Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9)

by Tonkin, Peter

  At the top of the stairway they stopped. Marshall’s left hand moved, fingers pressing the button of his personal radio. “To me all A teams,” he ordered quietly. “Comms and medic sit tight.”

  “Communications, as you were,” added Merrideth. “Sit tight, please, Op. Stay with him, Mac.”

  Still at the bottom of the stairs, Richard suddenly found himself at the heart of a crowd as black-clad men moved silently through the rents on the hold walls. They carried a disquieting array of arms: bulky, unfamiliar shotguns, skeletal AK 47s, M16s, Berettas, Minimis, Heckler & Kochs and at least one Steyr which looked as though it had strayed out of a science fiction movie. Richard had never seen such a weird range of guns all in one place and he found it disturbing.

  Suddenly Mac’s familiar brogue sounded in his headset. “Door closed,” he said, and the surge beneath their feet told of full power re-engaged. As it did so, Marshall’s black-gloved left hand gave the old US cavalry signal for “Forward”.

  The teams of men moved off, except for one anonymous American who held himself squarely in Richard’s way to prevent him following the others. After a moment’s silence, Richard turned away, apparently defeated, apparently obeying Marshall’s arrogant order to stay well clear of the action.

  The American also turned, whispering away upwards as rearguard to the rest, satisfied by Richard’s capitulation. But he did not know the ship, or the Englishman. Richard was bound for the engine control room, and the video monitor, via the makeshift sickbay.

  “What is it?” demanded Ann as soon as she saw him at the door. She was standing at the foot of Lazio’s bed checking the cuffs which secured his ankles to the frame.

  Ann’s tone made Harry look up from her position beside the securely restrained Pitman.

  “They’re on their way up to the bridge. All of them except four in the hold.”

  Pitman’s frame gave a lurch at the news and the cuffs securing her to the bed rattled.

  “They’re well-armed,” Richard said. “But I don’t think they’re expecting a fight somehow. I’m listening in on the radio and there’s nothing doing. Not even orders.”

  “Let’s follow them,” said Ann at once.

  “No need. We can monitor them,” answered Richard swiftly, all too well aware that Ann was mad enough to do what she said

  - and that he himself wasn’t a hell of a lot saner than she was.

  “Yes,” said Harry feelingly. “That’s much safer. Let’s go.”

  “Let me come too,” said Pitman. The three of them froze. Exchanged looks.

  “You? Why?” demanded Richard.

  “I need to know what’s going on as much as the rest of you. More. They’re my buddies. It’s my life…”

  “Pitman, for Christ’s sake,” said Lazio from the neighbouring bed. “What are you up to, you crazy bitch.”

  “Cuff me. Hobble me. I won’t try anything. It’s just…I’ve got to know.”

  “Let her come,” said Harry decisively. “I’ve got her gun and if she tries anything I’ll shoot her. I will,” she added, looking deep into Pitman’s eyes. “You know that.”

  “Crazy fucking bitches, both of you,” snarled Lazio.

  That and Harry’s request swayed it in Richard’s mind. Not that he was particularly in charge here. He knew Ann would make up her own mind in all things even though she would listen to him as a good friend. And Harry, too, was her own woman. In fact she was already busy releasing Pitman’s left hand. She re-secured it to Pitman’s right wrist before releasing that one and allowing Pitman to sit up with her hands bound behind her back.

  The four of them arrived in the engine control room at the same time as the figures of the SAS men and the SEALs arrived on the damaged monitor screen observing the bridge. Four of the strangely distorted figures were gesturing at each other while around them stood their fiercely armed soldiers. Beyond the central figures stood the hostages, wary and tense.

  Then, suddenly, there was sound. Someone on the bridge had switched their 349 personal radio to general broadcast. The shouting brought the twisted pictures to horrifying life.

  “Clear the bridge!” Marshall yelled. “Get all non-coms out of here!”

  “Sure,” capitulated Dall. “Non-coms to their own quarters. My men, stand. Captain, you lead the way. This is all over now. All you’ve got to do is sit and wait in any case.”

  A stir of reluctant movement.

  “In your own quarters. Out of the line of fire. Just in case,” emphasised Marshall more quietly. The threat in his words sent a current of fear through the bridgehouse that was almost tangible.

  “Who will take the helm?” demanded Bob, hesitating. “We’re still at full — ”

  “Later, please, Captain,” snapped Merrideth. “One situation at a time.”

  Bob capitulated. This, more than anything, told Richard how stressful things on the bridge must be. Nothing but the most extreme circumstances would make Bob Stark leave the bridge of a ship sailing at 100 miles per hour through crowded waters.

  Richard glanced at his companions to see how they were reacting. Ann was riveted, her face pale, her eyes fastened on Bob, tears of tension trembling on her lower lashes. So was Pitman, except that the object of her scrutiny was Dall, and her eyes were very dry. Harry was torn between the desire to watch the screen and the need to keep Pitman’s strange, square, skeletal gun firmly to the side of its owner’s neck.

  There was a brief as the crew left. Into this, urgently, came Mac’s voice, reporting from the hold with a warning. “Major! Someone has their radio on general broadcast.”

  “Thanks, Mac. All of you — ”

  “Right, Dall,” broke in Marshall, “just what the fuck do you think you’re playing at?”

  “We want more. We took all the risks. We got you the Stingers. We delivered the goods. We got the whole thing sewn up tight. But you never told us about any Stingers. We want more and that’s — ”

  The general broadcast ceased abruptly. As it did so, Marshall’s right hand flashed upwards like a black snake striking. The black fist put the pistol to Dall’s head and pulled the trigger. It was so quick and so unexpected that they were all stunned. One second the pirate was shouting at Marshall, the next he was dead on the floor. The silent figures on the bridge spun in a strange kind of dance, guns up and pointing. Spun, danced, but did not fire. Then a figure stepped forward slowly, unarmed, with his hands raised and his lips moving. It was Paul Aves, the dead man’s second-in-command.

  “Bastard!” shouted Pitman at the top of her lungs. The sound was so loud and unexpected that Harry jumped. So did Pitman.

  She jumped a metre off the floor, bunching her body into a solid ball and swinging her bound wrists beneath her feet like a skipping rope. As her feet hit the deck again her arms rose in a blur as quick as Marshall’s and she snatched the gun from Harry and jammed it directly to her heart.

  Stasis. Both here and on the bridge there was no movement at all. On the silent monitor, Aves was still talking but there was no sound in the engine control room except panting. Pitman stood looking straight into Harry’s eyes. Her bound hands held the gun between Harry’s breasts without a tremor.

  Sound came again. The tannoy this time. “Situation resolved,” came Marshall’s voice. “Lieutenant Aves’ men will lay down their arms. We are in charge now. Report to the ship’s exercise facility. Captain and watch return to the bridge. I have a new heading for you to follow.”

  There was a stirring on the ether. It was as though the very air relaxed a little — everywhere but in the engine control room.

  “Pitman,” said Richard in his gentlest tone. “Look…”

  On the monitor, the pirates, led by Paul Aves, were laying down their arms.

  “Shit,” said Pitman quietly and lifted the gun until it was pointed at the deckhead above. Carefully, Harry reached over and took it back. “Assholes!” said Pitman.

  “I’m going to have to edit some of this language if I ever
get to write this book,” said Ann.

  *

  New England turned a degree or two further west and headed down the coast towards her home port of Philadelphia. On the face of it, the situation was resolved. The pirates were disarmed. All of them, including Lazio and the uncuffed Pitman, were under guard in the ship’s gym. The forces of law and order were in control. New England was heading home.

  And yet Richard was not the only one aboard who believed the apparently cosy situation was entirely illusory. The men in charge of the ship were not representatives of law and order now, even if they had been once. They had been in some way associated with Dall all along. Indeed, the more Richard thought the situation through, the more it became obvious to him that everything that had happened since New England had gone to the aid of Calcutta had been simply a lengthy scheme to get these men aboard under the eyes of the American authorities in such a manner that the arrest or destruction of the jet-ship would be at the least stalled. His own involvement had begun with the strange messages that had interrupted Bill and Helen’s wedding reception — or, more specifically, the message for Bull, which had led to that first meeting with Merrideth in London. It followed, therefore, that the story in fact began with what had happened before that message was sent — with what had caused it to be sent…

  What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom? Richard wondered wryly, ready as ever with an apposite quotation.

  But there were still one or two elements of the situation Richard could not work out. If the surviving Jellicoe Boys had reassembled themselves from far-flung corners of the world, organised financing and armaments and gone through all this in order to take New England, what did they want her for? The fastest gun-runner in history? They were certainly well enough stocked with guns, rockets and God knew what else, courtesy of the IRA. And where were they taking her? Back to Philadelphia seemed so very unlikely in the circumstances but on their current heading down the coast, unless they were going to turn sharp right suddenly and head into Boston or New York, nowhere else sprang to mind. They could go on down the coast and swing into Delaware Bay or Chesapeake Bay, he supposed, and scare the hell out of everyone in Washington, but what was the point in that?

  He had seen these men at work. They did absolutely nothing without a clear, defined objective. This was all part of a three-point plan agreed between Marshall, Merrideth and, he guessed, Dall. Dall had let them down, double-crossed them, demanded more money before he would agree to fit back into the original plan. So they had come aboard and taken New England back. And they had killed him. Stepped on him like an ant. The shock of it lingered, deeply disturbing. And the question still remained — what plans did these mysterious, driven, conscienceless butchers have for the rest of the people aboard? Richard hesitated uncharacteristically. He really had to have a complete mental picture of what was going on here before he took any sort of action.

  The American medic Bone appeared suddenly at Richard’s side to break into these dark thoughts and remind him he had medical responsibilities still. The Americans had brought new supplies. “Come on, Captain,” said Bone. “Time to do our rounds.”

  “These doses seem to be much higher than the ones I was giving,” said Richard as he looked at Bone’s case full of pill bottles and syrettes. “Why is that?” It was an innocent question, arising from nothing more than a well-trained first-aider’s interest in medicine. But Bone’s answer was to give him the next important piece in the puzzle he had been working on.

  “The bulk of the medication is simply designed to stop the disease,” said Bone. “Once it’s in place, of course, the degeneration it causes can’t be reversed. None of this stuff can regenerate the tissues damaged by the bacillus. Not even the Thalidomide. Even with Hansen’s original strain that would have been impossible. With this new mutant it’s out of the question. Thank God it’s non-infectious, eh? Not like that new plague virus they discovered last year. Or Hong Kong Chicken Flu. So it’s just a question of containment. Doubling the doses of steroids will build up strength in the undamaged tissue.”

  “But that’s very short-term, surely,” said Richard. “Steroids themselves will begin to damage the tissue with doses as massive as this.”

  Bone was at the ruined wall, half in and half out of the hold. He turned to give Richard the strangest look. “Short term is all we’ve got,” he said. “All we’ve got either way. I thought you knew that.”

  Richard stopped dead in his tracks. Like a sleepwalker awoken by a punch in the solar plexus, he stood there gaping at Bone’s white face.

  The drugs. The syrettes. The sunken yellow eyes, the deformed bone structures, the gloves, the care they took even with holding their guns. The apparently illogical decision to bring a dead body with them out of Hero. The burning gloves extinguished thoughtlessly — painlessly — under armpits. The bleeding gums and pallid skin which had made him think of radiation poisoning and depleted uranium bullets. But the Ras Al’I. That was the key to it all.

  The mutant variety, Bone had said. Short term was all they had.

  And Hansen. Hansen’s disease.

  Dear God, thought Richard. Oh dear God. The Jellicoe Boys were dying of leprosy.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Right up to the late seventies there had been a thriving little port facility at the outer point of Great Egg Head. It had picked up the coastal trade plying between Atlantic City and Norfolk, Virginia, and some of the deep-water work in too much of a rush to swing round into Delaware Bay and up to Philadelphia. But after the oil crisis and the grinding reduction of ship-borne trade which characterised the eighties and the nineties, it had slid inexorably to the wall. All that stood there now, on the long, lonely thrust of land looking out across the Atlantic, was a derelict factory complex and a ruined little hamlet around it. It was a ghost port, too lost and lonely even for vagrants to bother with. The local turnpike wound lazily in from Wilmington but for more than a decade nobody had followed it.

  Until now. During the last few weeks there had been a gathering of surreptitious activity here. The long-dead leaves on the turnpike had been stirred by great tyres. The long dark windows of the houses and the factories had gleamed with lights far into the night. The still air of the place had been enlivened by something more purposeful than the voice of the east wind and the scurrying of local vermin. The quay had been strengthened enough to accept shipping and bear weight. The chandlering and maintenance facilities were almost up to spec. The warehouses contained wares — petrol for the most part, in great tankers labelled Amoco, Shell, Texaco, which had been hijacked further inland and driven here secretly at night, their original crews dropped far away and their destination one of the many unsolved mysteries on the files of the FBI. Among them, more carefully secured and also counted as lost at Federal level, stood an armoured vehicle brightly painted with the words “First National Bank of Idaho”.

  *

  New England eased into the half-ruined quay at Great Egg Head at sunset. The westering light threw long shadows from the derelict facility towards her as though gathering her into its secret heart. And out of that shadowy heart came men to greet her.

  Since 13 Int. had taken command, everything had changed. In their presence and even behind their backs the hated tabloid name the Jellicoe Boys was never used. Unlike the late Captain Dall’s mercenaries, caught between an unstable commander about an unexplained double-cross and a group of desperate, deadly adversaries, Merrideth and Marshall had gone to work with a will. New England had an immediate purpose and a tight schedule. If Richard and his friends aboard remained ignorant as yet as to what these were, no one could doubt that they existed.

  13 Int. had gone over New England with a fine-tooth comb. The automatic tracking aids and the ship’s identity beacon had been removed from the aerodynamic communications mast. Her ruined communications facilities had been replaced with specialised narrow-band equipment. The lower hold had been closed. Tom and his patrol had been mysteriously busy down t
here with Mac and Op, and some of the Americans too, but the ability of Bob’s crew to observe this action was increasingly circumscribed during the day as their liberty, too, was increasingly curtailed and finally cancelled altogether.

  Richard’s position was now very much changed; trust was no longer a feature of it. Nevertheless, he decided to confront Merrideth and Marshall with what he now knew about them at the earliest opportunity. No other course occurred to him. He knew as much about Hansen’s disease as most, especially as his first aid training had been carried out with work in the Gulf in mind. He knew the bacillus passed from one victim to another in breath droplets and that it lodged first behind the nose before spreading through the body, damaging tissue and killing nerves. He knew that there were two forms, tubercular and general. He knew that it could be held in remission with the very treatments he had been administering. He knew that it was incurable. He had never heard of a whole group of men being infected with it like this but he was one of the few who could begin to imagine the circumstances in which such a disaster might occur, because he knew about the Ras Al’I.

  Richard knew that leprosy was not easily spread and was reassured by Bone’s revelation that this mutant variety was entirely non-infectious. But he was sharply aware that up to thirty per cent of a random selection of people could be susceptible to the ordinary variety and would be very much at risk if Bone had got his facts wrong; and the longer they stayed in the company of what was left of Merrideth, Marshall and 13 Int., the more likely it was that someone else would catch it. To tell the others what he knew at this stage might be very dangerous. The group of crew members and guests who were still effectively prisoners might panic or begin to confront their captors, and Marshall’s method of negotiating with the double-crossing Dall showed all too clearly what the outcome of such a confrontation was likely to be. But doing nothing was out of the question and it seemed to Richard that the only course of action possible for him was to confront the two commanders himself, man to man. So, having completed his medical rounds with Bone, he made his way swiftly to the bridge before it occurred to somebody to confine his movements.