A glance back at the crane. The man had reached its cabin. ‘Quick, before he gets his gun ready,’ she said, scurrying towards the lock. Spencer gave the guard a nervous look, then hurried after her.
The roadway turned sharply away from the waterfront. Eddie kept going in a straight line, picking his way between a clutch of containers and stacks of metal plates. He had also heard the barrage of gunfire, coming to a similar conclusion as Nina: Trakas’s men had probably set up a roadblock.
He reached the side of the first dry dock, pausing in the shelter of the containers. A ship was in the drained tank, the rear half of its superstructure suspended overhead from the crane. Where was De Klerx’s boat?
There — creeping into the second dock. It was running dark, a ghostly shape fading into view as it entered the wash of the boatyard’s floodlights. To reach it, he would have to either skirt around the inshore end of the dry dock past the crane, or cut across the gangways leading to the disassembled boat; the smashed remains of a yacht blocked the way to the lock gates bridging the seaward end.
The first route, he decided. It was longer, but seemed safer. The dry-docked craft was missing large sections of its deck, shadows making it hard to tell what was merely darkness and what was an open hole. He broke cover and ran—
The echoing boom of a rifle from above and the piercing crack of a bullet splintering concrete just behind him came as one.
Someone was in the crane, high up enough to have been obscured from Eddie’s hiding place. He cursed and changed direction. He was too far from the containers to retreat without giving the sniper a clear shot at his back. Instead he charged up one of the gangways. Another shot snapped past him, impacting against the ship’s hull. He reached the deck. There was a hatch not far away, but it was closed, and taking even a second to open it would leave him a sitting duck.
But closer was a missing panel in the bulkhead. He leapt through it into the black void beyond—
Discovering to his horror that it really was a void. There was no floor!
He dropped—
Something hit him like a baseball bat to the chest.
A girder, one of the missing deck’s supports. He caught it with one arm, pain punching at his heart through bruised ribs. His gun fell and banged off unseen objects a worrying distance below.
Eddie hung helplessly for a moment before finding the beam’s edge with his now-empty hand. He swung his legs, but no footholds presented themselves, forcing him to draw himself upwards by sheer muscle until he could hook a heel over the girder—
A shrill hammerblow reverberated through the metal as another round hit a few feet away. The sniper had fired through the gap in the bulkhead. Even though he was clear of the point of impact, the clatter of ricocheting bullet fragments was stark warning that the Yorkshireman was not out of danger.
He hauled himself on to the beam, finding just enough remaining deck on its far side to allow him to stand. Sufficient light was coming from outside to let him pick out his surroundings. Sidestepping to a doorway, he slipped through into a passage. Its aft end was open to the night. He cautiously made his way down it, realising that the superstructure had been removed to give access to the engines below. Heavy machinery was visible through the gaping hole.
A gangway led from the deck to the quay between the dry docks. De Klerx’s ship was still approaching the open lock — and Eddie felt a flash of alarm as he saw two figures traversing the closed one ahead of him. Nina and Spencer were picking their way across the top of the huge gates. Too quickly. They must have thought the sniper had been firing at them, and were now rushing for solid ground. If either slipped and fell into the dock, they would be killed when they hit the concrete below.
But they would also be killed if the sniper saw them. If Eddie made a run for the quay, he could draw the guard’s fire—
He belatedly registered a new sound, a low mechanical moan. It was close by, but he couldn’t work out what it was — until he saw the shadows on the deck shift as something passed in front of the floodlights.
Something large.
Realisation struck — as the section of suspended superstructure hit the ship.
30
The lock gates were eighteen inches wide, thick wood reinforced with steel to withstand the sea’s immense pressure. They should have been straightforward to negotiate, but their tops were slimy with algae and splatterings of bird excrement, forcing Nina to take each step with great care.
But now she was three quarters of the way across the dry dock’s entrance. Ahead, De Klerx’s ship was almost at the mouth of the second dock. She risked a brief look inland, for the first time seeing something of the ongoing gunfight. Some of the boatyard’s guards had blocked the road to the docks by dragging a section of mast across it. She couldn’t see the truck bearing the Crucible, but it sounded as if the Dutchman’s men had spread out to exchange fire. One of the defenders lay unmoving at the roadside, but she couldn’t tell if the intruders had taken casualties of their own.
Movement to her side. She glanced at the crane, fearful that the man in it had spotted her — but instead saw the towering machine turning, swinging its suspended cargo at the berthed ship—
The hanging block of decks and bulkheads smashed into the rest of the superstructure with a colossal cacophony of rending metal.
The impact threw Eddie against a wall. Steel screamed around him, the ship warping and tearing as its two sections were crushed back together. Rivets burst loose and clanged off the bulkheads like bullets. He had to get outside—
A spar six inches thick punched through the side of the passage and lanced at his stomach.
He jerked sideways — not quite quickly enough. Its edge tore through his clothes and slashed his waist before burying itself in the wall behind him. The whole corridor twisted, turning into a demented funhouse as it closed in. He tried to duck under the beam, but more jagged spears ripped through the ruptured wall at him—
A deep, monstrous boom like the tolling of a satanic bell… and everything stopped.
The ship tipped sideways beneath him before slowly rolling back upright. Groans of tortured metal echoed through the vessel. Eddie gasped in relief and fear at the sight of a crooked knifepoint just inches from his chest. The swinging section was entangled in the rest of the superstructure. He had to make a break for it before the crane moved again.
He turned — and stopped in sudden pain as something dug into his ankle.
A deck plate had crumpled like paper, bending upwards over his foot. He tried to pull free, but another girder was wedged behind his heel.
The vessel jolted again, a shrill whine rising over the ear-splitting scrape of steel against steel. He redoubled his efforts to twist his foot from its cage, but the gap was too small.
Trapped — and suddenly he felt himself rise sickeningly as the crane ripped the whole of the mangled superstructure from the hull.
The man in the crane looked down at the ship with both anger and an almost boyish glee at the destruction he was causing. All he knew was that someone had killed Mr Trakas, and armed intruders were on the loose in the boatyard. He had seen one go into the dry-docked ship, and was doing everything he could to ensure he never came out.
The crane’s motors wailed as it hauled the wreckage upwards. Shredded debris rained back into the gaping hole in the deck. No sign of his target, though. The opening the bald man had gone through was now buried in a crumpled mass of metal. He had to make sure he didn’t find another exit…
A derelict building on the far side of the other dock caught his eye — as did a ship slipping in through the open lock. His boss’s killers were trying to get away by sea! His anger returned, and he snatched up his rifle, before remembering his original target. He shoved a control lever forward to slide the hoist and the wreckage it was lifting to the far end of the jib, then worked another to set the crane into a turn.