“I don’t know.” Robin was actually deeply concerned. She had wanted so desperately to find her father here among her kidnapped friends and to release them all together. But finding no one only deepened the mystery and renewed the pain. And put them back in that position of being helpless bystanders. She hated that. Then, half ruefully, she admitted to herself that in this case it was simply impossible to please her, for, while she hated inactivity, she had found the action so far not at all to her taste because it had put either her husband or her unborn child at risk.
As she and Chris strolled along, fifteen feet above the deck, her mind was preoccupied but her eyes were automatically busy. She was a fully qualified ship’s captain after all, and part owner of everything she surveyed. All at once she called to Christine, “Look. The accommodation ladder’s down.”
The ladder was halfway along the ship on the starboard side, just opposite the midway set of steps leading down from the catwalk to the deck. Both Chris and Robin ran easily down these at once and set out across the expanse of green deck toward the ladder’s head. Down here, the heat was intensified, reflecting back up off the deck, which was soon singeing even Robin’s callused feet through the thin soles of her lightweight footwear. They ran across as fast as they could, therefore, and stood looking bemusedly down. The steps were almost at full extension, falling to within five feet of the water. They stirred slightly in the steady south wind and banged dully on Prometheus’s side. “This is odd, too,” said Robin. “All of it is bloody odd.”
She turned, absently running her fingers through her golden curls. And her eyes lit on something else odd.
Just inboard from the top of the ladder was a hatch. It was a low inspection hatch that consisted of a simple trapdoor, hinged and clipped, on a raised rim some eighteen inches high. It led down to a system of tunnels that wove around and between the tanks so they could be inspected from without as well as within.
The hatch cover should have been secured by two quick release clips at all times. The clips on this one were open. Her mind still preoccupied with the mystery of the accommodation ladder, she crossed to this and automatically stooped to snap the catch closed. Then she saw the stains on the deck. Crouching carefully, too wise to think of kneeling, she drifted the tips of her fingers over the brown mark nearest to the hatch itself. They came away sticky. She put them fastidiously to her nose. Even granted that it came from an iron deck, there was no mistaking the iron smell of the sticky stuff on her fingers.
She straightened at once, looking around narroweyed. Chris was still staring down at the ladder, unaware of this new development. Oblivious of the sudden purposefulness of her friend’s movements. With her right foot, Robin snapped the nearest quick-release down. “Chris,” she called quietly. “Let’s go. Now!”
At first, Chris failed to understand the reason they ran down the remainder of the deck but the instant they were in the A deck corridor, Richard came pounding down the stairs, MP-5 at the ready, and Robin supplied the explanation.
“I don’t know who it is,” said Robin as her eyes met Richard’s, “but there’s someone down in the midships inspection area. Someone bleeding pretty badly.”
“Okay,” snapped Richard ten minutes later, “unclip it.”
Weary’s toe moved upward infinitesimally and the clip sprang open. The two men stood tensely, awaiting developments.
Nothing happened.
Weary sidled round to the hinge side of the raised cover and, holding his Kalashnikhov upright on his right hip, he leaned across the metal disk and took its handle from behind. Then he straightened slowly, bringing the cover up to protect his body like a heavy iron shield.
On the far side of the deck, Salah had just done the same thing. Richard put his radio to his lips. “Going in.”
“Going in,” said Martyr in a hiss of static.
Both men carried radios, MP-5 machine pistols, and torches. No thunderflashes. Not down here. The guns were more for effect than anything else. To rupture a tank even with a single bullet would probably be to detonate the ship.
At Richard’s feet, an iron-runged ladder led down into a tunnel dimly lit by low-wattage bulbs heavily protected. Nothing that could ignite stray pockets of gas was allowed down here. Even the leads between the lights were specially sheathed. Richard checked the gun’s safety, then let it hang from his shoulder. He let the radio hang from one wrist and the rubberized torch from the other. They would slide from elbow to wrist depending on what he was doing.
He glanced across the deck one last time, then down he went. As soon as he stepped onto the ladder, Weary was there above him, Kalashnikhov pointing down. Unlike the exploration of the bridge-house, this was a job for one man on each side. One man who knew the tunnels well.
Richard stepped down off the ladder into the first dim gallery and turned, holding his breath. No sound. He allowed the torch to slide down his right wrist and slap into his hand. He flicked it on without moving his feet and shone it on the iron-grating floor. At first nothing. He flashed it farther afield. And there it was, like Ariadne’s thread in the Labyrinth: a bright drop of blood. He put his radio to his lips. “Level one, corridor A,” he breathed. “Going aft. Blood.”
He moved off at once, torch beam on the floor, looking for more blood. Whoever was in here now must have been in the surgery when they boarded. The fugitive had been disturbed by their arrival and fled to this bizarre hiding place. If he realized he had left a trail of blood, then he could use it as a trap. If he wished to attack instead of hiding. If he had the strength after losing all this blood.
“Don’t try to imagine who it might be,” Weary had warned them. “You want it to be one of your people hiding from terrorists. Fine. It might be. Or it might be a terrorist wounded and hiding out himself. Look, Richard, we don’t know what’s gone on here. For all we know, the SAS could have come aboard while we were off Zarakkuh and sorted it out like they did the Iranian Embassy in London.”
“SBS more likely, but I see what you mean.”
“Right. We’ll all have time to think this through properly later. But for now, just see what happens and react accordingly. Fast. Remember: no presuppositions. They’ll get you killed every time.”
Another drop of blood. He went on down the tunnel, every nerve tense. As he proceeded, a memory began to stir. There was something down here. On this level. Something slightly unusual. Hardly worthy of note and yet he had remarked upon it once. What? When? Good God, yes. There was a little room down here. One of those tiny pieces of fun the occasional marine architect likes to add to a design. A useful little store place among all this maze of tunnels for the equipment one might need down here. Just the sort of place to keep all the sorts of things you were liable to leave on deck or up in the bridge-house by accident. By God, there was a room down here.
That’s where he was.
“And don’t be fooled into thinking there’s only one of them either,” Weary insisted in his memory, rehearsing the things his combat sergeant had told him out in Vietnam. “There’s only one wounded by the looks of things, but maybe he’s got a friend.”
“C. J.,” whispered Richard into his radio, “I think I know where they are.”
Five minutes later they converged from either end of that long, midships tunnel to the head of the ladder going down. Silently, and without the aid of their torches, they looked down into that secret little room. They could see and hear nothing. Except, when Richard knelt and slid his finger along the top rung, there was the telltale sticky wetness of the track he had been following. That was it. Here they were.