Seawitch

by Alistair MacLean

  The two saboteurs were not only energetically engaged in their task, they were so exclusively preoccupied with it that they quite failed to notice the stealthy approach of Mitchell and Sawyers. The two scuba divers pressed their masks together, looked into each other’s eyes–there was sufficient reflected light from the other divers to allow them to do this–and nodded simultaneously. Not being much given to squeamishness where potential killers were concerned, they harpooned the two saboteurs through their backs. In both cases death must have been instantaneous. Mitchell and Sawyers reloaded their compressed air harpoons then, for good measure, they sliced their two victims’ breathing tubes which, as was standard, also contained the communication wires.

  On the Starlight Easton and his crew were instantly aware that something had gone drastically wrong. The dead men were pulled up, the harpoons still embedded in their backs, and as they were being hauled over the gunwales two of the crew cried out in agony: Mitchell and Sawyers had surfaced and picked off two more targets. Whether either had been mortally or grievously injured was impossible to say, but far more than enough had happened for Easton to take off at speed, this time on his much faster diesels: the engines were admittedly noisy but the darkness was so intense that only a near-miracle would have enabled the alerted gunners on the platform to obtain an accurate fix on them.

  The two scuba divers, their own headlights now switched on, swam down to the spot where the mines and explosives had been attached to the legs. There were time fuses attached to both mines and explosives. Those they detached and let fall to the bottom of the ocean. For good measure they also removed the detonators. The explosives, now harmless, they unwound and let them follow the time fuses. The mines they prudently left where they were. Both men were explosives experts but not deep water explosives experts. Mines, as many ghosts can attest to, can be very tricky and unpredictable. They consist of, as the main charge, TNT, amatol or some such conventional explosive. In their central tube they have a primer, which may consist of one of a variety of slow-burning explosives, and fitted to the top of the primer is a travelling detonator, activated by sea pressure, which usually consists of seventy-seven grains of fulminate of mercury. Even with this detonator removed the primer can still detonate under immense pressure. Neither diver had any wish to blow up the pile-driven anchors or the tensioning cables attached to the anchors. Via the derrick crane they made their way back to the platform and reported to the radio room. They had to wait for some time before making their report, for Lord Worth was in a far from amicable telephone conversation with Cronikite. Marina sat apart, her hands clenched and her normally tanned face a greyish colour. She looked at Mitchell then averted her eyes as if she never wished to set eyes on him again which, at the moment, she probably didn’t.

  Cronkite was furious. ‘You murderous bastard, Worth.’ He was clearly unaware that he was talking in the presence of ladies. ‘Three of my best men dead, all of them harpooned through the back.’ Involuntarily, Marina looked at Mitchell again. Mitchell had the impression that he was either a monster from outer space or from the nethermost depths: at any rate, a monster.

  Lord Worth was no less furious. ‘It would be a pleasure to repeat the process–with you as the central figure this time.’

  Cronkite choked, then said with what might have been truth: ‘My intention was just temporarily to incapacitate the Seawitch without harming anyone aboard. But if you want to play it rough you’ll have to find a new Seawitch in twenty-four hours. If, that is, you’re fortunate enough to survive the loss of the present Seawitch. I’m going to blast you out of the water.’

  Lord Worth was calmer now. ‘It would be interesting to know how you’re going to achieve that My information is that your precious warships have been ordered back to base.’

  ‘There’s more than one way of blasting you out of the water.’ Cronkite sounded very sure of himself. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to off-load the Torbello’s oil, then sink it.’ In point of fact Cronkite had no intention of sinking the tanker: the Torbello was a Panamanian-registered tanker and Cronkite was not lacking in Panamanian friends: a tanker could be easily disposed of for a very considerable sum indeed. The conversation, if such an acrimonious exchange could be so called, ended abruptly.

  Mitchell said: ‘One thing’s for sure. Cronkite is a fluent liar. He’s nowhere near Central America. Not with that kind of reception. And we heard him talking to his friend Durand. He had elected not to come on this helicopter flight–which lasted only fifteen minutes. He’s lurking somewhere just over the horizon.’

  Lord Worth said: ‘How did things go down there?’

  ‘You heard from Cronkite. There was no trouble.’

  ‘Do you expect more?’

  ‘Yes. Cronkite sounds too damn confident for my liking.’

  ‘How do you think it’ll come?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. He might even try the game thing again.’

  Lord Worth was incredulous. ‘After what happened to him?’

  ‘He may be relying on the unexpected. One thing I’m sure of. If he does try the same again he’ll use different tactics. I’m sure he won’t try an air or submarine approach, if for no other reason that he doesn’t–he can’t–have skilled men. So I don’t think you’ll require your radar or sonar watch-keepers tonight. Come to that, your radio operator may need a rest–after all, he’s got an alarm call-up in his cabin. I’d keep Simpson on duty, though. Just in case our friends try for one of the legs again.’

  Palermo said: ‘But they’d be waiting this time. They’d be operating close to the surface. They’d have armed guards ready and waiting to protect the divers, maybe even infra-red search-lights that we couldn’t detect from the platform. You and Sawyers had luck the first time, and luck depends very much on the element of surprise: but there would be no luck this time, because there would be no surprise.’

  ‘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 have such a man?’

  ‘Yes.’ 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 should imagine so. Again, why?’

  ‘We trundle 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 could or should have no effect on the leg concerned. I doubt if the boat with the divers would receive anything more than a severe shaking. But for divers in the water the concussive shock effects could hardly fail to be fatal.’

  Palermo looked at him with cold, appraising eyes. ‘For a man supposed to be on the side of the law, you, Mitchell, are the most cold-blooded bastard I’ve ever met.’

  ‘If you want to die just say so. I should imagine you’d find conditions a bit uncomfortable nine hundred feet down in the Gulf. I suggest you get Cronin and a couple of your men and arrange the charges accordingly.’

  Mitchell went to watch Palermo, Cronin and two of their men at work. Cronin had agreed with Mitchell’s 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?’

  ‘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 fellow called Marshal Foch became the most 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 appear 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 its 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.’

  ‘That’s why you and John got fired from the police?’

  ‘I have to tell you that?’

  ‘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. ‘Lady Marina Worth, would you do me the honour–’

  Behind them, Lord Worth coughed. Marina swung round, the expression on her face indicating that only her aristocratic upbringing was preventing her from stamping her foot. ‘Daddy, 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 ship-shape and secured for the night?’

  ‘As far as I can guess at what goes on in Cronkite’s devious 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, good night, fiancé.’ She kissed him lightly and left with her father.

  For once Lord Worth’s confidence in Mitchell was slightly misplaced. He had made a mistake, though a completely unwitting one, in 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 Armory: 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 50,000 tons of oil and taken the Torbello well out to sea, far over the horizon. He returned an hour later with two companions and 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 relation with the United State 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 took out a flight plan for Guatemala.

  Some hour later they arrived at the Houston International Airport. With much of the remaining ten million dollars still remaining at his disposal, Cronkite 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 that he, Cronkite, was going to exact 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 that had been expected of it, for their search-lights 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 reached the other tide it had so vanished into the darkness and rain that they had been unable to pick it up. 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 taking place in a remote Louisiana motel, one exclusively owned and managed by Lord Worth himself. Here it was that the Seawitch’s relief crew spent their weekly vacation in the strictest seclusion. In addition to abundant food, drink, films, TV and a high-class bordello that might have been run by Sally Stanford herself in her hey-day, it offered every amenity for which off-duty oil rig men could ever have wished. ’Not that any of them wished to step outside the compound gates: when nine out of ten men are wanted by the law, total privacy is a paramount requirement.

  The intruders, some twenty in all, arrived in the middle of the night. They were led by a man–a humanoid would have been a better term for him–called 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 toothache. The 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 quite different reasons. Liquor is forbidden on oil rigs and the relief crews on their last 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, once afoot, remained still asleep on their feet, took no more than five minutes. The only two relatively sober members of the relief crew made to offer some show of resistance. Gregson, with a silenced Biretta, gunned them down as if they had been wild dogs.

  The captives were pushed inside a completely standard, albeit temporarily purloined, removal van and transported to an abandoned and very isolated warehouse on the outskirts of town. To say the least it was somewhat less than salubrious, but 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 fact the carbines were also 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 powerful 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 sickbay and, without as much as 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 in 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 on to 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-congratulation on his prescience was entirely premature. Fifteen minutes earlier the radio opera
tor, newly returned to duty, had picked up a news broadcast that he didn’t like at all and gone straight to Mitchell’s room. Like every man on board, even including Larsen 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 Armoury yesterday afternoon. Intelligence suspects they are being flown or helicoptered south over Gulf of Mexico to an unknown destination. A world-wide alert has been issued. Anyone able to provide information should–’

  ‘Jesus! Get hold of this armoury any way you can. Use Lord Worth’s name. With you in a minute.’

  Mitchell was with him in half a minute. The operator said: ‘I’m through already. Not much cooperation, though.’

  ‘Give me that phone. Hello? 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 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 is in his bloody bath, just get him here now. Colonel Pryce, an officer of your standing should know that Lord Worth’s daughters have been kidnapped. I have been engaged to recover them and this I have done. More importantly, this oil rig, the Seawitch, is under threat of destruction. Two attempts have already been made. They were unsuccessful. Further questioning of the Pentagon will confirm that they have stopped three foreign warships headed here for the purpose of destroying the Seawitch. I want information about those tactical weapons and I must warn you that Lord Worth will interpret any failure to provide this information as a gross dereliction of duty. And you know the immense power Lord Worth has.’