“It’s the biggest usable room aboard.”
“Apart from the cinema.”
“But the cinema’s full of seats.”
“That’s right. Clear the equipment out of the gym…”
“Easy enough to do…”
“…Chuck it overboard if necessary…”
“…a waste, but it’d give you plenty of room.”
“Move in some tables and chairs.”
“Beds?”
“Bedding on the floor.”
“Right!”
“And you should be able to hold forty people in there. Easy to oversee. Easy to guard.”
“You’ve the boxes from the stage if you want some height.”
“And the parallel bars up the walls.”
“You could just take out the stewards in teams to get food and clear up.”
“Seamen to see to anything else that needed doing.”
“And some officers to oversee them, holding the rest as hostages against good behavior.”
“It’d work!” concluded Robin, face aglow with excitement, until she remembered she was describing the hell being suffered by some of her closest friends. More soberly, she added, “Well, I can’t see any other way…”
“Nor can I.” Richard sat back, massaging tired eyes.
“But you’re assuming,” said Angus, “that these people are well organized. Intelligent. That they know what they’re doing.”
“Yes,” said Richard. “I think we have to assume that.”
“So,” said Hood slowly, “your worst-case scenario goes like this. Ten or twelve heavily armed hostiles. Forecastle head watch. Bridge watch. Engine room watch. Two more watching the bulk of the crew in the ship’s gymnasium. Two more to oversee the cooking, tidying, toilet, what have you. Maybe two more to oversee the seamen if need be. Two backups. Leader or coordinator. Whatever. Yes; it’d work real sweet with twelve.”
“Twelve looking after forty,” chimed in Weary. “Not much rest. Damn little sleep. They’ll be getting tired. Jumpy. They’ve got to move soon or they’ve lost it. Fish or cut bait. I wonder what they’re waiting for?”
“God knows. But you’re right about moving soon,” said Richard. “And it’s the same for us. If we’re going in, we have to do it quickly, while they’re at their most exhausted and we’ve got our fresh troops. And before they get any fresh troops.”
“We can up anchor whenever you like. We’ll have the south wind behind us,” said Weary. “If we go with the dawn and it holds through the day, we’d sight her tomorrow evening. Go in tomorrow night.”
And it lay there on the table before them, like the corpse of some foul thing. Within twenty-four hours, if they chose, they could be creeping aboard Prometheus to face twelve desperate, heavily armed terrorists to try to release their shipmates without getting everybody killed.
Tomorrow night.
“No,” said Richard at last. “It’s too risky. Especially without the grenades.” Now that he had had them and had lost them, he realized how much he really needed them. The dud grenades would have to be replaced. “And it’s too soon. We’d be going off at half cock. We need another day. Maybe two. And we still need that extra edge. Damn!” His hand slammed down on the tabletop. “Three days.”
“What?” For the first time tonight, Robin’s mind was not on the same wavelength as his. But she was still trying to come to terms with the news about the faulty thunderflash grenades.
“Three days’ hard sailing. Back to Fujayrah and then back here. With one of the other boxes. Doc, could you do that?”
“Yes.”
“Right. You go at first light. With Martyr. He knows about munitions too. For God’s sake, test them there this time. Angus, Robin, you and I will go ashore now. We’ll meet Martyr off the plane. And tomorrow we’ll hire a small coastal craft. Do some fishing off Bushehr.”
“Find Prometheus,” whispered Robin.
“Find out what we can and get back here within three days ourselves. Meet up for a final briefing. Go in then.” He looked around the table. “It’s Wednesday night now. The better the day, the better the deed: we go at dawn on Sunday.”
Chapter Nine
Once again Weary stayed aboard, checking the multihull from stem to stern now that he knew they had seventy-two hours’ hard sailing ahead. Hood came with the others to get provisions for the return run to Fujayrah. Although the Soukh would have closed its gates at sunset, he hoped to get all he needed at Manama Port. Richard and Robin were going to meet Martyr’s plane. Angus was going to find them a small coastal craft.
Hood took control of the little inflatable’s outboard and sat on the full rubberized side at the back. Richard sat at the other side of the little motor, the two big men balancing each other, but raising the inflatable’s round bow well clear of the water. Angus and Robin sat on the slatted wooden seat that divided her halfway along her stubby length, facing backward so that the four of them could talk.
“Guess you have all known each other a good long time?” Hood’s question, coming over the buzz of the motor and the slap of the waves, was apparently innocent, and yet Richard had been expecting it. He had seen the calculating, careful light enter those calm brown eyes even as Weary had thrown himself and Katapult wholeheartedly into Richard’s plan. Hood needed to be convinced that this was the best way. That this was the best team. Richard had no doubt that Robin and he passed muster with the careful American, but why should Hood take their word for the quality of the rest of them? The flamboyant Angus might easily prove to be less than he appeared at first sight. The mysterious Martyr all reputation and no reality. As for Salah Malik — all they had established about him was that he worked for the PLO, he might be dead, and he probably wasn’t coming. Not very confidence-building. Richard could see that.
“Look,” he said. “Angus and I were at school together. I’ve known Robin since she was sixteen. I was married to her sister. But what you really want to know about started ten years ago.”
“It was an insurance fraud,” struck in Robin, the business manager.
“It centered on the first Prometheus.”
“The one you fell off,” Hood said, grinning at Robin, “trying to save a parrot.”
“You told! You rat!” said Robin to Richard.
“That’s right. Well, Prometheus was due to sail from Kharg to Rotterdam with a full load of crude,” continued Richard, riding over her protest.
“But the plan was for her to slip into Durban, sell her oil illegally, and then sink so the owner could claim insurance on both hull and cargo,” completed Robin.
“That was the plan. Then an industrial accident killed off most of the officers aboard before she could sail, and we went out to replace them. I was running a crewfinding agency in those days.”
“Crewfinders,” said Hood. He knew about that, too: it was the best in the world.
“They knew nothing of what was planned,” added Angus. “Then you went aboard later, Robin.”
“The cargo changed hands several times on the in- ternational spot market,” said Robin. “My father owned it at one point. I went aboard then. They need a new third mate in any case.”
“A whole set of officers replaced and then they needed a new third mate! Sounds like a death ship to me.” Hood’s quiet comment stopped the rush of information for a moment.
Then Richard picked up the thread again. “We knew nothing about anything illegal. We were just trying to bring her home. But some of the old crew were still aboard and one of my own Crewfinders people was up to no good. The long and the short of it is this: the original plan still went ahead behind our backs…”