“When is the battle due to start?”
“As soon as they can find a way into the bridge without endangering the captives.”
“They won’t be able to, though, will they?” said Harry. “Dall and his men have got everything rigged so tight that even these men won’t be able to break in anywhere without starting a war, no matter how much help and advice you can give them.”
“It certainly looks that way,” agreed Richard. “The only route out of here seems to be through the ducting and none of Merrideth’s men is slight enough to fit. And anyway, one soldier would not be able to do much, even if he could go somewhere sensitive.”
The conversation between the three of them ended there, for Richard was called away, but an idea from it remained in Harry’s head, and then began to expand, especially when it became obvious that her estimation of the situation was accurate and the SAS men found themselves in a stalemate.
The change came slowly but noticeably. It was a feeling at first. The tempo of the activity died back. The disposition of the men became genuinely defensive rather than defensive through offence. Teams stopped reconnoitring and checking. The ducting was all laid bare. The ceiling and the floor were stripped and sectioned. Areas which might make excellent attack launch points were marked. It was when the crates were moved against the doors so that they would give good warning if Dall should try a full attack, however, that everything really began to slow. This happened at 20:00 hours. They had been aboard twelve hours exactly, and it was clear not only that they were going nowhere but that they had accepted the fact. Once the doors were secure, Merrideth ordered the men to stand down and allowed them to brew up, and even to warm up their bangers and beans. There was no risk that the heat would trigger the fire alarms, because they had disabled the sprinkler system as effectively as they had closed off the inert gas equipment.
Out of brew kits and zipped pockets and all sorts of secret places came the various condiments by which each man made his food less bland and more individual. Blueys fired up like the camping gas cookers used on family picnics, tea was made, beans began to boil and the racing spoons came out as each man not already cooking went to check out the culinary expertise of his friends. The relaxation was only surface deep, however. They might be having a fuddle, but they were doing so in the middle of a battlefield.
The differing characters of the two patrols began to show now. Bruce, Danny and Smell went up to the upper hold where Pain was still on guard. They set up their bashas with Op, Merrideth and Mac among the equipment on top of the pallet. Here they shared their tea, bangers and beans.
Tom, on the other hand, seemingly possessed of more social skills to go with his open, boyish face and jug-handled ears, allowed Martin and Russ to pull their bashas together down where Mike stood stag and where Richard, Ann and Harry preferred to stay. Tom and his men seemed happy enough to share their food with the three guests — and then to explain how the five-gallon “personal relief” jerry can might best be adapted to the peculiar requirements of women. The bags of course would work the same for everyone. Richard gallantly saved them both a fortune in Andrex by sharing Doc’s supply which he had found earlier.
The medical equipment Richard was in charge of remained up beside Op’s great communications case and last thing that evening he picked his way through the pallets to make sure his charges all had their medication. This meant he heard the final briefing of the day. Except for the two guards, everybody was there and it seemed natural enough to Richard that he should be included. It did not occur to him that at least part of what was said was for his benefit alone.
“Overview,” said Merrideth, drawing his black-gloved hand back over the dome of his head. Thin black hair almost indistinguishable from his knitted balaclava failed to stir beneath the weary gesture. Grey eyes in their strange swollen sockets stared round at the men whose slight listlessness betrayed the bone-deep weariness of having stood battle-ready for so long for so little result. “We have achieved our first objective and have secured all available areas not held by the players. We have completed full recce and have marked off all possible attack points. Further progress is halted for the time being by the lack of surprise, the unexpected level of player preparation and by the danger to the hostages. To our advantage remain the following. One, two players down. Two, Dall and his people can have no idea of our actual number or disposition, though they must know by now that we control both holds and, therefore, the equipment in the IRA’s cache. They can also assume that we have made contact with the women. But, and this is very important, they do not know we have the co-operation and expertise of Captain Mariner. Four, they do not yet know of the contingency plans we and others have in place. If we cannot make this area the ground for an attack within the next twenty-four hours then we can make it a beachhead where we can welcome reinforcements.
And that depends on the damage we can do to the propulsion systems and to the hull if necessary. Mac and Op will have more to say on that front later in the briefing. I want you all to try and rest tonight. We still have a lot to achieve. Stags change at two. That is all from me. Captain Mariner, if I might just have a word while Mac and Op finish things off?”
The word was simply about the sleeping and toilet arrangements. Richard was surprised by Merrideth’s solicitude — and was too tired to see that the main objective was to stop him overhearing what Mac and Op were saying to the rest of them.
Tom’s four-man brick possessed two sleeping bags and these he offered to the ladies. With a combination of exhaustion and disorientation making her unusually nervous, Harry begged permission for herself and Ann to set up their own little basha far from prying eyes away over by the port side. Ann, who in fact had no intention of removing anything intimate or displaying anything more arousing than her knees, nevertheless agreed to the demands of the exhausted Harry. They put their sleeping bags side by side beside a stand of pipes where one of the pallets had been positioned at a slight angle. On hearing that the lights would be extinguished at twelve thirty, Harry begged Richard’s little penlight torch and he was happy to give it to her in spite of the smirks of Tom’s men. The massive pallet gave such good cover that, greatly daring, Harry stripped off her uniform to reveal a heavy-duty sports bra and support knickers stretching from waist to mid-thigh like bicycle shorts. Ann persisted in her decision to keep everything she was wearing designed by Janet Reger covered and soon they were bedded down comfortably.
At twelve thirty the lights went off. The muted thunder of the engines swelled with the dark, overwhelming all other sounds, but the vibration all around and on the air itself was soporific and soon everyone was asleep. Richard, who had had very little sleep aboard Hero last night, was particularly pleased to slip into a deep slumber disturbed only by the realisation that he had not phoned Robin as he always did in the evenings when they were apart. She would definitely know that something was up now and he was going to be in very severe trouble when he got home. It never once occurred to him that he might never be going home.
The inspection panels on the square air ducts clipped in and out. Even with short fingernails it was easy enough to free them. They were strong but light, and they made no noise either coming out or going in, so Harry was able to open the panel on the duct beside her head without disturbing Ann or alerting Mike on stag by the blocked door. It was going to be a tight fit, even wearing only her underwear. She would have liked to have replaced the grille behind her, but it was as much as she could do to slither into the square metal tube; bending down to recover the grille was out of the question. This section of the pipe reached vertically through nearly two decks. It had a set of tiny rungs in it, just big enough to take the toes of an engineer’s boots during an inspection. After stripping off her uniform, Harry had put her deck shoes back on; no one’s toes could have taken the strain of carrying a body’s weight up that sharp-edged little ladder for long.
Step by step, Harry went up, breathing silently through her mouth
, acutely conscious of every sound she was making, every squeak of rubber, every slither of skin or stretch fabric, every rumble of her starving tummy. She wore the torch jammed uncomfortably but safely down the back of her underpants in the valley between her buttocks. She did not reach for it until the vertical section of the pipe bent suddenly away to her right. This shift in direction was not unexpected but it was abrupt enough to cause her a bump on the head. She froze, in case the sound of her head striking the covering should have alerted the sentry in the upper hold.
When nothing had happened after a slow count of one hundred, she rummaged in her drawers and withdrew Richard’s torch. Its unsteady beam revealed a long, square tunnel. It was clear of dust and gleamingly clean. She hoped fervently it was also as strong and well-secured as it looked. She wanted no panels banging in and out under the weight of her knees. She wanted no sections tearing free from wall or deck to pitch her down onto the pallets below. God alone knew what the terrifying black-clad invaders would do if they caught her crawling about in the dark like this. Shoot her as a spy, probably. And she could hardly blame them. It was probably insane of her to set out on such an adventure without either consultation or warning. But she had known from the first that they would never agree to her doing anything like this. She squeezed round the bend, went onto all fours, wedged the torch in her cleavage so that it shone ahead of her, took a deep, silent breath and proceeded.
The horizontal section held up beneath her weight well enough and she made it to the next vertical section with little trouble. Here she liberated the warm torch and flashed it around herself. The tunnel of the air ducting bifurcated here, and split several times again off each new tunnel almost at once. This was where the air-conditioning system reached the accommodation areas. Harry closed her eyes and her nearly photographic memory recalled the layout of the ducts through the rooms and quarters on A deck below her. Then, slowly, pausing every now and then to think again, she worked her way through the system.
At last she stopped. Her face was pressed up against a grille exactly as wide as her shoulders, held in place with nylon clips as easy to release from this side as the other. She was looking into a silent, darkened room. Before she did anything else, she flashed the torch around the room to make sure she had reached the correct destination. The legs of chairs. The bases of shelf units. Rows and rows of books.
Harry pushed the panel out silently and it toppled to the carpet like a feather landing on a duvet. With the torch still on, she pushed her right arm and shoulder through the opening, eased her head out next and followed that with her left shoulder, bust and torso. When she was half out, a swift wriggle of the hips allowed her to roll safely and silently into the room.
She knelt, flashing the torch towards the door, which was thankfully closed. Then she pulled herself to her feet and followed the pale beam over to the piles of books and videos still half concealing the computer. Oh God, let it still be working, she prayed as she moved the chair closer and sat before it.
Harry switched the rocker and the screen jumped into life. With the speed of a striking snake she hit the volume on the speakers, silencing them before they could sound the chord of connection. Directions and connection codes scrolled up the screen.
WINDOWS it said.
Harry took the mouse, her heart thumping, her mouth wide.
The icons came up. She was in!
Her plan was simple from here on. She was going to override the propulsion control programs if she could. She would reverse some, put viruses in any she could infect and smash up as many of the others as she could. By the time she had finished, it would be easier and quicker to row this tub wherever they were taking it.
PASSWORD.
Cleopatra, she typed.
As she did so, the door behind her swung silently open. Harry had no inkling. There was no sound beyond the insistent thunder of the distant engines she was trying to emasculate. There was no light, no stirring of the air discernible even to the sweat-slick surfaces of her bare back. Such was her concentration she had no idea that a tall figure was moving up behind her as silently as any of the super-trained Special Forces men below. PASSWORD.
She hesitated. Some sixth sense warned her, perhaps. But too late. There was a whisper of movement and a solid thud as a blackjack hit her head. She slumped forward onto the keyboard.
PASSWORD NOT ACCEPTABLE said the screen and died.
A long thin hand came forward and snapped the rocker off. Then the same hand took Harry by the shoulder and lifted the unconscious head up off the table.
“Now that,” said Pitman quietly, “makes us even. Almost.”
*
Harry regained consciousness to find herself in a workroom in one of the engineering sections. She was sitting in a low-backed swivel chair. She glanced down first, not around. And she was relieved to see, through the swirl of dizziness the movement caused, that her clothing, what there was of it, was still in place. Her next instinct was to move and she discovered that she was secured to the body of the chair. She looked at her right arm and saw it had been taped to the arm. There was a loud bang. She looked up.
Pitman had made the sound by thumping a black moulded plastic case on a metal table just off to Harry’s right. As Harry watched, Pitman pulled out various pieces of equipment. The first was a hand-held drill. Pitman pointed it at the ceiling as though it was a gun. It resembled a gun with its square black body, long moulded stock and bright red trigger, though it was a far bulkier weapon than Pitman’s beloved ASP. The chuck, which looked like a squat black barrel, spun when Pitman pulled the trigger and the powerful little motor whined.
Harry’s flesh clenched into goose bumps all over her body.
Pitman inserted the drill’s key into the side of the chuck and turned it. Three claws pushed up out of the body of the chuck and spread, as sinister as the claws of a vulture. When the claws had spread sufficiently, she took a long drill bit, the longest Harry had ever seen, and inserted it between the claws. A flick of the wrist tightened the claws, leaving the better part of twenty centimetres of drill exposed. She reached into the depths of the case again and pulled out a handful of 25 centimetre screws. Then she came round the table and put the whole grim set close by Harry’s securely-taped arm. Pitman pulled up a second swivel chair and sat on it, facing Harry, her knees between Harry’s knees. She leaned forward so close that when she spoke Harry could feel her breath against her cheeks. “Now,” said Pitman gently, “I’m going to ask you some questions and if I don’t like the answers I’m going to screw you to that chair. Do you understand?”
Harry, beyond speech, simply nodded. There was a lump the size of an Easter egg in her throat and she needed to pee so badly.
“ANSWER ME!” screamed Pitman.
“Yes,” said Harry. “Anything. I’ll tell you anything. Don’t hurt me. Please.” Her voice quivered, and her eyes overflowed.
“So many questions, so little time,” said Pitman to herself. “Where to begin?”
Harry watched her, her pupils huge with terror.
“How many of the crew are in on it?”
“I don’t understand. What?”
“Like O’Reilley. In on the deal? Dix, Bligh, the captain?”
Harry shook her head. She could not bring herself to speak. Pitman leaned forward again, looking deep into her eyes. She raised her hand, wiped away a tear almost solicitously. Harry’s head slammed away from the soft caress as though from a vicious blow. Pitman frowned. “You really don’t know, do you? You have no idea what is going on here at all.”
She sat back. Harry’s eyes remained riveted to hers. There was nothing going through Harry’s mind at all. She was focused on each succeeding moment so fiercely that there was no room for speculation or much rational thought. Pitman asked, she answered. That was all she understood. Except that if she answered incorrectly then this woman was going to drill holes in her and screw her to the chair. She understood that all too well. The only time her eyes s
hifted was when Pitman lowered the drill into her lap. Harry registered that she was in a clean green T-shirt and fatigue trousers. She had found her bergen then.
Pitman left the drill sitting in her lap looking incongruously like a black kitten. With very long claws. She raised her left hand to her head and caressed the bandage at her temple. Harry was clearly not the only person in that strange little room who had a headache. “Tell me about your new friends, then.”
“I don’t understand. Who — ”
“The men who killed Slogett and Newby. The men in black.”
“I don’t know much about them. I think they’re British. They seem to be soldiers of some sort.”
“SAS,” said Pitman quietly.
“There are maybe ten of them and Richard Mariner’s with them. He’s advising them, seems like, but he also seems to be giving them pills and whatever…”
“Unit medic. But why would they need one?”
“I don’t know. I guess some of them are sick maybe.”
“What do they plan to do next?”
The knot of fear in Harry’s chest tightened and she gasped. Her ignorance threatened her. “I don’t know,” she said, praying that Pitman would believe her. “They’ve all gone to bed. They had a briefing at about midnight but they wouldn’t let Ann or me up there.”
Pitman gazed at her victim. Of course the SAS men wouldn’t include some unknown girl in a major briefing. But it was a pretty unusual SAS team that had guest medics.
Dall hadn’t said anything about the SAS. As far as Pitman was aware, no one aboard had any idea exactly who Dall had arranged to meet up with, but no one had mentioned SAS. If they had, she suspected Dall’s last command would have been even smaller than it was. She hated to be so ignorant — hated the fact that her careful watch on the library had got her such a promising source of information. Hated the fact that her source turned out to be as ignorant as she was herself.
Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9) Page 20
