwo Jima. There were two other automatic handguns that he didn’t recognize but which looked to be about the same age as John Wayne’s Colts. Japanese war weapons, if the Colts were any guide. The Japanese army equivalent of the Nazi Luger. What were they called? Type 94s? Something like that. And there was another bulky, dangerous-looking pistol up on the shelving under the cracked clearview. He really didn’t recognize that and wasted some tense moments in nervous speculation before he realized it was a simple nail gun. All in all, not the sort of weapons he would have chosen himself, but - other than the nail gun - quite enough to do the job, if they were all well maintained and in working order, he thought grimly.
Then he stopped thinking and concentrated on what was being said. ‘This vessel,’ said the old man, gesturing towards the radar screen and speaking in English. ‘This vessel is the Miyazaki Maru? It has her identification code, you say?’
‘Yes,’ said Tom Olmeijer, clearly unhappy to be imparting the information, glancing at a stony-faced Nils Nordberg every time he spoke.
‘How you know this? How you know for certain this is Miyazaki Maru?’
‘All the rescue ships have unique identification numbers. We have logged them into our computers so we know which is which. Crucial for when we get right in close. So many ships, so little sea room, such bad visibility...’
‘Bad visibility. Yesssss,’ the pirate drew out the word, clearly deep in thought. ‘We head for this Miyazaki Maru. Not obvious; no big change of course. Tell no one. We meet Miyazaki Maru close to harbour, under cover of smoke. I give more orders then. Now I need radio. I talk to Captain Nakatomi. In...’ He hesitated, searching for the word. ‘In secret...’
As soon as the leader vanished, Richard leaned over towards Larsen. ‘Who’s not here? Nic Greenbaum, Gabriella...’
‘They have three women as hostages, according to the oldest one. I’d guess Gabriella, Eva and Inge. That’s why the owner’s told the captain to play ball for the moment...’
‘You shuttup! You shuttup!’ A younger, more dangerously nervous version of the old man waved one of the Makarov pistols in Larsen’s face and covered his beard with spittle. Someone’s going to pay for that, thought Richard, easing himself back against the wall, apparently amenable. He glanced across at Robin but she had withdrawn, clearly wanting to think rather than to communicate for the moment at least.
The leader arrived back on the bridge positively aglow with excitement. He gave a decisive series of orders to his men in a rapid flow of Indonesian baha Indonesia that Richard could not begin to understand. He noticed that the young relative reacted to a word that sounded a bit like bucket, however, and guessed that this must be the young man’s name or title. Other than that, Richard began to characterize his enemies by the weapons they were carrying. It was Bucket and his Makarov who was left on the bridge, with the two Colts to back him up. The leader took his Browning, the Walther, the other Makarov and the Type 94s with him - and le Chef like a guide dog on a leash jerked to his feet and pushed roughly forward. More payback to come, thought Richard, looking at the Frenchman’s thunderous face.
But if he had thought the Frenchman looked murderous that was nothing to the way Nic Greenbaum looked when he and Dr Hirai were pushed on to the bridge ten minutes later, the Browning held to Nic’s temple and a Type 94 to the doctor’s. ‘I swear to God, Councillor Kerian,’ Nic was saying in a voice and with a sentiment that Richard feared was probably as dangerous as it was satisfying to hear - it was, after all exactly what he himself was thinking, but far too canny to articulate, ‘if you harm one hair on anyone’s head here I will hunt you down.’ As the man with the Browning, whose name was Councillor Kerian, apparently, gestured him to sit down beside Richard, unfazed by the American’s bluster, ‘I will pay you back for this one way or another,’ Nic snarled, then, like all the rest of them, he fell into a brooding silence.
But the first part of the payback didn’t come for several hours.
Chapter 25: Lahar
It took a little while for the magma boiling out of the caldera at the top of Guanung Surat to attain a really steady flow. Only when the rock wall above the western slope collapsed did the lava really start to come down the mountainside at speed, pouring through the ever-widening spout caused by the enormous fissure. Although the molten rock was thick enough to form its own levees, solidifying on either side of the red-hot molten core as it rolled majestically down the steep mountain slope, these levees simply seemed to direct the flow of molten rock along the most disastrous course possible. The red-hot core of the lava river was the better part of a thousand degrees Celsius. It was moving with unusual rapidity because of the slope it was travelling down. It was an unusually heavy flow in any case because of the collapse of the rock-wall that had released it in the first place.
So that when it started pouring into the headwaters of the already flooding Sungai Baya River, it simply exploded. Superheated steam and boiling rock became a semi-liquid torrent that went roaring down the steep-sided river course at many metres per second, in a wave that was sixty metres high, and in a slide that was still seven hundred degrees Celsius at its heart. And then it met the hot mud still pouring out of the mountain above the almost naked rock that was all that remained above the landslide. And all Hell was let loose in the form of a lahar.
The lahar boiled out of the mud-filled flood-channel of the river course and spread out across the mountainside. Its leading wall dropped to ten metres high, but it gained in wei
ght and viscosity. At its heart it was still superheated, riding on a slipway of steam as slick as any ice; but it had dropped to five hundred degrees and cooled further with every metre it hurled down the mountain, exchanging heat for mass as it gulped in more mud, exchanging heat for speed. By the time that it reached the upper point of the actual landslide debris which had buried the modern sections of Baya City, it was moving at sixty kilometres an hour. The debris slowed it only in so far as it seemed to hesitate, tearing more mud up out of the ground and into its hungry heart. It was nearly ninety per cent mud and debris now, with just enough superheated steam to keep it moving. As its speed slowed, so its depth fell, to five metres. The mountain slope was easing, levelled by a combination of riverine plain and piled avalanche debris. Crucially too, the river itself spread wide here and was bound on its city side by the levee that led down along the harbour’s side. The levee was designed to stand three metres above the top of the highest spring tide, but the avalanche had heightened it with yet more debris plastered there with walls of solid mud. And the tide had peaked an hour or so before the lahar came and had been a low one in spite of the fullness of the invisible moon. The combination of the flooded river’s width, the tide and the levee kept the worst of the lahar out of the deserted city above and the harbour below. And away from the shocked and terrified crowds, therefore. But it sent the broad front of its massive, weighty power straight out into the ocean in a solid wall of boiling mud two metres high moving at seventy-five kilometres an hour.
The lahar came so fast that Sailendra never really understood what was going on until it hit. It added nothing appreciable to the shaking of the ground, and no distinguishable sound to the constant rolling thunder of the eruptions. The lahar itself glowed spectrally, especially high on the mountainside when it was still at incandescent temperatures, but it was disguised by the high-sided valley where it was at its brightest. And those who were looking closely at the lower mountain slopes and saw it coming thought their eyes were playing tricks on them - with a spreading ruby ghostliness seeming to cause everything around it to jerk out of focus. Most people witnessing the approach of the monster simply wiped their hands over their eyes, supposing their sight to have been affected by a blinding wash of tears.