The officer nodded.
“Go on, get out of my sight. Imbecile.”
• • •
The negotiations did not start well. Jake made his case to the expressionless leader of the Korean sailors. The Lance, he said, was drifting away from them. They were trying to recover it, but with only inflatable life rafts at their disposal, the task was proving tougher than they had imagined.
“Your problem not my problem,” the man said, his voice muffled by the door. He was now sitting on a table. Erica had been allowed to rejoin the other children on the floor. One of the men surrounding them had taken the gun, and kept it levelled at the youngsters. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the slightest provocation would lead to bloodshed.
“Well, it kind of is your problem,” Jake said. He felt the hairs on his neck stand on end and his ears burn as he pushed the hostage taker. He knew he was playing a dangerous game, but he was betting the Korean understood that if he acted rashly, if he harmed a child, he would feel the full force of the armed security team. “You need the ship, and we’re doing all we can to get it to you, but it’s taking longer than you are allowing us.”
“Forty-one minutes. Then, child dead.”
“No, you’re not listening to me. It isn’t physically possible to get the Lance back that quickly. It’s not our fault someone torpedoed us. I suspect you might know who did that, no?” The Korean gave nothing away. “Look, if you kill a child, or hurt anyone else in that room, it’s over for you, you understand? These men here? They’re itching for an excuse to come in there and finish you off. You have one gun. You can shoot one person at a time. Think about the odds. You won’t survive. Give me more time, and I promise you we will get the Lance back.”
“No need raft. This is ship. Sail!”
“If only we could. That torpedo? Ripped our propeller to shreds. If we try and move we’ll just go round in circles. My engineers could try and fix it, but they’re busy trying to get the Lance back.”
The man hesitated. He exchanged more words with the others. As the clipped conversation flipped back and forth, the children looked more and more terrified.
“Show me.”
“What?”
“Show me Lance. Prove words.”
“You want me to prove we’re trying to get the Lance back?”
He nodded.
“Okay. Leave it with me. I’ll prove it to you.”
“Thirty-nine minutes.”
Twenty-Five
IN A STORE room off the main engine room, Lucya and Martin leaned over a table covered in huge printed diagrams. Written in large letters in the corner of each page were the words” Technical Schematic - Not To Scale.
They wore ear-defenders to protect against the noise of the gigantic diesel electric generator that churned away nearby, creating enough power to keep the whole of the Spirit of Arcadia operational. When they spoke, it was by shouting at each other.
“Jake said you knew every inch of this ship,” Lucya cried, her mouth inches from Martin’s covered ear.
“I know it a damn sight better than he ever will. I can’t be expected to remember the location of every single service hatch and cleaning access point though. Not on something this size.”
His finger traced backwards and forwards across a complex-looking drawing. Lucya had trouble making out the ship underneath all of the labels and technical explanations.
“Isn’t there a version of this on a computer somewhere?”
“Probably,” he shouted. “I prefer paper. Here! This is the vent for conference rooms two and three. There’s no way to isolate it. You’ll have to make sure there’s nobody in room three. Got that?”
She nodded. “Keep three clear. Got it.” Lucya looked at the part of the page Martin was studying. A thin red line indicated the path of the ventilation pipe. He traced it backwards.
“No…no…this is no good.”
“What’s up?”
“This pipe, it comes straight from the main air-conditioning plant. There are no service hatches. The only openings are in the conference rooms themselves.”
“Can’t we cut a hole in the pipe? Squirt the virus in through it then seal it up again?”
He shook his head. “The only parts that are accessible are too close to the plant. If we injected the virus there we’d risk it getting into the plant and spreading throughout the whole ship.”
“Bad plan,” Lucya agreed. “Okay. You said this pipe goes to conference room three as well?”
He nodded.
“So we spray the virus in through the vent in that room. Easy!”
“No, that won’t work either. Well, it might, but the chance of success is minimal. The air flow from the plant will carry it straight back out into conference room three. It won’t go against the air current.”
“Can you reverse the air flow?”
“No. That’s not how it works. Besides, it would draw it back into the plant and redistribute it throughout the ship.”
Lucya banged the table with a fist. She turned and leant against it, staring at the metal ceiling. “Shit. There has to be a way!”
“Inject the virus under the door?”
“I think they’d notice.”
Martin leaned forward further, studying the diagram closely. He pulled the enormous page to one side and started rifling through the others, discarding most of them on the floor until he finally found what he was looking for. He spoke quietly to himself, too quietly for Lucya to hear what he was saying over the constant drone of the engine.
Eventually he tapped her on the shoulder. “There might be a way.”
“What?” She turned and looked at him, then pulled one side of her ear-defenders off.
“I said there might be a way. Here.” He pointed to an even more complex diagram.
Lucya looked, and didn’t understand anything.
“This is the air-con plant. The pipe originates here. It’s theoretically possible to enter the pipe by entering the main fan chamber. There’s access for cleaning. Normally that’s only ever opened in port during an overhaul.”
“But you could open it?”
“Yes. We would have to shut off the air conditioning for a few minutes, no big deal.” He chewed his lip.
“What? What’s the problem?”
“Someone would have to get into the pipe. Right inside. They would have to take the virus and crawl through it until they were almost at the conference room.”
“Okay. So again, what’s the problem?”
“We would have to switch the fan on again, as soon as they were inside. They’d have to crawl along the pipe with cold air blowing over them the whole time. They’d have to get to the room without making a sound that might alert the Koreans. They’d have to release the virus near the vent, exposing themselves to it and thus risking a painful death. Then they’d have to stay there, stuck in the pipe, silently, until the Koreans were paralysed and the gas-masked security men could secure the room. There’d be no coming back through the pipe; it would risk contaminating the rest of the ship. And to top it all, this pipe is forty-six centimetres in diameter.”
“Which means?”
“Which means no security guard is going to fit. It would have to be a child. Even I wouldn’t send a child to do this. So that means…”
Lucya nodded slowly. “It would have to be someone small. Someone nimble. Someone with narrow shoulders, who could shimmy through the tight space?”
“Right.”
“In other words,” Lucya said, not bothering to shout, “someone like me.”
• • •
Cabin 811 was easy enough to find, and although Jake didn’t need Erica’s help to locate it, the memory of the recent trip up there, with the young girl leading the way, weighed heavily. He’d felt responsible for her since the very first moment he’d seen her, when her father was unwell. Now those feelings were laced with guilt. He had failed to protect her, failed to keep the bad men away.