Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure

by Peter Tonkin

  If there was anything that attracted Richard’s gaze into the locker itself, it was the unthinking way that Macavity seemed to trust Dom. Several times he had his back to the Canadian. Once – at that moment when he leaned against his gun and craned over to look out – a simple push might have been enough to eject him through the hole above the anchor, but Dom was ready to help rather than hinder the strange exploration, and both Aleks and Steve showed every sign of having similar thoughts. After a further five minutes, Macavity seemed satisfied and he turned, gesturing to Dom to climb out first. Richard, still holding the door, reached out and helped both men down. Then he slammed the door and closed the handles. But at no time did he look closely or carefully into the iron-smelling little room, so he never saw the wires the Pitman had been following when Macavity had nearly caught up with her less than six hours earlier and sown the seeds of his disquiet.

  Macavity’s little commando next checked out the port-side chain locker. The technique and result were exactly the same. Then the six of them worked their way back along the length of the vessel. Every now and then, just as Aleks had, Macavity would check with one or other of his men on the shortwave radio. They had brought some radio equipment aboard with them, Richard realized, but they were also using that which they had confiscated from Aleks – probably at about the same time as they had purloined his Rolex and Galaxy. He soon gave up trying to double guess Macavity, or to predict where he would send the other teams or tell his own team to go. The ordered search pattern that seemed to be in place as they all set out soon broke down and Richard saw that Macavity was hoping to catch whoever he suspected of hiding on board unawares. Time passed, but as Richard had spent all of the search so far below decks and without his watch, he had little idea of how much. And no real idea at all of what the time actually was either here on board or outside in the real world.

  The next adventure worth his full attention came when Macavity suddenly ordered Verrazzano to lead them down a deck, then another. They were between tanks two and three, immediately below the pulpit where Boris had died and fallen overboard. Up on the covered A Deck, immediately inside the pulpit itself, the corpse of Yoichi Hatta lay at rest. Engineering Deck D seemed empty, though Richard thought he could hear distant voices. The corridors were wider here, for the tanks were curving inwards at a steeper angle than the sides. Macavity led them back towards the bows, unexpectedly retracing the steps they had taken one deck up. Then he led them between the tanks, from the port side back to the starboard. A curt signal and Verrazzano was leading them down another narrow companionway to the lowest deck of all, Engineering Deck E – a scant two and a half metres above the bilges. The sides of the ship curved in much more acutely here. The passageways were cramped and claustrophobic. Richard knew that the only real purpose for anyone to come down this far was to access the ducting within which the pipework joining the bottoms of the tanks followed the central line of the keel. He had never been down here himself, and he was struck by Macavity’s cunning. It must indeed be a tempting place for anyone to hide.

  He knelt. The deck was not solid here, but fine-mesh grating in long sections, capable of being lifted to allow access to the ducting. And the ducting, like everything else on board, was on a giant scale. It stood more than two metres square, but the central section of it was filled with a sheaf of pipes. There was enough room for a slim engineer with nerves of steel to follow the metal-sided passageway from tank to tank. He could hardly bring himself to imagine Ivan, Harry or the Pitman down there. He straightened and stepped back, only to be replaced at once by Dom DiVito. The wiry Canadian began to lift the steel mesh grating section next along the corridor floor. But Macavity spat, ‘No! Leave it!’ And the six of them turned away and went back up into the light and air of the upper decks.

  It took nearly four hours to search the ship. Then, when they all assembled in the engine room, it took another two hours to search the engine and ancillary equipment spaces as well. By the time they had finished, everyone on board felt that the vessel had been thoroughly inspected. And they’d found no sign of anyone else. At last, Macavity announced that he was satisfied. He assembled them all back at the starting point and locked Richard and his men away once again. But this time he left the lights on. And it was not long before Richard understood why. Section by section, in the teams assigned to the ship’s search, he allowed the prisoners out to be fed and watered. Ivan Karitov was in charge of the makeshift galley but there was little left by the time Richard, Dom and the others arrived except the noodles and fish sauce that the Japanese engineers and programmers had brought aboard with them. But then, to be fair, once Richard tucked in to his ramen with miso, he suddenly remembered how much he liked Japanese cuisine, and how much he had been happy to pay for just such fare as this at restaurants like Shinatatsu Ramen Mentatsu Shichininshu in Tokyo. Then, full at last, and with his mind more at ease about Ivan, Harry and the Pitman, he allowed himself to be locked up again. He used the latrine, stretched out on the sleeping bag and decided that this was as good a time as any to think things through carefully from start to finish – or at least his most recent experiences, and to really get on top of things.

  He was asleep within five minutes. So deeply that he did not even register when the lights went out. When the engines stopped, some uncounted time later still, however, he woke up at once, stood up, felt his way to the door and started hammering on it as loudly as he could.

  6 Hours to Impact

  ‘Twelve hours?’ repeated Anastasia. She looked at Robin, horrified.

  ‘Twelve hours to close it all down safely according to procedures, to disconnect it and to prepare it to move,’ emphasized Dr Gennadi Obukhov, director of the nuclear power station Zemlya, not best pleased at being called from his bed at midnight. ‘And according to protocol, we need to consult the men in charge of the Kujukuri construction project before we even start. It is their power we would be removing, after all.’ Anastasia, Robin and the director were sitting in his office on board the nuclear power facility. The NIPEX chopper which had brought the women here sat on the helideck under the yellow security lights, waiting to whisk them away again once they had solved the little local difficulty of removing the power station from Sayonara’s possible path of destruction. It would take them to the Radisson if they had any sense – and to their beds. But what had seemed a relatively simple matter was proving to be anything but.

  ‘Removing Kujukuri Construction’s power would be better than removing half their city by blasting it to smithereens – and contaminating the rest with radioactive fallout,’ snarled Anastasia.

  ‘Just so,’ answered the director frostily, and not a little pompously. Director Obukhov had been put in place by Anastasia’s late father and did not take kindly to being bossed around by importunate women. ‘But remember, Miss Asov, the procedures are also there to avoid just such eventualities, whether there is the danger of a collision or not. Look at Fukushima …’

  ‘Fukushima was abiding by its procedures!’ snapped Anastasia. ‘They just didn’t include losing power to the cooling system. And, before you bring it up, Chernobyl was testing its procedures when the wheels came off. Look, Doctor Obukhov, how short can you cut procedures and still get ready to move safely?’

  ‘I would have to consult my engineers,’ the director huffed.

  ‘Kindly do so.’ Anastasia dismissed the man. He rose stiffly and went off to do her bidding. She turned to her companion. ‘Robin, how soon could your tugs Erebus and Terror be ready to move Zemlya?’

  ‘Within the hour, as long as we weren’t moving her too far, though the tugs’ crews won’t relish being dragged out of their bunks either. If you want her moved any great distance we’d have to refuel. That could take some time.’

  ‘It sounds as though you’ll have plenty of time if Obukhov gets his way.’

  ‘But in theory we won’t have to move too far. Just enough to make sure Sayonara doesn’t collide with us if Richard can’t regai
n control in time.’

  ‘No. You’ll have to move further than that,’ said Anastasia. ‘Right out of the blast radius that might occur if she collides with anything and explodes. And we don’t know if the ’Ndrangheta might leave a present on board …’

  ‘Damn!’ swore Robin. ‘You’re right. I didn’t think of that. I do hope Richard has! Do we have any idea how wide the blast radius is likely to be?’

  ‘There must be someone at NIPEX who has some idea,’ said Anastasia.

  ‘That Engineer Watanabe seemed to have his wits about him. He’ll know if anyone will,’ Robin suggested. ‘And he said at the end of the meeting, before that impossible bloody dinner, that he would be on the night shift tonight.’

  ‘Can we get on to him without waking up Mr Hiroshi?’ wondered Anastasia.

  ‘I think so. My laptop is set up for contact with our London office and they have a link to NIPEX control. Give me ten minutes to get through and check, then I should be able to Skype him.’

  As Robin was looking into this, Director Obukhov returned. ‘My chief engineer says we might be able to cut the normal shutdown time in half. But six hours is the fastest we can manage things. And we can only handle that if the Kujukuri Construction people are on the ball. We can insert the control rods within the first hour, in a precise manner. As you mentioned Chernobyl, you will remember that it was the attempt to push the control rods into the core too rapidly that jammed them, shattered them and started the most serious phase of the disaster in Reactor Number Four – the phase that blew the roof off. Then, after Zemlya’s control rods are safely in place, we will have to allow some time for the residual heat to dissipate. We use the North Pacific as our cooler pool, of course, so we’re one step ahead of Fukushima there. But we must use ocean water under very strict conditions. Then, if we are going to move any distance at all, we will have to disengage from the power grid, which means that tenders must come out and take the cables from us because we cannot just drop electric power lines into the ocean. When all of these matters have been attended to, the tugs can start to move us. How far do you envisage moving Zemlya? And for how long? I will need to begin negotiations with Kujukuri Construction’s night manager. And you may need to consider alerting your lawyers as to the possibility of a lawsuit – and your accounts department as to the likelihood of claims for considerable damages.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Though I doubt you will be able to contact anyone. It is after seven in Moscow – the vodka hour. And that means it’s tea-time in London.’ He rolled his eyes.

  While Director Obukhov was delivering himself of the speech that was likely to end his employment with Bashnev Oil and Power if they were all still alive in twelve hours’ time, Robin was making Skype contact with Engineer Watanabe. The intense young man’s face almost filled the screen, but there was room enough to make out Captain Endo behind him, deep in conversation with someone just out of shot. The NIPEX facility was clearly buzzing, in spite of the hour. As succinctly as possible, Robin explained what they needed to know about the possibility that the nuclear power station might collide with Sayonara or be caught in the blast even if she moved out of the LNG tanker’s way.

  Watanabe frowned. ‘We have done much work on the problem of LNG leaks and their explosive potential, examining everything from accidental discharge to a full-blown terrorist attack, such as that planned in the Yemen in August 2013. Up until quite recently the general belief was that a gas cloud that is basically freezing methane would spread around any leaking container. It would remain at ground level or sea level until it began to warm up, then it would lift and disperse, if it had not ignited. The wider the cloud spread, the less the chance there would be of a fatal explosion. This is because an explosion – as opposed to a fire – requires combustion at an extremely fast pace, usually in some kind of container. The potential energy must be released extremely rapidly or there is no blast. But in the situation of a leak and a fire, this is unlikely to occur. Certainly the famous comparison between a cargo of LNG and fifty-five atom bombs has been generally discredited because although the potential is comparable, the different physical laws involved in the nature of each explosion are very different.’ He frowned and leaned forward, his broad face filling the whole of Robin’s screen. ‘Certainly, the possible blast area arising from any collision involving Sayonara would depend on how many tanks were ruptured, how the gas cloud spread – which would be affected by the wind, of course – and the speed at which the gas cloud catches fire. As I said, the received wisdom until recently was that the methane within the gas cloud would burn quite slowly and certainly not explosively, so there would be relatively little blast damage. However, in China on the tenth of October, 2012, a road tanker carrying LNG crashed. A cloud spread just as we expected but then it did explode. It exploded with great force, far more powerfully than we had believed possible. Several people died. There was a great deal of destruction to cars, lorries and nearby busses. The tanker was still burning twenty-four hours later. Since that incident, we have been forced to reassess what LNG might do if it ignites.’

  ‘So, what are you telling me?’ asked Robin.

  ‘That if Sayonara explodes with much of the LNG still in place, there may well be a great deal of blast. There will quite possibly be a great deal of blast as well as high temperatures if a significant amount of the LNG escapes from one of the tanks. If there is a wind, the gas will spread downwind and the effects of the explosion will be greatest in that direction. At the very least I would recommend that Zemlya should be moved two kilometres away from Sayonara’s likely course. If there is a wind, between three and five—’

  Watanabe was interrupted by someone calling his name. He sat back and looked round. Coastguard Captain Endo was speaking rapidly and gesturing excitedly. After a moment, Watanabe swung back into close-up. His voice was breathless and his expression elated. Sayonara has been in contact,’ he said. ‘She is short of the agreed point but she has stopped. We will send aboard engineers, coastguards, armed police, a crew and a pilot to bring her in!’

  ‘Do we still need to move Zemlya?’ asked Robin.

  ‘No!’ said Watanabe. But then he paused. His usual thoughtful expression returned. ‘But perhaps you had better stay on board and continue the preparations,’ he suggested. ‘Until we have Sayonara securely in dock, with her cargo and everyone on board her safely ashore.’

  ‘It’s all right, Richard,’ came the Pitman’s voice from outside the door. ‘Hang on a minute and give your knuckles a rest. I’ll have you out in a second.’

  ‘Pitman!’ In the darkness Richard didn’t need to close his eyes to have a clear mental picture of what Macavity’s hollow-point bullets would do to her. But he closed them anyway. ‘Watch out! They’ll shoot you on sight.’

  ‘No, they won’t.’ The Pitman opened the door and Richard opened his eyes. The light brought tears to them. That and the brightness behind her made her hair shine like a halo. ‘They’ve gone,’ she informed him cheerfully. ‘Taken the lifeboat and vanished overboard. All of the pirates, by the look of things, and some of the guys you brought aboard as well. The turncoats, probably. But they’ve left some people behind, living and dead. All the living are locked up. I just need to check with you who else to let out, that’s all.’

  ‘We’ll decide that in a minute. What’s the matter with the engines?’

  ‘They’ve shut down.’ The Pitman shrugged. ‘Harry says the computer sent a file out on the protected channel we can’t access, the one the black box has apparently been using, presumably to NIPEX and Heritage Mariner. Then the engines stopped. She thinks the main programme has switched back on and we’re sitting here waiting for a skeleton crew and a pilot. It’s as though whatever the pirates did to override the computer system was effectively wiped out when the bridge flooded. But she can’t confirm anything with NIPEX at the moment because whatever they have on board blocking our main communication with the outside world is still in place.’

  ‘My God,�
� said Richard, stepping out of his prison cell. ‘Stopped and waiting for the pilot. Just like that.’ He looked around the artificial brightness of the engineering deck. ‘Where are we? What’s the time?’