‘I thought Caleb’s command was tied up waiting to go in for repair,’ said Robin, surprised.
‘His other command. Not his corvette, his Kingfisher,’ said Bonnie, as though this explained everything.
‘What’s that?’ Robin’s eyebrows rose.
‘It’s a fast patrol vessel. Folks have been calling it Shaldag?’ Bonnie raised her intonation as though asking a question. ‘But it’s also called a Kingfisher which I reckon is prettier. I don’t know if that’s a translation or just another designation. But it’s the floating equivalent of an American Corvette. The General Motors Stingray roadster Corvette. And I for one would kill for a ride in one of those!’
Robin laughed and gave in. How could she resist? She looked across at the reception desk but it was empty. She fleetingly wondered whether she should leave a message telling Richard where she was off to, but Bonnie’s ride pulled up outside and she stopped hesitating. The two girls left arm in arm, chatting excitedly, bound for the riverside docking facility where Caleb kept his other command.
Ten minutes after their car pulled away from outside the big glass double doors, another smart staff car pulled up and Colonel Laurent Kebila climbed out of it. He came in through the doors, setting off the security alarm without raising an eyebrow. Andre Wanago, the hotel manager, answered his peremptory ring on the service bell in person.
‘Captain Robin Mariner,’ the Colonel rapped impatiently. ‘I understand she is here. Please inform her that I want her at once. I have orders to take her directly to the president himself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Andre. ‘She’s just gone out with Dr Holliday. I saw them leave on the security monitor but I have no idea where they were heading.’
Colonel Kebila slapped his hand on to the desk top with a sound like a pistol shot, turned on his heel and set off the security alarm once more as he strode angrily out to his car.
Bonnie’s Kingfisher fast patrol boat, known to the others as the Shaldag, was considerably larger than a Corvette Stingray sports car — to begin with it was nearly thirty metres long — but it was just as sleek and pretty to look at. Maybe five metres in the beam — slim-hipped and racy. Caleb Maina did not raise an eyebrow when not one woman but two climbed out of the limo he had sent for Bonnie. His main purpose was to show off his baby, and as far as he was concerned, the bigger the audience the better. Furthermore, he thought with a secret smile, having two such lovely guests aboard would go a long way towards restoring his reputation in the place that mattered most to him — in the eyes of his crew. He met Bonnie and Robin at the head of the gangplank, therefore, and showed them up to the flying bridge at once.
Robin, a little disorientated, found herself back to within a hundred yards of the place she had left less than ninety minutes earlier. But what a difference the passage of time and the slight change in location made! The wind came fragrantly off the bay, waves chuckled and tumbled. Lines tapped in the gathering breeze. In the distance ships hooted, their motors grumbling. The sun beat down like molten copper. She stood, drinking it all in, with her back to the little helm and engine telegraph, looking up at the tall window behind which Richard was poring over the contract. In which, weirdly, was reflected the very point of the crippled corvette Otobo’s forecastle head. She stepped back, looking across the restless water to the real thing. There was a bustle of activity all over the crippled vessel. ‘Shouldn’t you be aboard her when they tow her into dry dock?’ she asked without thinking.
‘Apparently not,’ answered Caleb shortly. ‘Minister Ngama has more competent officers available…’
‘His nephew, for instance,’ chimed in Bonnie, her knowledge unexpectedly far-reaching; her tone tinged with contempt.
‘Besides,’ added Caleb easily. ‘Mr Asov is expediting matters, supplying spares and experts — and footing the bill into the bargain. His people will almost certainly be aboard when she gets under way. And in any case, Lieutenant Jonah Ngama is quite competent, Bonnie… I told you…’ Caleb’s voice sank to an intimate whisper. Robin turned in time to see a look pass between them that suddenly made her feel, in the telling French phrase, de trop. De trop and then some, in fact. But only for a moment. For this was a bridge, not a bedroom. Lieutenant Sanda stuck his head up from the command bridge below. ‘All in order, Captain.’
‘Thank you, Mr Sanda. Cast off fore and aft. I’ll take her out. Warn the men that we’ll be going to full speed as soon as we’re clear.’
A moment later, Captain Caleb was steering the sleek, powerful vessel out of her berth and into the broad, brown outflow of the river. ‘Hold on tight, ladies,’ he ordered, and opened the throttles full.
Robin had never come across acceleration like it in a vessel this size. Richard kept a blood-red cigarette go-faster launch called Marilyn down in the HM experimental shipyard near Southampton, along with the Katapult multihulls with which they regularly won the Fastnet yacht race — and Marilyn could go from idle to full ahead in a matter of minutes. But the Kingfisher simply flew. From slow ahead to fifty knots in fifty seconds, she calculated wonderingly. It was astonishing — she was glad she had taken Caleb at his word and got a firm hold of the guard rail.
Caleb took the patrol boat racing in a wide arc across the mouth of the river. ‘We’ll follow a normal patrol pattern,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t want to be accused of joyriding…’ Within ten minutes she was skimming beside the southern swell of the delta, then he took her on down towards the oil platforms and out towards the ocean proper, before swinging back and racing in towards the river mouth once again. The wind battered them, counteracting the fierceness of the noonday sun, but other than that it was a smooth ride. And surprisingly free of spray. The Kingfisher sat high and steady. She seemed to slide through both the outwash of the river and the waves it generated as it battled the incoming tide. Not to mention the bigger surfs that came in off the Atlantic to the south of the river, where the continental shelf placed a wall in front of the deep-ocean swells and drove them to heights that might have flattered Hawaii. The hull sat so high in the water that Caleb was also able to disregard the shallows that had proved fatal to Otobo yesterday, and skim across the waters that the Zubr had floated above.
Something about these thoughts made Robin turn and look back. She squinted to see more clearly as the Kingfisher flashed up into the mouth of the river. It was hard to be sure at this distance, but she was suddenly certain. In the hour or so of the voyage so far, Caleb’s old command Otobo had started moving. That’s quick, she thought, even for Max and his people. As she watched, Otobo limped forward and began to swing unhandily out into the bay. As the corvette’s long, slim hull came round it was possible to see a couple of tugs working her head with long tow-ropes to her forecastle, and a hump of dirty white water at her stern which showed where her one propeller was churning, trying to hold her stern steady. ‘Hey, Captain,’ she called without thinking. ‘Your Otobo’s under way…’
Caleb reacted by bringing the Kingfisher round in a tight loop, swinging through 180 degrees in an arc of less than a hundred metres. ‘Worried?’ she called.
‘Interested,’ he said. ‘And this way I can get a look at what’s happening.’
The Kingfisher ran back across the bay at the better part of a mile a minute. Robin walked forward to stand at Caleb’s right shoulder — Bonnie had already appropriated his left. The three of them watched through the low windshield as Otobo continued to swing out from the dockside. Caleb spoke into a microphone stalk above the basic slave monitors beside the helm. ‘You see that, Sanda?’ he asked in English.