And yet, she did not give up hope. Bad as things were — and every now and then she considered the possibility that they might get even worse — she never really doubted that she and her crew would survive this. Her father was an hour or so behind, she assured herself — maybe two hours given Katapult8’s phenomenal run earlier. But he was coming, alerted as he had to be by the fact that his daughter’s command must have simply vanished off his radar and his satellite monitoring system in the blink of an eye. He had to realize that something cataclysmic had overcome her. So he would come looking — at full speed, even through this fearsome downpour. And he would find her. With Robin Mariner at his shoulder, how could he fail to find her?
Unless, of course, the ghost ship she thought she might have seen in the shadowy distance south east of the bright little beacon found them first. Whichever one got them out of this weather soonest would earn her undying gratitude. In the meantime, thank God for the bacon sandwich and the coffee, the memory of which was all that was keeping her warm. The immediate personal consequences for her and, she suspected, for the others, were covered by the fact that they were all running with so much liquid that a little more would hardly make any difference. Wearily, she pulled her head up for another look round. It hurt and seemed, frankly, pointless. But she found she could only stare at a perfectly black, utterly featureless surface for so long without feeling that her mind — her will, her very soul — was draining relentlessly out through her eyes and into the void. Instead, she found herself looking eagerly beyond the edge of the sail, which at a metre, was just high enough to give her a little elevation, especially now that the steep-sided chop was settling into sets of long rollers washing in from west to east. But there was precious little to see. Beyond the rounded black edge of the sail there was the surface of the ocean, the smooth green backs of the Pacific rollers boiling with a rash of massive raindrops.
Liberty’s train of thought was abruptly interrupted. Something strange seemed to be happening. The bright orange basketball floats that had been lazily bobbing in a rough open-sided circle round the sail since the nets they supported had destroyed her command, seemed suddenly to be taking on a life of their own. A life filled with sluggish but quickening purpose. As Liberty watched uncomprehendingly, almost mindlessly, the nearest float stirred and began to slide through the water. And the one behind it suddenly sprang to life as well, following in its fellow’s wake — such as it was. And a third …
Had Liberty been less shocked, battered and disoriented, she might have thought this odd. Had she been able to communicate with the others, she might well have called their attention to it. But she was so worn out as to be incapable of much more than childlike observation. And she had given up trying to talk to the others some time ago. So she just held herself above the spitting surface of the sail and watched the floats all come to life. And even when the next few in that long, swirling tail actually gathered round the sail itself and began to pull it gently across the ocean, all she did was lower her head again and lie there, almost comatose, unquestioningly awaiting events.
TWENTY-TWO
‘It’s gone!’ said Nic, his voice rising angrily.
‘What’s gone?’ asked Robin.
‘The signal. It was there, just over five miles ahead, and now it’s gone.’
‘Maybe someone’s picked up whoever was wearing it.’
‘That’s not likely,’ said Captain Toro. ‘If there was a ship out there we’d see it on the radar. But there’s nothing showing.’
The three of them looked at each other. They were all thinking the same thing: sharks. There was not an emergency beacon in the world that would transmit from the belly of a Great White, a Bull or a Tiger. There were mortal dangers here that came from below the surface as well as above it.
‘Looks like we’re too late, then,’ said Nic.
‘Let’s get there, even so,’ said Robin. ‘We know exactly where the signal was coming from. The quicker we’re there the sooner we’ll have a clear idea of what was going on.’
‘Can we go any faster, Captain?’ asked Nic.
‘Si, señor. We just take less care, is all.’
‘Go for it,’ decided Nic. ‘In the meantime, I need a coffee. Robin?’
‘Me too.’
‘I have Blue Mountain high roast Arabica. It’s Richard’s favourite. Captain Toro, shall I send some up?’
‘That would be very kind,’ answered Toro, his voice preoccupied.
‘What?’ asked Robin.
‘Nothing,’ answered Toro, his tone unusually uncertain. ‘I thought I saw something on the radar this instant, just inside the five-mile line. But it’s gone now. It was nothing. A ghost.’ He looked out through the opaque side window. ‘It’s this rain. I think it’s even more intense …’
‘Coffee it is, then,’ said Nic bracingly, taking Robin by the elbow and leading her back towards the lift. ‘Blue Mountain high roast for all.’
As they sat in Maxima’s huge lounge, cocooned at last from the pounding downpour, sipping the fragrant black coffee, Nic said, ‘Maybe we should contact Richard? Update him on what’s going on down here?’
‘I’d leave well alone for the time being,’ she said. ‘If I know Richard, he’ll be up to his elbows in something: getting those National Guard containers off Sulu Queen, arranging for the rest of the cargo to be unloaded — whatever. It’ll depend on what the weather up in Long Beach is doing.’
‘Well, at least we can find that out easily enough,’ said Nic, and he pointed a handset at the massive TV on the wall, which was currently in mirror mode. At once, the screen sprang to life. Biddy’s film of the aerial approach to Dahlia Blanca suddenly filled the screen — wave after wave of steep-sided green mountains rising step by step from the white-sand beach on Los Muertos to the ten-thousand-foot peaks of the Sierra Madre ten miles or so inland.
‘That’s not what I want,’ said Nic. ‘Where’s Channel Five? It was preset in Long Beach and we should still be able to pick it up.’ He pushed buttons on the handset. The pictures of Puerto Banderas were replaced by the logo of the Los Angeles local TV channel, KTLA5. They had obviously tuned in partway through a news broadcast. Footage of the Los Angeles River in flood filled the screen an instant later. Disturbingly, the sound on the footage matched the sounds from outside exactly. ‘Several more areas have been evacuated,’ the announcer was saying, ‘including the notoriously flood-prone neighbourhood of Lytle Creek in San Bernadino. There has been a storm surge reported, which has put some sections of the Long Beach dock facility at risk of flooding. Work in the docks has been suspended until the area is declared safe.’
‘Richard won’t like that,’ observed Robin.
‘You think?’ agreed Nic wryly.
‘He’ll up sticks and move out at the drop of a hat if they’re not careful,’ she said. ‘Looks like the National Guard and their containers won’t be required in Los Angeles after all.’
Nic just grunted by way of reply, focusing on the news report once more.
‘Officers in the San Gabriel Valley foothill community of Glendora have also reported a serious mudflow at North Ben Lomond Avenue and Hicrest Road, just below a hillside that caught fire in January, burning off all the vegetation, including the tree cover, leaving the topsoil unprotected. Mud flowed down from Yucca Ridge to Hicrest, a city engineer said. More than one hundred homes that were fortunate to survive the fire have now been destroyed, though there are no reports of any lives being lost.