Despite his fear, Hauser had managed to eat a little of the emergency stores cached in the craft. He had donned one of the yellow survival suits to retain his body heat and had even managed to sleep for a few hours. By the time dawn finally arrived, he was rested enough to implement the plan that had come to him during the night.
Hauser had spent only a few hours aboard the Petromax Arctica before she was seized, but he’d been around ships, especially tankers, his entire life. It was easy to work his way into the multiple layers of crawl spaces and access tunnels that were sandwiched between the decks. This gave him full run of the supertanker while avoiding any chance of detection. He’d been able to watch guards and crewmen alike as he lay in the cramped confines of the heating ducts.
When he reached the engine room this morning, he’d found Patroni and an assistant oiler doing a scheduled inspection under the malevolent glare of one of the terrorists. His hopes of sabotaging the tanker were dashed. There was nothing he could do as long as the engine room was occupied. But even as he prepared to make his way back to the sanctuary of the lifeboat, the guard herded Patroni and his aide back to the elevator.
Because of the complexity of the forest of pipes running to and from the power plant, inspection hatches were placed in readily accessible areas. One of them gave him access to the primary fuel bunker for the odd-numbered cylinders. The metal shavings he found on the floor of the machine shop adjacent to the engine room were perfect for what he had in mind. He simply dumped a few handfuls into the viscous diesel fuel and waited for them to grind the engine to a halt. The tanker wouldn’t be delayed long — he hadn’t done enough damage — and he hadn’t wanted to disable the ship permanently, fearing the dangers of her drifting out of control. Still, he’d hoped that he could grab a few minutes alone with a member of the crew during the confusion. Finding the Chief Engineer in the elevator was a godsend.
“We don’t have much time,” Hauser said to the still-startled Patroni. “They’ll wonder about your delay, so give me a quick rundown of the situation.”
“Well, terrorists have seized the ship and Riggs is working with them.”
Hauser cut him off. “I know all that. What’s the status of the ship and crew?”
“Whatever you put into the fuel system only affected cylinder five before the computer shut the engine down. We’ll have her running in an hour or two. But we’ll only be able to goose fifty percent power without destroying the rest of the engine. Riggs told me that the ship has to make it to San Francisco.”
“Frisco? Why Frisco?”
“She didn’t say, but she made it damn clear that that’s where we’re headed.”
“How’s the crew?”
“We’re doing okay. They keep us in the main mess hall when not on duty. We’re fed only once a day and have to sleep on the floor or in chairs, but it could be a hell of a lot worse. They’ve made a few threats, and so far two are dead. One of them was Larry Walker, the helmsman who took the bullets meant for you.”
“What about the rest of the ship? I know the bridge was shot up pretty badly.”
“Yeah, it was. The radar system is a complete write-off; I’ll never be able to fix it. And the tank pressure sensors were taken out too. She wants those sensors back on-line ASAP. In fact, she’s got the ship’s electrician scavenging parts from other systems to get them running again. The helm controls still work fine, but changing engine speeds must be done manually in the engine room.”
“They don’t have throttle control, yet they leave the engine room on UMS status?” Hauser was shocked by the negligence. UMS, or Unmanned Ship, is the automatic system that controls the power plant during the engineering staff’s off-duty time. In normal conditions, a tanker is run under UMS only at night and in calm seas.
“I’m not issuing the orders. I’m just following them.”
“I wonder why tank control is so important to them. It shouldn’t be prioritized above regaining remote throttle control.” Hauser spoke almost rhetorically. Neither he nor Patroni could second-guess the motivations of the force that had taken their ship. “Do you know anything about the terrorists?”
“Only that the leader is named Wolf, and even he takes orders from JoAnn Riggs.”
“What’s your take on all of this? You’ve sailed with Riggs.”
“I don’t know, Captain. I’ve sailed with her, yes, but only twice before. I’m almost as new to this tub as you are. All I know is that she was pretty chummy with the former captain, Harris Albrecht.”
“Do you think Albrecht was involved with this?” Hauser asked, putting two and two together but still coming up with three.
“I’m sure of it.”
“Do you know what happened to him and why the ship was late getting into Valdez?”
“Albrecht confined most of the crew to their quarters while we wallowed in the Gulf of Alaska. Nobody was allowed topside except him and Riggs. And it wasn’t the first time we stopped out there, but it was the longest. I don’t know what happened to Albrecht’s arm. But I do know that they never recovered the limb, if you know what I mean.”
“What are you saying?”
Patroni looked at Hauser for a second as if he couldn’t believe that the captain didn’t catch his meaning. “Hey, this ship is big and dangerous too, but if you lost an arm, you would damn well find it real fast and hopefully have a doctor sew it back on. Captain Albrecht never got his arm back, and the medevac helicopter was here only twenty minutes after the accident. What happened to the severed limb?”
“Overboard?”
“What was he doing at the rail that could take his hand off?”
Hauser had no reply.
“I’ve been talking to the guys who’d been sailing with Riggs and Albrecht for a while. They’ve been doing this for a few months, stopping in the middle of nowhere and confining the crew belowdecks. They were paid a small bonus for the inconvenience, so no one complained.”
“Petromax never said anything about these delays?”
Patroni shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”
Hauser looked at his watch. “You’d better get going before they wonder where you are. I’m holed up in the aft life raft. I need you to pass me any information you can get.”
“Yes, sir. I want these bastards off my boat as bad as you do.”
“Listen…” Hauser hadn’t been in command long enough to know the names of his officers.
“George,” Patroni offered.
“Listen, George, it may be necessary for me to leave the ship. The emergency radio in the life raft doesn’t have much range and we have to tell the outside world what’s happened. I want you to think of a way of launching the life raft without arousing suspicion. I don’t want my escape causing problems for the crew.”
“I understand,” Patroni replied. “I can arrange a short on the master control panel that will kill the indicator lights when the raft goes up on her davits. Don’t forget, the aft boat can be self-launched, but the timing has to be perfect.”
“It won’t happen for a while,” Hauser said as he prepared to heave himself back onto the roof of the elevator. “But be prepared. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
Once on the top of the elevator, he turned and looked back through the open hatch. “George, take care of the crew. No matter what happens, they come first.”
“I will, sir. You can count on it.” A moment later the elevator lurched upward as Patroni disengaged the manual arrest button.
Abu Dhabi City, United Arab Emirates
Khalid Al-Khuddari didn’t mean to slam the antechamber door of his office suite when he entered, but his pent-up frustration got the best of him and the nine-foot door crashed against its jamb with the concussion of a rifle shot. Siri Patal, Khuddari’s personal assistant, looked up with startled doe eyes, her fine features showing concern as Khalid stood by the door trying to calm himself.