by Dan Latus
‘Not much,’ he said morosely. ‘But we’re planning to search Steele’s ship. What do you think we’ll find, Frank? Anything interesting?’
That winded me for a moment.
‘Frank?’
‘I’m still here. Just surprised. I don’t know what you’ll find, Bill. I haven’t a clue.’
He rang off soon afterwards, leaving me sweating blood.
I went looking for Josh again.
‘It’s just got worse,’ I told him. ‘More urgent, anyway. Cleveland police are planning on searching your ship.’
‘What the hell for?’
I shrugged. ‘Beats me. All I know is we have to do something. That shipment has to be stopped, but it can’t just sit here for the cops to find. You and the rest of your family are likely to end up in jail if that happens. Me, too, probably.’
‘There’s still Tom,’ he pointed out.
I nodded. There was still Tom. There was also Anne now, but I wasn’t going to tell Josh that for the moment. I couldn’t afford to risk him doing something else totally stupid.
A car drove onto the jetty and stopped. Senga got out and waved to us. Josh raised a hand to acknowledge her in a desultory sort of way. I just stared. Then something clicked.
‘That’s it!’ I said breathlessly. ‘Senga came up with the right idea the other night.’
Chapter Forty-One
‘What was that?’ Josh said.
‘When I was saying to her we had to find a way of getting rid of Logan and Blue permanently, Senga suggested it might be easier to make the ship disappear. I think she’s right.’
‘Make the bloody ship disappear? Don’t talk daft! You’re as loopy as she is.’
‘Just think about it, Josh. We could sink the damned thing!’
He swore bitterly and turned to walk away. I grabbed his arm. ‘Come and sit down with me and Senga. Hear us out.’
‘Don’t be so stupid!’ he said angrily.
But he came with me to meet his sister-in-law. Then the three of us retired to a nearby cabin.
‘What’s going on?’ Senga asked, sensing the atmosphere.
‘He wants to sink the bloody ship,’ Josh said. ‘I gather you suggested that?’
‘Well, not quite,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Disappear it, is what I said. But sinking it will do the job. What’s that big thing on deck, by the way? Is it what I think it is?’
‘A main battle tank,’ I said, ‘as currently used by the British Army. You might well look surprised,’ I added, as she raised her eyebrows and gave a little whistle.
‘A tank?’
‘That’s the special item Blue was on about. I suspect it’s why he came here in the first place.’
‘A tank?’ Senga said again, thoughtfully. ‘We didn’t think of that, did we?’
I just shook my head. I wasn’t in the mood for whimsical conversation. I wanted to get down to business.
‘It changes things,’ I said. ‘They were already pretty bad, but this makes them worse. There’s no way we can let them ship out a weapon like that. God knows who the customer is but it won’t be a friend of this country, or of the West. Probably some guerrilla group in North Africa, like I just said to Josh.
‘Also,’ I added, ‘the Cleveland police are planning to search the ship. We can’t let that happen either. Finally, they still have Tom. That’s it, I think – all the news.’
I refrained from mentioning Anne. None of us could do anything about that for the moment. To say anything now would just clutter things up with emotion. What we needed was brainpower.
‘So what are we going to do?’ Senga asked.
‘I like your idea,’ I said. ‘We’ll sink the ship.’
‘No, you bloody won’t!’ Josh said angrily. ‘Tell me how that would work. Tell me how that could possibly make things better.’
‘First, it would mean the tank goes nowhere. Just to the bottom of the sea. Second, if the ship is gone, there’s nothing for the police to find – and nothing to incriminate you. Third, Logan won’t get the rest of the shipment either. In fact, he’ll get nothing at all. How am I doing so far?’
‘But I’m down a ship plus a legitimate cargo,’ Josh pointed out. ‘And they’ve still got Tom.’
‘True.’
There was that. Hell, I couldn’t think of everything!
‘Frank will rescue Tom,’ Senga said confidently. ‘The rest of it – the ship and the cargo – doesn’t really matter, does it?’
They both looked at me then.
‘You’ll rescue Tom?’ Josh said, sounding mystified.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘How?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’m still working on it.’
There followed a long pause. Then Josh sighed and said, ‘OK. Let’s do it.’
The preparations for departure took all day. The crew had to make sure the cargo was battened down tight, which took some doing. Then the ship itself had to be made seaworthy. Josh had to brief the captain and chief engineer, and make sure they understood what was expected of them. There were also arrangements to be made with officials of one sort or another on shore.
And I had to find somewhere to hide on the ship, because I was sailing with it.
Blue and a couple of armed guards turned up an hour or so before the ship was due to leave. They brought Tom with them and hustled him aboard and into a cabin that Blue locked.
Josh remonstrated with him about Tom, demanding that he let the boy go.
‘He’s my insurance,’ Blue snapped. ‘I don’t want to be intercepted by anybody’s navy because you’ve blown the whistle on us.’
Josh, visibly deflated, turned away, defeated.
‘Where’s Doy?’ I heard Blue ask.
‘No idea.’
Josh shrugged and walked away.
I had thought Senga might have turned up to check on Tom but I couldn’t see her from my vantage point amongst the deck cargo. What I did see was that Blue brought only a couple of men on board with him. No doubt to share watchman duties. He wasn’t going to be able to stay awake all the way to Marseilles.
We slid away from the jetty on time and headed downriver. It was a cold night, but very clear. Stars and frost, and an arctic breeze to make the eyes water. But no more snow.
I was hidden on deck, sheltered from the breeze by the cargo, and I watched the banks of the Tees slip past us. The Transporter Bridge soon receded, and then all the clutter on the river banks began to pass us by.
There was plenty for me to think about. Tom was part of it, but he was OK for the moment. I concentrated on keeping out of the way of Blue and his men, who were patrolling the ship. I had to avoid them for the next few hours, at least. Until the rendezvous. Then teamwork would kick in. Sinking a ship is a more complex project than you might think – if you want everyone on it to survive. Well, nearly everyone.
I could have made my play right away but I settled down to wait until we were well out to sea and the edge had come off Blue’s vigilance. No hurry now, not when we had come this far.
The petro-chemical complex south of the river slid by, along with the Hartlepool nuclear power station and the remaining wild land around Greatham Creek and Seal Sands. The tide was running out strongly and there were mud flats and sandy beaches to either side of us, coated with rime and glistening in the moonlight.
We passed North Gare Sands and, on the southern bank of the river, the steelworks at Redcar. Soon after that we reached the entrance to the estuary and passed between the South Gare and North Gare breakwaters, and out into Tees Bay and the desolate North Sea.
The crew of the ss Anne numbered about half a dozen, including the skipper. That was enough. With all the technical equipment they have to aid them, a crew that size can sail the biggest cargo ships afloat these days. The small number suited me. It meant I could move about easily unnoticed, and it meant there were fewer people likely to get shot if a firefight started up.
Once we were out to sea
I seemed to be the only person on deck. That was until Blue and a couple of his men came outside and stood talking. The men – Eddie and Manny, I gathered they were called – were smoking, and laughing and joking. They obviously thought it all a great wheeze. Not Blue, though. He seemed distracted, no doubt thinking about the voyage and what awaited him at the far end.
After a couple of minutes, without any warning whatsoever, Blue calmly pulled out a gun and shot the pair of them. I was shocked by the sudden, unanticipated violence. Almost before their bodies hit the deck, Blue tipped them over the side, one after the other. He didn’t need them anymore, it seemed.
That was likely to be Tom’s fate, too, I thought, once he was no longer needed. It was a useful, if grim, pointer to the kind of man Blue was. I would remember that when the time came.
Chapter Forty-Two
So there was just Blue left now. That made it easier. I certainly wasn’t going to underestimate him, but one man was a lot different to three. Before I went looking for him, I checked the Glock I’d brought with me. There was no way I was going up against him unarmed, especially given what I’d just seen him do.
He was on the bridge with the captain, watching him, monitoring his movements, and no doubt ready to pounce if something wasn’t right. I slid away. I would tackle him, but not yet. First, I wanted to see how Tom was doing.
I referred to the place where Tom had been locked up as a cabin, but it certainly wasn’t a luxury cabin. More of a steel box in which a bunk bed had been installed. There wasn’t even a porthole. I wondered if it had been a punishment cell, or a holding cell for crew members guilty of serious misdemeanours. A ship has to have somewhere like that.
The door was fastened tight, secured by levers. It reminded me of a watertight bulkhead in a submarine. You didn’t need a key to open it from the outside. I pocketed my gun and began to turn the levers to open the door.
‘That’ll do!’ a voice said. I froze. Then I gently turned my head. Blue was there. He stood in the narrow passageway, gun pointed at me.
‘I wondered if you might turn up,’ he said. ‘This makes it easy.’
I stepped back from the door. ‘Just checking to see if the boy is all right.’
‘Yeah? Well, you might as well open the door all the way now, and join him.’
‘Then what?’
‘Just open the door.’
The future was uncertain, and probably would be brief. I had a gun, and he hadn’t searched me, but the gun was in my pocket. I couldn’t draw it out faster than a bullet could come from his gun to me. My life was being lived a second at a time now.
He motioned to me to get on with it. I turned back to the door and worked the bottom lever. As I straightened up again, a door behind Blue opened and to my astonishment Senga stepped into the corridor. She was dressed in some sort of waitress uniform and carrying a tray of coffee mugs.
Christ, no! I gaped at her. Senga and the Frenchman? All my fears and suspicions returned in a rush.
Where the hell had she come from? Our eyes met, and mine must have betrayed my utter dejection. Hers seemed full of fury and contempt. Blue was her man, it seemed.
All those thoughts flashed through my mind in the briefest of moments. Then the cabin door swung open, giving me a brief glimpse of a startled Tom.
At the same time, Senga screamed horrendously and threw the tray against the wall with an almighty crash that reverberated excruciatingly in the confines of the narrow, steel-lined corridor.
Pandemonium broke out.
Blue swung round, gun raised, as Senga withdrew through the doorway from which she had appeared.
Like a jack-in-the-box released, Tom bolted past me into the corridor, and cannoned into Blue. With a curse, Blue grabbed him and pushed him, struggling, back towards the cell.
I shoulder-charged the pair of them. Blue tripped over the high threshold, and went down hard inside the cell. Tom leapt up and back outside again with an agility I would never have expected of him.
Unthinkingly, I slammed the door shut and spun the levers back into the lock position. Then I slumped back against the wall with relief.
‘You all right, Tom?’ I managed to gasp as I fought for breath.
He nodded and grinned. ‘Got the bastard!’
I just shook my head, still shaking from the frenzy of the last few moments, and from the agony of my doubts about Senga.
Tom said, ‘How many more of them are there onboard?’
‘There’s just him. He shot the rest.’
‘Really?’ Tom grinned and slapped the cell door hard. ‘Well, we’ve got him now!’
I had to agree. We had him.
‘He’s still got his gun, though,’ I pointed out.
‘He’d need a bomb to get through that door, or the wall,’ Tom said scornfully.
‘Well done, kid!’ I said belatedly, grinning and punching him lightly in the shoulder. ‘You saved the day.’
‘I finally did something right, eh?’ he said happily.
‘Something brave, too,’ I told him. ‘You’re a bloody idiot!’ I added with a chuckle.
‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking,’ he said modestly. ‘I was so mad I just went for him.’
Then the door along the passage slammed open again and Senga stuck her head round the corner.
‘Where is he?’ she mimed.
I just shrugged, still a bit dazed by the passage of events.
‘In there!’ Tom said, pointing at the locked door.
Senga whooped and threw her arms into the air in joyful celebration. I smiled. But inwardly I cringed, wondering how on earth I could have got it, and her, so wrong – even for one moment.
‘You two!’ I complained.
Senga gave me a big grin.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I asked her, still struggling to reconcile my conflicting emotions.
‘I’m a galley cook – or whatever they’re called.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since I discovered you were going to be aboard. You didn’t think I was going to let you sail without me, did you? I knew you wouldn’t be able to manage on your own.’
I shook my head, with astonishment this time, and gave her a hug. ‘Your timing was perfect,’ I assured her. ‘I thought you and—’
‘What did you think?’ she demanded.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said faintly, wondering again how I could have got it so wrong.
‘What? Me and Blue?’
I shrugged. ‘I was told you had a French boyfriend.’
‘Armand is long gone,’ she said. ‘He was an artist anyway, not a bloody criminal!’
I just shrugged again, even more helplessly.
‘I was trying to help,’ she said earnestly.
‘And you did!’ I assured her, strength returning.
‘Did I really?’ she said, grinning. ‘I did, didn’t I?’
I nodded and hugged her hard. Then I went to see the captain.
‘Everything’s under control now,’ I told him. ‘We’ve got Monsieur Bleu safely locked up.’
‘Phew!’ He rubbed his face with both hands and then said, ‘What about the others?’
‘He’d already shot them and tipped them overboard. He didn’t need them anymore.’
The captain blew out his cheeks with relief and shook his head. ‘I don’t want to know how you managed it,’ he said, ‘but thank God it’s over! Another two hours to go,’ he added. ‘The rendezvous has been moved back an hour.’
‘That’s not a problem, is it?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ll just pull the plug an hour later, that’s all. Ask that new galley maid if she can brew some more coffee, will you?’ he added with a grin.
I helped, Tom helped, and between the three of us we managed to brew up coffee. The crew came up one at a time to grab some. Senga took a mug to the captain.
‘You did really well, Tom,’ I said, when we had a spare moment. ‘I thought we’d had it back there.’
/> He gave me a big grin. ‘I was desperate to get out of that claustrophobic cell. I would have charged a machinegun when the door opened!’
‘Is there any way Blue can get out of there? We don’t want him reappearing.’
Tom shook his head emphatically. ‘I told you, it’s just a steel box. That’s all it is. Houdini couldn’t get out. Not even a microwave can get through the walls.’
‘So he can’t phone for help either?’
Tom shook his head. ‘It’s a dead zone. There’s no mobile service at all. I know. I tried.’
Just then Senga returned, looking remarkably pleased with herself.
‘What are you smiling about?’ Tom asked her.
‘The captain asked me if I wanted a permanent job. He really likes my coffee.’
‘Our coffee!’ Tom reminded her. ‘It wasn’t just you that made it.’
She put her tongue out at him. But all was well with our little world now.
Chapter Forty-Three
It was coming up to three when the captain told me they’d got something on the radar. I stepped outside to let him get on with his job without distraction. For a couple of minutes longer I could hear nothing except the swish of the ship easing through the sea. Then I picked up a distant sound as it came in fast, lights blazing.
It was a big one, a Chinook. I watched it hover and then begin to descend towards a landing pad on the upper deck. The noise by then was deafening, and it didn’t stop when the chopper touched down. The rotor blades kept whirling. It was to be a short stay.
I saw Josh climb in through the open doorway and disappear for a moment. Then he reappeared and beckoned. Members of the crew dropped what they were doing and headed for the chopper. I steered Senga and Tom the same way, telling them I would join them in a couple of minutes.
‘Where are you going?’ Senga demanded.
‘I’m going to get Blue.’
She wanted to argue but I had no time for that. I turned away and headed back down to the place where we’d left him.
The ship had lost its way now, and its movement had changed. There was a perceptible difference, an uneasy wallowing that was disconcerting as I crossed the deck and went down a flight of steps. It felt like the end was coming.
I hesitated outside the cabin. I really didn’t want to do this. I wanted to be safe on the chopper with the others. But there was no way I could just leave the guy, trapped and soon to drown, much though part of me wanted to do just that.