by Peter Tonkin
Only then did it occur to Richard that the target of the shot might have been Sally. But he need not have worried, for suddenly he felt the almost gymnastic pressure of a hand on his ribs which reawoke a long-forgotten feeling that he was involved in a game of leapfrog. His ear, which was crushed to the intruder’s side, was filled with a fierce crackling, almost as though a firework had exploded deep within the man. The body he was holding jerked backwards in a peculiar but terminally forceful way and he bashed his head on the wall again. Then he, his leapfrog partner and their victim were all in a pile on the floor together.
‘Now this will have made the need for action just a little more pressing,’ said a distant voice after an instant. Richard pulled himself free of the suddenly weighty and clinging form of the intruder. Sally was sitting with her back to the wall beneath the Virtuality headset, her hands busy with the gun. She handled it with reassuring familiarity. ‘Has our late friend got any more ammunition on him?’
It was only when Sally said this that Richard realised what she had done to the intruder. He moved all the more swiftly for the knowledge. The black outfit worn by the flat-nosed man seemed to have no pockets so it was only an instant before he said, ‘No.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Time to go, then.’
‘I’m sorry, Sergeant Alabaster,’ said Captain Song, ‘but I think not.’
Richard’s head swung round almost as swiftly as the barrel of Sally’s pistol. The captain was standing in the doorway and on either side of his slight frame bristled the black barrels of a large number of guns.
‘You call it, Captain,’ said Sally quietly.
‘You’re kidding,’ Richard said. ‘Not even Custer would charge in this situation.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ she said sadly and snapped the safety on. She slid the weapon across the floor and the pair of them rose to reveal the crumpled corpse between them. Captain Song glanced down then up. He said something quietly in Cantonese. Richard knew enough of the tongue to recognise the name Ang and something which might have been ‘white powder’, but that was all.
‘He was trying to kill us. We don’t know why,’ said Richard. His mind was racing. He knew what White Powder meant better than most Occidentals. The very thought of it made his short hairs prickle. But his thoughts did not stop there. It was possible that they might use the incident to cover the fact that they had been out of their quarters. Unlikely but possible.
The captain spoke gently in Cantonese again and two sailors took the deceased Ang while a third took his gun. Then the captain was speaking in English. ‘I left you the Virtuality headset as a kind of recreation, Captain, not as a method of covering attempted escape. Please remember this the next time you get any ideas. There is nowhere for you to go even if you reach a lifeboat unobserved because even though the storm is moderating, we are approaching the Rifleman Reef and these are the most dangerous waters in the South China — ’
The ship’s emergency siren cut him off. Captain Song whirled and ran back up the corridor. Richard, too, rushed forward but the men Song had brought with him slammed and re-locked the door.
‘Sounds like trouble,’ said Sally conversationally.
‘Yes, it bloody does. Get your life jacket on.’
‘What? You don’t think we’re going overboard again?’
‘Better be ready.’
‘Not again!’
‘It happens,’ he yelled, his voice booming over the warning howl of the alarm. ‘There’s something dangerous going on. Can’t you feel the way she’s heeling? Someone’s put her on hard a’ starboard in spite of the fact that that’ll take her right across the wind. They’re trying not to bump into something, I’d say. Hurry!’
Within moments they were both in life preservers. And not a moment too soon by the sound of things. The whole ship was juddering now and it felt as though an army of massive trolls was hammering against her sides with great stone clubs. Items were beginning to roll over surfaces. Sally found herself leaning against the doorjamb and was shocked to see the list of the room around her. It was as though she was on a fairground ride which was slowly tilting on to its side.
‘Can you get us out of here? On to the outside companion-way?’ bellowed Richard.
‘I guess.’
‘Then do it! There’s something … ’
There was no cataclysmic shock of impact, rather a rising growl which began almost subliminally as sound and sensation and rapidly gathered overwhelming power. Richard knew at once what this was. He had been here before. His first great command had collided and exploded in the Channel the better part of twenty-seven years ago. But the sound of the impact had stayed with him, and always would.
‘Get us out!’ he ordered. ‘Quickly, for Christ’s sake!’
Out on the companionway an instant later, the combination of steepening angle, battering storm and gathering vibration made it difficult to walk. Dogged to the point of sheer bloody-mindedness, they clambered up the familiar pathway to the deck above the navigation bridge. No sooner had they attained this football pitch of running, juddering darkness than the tilt of the ship began to ease. But as it did so the noise became agonisingly more intense. Richard could never have formed the words — to do so would have been a waste of time for in the throat of that maelstrom Sally could never have heard them — but he knew what was happening.
The situation of the ship, communicated through his ears and especially his feet, presented itself to Richard as a series of ideas half pictured in the disorientated whirl of his mind: of the ship, turning wildly away from an unexpected stranger, suddenly bearing down on a collision course; of the turn being accentuated by the overwhelming force of the weather, accentuated but still nowhere near enough to avoid impact; of two great hulls grinding together, tearing each other apart, the one on a straight course riding over her turning victim, bearing down on her, bludgeoning her sideways through the storm and the swell, pushing her round out of her course, out of safe channels and over into Dangerous Ground — the first great fangs of the Rifleman Reef.
Staggering as though in the grip of the fiercest of earthquakes, the two of them skittered across the deck. Sometimes on his feet but more often on all fours, Richard slid down to the starboard side. Here he paused, leaning dangerously out with the rails digging into the pit of his belly.
A bolt of lightning pounced down, joining the radio mast of the other ship to the sky for a frantic, flickering moment. Richard saw the black bulk of the other hull stuck fast in the Triad freighter, her forepeak, distinguished by some Cyrillic name, wedged halfway along the foredeck’s length. Most of the deck cargo of both ships was gone, by the look of things. Richard turned, the wild scene etched on his mind. Another bolt pounced down, further away, showing a wilderness of breakers seething over a mass of tumbling water like an infinity of rapids. Over this, the lifeboat was hanging like a pendulum on a thread.
In any other situation Richard would have hesitated. But the Russian ship was still grinding forwards. Captain Song’s command was being driven up on to the reef and broken apart at the same time. Her gathering tilt might have been slowed by the rock and coral in her side but that was a situation which could not last. If the Russian kept on moving and the wind kept on blowing, the Chinese freighter would begin to roll again. Anytime now, in fact. If they hesitated here then they would die.
Wildly, he swung himself over the edge of the deck, and saw with some relief that Sally was following his every action. Side by side they dropped the three metres down on to the bridge wing. They ran out along it and reached the outer edge just in time. Below them, hidden by the overhang, someone hit the release on the lifeboat’s mechanism, letting it fall to the wild surface of the sea below. But no sooner had they done so than a series of orders rang out from the ship’s tannoy and the lifeboat was left there, pitching and tossing, as the men rushed off about some other business.
The instant the men vanished, Richard’s worst fears were realised and the ou
ter edge of the bridge wing swooped down. The noise and motion were utterly overwhelming. But Sally was a battle-hardened soldier who had been trained to work with ruthless efficiency in all sorts of conditions. And Richard had been in situations like this before — as he had proved on the jetcat already. They hung on for dear life, eyes fixed on the bright bob of the lifeboat’s automatic beacon. Providentially, the wild swoop began to slow as the Chinese vessel fought back gamely. Richard grabbed Sally roughly by the shoulder and hurled the pair of them forward into the wild maelstrom.
They did not swim, they battered their way wildly through the overwhelming element. Only their life preservers stopped them being gulped down at once. Only the instant brightness of their own lights, illuminated by the power of the little salt-water batteries on their jackets, kept them in contact with each other. Even so, neither of them would have made it across the ten metres to the bobbing boat had Richard not blundered into the line which was still secured to its forepeak.
For a disorientating instant he supposed he must have been attacked by a sea snake, but then his numbed fingers recognised the braided weave of rope and he clutched it with a power made superhuman in its desperation. Hand over hand he pulled himself forward, mouth and eyes closed against the claws of water. Breathing was a dangerous luxury and yet the effort he expended made the occasional gulp unavoidable. The third time he tried to breathe he knew in his bones he was going to die. Choking, hacking, eyes, nose, throat and lungs agonisingly aflame with water, he paused in his relentless tug of war, even though he knew this was a fatal mistake.
I’m getting too old for this game, he thought. And that realisation immediately put him in mind of Robin, who had been telling him this in the teeth of his fierce disapproval for some time now.
He was actually hanging there, dying, looking into the pale oval of Robin’s spectral face when the lifeboat bashed him on the back of the head and instead of knocking him out it woke him up. And the instant his mind cleared, he saw Sally being swept past just behind the veil of deathly exhaustion where Robin’s face had hung. He lurched forward and managed to catch the sergeant’s life preserver. She grabbed his arm with the same bruising strength he was using on the lifeboat’s rope. Just the touch of her hand galvanised him.
Like everything on the Chinese vessel, the lifeboats were state of the art. With their bright orange covers made of indestructible moulded plastic fitted with special in-swinging hatches designed to accept wildly diving bodies but repel water, they were the best available on the market. Under the solid covers, they were well fitted with a striking array pf equipment and survival gear all powered, like the motor, by a series of electric cells kept charged by a cable from the ship’s power system while the boat was in its davits. When this ran out — in several days’ time — it would be replaced by power from a parallel series of salt-water batteries which would last as long as there was brine in the bilge, but at a reduced level.
The instant the lifeboat was launched, the external beacons, giving out light and automatic distress signals, switched on. So did the internal lighting and heating systems, as Richard discovered when he exploded head first through the hatch down into the warm, dry cocoon within. He rolled on to his knees at once and turned, preparing to pull the hatch back and reach out for Sally. She shot through straight after him, however, and sent him sliding backwards. ‘Secure that!’ he yelled over the cacophony. Then he was crawling on all fours back towards the raised section of the roof above them where the survivor in charge of the boat was supposed to stand in a clear plastic bubble and look around while he controlled the motor and steered the vessel.
Richard thrust his head and shoulders up into this observation area and his hands were in feverish motion at once. During the time it had taken him and Sally to come aboard, the Russian ship had pushed the Chinese vessel further up and over so that the bridge was now threatening to overwhelm the tossing little lifeboat. The topmost decking which they had crossed so recently was now a streaming cliff seemingly immediately above his head. No, not a cliff, a tidal wave; for even as he looked up at it, the wall of steel swept inexorably towards him.
In an instant of relative calm granted by the wall of steel sweeping in so closely upwind of them, the motor caught and Richard felt the game little vessel come alive under his wise hands. He reached for the throttle and eased it forward. The propellers, carefully protected from all sorts of damage and interference, pushed the lifeboat forward.
‘Where are you going?’ screamed Sally, who had discovered the perspex bubble at the forepeak where the watchkeeper was supposed to sit. The volume of her voice made Richard jump; there was an intercom built into the hull designed to overcome the wildest of storm sounds. A wise precaution, he thought grimly.
‘We have to look for survivors,’ he said flatly.
There was a moment of relative silence. ‘I guess,’ she said.
But looking for survivors in any realistic way was simply beyond what they could do. The sea through which the lifeboat was moving behaved like the wildest of millraces, the most lethal of rapids. And it was full of dangerous debris from the decks of the two ships. The lifeboat had eased forward ten scant metres before the all but unbreakable hull was battered by a range of sharp-sided floating hazards sounding dangerous enough to make Richard pull away from the collision site slightly. The instant he did so, the storm took firm hold again. Vision was cut by torrential rain and howling spume. The vessel began to leap and corkscrew until Sally said, ‘So this is what it’s like going over Niagara in a barrel.’
And Richard answered, ‘Yes, I guess it is.’
The doomed vessels towered above their heads, outlined by flashes of lightning. The weird edges of the fatally intertwined hulls streamed with great banners of spume, putting Richard in mind of huge black icebergs in the grip of an Arctic storm. The sight — what little he could see — put him in some hope for the Chinese crew, at least. The Luck Voyager seemed to have righted herself by some degrees since that vertiginous roll which had cast Richard and Sally adrift. Her hull was wedged firm and although she could not live for long and would never float again if he was any judge, at least she would see out the night, all things being equal. The state of the Russian hull beyond it was impossible to judge. Richard had no thought of going upwind of the Chinese wreck to see. To do so would have spelt death, but in any case the lifeboat motor could not have taken them directly into the teeth of the typhoon. Even at sea level the wind was gusting well over one hundred knots and it was pushing the water up into great piles of waves which streamed down the wind and away.
By the time Richard and Sally had established that no survivors were floating in the water near at hand, they were hundreds of metres away from the point they had started their search. Reluctantly but inevitably, Richard was forced to turn his back on the wreck, present his stem to the wind and allow the great hills of water to sweep him forward over the Rifleman as though he was surfing to Singapore.
He was concentrating so fiercely, riding down the wind and water, fighting to keep some kind of control over his intrepid little command, that time began to slip away almost as though he was asleep. Every now and then a lightning strike would thunder down within the quadrant of his vision, giving off enough light to reveal an image of mountainous waters and tumbling foam. If they were on top of a wave when the lightning came, Richard had the impression that he could see for miles. If they were in a trough, all he would see was an immediate wall of foam-backed water racing away in front of him. The lightning strikes were a kind of measure of time — all he was aware of, in spite of the fact that his Rolex was still ticking gamely where his hand clutched the tiller. The bolts of brightness might have come seconds apart, or minutes, or hours. It made no difference at all.
And yet, as the lifeboat plunged wildly westwards over the massive hump of the foam-backed reef, a kind of day did begin to dawn. The clouds thinned as the storm began to moderate and the waves to settle. At last, it might have been mid
-morning, six hours after they abandoned, the light attained a kind of greenish gloom. The sea fell back into a regular series of green heaves and the wind moderated so that the spume began to settle among the greeny-white horses. The rain stopped and it was possible to see ahead, but there was precious little there except the blackness of the storm’s departing skirts.
Then, in a magical instant Richard would never forget for as long as he lived, the last and greatest lightning bolt fell out of the sky like the twisting heart of a waterspout made of fire. It fell for a lingering moment as though its power had been exhausted by the storm and it was too weary to pull itself back up into the clouds. And that lingering bolt of brightness revealed, not more ocean but a heave of land. A shoulder of hill clothed in jungle sweeping down into an arm of land curling protectively round a little bay. Richard had no way of estimating distances any more than he had of judging time. But the island stayed in his eyes after the lightning showed him where it was and with just the tiniest adjustment of the helm he allowed the boat to be driven by the dying storm down the last of the intervening water, into the bay.
The waves drove the vessel’s nose up on to the soft sand then pushed it further and further up. It was only when the vessel, well beached, tilted a little to one side, that the reality of this pierced Richard’s exhausted mind. The perspex bubble above him could be released to swing back like the removable top of a sports car. The interior equipment all around him was designed to take the weight of a large man so that even the control panel could be used as a ladder.
The first breath of air, turbulent though it still was, filled his lungs like pure oxygen and filled his head like wine. He stepped up, suddenly full of fizzing energy, and hauled himself out of the cockpit on to the deck. Here he stood for a moment, looking around.