“Come out here, the pair of you,” snarled Dall.
Harry, terrified, walked forward. Ann moved in beside her, all sulky resentment.
“O’Reilley,” said Harry as she came level with him, pronouncing his name correctly for once. “What are you doing working with these people?”
“My job.”
“You traitor!”
The quisling radio operator gave a bark of derisive laughter. Dall spoke over it. “Up to the bridge. Now!”
*
The atmosphere on the bridge was electric. New England was coming up to full speed. By the time Dall arrived with Ann and Harry, the Fastnet light was gleaming quite close by and it was possible to look round the point of the Mizen. The whole of the North Atlantic lay before them with not another ship in sight.
The deck officers, Bob among them, were under the guns of their captors, though the control seemed to be only just being held in place. Certainly, none of them was beside his equipment, so it was just as well that the seas ahead were empty.
“Now,” said Dall, “we have a problem.” He looked around the others there. “These two women seem to think they’re in some kind of adventure story. I tell them what to do and what not to do. They do the opposite. You all know how dangerous that can be. We’ve only got another day or two together, but these two put all of you at risk because they cannot do what they’ve been told. I think it’s time to teach them a lesson.”
The tension on the bridge became even more taut. O’Reilley stood behind Ann and Harry, blocking any chance of escape. Dall crossed to stand beside Bob, as if he felt the captain needed a particularly close guard, even though he already had the barrel of a gun pressed into his ribs.
“Pitman!” snarled Dall. “Front and centre.”
Pitman joined O’Reilley between Harry and the door.
“Captain?”
“The computer officer. I want you to hurt her. Badly.”
“But how, Captain?”
“I don’t give a fuck how you do it, Pitman, I just want them to hear her screams in Boston!”
But Harry started screaming at once. She gave the wildest, maddest scream and as she did so, she punched Pitman as hard as she could right on the wound in her temple.
Pitman went sideways like a felled tree, taking the wiry O’Reilley with her to the floor. Still screaming, Harry dashed for the door, with Ann right behind her. One of the guards fired. A bullet smashed into the lintel of the door, glanced off the metal, whined across the width of the bridge and buried itself explosively in the chart table.
“Don’t shoot in here, asshole!” yelled Dall. “Just get the bitches!”
A moment or two of confusion followed as the two women hurled down the first companionway onto the deck where the Charlestons’ cabin was. Sam Copeland, disturbed by the noise, stood in the open door and they rushed on down as he hesitated. Their own cabin beckoned but both of them knew there was no chance of safety there. They ran on down to A deck, past the library and the exercise room. The weather deck was out of the question now, for the ship was near full speed.
“Down!” gasped Harry wildly. “Keep going down!” Ann obeyed with alacrity and soon the fugitives were far below deck, with the engines astern of them and the fuel tanks to the fore. There was a work area full of storerooms here which Harry hoped to hide in. Dall had said it would be over in two days. Even without food or sanitation they could last two days hidden away down here. “We’ll need some water,” she panted. Desperately, she tried to keep her mind focused, but the look in Pitman’s eyes as she had prepared to obey Dall kept intruding.
“Hide first, then plan,” gasped Ann.
Dall had assigned Paul Aves to guard the engineers and the minute the women escaped from the bridge Dall warned Aves what was going on. Aves decided against leaving the engineers to their own devices at such a crucial time, but he sent his fellow guard, Slogett, to keep an eye on the companionway. Slogett was well-trained but unimaginative, and his reaction on seeing the two women was a warning shot. As the bullet bounced lethally from one impenetrable surface to another, Ann and Harry turned and ran back upwards. Slogett didn’t have orders to pursue them, so he hesitated, and reached for his personal radio.
“In here!” said Harry. “It’s our only hope. They can come in after us but maybe we can get past them.” She hit the door into the lower cargo hold and stumbled in with Ann immediately behind her.
The lights were on, as they had been ever since loading had finished. The almost solid geometric puzzle of the fully laden hold had been replaced by a much more haphazard arrangement of pallets, boxes and crates. As the ship had surged up towards full speed, some of these had shifted, and one or two had toppled and burst asunder. Ann and Harry began to pick their way forward.
On the bridge, Dall was listening to Aves’ report of Slogett’s failure to secure them. It was as unsatisfactory as the rest of the fiasco so far. But at least it gave him a good idea where the pair of them were. He crossed to the hold observation screens. He flicked them both into light, hitting the switches marked HOLD LIGHTS as he did so. Both screens remained dark but he paid no real attention. He depressed the tannoy switch. “We know you’re in there,” he said, hearing his voice amplified throughout the ship. “Come out at once with your hands up or you die.”
CHAPTER XIV
Secure in the knowledge that Merrideth’s men had taken care of the video surveillance, Richard switched on his torch the instant the lights went out. In the dull beam he saw Bruce’s team, slick and silent as tar bubbles, disappearing back down the cracks between the pallets. Tom’s brick had already gone, and so had Merrideth and Mac. Op loomed above his equipment. “Come out with your hands up or you die,” the tannoy bellowed again.
“How on earth do they know we’re here?” asked Richard in a low voice.
Op held up his hand and Richard lapsed into silence. He strained to hear the merest whisper of sound out where the SAS men were questing through the darkness, but all he could hear was the thunder of the engines pushing them like a hurricane through the booming Atlantic wind.
“Have it your own way,” said the tannoy. “We’ll come in after you. But you’ll regret it if we do. Take a few minutes to think about it. You’re not going anywhere. Not now.”
The lights came on.
Richard found he was panting with shock. To have got this far against such overwhelming odds only to walk straight into a fire fight before he could do the native guide job for which he was here seemed totally unacceptable. Such was his preoccupation that it did not occur to him to wonder why whoever controlled the lights was switching them on and off in such a bizarre manner.
*
“Look at that!” spat Dall, almost beside himself with rage. “The cunning little bitch has fucked up the lights!” The lower cargo hold was bright although the switch said OFF. “And she’s found some way to disable the cameras in the upper hold too. So that’s where they are.”
Just at that moment, Pitman began to stir. Groggily she sat up. Her face was so pale it had a green tinge. Something cut through Dall’s rage. She had been willing to obey his order unhesitatingly, after all. The head wound was not her fault. She had bought herself another life. A last one.
“O’Reilley,” he called.
The turncoat shuffled forward.
“Are there any computer terminals in the holds?”
O’Reilley shrugged. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Nothing that could be patched into the network?”
“Not as far as I know, Captain.”
“No need to worry then,” decided Dall. His personal radio buzzed. It was Paul Aves calling up from the engine control room.
“We’re at full speed now, Captain. You’ll need to get the watch alert again.”
“Right. You stay there until I contact you but tell Slogett to watch the door into the upper cargo hold. I’ll be sending a team down in three minutes.”
*
“I’
ll be sending a team down in three minutes,” the voice in Mac’s ear said. He held up his hand to Merrideth with three fingers raised, then tapped his watch.
Merrideth nodded, his head ghostly in the monocle of the big Scot’s night goggles. Then he pulled sensor equipment from his webbing and pressed it to the door, crouching over it, looking for all the world like a frogman planting a magnetic mine.
Even through the heavy steel the sensitive equipment picked up enough sound to identify one man climbing stairs, coming up to take position outside the door. The thunder and the vibration coming through the hull interfered with the picture and made it fuzzy, but at least the noise would cover transmission from this side. “Bruce. Up front. Cover the door. It’s the only way they’ll be coming unless this is even more tricky than it looks.”
“Moving.”
“Tom. Second echelon.”
“Moving.”
“Op. You keep an eye on our guest. We’re going to need him and both bags of tricks.”
“Ready.”
Mac held up two fingers. Merrideth nodded. The sensor equipment was registering three more men coming down the stairwell from above. They would make up a brick of four. Standard procedure. Merrideth racked his brains for another way into the hold. One brick just did not seem sufficient for a frontal assault on the hold like this. But there was no other way in that he could think of.
Tall back and hold your fire until my order,” he instructed.
Mac held up one finger, and the lights came on.
*
Slogett’s buddy was Canada Newby. They were a good team who had survived a range of interesting encounters all over the southern hemisphere. With Newby, Dall had sent down Gus Grillo and George Bacon, another successful partnership. All four were level-headed and, compared with the likes of Lazio and Lobo, the epitome of controlled professionalism. Dall had made clear that they should put the fear of God into the women, but nothing else. No bullets, no knives, no personal appendages.
As Slogett and Newby went through the door, one high, one low, Grillo and Bacon covered them. But the instant all four were through, they stopped, nonplussed. The camera in this hold was not working, and none of them had been into it before. What confronted them was unlike anything they had ever seen. A pallet the size of a room stood in front of them. Another the same size sat on top of it with a gap perhaps a metre wide between them. A metre to one side sat another pair of pallets, and a metre on the other side, another. The four men were in an area which could easily have accommodated a couple of football pitches. Two unencumbered women could slip easily wherever their terror might take them. Four large and fully equipped soldiers in pursuit of them would have a problem keeping up.
Slogett gestured to the others to stand and wait.
“Captain,” he called up to the bridge.
“Yes?” came the answer over his personal radio.
“Sir, this is no job for a full patrol. Let Grillo and Bacon stand by at the door and Canada and I’ll shuck down on some of this kit. They aren’t armed, are they?”
“Correct, Slogett. Not armed. If that’s the way you want to call it, that’s fine by me. But bring them back alive.”
“They may get mussed up a little.”
“That’s OK.”
Slogett gestured the others out, then he and Canada stripped off their combat webbing. They took a torch in one hand and their preferred short gun in the other. Slogett’s was his old Heckler and Koch P9; Canada’s was a Smith and Wesson he had bought in New York on his last furlough. Red-dot sight, state of the art. “You use that mother and your ass is in a sling bigtime, boy,” warned Slogett.
“Couldn’t hit nothing with it anyhow,” growled Grillo derisively from the door. “You know what they say: red dot, white stick.”
“Hush up, Gus,” said Bacon. “You know he’s probably all frightened up inside in case one of the ladies takes a swing at him.”
“Right,” grunted Slogett. “You see what that dyke did to Pitman? Dyke Tyson maybe. You think?”
“Ready?” asked Canada.
“Let’s do it!”
*
None of this conversation made any sense to Merrideth as he lay like the ham in a sandwich between the pallets two room-sized boxes away, still using his special equipment to monitor what was going on. His lean, almost skeletal body was beginning to react badly to the stress and strain he was putting it under. He gritted his teeth — and felt them move in his jaws. His mouth flooded with blood and he swallowed feverishly, his stomach revolting. He needed his medication. Feeling his mind begin to go woolly, he fought to concentrate. The pair who were coming in were on their way, and he double-tapped his throat mike to warn the others. His sensors told him that the other two had pulled the discarded kit outside the door and swung it nearly closed. That was all he needed to know about them for the moment, though he still wondered whether this could be some kind of trap.
Slogett and Canada worked their way swiftly across the open area, then slipped into the vertical gap between the massive pallets, acutely conscious that several metres above their heads was a horizontal gap large enough to contain the two desperate women. Slogett led the way down the gaps like a weevil exploring an ancient tin of biscuits on the inside. When he was satisfied that there was nothing to be seen at deck level, he got Canada to sling him up so that he could worm his way into the horizontal gap.
It was very dark in there and his torch was of little use. It was also claustrophobically constricted. The vertical spaces had allowed him to walk upright but here even crawling resulted in him bashing his backside or his head against the upper pallet. By the time he reached the first junction, he was very much of a mind to kill the women when he found them just to make his headache feel better.
He stuck his head out into the junction and looked down into the gap which reached narrowly to the floor. He wondered which way to go next, left, right, or forward across the gap. He looked right. Then he looked left and wondered no more.
The black-clad figure of SAS Corporal Bruce Jones appeared like a magic spirit from between the set of boxes opposite and broke his neck with a silent blow.
Down below, Canada Newby was becoming convinced that the women were not here. Left to his own devices he would have called out some threats to see if that stirred any game, then he would have come out and left them to it.
“Slogett?” he said into the massive silence of the hold. They had removed their personal radios with their combat webbing — something that Canada was beginning to regret. He looked around at the disorientating maze of narrow passages at whose heart he stood. “Slogett?”
Again, only the massive silence answered, a silence emphasised by the invasive throbbing rumble of engines and speed.
He wondered why Captain Dall had thought this search was within the capacity of a single brick. What was really needed here was the complete command to give the place a proper sweep. He decided to retrace his steps to the door and check with Dall. He turned and found a man in black immediately behind him. He jerked his gun up but the butt hit the side of a pallet. The shadowy stranger’s hand flashed out towards him.
“Don’t kill them!” came the order over Tom’s headphones. But he was committed now, and the player’s gun was big and dangerous. The heel of his hand took Canada under the nose and drove upwards. There was a sharp crack as the upper jaw sprang clear of the front of the skull and drove back into the brain.
The best Tom could do was to catch the man on his way down and swing him into a makeshift fireman’s carry. Then, silently and swiftly, he carried his victim back to base.
*
Richard’s first patient was clearly a lost cause. The damage to the front of his head was massive and Richard was almost relieved to find no pulse or heartbeat. Tom crouched silently beside him, watching him make his checks. When Richard shook his head, the big soldier shrugged, opened the holster on his thigh, took out a battered old pistol and replaced it with the Smith and Wesson
the dead man had been carrying. Then, vulture-like, he sorted through the corpse’s pockets, keeping much of what he found there, starting with the ammunition clips for his new gun.
Merrideth appeared, coming up over the edge of the pallet like some kind of monstrous spider. He looked down at the dead man and then up at Tom. Tom shrugged apologetically. His lips moved. “Order came too late.”
Merrideth gave a weary nod.
“Slogett? Canada?” The cry from the doorway was distant and weirdly distorted by the canyons and passageways through which it had come.
Tom looked at Merrideth but Merrideth was slumped strangely, clearly at the end of his tether.
Mac heaved himself onto the pallet top. “They’re calling the bridge again. They know something’s up.”
Merrideth nodded.
“We have access,” said Mac. “We could hit the door now and spread out at once.”
“I’m ready,” whispered Richard. “I’ll guide you straight up to the command bridge. No problem.”
Merrideth shook his head. “No. There’s something going on here I don’t understand. We need more intelligence before we move. Call them in. We’ll sit tight.”
“Slogett? Newby? Come out of the hold at once,” boomed the tannoy.
In the echoing silence that followed, Mac persisted, “It would be four down. How many are there? Twelve in all? It’s an option.”
“It would be a bloodbath. We’d be going in blind against well-prepared foe. We’d lose most of the hostages at the very least. We need more time to prepare.”
“We’ll probably get that/ said Mac. “I don’t think they’ll be coming back in here in a hurry.”
“OK. Call Tom’s brick back. Bruce’s to watch the door.”
“Right.”
“Slogett. Newby. You have five minutes. Report within five minutes or the door will be secured. That is all.”
“That is definitely not all,” said Mac, and he started to call the man back in.
*
Merrideth’s whole demeanour made it obvious that he needed attention. Richard was aware, from his study of the doc’s treatment book, that Merrideth’s medical regimen was the most exhaustive of all of them, though the names of the drugs involved meant nothing to him and so gave no clue as to what condition they were meant to treat. In fact, when he had looked through the medical boxes, only the generic term corticosteroid meant something to him, and the only name he recognised, and that with something of a shock, was Thalidomide. Thanks to Doc’s precise notes, however, knowledge of the drugs was not necessary to administering them correctly.
Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9) Page 17