Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9)

by Tonkin, Peter

  As the afternoon wore into evening, Harry guided the two officers through the bridge, through the senior officers’ cabins and day rooms, the visitors’ suite — where Richard’s bags lay on the bed awaiting his convenience — the junior officers’ and seamen’s quarters. “I have one of the senior officers’ cabins,” she admitted a little shyly. “Not because my commission really merits it; it’s more to do with sex than seniority, I guess.” She stopped speaking suddenly, realising that her sleeping arrangements were under the direction of the new captain now; she could end up bunking in with the crew if he so decided. But she dismissed the thought at once. Bob Stark generated trust, not the sort of sneaking unease that Herbie Stevenson and Larry Cohen had given rise to.

  The crew’s rest rooms, exercise areas, TV lounges and bars were standard. There were galleys and a dining room, a laundry and a surgery. It was all familiar, except that New England’s crew was less than half the size of the average tanker’s crew so everything was smaller. And once the jet-ship was in service, the deck would be out of bounds, so it was all very solid and self-contained. The bulkhead door out onto the main deck was the most massive Richard had ever seen. “Look what it’s got to withstand,” said Harry when he remarked on it.

  The deck was strange, too, now that he looked at it. It was made of a composite, almost like plastic. “Not much wear in this, surely,” he said.

  “Depends what you mean. It doesn’t have to withstand the usual deck work. There’ll be nothing loaded on it. All the cargo will be stowed below. Anything — or anyone — up here would simply get blown away. Even the deck rails round the sides and stern are only there for when she’s at anchor or in port. Other than the cargo itself, the propulsion unit and the main lading systems are the only bits of the ship that would show up on a normal radar display. That’s why the identity beacon is so important, remember.”

  As she led them across the snowy expanse of the afterdeck, Harry continued with her spiel. “Under our feet are the main holds. There is emergency access, but as you can see the hatches are unusually well-fitted. No raised covers here, they would simply be ripped off. Even the handles are flush fitted.” They reached the stern rail. “Down there you will see the main jet propulsion system.”

  Obediently, Richard and Bob looked down over a white cliff. The stern of the ship was thirty-five metres wide and nearly as high. The cliff face below them was split into two massive lateral grilles whose vertical slits were about ten metres high and two metres wide. The solid struts between them were over two metres wide. The grilles stretched from side to side of the hull and stood one on top of the other. A strange odour, a mixture of ozone and jet fuel, oozed headily upwards from them.

  “Those two sections stretching right across the stern are like two drawbridges, one on top of the other,” said Harry. “They are attached to the jet propulsion system. When the jets are at full power we get the equivalent of two jumbos on full thrust down there. And that’s not counting the water jets. When we’re in dock, the two sections uncouple from the jet system and swing down exactly like drawbridges, opening up the whole width of the holds.”

  “Can you open the drawbridges while the jets are running?” asked Richard.

  “I guess so. Except that the safety overrides would cut in. If you tried anything like that, you’d lose your cargo and God knows what else. Why would you want to do anything as foolish as that, Captain?”

  “I wouldn’t. I was just curious.”

  “Well, I guess — ”

  “It’s not important,” cut in Bob. “Come on. We’ve still got a lot to see and the evening routine will be kicking in soon. You dog the watches, Harry?”

  “In port it seems to be every man for himself, Captain. I am not a qualified watch officer, before you ask.”

  “Never mind, we’ll soon put that right. In the meantime, I want to talk to the crew before supper and we haven’t even got below decks yet.”

  “I’ll take you in at once then, Captain. I wouldn’t be competent to take you below in any case. The infernal regions belong to Chief Bligh and his attendant demons.”

  CHAPTER VI

  There was plenty of room for the sixteen of them in the ship’s bar. As it was well after six, Bob bought them all a drink and then sat and chatted with calculated approachability. Richard could not help but be impressed by the speed with which his old friend stamped his personality on the disparate group, and yet he did not seem to be unduly overbearing about it. At the same time, Richard knew that those apparently guileless eyes would be taking the measure of every man here.

  By the time the first round of drinks was finished, Bob seemed to have been accepted. Richard himself would have been tempted to keep a particularly close eye on Radio Officer O’Reilley, already two drinks ahead of everyone else, and Chief Bligh seemed less easily impressed than some of the others, but that might just have been the tension between deck and engine room.

  Where Harry’s tour had begun at the highest point, Bligh’s began at the lowest. Having taken the lift down through two cargo decks and two engineering decks, they stepped out in the lowest space aboard. They were so far down here that, as they walked away from the lift car, they could see the shape of the hull around them as though they were in some inverted garret beneath the eaves of a house.

  “I brought you down here,” began their guide with an engineer’s understandable pride in a spectacular feat of engineering, “to show you how it all works. You’re both aware of Froude’s drag rules?”

  It was like asking an astro-physicist if he knew about Einstein.

  “The hull of New England is designed to overcome the problem of drag from the wake. It’s not just the propulsion, you see, the whole thing only works because the hull is shaped in this particular way. It’s the aquatic equivalent of a whale-tail on the back of an old Porsche, if you like. It overcomes the rules of drag on the hull of a large vessel and it also settles the whole structure and makes it more stable. Your super-cats, Captain Mariner, rise up and skim over the waves. The Katapults do the same. The jet-ship settles down, sits firm. It cuts through any seas up to twenty-metre waves, and any weather up to a seventy-five-knot headwind.”

  Richard could see why the weather deck would be forbidden under those circumstances. Air with a closing speed of nearly 200 mph. A raindrop would bruise severely under those circumstances. Hailstones would be like bullets. Even the air would be lethal.

  “And these are the babies that push her along.” Bligh led them across to a companionway and sprang up it swiftly. He had the square, long-armed, bow-legged body of an orang-utan, and he moved with ape-like ease. Bob sprang gamely after him, but Richard’s knees were largely held together by steel pins and he followed at a slightly more sedate pace. The climb was long and steep. The stairway led to a bridge not unlike the galleries that reach across the sheaves of pipes which run down the middle of a tanker’s decks. But here, instead of conduits, eight huge jet engines lay beneath their feet. “Biggest mothers Rolls-Royce do,” Bligh was saying. “These are the direct line jets. They blast pure power out of the grilles at the back. Each one delivers ten thousand horsepower at full throttle. And the Pratt and Whitneys over there deliver the same again as water jets, yet the whole lot together weighs maybe a twentieth of a standard motor.” Bligh swung round and gestured at the distant walls of the place. “Hull’s light as hell too.”

  “Newbold says she’s hard to spot under radar,” said Bob.

  “Newbold’s right. That’s why the beacon’s so important. Magical hull altogether. The only thing heavy about her is the cargo. Talking of which…”

  The empty cargo holds were like cathedrals, except that they were larger and more silent. Each open space was eight metres high, more than thirty metres wide and one hundred and sixty metres long. Around the upper outer edge of each stood a galleried walkway. Here, at the front and back of each hold, sat the lifeboats, each in a strange cradle whose outer side was the hull of the ship itself. If ever
they needed to be deployed, the ship’s side opened, the cradle rocked outwards and automatic davits swung the solid little lifeboats free. The flooring was air-cushioned.

  “We can get the equivalent of seven hundred and fifty containers in the two holds/ said Bligh. “They’ll come loaded on pallets like groceries going up a supermarket checkout. Six hours to unload; another six to load up again. We should be able to turn around completely inside one working day.”

  “And cross to Europe in three. One complete turn-around within each working week,” said Bob.

  “That’s with weekends off,” said Bligh in an “I don’t think so” voice. “Three complete runs in a fortnight, more like.”

  The chimes sounded to announce dinner, and they made their way to the dining room. Except for the one watchkeeper, the whole crew ate together, filling four tables. The dinner was excellent but neither Bob nor Richard lingered over the food. Bob had not finished his tour of inspection below. There were control areas still to be inspected, the engine control room major among them. Then there were the ship’s stores, the bunkerage and all the ancillary equipment to be checked. And that needed to be done before bedtime, for Bob was bursting to take his new toy out and play with her. The preliminary negotiations with the Port Authority were under way before ten local time. The owners were alerted with cheerful disregard for time zones and sleep patterns by Richard who prefaced his busy schedule on the phone, fax and Internet with a call to Summersend where he was very fortunate to catch a couple of extremely tired and emotional children between bath and bed, and snatch a brief word with their exhausted mother.

  *

  The next day dawned calm and clear over Boston. Richard was up by five, his internal clock still attuned to British Summer Time. Thus he was able to experience the gathering bustle of the stirring ship as she began to prepare herself for sea with all the growing excitement of a bride for her wedding day.

  Still in his dressing gown, Richard wandered to the bridge. It was deserted. Monitoring systems glowed faintly, already beginning to lose their light in the gathering brightness of dawn. In Harry Newbold’s den a few lights flickered, denoting systems which could not be closed down, but all the monitors were dark. Scratching his bristly chin, Richard padded off down the internal companionways to the galley. Even here there was no life stirring as yet, so he made himself a cup of instant coffee — there appeared to be no tea available — and wandered on down. The engine control room was as deserted as the bridge, the engine monitors for the most part dead. The rest of the cargo and engineering decks were tomb-like and silent.

  The dawn air on the deck was as bracing as it can ever be in a major dock facility. Richard wandered contentedly down to the stern and divided his attention between the fantastic drawbridges of the jet grilles and the rose-blush of the dawn. It was going to be a perfect day for a cruise, he though. And he hummed cheerfully to himself as he sipped his coffee.

  When he got back to the bridgehouse he found he was no longer alone. Harry Newbold was up and about, bundled shapelessly into a grey jogging outfit and trainers.

  “You’re up early,” she said. “I’m just checking my babies before I take a little exercise.”

  They chatted companionably as she went through a basic check on the status of the computers, then, having nothing else to do, Richard wandered down to the ship’s exercise facility with her. They were talking of nothing in particular and certainly Richard was observing her as nothing more than a valued shipmate when artlessly, apparently thoughtlessly, she stripped off the grey bundle of sweatshirt and pants and stepped aboard the jogging machine, which was set for fast. Richard’s conversation faltered as the femininity of her lycra-clad form hit him. Up until now she had been dressed in clothes which made no allowance for her body. Now suddenly she was a creature of long, muscular legs, flaring hips, solid but shapely haunches outlined as though the exercise outfit was simply a thin layer of paint, slim waist and perfectly proportioned chest. Richard’s eyes flicked up to her face but it was closed, her eyes distant, concentrating on making the most of the exercise.

  He thought of saying something but instead simply turned away and left her to get on with her work-out unmolested, vexed with himself for having looked more closely than he ought to have.

  But what was it Robin said? Men always look; they can’t help it.

  Back on the bridge, the next man up was Bob. “You’re up early,” he said, echoing Harry.

  “Too excited to sleep,” admitted Richard. “Same as you, I guess.”

  “Too right,” said Bob. “I can’t wait to get this show on the road!”

  “When’s the pilot due aboard?”

  “Ten.”

  “Plenty of time.”

  “Just bullshit and bumph to get sorted. Stevenson and Cohen are both being flown home so there’s nothing more to do here on their behalf. Never had such an easy departure.”

  “Well, you’re only going for a three-hour cruise. You’ll hardly have dropped the Boston pilot before you pick up the Fall River man.”

  “Booked him yesterday. Twenty-four hours’ notice for going into Narragansett Bay.”

  “Very impressive. How did you find the time among everything else?”

  “Did it between inspecting the engine control room and checking the ship’s stores. Only eighteen hours’ notice actually, but they forgave me.”

  From 9 a.m. local time, Bob became increasingly distant as he concentrated on the process of departing for Fall River.

  Harry, too, was preoccupied. Richard stood back and watched.

  The pilot came aboard at ten. He was a dapper, chipper little man with narrow eyes and a dry “don’t take no bull” manner. But within five minutes it was clear that he was impressed by the jet-ship and very pleased indeed to be taking her out across his harbour.

  Richard positioned himself in one of those little backwaters of quiet space which seem to exist in even the busiest of places — a corner beside the open chart area from which he could observe most of the bridge. If he looked to his left, he could see everything the pilot, captain and watch officer saw almost as clearly as they could themselves. If he looked right, he could see Harry’s bank of computers and monitors.

  When the order came for starboard thrusters, Richard watched on Harry’s schematic as the small motors glowed through various shades of red, depending on their percentage power. Then he turned his head and saw the Mystic River wheel across the clearview as New England came round until she was facing across the bay.

  “Slow ahead outer water jets.”

  At once the great engines on Harry’s screen began to glow, and the thrusters faded back towards blue. There was just the whisper of sensation as the great ship surged forward. Richard could hardly have said he felt the acceleration, though he was straining to do so, but suddenly he was leaning against the corner of the wall rather than just standing beside it.

  “Steady as she goes,” said the pilot to the man at the helm.

  “Yes, sir. Making five knots.”

  “Hold her at that…”

  Richard switched his attention away from the run-of-the-mill conversation on the bridge and looked at Harry’s schematics again. As nothing new seemed to be happening on the diagram of the ship’s disposition, he looked across to the radar. Outside, on the bridge, to Richard’s left, beyond the chart table, Stubbs was looking carefully into the bright square of the head-up collision alarm radar, and there on a little screen above Harry’s right hand was the information Stubbs was studying so carefully.

  Harry glanced up and saw him looking. “We get full circle graphics at this speed. As we come to full ahead we get more concentration of what’s ahead of us. When the big jets kick in, she closes down all rear vision automatically — nothing from behind can do us any damage then.”

  It took them nearly half an hour to pick their way through the busy port and out along the North Channel past the Graves to the B Buoy. Here they came to a near stop as the pilot departed
. “Thanks for the trip, son,” the old man said to Bob. “That was quite an experience. She’s a great lady.”

  This was unprecedentedly impressive to Richard who had always found pilots taciturn. And he had seen nothing particularly memorable in the experience so far. This was a situation Bob was soon to change, however. “Right,” he said as soon as the pilot’s cutter was clear, “let’s see what she can do. Ready for full power all engines.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  At once the whole rear section of Harry’s diagrams sprang into life. The circle on the collision alarm screen shifted more towards a wedge shape, widening the view ahead, closing down the view astern, focusing on the vessels immediately behind the great jets.

  “Standard sequence straight line acceleration to fifty knots,” said Bob quietly. A ripple of excitement went around the bridge. But Bob had not finished. “Configure radar on the assumption that we will be entering stage two at fifty knots and pushing on to full speed.”

  In theory it was a standard manoeuvre, but it had never been attempted by this crew. At fifty knots the water jets would be at full stretch and the standard jets idling; stage two of the sequence would bring everything up to full power and take the sleek hull to the better part of 90 knots — 160 kph or 100 mph. Harry stirred and Richard looked down at her. She smiled, with contagious excitement.