by Dayle, Harry
He hung up and turned back to Jake.
“We’re not deep, but they won’t see us coming. Staying at this depth means we can keep the photonics mast up and get a good visual approach. I daresay we’ll get a better signal for accessing the computers too.”
Jake nodded.
“About another thirty minutes and we should be close enough to have a look at getting into that system. In the meantime, maybe you’d like to get cleaned up a little? No offence, but you do look like you’ve been through the wars somewhat. Ewan can show you where the bathrooms are. We have some spare uniforms. I’m sure there’s something in your size.”
“That would be great, thank you.” Jake was glad of the diversion from the mix of emotions he’d felt upon seeing his ship again.
Sixty-Two
JAKE SPENT TOO long in the shower, but he didn’t care. The hot water was bliss. When he was done, he found a clean pair of navy trousers, a shirt, and a navy jersey all laid out for him. They fitted almost perfectly.
Ewan was waiting for him outside the bathroom, and escorted him back through the submarine. Jake couldn’t imagine spending weeks or months cooped up in such a confined space. The ceilings were low and, although the fixtures and fittings were modern and clean, the complete lack of any natural light was oppressive. The crew had tried to make the place homely. Photos adorned many surfaces, and drawings sent by children were common, too.
Every room they passed through looked to have more than one use. Food was stored everywhere, even under bunks. The efficient use of every tiny nook and cranny reminded Jake of caravanning holidays, and of his first trips on small pleasure boats back home.
All the submariners he encountered were polite. Many were keen to talk to him, to hear first-hand what he had seen outside, on the surface. Ewan did a good job of fielding these requests, hurrying his charge through bulkheads to the next room each time they were slowed down by inquisitive sailors. Jake didn’t mind answering their questions, but they didn’t really have the time for it.
He was struck by the ways the crew kept themselves occupied. There appeared to be at least two separate poker tournaments going on. Ewan explained that these could last for weeks. When they went through the junior ratings’ mess, he saw a group of young men huddled together, studying materials for a test that could see them promoted. They must have known that the exams would never happen now, but he could totally understand the desire to carry on as normal. Indeed, down here, under the water, cut off from the rest of the world, it was easier to just keep pretending everything was normal.
They called in on the medical berth, and Vardy changed the dressing on Jake’s hand. The rest had done it some good and it was starting to heal nicely.
When they eventually got back to the communications control room, Ralf called them straight over.
“We’re right behind them, less than a nautical mile between us. We’ve got excellent visual contact, and a high bandwidth connection to the computer system. I’ve had a go at cracking the security. It’s not bad, not great. With time, I can get in. But it would be worth trying your own password first.” He moved to one side, making his keyboard accessible.
Jake leaned over and tapped in his username, and then a password below. It was masked by dots as he typed it. He hit “Enter”, and the page refreshed in the web browser. A message written in red informed them that his account was not valid for remote access.
“Sorry,” Jake said. “I didn’t think it would work.”
“That’s okay. Actually, what I really needed was your username. I can get into the authentication database. It’s one-way encrypted, hashed, and salted, difficult to break without a lot of computational horsepower and time. We’ve got the power, but my understanding of the situation is that time may not be on our side.”
“I have no idea what any of that means,” Jake said, feeling dumb.
Ralf laughed. “No probs. It just means I can’t crack your password quickly. But I don’t need to, I just need to change your access level. I already hacked into the database, and now I know your username, I only have to do this.” He tapped a button and his screen switched from the web page back to the green text on black. He bashed away furiously at the keyboard, sending lines of text scrolling up the screen, then sat back, tapped “Enter”, and the screen flicked back to the web page.
“Try again,” he said.
Jake leaned over once more, and re-entered his username then his password. He hit “Enter” and this time, the page refreshed, and a message read “Processing…” A few seconds later the screen changed and a complex page came up. It was headed “Spirit of Arcadia Anti-Piracy Security System Console.”
“Shit!” Jake said. “It worked!”
“Of course. That’s what we do here. Okay, let’s see. We should probably get Coote back before we do anything else.”
“I’m on it,” Ewan said, and sprinted off out of the console room.
“Do you have any idea of the date and time we need to access?” Ralf asked.
“The date was May third. The time, I’m not sure. Let’s see…the election meeting was called for twenty-one hundred hours. It would have been nearly an hour later that they marched me up to the bridge. Flynn didn’t come up straight away, he had to get his shoulder patched up where he took a bullet. I would estimate twenty-two hundred hours, that would be a good starting point.”
“Okey dokey. Let’s see here.” Ralf navigated his way through various menus relating to archived security information. He found a page labelled “Bridge Feed”. There was a list of dates. He selected one. The page reloaded, and in the middle was a large video player. He looked up at Jake and grinned.
Coote stepped through the bulkhead door.
“Righto, lads, what have we got?”
“We’re about to find out. Ready when you are,” Ralf replied.
Coote took up position behind him. Ralf moved the playhead on the video window to 22:00 and hit the play button.
A circle of dots animated in the middle of the black video window, indicating that the file was buffering. Suddenly it filled with a colour image. The video couldn’t capture the whole of the bridge, but it showed enough. The camera must have been hidden somewhere above and in front of the captain’s seat, looking back over the room. Visible in the background was a chair, and Jake was tied to it. Flynn’s henchmen milled around close by. The sound quality wasn’t great, and they were talking in hushed voices. It was impossible to make out what they were saying.
“He’ll appear any minute,” Jake said without taking his eyes from the screen. “The guys guarding me were all together in a group like that just before he arrived.”
The three men continued to watch the footage. Sure enough, three minutes later they saw the door open and Flynn stride in.
“Mr Noah, congratulations.” His voice could clearly be heard from the console’s little speaker.
“That him?” Coote enquired.
“That’s him,” Jake confirmed.
They watched for ten minutes as the video confirmed everything that Jake had told Coote about Flynn and his plan.
Sixty-Three
HALF AN HOUR later, Jake, Coote, Ralf, and two dozen submariners including Eric and Ewan were assembled in the junior ratings’ mess. The video of Flynn and Jake on the bridge had just been screened to all the men present. Ralf tapped at the touchscreen of a small tablet he was holding, and the big screen on the wall flickered, then settled.
“This is the live feed from the bridge,” he said.
“Jake, can you give us a quick who’s who? For the benefit of these men?” Coote looked around the room.
Jake stood up and walked to the screen.
“This man sitting in the captain’s chair is Flynn, as you just saw. He’s in charge, no doubt about that. He took a bullet to his shoulder, but I don’t think it affected his mobility in any way. This man here on the helm, that’s Pedro. The man watching him, the one with the gun, is called Zhang. He’s dang
erous. I watched him kill a man, one of their own. It certainly looks like Pedro is acting under duress. He’s a good man, I don’t think he’s working with them by choice. These other men, I don’t know their names but they are all working with Flynn. They’re some of the disciples you heard him talk about.”
“He said there were twelve disciples in all,” Eric said. “With Zhang, I see five on the bridge. Where do you think the others are?”
“No idea. I am guessing they’re keeping some of the bridge crew captive somewhere. Hoping, anyway. We know that he took Lucya, the chief radio officer. And before that they took another hostage, the head of housekeeping. They may have other hostages, and they must be holding these women somewhere. Some of the disciples will be guarding them.”
“Any thoughts on where he would be holding them?” Coote asked.
“None. There’s no brig or secure cell on the ship. We looked for Tania and didn’t find her, even when we surveyed every cabin. I guess they moved her around. They could be anywhere. Maybe more than one location.”
“So we have no way of identifying these guys,” Ralf said.
“Not all of them. But anyone carrying a gun you can probably assume is one of them. Apart, maybe, from Max, our head of security. He had access to the gun locker, but I believe they took his key, violently. I might be wrong, and he could be armed and active, but I think it’s more likely he’s a hostage, or dead.”
“Thank you, Jake. Ralf, the plans if you could?” Coote looked over to the tattooed man.
Ralf tapped away on his tablet. The screen flickered, then the image was replaced with deck plans.
“Our entry on board is here, the landing platform for the tender. We have visual confirmation that they haven’t closed it up. It provides access to deck two. The bridge is located on deck ten. This is the most direct route.”
As Coote spoke, Ralf zoomed in on the relevant sections of the blueprints. The plan was discussed in detail for two hours, with Jake providing as much information as he could.
They were to board the Spirit of Arcadia at twelve thirty hours. There had been discussion about waiting until night, when most passengers would be asleep and out of danger. The consensus was there was too great a risk that Flynn could already be harming or even killing people and that they should not waste any time. At the hour they had chosen, passengers were likely to be in the restaurants for lunch rations, so the risk was somewhat reduced.
They filed out of the mess to take up positions for the mission. Coote turned to Jake. “Maybe this boat isn’t so poorly named after all eh? The Ambush is about to engage in an actual ambush!”
• • •
Jake was to remain aboard the submarine until the men had secured the bridge of the cruise ship. They were trained in combat and he wasn’t. He would only get in the way and risk the mission. Instead, he was stationed next to Ralf. They were to provide radio support. The live feed from the bridge would provide crucial information. From a station next to Ralf’s, another officer was monitoring the video feed from the periscope array.
The most delicate part of the operation, Coote had explained, was surfacing at exactly the right spot. They wanted to remain hidden for as long as possible. The captain was now in the main control room, overseeing the helmsman. An open audio feed between the two control rooms meant Jake had a good idea of what was going on. They had pulled alongside the Spirit of Arcadia and matched her speed exactly. Using a fancy sonar trick, they had been able to engage some sort of autopilot that would keep them in position, provided the cruiser stayed on a relatively straight course and didn’t execute any tight turns. They were now in the process of surfacing. Instead of just rearing up out of the water as they had done in front of the life raft, they were attempting to partially surface. Clipped orders were called out, status updates called back. Jake got the impression from the tense atmosphere that this was not something they practised regularly.
“Steady!”
“A little more out of the aft tank please, Budden.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Tower has broken the surface!”
“Keep it steady, Budden. Another three metres.”
“Two…one…”
“Hold her here!”
“Holding.”
“How do we look from outside?”
The officer to Jake’s left replied into his headset: “Looks like we’re creating a slight bow wave, nothing too conspicuous.”
“Any sign they’ve spotted us?”
“Negative,” Ralf responded. “All quiet on the bridge. Primary target looks to be sleeping.”
“Red Team, proceed with caution. I repeat, proceed with caution.”
Jake watched the periscope monitor intently. It had a wide field of view, and he was able to see a hatch on the top of the fin pop open. He counted a dozen armed submariners as they crawled out of the small, round hole, then leapt from the tower onto the landing platform from which he himself had been dispatched so recently. They mounted the steps in formation. The lead man entered the ship. Thirty seconds later the others followed.
“Red Team aboard.”
“Roger. Blue Team, stand by.”
“Standing by.”
There was radio silence for a few very tense minutes.
“Red Team approaching engine room.”
“Roger. Blue Team — go, go, go.”
Jake listened attentively. Ralf’s screen showed no movement on the bridge. On the other screen he saw twelve more men leave by the hatch. They followed the same formation, and within two minutes all had disappeared from view.
“Blue Team aboard.”
“Red Team, we have secured the engine room. I repeat, we have secured the engine room.”
“How many disciples?”
“Two gunmen. I don’t think they were expecting us.”
“Casualties?”
“None. No shots fired. These boys gave themselves up easily.”
Jake breathed a small sigh of relief. They knew that until a few days ago these so-called disciples were just regular passengers, not soldiers. They hadn’t expected too much of a fight. Even so, Coote had insisted that frightened men with guns could be unpredictable. Nothing was to be taken for granted.
“Blue Team, we are on deck ten. Approaching bridge.”
“Roger. Keep this channel open.”
Jake’s heart was beating fast again. This was the most dangerous part of the operation. There was a good chance that Flynn had stationed men outside the bridge door. The speakers hissed quietly as the radio transmitted the breathing of the lead man. Then everything happened very fast. Shouting erupted from the speaker.
“Armed forces, drop your weapons! Get down on the ground, now!”
Incoherent noise, more shouting. Two shots fired. Then another.
“Down, now!”
On the monitor, Jake watched as Flynn’s men ran to cover the door. They took up position behind consoles, two each side. Flynn ran.
“Primary target appears to be going for the escape hatch,” Ralf said into his headset. He turned to Jake. “Looks like you were right about him trying to escape.”
“Blue four, confirm your position.”
“Blue four in position above bridge hatch.”
“Stand by, primary target headed your way. Blue one, report.”
“Blue one, one man down, dead. Another immobilised. No casualties on our side. About to blow the door.”
Flynn was halfway up the ladder, but stopped. He paused for an instant, then jumped back to the ground, landing in a crouching position. He sprang to his feet and sprinted to the rear of the bridge, and out of view of the camera.
“Primary target has changed direction, no longer headed for the hatch,” Ralf reported. “You’ve got two targets either side of the door. Repeat, two either side, behind consoles. Further target at five metres from door. Shit, what the hell is he doing?”
At the same instant, the screen flared bright white. The camera came back
into focus. Dust was blowing across the room. More shouting issued from the speaker.
“Armed forces, drop your weapons and give yourselves up. You are outnumbered!”
Gunshots rang out.
Jake looked on in horror as he saw Pedro being walked up the middle of the bridge towards the door. Zhang was behind him, a gun held to the pilot’s neck.
One of the men behind the console popped his head over and fired off a shot. More shots were being fired from the door by the unseen navy men.
“He’s using Pedro as a shield,” Jake said. “He thinks he’s going to get out of there.”
Ralf relayed this to Blue Team, but it was too late. As he spoke, Pedro and Zhang both dropped to the floor. The gunshots rang out through the speaker.
“I can’t watch this anymore,” Jake said. “I’m going in. Flynn’s getting away. They could be held up there forever, it’s a standoff.”
“Coote wants you here until the bridge is secured,” Ralf said.
“That’s my ship. I’m responsible for those people. I’ve let them down once, I’m not doing it again.”
“I can’t stop you, Jake, you’re a civilian. But I’d advise you to let us take care of this.”
“Your advice is noted, thank you.”
Jake smiled, then turned and left the communications room.
Sixty-Four
JAKE NOAH RAN through corridors and up several flights of stairs. It seemed strange, being back on board the Spirit of Arcadia after seeing her sail off, assuming he would die. He passed a few passengers; fortunately none seemed to recognise him. Had he not been running they probably wouldn’t even have given him a second glance. As he reached deck ten, he heard gunfire from the direction of the bridge. Blue Team were evidently still trying to take it. He spoke into the radio Ralf had insisted on giving him before he left.
“Ralf? Jake. Any sign of Flynn on the bridge?”
“Negative. Blue Team are being held at the door. Two more disciples down, two still firing.”