Even as Daz blocked the blow with his forearm, Sean had jumped for the stairs, sliding down the handrails rather than bothering with the narrow treads.
Before he could reach the bottom Eamonn had lifted a small walkie-talkie to his mouth and shouted, “Are you in position, Michael? Hit the bastards! Hit them now!”
There was a delay of perhaps three seconds, during which time I’d started to dive for the board that held the bolt-cutters. Sean had landed at the bottom of the stairs and taken a stride for Eamonn. Daz had fallen and was rolling out of the way, hugging his injured arm to his chest.
I’d almost begun to believe that whatever nasty surprise Eamonn had planned had backfired on him when the big cooling fan next to me suddenly lost impetus and started to spin down. A piercing alarm siren wailed into life, backed by a blinding flashing light.
The engine room lights all went out, leaving only the warning light strobing in the darkness. Then the emergency lighting clicked in.
“William,” I snapped into the radio, shouting over the siren. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Oh shit,” William said. “He’s hit the manual override on the fire control system. Get out of there, Charlie! You’ve got thirty seconds before the compartment seals.”
“What?” I yelled, wrenching the bolt-cutters off the wall and racing for the stairs. “What the hell happens after thirty seconds?”
“The whole of the compartment floods with CO². It takes less than two minutes.”
Oh shit, I echoed silently. I jumped the last half-dozen steps, landed badly and staggered on.
The vibrations through the deck had changed, I realised, the engines were shutting down as well. As our forward momentum dropped, the stabilisers began to lose effectiveness. The ferry had already been pitching in the swell but now it began to roll more violently as well.
“Shut it off, William,” I managed. “Jamie and Isobel are stuck down here. Shut it off!”
“You can’t,” William said, anguish twisting his voice. “Once it’s been activated, that’s it. It’s supposed to be a last resort if there’s a fire. Anybody still in there when it goes off is as good as dead. Just get out!”
“Daz,” I shouted. “Get to the door. Wedge it open!”
“With what?” Daz demanded, lurching to his feet.
“Anything you can damn well find!”
Sean had cornered Eamonn by this time. Eamonn took one look at the deadly intent in Sean’s face and tried to bring the baton up, but the confined space was against him. He backed up and prepared to make a stand but Sean just swatted the baton aside and put one hard deliberate blow straight into the middle of Eamonn’s face, shattering his already broken nose. Eamonn gave a squeal of pain and dropped to the grating with his hands to his face.
Sean didn’t bother trying to finish the fight. He’d heard my brief exchange with William on his own radio and now he spun back to where Jamie and Isobel were tied.
I braced myself steady against the railing to operate the big bolt-cutters. They sliced straight through the inside band of the handcuffs without any fuss. Jamie was still on his knees and I had to cut him loose from Isobel completely so Sean could hoist him to his feet.
Isobel gave a gasp. We turned to find Eamonn was back on his feet with a length of heavy chain in his hand and blood running freely down his face.
Sean dumped Jamie’s almost senseless body onto me. “Get him out,” he said.
The fear grabbed me by the throat but there wasn’t time to argue. I half-carried, half-dragged Jamie to the staircase, shouting at him until he put one foot in front of the other and began to climb.
We reached the upper walkway. I glanced back briefly as Eamonn launched a frenzied attack on Sean, just had time to see Sean dance out of the way, agile despite the heaving floor under him, and kick Eamonn’s legs from under him.
“Come on, I don’t know how long it will hold!”
Daz was by the doorway. He’d found a small pallet truck and had jammed that into the door aperture. The door itself was attempting to close on hydraulic rams that were designed to seal the engine compartment in the event of disaster, come what may. Over 2000psi of pressure was slowly and inevitably crushing and distorting the legs of the pallet truck. Our last exit was shrinking with every passing moment.
And then, our thirty seconds were up.
I heard a hissing noise from above my head. A series of pale green pipes with flat nozzles was strung across the ceiling of the compartment. Now, gas was spraying out from each nozzle. The carbon dioxide, heavier than air, cascaded down into the engine room like misted water.
Desperation lent me strength. I heaved Jamie over my shoulder with a thankful prayer that it wasn’t William I had to lift. Gritting my teeth, I charged for the doorway, almost throwing Jamie through the gap into Daz’s waiting arms.
I turned. Isobel was staggering along the walkway about six metres behind me but of Sean – and Eamonn – there was no sign.
“Come on!” I bellowed, starting to gasp now as the carbon dioxide flooded in, and trying not to let the panic show. “Time’s up!”
Sean’s head appeared from the other side of the engine. He scrambled up onto the massive diesel, ran along the top of the casing and jumped for the walkway near where I was standing. I grabbed his forearm as he landed, but his grip was tight. He vaulted over the railing in a flash and dived for the steadily closing doorway. I followed him through, dimly aware of hands grasping me and hauling me clear.
“Who else is inside?” demanded a man alongside me. He was in uniform like a naval officer and carrying a walkie-talkie. Through the haze of little black dots that the carbon dioxide had starred across my vision, I realised that Isobel wasn’t right behind me.
“Two,” I said, still panting for breath, just as one leg of the pallet truck buckled with a terrible graunching noise and the door lurched a little further closed.
“Mum!” Jamie cried, coming out of his nausea enough to realise who was left behind. “Where is she?”
As I watched, Isobel’s head and shoulders appeared through the gap. Two crew members grabbed her arms and started to pull, but she was suddenly yanked backwards with a dreadful wailing cry. Eamonn’s bloodied face thrust out of the doorway instead.
Jamie flung himself forward and Sean and I grabbed him before he would have tried to force himself back into the engine compartment. He struggled wildly in our arms, tears streaming down his face.
The crew, meanwhile, started to pull Eamonn clear without making any judgements on who deserved to be saved. The door was edging towards its goal all the time, the pallet truck little more than a compressed and twisted mass of scrap metal. But Eamonn was nearly out, only his legs remained inside.
I could see the triumph blooming on his face but then the triumph changed to horror. He began to yell, struggling against something still inside the engine room.
Through the ever-diminishing gap I could just make out Isobel’s face, teeth bared. She’d abandoned any last hope of making it out of there, but she had a death grip on Eamonn’s shins and she wasn’t for letting go.