Powerdown (Richard Mariner Series)

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Nice speech,’ said Richard sotto voce beside her. ‘Think Andrew’ll take you and your Trojan horse?’

  ‘He will if you ask him,’ she said.

  ‘Dr DaCosta’s right,’ said Kate Ross suddenly. ‘I vote she goes and we take half a dozen of the most severely hurt with us, if you agree, Colonel Jaeger. Sergeant Killigan and Corporal Washington both sustained bad bums when the second lab went up. Billy Hoyle’s got pretty severe blast damage and a scalp wound from flying debris, though no one’s quite sure how or when that happened. Two of your scientists …’

  Colonel Jaeger agreed with Kate’s proposal. He talked to Andrew Pitcairn and the deal was done. The Westland lifted them all back aboard Erebus, including Major Schwartz, zipped securely in his strong plastic body bag, and swiftly-gathered possessions and dunnage for each of them that needed it.

  By the turn of the midday watch everything was settled, signed and sealed. Then, with Andrew on the bridge still, his parka over his green plaid dressing gown, Erebus cast off and pushed her way slowly through the thin ice along Kalinin’s track, out of the bay, past the thickening skirts of the incoming iceberg and away into the Bismarck Strait.

  Chapter Ten

  As Erebus pulled out between the tall jaws of the bay, Richard was standing below the after end of the rear-mounted helipad, leaning back against the stern rail, his shoulder against the little flag staff there, the ensign snapping in the air above him, the lanyard rapping and tapping in the wind. All around him the wind sighed, whispered and chuckled in the lines securing the Westland into place.

  The twins had been with him until the penguin rookery passed out of sight, then they drifted away. But as he watched the slim ship’s wake he rather wished he had been able to hold their interest for a little longer. As Erebus swung onto a northerly heading, scant metres away to port, the brash ice began to pile into something like the permanent pack, and what appeared to be only a couple of hillocky kilometres beyond that stood a cliff of blue ice stretching from edge to edge of the southern horizon. It was illusion, he knew; a trick of light, scale and thick cold air, but the effect was magnificent. The monstrous berg did not come unattended. Beneath the piled brash seals were hunting the fish which fed on the krill in the cold currents created by the berg and the plankton growing on and around its submarine surfaces. Above, a range of penguins came and went with much the same feeding habits as the seals; they had young to feed and raise before winter closed her icy grip again in March. Briefly he remembered the pod of killer whales Colin had pointed out from the penguin rookery. They would be down there too; toothed whales, baleen whales, predators of all sorts. Sharks too, in all probability, from the harmless to the fearsome.

  Richard stretched, unconsciously making a throwing motion with his arm. A skua screamed in low over his head, hitting the water where any titbit would have landed. Richard smiled and shook his head. Even these wild and fearsome hunters of the air had learned to feed from the hand of man.

  Even down here.

  He turned, and there was Colin halfway down the outer aft companionway, waving a white flimsy like a flag. He’d better be careful a skua doesn’t have that off him, thought Richard, raising a hand in acknowledgement and starting back.

  In fact Colin was holding not one flimsy but two: a print-out and a fax. Both showed more or less the same thing. Colin began to explain it to Richard as they went up the companionway but it was not until they were back on the command bridge with the white papers spread beside the big chart that the whole picture became clear. Now that she was under way and out of the harbour, Erebus’s weather-watch equipment was up and running again, and, just as she received her first ice map from a low-orbiting weather satellite above them, so Kalinin faxed over a copy of the one she had just received. Put against the long sand-coloured tongue of Graham Land, the two maps made the situation unequivocal. Under the influence of the westerly drift, the Bismarck Strait, Grandidier Channel and Crystal Sound below it were all silting up with ice. This was particularly significant because, although Faraday had been Erebus’s next scheduled port of call, Rothera, on Adelaide Island to the south, was closer, an important consideration with wounded aboard.

  ‘But now,’ said Richard, tracing the course on the chart with a broad finger while Colin and Andrew watched, ‘to reach Rothera we would have to go right out round the Biscoe Islands, nearly doubling the length of the journey. Faraday is now the closest BAS station.’

  Andrew leaned forward, pointing to the chart and dropping his voice to a slightly more conspiratorial level. ‘Frankly, that fits well with my overall game plan. The American base at Palmer, here on the edge of Arthur Harbour on the coast of Anvers Island, is well manned and right on the way there. I have every intention of stopping off at Palmer to drop off our unwelcome guests, living or dead, before running on over to Faraday for the New Year. What do you say?’

  ‘Sounds like the best idea to me,’ agreed Colin. ‘And in the meantime every country with any pretensions to international standing has some kind of summer base up and running between us and them. From the USA to Uruguay. From Chile to China. Any more problems, we pop into the nearest. Simple.’

  Richard nodded once. Somehow he could not bring himself to believe it was going to be that simple.

  *

  Robin’s first aid qualifications were almost as advanced as Richard’s and every bit as up to date. Her gender and demeanour, moreover, made her as welcome a nurse as Kate. Andrew Pitcairn had been persuaded to release another crewman to replace Tony Thompson as child minder to the twins because Kate had asked Robin specially to help in the ship’s infirmary to settle the American wounded in and to protect them from the shock of meeting the doc. Surgeon Commander Cedric Chappie was generally known among the crew as Dr Crippen. He was a short-tempered, cantankerous, dyspeptic man, thin of stature, bald and deeply lined. A fastidious, punctilious man, he behaved as though the worst, most arrogant excesses of hospital consultants were normal medical practice. His one saving grace — and he was a man who needed a saving grace — was that he was excellent at his job.

  ‘Well,’ he said, after his first round of the after-luncheon session. ‘I have a good number of genuine cases and a couple of malingerers. If they were British sailors I’d soon have them up and about their duty, I can tell you. But they do things differently in the colonies I dare say. Breed less hardy stock.’

  ‘Should we direct the medical orderlies to any particular cases?’ asked Kate.

  Chappie used Kate as a kind of matron or staff nurse. This added to his feeling of self-importance and kept the common jack tars out from under his feet. His pallid blue eyes rested on her.

  ‘Keep a close eye on Sergeant Killigan. The scalp wound is worrying. Please keep checking for concussion as the patent begins to stir. Keep an eye on Washington, and on Mendel, the more serious of the blast victims. It will be a while before anyone can call him “a beard”, what with all his hair singed off, eh? Eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Kate tranquilly. ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Experience suggests that the next most troublesome after the severely unwell will be the malingerers. Hoyle in particular will bear close watching. Nowhere near as ill as he pretends to be and he’ll be up to all sorts of games the minute your backs are turned. If you were my nurses,’ he concluded, ‘I’d advise you to wear spare knickers and keep your pretty bottoms well padded around Mr Hoyle, eh? Eh?’

  ‘All of your nurses,’ spat Robin, ‘are men.’

  ‘His nurses are only men at the moment,’ Kate soothed her steaming friend when the doc had gone, ‘because all the Wrens on the crew list have gone home for the New Year. Not many women mad enough to be down here at this particular time.’

  ‘Well, you can see why. God! Why did I allow that bloody man to talk me into this?’

  ‘Same reason as I let my bloody man talk me into it. And in any case, it was neither of our bloody men who did this. I did it to you, and I really thought you’d lo
ve it. I still think you’ll love it, when we get out from under all this doom and gloom. You enjoyed the visit to the penguin rookery yesterday, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. So did the twins. Even this lunchtime it was all they could talk about.’

  ‘There you are then. We’ll get sorted out here and see if we can arrange more adventures like that one.’

  ‘OK. One more round, then one of us goes up on the bridge to see what’s really going on. Deal?’

  ‘Deal.’

  *

  Some of the below-deck crew, the hard men, thought sickbay watch was an easy option, for lazy oiks and nancy girls. Not so Ernie Marshall. Ernie was content to put in his sickbay time and put up with that prat Doc Crippen because it gave him the two things a man in his line needed most of all — freedom and privacy. It also gave him a place to store his stash, which no one ever checked, though a man of his experience and talents would have been able to find a secure corner anywhere. The innocent might assume that his position would also give him access to various substances for which there would be a ready market among his weaker shipmates but, like his namesake, the doc was careful about his poisons and kept a very accurate drug log, updated on a carefully irregular basis usually every week. Still and all, where there was a market, Ernie could usually arrange a supply.

  Ernie was physically fit but by no means large. He was fast and tough. He could hold his own against bigger men but rarely had to. He preferred to out-think his opponents rather than out-fight them. To go with his scheming mind and devious character, Nature had given him an open, boyish countenance and wide blue eyes which Ernie schooled himself always to reflect a direct honesty. He was popular with the officers, with the doc who trusted him more than most, and with the two women who were helping in the infirmary.

  At the end of their shift, Robin and Kate handed over to Ernie for the first dogwatch and went off about their business while he got ready to do a little of his own. He watched them walking down the corridor side by side. They were in Shetland pullovers and jeans — hardly designed to arouse much libido under normal circumstances. But aboard Erebus, with all the Wrens flown, Whistler’s mother would have made it as a pin-up — had Ernie not been there with a range of alternatives, of course.

  Ernie’s innocent blue gaze focused on the seats of the women’s jeans, lazily comparing the way they were filled. Not bad for old broads, he decided. He let his mind dip beneath the blue cotton, and he could do so with more authority than most, considering the little stock of underwear he had in his stash, not to mention the range of videos, books and magazines he had also accumulated. No fetish unfettered, no taste uncatered. With his personal slogan in mind, he decided to do a quick tour of the sickbay then down to check his stuff.

  Everyone seemed well-sedated and fast asleep. He went back through the ward like a ghost and returned to the quiet little anteroom where the doc usually did his briefings. Here he kept his stash behind a grille in a big duct. Within moments the old kitbag was out on the table and Ernie was sorting through the contents with one eye on the long corridor along which anyone would have to approach the room, giving him plenty of time to get everything hidden again. Anyone, that was, coming down from the bridge. Someone coming up from the ward would be able to surprise Ernie very much more effectively, which was why he had checked so carefully earlier. Carefully, but not carefully enough.

  Ernie was just sorting through some magazines he had managed to acquire during a visit to the Scandinavian camps in Queen Maud’s Land last summer when a shadow fell across his garish wares. ‘Hey,’ drawled a quiet voice. ‘Now this stuff makes Playboy look like the Church Times. You must be a guy it’s good to know.’

  Ernie looked up into eyes every bit as cheerful and open as his own. ‘Hi,’ said the stranger, sticking his hand out socially. ‘My name’s Billy Hoyle. It’s a pure pleasure to meet you.’

  *

  No sooner had Robin relieved a lucky crewman of twin-watch and fed them their smoko than Richard appeared. ‘Come on out again,’ he said, full of bounce and enthusiasm. ‘There’s a really clear view of the berg just behind us, all sorts of wildlife stirring. Bring the camera.’ And, as if to emphasise his words, a split in the clouds let the sun through. Robin allowed herself to be swept up by Richard’s enthusiasm and within ten minutes or so they were all bundled up, ready to face the deck again.

  Richard led them up the companionway that Colin had descended with the flimsies earlier. This steep set of stairs led upwards to the highest open deck of all, at the foot of the communications mast, right above the command bridge. Here they were able to look back past the funnel, over the top of the Westland and away into the heart of the sun-struck berg. It towered even more majestically from this angle, and the sunlight sparked a range of fires from it, all of which were blue. They were close enough to see slopes behind the great vertical cliffs, like thick, twisted, bubble-filled glass in ancient blue bottles. For every snowy surface there was a crystal depth. For every craggy headland — undercut for the most part and fiercely beaded with icicles the size of stalactites — there was a glittering grotto fathomlessly deep where shades of sapphire darkened into inky richness and mysterious darkness. But no sooner had the unutterable beauty of this scene imprinted itself on their minds than a sound like the rolling salvo of heavy guns opened up. Both children had been to the Imperial War Museum and knew well enough the sound of the great barrages of the First World War. Now they looked across the berg as though expecting it to transform itself into the Somme. As they did so, a line of smoke rose up along the highest ridge of the cliff, exactly as though the barrage had found its target.

  ‘Daddy!’ screamed the twins. Robin stepped forward and took Richard’s arm. The whole cliff nearest to them began to fall. It was an indication of the real distance they were from the berg that it all seemed to happen so slowly. Boulders of ice — as large as houses, many of them — sprang free and began to fly in individual parabolas. Then the slopes behind and below them began to slide, gathering momentum, throwing up clouds of blue ice-smoke as they did so. And the first great blocks, destined to become bergs and bergy bits, became subsumed in the whole massive slide to destruction. Green spray, wet and heavy, exploded out of the ocean and rained down where the ice-smoke was snatched away by the wind. And it seemed that the ice-smoke and the thunderous sound of the main avalanche reached them simultaneously, for as they strove to catch their breath in the face of air which reverberated like a drum roll in their chests, so the burning prickle of ice crystals, like sand grains made of fire, fell onto their faces. As they looked on, too shocked and entranced to move, the brash ice apron all around the berg heaved up into great solid waves.

  Like everything else about the spectacular scene, the waves moved in loud slow motion, the liquid heave of the water overmastered by the inertia of the sluggish cowl of ice. Like waves of oil or gelatine, without spray or foam, the great rollers came. The ice did not even seem to split, apparently heaving like thick, slow cream to the dictates of the fearsome forces beneath it. Only as the little family, still rooted, saw the waves begin to near did the creamy surface seem to fracture into lines like a shattered windscreen. Lines of black at first, then green-hued valleys, then green-floored, blue-throated abysses.

  ‘You’ll be surprised,’ bellowed Richard reassuringly, ‘how small and sedate the swells will be when they reach us.’

  Out of nowhere, as though summoned by his reassuring words, a great flock of arctic terns screamed by, seemingly just above their heads. This was very nearly too much for the children and William cried out, ducking down under his father’s protective arm. As the birds whirled past, the first wave emerged from beneath the ice, in truth a good mile and more astern. It was not all that big, as Richard had said, so much of the energy which gave birth to it soaked up by the force required to move the ice at all. And, from its leading surface, a gentle slope of bottle-green, there soared half a dozen dolphins. The dolphins, coloured precisely and distinctly
black and white, leaped out of the rushing heave, flew ahead of it like birds and slipped back into the water without a ripple or a splash, heading directly for Erebus’s fleeing stern.

  The best view now would be from the helipad and it was all Richard could do to stop William and Mary pulling him headlong down the steep companionway. They arrived at the stern-most section of the ship a little before the first wave did, and so they were able to see, from a much lower and more intimate perspective, the arrival of the hissing green wall. From down here it looked higher, faster and more threatening. The twins’ trepidity would have returned, but the dolphins exploded outward again, gambolling so playfully that first Mary, the naturalist, entranced, and then William forgot to be frightened by the prospect of the wave’s arrival.

  Richard looked up toward the bridge wing, hoping that whoever was on duty up there was well awake. Erebus might sit better during the next few minutes if she was moving a little more determinedly north.

  A flash of movement. Half a dozen heartbeats later the revs — which they could not hear but which both Richard and Robin could feel quite — rose appreciably. Deep in the heaving green below their feet, the long shaft spun Erebus’s single, three-finned, variable-pitch propeller up towards her maximum revolutions. The ship gathered way, seeming to surf forward on the crest of the first wave, joyfully joined at this interface of the liquid and the gaseous elements by the frolicking, flying dolphins.

  But even as Erebus gave that first surge forward, as though taking flight with the sleek mammals dancing in her wake, a great shuddering bang echoed through the whole ship. It was as though she had ran aground but there was no catastrophic lurch in her forward progress. Instead a deep thrumming seemed to come from underneath them and the sleek ship lost way, sliding off line so that the next wave took her on the port quarter, making her roll as well as pitch. The engines stopped.