‘Florita?’ said Gallen, wanting to threaten Du Bois but knowing that was what she wanted.
‘She your girlfriend, Mr Gerry?’ said Du Bois. ‘Or doesn’t she screw the help?’
‘She doesn’t drop nuclear reactors on the ocean floor, let’s leave it at that.’
A noise echoed through the vessel. Human voices, shouting, confused. Winter appeared at the door again. ‘Found Tucker, boss.’
‘How is he?’
‘Got a hole in him, needs a quack,’ said Winter. ‘Mike’s okay.’
Gallen hated his men being harmed, took it very personally. He wanted Hansen to haul them up, but after too many years of special forces operations in the Ghan he resisted the urge. Gallen’s number-one worry was a booby trap and he knew he had to slow himself down.
‘Who else?’ he said.
Winter shrugged. ‘That’s it. Menzies is dead, Tucker was shot in the leg. And Florita ain’t down here.’
‘Where’s Letour?’
‘Here,’ said Winter, letting through Ben Letour, Menzies’ second-in-command.
‘We need to search this vessel,’ said Gallen. ‘Who knows what surprises they’ve left us with?’
‘What are we looking for?’ said Letour.
Gallen thought about it. ‘Anything that will kill us as soon as we ascend. And by the way, is Negroponte here?’
Letour and Winter looked at one another. ‘He went down with the power station, when it ejected,’ said Letour.
Gallen hissed. ‘I’ll meet you back at the control room. Let’s make sure this place is clean before we move. I need everyone accounted for.’ Turning to Du Bois, he felt his guts churning.
‘Looking for a bomb?’ said Du Bois. ‘Why would environmentalists bomb you?’
‘Greenies wouldn’t,’ said Gallen. ‘But a bunch of Mossad agents pretending to be environmentalists might.’
Du Bois’ eyes darkened in a flash then returned to their normal state. But Gallen caught it.
‘Well that’s very intriguing, Mr Gerry. Maybe you watch too much the Bruce Willis DVDs, yes?’
‘Where are your men, if they’re not on the Ariadne?’
She shrugged and smiled.
‘Where’s Florita?’
Du Bois sighed. ‘Learning the secrets of the deep.’
‘She’s down there?’ said Gallen, pointing at the floor. ‘With the STAR?’
‘Do you know how much she stood to gain personally by pushing through this contraption?’ said Du Bois, jaw jutting with defiance. ‘This nuclear-powered contraption?’
‘I don’t do the books,’ said Gallen. ‘Wrong guy.’
‘Hah!’ said the Frenchwoman, seemingly amused. ‘You are not like the Americans in the movies, yes? You are the simple ones, the red states? Republican…?’
‘Redneck’s the word,’ said Gallen. ‘And I don’t vote. You been watching CNN, think every American’s wandering around worrying about Tea Parties and having a black president.’
‘You’re not? ‘
‘The only tea parties I know of happened in Wonderland and Boston,’ said Gallen. ‘And presidents? If they raise taxes or stop me shooting cougars, they can kiss my ass.’
‘Not the racist, Mr Gerry?’
‘In Wyoming, all politicians are the same colour, same religion.’
‘Four hundred million dollars US!’ said Du Bois.
‘What?’
‘That’s what Mendes will make if this project works to budget and yield.’
Gallen could hear approaching footsteps. ‘That’s a lot of money.’
‘Yes, and it only works with the self-contained pumping and maintenance rigs on the sea bed. And now we hear the full picture.’
‘Full?’
‘That takeover announcement,’ said Du Bois, standing. ‘It means Oasis controls about eighty per cent of the Arctic Ocean drilling leases. Within a decade, there’ll be two hundred nuclear reactors on the sea bed.’
‘Where is she?’ said Gallen as Winter and Ford walked in.
Martina Du Bois smiled like a snake. ‘She’s inspecting the site of the world’s latest nuclear reactor.’
They crowded around the circular control desk, Gallen allowing the acting commander of the vessel — Ben Letour — to take them through it.
‘We’ve got comms again with the Fanny Blankes-Koen,’ said the XO. ‘But the terrorists have disabled the ship-side air hoses. We’re on emergency oxygen bottles, and with the full complement on board we have about ninety minutes of air.’
‘And then?’ said Gallen.
‘We’ll slowly start dying, as the carbon dioxide becomes too great.’
‘And in ninety minutes we might get thirty people off this tin can with one submersible?’ said Gallen.
‘Maybe less,’ crackled Hansen’s voice through the console speaker. ‘I’ve done emergency take-offs before, my friends, and they never work as fast as the crisis manual says.’
‘Hansen,’ said Letour into the mic, ‘given our concerns about a bomb, what would you suggest?’
‘Search the vessel,’ said Hansen. ‘And then ascend. There’s no other way, and right now you’re using up oxygen.’
Gallen nodded. He already had Winter and Ford searching the vessel and trying to keep the crew out of the way — not an easy task when they were roughnecks and clearance divers, seamen and drilling engineers. People who would not politely sit back and be snow-jobbed.
‘Master Hansen,’ said Gallen as respectfully as he could, ‘the Ariadne ain’t small and we’re going as fast as we can. We also have morale problems with the personnel.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Gallen,’ said the big Swede. ‘There’s no other way.’
Half an hour later, Letour approached Gallen as he gulped at a bottle of water, the heat and muggy atmosphere building despite the Ariadne’s climate-control system. Carbon dioxide carried its own heat and Gallen had stripped his coveralls to the waist.
‘We’re facing a mutiny,’ said Letour, flush-faced and now dressed in a white T-shirt and shorts. ‘How’re your men going?’
Gallen raised the radio handset. ‘Tango Team this is Blue Dog — sitrep please, over.’
Winter’s voice barked out clearly, ‘Situation unchanged since last sitrep eighty seconds ago, Blue Dog. Yellow Bird out.’
Letour rubbed his face. ‘What if there’s nothing here?’
‘What if there is?’
Letour nodded and slumped in the controller’s seat. ‘I guess you have bigger things to worry about, with your CEO missing?’
‘I have to go get her after this,’ said Gallen.
‘That could be a suicide mission.’
‘That’s the gig,’ said Gallen. He was still waiting on the confirmation of his suspicions. Aaron’s bio of the film crew had been checked but Gallen had asked Aaron to email the file to a secure service where it could be picked up and rechecked by Pete Morton. Morton owed him no more than he’d already given, but it might suit him to help.
‘Why Menzies?’ said Gallen. It had been annoying him: why kill the vessel’s commander?
‘Why is he dead?’ said Letour. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What did he know? You think he knew the terrorists?’
Winter walked up, red-faced, Ford and a limping Liam Tucker behind him.
‘How you doin’, Liam? ‘ said Gallen, seeing cut-away trousers and a big white bandage on the man’s left thigh.
‘Only a leg wound,’ said the former Marine. ‘Worst part was passing out, hitting my head on the bulkhead.’
Gallen turned to Winter and looked at his watch. ‘We have nine minutes before people start dropping. Are we clean?’
‘There’s nothing in the way of an IED on this vessel, boss.’
‘Checked the oxygen and nitrogen bottles?’ said Gallen. ‘They can be detonated.’