The Fire Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  “What did you do?”

  “Never moved so fast. I just gathered that piece of skin and bone in my hand and slapped it back in place. He sort of twisted round till his head was in my lap and lay there looking up at me. I mean—he was wide awake and all, hardly blinking. Didn’t say nothing. Just lay there looking up. After a while my hand starts shaking. I am holding this man’s head together, you know? and the guy is lying there watching me do it. So I starts looking around for some bandages or something but there’s no goddamn medic in sight at all. But one of them Aussie guys there with him is some kind of beach bum and he’s got this sweatband on his head so I says to him can I borrow it for the kid. And he says sure. So by the time we get to the medical men in Khe Sanh, he’s sitting there looking like some hippy, hardly even bleeding, wide awake and sort of grinning and all that’s holding his head together is that sweatband. Never been parted from it since.

  “We ended up in the same medical facility in Khe Sanh. Trapped there for a while. So I got to know him. Felt kinda responsible. And the more I found out the worse I felt. I mean the guy was only nineteen. Same age as most of ours. Wasn’t much older myself. But what this kid had done! He was this high-flying scholarship student. Straight A’s. B.A., summa cum laude from his home school. M.A. from somewhere else—he’ll tell you if you ask, he remembers that. And the Ph.D. from Oxford, England. All this by the time he’s nineteen years old! I mean there was no end to the shit this guy knew. And most of it was spread over the inside of a Huey helicopter—because he tried to help me.

  “But he wasn’t Mongoloid, you know? There was no imbecility. No, like, brain damage.” He said the two words in a slow voice and paused to make sure Robin got the message. “He was either totally switched on or totally switched off: Kid Einstein or some kind of cabbage. The doctors told me that’s how it’ll always be. It’s a miracle he’s even the way he is. They were going to put him in some kind of institution but I said no, I’d look after him. Least I could do. You see, he don’t know who he is. Not really. Not deep down. Not anymore. Every time he goes to sleep he forgets. You got to tell him every morning, ‘You’re Doc.’ Then things kinda fall into place. He’s got a family back in Sydney. Nice folks—nothing special, but nice. Might as well be strangers. Show him pictures, he never met them. His home up in Paddington? Never been there. Hell, show him Sydney Harbour Bridge, he’ll ask is it the Golden Gate? Show him the Sydney Opera House he’ll say, ‘What is this?’

  “But ask him about Hamlet—it’s like they were brothers. Ask him about quasars or black holes—now there he has lived. Beethoven? Mozart? Now that’s his family. It’s weird. And boats. Nobody seems to know where he picked up this stuff about boats…

  “But he did. Oh, brother, did he ever pick up a shitload of stuff about boats…”

  They were sitting on the bench at the back of the cockpit by the time he finished speaking. They had been talking there for about three minutes. In all, perhaps eight minutes had elapsed since Weary took the helm; certainly no more than ten. There was nothing else for them to do: their lives lay in the hands of the two men at the helm and, perhaps, in the laps of the gods.

  Robin was overcome by a massive wave of emotion—a helpless desire to protect Richard and preserve her family at any cost. But she was all too well aware that there was nothing she could do, and suddenly she was afraid. Her fist closed on Hood’s arm and he looked down at her, surprised. But her face was calm, slightly flushed. Her golden ringlets, soaking, clutched her head despite the wind. Her eyes were sparkling—and how could he know that the light in them came from unshed tears? On the surface, she looked like a girl about some excitement. He half grinned, suddenly feeling less tense himself.

  Weary’s hand moved gently out from under Richard’s and the Englishman closed his fist on smooth wood, shifting his feet unconsciously, bracing himself as the wheel tried to hurl him overboard. His concentration was absolute, overriding even the pain in his swollen elbow. His eyes never wavered from the course they were following, at a speed he had never imagined any yacht to be capable of. And yet that speed was increasing steadily. Suddenly the wheel kicked viciously. The angle of the mast clicked nearer upright. And again. He looked up automatically. The angle of the sails had varied slightly too.

  Had Katapult been alive before, now she became frenetic. Richard could not credit the intensity of what he was feeling. He had never sailed like this before, never known—never dreamed—that it could be like this. Weary was pulling every knot of speed and power possible from his creation, using the outriggers ruthlessly to force the closer-hauled sails into the rushing torrent of the wind. Then he was back at Richard’s side again, eyes busy on sails and instruments alike, pushing down on Richard’s right hand firmly, bringing them over a point or two, sailing across the main thrust of that terrible force, looking for an outer edge.

  “Hood!” Weary’s bellow was snatched away and hurled forward into the great white spray-wall bearing down on them like an avalanche. Richard’s eyes were drawn inexorably toward it. There was very little else to look at now. It curved up and out, more than two hundred feet high, a dancing cliff of the stuff, the overhang at the top of it shadowed and dark. The heart of it—it was translucent, like a cliff of ice—danced madly as though a column of black fire burned there. But the surface drew the eyes and threatened to numb the mind with its insane activity. Although it had unity and form, it was made up of individual things, all in wild motion. Dots made by fist-size chunks of water hurling round the vortex left-to-right across their port quarter at hundreds of miles an hour. And more than the water. Suddenly there was the hull of the lifeboat, dead men dancing out of it, there for an instant, plainly visible mast high, imprinting itself forever on Richard’s mind, then gone as though it had never been.

  He crashed forward onto the helm and thought it was a fluke in the wind—but no, it was Hood hammering at his numb back, moving up to replace Weary at his side. Then Robin was there, too, wedging herself between Hood and himself, hot as fire against his windchilled side. He glanced down to see Weary, crouched in the lee of their bodies, calculating the finest points of how to sail them out of this.

  But even as he did so, the stresses on Katapult began to go beyond her limits. Inch by inch, against the dictates of helm and outriggers both, her mast came past the vertical and began to lean in. And slowly, inexorably, moved by a power beyond that of the four arms at the helm, her head started to come round. The port outrigger sank deeper beneath the streaming, windtorn surface. The other threatened to break free of the surface and hurl them all to destruction. They began to climb up the hill of water toward the lethal heart of the thing. Richard closed his eyes, his concentration absolute, moving as one with Hood, never giving an inch, fighting the good fight. Robin was yelling something to him, lips hot against his ear, breath sweet on the thick salt air. Her meaning clear but her words gone in that awesome, overwhelming noise.

  Then Weary was there, at their left, his hands closing over their left hands, forcing upward with all their combined might.

  And the helm spun over. Hard. So hard they lost control of it and let it whirl like a Catherine wheel, hands clear, before they caught it again, the four of them, moving as one; caught it and held it and prayed.

  As the blade of the mast, socketed in its mast-foot a yard above the deck, turned, turning the long line of the fore and after booms, turning the close-hauled blades of the straining sails against it, turning the whole screaming construction across the howling wind, and Katapult came round on the opposite tack, her head swinging right as though she had been punched, using the massive momentum the wind had given her to break free of its grip and mash through to the far side, away from the thing.

  For that one split second they grazed the foot of the spray wall itself; then it was gone. The hurricane that had been roaring into their backs blasted into their faces, tearing their eyes, bulging their cheeks, filling their lungs like balloons. But Katapult’s sails were closeh
auled now, giving no surface for the air to catch, and she continued to beat across the wind straight and free while the waterspout diminished astern.

  How long the four of them stood in that closely entwined knot at the helm they would never know. It was not something to be measured by clocks or chronometers. The moderation of the wind, the calming of the sea, the passing of the clouds, the rebirth of the sun. These things measured that time on a scale beyond mere minutes.

  And when they came back down to earth from the almost mystical plane of their concentration, they found themselves in the heart of a crystal afternoon, fresh and bracing. Long blue seas ran down calmly toward Africa. The heart of the whispering breeze smelled of salt and ozone. The light was dazzling in its purity, glancing off a million mirror surfaces all around them from the rime of salt crystals caking everything on Katapult like ice.

  But before they took even the first step toward cleaning down and tidying up their brave, strong vessel, they had one overwhelming duty to perform. Richard ripped the plastic sheeting off the radio, turned it on, and pressed TRANSMIT.

  “Hello, hello, Dubai…Damn! I hope this thing is working after all this…Hello, Dubai. This is Richard Mariner reporting from yacht Katapult. Can you hear me, Dubai…”

  And the radio suddenly crackled into life. “…Heritage Mariner office, Dubai. Angus El Kebir reporting…Hear you strength four, Katapult, over…”

  “This is Richard Mariner reporting from yacht Katapult, Indian Ocean. Uncertain of our position at this time. All well. Please inform Sir William Heritage Richard and Robin both well, over.”

  “This is Angus El Kebir at head office in Dubai, Richard. I’m afraid I have some extremely bad news…”

  Chapter Five

  Dubai. United Arab Emirates.

  Angus El Kebir sat back from the radio at last and switched the power to OFF. In spite of the efficiency of his air-conditioning, he was running with sweat. In spite of its airy brightness, his Dubai office felt dark and cramped. It perched like an aerie atop one of those new dark-glass skyscrapers, towering against the hard blue Gulf sky, which overlooked the frenetic activity of the Creek. Part boatyard, part port, part market, the Creek was the heart of the city and the state. Heritage Mariner had offices here as inevitably as they kept their head office on Leadenhall in London, close to Lloyd’s at the heart of the Western world’s shipping industry.

  Angus shook his great lion’s head, all russet beard and ruddy curls, and brought his clenched fist down on his desktop. Never had he heard Robin so upset or Richard so enraged. He had known them both for many years—he had been at school with Richard at Fettes College in Edinburgh—and not once before had he heard such anger, such desolation, in their voices.

  Rising, he strode across to the long window of his office and looked down across the busy maritime spectacle of the Creek, but for once the lively view failed to thrill him; the bustle of commerce failed to bring elation to his part-Arab and part-Scottish soul. Here was a bad situation brewing, showing every sign of growing worse—and here were his oldest and dearest friends trapped and raging like bears at a stake in the midst of it.

  And himself, powerless to help more than he had done, feeling all that baseless burden of guilt belonging to the bearer of such bad news. His breath hissed between his tight-clenched teeth as he shared the overwhelming rage of his employers and friends, so far away, so helpless. If only he could have between his powerful hands something—or someone—whose destruction could ease his rage.

  A timid tapping at the door intruded itself into his dark brooding. “Enter,” he snapped.

  The quiet youth who was his assistant down here appeared, clutching a bundle of files. Angus thrust his hand out and the young man surrendered his bundle and fled. Still lost in rage, Angus crossed to his desk, threw them down, and hurled himself into his chair.

  He had been dreading this moment almost as much as he had been dreading having to break the news to Richard and Robin. It was cruel that, after so many hours of waiting, the two moments should have come so close together. That now, while he was still gripped by the feelings arising out of talking to Katapult, these files should have arrived, giving full details of all the men and women he had just been discussing, lost on Prometheus.

  The force with which he had thrown them down had caused the top few to spill their contents, and it was in many ways apt that he should spend the next few minutes disentangling the lives of John Higgins, Asha Quartermaine, and Bob Stark.

  They were the three on Prometheus to whom he was closest. He and John were old friends. They had first met many years ago in the wake of the affair that had overtaken the first Prometheus. Looking at the photograph of the solid, dependable Manxman, Angus was forcibly reminded of his modest charm, his open friendliness. The black hair, neatly parted; the level, intelligent gaze from those calm brown eyes. The pipe, inevitably, at its jaunty angle, emphasizing the strength of the jaw. Little John, they called him, like Robin Hood’s Little John.

  Bob Stark was a different kettle of fish. With his American film-star good looks, his Ivy League education, and his New England old-money family background, you expected to find him following in his father’s footsteps into politics. Or at least his uncle’s into the American Navy. But no. A love of marine engines and some vagaries of maritime chance had brought him to Heritage Mariner and he was content, for the moment, to remain. His photograph looked up at Angus quizzically, almost as though its subject had been surprised when it was taken. His blond eyebrows met the strawcolored cowlick, his eyes held an expression almost of incredulity. You expected a long straw to be dangling from the corner of that wide mouth, held firmly by a combination of those dazzling teeth and that square, impossibly wide jaw. Even from a far-faxed Polaroid, the charm of the man leaped out at you.

  And Asha. He had known her only briefly, but had been as severely smitten as the other two. The facts in her file were scanty enough, names of parents in Dahran up the coast. Date of birth. Mention of a twin sister, Fatima. Education in England. Medical qualification in Edinburgh. Marriage to and divorce from Giles Quartermaine, the famous journalist. Russet eyes looked up at him from under hair as red as his own, but darker, richer. He threw the file away across the desk, unable to stand having her gaze upon him when she was in trouble and he was powerless to help.

  And the action brought to his attention something that he had failed to notice until now. At the bottom of the pile was one extra file, fatter than the others. Without further thought, he opened it and confronted himself with a photograph of the man he most respected in the world, after Richard Mariner. Sir William Heritage stared out of the old monochrome picture as though carved in granite, thin hair swept straight back, thin mouth uncompromising under the white clipped mustache. Proud eyes staring out of the photo, unflinching.

  Angus drove his fist down again, and was surprised to discover that he was now holding a paper knife in it. The blunt brass point stabbed through the leather of his desktop, through the backing, glue, and mahogany. Oddly, the desk had been a gift from Sir William many years ago and the fact that he had defaced it now, for such a reason, was the last straw. Had his anger been hot before, now it was incandescent. And it was the merest candle flame, he acutely suspected, beside what Richard and Robin would be feeling.

  Without further thought, he leaned forward and lifted the phone beside the still-quivering handle of the upright paper knife. “Get the international operator,” he ordered. “First I want to speak to New York. Then I want Beirut.”

  Chapter Six

  Off Rass al Hadd.

  They raced northeast at full speed, almost blind in the haze at the northernmost edge of the monsoon. Then Weary spun onto a new tack and they exploded out of a silver mist-wall into clear, calm air, straight under the bows of the USS Mississippi.

  It was stunningly sudden. One moment the multihull was hurling forward at incredible velocity in the deafening, blinding maelstrom. The next moment, even as the new tack b
egan, the air was still, crystal, and furnacehot around them. The sea was choppy and mercuric, as though contained, boiling, in the crucible of the desert. And, approaching them at flank speed across it, warning sirens howling, came the great gray leviathan Iowa-class flagship of the American Sixth Fleet.

  Weary froze, looking up at it. Richard, providentially beside him, drove the wheel to port, sending Katapult skipping out of the battleship’s way, over the confusion of wavelets toward Rass al Hadd.

  The Mississippi’s cutwater sliced past Katapult’s stern. The sea heaved around the warship’s massive flanks and threw Katapult out of the way, then spread in a widening chevron, the largest waves in the choppy sea. In series to the east of her reached the ships under her command, all of them racing in perfect formation dead south, whence Katapult had just come.

  And even as the four of them, frozen in the cockpit, stared, the American Sixth Fleet vanished into the haze they had just emerged from, and, but for the patterns in the water, it was as though the lean warships had never existed. As though Katapult had always been alone here, drifting northeast across the restless chop in the humid heat, slack sails searching for a breath of breeze in the thick, hot air.