‘Difficult to be sure,’ said Nic. ‘I’ll see if the pilot can tell us how far away it is, then we can guesstimate, at least.’ He unstrapped yet again and vanished into the cockpit once more.
‘What does she look like?’ asked Robin. ‘I mean, she reminds me of something so much … I just can’t put my finger on it …’
‘Thunderbird Two!’ said Richard. ‘She looks like Thunderbird Two!’
Nic returned after a few minutes, his head packed with information imparted by an enthusiastic, well-informed pilot. ‘The pilot gave me the whole skinny,’ he announced. ‘Apparently the thing’s got quite a rep among the local flyboys. Her name’s Dragon Dream. She’s two hundred and fifty feet long and a hundred feet wide, and she can lift the better part of thirty tons. She’s the half-scale prototype. There are plans afoot to build one twice as big, but this one is awesome enough to be going on with. Technically pretty advanced by all accounts. Works using helium rather than hydrogen like the old airships did, and controls lift by compressing and decompressing the gas rather than picking up and releasing ballast. The main propulsion units can generate vertical lift as well as horizontal thrust into the bargain. She moves at about a hundred and fifty knots in still air. They plan to use her for general transport, of course, but there’s apparently quite a sales pitch about her being perfect for disaster-relief work. Got the army sniffing around. And some of the NGOs. She can pick up and put down anything up to the size and weight of a fully-packed standard container. That’s a full-sized TEU — twenty-foot equivalent unit, I guess. No need for any on-ground infrastructure — landing strips and so forth. She can just hover at any given height and lower or pick up anything beneath her. Flame-proof aluminium skin. And helium doesn’t burn, of course. So she’s even fireproof — within certain limits. Broiling the pilots, melting the controls and so forth just doesn’t happen. And as long as she can sit still; as long as she doesn’t get blown all over the place like a kid’s balloon. Apparently she’s on the last of a series of test flights over LA. In a day or so she’s off down to Mexico City. The guys who built her, Aeroscraft, have headquarters here in Tustin and offices down there too. Tustin to Mexico City will be her first big test run.’
FIVE
Long Island Docks were a mess. There was no other way to describe them. From Nic’s helicopter the sight was one of confusion, overcrowding and confrontation. The normally well-ordered expanse of waterfront was packed with conflicting armies of men, materiel and transport. From the air it was obvious the whole place was heading for gridlock pretty quickly, and by the time the Bell actually reached Sulu Queen’s berth the whole place was at a standstill.
It seemed clear to Richard that the governor’s call had resulted in not only truckloads of National Guard and ancillary vehicles choking the roadways and backing up along Interstates 710, 405 and 110, but trainloads of freight cars which were all running into the rail yards like cholesterol into the veins of a heart-attack patient. Shiploads of aid were doing the same to the berthing facilities which had looked from the air like an overcrowded marina, but with massive freighters and tankers instead of bustling little pleasure boats.
And it appeared that the stevedores and longshoremen — whose huge machines for lifting and laying the twenty-foot equivalent units of the containers had been utterly overwhelmed — were on the point of walking out into the bargain. Certainly, there was no evidence at all of the usual well-ordered bustle that told of them being efficiently on-task. There was no movement at all, in fact. The whole place was frozen. Petrified.
And being on ground level, or deck level several metres higher, simply made the situation clearer, thought Richard half an hour later, looking down on the half-laden length of Sulu Queen and at the jetties beside her packed with stalled trucks and piled containers, with groups of angry and frustrated men dwarfed by massive immobile cranes and gantries.
Nic’s helicopter had just managed to find space and permission to touch down on the dockside. It dropped Richard as close to Sulu Queen’s gangway as possible then powered up to lift off as he leaped out and ran, doubled over beneath the rotors, towards his mighty vessel. After half-a-dozen steps, Richard was tempted to run back through the mayhem and jump aboard before the chopper could swoop up and away towards the distant golf ball of Maxima’s radar equipment, with the upended black composite jumbo-jet wing of Katapult8’s mainsail immediately behind it, her next destination the relative quiet of Maxima’s helipad. But duty called. And he had promised to be on Sulu Queen by the time the afternoon watch was called. A glance at his Rolex warned him he had better hurry up or he would be late going aboard.
‘See you later,’ he bellowed after Robin, and she raised a distracted hand in reply as the helicopter jumped into the air. It was a miracle she had heard him — even though he had bellowed in his massive quarterdeck voice. She could hardly be expected to have understood him. Never mind, he thought grimly, turning towards the gangplank and the crewman waiting there to hand over his hard hat and safety gear, he’d call her on her cell phone later. Then, hard hat safely secured and security vest flapping wide over his dark blue suit jacket, he hurried along the three-metre-level pathway after the officer who had welcomed him aboard.
On Richard’s right was a low gunwale and the security rail standing above it, then the packed and cluttered dockside he had just run along. On his left there was a narrow metal track, like the rail for a small-gauge railway. It was along this that Sulu Queen’s own on-board container-handling equipment ran. It was a big, square gantry, standing back against the bridge house now, as wide as the vessel’s loading area and as tall as the bottom of the command bridge windows. It could not pick up or lower containers from or to the dockside, but it could lift and lay them anywhere aboard. Beyond the rail track there was a vacancy some three metres deep which also had a safety rail running along its edge, albeit a temporary one. A glance away to the left showed him that the vacancy was as wide as the massive ship herself. And another glance, as he paused outside the bulkhead door into the bridge’s A-deck, showed him that the vacancy was not just as wide as the ship’s hull — it was as long as the vessel into the bargain. As long as the foredeck, at least. The noise was overwhelming, even though Sulu Queen’s cargo was not being unloaded for the moment, and Richard wondered whether he should demand earmuffs — or a headset like the one he had worn in the Bell. When he called Robin, he thought as he stepped over the raised section at the doorway’s bottom and into the bridge itself, he’d better find somewhere quiet as well as somewhere private.
Now it was a good half hour later and Richard still hadn’t called. Nor had he found anywhere quiet. He towered at the shoulder of the incandescent Captain Sin, trying to work out how best to proceed. The bustle on the bridge was calm enough; however, the man at its centre was anything but. Nor was he particularly quiet. ‘I send clew to runch,’ snarled Sin, his rotund figure bouncing unsettlingly as he rose and fell on the balls of his feet, his normally impeccable English buckling beneath the strain of his outrage. ‘I waste all mo’ning watch, then ha’f of fo’enoon watch with Import Specialist Team 733, going through iron and steel import regulations, like we didn’t do this a’ready! Then after them come Homeland Security in case we working for al-Qaeda! Then customs and port officials in case we’re carrying poppy juice instead of pig iron … Waste of broody time! Then halfway through unloading, every’t’ing stop! Wo’kers just stop wo’k and wa’k away! I talk to Po’t Autholity myse’f on ship to sho’ and all they say is “Solly. Solly. Gleat big mix-up.” Had we been twelve hou’s early everyt’ing would be fine … I say we were twelve hou’s early but their stupid gwailo officials gum up the wo’ks … They say, “No can he’p … No can do! Now National Guaad have plio’ity. Eme’gency Se’vices have pli’oity.” Every gwailo too zai zi in Rong Bitch have plio’ity! No chance we get cargo ashow through this … This …’ His gesture took in the static pandemonium ashore and afloat. And his indignation robbed him of words.