He found Carrie on the floor with Coote.
“Jake! Can you help me get him back onto the bed?”
“Of course. What happened?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing. He fell when the ship rolled.”
Jake outlined what they knew about the attack, while the two of them heaved the heavy submarine captain back up onto the bed.
“Is he going to be alright?”
“I think from the way he fell that his arm might be broken. I’ll need a second opinion from Doctor Vardy. If only we had x-ray equipment on board…and ultrasound. Poor Vicky Mitchell, we’ve no way of seeing her baby. I listened to its heartbeat and everything sounds normal, but it’s a long time since I did any midwifery. To be honest, I’m as nervous as anything.”
“You’ll do just fine. Everyone has risen to the challenges of our rather unique situation better than I could have imagined. I have no doubt you will be equally impressive. Now, I need to get back to the bridge with a stretcher. Our helmsman is in a bad way and Vardy wants to bring him down here. I expect he’ll need your help.”
“I’ll get some space cleared, get us organised.”
He turned to leave, pushing the trolley with him.
“Jake?”
“Yes?”
“Are they going to try again? Another torpedo?”
He hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. “What can we do? The Ambush is out there, somewhere. I just hope she can deal with whatever this threat is.”
Twenty-One
MARTIN OAKLEY LOVED the sea, as long as he wasn’t in it. As far back as he remembered, he had loved boats, loved engines, and knew that he wanted to somehow combine the two. When he was eight years old, he’d had the grand revelation that there was such a job as marine engineer, that it was possible to work on ships’ engines and get paid for it. But for all that, he preferred being on the water to under it. He rarely used any of the swimming pools on the Spirit of Arcadia, and never took holidays at the beach. As far as he was concerned, the sea existed purely as a means of making boats work.
Getting out of the sea was now his primary focus. All he had to do was swim to the tender platform that was suspended just above the water line, and climb out.
It wasn’t until he had swum half the length of the ship that he realised the tender platform had gone. Part of the metal staircase that descended from the deck-two hatch was still visible. The rest had apparently come loose and detached itself, along with the platform. Given that it was made from steel, it was, he realised with horror, on its way down to the seabed.
Martin’s limbs were already exhausted from his efforts to escape being crushed. Now it seemed he would have to swim all the way round the cruiser and try to board the Lance, whose hull was much lower and therefore a more realistic prospect for climbing.
He trod water as he considered the Lance. He’d walked all the way round her deck when he had been carrying out his inspection. He couldn’t recall seeing any ropes, ladders, or other means of getting himself up out of the water. Even if he did make it aboard, the walkway was now gone. He’d be out of the sea, but no closer to getting back to the Arcadia’s engine room.
Frustrated, he raised his head to the sky and shouted out in rage.
Which was when he saw the severed umbilical power cord, dangling impotently from the Arcadia. It was ten metres ahead of him, and the end was already in the water.
• • •
In her rush to get to the classrooms, Lucya had overlooked the small matter of the lack of power. On the upper decks it wasn’t so much a problem; daylight flooded in through the windows. The lower she descended, the darker it got.
She continued to be ambushed by questions on every level, slowing her progress. Whilst she tried to remain as polite as possible, her patience began to wear thin. There was confusion and injury on every deck en route, and the more of it she saw, the more worried she became about Erica and the other children. Vardy had been spot on: going to engineering had just been an excuse.
By deck three there was very little light at all. The one upside was that it was possible to pass straight through without being noticed, which meant no stopping to answer the same questions.
Deck two was lit by small portholes. The sun, which had trouble enough penetrating the ever-present thick cloud, didn’t get far into this gloomy area. Most of deck two was the kind of space where the lack of daylight wasn’t a drawback. The sterile conference rooms — now classrooms — the lower level of the cinema, a casino, and crew accommodation. Without power, this warren of corridors and passageways would have been unnavigable for most people. Lucya had been bunked down there for most of her time on the ship, so she could find her way round with her eyes closed. She went directly to the classroom that she had dropped Erica in barely half an hour earlier.
Her first instinct was to peer through the small window in the door. If Miss Linders had everything under control, there was no need to interrupt. The room was, of course, in almost total darkness. Being in the interior of the ship, it benefitted from no natural light at all. However, it looked like someone — Miss Linders, she presumed — had a torch. Its focussed beam was darting around, picking out the faces of children.
The youngsters looked terrified.
“Poor loves,” Lucya whispered under her breath. “Why doesn’t she bring them up to another deck?” She pushed at the door to go and suggest that to the schoolmistress.
The door did not move.
Lucya rattled the handle, but the room had been locked shut. She rapped three times on the glass panel. “Miss Linders? Can you open the door?”
• • •
Martin stood on deck four, hands on his knees, water dripping from his clothes, panting heavily. His head was spinning. The physical exertion had been too much. He wasn’t quite sure how he had managed to climb the electrical and navigation umbilical cord when he was already so drained, but he had. The thick plastic ties that clamped the bundle of cables together at regular intervals had been life savers. Every couple of metres he had rested his feet on them, taking the strain from his arms and hands, getting his breath back before pulling himself ever upwards. As he went, he had thought of Stieg. Martin had been in the water for no more than ten minutes and was already chilled to the bone. He couldn’t imagine how Stieg could possibly have survived more than an hour in such conditions.
Finally he had arrived at deck four, exhausted. It was the lowest deck with an outside area, and so the first opportunity to get back onto the ship. Now he had to get back to the engine room. Just as soon as he got his breath back.
Extra motivation arrived in the form of a crowd of angry passengers. Martin always wore engineering overalls, emblazoned with the Pelagios Line logo. They gave him away as someone who might have answers, and the passengers made that perfectly clear.
“Here, mate. What’s going on with the electric? When’s the power getting switched back on?”
Martin shook his head, showering those closest to him with beads of salty water. “You do realise we’ve just endured some kind of explosion?”
“Yeah? Obviously. And? When’s the electric coming back on?”
“Un-fucking-believable.” Martin glared at the crowd, looking from one person to the next. He pulled himself upright, turned, and walked away, ignoring their protestations and cries.
He arrived in engineering to find Tom Sanderson working with two junior mechanics. They were almost at the point of getting the main diesel electric generator running.