Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9)

by Tonkin, Peter

  “Lieutenant Stubbs is worried about the weather,” Ann said now. “He can’t leave his post and the gentleman guarding the bridge seems reluctant to disturb anyone so he can’t contact you direct and isn’t allowed to call Captain Dall here. So when I went up there he asked if I’d tell you it looks as though there might be a nasty weather system coming in from north-west. Have I got that right? Can a weather system be nasty?”

  “I’d better check that out, Captain Dall,” said Bob at once. “Anything serious catching us out here without way or power could do us a lot of damage.”

  “Yes,” said Dall. “You check it out and get back to me.”

  *

  “I need to see you in the library/ hissed Ann as they hurried towards the bridge.

  “What?”

  “The weather’s an excuse to get you away. Check on the bridge then try to get to the library before you go back to Dall.”

  “They’re likely to guard me on the way back. They’ve only let me out of sight now because you made it sound important. What is going on, Ann?”

  As they hurried up the companionways towards the bridge, she tried to explain what she understood of Harry’s discovery. She understood a fair amount, in fact. She was computer literate, Net-confident, Web-wise and competent with all types of modern gadgetry. Had Pitman not taken her personal phone, the Marines would have been on the way down the funnel by now.

  Halfway up the final companionway, Bob stopped as the full implications of what Ann was telling him hit home. “If she can access all the systems…”

  “She can do more than that. She thinks she can control them!”

  “And get onto the Web…”

  “Even the CIA has a Website. The Marines certainly do, though I don’t know the address off hand. We could call in whoever we want.”

  “I’ve got to think this through.”

  “Come and talk to Harry. In the library.”

  “OK. Wait for me there.” He was so excited he suddenly reached for her and held her, returning her original greeting with interest.

  *

  Bob strode onto the bridge with his mind on fire. There was no one at the helm. The ship was making no way. In theory she should be showing either riding lights or a distress signal but Dall had said to leave that for the time being. Stubbs was there, on watch, mooning about, lonely, worried and depressed. In the watchkeeper’s chair on the port side of the bridge a young soldier sat idly nursing a venerable but functional-looking gun. For all his lackadaisical ease, the soldier seemed to Bob to be closely on watch, ready for anything.

  “Well, Mr Stubbs,” he said cheerily. “Where’s this nasty weather system?”

  Stubbs led Bob over to the weather radar. “Picture’s not too good, Captain,” he said apologetically. “All sorts of interference, I don’t know where from.”

  “Never mind that. It often happens,” lied Bob, thinking of Harry breaking into the system from below. “If you’re really worried we’ll see about getting permission to contact a weather station.”

  “We could get the British Shipping Forecast on the World Service of the BBC, if it came to that,” said Stubbs. “We’re not so far beyond their reach.”

  “Hell,” said Bob, “we could fire up the old TV and time into the Weather Channel. But we’d have to get Captain Dall’s permission to switch on. In the meantime, what have you got on the automatic systems?”

  Stubbs had only brought up the idea of the BBC as a kind of moan. It was the sort of thing he did all the time. Under pressure he was a bit of a Luddite. His captain’s cheery rejoinder knocked him sideways. The idea of New England actually relying on the television for her weather reports was simply ridiculous. But when he looked at Bob and saw that Bob was looking at the soldier in the watch chair, even Stubbs began to suspect that his captain was up to something; at the very least he was testing the guard’s knowledge of the real power of the ship’s systems.

  “It’s a tight little low pressure system coming east out of Newfoundland about now,” said Stubbs, showing Bob the cause of his concern. “You see the pressure gradients along the fronts here? The projected path brings the tail over us within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours with predicted wind speeds building to severe storm in this area. Its track will bring some big seas over.”

  “I’d better tell Captain Dall,” said Bob and crossed purposefully towards the door.

  “Wait up, Captain,” said the guard at once. “I’ll call you an escort.”

  “No, that’s all right. Really. I know where he is.” The newly re-invigorated Bob kept moving as he babbled. Had the guard been standing in the doorway, Bob would have had no chance, but unless the guard was going to shoot him in the back, he could not control him. Even so Bob’s shoulders did not stop prickling until he had turned the corner into the companionway. He ran down it, the sound of his feet on the deck disturbingly loud. He moderated to a jog only when he reached the A deck corridor where the library was located.

  He swung the library door wide, but the room was empty and the computer was dead.

  “Double stag,” fumed Pitman. “You got me double fucking stag. I am not pleased with this so you had better do what I tell you, ladies, and keep your asses clean.”

  Pitman had appeared at the door to the library in a rage. The only positive aspect of her thunderous mood was that she had made so much noise on her way up the corridor that Harry had had time to switch off the computer and pile some videos in front of it before the door slammed wide.

  “There you are!” spat Pitman, shouldering her way in. “What’s this Captain Dall tells me about you fucking about on the bridge, Ms Cable?”

  Ann wisely said nothing.

  “The captain does not wish you ladies to be running about in command areas unescorted. He does not want you anywhere sensitive at all, in fact. So I’ve got to keep an eye on you at all times, thank you very fucking much. It’s not enough I’ve got to eat with you and sleep with you. Everyone else gets an on and an off with their assignments. Not me, though. Oh no, not me! Well, I tell you this, the pair of you, if I’ve got to watch you then I’ll watch you watching me do what I’ve got to do. This way! Now!”

  She led the subdued women along the A deck corridor past the dining area and the galleys to those sections of the bridgehouse designed to balance the mental pursuits of the starboard with more physical pastimes on the port. She kicked open a door to a neat little gym. Two benches sat at the foot of walls hung with exercise bars. There were ropes suspended from the low metal ceiling. These old-fashioned facilities were not being used but the exercise machines in the centre of the room bustled with exercising men.

  Pitman’s arrival was greeted with a round of jeers and lewd comments which came to an abrupt stop when the men realised she was not alone. They all stopped exercising, and eyes and lips began to gleam as brightly as sweat-sheened muscles.

  With no regard for the sensitivities of anyone, Pitman barked,

  “You two, sit on that bench. Move and you suffer. Lobo, let me back on that bench. I’ve got to be able to see these two tarts at all times. Captain’s orders.”

  As she spoke, Pitman was pulling off her blouse and easing the waistband of her trousers. The reluctant Lobo gave way to her and she straddled a bench, sitting with her thighs wide, her back straight, and her arms raised to a trapeze above her head. Her skeletal automatic was on the floor, its grip beneath the instep of her right boot, its barrel pointing meaningfully at her charges. Lobo crossed and looked speculatively down at Ann who thanked God silently but fervently that she had buttoned her blouse to the throat since her assignation with Bob. Harry, in her white uniform blouse, was not so lucky and the man’s lingering glance made close acquaintance with the lace of her bra. “If either of you two ladies want some serious exercise,” he began, posing like a teenage lifeguard — but the rest of his proposal was drowned out in hoots of laughter and alternative offers, all of them imaginative, few of them physically possible. Event
ually Lobo crossed to a rowing machine, sat down and got to work, and the rest of them followed suit. Like Pitman, they had to rely on their bodies the same way a parachutist has to rely on his chute. Every fold had to be in the right place, every line checked and laid out free, every aspect of the packing had to be just so. Imperfect parachutes open badly. Imperfect bodies let you down.

  Not since Ann had looked through the hole in Harry’s shower wall had she seen so much manhood unadorned. Pitman was the only one in trousers. The others were in shorts. She was the only one in a T-shirt. A man on the peck-deck beside Lobo wore a scoop-fronted, sleeveless vest which fitted him like a second skin and under it massive thoracic muscles moved, spreading out, front and back, from the valleys of sternum and spine to the square bulk of bicep, tricep and forearm. Ann was put forcefully in mind of Messrs Willis, Stallone, Van Damme and Schwarzenegger — until she met his eyes which were resting dreamily on her as he worked. Then she was put in mind of Jack the Ripper.

  Harry didn’t know where to look, but her eyes kept being dragged back to Pitman’s body. Muscular and powerful though it was, it retained its femininity. The arms were strong, the thews moving smoothly beneath the pale skin were steely and the veins lifting into knotted definition spoke of regular and fearsome exercise. And yet the fingers gripping the handles were long, tapering to pale, ice-clear nails. The trapezoid muscles on the shoulder blades were as bulky as most men’s and yet they supported the neck of a white swan. The chest was as deep as any athlete’s and the belly beneath it flat and corrugated, but where the poser on the peck-deck had square bulks of granite, Pitman had something altogether rounder and softer.

  The watch changed at midday and as one set of men exited, another entered. Pitman, too, took the opportunity to move. “Mess call in half an hour,” she said. “I’ve got to freshen up. Off we go, girls.”

  The three of them went up to the cabin they were sharing and Ann was ordered to join Harry on her bed. Like naughty children they sat with their hands folded in their laps. “This isn’t any more pleasant for me than it is for you,” said Pitman as she shucked off her trousers, hopping from one foot to the other in the open door to the bathroom. “But the orders are clear. And I’m keen you understand what they can mean if we don’t come to some arrangement here. My turn for a public shower now. Yours next. Unless we come to some arrangement. If you catch my drift.”

  She pulled off her T-shirt and pants, placed her pistol on a chair in the corner by the shower stall door and stepped in. The water poured from side to side across the opening and Pitman washed herself quickly and practically, using Ann’s Calvin Klein soap for both body and hair. At no time was she more than an arm’s length away from the gun. And not for one second were the two women on the bed out of her sight.

  Not for one second, either, was Pitman out of Harry’s sight. That a body should attain such a perfect balance between femininity and muscularity, between hardness and softness, had occurred to Harry only in her dreams and fantasies. That such a frame should be clad in that particular Dutch porcelain perfection of skin put her ability to breathe easily at hazard once again. But it was the revelation that a honey blonde crew cut could be accompanied by body hair of so much lighter and finer a shade that threatened to undo her altogether.

  *

  During the rest of the day the tension slackened slightly but the regime firmed up, and not just for Harry and Ann. Once Dall had drawn up his plans, he began to put them into effect. The whip-thin captain had an overwhelming energy and he simply carried everyone along with him. The engineers might be truculent and obstructive where they could be, the deck officers unwontedly dense and disorganised, but little by little Captain Dall began to get them to do what he wished. Their plans to get into the main computers frustrated, Ann and Harry asked to visit the Charlestons after lunch and Pitman, glad to have them out of her sight, was content to guard them from outside the door of the Senator’s state room. The two women, given shortlived access to a feeling of enormous freedom, found that she was willing to do this only because the room was already guarded inside by a dark-jawed, dour young man. Conversation, therefore, was shallow and stilted, and largely a waste of time until Harry discovered that the Charlestons had known her long-dead father and corresponded with her mother still — much more regularly than Harry herself did.

  And so the watches went by and the afternoon waned. The evening of that first long day gathered and New England drifted slowly eastward under the power of the great Gulf Stream which in time would hurl its regimented swells to die like lost legions on the black cliffs of the Irish coast. Drifted east and prepared for war.

  *

  The next day dawned fair. Stubbs’ weather system spun northwards to dissipate well clear of them. By the dogwatch on the second day, Dall was satisfied with what had been done and he called a halt to the work. Ship’s routine was pulled back an hour. The evening meal was served at six. After the meal, the tables were cleared from the dining area and the chairs were arranged in rows. New England’s passengers and crew were placed in the chairs. A guard stood, as ever, in the corner of the room. After the briefest of waits, the video player from the library was wheeled in and a video was put on. Then all the captives aboard watched A Fish Called Wanda which, under the circumstances, raised very few laughs. Slightly nonplussed by the unexpectedly bizarre situation, none of them questioned what was happening. When the film finished, Dall was back, sparking with excitement and energy. He dismissed them all and declared curfew from eight.

  “They held some kind of briefing, I guess,” said Ann to Harry as they sat in their cabin. Because of the curfew, Pitman had been assigned to the eight to midnight bridge watch. There was little chance of them getting up to mischief isolated in their cabins, and anyone who came out, even with no mischief intended, would be shot.

  “It’s the only thing I can think of,” agreed Harry. “Unless he’s cracking up. God, I hope this isn’t going to be part of the evening routine for long.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s 101 Dalmatians, Chained Heat II, Erotic Intensity, Black Lust and Co-Eds in Bondage.”

  ““Nuffsaid.”

  “I feel sorry for poor Mrs Charleston. Fortunately I think the bit about the gorgeous ass went over her head rather.”

  “Don’t you bet on it, Harry, that’s one sharp lady.”

  “Think we ought to try and get her in with us? I’m still keen to get into the computers if I can, even if it’s just to see what I can see.”

  “We’ll need more help. Maybe more of a plan. God! If only I could get to Bob.”

  Harry made no comment on that, but it seemed to her that Ann was having no trouble at all getting to Bob. They had sat very close during A Fish Called Wanda.

  “We tried to get some plans going during the video. But it was impossible,” added Ann.

  The thunder of the shower in the next-door cabin began. Harry rose to close the door. “I guess you could go through now and make plans with his ass,” she said, hardly thinking what she was saying.

  “Harry! You little genius!” cried Ann. She was up impulsively and gave the surprised officer a hug. Then she was into the shower and down on her knees, peering through the hole beneath the tap. “Bob! Bob, it’s Ann. Put on some clothes and get back here, we have to talk and I need to keep my mind clear.”

  After a few preliminary pleasantries about the habits of single women, the conversation settled down. Professor Miles was now sharing Bob’s accommodation and he was reluctantly dragged into the discussions. Bob was keen for Harry to run a series of checks if she could get at the library computer again. There were some systems he was particularly keen to know the status of. Equally, he was game to try to get O’Reilley to activate the switches they needed for access to the Internet, but O’Reilley had already been sounded on the question of sending secret distress signals and had proved depressingly negative. Other than routine messages and the spurious reports of failing engines and the refusal of
any help, the radios were all shut down and carefully guarded.

  “But who are these men?” demanded Professor Miles, not for the first time. “What do they want with my ship? What do they want with us?” Their discussions, which went on until the stirring of watch change at midnight, kept coming back to the same question. No matter what system they thought they should test, what experiment they should attempt when Harry could get at a keyboard and screen, what message they should send to which Website, it all came back down to that. Who exactly were these people and just what in hell’s name were they up to?

  The answer seemed to become clearer next afternoon. Dall had spent the morning running one last series of checks on the work he had had done. In the small hours he had gone all over them himself. Then he had gone over them all again with Bob, Chief Bligh, the reluctant Professor Miles, and his second-in-command Paul Aves in tow. Every addition was tested by Dall and his disparate team for strength, defensibility, the manner in which it integrated into the structure of the ship. Dall was acutely aware that it was useless to build a defensive barricade across a corridor when between-deck ducting could allow enemies easy access above, below and to the rear. He questioned Alan Miles closely about any strengths and weaknesses not immediately obvious from the plans he seemed to know almost by heart. His explorations during the sleepless hours he had been aboard — and Dall seemed hardly to have slept at all — had enabled him to get to know the ship very well, but even so there were details which only the ship’s designer could be expected to know. Which was the master switch for this corridor? Could it be secured so that the lights stayed on or off? Could this position control it? Could this companionway be compromised from beneath? If a man was on these stairs, could he be shot by someone firing upward from below? Which sections would the fire sprinklers inundate? Could one such section be shut off from others? The questions were endless.