by Peter Tonkin
“What did you do?” she demanded, with all the force she dared, leaning as close to him as she could without touching him.
Just at that moment, another bolt of lightning filled the room with intense light for a micron and established every detail of his face on her retinas. He was turned toward her, kaffiyah open, eyes wide but blind with sleep. The right side of his face, nearest the brightness, was perfectly illuminated. The left shaded mercifully into shadow. The right side showed an open, cheerful, almost boyish countenance with high cheekbones, deep laugh lines, broad, square chin. The left side, beyond the crushed nose, twisted away into a ruin to match the ruin of the left side of his body.
“Oh, God!” she said, startled.
“Oh, God,” he echoed at once, speaking incredibly quickly, “she’s breaking up. Must get away. I’ll never get off alive if I don’t…No don’t…Don’t get in the way! Leave me alone! I’ll kill…Kill…KILL…” He slammed upright. She saw him outlined against the porthole, arms reaching out as though holding something. As though pointing at something. “Goodbyeeeeeeeee…” he sang. Like the old song. Triumphant. Insane.
He slammed back onto the table, rigid. “Nooooo…” A little boy’s voice, sad and disappointed.
“Noooo…” squeezed out of him. He hadn’t even breathed in.
“NOOOO…” Crushed out of him with the last of his air. The last of his life—or should have been. He was spread out against the table, shaking, in the grip of the ghost of whatever force had done this to him. During the breakup of whatever ship.
He was gone. Far beyond Asha’s ability to recall him. She slowly got to her feet and crossed to the door to escape his cries of pain. She was disappointed to have missed the opportunity, for on the face of it she had learned nothing of any use. Except the depth of the madness gripping the man in whose power they lay.
She had to contact Fatima and get them both out of this situation at the earliest possible instant. But for the moment she had better go into hiding herself—if this man remembered anything of this when he woke up tomorrow then Asha was as good as dead. This was, after all, the man who had butchered Cecil Smyke without a second thought.
On the sixth day, things in the gym changed. Early morning saw the arrival of the books from the ship’s library. Then the televisions and videos were wheeled in. Restrictions on talking were relaxed. “I don’t like this,” were John’s first words to Bob Stark.
“Neither do I,” said the big American. “Looks like this is shaping up to be a long stay after all.”
The pressure was on them now to regulate the crew’s amusements carefully. They did not want the team they had built up so painstakingly in adversity to fall apart now. They still had work to do. It remained obvious that the only way forward lay outside. But how to get out there? Able to talk now, they started to plan in detail.
Only to find that on the seventh day things had changed again. The leader came in at dawn, backed by a phalanx of five heavily armed men.
“Where is she?” he screamed, his scarred hand tight around the stock of his rifle. Prometheus’s crew, just coming awake, looked at him in dazed confusion. Only John and Bob had the wits about them to realize what he was talking about.
“Where is she?” he screamed again.
Silence.
“Very well then. Up and out. All of you. Line up at this end. We are going to search the ship. You are going to search the ship, under the direction of my guards.”
The search revealed nothing, but such was the leader’s rage that he made one major miscalculation. He allowed John, Bob, Kerem, and Twelve Toes to form a group together. As they pretended to search for Asha, they put together their final escape plans. Clearly whatever the terrorists were waiting for was not likely to happen soon. On the other hand, the fact that Prometheus’s complement had been here this long with no sign of help from the outside probably meant that no help was coming soon either.
There were ways of getting out, however: Asha had proved that. And there were places aboard to hide in. The terrorists seemed to know the layout of tankers very well indeed, but the fact remained that no two tankers are identical, and Prometheus had nooks and crannies only her crew knew about. But escaping from the gymnasium and hiding aboard would not be good enough. It would only be the first step. The prime objective would be to get clear away. To cross the Gulf, if a big lifeboat could be stolen, or to contact local shipping if the people who escaped had to take a liferaft or swim for it. And there did seem to be a lot of local shipping. From the main deck, they could see a fishing fleet out in the Gulf, and one neat little thirty-footer cruising inquisitively close at hand. It was even near enough for them to read its name: Alouette.
But then the terrorists’ patience ran out. They were all herded back into the gym where they were made to stand, guards clustered threateningly around them, and listen to another speech. The speech went on for twenty minutes and was completed by an enraged gesture from the speaker. Immediately the guards opened fire, spraying the ceiling with bullets. Glass from the shattered light fittings, dust, and splinters came raining down. It was a mercy, thought John, that the gym had been added as an afterthought, that it wasn’t iron plate up there, as it was in the rest of the bridge-house, or the room would have been full of lethal ricochets.
“Let that be a lesson to you,” snarled the leader in the echoing silence after the shooting had stopped. “This is not a game. If you forget that, then you are all dead men. Now clear this mess up and get the books and televisions out of here. No more talking!”
So the silent boredom was resumed. But this time the number of people willing to join in the games was sharply reduced. Many were genuinely frightened by the terrorists’ display. Waverers were further disturbed as the heat of the day began to move into the crowded room and they realized the leader had made good another of his earlier threats and switched the air-conditioning off. But those threats made the escape committee even more determined to get someone out as soon as possible. How to do this remained problematic, for they were watched ever more closely by the grim guards. There was only one wild card: Asha. John and Bob moved their beds nearest to the doors out onto the afterdeck. If she was going to make contact she would do it here during the night.
At about two the next morning, John was dozing uneasily in the humid heat when he became aware of the faintest tapping noise. The regularity of the sound jerked him awake and he realized it was Morse code. Someone was tapping in Morse code on the door by his head. It could only be her. An emotion welled up in him which made it hard for him to breathe. It took him a moment to get control of himself, and then he was tapping back.
Once they had established a dialogue, she made a brief report, telling him what she knew of numbers, dispositions, watches, and patrols. He did not interrupt with the questions he was burning to ask—How was she? How did she escape? Where was she hiding? Instead he waited until she finished by saying she thought she could get one person out safely.
—Bob, he tapped. He can try to take the helicopter
—Tomorrow
—Yes
—I will get this door key
—Yes
—Tomorrow same time
—Same time
She was gone.
Asha arrived at the door at 02:30 the next night. The same gentle sounds alerted the two men who had been wide awake since lights out at eleven. Once more, there was a brief burst of Morse code, then Asha took the greatest risk of all so far. She stood up. Outlined against the glimmer of the stars, visible through the glass top of the door should either of the guards look her way, she stood up to slide the key silently into the door’s lock. All three of them held their breath as she turned it, but the tongue slid back without a sound. The door opened a fraction. All three of them breathed easily.
And the lights went on. The far door was suddenly full of terrorists, the leader calling, “Get up! Get up!” in that raucous voice of his. There was an instant when Asha was plainly vi
sible in the brightness, then she dropped to her knees and rolled away into the shadows of the deck. The crew sleepily began to sort themselves out as ordered. The captain and his chief feigned confusion, too, but they stayed by the open door and when that moment came that the better part of forty men were standing between them and their captors, they stepped out into the darkness on the deck.
Once out of the glare shining from the gym, the two of them felt liberated by the shadows. They walked upright. They briefly discussed the possibility of stealing fuel for the helicopter and getting away in that. They called out Asha’s name dangerously clearly, and it was not until she materialized at their side and hissed a warning, that they began to take proper care again. Silently she led them down the side of the bridge-house, flat against the dew-damp metal walls, forward toward the main deck, their only obstacle a rack of BMX bikes. As they came past the big bulkhead door onto A deck, they hesitated by the ship’s office on the corner, before they dared go out onto the main deck. The curtains of the office were closed, but the windows were open—they probably had been since the air-conditioning was switched off. And an argument was going on inside. In English.
“But why?” demanded a woman’s voice. Both men were so busy eavesdropping they didn’t notice the expression on their companion’s face. “Why now? It is too early. We must wait until the message arrives.”
“No. It is taking too long. They are getting impossible to control. Moving them now will disorient them. Give us a few more days before we have to start executing troublemakers.”
“It is departing from the plan.”
“I know. But the plan is only of use when it serves our ends. And anyway, the doctor is doing too much harm. I am sure she took the chart. She is still aboard. Still a threat. If I can’t find her or kill her, I must move the others before the situation gets out of control.”
“But…”
“That is enough. No more discussion. I have decided. We go now, as I have arranged.”
“That is not enough! We have a plan. It is agreed with our friends on the high seas. It is agreed with our friends in Iran. We must stick to it.”
“No. There are aspects of this situation beyond even your knowledge. I have already contacted Iran…”
“Beyond my knowledge! What is there beyond my knowledge?”
“I will tell you in due course. I promise. We have no time to argue now, we must act before it is too late. The transports from Queshm are on their way. We have to move now!”
The sound of the door slamming galvanized the three of them into action. They moved as one person, Asha taking the lead. She ran out toward the shadowed deck keeping low. Forward of the bridge-house they went, sprinting past the pump-room hatch, past the first tank tops, toward the accommodation ladder. “Where are we going?” gasped John at her shoulder.
“To my hiding…”
As she spoke, the deck lights came on, trapping them out here, yards from cover. The instant the brightness blazed, a disorienting roar of sound washed over them. Shouts in a mixture of accents, far off and disturbingly nearby. The pounding of running feet. The rattle of safeties coming off guns.
“This way,” yelled John, diving to his left. Three seconds of frantic movement brought them halfway to the shelter of the central pipes, but as they continued to run wildly forward, so the first shots rang out.
“Christ!” yelled Bob, “they’re going to blow us all to hell…” Then he was gone, spinning away with a howl of frustrated rage as a ricochet clipped his left calf and blew the leg from under him, sending him tumbling across the deck. John turned as Asha dived into the safety of the shadow beneath the pipes. “Bob,” yelled the captain, blinded by the light. And a single shot blasted him round, chucking him back into Asha’s arms.
And she was off with him at once, half carrying him, using the strength lent to him by the shock, moving him as fast and as far as she could, before he realized how badly he was hurt. Down the length of the pipes they went, toward the bow of the ship. “Not the forecastle head,” he called. “There’s no way off…”
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “I know where I’m going.”
She took him to the farthest hatch connecting to the inspection tunnels beneath the deck. She led him down and guided him back, until, after nearly fifteen minutes, they were above her secret room, almost exactly beneath the spot where he had been shot. By this time, the numbness of shock had worn off and she could tell from his movements that pain had set in. And yet he refused even to slow up. Grimly he swung onto that last ladder, and down he went, and down. He almost made it to the bottom before his legs gave out.
She pulled him away from the foot of it and across her secret room. How he had kept going for so long before passing out she would never know. Clearly, behind that boyish blend of exuberance and diffidence there lay a good deal of unexpected grit. She felt herself fill with warm affection for him. He was, after all, quite a man. Having rolled him onto her makeshift bed, she knelt at his side, busily undoing the buttons of his oncewhite shirt, pulling it away from his red-matted chest.
As she did so, she gasped. The damage was even worse than she had feared. The bullet had gone in at the back, followed the curve of the ribs, ripped through the muscles of the upper thorax by his left armpit, and exploded out the front, leaving quite a severe exit wound. These facts, accepted numbly at first as she worked to render rapid first aid, abruptly triggered off a vivid memory. John had been looking for Bob when he was shot. Looking back toward the bridge. And yet he had been shot in the back. That should have been impossible. The terrorists never ventured out onto the deck, let alone this far down it.
Therefore…
Then the memory came. Bob falling, a small wound in the calf, blood flying, bright in the blaze. John turning back for him. And out of the darkness behind John, another figure rising up out of the ground. Seemingly through the steel of the deck. But no. Of course. If they were beyond the light then they were beyond the deck. And that meant they were coming up the accommodation ladder. Up from a boat below. Her hands froze. She sat for an instant trying to work out the implications. But they were incalculable. The situation was too new; the alternatives utterly unknown. Only observation would tell her anything now. And, as it happened, she would have to go back to the surgery in any case. John required much more than she had here.
She took the greatest care as she planned her return to the bridge, caught between the urgency of helping John, simple curiosity, and the certainty that they would be looking for her now more than ever. The leader seemed a fundamentally unbalanced person, holding himself on a path of relative sanity only by the exercise of massive self-control. She wondered what he would be like without the firm hand of Islam to control his actions. Deeply disturbed and disturbing, she thought, and she had no desire whatsoever to fall back into his hands. How had Fatima become involved with him? With this whole horrific mess? And why hadn’t Fatima contacted her? She felt like screaming.
Feeling a little like the Phantom of the Opera, she used the steel tunnels below the decks, showing herself only at the hatch covers she had left unlatched for this purpose. Only that one closest to the accommodation ladder itself was near enough to the action to be of any use and, having tried another farther away without success, she returned to this one, hoping to hear something of the terrorists’ immediate intentions. She approached it with a great deal of care. On the deck above her she could hear a confused rumble of footsteps and, when she eased the hatch up an inch, she was confronted with a forest of booted legs. It was instantly clear what was happening: the captive crew were being taken off Prometheus.
Hope swelled. Perhaps a ransom had been paid: perhaps they were going home.
Reality intruded: perhaps not.
“That’s the last of them,” a man’s voice called, in Arabic.
“Wait a moment,” answered the Englishman’s voice in the same language. “I want a last look around.”
“What about the two
that are missing?”
“Forget them. Get ready to cast off.”
“Very well.”
Asha closed the cover silently and went back down the steps. Good. It seemed that her fears were unfounded. If he was content to have a last check around and then to leave, then she would be free to tend John. When he was comfortable, she would see about contacting the outside world. Her mind busy with plans, she crawled out onto the deck and ran for the bridgehouse. With hardly a second thought she sprinted down the corridor and in through the surgery door, straight into the arms of the terrorist waiting there.
Asha stood, paralyzed with shock, utterly incapable of movement. All for nothing, she thought. It was all lost now. She would have to take them to John or he would bleed to death. A sense of frustration swept over her. It was so acute it felt like fury.
“He knew you would come here!” snapped the terrorist. “You fool, Asha, how could you think he would not know?”
Asha stood, unable to breathe as the familiar voice went on.
“You hang around here risking your freedom to release your captain. Then you all but throw your life away to rescue him when he is wounded. Of course you will come back here the moment you think it is safe, to get what you need to tend him!”
“Fatima. It is you! Your voice, I…”
“Get down! Down on the floor.”
“Fatima. Darling…”
“Now!” The barrel of the rifle in her twin sister’s hand drove into Asha Quartermaine’s stomach and she dropped to the floor at once, winded. Then sturdy legs rolled her over and over as though she were a big beach ball and she was under the examining table, concealed by the cotton sheet upon it.
“Has she come yet?” enquired the harsh voice of the Englishman suddenly, from the doorway.
“No,” lied Fatima at once. “I told you she was too clever to fall into such a simple trap.”
“Well, never mind. We still have enough hostages to ensure no action will be taken against us until it is too late. Come on, then. It is time to go.”