by Peter Tonkin
“I thought you’d give me a bit of a chance.” Ben’s voice was little more than a whisper.
“You’re out of your mind.”
“I know.”
Ben died with a smile on what was left of his face.
Richard frowned. He didn’t like that smile at all. Alternatives whirled in his head. Was the place booby trapped? Rigged to explode and kill them all? What was Ben doing when they arrived here? Start with that.
Looking in the radar. Richard looked into the radar. Four fast-moving blips were coming out of Queshm, cutting through the shipping lanes. He looked at his watch. They’d be here in fifteen minutes. “Twelve Toes,” he snapped urgently, “we’ve still got work to do.”
“How many do you think, Richard?” asked Sir William Heritage, softly.
“Four boats. Maybe twenty-five heavily armed men in each.”
“We don’t stand a hope against a hundred. Look what it’s cost us to fight thirteen!”
“You’re right, Bill.”
The others were clearing up below. Sir William Heritage, Bob Stark, Salah Malik, and Richard Mariner were in the blood-and-cordite-reeking mess of the command post. Through the north-facing windows, they could see the bright outline of Prometheus jammed against the side of Fate, but beyond that, there was only darkness.
Salah was looking down into the blood-smeared radar bowl morosely. “Five minutes, tops,” he said.
And Bob Stark muttered, looking down at Ben, “I’d like to wipe the smile off this bastard’s face!”
“It must always have been a part of his plan,” said Sir William. “Take over the platform. Close the Gulf. Hand it over to his friends in Iran.”
“They could always close the Gulf if they wanted to,” Salah reminded him. “Or close Kharg. The Iranian government has that right without going to these lengths.”
“But this isn’t the government,” said Richard. “This is just some people from the navy in the middle of a power struggle. And getting pretty desperate, too.”
“They’re here,” said Salah.
And even as he spoke, the blustering roar started. Massive searchlights lit up every nut and bolt around. A huge, disembodied voice boomed, “Stay calm. Everybody stay calm, please. This is Admiral Walter Stark of the United States Navy. Our forces have been invited into the Gulf to help with this emergency. Our frigate Hazard will be here to oversee any danger arising from this collision in a matter of moments. I would like to thank the Iranian gunboats for their prompt offer of assistance but assure them we have everything under control…”
“Now, what is that,” said Sir William. “What in Heaven’s name is that?”
Richard crossed to the window and looked out. “That’s a couple of Kaman Seasprites,” he answered. “It looks like Robin is back.”
Nobody else knew where he had gone, but Salah and Richard did. They followed the bloodstains down the corridor to where it opened onto nothingness above the quiet sea. He was lying there, face down, with one arm hanging over the edge, as though he had tried to go down and join them but had run out of strength just here.
Richard turned him over. His face was like wax.
“Christ, Richard. It hurts.”
“I know.”
Neither of them was talking about the chest wound.
The American took a long breath. Richard could feel it bubble through the thin walls of his chest. “She was a good kid, you know? Best daughter a father could ever wish for.”
“I know.”
“But now she’s gone, I don’t feel much like hanging around.”
Richard looked up at Salah. In the face of so much grief, he simply did not know what to say.
Salah crouched down. “You should not give up,” he told his old friend. “I, too, had a child once, remember. And he was taken from me.”
Again, that long, rumbling breath. “Have you had one happy day since then, Salah?”
Salah’s silence was answer enough.
Martyr started to cough. Richard held him until the fit was over. “That’ll just about finish me, I think,” whispered the American like a ghost.
“Wait for Robin,” pleaded Richard. “It’ll break her heart if you don’t say good-bye.”
“I’ll try to hang on for Robin,” said Martyr. “But she’d better not take long.”
But Robin never came. She was tending the other wounded, Fatima among them, with Asha on Prometheus. Instead, an explosion of gasping and splashing suddenly came upward through the night.
And a voice, loud and triumphant: “What a hull, Chris, what a hull. Damn near impossible to break. Enough air still trapped in it to last for a perishing week. We designed it and we built her. Me and old Sam Hood.”
High Praise for Peter Tonkin!
“Peter Tonkin has proven himself a master of seagoing adventure. Enough taut suspense and danger to satisfy any reader.”
—Clive Cussler
“A bang-up story, which Peter Tonkin tells with an insider’s skill.”
—New York Daily News
“Plenty of adventure.”
—Chicago Tribune
“This kind of story has built-in excitement…Convincing.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“While the complex story line commands full interest, this first novel is further strengthened by its description of supertanker operations that are routine only in their dangers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A tight, no-nonsense, seagoing adventure.”
—The Kirkus Review
Other Leisure books by Peter Tonkin:
THE COFFIN SHIP
Copyright
A LEISURE BOOK®
August 2009
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Copyright © 1990 by Peter Tonkin
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