by Dayle, Harry
Brian was the first man off. Jake was shocked to see that his leg was tied with a blood-soaked bandage.
“Oh, yeah. Got a bit shot,” he said, shrugging as he noticed Jake looking.
“Get yourself up to deck eight. Room 845,” Vardy said. “Temporary hospital.”
“If it’s all the same, I’d like to see the other men off first. We’re not done here yet. Anyway, it’s just a flesh wound.” He gave the sort of twisted grin that made Jake think there was a shared joke between the two men.
Martin rocked from foot to foot, eager to get on board. Before that could happen, they needed to get everyone else off.
The first to come were the captives, who had been found down below the waterline. They were brought out by the sailors into the ever-brightening morning, where they blinked back the light and stared in awe at the towering mass of the Spirit of Arcadia. Some were able to walk, with help. Some had to be carried, too weak to stand on their own two legs. All of them were foul-smelling, and it was easy to see why. Their clothes were drenched with effluent mixed with seawater and oil, and in some cases there was blood added to the cocktail too. Their rancid torn clothes, and their weak, atrophied muscles, their pasty white faces pocked with bruises, and their unkempt, matted hair and reddened eyes told a story of an inhumane incarceration.
As each captive was brought off the boat, hushed gasps could be heard from the decks above when the onlookers saw first-hand the state of the men and women.
Vardy directed the accompanying submariners to the temporary medical accommodation. It took time to get them all out, the Ambush’s men each making more than one trip up and down to deck eight.
The last man off wore a deep blue jacket. He was in a particularly sorry state, but as he passed by Jake and the welcoming committee he stopped, and croaked two words to them: “Thank…you.”
Jake nodded. He was still shocked at the condition of the men. He wanted desperately to sit down with them and hear their story, to ask them just what had happened with the Lance, with the life rafts, and most of all with the decapitated bodies. It wasn’t the time, but he would have his chance later.
Next off were the prisoners, the men who had apparently taken control of the Lance and tied up the real crew below deck. They had almost all come round after being stunned, and found themselves gagged and bound by the ruthlessly efficient submariners. The men (and they were all men) were silent apart from one, who was trying in vain to shout and scream through the thick tape that covered his mouth.
Vardy waited until they had been marched off the ship and down to a makeshift brig that Max had prepared on deck one, before commenting.
“Those uniforms they’re wearing. You know what they are?”
Jake shook his head.
“Korean. Specifically, North Korean.”
“What are North Koreans doing on a Norwegian science ship?” Jake asked, staring out at the blue-and-white boat. “And where on earth did they come from?”
“That,” Vardy said gravely, “is the real question. Where indeed?”
• • •
Grace approached the door, dragging her feet and keeping her head low. Her pulse was racing. Should she knock? What should she say? Being up on deck eleven suddenly didn’t feel like such a clever idea. Perhaps it would have been better to discuss the plan with Max, she wondered. No. He would have ridiculed her, said she was being paranoid, then sent her off on another pointless patrol. Evidence was required. Besides, what was the danger, really?
When she was within two paces of cabin 1124, the door magically opened before her. Whoever was behind it stayed behind it, out of view. The entrance to the suite was a short, narrow hallway, with a cupboard on the right. Grace could see a couple of armchairs facing away from her at the end of the hall, but no sign of life. She hesitated.
“In!” The husky voice came from behind the open door. It carried such authority that almost automatically she took a step forwards. She heard the door close behind her, but didn’t dare turn to see who was there.
She walked on, and the hallway opened out into a spacious room decorated in shades of cream and brown. The armchairs, she realised, were for show. Anyone glancing in while the door was open would see them and not suspect that the rest of the furniture in the cabin had been piled into a corner, which was the case. At least in the salon of the suite anyway. The door to the bedroom was closed; there was no chance of seeing what was in there.
“What you here for? Food, fags or booze?”
Grace swung round to see a skinny man dressed in black jeans and a heavy-metal t-shirt. She guessed he couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three at a push. He was leaning against the wall, one foot on the floor, the other raised, sole pressed against the cream wallpaper.
“You’re new. Not seen you here before. How did you find us?” Something in his voice made Grace afraid. A menacing undertone, a hint of madness. She breathed deeply, but quietly, through her nose, maintaining a calm exterior.
“Friend of mine,” she said, her voice flat. “Said you had smokes?”
“American?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t like Americans.”
“Even paying customers?”
“Depends what they’re paying with. What you got?”
Grace tried hard not to let her delight at being right, show. This was the black market she had suspected, no doubt about that.
She’d considered the question of payment before putting on her casual clothes and coming up to deck eleven. She’d spent a good fifteen minutes in her cabin, racking her brain for what she could offer in return for whatever it was they were selling. Cash was obviously of no value to anyone. It had to be something they could sell on, at a profit. The problem was that she had nothing. She didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, and she had no chocolate, or food, or anything else that she thought might be in demand in their rationed and restricted world. The answer had come to her in a flash. It was dangerous, Max would undoubtedly have said reckless, but she was sure it would work. Besides, anything she gave them she would get back, when she took her evidence to Max and they busted the operation wide open.
“How about this?” She reached into her jacket pocket and wrapped her fingers around the prize.
“Stop right there, miss!” The husky voice again, right behind her. “Take your hand out now, nice and slowly. Here, let me get that for you.”
A suntanned hand reached around her. It was attached to a hairy tattooed arm, but Grace wasn’t paying attention to the artwork, she was watching the fingers enter her pocket and pull out her payment. The arm held it aloft in front of her face, for the skinny man to see.
“Oh dear. What did you think you were going to do with that? Shoot me? Arrest me?”
“You don’t understand—” Grace began.
“What is there to not understand, cop woman? You marched in here with a gun. I might not be the sharpest tool in the box, but I think I understand perfectly.”
“It’s payment.”
The skinny man raised his eyebrows. He pushed himself off the wall with his foot, and took the gun from the arm.
“It’s not loaded. I don’t have any ammunition, but I thought it would still be worth something to you.”
Skinny checked the weapon, holding it at arm’s length as if worried it might be booby trapped. Grace saw that he knew how to handle the pistol; it held no secrets for him except one.
“Where did you get this?”
“I found it,” she lied. “During the virus outbreak, when the ship was mostly deserted. I found it, and took it, because I thought it might come in handy. And now it has.”
“Liar!” The skinny man spat the word at her, his nose an inch from hers. He held up his arms like a chimpanzee and began to dance around her, hopping from foot to foot. “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”
The owner of the tattooed arm chuckled behind her back. Grace could feel her cheeks flushing red. She tried to control her breathing. Sh
e couldn’t show fear. She couldn’t show any emotion.
The young man stopped dancing and pulled an exaggerated expression of depression. “Oh, cop lady doesn’t want to play. Listen, love. We’re running a professional joint here. We keep an eye on what’s happening in the ’hood, you get me? And what’s happening here is that you spent a happy hour outside our door yesterday. Wore your security uniform and all. So don’t come the innocent with me. Now, this gun? I have to admit, that’s a bonus. Wasn’t expecting that. So, yeah, thanks for the payment. Now we just have to decide what to do with you.”
“You can’t do anything to me. The rest of the security team will be up here any second now. I’d suggest you run. Try and find somewhere to hide for a very long time.”
Skinny laughed. “You hear that? Run? Security team? Don’t make me laugh. We’ve been following you since yesterday. Nobody’s coming, love. Now…how to dispose of you? Did you know people go missing on cruise ships all the time, and nobody looks for them? Ain’t no law at sea. Nobody cares when it happens. I think I know exactly what we can do with you.”
Grace felt adrenaline flood into her bloodstream. She wanted to run, to escape through the door and to the safety of the crowded sun deck. But she knew that wouldn’t be possible. The tattooed arm came back around her, joined by its twin. She felt them both grip her tightly, and then she was lifted off her feet. The leering face of the skinny man was the last thing she remembered seeing.
• • •
Russell Vardy arrived on the bridge at the same time as Lucya. He made small talk with McNair — who still had the helm — while she and Jake had a moment together.
“How was she?” Jake’s expression gave away the concern he was trying to hide.
“Okay, really. She heard some of the gunfire, but she thought it was a bad dream and went back to sleep. I told her what had happened on the way down to the classrooms. Just the…how do you say? The broad strokes.”
Jake nodded. “It’s as well. She’ll hear it from others.”
“That’s what I thought. She wanted to know when we can meet the new people. I said she’d have to wait a bit longer. We saw the Lance through the window on the way. She jumped for joy when she saw it was blue. I mean, really, jumped. Anyway, they’re going to talk about it in class today, and then Miss Linders said they would do some drawings or make a scrapbook to welcome the new survivors.”
“Great, that’s great. I hope the rest of the people on this ship will be as welcoming. Somehow, I doubt it.”
“So, Captain Noah.” Lucya stood up straighter and gave a half-salute, smirking as she did so. “Where are we heading?”
“Back to France. Lay in a course for Ile Longue, Crozon peninsula, please. It makes me nervous hanging around in the ocean like this. I’ve no particular desire to see the inside of another submarine base, but some land to fill the windows would be nice.”
“Aye, Captain!”
“Shut up!”
Vardy cleared his throat loudly, and wandered over to the captain’s chair. He looked out to the calm sea. The sky looked a little clearer than before; the sunlight shone brighter. There was a sense of optimism in the air, and Jake felt it too. They’d caught the bad guys, who were now being held in a secure storage room on deck one, and they were getting back on course, with a new ship in tow. A ship that was an eight-hundred-tonne symbol of the fact there may be more survivors out there, that the world didn’t necessarily end at the hull of the Spirit of Arcadia.
“How are they, Russell?” Jake asked.
“Some better than others. The captain is the worst. He had been physically beaten, repeatedly. I’ve had to sedate him, so we won’t get anything from him for a while. The others are better, but not much. They’d already been sedated, I think. It’s hard to tell. They’re all suffering from malnutrition. They must have been stuck down there for weeks. One or two are hallucinating. Most are sleeping. Apart from the lack of food, they’re going to need to build up muscle mass. I’m worried about infection too. They were held in extremely insanitary conditions. I’m keeping them off limits. Only the nurses and myself are to go into cabin 845 for the time being, and only with breathing masks, until I can screen blood samples from the lot of them.”
Jake nodded slowly. “Yes, makes sense. So you haven’t been able to find out anything? About the—” He looked around to make sure nobody was listening, “— the North Koreans?”
“There were mumbled accounts of the monster from the sea attacking them. I don’t know if that’s a metaphor, part of a hallucination, or simply a language problem.”
Jake shivered. “When I saw the Ambush rear up out of that fjord, my first thought was that it was monster-like. You don’t suppose…”
“No. That’s impossible. The North Koreans don’t possess any submarines that could get anywhere near this far north. Their navy is like their air force: it’s built from antiquated Cold War equipment; hand-me-downs from the Chinese, whose own machinery is usually a poor copy of old Russian models. They have a few tin cans that can patrol their territorial waters, but to come this far? Impossible.”
“Well they came from somewhere, didn’t they? And we haven’t seen any other ships.”
“Doesn’t mean there aren’t any. My money is on another Arctic research ship. Or rather, an Antarctic research ship that was somewhere it shouldn’t have been.”
“North Koreans checking out the North Pole?” Jake scratched his head.
“There have been rumours. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. They’re safely locked up down below. We’ll find out more once the Lance crew are fit to talk, and we’ll interrogate the men in your new brig. Until then, it’s back to business as usual.”
“How’s Coote?”
“No change. He’s still under and I’m keeping him that way.”
“Thanks, Russell.”
The doctor nodded, and headed for the door, patting McNair on the shoulder on the way.
Jake reclined in his chair. He was looking forward to an uneventful day. A calm, quiet voyage to the western tip of France.
It wasn’t to be.
Lucya began to speak: “I’ve plotted a course, we should arrive by…hang on, HMS Ambush is calling.”
Vardy stopped short of the door, interested to hear of the communication from his submarine. Jake sighed and swivelled his chair round to look back across the banks of consoles at Lucya. “What do they want now?”
All colour had drained from her face. “It’s Ralf, he’s shouting something… Wait, I missed it. He’s gone. Hang on, I’ll replay it. It will still be in the buffer.”
Jake’s eyes widened. Ralf shouting couldn’t be good news. “Put it on speaker.”
Lucya flicked a button and fiddled with some dials. Suddenly Ralf’s voice sounded throughout the bridge.
He was indeed shouting. The increased volume distorted the message, but replayed through the speaker it was still clear enough.
“…we have incoming torpedo. Taking evasive action. Repeat, incoming tor—”
The message stopped, because at that instant the power went off throughout the ship.
Eighteen
JAKE DIDN’T REACT immediately. Nobody on the bridge did. Everyone was trying to process the words they had just heard, and the implications of those words.
Vardy was the first to move. Instinct, training, or both, propelled him from his position near the bridge door all the way to the port windows from which, under normal circumstances, it was possible to see at least the conning tower of the Ambush as she rode alongside, and very often a large part of the top section. He gasped loudly. Jake sprinted to join the doctor.
The Ambush had gone.
There was a tell-tale trail of bubbles and wash showing where she had dived whilst at the same time accelerating away. The umbilical cord that connected the Royal Navy nuclear submarine to the cruise liner, supplying power and enabling communications and shared navigation, dangled uselessly from the side of the ship.
“Torpedo,” Vardy whispered. He was transfixed by the shadow, staring open-mouthed at it.
Unlike Vardy, Lucya, and McNair, Jake had no experience of the military. He hadn’t undertaken war-game exercises, nor had he ever been sent into any theatre of war. His only experience of sea battles came from what he had seen in the movies. The few films he had watched that featured torpedo attacks had all been accompanied by impressive, pounding, menacing orchestral scores. The bass line of the music, and the discordant, incessant percussion had always rammed home the intensity and the despair of the situation. So watching this real underwater missile hurtling towards them in complete silence seemed quite unreal. It was less menacing, and somehow that made it all the more terrifying.
“What do we do?” Jake whispered.
Lucya and McNair had joined them now. All four stared at the shadow.
“Nothing,” Vardy said, his voice hoarse. “There’s nothing…”
“No.” It was McNair who spoke. “There’s time. If the Ambush deploys counter measures—”
“She’s too close!” Vardy pounded the window with a fist.
“She can make it! She can draw it away!”
As McNair spoke, the torpedo did seem to be changing direction, though barely.
Lucya and Jake’s hands found each other. Jake pulled her towards him, and held her tightly. He’d lost count of how many times he had thought he was about to die since the asteroid. On some of those occasions he’d been ready, prepared for the end. This time was different. He thought of Erica, happily making a scrapbook down in the classroom. She would feel the brunt of the inevitable explosion. She and the other children would almost certainly drown before there was any chance of getting them out. He thought of Coote under sedation. He thought of the thousands of people, of the survivors on the ship, who had come this far. They had no lifeboats, and only a handful of rafts.