Marsh woke up. He opened his eyes and looked around the inside of the lifeboat, wondering where the hell he was. And then it dawned on him. Around him was a cocoon of heat and semi darkness. His body raged in discomfort and his skin felt like canvas stretched over a tight frame. He moved and the pain in his knee made him gasp out loud. He remembered the rifle shots and reached down to rub at the joint. It was swollen and very tender to the touch.
His mind dragged itself from a feeling of lethargy and fed small nuggets of painful memory into his brain. Pictures opened up for him and he recalled the horrific scenes that had brought him to his present predicament. Each event played itself out like a scene from a nightmare and he sagged mentally when he realised he was still in mortal danger and he knew that he had to get off the ship.
When Marsh had crawled into the lifeboat, it had offered sanctuary, albeit temporary. Now it was hot and airless and he knew he was in danger of dehydrating seriously. He already had a raging thirst and hunger pains shot through his belly adding to his discomfort.
He moved and straightened his legs in an effort to find some comfort on the hard boards. The effort and subsequent flash of pain almost made him pass out. He abandoned the task and lay there gasping with his mouth open in a silent cry of pain and anguish.
After several minutes, when he felt some strength return to him, Marsh gingerly lifted up the edge of the tarpaulin. The sunlight burst through like a brilliant flare and he was forced to close his eyes against it. He lowered the tarpaulin and kept his eyes closed for a while.
He tried again, but this time he inched the tarpaulin up and squinted against the glare until he was able to look around and take stock of his surroundings. He could see the aft deck of the Taliba was deserted, but that did not mean there was nobody about. He looked towards mid-ships and saw a couple of the crew leaning on the ship’s rail in quiet conversation. Behind them was the superstructure of the bridge and accommodation block. There was one person on the starboard side of the bridge out on the wing, looking across the water at something.
Marsh moved to the other side of the lifeboat and lifted the tarpaulin cover gently. He could see a scattering of islands in the distance, which was probably what the figure on the bridge was looking at. Marsh had no idea what islands they were. But this was the Caribbean and islands meant boats and pleasure craft.
It was then that Marsh realised that the Taliba was heading towards the land.
He began thinking ahead: should he chance it or not? He could die here on Khan’s boat or take his chances out there in the sea. Only the latter offered an extremely slim advantage, but that depended on how close to the land the Taliba would sail.
He lowered the tarpaulin and started to think.
To remain where he was, inside the stifling heat of the lifeboat, was not an option. If he gave himself up to the ship’s crew, he would almost certainly be killed and dumped overboard. If he waited until nightfall before leaving his hiding place he would almost certainly have drifted into unconsciousness because of serious dehydration. After considering all the alternatives, Marsh knew there was only one option: he had to get off the ship. There was no choice, he knew he couldn’t go just then; he had to wait until the ship was close enough to shore to give him a fair chance. He pulled a lifejacket from one of the lifeboat’s lockers and lay down on his back, closing his eyes and thinking how his luck was panning out. The sea had tried to claim his once, and now it might get the chance to claim him again.
It was sometime later when Marsh woke. The heat was stifling but after looking out from beneath the tarpaulin, he could see the sun was lower in the sky and the ship was much closer to land. By his reckoning the ship was about five miles from the shore.
He eased the tarpaulin up and slid carefully from the lifeboat. Keeping the bulk of the lifeboat between him and the bridge to avoid detection, he edged towards the ship’s rail. The pain in his knee was almost unbearable, but the thought of what might happen to him if he was caught, was even more so. He leaned over the rail and rolled forward, dropping into the sea.
He hit the water with a smack and was immediately drawn under and spewed out into the ship’s wake, thankfully clear of the propellers. He wanted to gasp in deep draughts of air but tried to keep himself below the waterline for as long as he possibly could before surfacing.
His wounded leg still hurt like blazes, but Marsh kept himself afloat while struggling into the lifejacket by treading water with his good leg. He felt refreshed by the plunge into the sea but knew it would not last long, so he turned towards the direction of the land and began swimming.
Francesini had placed the satellite photographs on his desk and was studying them when Starling walked in. When the admiral had told him that there was a chance that Al Qaeda had three nukes, Francesini asked Hamilton Ford and his sidekick, Navarro to leave the office for a while, then had what could only be described as a heated discussion with the admiral.
Starling’s excuse was that the evidence had not been available to him until shortly before he had asked Francesini to come to his office. He apologised for the discourtesy but blamed it on Washington; always a good source at which to lay the blame.
“What do you make of it, Remo?” the admiral asked. As he put the question, he walked over to the coffee pot that Francesini always kept hot on the bureau and poured himself a cup.
Francesini looked up. “Well, you tell me that two nukes have gone missing within the space of three weeks and now another one. If Al Qaeda has them, how on earth can they expect to get them into America without being detected? We’ve got this country sewn up tighter than a duck’s arse.”
“It’s a big country, Remo,” Starling offered unhelpfully as he lifted the cup to his mouth. “There are lots of ways.”
“So tell me. They can’t fly them over and drop them from a hijacked airliner. The delivery system needed for a nuke attack is too sophisticated for a hijack operation. If they smuggle them in by road, the chances are we’ll pick them up and stop them. But if they do manage to get them into the country, the odds are they will put them where they will do the most damage, in any one of our major cities. And the technique used to explode a nuke is quite sophisticated; you can’t just leave them in the trunk of a car in a car park and blow them up. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It never does.” He sipped his coffee thoughtfully. Eventually he asked Francesini about the man they had picked up dying from radiation burns. “We never came up with anything, did we?”
Francesini sighed deeply and gathered up the photographs. “You think there might be a connection?”
“I’m clutching at straws, Remo. Who was he? Where did he come from? Remember, the first two bombs went missing some weeks ago. Where are they?” He didn’t expect any answers. “Tell me again about the fellow.”
Francesini shovelled the photographs into a folder and locked them away in a filing cabinet. “He was found wandering down in the Florida Keys area. His DNA profile puts him in the Middle East, Arab origin. Aged about thirty five. Looked like he’d been in the water for some time. We couldn’t put out a missing persons enquiry because of the security implications.”
“So he was found in the Keys,” Starling conjectured. “Obviously he’d been in the water. Did he fall from a ship? If so, where was the ship from? How many ships have been in the Gulf and the Caribbean in the last month?” He held his hand up defensively. “I know; too many to account for. It could be Cuba, Remo.”
Francesini laughed. “Unlikely sir; we’ve got more agents there than the Castro faithful. All promised a future in the good ‘ole US of A’ after so many years of loyal service, etcetera, etcetera. We would know if Al Qaeda was in league with the Cubans, no doubt about it.”