‘I see. So what do you suggest?’
‘With your permission, señor, I will alter course to port. That will take us on a slightly more easterly heading. If we find nothing, we will be ready to run on along that course before swinging due east to Puerto Banderas — if you still wish to go there, though from the sound of things you may not wish to stay after we have caught up with Señorita Liberty and her crew. But in the meantime, such a move will ensure we do not collide with our silent ghost. And it will also take us between that and whatever is giving the fainter reading.’
‘That sounds fine,’ said Nic, nodding. ‘Robin, have you any thoughts?’
‘No.’ Robin shook her head, frowning. ‘I don’t like the look of that ghost boat, though. In all sorts of ways.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Obviously the fact that it has no VMS and won’t answer the radio makes me wonder what it’s up to out here in all this.’ A wide gesture of her hand encompassed the weather outside. ‘But it’s also worrying that it’s coming and going on the radar. That means you either have a fault in the system or the range is being interfered with by the downpour. Neither of which is particularly healthy under the circumstances.’
‘So,’ said Nic, ‘do you advise that we do something different to what Captain Toro plans to do?’
‘No. Captain Toro’s plan is the best we can do under the circumstances. Though I was just wondering: do you have an electrical engineer aboard who could check your sonar? It’s crucial to know whether it’s the conditions or some sort of malfunction that’s affecting your readouts.’
‘In this?’ said Toro. ‘You want me to send someone aloft in this?’
‘We can wait for conditions to ease, I suppose, but I’d be happy to go with him,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve never seen the inside of one of those golf balls of yours and if someone’s going up to check things out, I’d love to get the chance …’
Twenty minutes later, a flaw in the wind and rain gave them a realistic chance of going outside. Robin was following a less-than-happy electrical engineer up on to the top deck, immediately above the command bridge. The rain was much lighter and the wind had eased for the moment. Robin’s vision was no longer blocked by streaming windows. After the interior of the bridge house, she felt she could see for miles. The engineer had told her his name was Manuel. He was easy enough to follow, however, as he sloshed forwards.
They were both carrying two-way radios and wearing safety harnesses. As soon as Manuel arrived at the bottom of the ladder up to the golf ball housing the radar, he stopped to clip his safety line on to the banister running up on the right. The wind and rain might have eased but Maxima was still pitching and rolling. Manuel’s careful actions gave Robin a chance to look around. There was no doubt that in the easier conditions the view was better than the view from the bridge. As Manuel toiled up the steps to the big white sphere of the radar cover, Robin found herself walking forward until her hands were gripping the yacht-varnished teak of the safety rail. Pressing against the curved wood like an elevated figurehead, she strained to see forward. In spite of all her comforting words, she was worried about Katapult8. Even with her most competitive game face on, Liberty should have radioed in to assure her father that all was well. The only positive reason that she hadn’t done so which Robin could think of was that she still had the good wind behind her and was sailing through the last of the calm weather, racing the ARkStorm down to Puerto Banderas. Every alternative to that scenario involved danger, disaster and perhaps death.
Straddling her legs and pressing herself hard up against the rail, Robin lifted both her hands to make a makeshift peak above her eyes, hoping to see a little further ahead. And, as she did so, the downpour hesitated in unexpected cooperation. Robin’s view leaped forward and out to the sides. Like Richard with the lightning strike, the picture was there and gone so fast that it was only after her sight was snatched away that she was able to make sense of that instantaneous glimpse of what lay ahead of Maxima. Away on her right, perhaps half a kilometre distant, there was a fishing boat. It was facing away from Maxima so all she could see was the stern, over which draped a tangle of netting. Away on her right, low in the water, and so unexpected that she had trouble defining what it was she saw, there was the black wing of a jumbo jet, floating high on the waves, with a clump of figures on it almost as bright at Manuel’s daffodil yellow. And, joining the two, a chain of bright orange basketballs.
‘Oh, shit!’ she said. She slammed the walkie-talkie to her mouth so fast she almost split her lip. ‘Captain Toro! There’s a net dead ahead!’
But she was too late. Maxima’s bow powered into the space between two of the orange floats. Her keel drove the fish-laden netting down, but the tension between Katapult8’s sail and Pilar’s winch pulled it up again, so that when the twin screws of the super yacht thrashed at full speed into the tangle of webbing, it wrapped itself around them.
Maxima was fitted with every modern essential. And this included a state-of-the-art Spurs Marine line-and-net-cutting system. But that was the system which the crew, distracted by Katapult8’s crew swimming like mermaids in the glass-sided pool, had not had a chance to check. And it wasn’t working. The net wrapped itself round the racing propellers and jammed them in an instant. Like Katapult8 before her, Maxima went from full speed to dead stop in a heartbeat. Even so, she jerked the net with far more power than even the pod of humpbacks had unleashed. The water in the pool ruptured the cover and broke through the inner wall, cascading into the living areas, pouring down into the engine areas, doing untold damage to much of the equipment and circuitry down there. Robin was very fortunate not to be pitched over the rail and down on to the foredeck. Manuel, up in the radar equipment, was not so lucky. He was thrown sideways and fell, still holding on to a good deal of the delicate equipment he was up here to check. It came away in his fists, effectively blinding the vessel altogether and doing a fair amount of damage to several other systems into the bargain. His life was saved by his safety line, which brought his tumbling body up with such a shock that he cracked several ribs. As though the whole disaster was part of a cunning plan devised by the weather gods, the rain returned, heavier than ever.
Under the circumstances, Manuel had to be Robin’s first concern. She freed him from his harness and helped him down on to the bridge, where there was a kind of ordered chaos. Captain Toro, very much in charge, was issuing terse orders in a mixture of English and Spanish both face-to-face and over his walkie-talkie. Maxima needed checking from stem to stern at once. All damage was to be assessed and reported to him. The chief engineer was to update him as soon as possible on the state of the Caterpillar engines and the main drive shafts. If possible, he should assess and report on the state of the propellers. Anyone in need of medical assistance was to report to the medical facility. Robin registered all of this as she brought the wounded engineer into the dry. Then she to dispatched him to the ship’s medical centre and caught Nic’s eye.
Nic strode over to her at once. ‘This is a disaster,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘Maxima seems to be crippled. Heaven knows what we’ll do now. I’d like to radio for assistance at once but Captain Toro wants to check the boat over first so he knows exactly where we stand. Jesus, this is a mess.’