Katapult flew.
Her attitude changed. Her head lifted. It felt as though the whole of her central hull jumped out of the water and soared from wave crest to wave crest leaving only the outriders in contact with the sea. And the knot meter, Katapult’s speedometer, clicked up remorselessly. Thirty-five knots. Thirty-seven. Thirty-nine. Forty. At forty knots she held steady and Richard felt her settle into it. The exhilaration was complete. The captivation of his senses total. It was an experience so real, so superreal, it had a dreamlike quality. It was impossible that such ecstasy should last. But last it did, with the wild spume flying; the rigging howling; the winches, cleats, plates, and blocks that held it all together, all groaning to break free; the slap and thunder of the waves against her; the ecstasy of holding the thrilling helm-spokes in his fists: all of it lasted and lasted.
Martyr and Salah came up, dazed, into the grip of it and stared about themselves in dumb wonder. All of them stood or sat, lost in the wonder of it, for fifteen minutes, twenty, thirty; until Prometheus came into view.
Instantly the mood changed. Martyr and Malik leaped up onto the afterdeck and opened the hatch. Mar- tyr went down, and, within minutes, the guns were being handed up. Then the thunderflashes. Malik passed them forward and down to Chris and Robin, who put them on the cockpit sole to keep them dry. Then the two men came forward again and began to fit the long clips of ammunition into the guns. Loosening the harnesses so that the light, robust assault rifles could easily be slung across their backs. Salah disappeared down into the forward cabin to reemerge with the Heckler and Koch MP-5 machine guns.
Robin went to relieve Richard at the wheel. Chris took the spinnaker ropes from Doc. They had talked it through. They all knew what to do. The men went down into the forward cabin and quickly changed into shirts, jeans, and silent-soled footwear. Grimly they began to arm themselves. Each slung a Kalashnikhov across his shoulders. Richard and Salah also took a machine pistol each. They had been up before. They were going first now. Martyr and Doc took portable radios. They all took thunderflashes and went up on deck. Last out, Weary took Katapult’s handgun and laid it on the table, beside the last two Kalashnikhovs, in case the women needed an extra edge. Then he changed his mind and put it instead beside the radio where they were due to be monitoring transmissions while the four men were aboard the tanker.
He got up into the cockpit just in time to hear Richard ask, “Did you ever get a chance to test these out?” He was holding a thunderflash.
Martyr shook his head. In all the confusion, it was the one thing they had forgotten to do.
Richard looked up at the rapidly closing hulk of his tanker, then he twisted the top of the grenade he was holding and dropped it overboard. Three seconds later, the sea behind them lit up for an instant soundlessly. Richard nodded once, in terse satisfaction. The attack had effectively begun.
The reality of it hit Robin like a truck. That gigantic hull bearing down on them at more than forty miles an hour held twelve trained killers, armed to the teeth, each one of them ready and able to kill any or all of the four men going in against them. And what of those men? Weary at least was a trained combat soldier, but how his damaged brain might function on the firing line, there was no way of predicting. And Salah — dear Salah — what was he capable of? If his reputation was anything to go by, he was battle hardened and every bit as fearsome as the other terrorists aboard. And yet he had always seemed to her the gentle diplomat, never the wild-eyed fanatic. And C. J., like a father to her: she had seen him move like a panther along dangerous decks before. But never against men like these.
And Richard. What she thought about Richard was dictated by heart, not head. Never in all the years she had known him had he let her down. She had fallen in love with him at the age of sixteen when he had appeared like a film star beside her father’s yacht in St. Tropez, and she had loved him ever since. The thought that he might fail was completely foreign to her nature. But the odds against him were so high.
Then she thought of John Higgins and Asha Quartermaine; Bob Stark and all the rest. The men and women on Prometheus, pirated, kidnapped, terrorized. Of her own father, perhaps aboard with all the rest. And her rage gave her new determination. They would break free at the first chance, she knew. No matter who stood against them. As soon as they realized help was at hand, it would no longer be four against twelve, but twelve against forty-four. And God help the terrorists then!
“Easy…” said Weary, fussing.
“We’re going to the downwind side of the hull,” she said. “We have a quarter of a mile of wind shadow, Doc. I’ve got to keep her speed up.” Even as she said it, they flashed past the stern and Prometheus came between them and the wind like a fifty-foot-high wall.
Inertia took them past the absolute stillness of the bridge-house — the wall rising to more than a hundred feet there — then some light air refilled the top of the spinnaker, enough to stop it flapping as Katapult’s speed picked up again. “Wait for it,” called Robin, in charge now, as the men lurked on the companionway.
“Nobody on the port bridge-wing,” called Chris softly, not quite as preoccupied with the spinnaker ropes as she might have seemed.
The Sampson posts flashed by and they were halfway along the deck.
“Wait for it,” called Robin again. “Just a little longer…”
“Keep saying to yourself,” hissed Weary, “ ‘This boat is worth a quarter of a million. This boat is worth a quarter of…”
“Let go!”
“…a million.’”
The spinnaker flapped up, whipping clear of the boom in a trice, anchored only by the block at the top of the mast. As the way came off Katapult, Robin spun the wheel and the starboard outrigger slid neatly under the anchor chain and stopped. The loose spinnaker floated like a magic cloak a hundred feet above, hiding the forecastle head completely under its billows. Both women were on the afterdeck at once, presenting an eye-catching display of maximium distress and minimum clothing. “It had better be worth it,” said Chris grimly. “I swore I’d never do this sort of thing again!”
Richard went up the chain first, sliding through the hawse hole and rolling back against the pulpit wall, machine gun at the ready in case there was a watch up here after all. There wasn’t. He waited where he was for an instant until Salah came through. Salah rolled over the other way, and the two of them knelt tensely, waiting for Martyr and Doc. Richard’s mind was racing, adapting to the situation at lightning speed. They could afford to get sorted into teams up here instead of on the main deck as planned because the spinnaker, one of the flying guy ropes wrapped around the flagpole at Prometheus’s head, continued to protect them from prying eyes.
The wait was not long. Both Martyr and Weary came through quickly and quietly. Prometheus’s forecastle head was massive but it was packed with equipment. The two anchor winches were here. The spare anchor. Bollards. Housings. Vents. Cover of every sort. Richard raised his hand, and they paused for a micron more. Richard gestured. Weary fell in behind him. Martyr joined Salah and Richard led off.