‘Speedbird? What sort of a namby-pamby name is that? I grant you it’s flighty enough …’
‘Iain, stop being a curmudgeon.’
‘I’m not a curmudgeon Margaret. It’s just that I don’t think we should take on a man with divided loyalties. He carries two passports.’
‘Iain, you’re growing fantastic. Her Majesty the Queen is New Zealand head of state, through her representative the Governor-General.’
‘The place is being taken over by the Japs and converted into a huge golf course.’
‘I think we’ll ignore that absurd remark.’
‘Speedbird! God help us …’
ANY OTHER COMPETENT BUSINESS:
During the meeting, Major Forster received intelligence of an explosion at Marsden Wharf in the Port of Auckland involving the research vessel The Captain Cook. The ship is listing in the shallow waters of the Waitemata Harbour. Captain Hodgson may be on board. There have been no reports of injuries to date. Evacuations are ongoing. Dr Cameron-Strange is attending at the scene.
Major Forster has given his apologies and terminated the video link.
III
‘You can’t come down here sir,’ said the police officer in a bored voice. The Harbour is closed until further notice.’
Marsden Wharf was crawling with officialdom. The whole place had been cordoned off. Next to me, a TV NZ film crew were setting up and a tall, dark-haired girl in a smart trouser suit was simultaneously carrying out a sound check, talking to camera, and applying some lippy. Next to her, another crew were trying to blag their way through the barrier, without success. The police were being patient, but firm.
I took out my temporary N-MASS ID and held it up. The officer frowned at it. ‘What’s this?’
I said, ‘Doctor.’
He stroked his chin. ‘I’m afraid I have clear instructions …’
A voice behind me said, ‘That’s all right, officer, he’s with me.’
‘Sorry sir.’
Major Forster was camouflaged in dark green and khaki army field kit, as if on a yomp. Now I was official. The police officer lifted the tape and we stepped through.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Search me. Somebody with a grudge, I guess.’
We walked purposefully past the uniforms, the emergency vehicles amid the dockyard detritus, the cranes, and the containers.
Down at the wharf, The Captain Cook was listing at a crazy angle. There was a great charcoal scar curved like a scimitar across the upended bow, with a gash down at water level about the size of a small car. The glass windows on the visible upper decks had all gone. I counted five fire engines and three ambulances but there was no evidence of activity within them and they looked to be on standby. Instead, there was an orderly evacuation taking place. Forster had a quick word with a paramedic. Anybody hurt? Apparently not. One person trapped. Deck 4. I said I’d take a look.
I got permission to go on board and ascended the gangway while the Major went off on his own fact-finding mission. I already had a premonition who I was going to find and my heart was beginning to thump.
‘Who’s this?’
‘Doctor.’
‘Oh, good.’
I got led down through another gash on to the remains of the cabin on Deck 4, the same cabin Nikki and I had occupied an age ago. It was unrecognisable. It was as if all 1753 tonnes of The Captain Cook had concertinaed in on itself. The big men with the yellow helmets and the pickaxes had found her jammed under a heap of debris. She was lying on her back on the floor of a six-foot-deep trench formed from warped and twisted stanchions, barely wide enough to accommodate her. She flashed me a grin. I felt an overwhelming surge of relief. I said, ‘Oi. Hodgson! What the hell are you playing at?’
‘I’m fine. Thanks for asking. Just stuck.’
The fire-fighters, the extrication men, took a breather and gave me five minutes with her. I had to wait for one of them to come up before I could reach her. That was the trouble. If half a dozen big guys had been able to put their backs into it they might have shifted all the tonnes of debris and freed her up in a minute. But there was no room. I could see they would need some heavy-duty cutting and lifting gear, and the operation would be tricky and hazardous. It might take some time. She was occupying a casket, flat on her back. There was just enough room to drop down, and squeeze in by her left side. I did so and crammed in awkwardly beside her. Her left arm was abducted and externally rotated under a massive iron girder. Stuck fast. I shifted my position, knelt down, and felt for the small brown hand. It was covered in dust. It was warm and there was a palpable radial pulse.
‘Move your fingers.’
She complied. ‘Good. Feel me touch you?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Sore?’
‘No. I just can’t move.’
‘Rest of you okay?’
‘All bits present and working.’
‘You’re a survivor.’
‘Indestructible, mate.’
I looked aloft at the man in the yellow hard hat. ‘We going to be able to move this stuff?’
He took off his helmet, wiped his brow, and put my thoughts into words. ‘We’ve sent for some gear, doctor. Heavy cutting equipment. Should turn up pretty soon. Access will be a problem. She okay?’
‘Looks like it. Bloody miracle. Must have a guardian angel.’ I still felt the warm glow of an overwhelming relief that she was alive and, essentially, unscathed, that all she might have to endure was the inconvenience of being stuck on a boat for an hour or two. Nothing to worry about. Surely. What if the boat sank? It occurred to me that it might be easier to get Nikki out if she and the boat were semi-weightless on the seabed. I said to the man in the helmet, ‘We need some scuba gear.’
‘We’ve got that.’ He was ahead of me.
There was a skirmish out on the wharf and a series of shouts and catcalls. I became aware of a change of atmosphere. A new threat.
‘Everybody out!’
‘Clear the area.’
‘All non-essential people to vacate stat!’
Nikki said, ‘What’s happening?’
‘Search me. I’ll try and find out. Back in a sec.’ I climbed carefully back up through the gash in the ceiling and moved outside and along to the starboard gantry to where a group of emergency workers were taking a sitrep. On the wharf, the engines of the emergency vehicles were starting up and one by one the police cars, fire engines, and ambulances were backing away from the water’s edge.
‘… can’t get her out in a hurry then she’ll just have to take her chances. Who’s this?’ The police officer stared at me quizzically. One of the paramedics said, ‘It’s the doctor.’
I introduced myself. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘We’ve got a problem.’
‘What is it?’
He looked pointedly at his watch. ‘We’ve had a tip-off. Can’t ignore it. Can’t take it with a pinch of salt. Got to take it at face value I suppose.’
‘Inspector, what’s wrong?’
He grimaced apologetically. ‘Sorry. Fact is, they’re saying there’s another bomb. Limpet. We can’t find it. And anyway it’s supposed to be booby-trapped. They’re saying it’s timed to go off on the hour.’ He looked at his wrist watch. ‘Just under thirty minutes in fact.’
‘Could it be a hoax?’
‘Given what’s already happened I wouldn’t bank on it.’
‘When’s the cutting equipment going to arrive?’
‘They’re saying half an hour. Cuts it a bit fine.’
I didn’t fuss. I tried to make the calm, analytical part of my mind took over. This is how it had been with the Rainbow Warrior, at Marsden Wharf, all those years ago. Operation Satanique. The first bomb had been intended to get everybody out, the second to sink the ship. It had all gone hideously wrong.
‘What’s your take on this, Inspector? Do you think there’s going to be another explosion?’
‘Well, it’s impossible to say.
It’s a risk management exercise, weighing up the relative …’ Our eyes met.
He said candidly, ‘I think there’s going to be another detonation.’
‘Thank you. Give me ten minutes.’
I hunted out a paramedic. ‘I need some simple equipment. Fifty-mill syringe. If you haven’t got one, a couple of twenty-mill syringes, an anaesthetic extension set if you have it, some prilocaine, 40 mills. Lignocaine would do. And a 23-gauge blue needle.’
‘Got it.’
‘Oh. And a field surgical set.’
‘Sir.’
I went back to Nikki. She stared up at me with big, dilated, frightened eyes. She already knew.
‘What is it?’
No point in beating about the bush. ‘There’s another bomb. Or there might be. We need to get you out of here. Now.’
‘But you can’t.’
‘Yes I can.’
Then she understood. ‘No. No. No. No. No.’
‘Nikki–’
‘You can’t. I won’t let you. You can’t do it without my consent. I absolutely and unequivocally refuse!’
Don’t pick a fight. Use the time. ‘That’s fine, Nikki. At least let me put your arm to sleep.’
She was deeply suspicious. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I can numb your arm with some local anaesthetic. Then at least we have some options. I dunno – we might be able to drag you out. Whatever. At least you won’t feel pain.’
She gazed up at me, pleading. ‘No funny stuff?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Promise me, Alastair. Promise me you won’t do anything against my will.’
‘I promise.’
I glanced to my left. The equipment I’d requested had been laid beside me, along with a crash box and the anonymous, innocuous autoclaved field surgical set in its green wrap. Quick wash of the hands with antiseptic gel. I took up the two bottles of parenteral prilocaine, automatically checked their expiry dates, and began to draw them up into two syringes.
‘Talk me through this. I need to know what you’re doing.’
‘Okay. I’m just preparing some local anaesthetic.’ Twenty mills into each syringe. I opened the sterile wrap on the slim coil of tubing that was the anaesthetic extension set and attached one end to one of the syringes. Then I took the 23-gauge needle and attached it to the other end of the extension set. I held the syringe up and expelled air through the dead space of the extension set. I looked down at my trapped patient and the externally rotated left arm. Serendipitously, she was ideally positioned for the procedure. I worked my way cautiously back down to her left side. More antiseptic gel, kneading my hands obsessive-compulsively.
Scissors. I found a pair in the paramedic crash box and cut away the short sleeve of the T-shirt’s left arm. There was the beautifully smooth hairless skin of the axilla. I gently palpated and found the soft, even pulse of the axillary artery.
‘OK, Nikki. This is called a brachial plexus block. I’m going to infiltrate some local around a nerve complex in your armpit, and make the whole arm go numb.’
‘Uh.’
Alcohol wipe to the skin over the artery. Now then … In hospital I might have used a nerve stimulator to make sure I’d accessed the sheath of the neurovascular bundle. Here in the field I was going to use a more old-fashioned technique. I firmly pushed the blue needle through the skin and straight into the axillary artery. There, within the thin tubing of the extension set, was the tell-tale flashback of arterial blood and its pulsating meniscus. I pushed the tip of the needle through the posterior wall of the artery. Nikki gave an involuntary twitch of her left arm.
‘Ouch! What was that?’
‘What did you feel?’
‘Electricity.’
‘Pins and needles?’
‘Right into my hand.’
‘Good.’
I made a tiny adjustment to the position of the needle and proceeded to inject the anaesthetic. There was a characteristic resistance, palpable as the anaesthetic passed into the neurovascular sheath. I could feel the local expand under the fingers of my left hand, in the shape of a sausage. I injected the entire contents of the syringe into the posterior segment of the sheath and then changed the syringe on the extension set. Then I pulled the needle a millimetre back until the blood-red pulsating flashback within the tubing verified that I was back in the lumen of the artery.
Now I redirected the needle medially. There was another brief electric shock, but attenuated. I injected ten mills, pulled back into the artery, and redirected the needle laterally. The last ten mills were injected. I withdrew the needle and pressed on the puncture site with a piece of cotton wool.
‘All done.’
‘Where’s my arm gone?’
‘It’s still there.’
‘Where?’
She had lost proprioception. She almost had spatial neglect. It was going to be a spectacularly successful block.
A paramedic was hovering. I looked round. The rest of the cabin was deserted.
‘Message from the Inspector, sir.’
‘Yes?’
‘He says it’s twenty minutes to the hour.’
‘Yes?’
The paramedic looked uncertain. ‘Could we talk in private?’
‘That’s not necessary. Captain Hodgson is fully cognisant of the situation.’
He looked frightened. ‘If you say so, sir. Sir, there’s another bomb.’
‘Then you’d better run along.’
‘Sir.’
We were alone.
Nikki looked up at me. ‘You too, Al. Get outa here.’
‘Can you feel that?’
‘Feel what?’
‘Mm. Perfect block. Nikki, I can have you out of here in a minute.’
‘What part of NO is it that you don’t understand?’
‘Okay. I hear you.’
‘Now piss off.’
‘I’m not going without you.’
‘Well, that’s just crazy, ’cos as you can see I’m not about to be going anywhere. What time is it?’
‘Nineteen minutes to twelve.’
‘Get going, Alastair. You don’t know how finely timed or otherwise this thing could be.’
There was a commotion just outside the cabin. I knew who it was. His grand entrances always seemed to be preceded by an abrupt deterioration in the local weather. Major General Civil leaned over the remnant of the wrecked cabin and glared down at us.
‘Doctor, I am now in charge of this operation. You are to take whatever measures are necessary in order to retrieve Captain Hodgson. Or, if there is insufficient time, you are to evacuate with me, stat. If you’re saying it can’t be done, then there is absolutely no gain for you in remaining here. If you can’t help her, you are merely exposing yourself to a huge risk without any prospect of an advantage either to yourself or to her. Captain Hodgson is an enlisted member of the armed forces. She understands that on a war footing – and that’s essentially what this is – difficult decisions have to be made. Any sane, rational person can see that your staying here is folly.’
He was lecturing me.
‘If on the other hand, she can be extricated, by whatever means, then get your thumb out of your bum and get on with it.’
‘The captain is not consenting to operation.’
‘Doctor, a word.’
‘I’ve already said, I have nothing to hide from Captain Hodgson.’
‘Very well. Time’s short. You don’t need Captain Hodgson’s consent. You need my consent. I am consenting to any necessary operation.’
‘Sir–’ pleaded Nikki.
He ignored her. ‘Get on with it. That is a direct order.’
I stood up and looked up at the Major General, and held his gaze. ‘No.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not in your army.’
For one hysterical moment I thought he was going to pull out his side arm and summarily execute me. His moustache was quivering with rage.
‘
Leave the ship.’
‘Alastair, he’s right. Go. Hurry up.’
‘Major General, I’m sorry. And of course you’re right. But I’m staying. I’m staying with my patient.’
Nikki said, coldly, ‘I don’t want you. Get the hell out of here. Get the hell away from me. Fuck off!’
But she had started to weep. I knelt down beside her.
Civil stared at me in complete incomprehension. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at? You must be out of your mind!’
He continued to gaze at the pair of us in disbelief.
‘Why?’
‘Because nobody should die alone.’
When I next looked up, Civil had gone.
* * *
‘What time is it?’
‘Quarter to twelve.’
There was another commotion above our heads. I glanced up. ‘It’s the Major.’
Forster took in the scene with one scanning glance. He briefly tried the nearest metal stanchion and verified that it was unyielding. He sniffed.
‘Bugger.’
He gave his subordinate a brief smile. ‘Sure you don’t want to be cut out, Nik?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m quite sure.’
‘And you doctor? You staying?’
‘Yes.’
Major Forster gazed contemplatively at me with a half-smile on his lips. There was a long and pregnant silence. The half-smile slowly ebbed away. It was the first time Major Forster ever addressed me without any trace of irony.
‘Alastair Cameron-Strange, you can play on my side any time you like.’
Abruptly he made up his mind.
‘Not much time. You’ll need some sand bags.’ He hoisted himself back up on to the upper deck and within moments was back chucking the heavy, dun, jute sacks down through the gash in the ceiling. I got up and started to arrange them in a flimsy barricade round Nikki as best I could.
‘Thanks, Major.’
‘You’re welcome. Oh! You might need these. You never know.’ Carefully, he handed me down two oxygen cylinders with attached tubing and mouthpieces. He gave us a broad smile and a thumbs-up. ‘See you shortly. Let’s do lunch! Good luck.’
The Seven Trials of Cameron-Strange Page 22