‘To go south as fast as we can,’ said Richard. ‘With the current behind us — and the wind — soon enough we’ll be making more than twenty-five knots or thirty miles an hour. That’ll put us off Cabo San Luca at the southern end of the Baja just after midnight tomorrow night and get us to Puerto Banderas by six or so the next morning. Unless we get sidetracked or held up at all.’
‘Sidetracked,’ said Guerrero. ‘Held up. By what?’
‘There are pretty bad conditions down there,’ explained Richard. ‘Not just on land but at sea as well. If we get a distress call we’ll have to answer it.’
‘You expecting any distress calls?’ asked Guerrero, his eyes narrowing.
‘Maybe one,’ inserted Biddy as she arrived carrying a plate piled high with toffee bananas. ‘That’s what I’m here for. With the Bell. Search and rescue.’
‘Search and rescue?’ wondered Guerrera. ‘What are you up to, Captain?’
‘Call me Richard,’ said Richard blandly. ‘And your first name is?’
‘Juan Jose,’ answered the major, suddenly very much on his guard. ‘But I must ask again: what are you up to, Richard?’
‘You know there are several people and two vessels I care about somewhere down there,’ answered Richard. ‘I’m proposing to check on them as I run south. Shouldn’t hold us up or slow down your mission, Juan Jose.’
‘Especially as the plan is that I take the Bell out and scout around their last known location as Sulu Queen here steams on past it,’ said Biddy, her mouth full of banana, toffee and sesame seeds. ‘Weather permitting and all.’
‘That’s a big piece of ocean down there,’ said the major.
Something in his tone made Richard ask, ‘Do you know it, Juan Jose?’
‘Born and raised in Puerto Banderas. Fished it till my teens when I came north with my mom,’ he explained.
‘Sill got family down there?’ asked Biddy.
‘Father and baby brother,’ he answered shortly. ‘Miguel-Angel. We haven’t visited, Skyped or even called in years. I guess the break-up of the marriage was pretty acrimonious. I just know my father runs the ship chandlery on the Malecón down by the docks in Puerto Banderas and my little brother helps him, I guess. He must be about the age I was when Mom and I came north.’
‘Well,’ said Richard. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get there as quickly as possible.’
Juan Jose Guerrero was still nodding thoughtfully when the ship’s tannoy broke the silence. ‘Captain to the bridge, please. Captain to the bridge.’
‘No rest for the wicked,’ said Richard, rising. He hesitated for a second, then picked up his half-finished plate. On his way to the door he passed it in to the cook. ‘Fill that up, please. Put it on a tray with some of that coffee from the filter there and send it up to the bridge.’
Richard stepped into the lift and pressed the button for bridge deck, but before the doors could close Guerrero pushed in. ‘Mind if I come up?’
‘So long as you keep your hands off my Kung Po chicken.’
‘I give you my word. As an officer and a gentleman.’
This conversation was enough to take them up on to the bridge. The deck lights were off, Lieutenant Harding having closed everything down and sent the major’s command to bed. The bridge lighting itself was on night setting, all reds and shadows, except for the banks of screens showing the course and disposition of the ship. Richard planned on assuming the watch. It was a good way for him to get to know the vessel he was commanding — even though he had already done a first inspection of the new guests and planned on a full Captain’s Inspection before breakfast. Given the weather they were heading into, it was vital that he knew the ship and the crew as well as possible in the time he had available. When he took over on the bridge, he would check all of the screens and go out on to the bridge wing and use his human senses to augment the electrical information as he made up the logs. First, however, Richard walked to the third officer’s side. ‘Captain on the bridge,’ he said quietly. ‘And happy to take the rest of this watch. What did you want me for?’
‘This, Captain.’ The third officer crossed to the screen that showed the collision alarm radar settings. He punched a sequence of buttons and the range of the radar leaped out to its widest setting, where electronic information about what lay ahead was largely supplied by satellites rather than by the ship’s own equipment. ‘There,’ said the third officer, quietly. ‘You see it, Captain?’
‘I see it,’ said Richard. ‘Even going all out, that’ll take almost a day. I’ll check with the coastguards nearer and see what other vessels are in the area.’
‘I have done, Captain. There are none. None willing to go there, at any rate — they’re all heading for safe haven.’
‘I’m not surprised. So, set a course and we’ll at least supply back-up.’
‘What is it?’ asked Guerrero. ‘What does the machine show?’
‘It’s an emergency beacon,’ said Richard. ‘There’s somebody in bad trouble in the middle of the ocean seven hundred miles dead ahead of us.’
THIRTY-TWO
Robin stood on the exposed aft end of Maxima’s middle deck. Above her was the bridge deck where Biddy’s Bell 429 sat when she was aboard. Below her was the half-empty swimming pool and the lowered bathing section that was beginning to look as though it had seen better days, which was stuck until power was restored. Inboard of this, on either side of the heaving, slopping pool, harnessed to safety lines, stood groups of crewmen. Robin would have gone down to be with them but both Toro and Nic roundly refused to let her take such risks. So this was as close as she could get to the action. All around her was the vast storm of the late afternoon, which seemed set on destroying the battered but still beautiful vessel. Despite her almost limitless experience in nautical matters, Robin was only partially aware of the physical forces that held Maxima in their grip. Physical forces that reached far beyond the meteorological turmoil they were battling. The wind gusted again, making her stagger, even in the wind shadow of the bridge, and she mentally thanked heaven that she was secured to the lifeline and wearing a full safely harness. Except for the fact that she was wearing Aquascutum rainwear rather than neoprene wetsuit, she was as well secured as the divers whose work she was watching.
Two of the crew, Raoul and Emilio, had worked in the past as rescue swimmers. They had jumped from helicopters into the middle of tempestuous oceans to check the hulls of upturned vessels for signs of life. They had taken panicking men and women in hand, given them reassurance in the midst of great storms in huge seas and helped them put on the harnesses that allowed the winchmen above to lift them to safety. Swimming in near hurricane conditions had been their bread and butter. Even so, they had baulked at going in the water under these conditions. But the facts were simple: if they didn’t get the screws fixed they were all dead anyway. And Nic, open-hearted and open-handed, had made them a financial incentive that they simply could not refuse. So they had agreed to do it one more time, to try to cut the nets free and, if possible, get the Spurs line-and-net-cutting equipment back online in preparation for the moment that the engineers got the Caterpillars running and the propellers turning. It was becoming increasingly vital that these things should happen soon, for Maxima, which had ridden over the first series of waves at the front of the storm through a combination of good luck and the fact that the water missing from the pool kept her stern buoyant enough to counter-balance the downward drag of the nets. But now, for reasons Robin could not fathom, Maxima was moving slowly south and beginning to turn beam-on to the big seas. Once she was positioned so that her side rather than her bow or stern met the great wave-sets, she would simply roll over and die. Hence the desperate lengths Toro was reduced to now.