Richard ran up the gangplank and went back aboard Sulu Queen halfway through the morning watch, just as a sullen, stormy dawn was beginning to threaten. He ran round the foot of the great square gantry immediately in front of the bridge with only the briefest pang of frustration that the massive mechanism could not lower containers on to the dockside — merely rearrange them on the deck. Then he swung through the A-deck door into the bridge house and pounded straight up to the command bridge, where he found the youthful first officer keeping watch himself. The young man turned round as Richard strode on to the bridge, and Richard recognized the badges of rank on his uniform before he registered the almost elfin youthfulness of the face above them. ‘I am Cheng, Captain,’ said the young man. ‘I am the first officer. Welcome aboard.’
‘Thank you, Mr Cheng. Tell me, are the National Guard soldiers and Mr Prudhomme still aboard?’
‘Yes, Captain. They went back to bed after you informed us that you planned to take command yourself. I can have them woken …’
‘Not yet. Any updates on Captain Sin’s condition?’
‘He is resting comfortably.’
‘Good. You said he had toured the ship, checked for damage after the lightning strike yesterday morning and everything was OK?’
‘Yes, Captain. And he had also ensured that our supplies and bunkerage were full, as I said. Apart from the situation with the cargo and the National Guard containers, we are ready to sail at a moment’s notice.’
‘The crew?’
‘All ready, too …’ There was some hesitation in Cheng’s voice, as though he could not see the purpose of the question.
‘No one demanding shore leave?’ Richard elaborated.
‘No, Captain. No shore leave. There was never any question of that.’
‘Very well. Are the logs up to date?’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Then I am happy to relieve you until the end of the morning watch. It will give me an opportunity to read the logs and make my plans. Then at change of watch, eight o’clock sharp, I will conduct my own inspection. I will want yourself and the chief engineer available as I do so.’
‘Yes, Captain.’ The young man hesitated, looked around the bridge and then — literally — bowed himself out.
Richard walked to the forward section — the area that had been forbidden aboard Queen Mary — and looked moodily out through the clear view over the square top of the gantry and along the grey-black Rubik’s cube of the cargo as the dull brightness of the leaden dawn began to reveal it. He noted precisely where Major Guerrero’s National Guard containers stood, estimating that there must be between seventy-five and a hundred of them in all.
Then, deep in thought, he crossed to the little side table beside the pilot’s chair and shook the kettle standing there. It gave a satisfying slopping sound, and the weight of it told him it was almost full. He switched it on and made himself the strongest, blackest cup of coffee he had ever sipped. At the very least it was going to be a long day, and three hours’ sleep followed by a hair-raising helicopter ride were not the best possible preparation for it.
He crossed to the chart table and opened the old-fashioned log book there. Punctilious in this as in everything, Captain Sin had clearly insisted that the log be kept in both Chinese and English, and that every detail of shipboard life be entered. The last entry in the English section — and, probably, in the Chinese — was the report of the captain’s illness, the arrival of the paramedics and the address and contact number of the hospital he had been taken to. Richard flipped back and began with the entries for the last few days, focusing on the way the weather had behaved as the storm tiger chased poor old Sin across the Pacific and finally cornered him here.
The detailed description of the air pressures, the cloud forms, the wind speeds, the states of sea and sky soon filled his head like a pattern, and he went through them almost like Sherlock Holmes looking for clues to a puzzle he wasn’t even certain existed. But he did see a pattern beginning to emerge — and one at variance with what Dr Jones of NOAA had been saying the best part of three days ago. He was so immersed in his detective work that it came as a shock when he turned over the last page to find he was back at the report of Captain Sin’s illness — there were no further meteorological observations at all.
Richard looked up, blinking a little blearily. Dawn was gathering more forcefully now. The ship’s chronometer above the binnacle told him it was coming up to seven thirty a.m. local time, which to be fair, he reckoned, was probably the time everywhere from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego — Pacific Standard Time. It certainly reached up as far as Alaska and the coast of Canada, and down as far as the parts of Mexico he was most deeply concerned with at any rate. He rubbed his eyes and sat back, scanning the bridge once more. On one corner of the chart table someone had placed a portable TV. It was probably a recent addition to the bridge equipment — Richard couldn’t see Captain Sin being too happy with the thought of his watch officers being offered such a potent distraction, even in harbour. And he couldn’t remember having seen it here on his earlier visits. But he switched it on now and the little screen was filled at once by the logo of KTLA5, the local TV station. Then, immediately, by the face of the woman he had just been thinking about.
‘So, Doctor Jones,’ said an interviewer currently out of shot. ‘Your ARkStorm seems to be less cataclysmic than you feared.’ A bit of an anticlimax, the interviewer’s tone implied. Richard was reminded of the taxi driver and his dismissive opinions.
‘We certainly seem to have been lucky so far,’ allowed the climatologist warily. ‘Though, as you know, there have been dangerous mud slides in Glendora and Azusa. Both of those neighbourhoods have been evacuated and we’re looking at moving more folks out of houses on the western slopes of the Sierras. Things will continue to worsen here if the rain continues like this. The Los Angeles River is on flood alert too, of course. An inch an hour is still a dangerous level of precipitation.’
‘But,’ purred the invisible interviewer, ‘we were informed you were predicting amounts in excess of two inches an hour. There have been no reports of that level of intensity.’
‘Yes, there have,’ Richard informed the television. ‘Down in Cielito Lindo and San Quintin and on down the Baja California there have …’
Then he stopped talking and sat silently for a moment as the most obvious truth of all hit him and the pattern he had been seeking in the log books became clear. ‘It’s gone south,’ he said. ‘Your ARkStorm’s not going to hit the coast of California, Doctor Jones, because it’s already hitting Mexico! It’s heading on south. Bloody hell!’
No sooner come to that conclusion than his cell phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw Robin’s face on the screen. Where in heaven’s name did she get a signal way out there? he wondered. Perhaps there were cell phone satellites as well as the NOAA weather sats in low orbit over the Pacific just at that moment.
‘Hi, darling. What can I do for you?’
‘We have a bad problem here, darling. We’ve lost Katapult8.’
‘Lost her how?’ He stopped wool-gathering and focused on what Robin was saying.
‘Well, you remember we had her on radar all last night, even though her AIS locator wasn’t working?’
‘I do …’ Richard thought he could see where this was going.
‘Well, they fixed the locator nearly two hours ago so we had them on both radar and the AIS equipment. They called in, and Florence issued another of their challenges. Really, darling, what have you started! Well, then Katapult8 took off like a bat out of hell. We lost her on radar but we still had her on locator. Then, suddenly, she vanished. Even the locator signal vanished.’