Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure

by Peter Tonkin

  If the upper weather deck was a mess, the companionway was a disaster and, as he walked down it, treading carefully on warped and twisted steps, holding on to slack and serpentine handrails, Richard began to register the scale of what must have happened here. He remembered the strange sensation of being alone on the bridge when he took the helm – how long ago was that? And then he began to try and recall how many other men had been on the bridge when the clearviews smashed in with several tons of water behind them. And to speculate what might have happened to the water, the glass and the men.

  Richard walked thoughtfully back into the areas that the skeleton crew or harbour watch would occupy when they were on board. The largest of the rooms there was the mess, where Macavity said Rikki Sato was waiting for him. And the instant he walked through the door he understood Macavity’s grim amusement. For a mess it was, thought Richard sadly. Half-a-dozen men in varying states of disrepair were laid out on the floor. Clearly someone had rifled the cabins on the decks above to get sheets for makeshift bandages and blankets to make up beds on the deck. There was some basic first aid equipment on show but no real medical equipment. Aleks’s stores had been confiscated, clearly, as well as his guns, for there were pressure bandages and the sort of drips that had been used to tend to Kolchak after he had been shot in the shoulder. And Kolchak himself lay in a corner, comatose. But there was no sign of Aleks; there was hardly anyone who seemed familiar at all, in fact. Even the stony faces of the men working as medical orderlies were unfamiliar, though Richard felt he should have known some of them from Aleks’s command.

  Rikki Sato lay on the floor beneath a blanket that was piled worryingly high, as though the body beneath it was thickly bandaged, and suspiciously stained with what at first glance looked like melted chocolate. His face was bandaged but recognizable, even though his glasses were gone. As Richard walked in, his eyes seemed to light up and he began to writhe like a butterfly trying to escape from a chrysalis. Richard knelt beside the wounded computer programmer. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rikki earnestly. ‘I apologize. It was madness. Madness. All those lies … All this damage … I never meant … Tell Yukio … Tell Yukio …’

  But the effort of movement and speaking seemed to tear something deep within him. Halfway through what he was saying, he began to cough and choke. His mouth filled with blood and his eyes rolled up. Richard stood up and stepped back, shocked and distressed. One of the orderlies crossed to him and shook his head, gesturing to him to back off as he knelt beside the choking man. Feeling oddly as though he was trapped inside some hospital drama, Richard straightened again. ‘I’ll come back later,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe you’ll get the full skinny then – if he’s in any condition to give it.’ Richard turned and found Dom DiVito standing at his shoulder.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Richard as they left the sick bay. That question seemed at the moment to be more important than any other – and more likely to get answered truthfully.

  ‘Glass from the clearview cut him open and then the water washed him down three flights of stairs,’ said Dom. ‘His guts are held in with duct tape and his neck is probably broken. Yukio is his daughter.’

  ‘I remember that much, even without my laptop records,’ said Richard, his eyes narrowing and mind racing as he formulated the questions he was burning to ask the supercilious young Canadian traitor.

  ‘OK,’ temporized Dom. There was a short silence. ‘So what next?’

  ‘Food and the head,’ said Richard. ‘I need something to eat and somewhere to piss. It’s been a long day. Then I have some questions.’

  ‘Right this way,’ said Dom, and led him out into the crew’s quarters. ‘Food and facilities I can supply. But don’t count on getting any answers from me.’ The heads were at the end of a long corridor whose lights, like a good number of others, Richard now registered, were not working properly. Dom stood back and let him walk urgently alone down the corridor to the door marked FACILITIES in big, bold letters. ‘See you up in the new mess,’ he said and walked away. Richard pushed open the door and stepped into a surprisingly large room, thinking that Dom could afford to be so apparently overconfident. Richard was in no position to insist on confessions. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to escape. Where in God’s name would he go? Three stainless-steel urinals were suspended waist high along one wall. Two cubicles stood open beside them on the left. A sizeable shower stall stood at an angle on the right, its curtain closed and opaque because the light in the shower was another one out of commission for the moment. Between the urinals and the shower there was a pair of moulded steel basins with soap dispensers above them, paper towel dispensers beside them and bevel-edged mirrors screwed to the wall above them.

  Richard crossed to a urinal and made copious use of it. Then he turned to the basins and began to wash his hands. As he did so, there was a strange whispering sound behind him and to his right. He looked up into the mirror and saw a square face reflecting over his shoulder; a broad forehead topped with short-cropped blonde hair. Straight, honey-coloured eyebrows that almost met in the middle above the blade-straight thrust of nose. Cold blue eyes a shade or two darker than his own and clouded like opals regarded him expressionlessly. ‘Hello, Angela,’ he said, secure in the knowledge that he was one of the few men alive who could call Angela van der Piet, the Pitman, by her given name. ‘Welcome aboard Sayonara. And how is Harriet?’

  30 Hours to Impact

  ‘Harry’s fine,’ answered the Pitman. ‘But what about you? You look like shit.’

  ‘A bit tired, maybe. And a bit stressed,’ Richard admitted.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ snapped the Pitman. ‘Either the computer programme has screwed up big time because of this typhoon or there’s been some total asshole driving the boat for the last couple of hours. What do you think?’

  ‘I’d go with the asshole driving,’ admitted Richard. ‘But didn’t the computers all go down when the windows came in and the power went off?’

  ‘Windows came in, hunh? That would short out a shitload of stuff.’ The Pitman shrugged. ‘All I know is that everything on board shut off all of a sudden, then all the computer programmes went back to the equivalent of factory settings as the power began to come back on and an emergency file was sent out thanks to the black box. Harry went into the programmes like a pig into a truffle mine. I know some things came back online at midnight when we got full power on for the first time. There was a distress beacon. They’ve shut it down now, though. But you need to talk to Harry about all that.’

  ‘Will do,’ nodded Richard. ‘But …’ he hesitated, swaying thoughtfully as the hull pitched lazily up and down while she calmly overtook a storm wave. The watch and the helm were doing well, he thought.

  ‘But what?’ demanded the Pitman impatiently, sounding very much like Macavity up on the bridge.

  ‘Well, thanks for rescuing me and all,’ said Richard, ‘but I’m not sure I should vanish quite yet. I could do more good staying where I am. There are things I still want to find out, and under the current circumstances I’m in a pretty good position to do some detective work. And the storm’s still pretty dangerous. I feel responsible for the people I brought aboard.’

  ‘Up to you.’ The Pitman shrugged her broad shoulders again. ‘But don’t flatter yourself. I wasn’t after you. I was trying to liberate Doctor Sato. Harry wants to talk to him. Something about the programmes.’

  ‘It would be,’ nodded Richard. ‘But you’re too late to talk to Rikki Sato, I’m afraid. He was chopped up pretty badly when the windows came in and may have broken his neck when he was washed down the companionway.’

  ‘That’s a bummer.’ The Pitman frowned, looking worried for the first time. ‘Harry’ll be pissed if she doesn’t get her own way.’

  ‘Well, I’d better get back, I suppose,’ said Richard. ‘I really don’t want them to come looking for me and find you hiding in the shower.’

  ‘No skin off my nose whether they come or not,’ sai
d the Pitman easily. She didn’t need to stroke the Heckler and Koch G36C short-barrelled rifle she had cradled across her breast, nor to ease the nine-millimetre Sig in her holster or even to fondle the Fairbairn and Sykes black-bladed special forces knife she carried strapped to her thigh. Richard got the message.

  ‘No, I know,’ he said. ‘But let’s leave the mayhem for later, shall we? Until I’ve worked out precisely what’s going on.’

  ‘You know it’s the ’Ndrangheta, right? Ivan’s brought a shitload of stuff on organized crime from the FSB.’

  ‘Ivan? Ivan’s on board?’

  ‘Couldn’t keep him away.’ The Pitman shrugged. But her eyes sparkled a little and there was the ghost of a smile at the corners of her mouth. She didn’t dislike Ivan, thought Richard. High praise indeed. ‘His father the federal prosecutor and some other high-ups gave him an external hard drive with about a terabyte of information on it. He’s got your computer too, which is compatible with the drive by some kind of miracle …’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Richard. ‘Is he close enough for me to have a quick word and still get back before they notice?’

  ‘Well, I guess so. If they thought you were doing a little more than popping it out then zipping it up …’ She nodded to the cubicle, then frowned. ‘Or if they’re not too worried about keeping a close eye. What’s so important all of a sudden?’

  ‘Yukio,’ he answered.

  ‘Well, fuck,’ said the Pitman, her voice dripping with irony. ‘That explains everything! Let’s go, big fella.’

  As they crept down the corridor, Richard breathed, ‘Angela, do you know where they’ve put the new mess?’

  ‘One deck up, then follow your nose.’

  ‘Good. I’ll have a quick word with Ivan, check something on my computer, then go there. It was where I was going next. They might think I … ah … zipped up, washed up and went straight up for something to eat.’

  ‘If they’re tired or seasick enough it might work. Or if whoever you’re trying to convince is easy to fool.’

  Richard, Aleks and the rest had had no real opportunity to explore the decks in and immediately below the bridge house itself, and he was surprised by how many unexpected little stock cupboards and store rooms there were down there. Harry Newbold and Angela had obviously set up camp in one of those least likely to be visited, and had given a little extra room to Ivan Yagula as well. It was an electrical equipment storeroom, doubling as some kind of back-up to at least part of the computer system. On one side of the room there were piles of cardboard boxes that Ivan had arranged into a makeshift work bench. By the look of the labels on the side they contained wiring, relays, hoses, manifolds, cooling banks, air-conditioning spares and back-ups. On the opposite wall stood tall banks of old-fashioned-looking computers. There were flat screens with touch controls, serial ports and all sorts of stuff Richard didn’t recognize. Harry was going through it. She had her laptop plugged into one of the ports and had taken the front off one of the other machines nearby.

  ‘Hi, Ivan, Harriet,’ Richard said easily. ‘Nice to have you on board. I’m sorry to say Rikki Sato’s not likely to be well enough to talk to you. Can you do without him?’

  ‘If I have to.’ Harry shrugged philosophically. ‘It’ll just take longer to sort this stuff out and make sure I’ve broken in to everywhere I want to. Then, I believe, with luck, I can take full control of most of the computer systems on board …’ She didn’t look at either of them as she talked, her fingers too busy with circuit boards and brightly coloured wires.

  ‘What’s all that stuff?’ Richard just had to ask.

  ‘Back-ups and spares,’ she answered. ‘Mirrors the main system up on the bridge. MC4510-C23 marine computer system with the MD 220 display integrated with the MPC-220W-C23 marine panel …’

  ‘You had to ask,’ Ivan said wearily. ‘Harry’s only just finished explaining it all to me.’

  ‘Good,’ said Richard brutally. ‘You can talk me through it all later, then. In the meantime, Angela says you brought my laptop aboard.’

  ‘I did. Seemed like a good idea …’ Ivan began defensively.

  ‘It was,’ interrupted Richard. ‘There’s stuff on there I really need and couldn’t access on my Galaxy before I lost it.’

  ‘You lost your Galaxy? That’s tough.’

  ‘That’s not the half of it. But we don’t have time to go through all my adventures now. I want you to access Rikki Sato’s personnel file for me. I want to know about Yukio. His wife’s name is Seiko.’

  ‘Like the watch,’ said the Pitman.

  Richard looked down at his wrist. ‘Let’s not talk about watches,’ he said.

  ‘Got her,’ said Ivan suddenly. ‘Yukio. She’s Sato’s daughter. Born, let’s see, twenty-three years ago. Attended Seitoko Elementary School. Top of her class in everything. Went to Kobetokiwa Girls’ High. Top of her class again. Prizes galore. Special commendation from the principal. Speaks several languages pretty fluently, including Mandarin, English, French, Spanish and Italian. Graduated from Kobe University, Rokkodai Campus Number One with First Class Honours in Applied Economics. That was eighteen months ago. She went back into the graduate school just over a year ago to start her first postgrad degree. Invited back by the faculty, apparently. Joined the European Erasmus Mundus programme. Special recommendation once again. Currently halfway through her Master of Applied Economics course …’

  ‘At Rokkodai?’ asked Richard. ‘Her father works at Kobe. The family lives there.’

  ‘No. The Erasmus Mundus programme has allowed her to do an exchange year. She’s partway through it, according to this.’

  ‘If she’s not in Kobe at the Rokkodai campus, then where is she?’

  ‘She’s in Cosenza, Italy,’ answered Ivan. ‘At the University of Calabria.’

  28 Hours to Impact

  When Dom DiVito caught up with him a little while later, Richard was alone in the makeshift mess, using a box labelled Air Conditioning as a seat and a slightly larger one as a table. He was consuming something that had been called all-day breakfast on the tin. Though where it had come from God alone knew. The brightly printed ‘contents’ section boasted that it consisted of baked beans, button mushrooms, sausages, bacon slices and pork bites filled with scrambled egg. It tasted of nothing in particular, and was more slimy than chewy. The only strong flavour seemed to be coming from the plastic plate and fork he was using. And that was of fish. But Richard didn’t care. The food was steaming hot, filling, and of all the assorted tins and packets piled between the microwave and the kettle, it was one of the few whose label was in English and which did not consist largely of seafood with rice or noodles.

  In any case, Richard could have been eating anything between sirloin steak and sewage and he would hardly have noticed, for his mind was simply not focused on the here and now. It was hardly, in fact, on board at all. Such was the depth of his brown study that he noticed nothing of the food, of Dom’s hurried entrance and first question, or of the new, uneasy motion of the ship.

  ‘WHERE. DID. YOU. GET. TO?’ repeated Dom suspiciously, slowly and loudly – as though speaking to a deaf man.

  ‘What? Oh. Hi, Dom. After I tested the plumbing, I came up here. Got a bit lost on the way, but ended up following my nose.’ Richard wrinkled the organ in question and Dom looked around as though suddenly becoming aware of the strong briny stench which Richard’s all-day breakfast stood no chance of overcoming. Not, frankly, that it actually smelt any better.

  Dom nodded once, clearly unconvinced, and Richard kept his vague but innocent expression in place as he finished his meal in two hasty forkfuls and plonked his plate in a bowl full of lukewarm water, scum and fish bits. ‘Coffee?’ he asked, reaching for the kettle and shaking it to establish that it was half full. As he did so, the deck stirred again and he rode the movement with all the ease that came from his years at sea. ‘Tea? No milk or sugar, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No time,’ answered Dom. ‘You’re wa
nted back up on the bridge. The lieutenant started calling for you some time ago.’

  Richard put down the kettle and followed. ‘Speaking of which, does our beloved leader have a name, or shall I just call him Leutnant for the duration?’ he demanded as the pair of them strode out into the corridor. He used the German for lieutenant on purpose. ‘Or, considering he’s Afrikaans, Kapitanleutnant, perhaps. What do you think? And, now that we’re asking questions …’

  Dom threw him a questioning look over his shoulder, as though he was wondering how far Richard was going to push his schoolboy confrontation. Whether, perhaps, he was planning on playing this game with the lieutenant himself. ‘Are you going to push him like that? Needle him all the time? I mean, it’s getting nowhere with me. With him it might get you a broken nose …’

  ‘I’m considering it, though. He doesn’t seem exhausted or seasick. The next best thing is to make him angry. Angry people don’t think straight.’