Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Harry Newbold?’ insisted Dr Sato frostily.

  ‘It’s an insurance policy,’ explained Richard. ‘Plan B. Back-up only. In case of unforeseen but insurmountable problems.’

  ‘Such as …’ grated Dr Sato.

  ‘Give the guy a break, Doctor Sato,’ interjected a new voice. Richard turned to find one of the Greenbaum International executives standing smiling at his shoulder. ‘If he could give you a such as, then it would hardly be unforeseen. You can see the logic in that, surely.’

  Dr Sato grunted, bowed and turned away.

  ‘Domenico Giancarlo DiVito, Greenbaum’s Vancouver office.’ The stranger held out his hand to Richard. ‘But everyone just calls me Dom. Pleasure to meet you, Captain Mariner. Rikki’s a real nice guy when you get to know him.’

  And you got to know him fast, thought Richard, meeting smile with open smile. You’ve both only been here a couple of hours.

  ‘But I think you threw him a bit with the name-dropping,’ the Canadian continued. ‘Bit like asking Colonel Custer to take tea with Sitting Bull. See where I’m coming from? You can understand the good doctor’s point. Using Harry and the Pitman as your insurance policy is not so much a safety net as mutually assured destruction. A two-guy team coupling a top mercenary with a world-class hacker. That’s a bit like Arnie Schwarzenegger meets Lizbet Salander, isn’t it? The Terminator with the Dragon Tattoo?’

  Richard looked down at the open, smiling face of the young Canadian beside him. ‘Nice to meet you, too, Dom,’ he said after a moment longer. ‘And you may have a point. But then, so may I. Tell me, what is it that you fight fire with? Especially in situations that could get explosive?’

  The ingenuous brown eyes were shaded for an instant. Then another cheery voice interjected. ‘Fire,’ said the newcomer. ‘You fight fire with fire, Dom.’

  ‘Damned if you don’t,’ nodded Dom cheerfully. ‘This is my opposite number from the Anchorage office, Captain Mariner – Steve Penn. Steve, Captain Mariner.’

  Christened Stephano Penne, Richard remembered. Penne, like the pasta. ‘Call me Richard. Nice to meet you,’ said Richard, shaking their hands. ‘Steve’s right, Dom. Fight fire with fire. So I’ll keep my terminator with a dragon tattoo on call until I’m sure that I’m not facing something I need that particular fire to fight.’

  Again, the open countenance darkened for an instant. ‘But this is just an exercise, right? A test run. In case we ever do find ourselves fighting a fire for real …’ The two young executives exchanged glances.

  ‘That’s what we suppose,’ said Richard. ‘But then, my Bentley’s supposed to be a safe ride and I’m supposed to be a good driver. But I still have—’

  ‘—car insurance …’ said Dom DiVito with a shrug. ‘Sure. I get it.’

  ‘Right, Dom. Let’s get the ruffled feathers smoothed, the troops fed and watered, the briefing done and the show on the road, shall we?’

  Once again, Richard was content to let Aleks Zaitsev make the running after everyone had enjoyed a peculiarly Russian breakfast of bacon, eggs, ham and blinis served with a samovar of tea and a massive jug of coffee. Richard, chatty as ever, discovered that the restaurant was well-supplied with the food thanks to another group of foreigners who had passed through a little under a week earlier, also, apparently, heading west rather than east to Yelizovo or south into the local community of Petropavlovsk.

  This time there was no need for a large-scale schematic. Even the Greenbaum execs knew the basic structure and layout of a hull designed to house Moss-type LNG tanks. And Sayonara was not radically different in architecture from all the other LNG tankers plying the seas, except that she had that whaleback deck in front of her shortened bridge instead of four or five great hemispheres lined up ahead of an eight- or ten-deck block of flats. And neither Aleks nor any of the others except Rikki Sato and his team really needed to be aware of the differences in computer control and programming. The computers were where the officers crew would have been: between the command bridge and the engine room. So Aleks simply talked them through the basic safety procedures; where they were planning to go first; who was going to be with them to watch their backs; where they were all destined to end up and who would be there to keep the bad guys off their backs while they discovered what damage had been done and put it right. He then emphasized that this was a purely defensive exercise.

  That last being an extremely important point, thought Richard as, fed, watered, rested and half-briefed, they all trooped down to the hangar with the Bashnev/Sevmash truck and chopper parked beside it. They took off their business suits, executive shirts and ties, their city shoes and so forth and pulled on cargo pants that were lined and inky black, and black wool roll necks along with black Kevlar body protectors, balaclavas, boots and gloves. Here the techies were given their laptops, their connectors and their shoulder-cases, infra-red headsets and night goggles, and open channel two-way communicators. The soldiers got their guns.

  The only men going in empty-handed were Richard, Dom DiVito and Steve Penn. But Richard at least made sure he had his Galaxy at the ready. He pulled it out and looked at its flat screen, remembering Robin’s frowning face and angry words the last time he had held it. She was ready and more than willing to send in the reinforcements at the slightest excuse, whether she heard from him or whether she did not. If anything hit the fan, he thought grimly, she would hear. He liked to be in control, and had no intention of causing Harry and the Pitman to be called out because of what he hadn’t done as opposed to what he had done.

  He looked almost fondly at the familiar, trusty Samsung Galaxy smartphone, with worldwide access to the Net.

  Battery full. Pre-dial loaded.

  Panic button set to press.

  70 Hours to Impact

  The Bashnev chopper came over Sayonara exactly five hours after the internal flight from Moscow touched down in Yelizovo, calculated Richard, dividing his attention between the view from the window beside him and the face of his watch which told him it was noon, local time. Accurate to the second. And, for once, local time and ship’s time coincided. The vessel was proceeding at eighteen knots. A ground speed of more than twenty miles per hour, he calculated. Heading along a south-south-westerly course, following the edge of the abyssal Kuril Trench down towards Japan. He checked his Rolex again. She was exactly fourteen hundred and fifty miles from the new NIPEX facility. Seventy hours’ sailing time.

  Aleks Zaitsev had spent the two hours of the flight giving a final briefing to the technicians, making sure that they were comfortable and confident with the equipment they were wearing, particularly the night-vision equipment they had been supplied with on the assumption that they could well be working below decks in a lightless environment. Richard was familiar with his own goggles – he’d worn a similar set when he’d been involved in night actions during a bush war in West Africa, in the days when Felix Makarov’s partner, the bellicose and dangerously short-tempered Max Asov, had still been with them. Max had died in that nasty little war, on the shore of a lake full of coltan – a lake which promised to make all of their fortunes. The search for it had taken Max from Moscow to the slopes of Karisoke, a volcano in the dark heart of the war-torn continent, where he had died. Max had been succeeded by his daughter because his son and heir had died of a drugs overdose the better part of a decade earlier. Anastasia, therefore – though Max must be turning in his grave at the thought – and Ivan, her chief of security and right-hand man, were the natural Bashnev balance to Felix and his team at Sevmash shipping.

  It was Anastasia, more than any requirements of business or security, which kept Ivan in Russia now, Richard suspected. Only Anastasia would keep the big man away from an adventure like this one. Though, given the young woman’s warlike propensities, he was vaguely surprised that Nastia hadn’t come along herself. Perhaps there was trouble brewing in Moscow, St Petersburg and Archangel, where the twin companies of Bashnev/Sevmash had their main business concerns. Perhaps he should
ask London Centre what the word was on the street next time he was in contact with Robin. Or rather, what the word was on the ulitsa. It occurred to him that he should contact Robin pretty soon, in fact. Perhaps as soon as they got aboard Sayonara.

  But then the immediate requirements of the situation took precedence for Richard. The Mil made a low pass over Sayonara. They all craned to see if there was anything obvious amiss, but there was not. The vessel swept determinedly forward, her decks and bridge house apparently empty. There was no gesture of greeting towards them; no declaration of war. Now it was the turn of the techies – most of whom had worked on her or on board her – to nod with silent wisdom while the soldiers gasped at her sheer size and the impact she made close-up, for she was a massive craft. Aleks Zaitsev, Konstantin Roskov and Vasily Kolchak were the only ones not giving vent to Russian oaths of surprise. They were focusing three pairs of electronically-enhanced binoculars upon their destination, trying to see into whatever deadly secrets lay within her.

  The sides of her two hundred and eighty-eight metre hull were black and unmarked by any of the signs of age and wear that come so swiftly to working vessels. There didn’t even appear to be a rust streak on the flare of the forecastle head beneath her carefully cradled anchors. Her squat bridge house sat far back at the opposite extreme of the long, lean hull, empty bridge wings stretching sixty metres from tip to tip. There was almost no poop deck and what little there was lay hidden below the hull of the lifeboat hanging from side-to-side aft of the bridge house above it. There was a glint of a safety rail in the summer sunshine then the square wall of her stern, falling towards the white heave of her propellers and the widening V of her wake.

  The great whaleback of the protective cover, which stood so massively over the foredeck and the hemispheres of the Moss tanks, began immediately forward of the bridge to which it was joined. It stood more than twenty-five metres high and spread from rail to rail more than forty-five metres across the deck. Forty-eight point nine five, in fact, Richard remembered from the schematic on the laptop Ivan was guarding for him. Where the sides were pristine black, the bridge and whaleback were white, and in the midday sunshine it was as though they were flying over a snow bank so bright Richard wondered whether Aleks Zaitsev would be reminded of his Italian alpine ski runs. Pipe tops and mastheads stood in pairs above the pristine curves, like the uprights of a ski-lift long fallen out of commission. Between them, on the very top of the whaleback, there were pipes, as on a tanker, running in parallel series, fore and aft. And a little over halfway down the hull there was a cavity, with what looked for all the world like a massive balcony projecting over the side.

  The shadow of the helicopter crept across the Alpine whiteness, rising and falling as the pilot sought to keep clear of the skeletal uprights. But it settled beside the starboard balcony. The lieutenant, his warrant officer right-hand man and the operations and intelligence sergeant – Aleks, Konstantin and Vasily – put their heads together, clearly debating whether this would be a good point for at least one team to gain entry, for it was a far more sizeable feature than it had appeared to be on Richard’s schematic. But eventually they nodded their heads. They had a plan. This was not the moment to deviate from it. Aleks spoke into his headset, clearly ordering the pilot to proceed.

  At last the Mil arrived above its destination. The triangle of the forecastle lay like a massive arrow-head below them, the circle of the helipad drawn in white on the green of the decking behind the pair of huge winches supporting the anchors, and between the slightly lesser pair controlling the hawsers by which the great ship could be moored. As the chopper pilot began to descend, Aleks was in action once again. He strode up to the cockpit, then returned with the flight engineer. Richard pulled out his cellphone, switched it on, tapped in his code and hit the predial. Robin’s face filled the screen. ‘We’re going in,’ he said tersely. ‘I’ll contact you again within the hour.’ Then he realized it must be nearly midnight in London.

  ‘Within the hour,’ she said. ‘Got it. I won’t be in bed by the looks of things so don’t let the hour worry you. But this time, buster, you’d better be bang on time.’ And she broke contact with unexpected abruptness.

  Aleks Zaitsev broke into his thoughts. Not by what he said, this time, but by what he did. As he came down the length of the Mil’s cabin, Aleks patted several shoulders. The men he contacted sprang erect. The Mil’s descent slowed, and as it did so, the engineer opened the sliding door in the cabin’s side. Aleks and his four-man squad clipped lines to a rail above the howling vacancy of the open side and – at a nod from their leader – stepped back into thin air. Richard, on the far side, looked out and down until the four figures appeared beneath the belly and landing gear that partially blocked his view. As though they too were all controlled by Sayonara’s computers, they rappelled in perfect unison down towards the waiting deck, while Richard thought that skiing was by no means the only sport at which Aleks excelled. They all landed together precisely at the centre of the white circle of the helipad, unclipped and reached for their weapons. Then they fanned out, checking for anything that had been hidden from the binoculars’ scrutiny – anyone concealed just inside the forward doors into the whaleback, lingering with evil intent. But soon they were signalling, and the pilots set the Mil on the landing pad so that everyone could climb out.

  As Richard stepped down, the familiar sensations of being on shipboard swept over him. The throbbing of the deck as it vibrated to the movement of the engines. The subliminal feelings of movements and unsteadiness – though Sayonara was by no means either pitching or rolling. The stench of exhaust fumes, like the clatter of rotors, faded as soon as the Mil lifted off. Then the salt wind claimed them, with its clean tang of ozone and its gentle grumbling bluster. It was surprising how quickly it became quiet as the big chopper thrummed away towards the distant land lying invisibly below the starboard horizon. Then there was just the vastness of the ocean ahead – emphasized by the white cliff of steel standing sheer behind them. They were all turning to look at it – like tourists at the foot of an Alp.

  The peaceful feeling of being at one with the great vessel and the natural world around it lasted for only the briefest of moments. ‘Let’s go,’ said Aleks. He led one team with his intelligence man Sergeant Vasily Kolchak at his shoulder and his communications man with his back-packed radio making a third. Senior Warrant Officer Konstantin Roskov led the other. He too kept his communications man close at hand. All of the soldiers had their guns at the ready. All of the techies held their equipment carefully and safely. They each stood by a door into the whaleback while one of the techies keyed in the access code, then the soldiers led the way into the cavernous blackness beyond as Richard silently thanked God that whoever was on board hadn’t thought to reset the codes. Unless of course, they had – and this was an immediate trap.

  The techies and the executive observers fell into their designated squads and were following their leaders, apparently oblivious to any second thoughts or dark suspicions. Part of the briefing in the chopper had been the detailing of who was going with which team, under whose command. Steve Penn was going with Konstantin Roskov and the port-side team. Richard and Dom DiVito were with Aleks, Vasily and their men. One after another, they stepped over the raised sill of the bulkhead door into the black throat of the starboard corridor.

  Richard hit the infra-red on his eyepiece and found himself surrounded by orange figures. There was a straggling line of them ahead of him, bright against the vastness of the lightless cold with which they were surrounded. But there was also a sense of cavernous immensity. He could hear the sound of the wind, muffled, against the outer shell of the whaleback at his right shoulder. He had the impression of something vast and dark reaching up and over in front to his left, but there was almost nothing to see except his companions, burning so brightly through his infra-red. There was a dull clang as Vasily shut the door. He shook his head, feeling a little like a pot-holer lost at the heart of s
ome huge cave system deep beneath the earth. Vastness and enormity stood invisibly all around him, giving itself away only by the promise of echoes and distant whispers. The knowledge that he was in something superhumanly gigantic, if only he could see it.

  And then he could see nothing at all as searing whiteness burned into his brain. He gasped with agony and shock, hearing all those around him doing the same. It took him an instant to realize, but then he understood.

  Someone – or something – somewhere had switched on all the lights.

  69 Hours to Impact

  Right at the moment when Richard – on the far side of the world – was thinking he ought to call her, Robin’s cellphone rang. It was the middle of the day for him, the middle of the night for her. But whenever he was away, she found herself regressing to the sort of hours her children kept as university students. At eleven p.m., therefore, she had just put the finishing touches to her late-night small board videoconference with Heritage Mariner’s associates in New York where it was six p.m., Vancouver where it was three p.m. and Sydney, where it was eight a.m. tomorrow. To be fair, it had been midday in Vancouver, three p.m. in New York and eight p.m. in London when the meeting had started, long before Sydney came online, but Robin had been a lackadaisical chairwoman and timekeeper because all she had to look forward to was a big, cold, empty bed. Furthermore, she had convinced herself that she needed to refer one or two matters to their head of design, the Australian ‘Doc’ Weary. ‘Doc’ was currently Down Under, but he was an early riser and had been happy to have a chat at seven a.m. his time – ten p.m. hers. Their chat had gone on for an hour.

  So Robin was still standing in the boardroom looking down at her papers when the phone rang and she answered almost automatically, her mind still on business. Very few people other than Richard and her children had access to this number, and very few indeed would ring at this time of night, but it was not in her nature to expect bad news, so she activated the handset without a second thought, actually expecting another ‘catch-up’ call from her errant husband. The face on her cell’s screen told her who was actually trying to contact her and she paused before accepting the call with a slight frown of distaste. It was from a man she disliked, but whom she felt she had to treat civilly, if not warmly, as he was important to her company if not to her personally. His name was Tristan Folgate-Lothbury and he headed up a Lloyd’s of London syndicate which insured a good deal of Heritage Mariner’s fleet.