“Break whose back?”
“Easy? Christ, you’d think they’d know. Takes years of training to make sure we don’t break their backs every time.”
“Whose back?”
“Broke her back. Middle of a storm. Middle of the Channel. Perfect.”
“What did you do?” she demanded, with all the force she dared, leaning as close to him as she could without touching him.
Just at that moment, another bolt of lightning filled the room with intense light for a micron and established every detail of his face on her retinas. He was turned toward her, kaffiyah open, eyes wide but blind with sleep. The right side of his face, nearest the brightness, was perfectly illuminated. The left shaded mercifully into shadow. The right side showed an open, cheerful, almost boyish countenance with high cheekbones, deep laugh lines, broad, square chin. The left side, beyond the crushed nose, twisted away into a ruin to match the ruin of the left side of his body.
“Oh, God!” she said, startled.
“Oh, God,” he echoed at once, speaking incredibly quickly, “she’s breaking up. Must get away. I’ll never get off alive if I don’t…No don’t…Don’t get in the way! Leave me alone! I’ll kill…Kill…KILL…” He slammed upright. She saw him outlined against the porthole, arms reaching out as though holding something. As though pointing at something. “Goodbyeeeeeeeee…” he sang. Like the old song. Triumphant. Insane.
He slammed back onto the table, rigid. “Nooooo…” A little boy’s voice, sad and disappointed.
“Noooo…” squeezed out of him. He hadn’t even breathed in.
“NOOOO…” Crushed out of him with the last of his air. The last of his life — or should have been. He was spread out against the table, shaking, in the grip of the ghost of whatever force had done this to him. During the breakup of whatever ship.
He was gone. Far beyond Asha’s ability to recall him. She slowly got to her feet and crossed to the door to escape his cries of pain. She was disappointed to have missed the opportunity, for on the face of it she had learned nothing of any use. Except the depth of the madness gripping the man in whose power they lay.
She had to contact Fatima and get them both out of this situation at the earliest possible instant. But for the moment she had better go into hiding herself — if this man remembered anything of this when he woke up tomorrow then Asha was as good as dead. This was, after all, the man who had butchered Cecil Smyke without a second thought.
On the sixth day, things in the gym changed. Early morning saw the arrival of the books from the ship’s library. Then the televisions and videos were wheeled in. Restrictions on talking were relaxed. “I don’t like this,” were John’s first words to Bob Stark.
“Neither do I,” said the big American. “Looks like this is shaping up to be a long stay after all.”
The pressure was on them now to regulate the crew’s amusements carefully. They did not want the team they had built up so painstakingly in adversity to fall apart now. They still had work to do. It remained obvious that the only way forward lay outside. But how to get out there? Able to talk now, they started to plan in detail.
Only to find that on the seventh day things had changed again. The leader came in at dawn, backed by a phalanx of five heavily armed men.
“Where is she?” he screamed, his scarred hand tight around the stock of his rifle. Prometheus’s crew, just coming awake, looked at him in dazed confusion. Only John and Bob had the wits about them to realize what he was talking about.
“Where is she?” he screamed again.
Silence.
“Very well then. Up and out. All of you. Line up at this end. We are going to search the ship. You are going to search the ship, under the direction of my guards.”
The search revealed nothing, but such was the leader’s rage that he made one major miscalculation. He allowed John, Bob, Kerem, and Twelve Toes to form a group together. As they pretended to search for Asha, they put together their final escape plans. Clearly whatever the terrorists were waiting for was not likely to happen soon. On the other hand, the fact that Prometheus’s complement had been here this long with no sign of help from the outside probably meant that no help was coming soon either.
There were ways of getting out, however: Asha had proved that. And there were places aboard to hide in. The terrorists seemed to know the layout of tankers very well indeed, but the fact remained that no two tankers are identical, and Prometheus had nooks and crannies only her crew knew about. But escaping from the gymnasium and hiding aboard would not be good enough. It would only be the first step. The prime objective would be to get clear away. To cross the Gulf, if a big lifeboat could be stolen, or to contact local shipping if the people who escaped had to take a liferaft or swim for it. And there did seem to be a lot of local shipping. From the main deck, they could see a fishing fleet out in the Gulf, and one neat little thirty-footer cruising inquisitively close at hand. It was even near enough for them to read its name: Alouette.
But then the terrorists’ patience ran out. They were all herded back into the gym where they were made to stand, guards clustered threateningly around them, and listen to another speech. The speech went on for twenty minutes and was completed by an enraged gesture from the speaker. Immediately the guards opened fire, spraying the ceiling with bullets. Glass from the shattered light fittings, dust, and splinters came raining down. It was a mercy, thought John, that the gym had been added as an afterthought, that it wasn’t iron plate up there, as it was in the rest of the bridge-house, or the room would have been full of lethal ricochets.
“Let that be a lesson to you,” snarled the leader in the echoing silence after the shooting had stopped. “This is not a game. If you forget that, then you are all dead men. Now clear this mess up and get the books and televisions out of here. No more talking!”
So the silent boredom was resumed. But this time the number of people willing to join in the games was sharply reduced. Many were genuinely frightened by the terrorists’ display. Waverers were further disturbed as the heat of the day began to move into the crowded room and they realized the leader had made good another of his earlier threats and switched the air-conditioning off. But those threats made the escape committee even more determined to get someone out as soon as possible. How to do this remained problematic, for they were watched ever more closely by the grim guards. There was only one wild card: Asha. John and Bob moved their beds nearest to the doors out onto the afterdeck. If she was going to make contact she would do it here during the night.
At about two the next morning, John was dozing uneasily in the humid heat when he became aware of the faintest tapping noise. The regularity of the sound jerked him awake and he realized it was Morse code. Someone was tapping in Morse code on the door by his head. It could only be her. An emotion welled up in him which made it hard for him to breathe. It took him a moment to get control of himself, and then he was tapping back.
Once they had established a dialogue, she made a brief report, telling him what she knew of numbers, dispositions, watches, and patrols. He did not interrupt with the questions he was burning to ask — How was she? How did she escape? Where was she hiding? Instead he waited until she finished by saying she thought she could get one person out safely.
— Bob, he tapped. He can try to take the helicopter
— Tomorrow
— Yes
— I will get this door key
— Yes
— Tomorrow same time