Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9)

by Tonkin, Peter

“Warp factor eight, Mr Sulu,” she said, and beat an excited little rhythm with her knuckles on the edge of her desk.

  And he thought, she’s a Trekkie; but of course she is…

  He gave her a tight but genuine smile and crossed to the empty space the pilot had occupied. Here he had a perfect view of the gleaming foredeck and the empty reach of the Gulf of Maine beyond.

  “Not going down the one-way system to the South Channel?”

  “She won’t fit in unless we hold her speed right down,” Bob replied. “I can take her out to Georges Bank and bring her back in easier. We’ll be at South Channel more quickly that way. Then we’ll see about fitting in to the system.”

  The easy conversation was a technical one between old friends. There was no questioning of Bob’s commands or decisions. And Richard would have done the same. They had a high-power Lamborghini here; no sense taking her through a 30 mph zone for her first spin.

  “All clear aft, Captain.”

  “Thank you, Mr Stubbs. Engine room?”

  “Coming to optimum, Captain. Awaiting your word.”

  “Thank you, Chief. Mr Stubbs?”

  “All clear ahead. What are we doing? Idling still?”

  “Captain!” cut in Harry urgently. “Vessel to starboard. Coming up level now. I guess he must have crept up behind us as the radar focused forward. He didn’t register until he came level with the bridge.”

  “Thank you, Mr Newbold. Hold it, Chief.” Bob walked to the starboard side of the bridge and looked down New England’s sheer white side. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Richard, look at this.”

  Obligingly, Richard crossed to his friend’s square shoulder. Beside the great ship, cutting arrogantly through the dead calm of the still morning, came a massive black powerboat spewing water from four great jets.

  “He wants to race,” said Richard.

  “Price of having the coolest wheels on the block,” said Bob. “It would be highly unprofessional,” said Richard equably. “Criminal and juvenile. Ready, Chief?”

  “Ready, Captain.” On Bligh’s word, Bob strode back to his accustomed position, leaving Richard where he was.

  “First stage, then, on my mark. What’s he doing, Richard?”

  “Revving…Off he goes!”

  “Execute!” barked Bob.

  This time there was a very powerful feeling of acceleration. Richard found himself walking purposefully backwards as the deck tried to tear itself out from beneath his feet. Then he caught hold of the rail beneath the window and continued to observe. The powerboat was falling behind already, the black beak of its bow rising above a welter of bow wave. New England, on the other hand, was settling down into the water.

  “Twenty knots,” said the helmsman. Richard supposed he must have misheard; surely they could only be doing ten at most so soon after moving off.

  “Thirty knots,” called Harry Newbold. Richard glanced across at her distant figure, weirdly illuminated by spectral lines of green. When he glanced back he had to look far aft to see the labouring, bouncing blob of the powerboat.

  “Fifty knots,” called the helmsman.

  “Mr Stubbs?”

  “All clear ahead.”

  “Chief?”

  “All aft radar completely closed down now, Captain.”

  “Thank you, Mr Newbold. Chief?”

  “Optimum now, Captain.”

  “Secure all!”

  Richard took an even firmer grip of the railing under the window, though there was nothing to see now, the powerboat was long gone.

  “Execute!”

  A gentle hand seemed to pull Richard back against the wall. The officers and crew at the clearview all leaned forward at a well-practised angle. The deck seemed to be vibrating beneath Richard’s feet with just enough power to make his soles itch unbearably but at once the sensation was gone. The great hand let him go. The men in front of him were all standing normally again. The sea and sky outside were whirling past in a hazy blur. It seemed to Richard that they should have been deafened by the thunder of jet power as the equivalent of four jumbo jets lifted them up to full speed, but the helmsman’s quiet “Seventy knots, Captain” carried easily.

  Richard let go of the rail, surprised to find that his grip had been so firm. He crossed to Harry again and watched in wonder as her machines reflected New England’s whole experience. The after section of the ship schematic was red now and a set of figures in the corner above the engine flickered up towards 80. The radar was a long thin isosceles triangle, lying in its side, looking out miles ahead with the blip of light which was New England at its very point.

  “How far ahead is that?” Richard asked.

  “Full mag. Horizon’s seventy-five kilometres. But look.” Harry’s long hand flicked a switch at a companion monitor and a similar, wider triangle appeared. Harry pressed a series of buttons on the console in rapid succession and the long, narrow isosceles was ghosted up into the larger triangle above. “That’s the Magellan system, using the satellites,” said Harry. “Gives us an over-the-horizon view. Not as accurate or detailed as the ship’s generated radar and it doesn’t do Doppler, but it shows us what else might be out there.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “And that’s not all. Here.” The triangle of satellite-generated information began to tilt and widen until it opened into levels.

  “This central line is the sea surface. Here’s a ship well ahead. Those figures tell you he’s that many degrees to starboard of our current course, but he’s on the same line as us because he’s on the surface, see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now this blip here is something else. He’s a submarine in the Fundian Channel, probably heading down to the exercise area. He’s dead ahead but well below us.”

  “I see. So that area below him, that solid area…”

  “That’s the sea bed. And that’s a rock outcrop, here, and that’s the channel the sub’s heading for. That looks like a wreck. You see the figures are different, and the colour?”

  “Yes, I see that.”

  “OK. Now look up. This blip here is a plane. He won’t be there long because he’ll only register while he’s directly above our course. There, he’s gone. But more importantly, look here.” Harry’s fingers traced patterns on the screen which only seemed to exist because the long pale digits had passed that way. “This is a weather system. It’s so faint because it’s weak. These are clouds here. This is a little light rain. There will be winds there too, but this can’t read wind speeds. However…” Again, the click of keys being touched in rapid succession, and the patterns on the weather monitor began to change. “I can make these two compatible easily enough,” said Harry, “so that what we see on radar down here becomes what we see from the weather sats up there. And they will predict air pressure, wind speed and direction. So if I want to bring the figures down the net…”

  The ghostly patterns on the radar picture reaching out ahead and scanning everything from the sea bed to the cloud tops were suddenly dotted with jewel-bright figures giving wind speed and direction, precipitation levels, front line and squall lines — though these were so slight as to be negligible.

  “I would normally only do this if there was something big out there,” said Harry. “It’s a waste taking apart a pussycat like that little system.”

  “You prefer wrestling with tigers?”

  “Have to. We need to be very careful to avoid anything that will bring very big seas. We can take twenty-metre seas but anything more and there’ll be trouble so we need to know for certain.”

  “I can imagine,” said Richard. But then he realised the phrase was as inaccurate as it was fatuous. He most certainly could not imagine. Everything aboard New England was a revelation to him.

  CHAPTER VII

  Richard left New England at Fall River and flew back home full of excitement. Bob stayed aboard and oversaw the minor re-fit while Alan Miles gave the crew a five-day stint ashore which they all, except Harry Newb
old, took gratefully. At the end of the five days, they re-assembled, including the new first officer John Dix whom the professor had found and appointed in the meantime. Then Bob took New England, sedately, down the normal shipping lanes past New York, Atlantic City and Great Egg to the north channel leading westwards past Cape May, round northwards into Delaware Bay and up to the anchorage prepared for her on the Delaware shore just south of the bay made with the confluence of the Schuylkill.

  Here things became frantic, especially for Bob. After the better part of a week in a boiler suit wriggling around the darker and messier parts of his shining command with Alan Miles, Fall River engineers and maintenance men, he was now at all times expected to be in his captain’s whites. The only oil which came anywhere near him was a trace of scented hair oil a Philadelphia stylist slipped unnoticed onto his handiwork. Although New England was the centre of attraction, Bob saw less of her than one might have expected, for there was a good deal of promotional work to be done ashore. And Bob, wry and lightly self-mocking, was happy enough to do his duty in offices and public buildings as well as the Four Seasons or the Marriott.

  Jet-Ship Inc., though little more than a well-financed one-man show, had enough of a publicity machine going now to make sure that the first voyage of their revolutionary new vessel would catch public attention as well as romantic imagination. Alan Miles ensured that the tragic deaths of the captain and first officer were a sad but carefully distanced memory. The brief exposure of their serious faces in the obituary notices of local papers and TV were soon replaced by pictures of New England herself and, increasingly, the series of dazzling, celebrity-laden receptions being held around and aboard her.

  Richard would have given anything to have been at the last of these receptions, an exclusive dinner for half a dozen VIPs, held aboard New England the night before she was due to sail. He would particularly have liked to have been among this select few as they would not be going ashore until the jet-ship docked in Southampton in four days’ time. But he had other responsibilities, personal and financial. Instead, an old friend managed to take his place.

  *

  Richard was very much on Ann Cable’s mind as she was driven through downtown Philadelphia that evening. It had been little more than a week since Bill Heritage’s wedding day had come to such a dramatic ending and the journalist’s senses had been set atwitch by what she had overheard then and since. Her attempts to find out what Sir Justin Bulwer-Lytton had been up to had drawn a blank. Now she had called in a favour or two — from Richard and even from Bob himself — and got herself one of the coveted berths aboard the jet-ship and there was a chair awaiting her at the captain’s table tonight.

  Ann was a little late, but by no means late enough to be rude. Even so, she felt pressed to hurry and when she was shown to her cabin she hardly noticed that it was a twin cabin already half occupied.

  The guests were assembled in the crew’s lounge and the small room seemed as crowded as a crush bar though only the officers were present, since all the GP seamen were doubling as waiters. Ann was used to turning heads. Her tall, slim, perfectly coutured body supported a strikingly beautiful head beneath apparently natural waves of brown hair. High Italian cheekbones framed a long nose which plunged to a sensual mouth. Her large, intelligent hazel eyes, edged nowadays with little lines which did nothing to detract from their impact, swept around the room, meeting one set of eyes after another. But only two pairs really registered with her. Bob Stark was an old friend but the familiar crinkling at the corners of his deep, almost sapphire-blue eyes somehow struck her anew. And, oddly, the green-flecked depths of the studious young officer’s eyes, standing shyly alone at the far side of the room, stirred something in Ann’s mind. Perhaps it was the involuntary widening of the pupils that registered.

  But then first impressions were swept aside as she was introduced to the guests, among them Senator Charleston, a tall and angular man who looked like Lincoln in later life. He was the recently retired Speaker of the House of Representatives and on the short list for the next presidential election. Ann was more interested in Senator Charleston’s quiet but intense wife who, she knew, hid within her plump Southern belle’s body a razor intelligence and a coruscating wit. Professor Alan Miles, the designer of the ship and chairman of Jet-Ship Inc., struck her as very much the new type of scientist, as quick and confident as a salesman. He was all boyish enthusiasm and intelligent networking. He had, Ann suspected, taken the measure of everyone here in terms of their worth to the realisation of his master plan.

  At dinner, Ann sat between Bob and Professor Miles. On Bob’s right were the guests of honour, Mrs and then Senator Charleston. Beyond the Senator was the shy young officer with the brown-green eyes. And it came almost as a shock to realise, when the slim torso leaned forward for an instant and the shirt front filled with unsuspected weight, that the officer was a woman.

  Bob, the perfect host, kept up a flow of sparkling conversation with Mrs Charleston, and Professor Miles worked assiduously on Ann, well aware that this cruise would make at least a feature and perhaps a bestseller in her hands. Even so, Ann and Bob managed to slip in an elliptical, allusive conversation, such as only old friends can manage. They had seen little of each other at Bill’s wedding, what with her late arrival and his precipitate departure, and they had a fair amount of catching up to do.

  Ann and Bob had first met at the inquiry after the loss of the Napoli and subsequently at the court case that followed it when Richard had been forced to fight for Heritage Mariner’s future. She had been with the Napoli9s Italian first officer Nico Niccolo then, but Nico had a wife and children now and was happily settled in Naples. She and Bob had renewed their acquaintance, if more distantly, when they had become entangled with Richard’s attempt to tow the great iceberg Manhattan to Africa. But in those days Bob had been involved with the Russian Captain Katya Borodin and she had been in pursuit of a Pulitzer prize.

  For the last few years they had each followed their own careers, his as a widely experienced captain, hers as a bestselling author and investigative journalist, darling of the Worldwide news screens.

  After dinner there were one or two short speeches. Then the ship returned to its accustomed routine. Ann lingered, watching the helpers from the galley leave in vans marked with the name of the most exclusive local restaurant.

  “I didn’t know you could order out from Le Bee-Fin,” she said a few moments later, finding Bob up on the bridge.

  “I thought you’d have had enough Pennsylvania pheasant and whatnot at the Fountain. Foie gras not to your taste?”

  “You must know Maitre Perrier better than I do, that’s all.”

  “Old money, wide connections,” he said, his eyes crinkling self-deprecatingly. Her own eyes creased in response and something long forgotten fluttered in her no longer maiden breast. “Senator Charleston certainly liked it,” she observed.

  “Dan’s a fine man. One of the best. Heaven knows how Alan pulled that one off. Jet-Ship are lucky to have him aboard.” There came a sudden stirring which made Ann jump. Although the bridge was illuminated, the light was dim and it was quiet, and there had been an air of intimacy between the two of them which had made Ann feel that they were alone. It came as a surprise to find the serious-looking young officer in the computer room. Ann was suddenly aware that she was blushing, as though caught doing something wicked with Bob.

  “I’m Ann Cable,” she said, recovering quickly. “We weren’t properly introduced tonight. You’re Harriet Newbold, aren’t you?”

  “Everyone calls me Harry.” Those strange, still eyes consumed her — or maybe it was just the dimness of the coloured light.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I’d really like to pick your brains during the next couple of days. I’ve been in and around lots of ships over the last ten years or so and I’ve never come across an officer like you — in responsibility rather than gender, I mean.”

  “Of course. Anything about my work, equipment,
responsibilities. Anything…” The word lingered oddly.

  “You two’ll have lots of opportunity for talk,” Bob cut in, perhaps sensing something in the air between the two of them. “You’re bunking together.” He held up his hands as though warding off a playful blow. “I offered of course, but I got the short straw. The Charlestons have got the owner’s suite, the professor’s got mine and I’m in with John Dix. It’s only for a couple of days.”

  “It’s fine with me if it’s OK with Harry,” said Ann at once, suddenly realising how very much she would like to bunk down with Bob.

  “Oh, I agreed some time ago,” said Harry lightly. “It’ll make a nice change for me. I haven’t roomed with a girl since Radcliffe.”

  In fact, Harry’s reserve seemed to increase, if anything, when they were alone together. As they prepared for bed, Ann tried to tease out of her a human interest angle to enliven what might turn out to be a fairly arid piece of reportage.

  “So, do you feel ostracised among all these men? Patronised?” she called through the bathroom door while Harry modestly washed, cleaned her teeth and climbed into her pyjamas and she herself stripped off her evening two-piece and hesitated in her black lace teddy, looking for a wardrobe. Then she started rifling through her weekend case, wishing she had brought a robe; wishing that the nightgown she pulled free had less of style and more of modesty about it. Still, all girls together, she thought.

  “Well,” answered Harry, opening the door and stopping suddenly. “Well, I don’t know. Do you need the head or anything?”

  “I’ll wash up and see,” said Ann cheerfully.

  Harry held the door wide and Ann slipped past her, the nightgown in one hand and her sponge bag in the other. Harry closed the door but Ann, fed up with shouting, opened it an inch or two. “So,” she persisted, “do you feel isolated? Threatened?” She had broached this same subject with Richard’s wife Robin, a full ship’s captain who on more than one occasion had taken command of a full crew of forty men and more. Robin was modestly reserved about her experiences, eager to point out that as owner as well as commander she was usually in a position of unapproachable power. Ann found this frustrating and unenlightening. But, as is often the case with strangers thrust into unexpectedly intimate circumstances, there was a chance that she could get this shy woman to open up to her.