And out of the heart of the murk, there came the answer. Something more solid and more lethal even than the storm wind. It smashed into the golf ball Manuel had been preparing to work on. The sound was deafening, overwhelming. But nothing compared to the sight of it. It beheaded the communications mast as efficiently as a guillotine and carried the top away in an instant, even as Robin, horrified, recognized what it was. It obliterated the golf ball that contained the last of their electronic equipment. Then it span, end over end, away down the wind, hurling the dead wreckage of the electrics away into the sea.
Katapult8’s massive jet-wing sail.
THIRTY-THREE
‘Is there a problem?’ asked Guerrero the next morning, looking over Richard’s shoulder at the radar display.
‘Nothing for you to worry about. How’s the container-sorting going? From the look of the weather forecasts you’ll have to be quick.’
‘It’s going well, in spite of rapidly worsening conditions. With Lieutenant Harding and First Officer Cheng in charge, and that wizard who’s driving the gantry, lifting and laying the containers at record speed, we should have done everything by the time we catch up with those nasty-looking clouds dead ahead. But why the worried face, Richard? Something disturbing ahead? Other than the weather?’
‘No. It’s just that the emergency beacon we’re heading towards is now moving eastward at a steady ten knots. I logged it as being dead ahead when I went off watch last night. Now it’s miles east of that position.’
‘How’s that possible? I mean, I guess whoever’s got the thing can’t be swimming at that speed. Unless it’s Michael Phelps or Mark Spitz.’
Richard gave a grunt of laughter. ‘Even those two would find it hard to keep that speed up! No, there’s only one explanation I can think of — the beacon, and hopefully whoever’s holding it, is on a vessel.’
‘If he’s on a boat, why hasn’t someone switched it off?’
‘Heaven only knows. But there’s no other explanation I can think of.’
‘OK. So the beacon’s on a boat. And where’s the boat headed?’
‘Eastwards. Towards the coast. Towards Puerto Banderas, actually.’
‘And the boats most likely to be out here are …’
‘Katapult8 and Maxima are the only ones we know about. And Maxima’s the most likely of those two. I can’t see Liberty and Katapult8’s crew being able to pick anyone up, no matter how much they might want to.’
‘So …’
‘So, in the absence of any contact from either one of them, we have to assume that everything down there is now resolved, and we’ll return to the original plan of meeting up in Puerto Banderas. Helm, alter your course to the south-east. Steer one hundred and thirty degrees, please.’
‘That looks as though it will take us further into the rough weather even more quickly,’ said Guerrero. ‘I’d better go down and chivvy them along.’ He vanished.
Richard noted the changes of the beacon’s position and the ship’s bearing in the log, then he walked to the starboard side of the bridge and stepped out on to the open bridge wing. He was at once overwhelmed by a range of sensations that the quiet of the bridge had kept at a distance. The smell of the ship itself, all oil and rust, was overlain by the odour of the ocean, the ozone; the salty tang that was half smell, half taste. The feel — almost the taste — of the new wind, partly originating in the fact that its direction had swung into a new quarter and partly because of Sulu Queen’s new heading. He could feel it gusting stormily at his back, like a drunk pushing past him to get to the bar. The fact that it was unexpectedly cool, even beyond the expectation of wind chill. The noise it made as it buffeted past his ears. A noise subsumed in the bustle ahead and below him. He put his hands on the white-painted metal safety rail, leaned forward and looked down.
The gantry was in operation, lowering the last of Guerrero’s containers into its new position. When fully laden, Sulu Queen accommodated fourteen containers across her deck, twenty-foot equivalent units stacked lengthways. The stevedores and crane men at Long Beach had stacked the new ones lengthways, two containers high, in a kind of wall all around the edge of the deck. They were twice as long as they were wide, so Guerrero had asked the gantry operator to swing them round so the long sides were facing inwards. Now they sat snugly side by side, one level high, reaching in twenty feet from the ship’s sides, with an open area between them made up of the tops of the original cargo. Richard had OK’d this arrangement because it was clearly much more stable than what the guys at Long Beach had done. Though to be fair, they hadn’t envisaged taking the vessel into the conditions she was heading for now. While Sulu Queen’s crew bustled about making sure the new arrangement was secure, placing stacking cones, securing lashing rods, tightening twistlocks and turnbuckles, Guerrero’s men were opening the doors on the inboard ends and pulling the contents out to check against their manifest. The foredeck was crowded and bustling. Richard looked up, sniffing the gale-force wind. The sky ahead was full of clouds and looked deeply threatening. It seemed to him that they would be in some very serious weather by the end of the watch. He hoped with all his heart that the signal from the emergency beacon heading east towards Puerto Banderas was safely aboard Maxima, and that the super yacht’s continued silence — like that of the beautiful multihull — meant that all was well with them. Still, he thought, straightening and turning to step back into the clinical confines of the bridge, he would be in a position to check. And he had aboard everything he needed to find either or both of the vessels and to come to their aid if anything had actually gone seriously wrong.
THIRTY-FOUR
Maxima had been running east at ten knots since she had picked up Miguel-Angel Guerrero sixteen hours ago. And, by the end of that time, Robin for one was getting worried, even though she had not spent much time worrying in the interim. Maxima was riding more easily — especially after the downpour filled her pool to overflowing and rebalanced her hull. She seemed unlikely to succumb unless the force ten storm got a great deal worse. She was well out in a notoriously empty ocean, and now that the last of Katapult8 was gone there wasn’t much she was likely to collide with. They wouldn’t be anywhere near the coast for the better part of twenty hours. And she found she had a lot to do.
She had led the shaken Manuel below after saving him from Katapult8’s rogue sail, and took him down to the sick bay. Here they found the lad Raoul and Emilio had just pulled out of the water, suffering from shock and mild hypothermia but bubbling with the excitement of having survived his adventure. Then, just as Liberty and her crew had preferred to be treated by a woman, she had left the two young men to the attentions of the male medic. With the power back on, it had been possible to prepare hot food and she had welcomed Liberty, Flo, Maya and Emma to the dining room, glad to see that even those who had suffered motion sickness were beginning to feel better. She had also welcomed the young survivor, who had told them his name and stretched his command of English to the limit as he recounted his horrific story while consuming a bowlful of chilli large enough for four hungry men. They all packed away more ladylike helpings, marvelling at the resilience of youth while subject to delayed shock, and beginning to look out for it in him. They went through the story of Pilar’s final moments several times, trying to assess whether anyone else could have made it out alive. Then they discussed their current position and where they were heading. How close, in fact, to Puerto Banderas they would be coming, hour after hour as time passed. Shock and food made them all sleepy, especially after the stress of their adventures so far, and even Robin finally bunked down, feeling vaguely guilty that she had not offered to relieve Captain Toro on the bridge.