And so it began to sink—at speed—into the depths of the English Channel.
For Schofield, Knight and Mother, in their lifeboat on the water's surface inside the missile hold, the noise was all-consuming.
The roar of the waterfall flooding into the hold echoed throughout the ship. Waves crashed against steel walls. Whirlpools formed.
And the water level rose at frightening speed.
Indeed, to Schofield, it seemed as if the ceiling was lowering itself toward them. Quickly.
Within moments, they found themselves speeding along the surface halfway up the gigantic missile silos, 20 feet below the steel catwalks suspended from the roof.
In addition to this, with the breaching of the starboard-side door, Demon Larkham and his IG-88 men broke away from their chase, heading instead for the various ladders that led to the hold's ceiling.
'Damn, he's good,' Knight said. 'The Demon's heading topside, for the foredeck. He's going to cover all the hatches. Then he just waits for us to come up—which we'll have to do eventually.'
'Then we have to find another way out,' Schofield said. 'All I need now is to get away from this ship and find a safe place to hole up while I disarm the missiles aimed at America.'
Schofield pulled out his Palm Pilot to see which was the next Kormoran ship to launch.
He called up the bundle of documents that he had seen on the Pilot before:
He clicked on the abbreviated launch list. The full list came up:
He saw the familiar list.
It was the same as the one Book II had decrypted before. He saw the GPS locations of the first three boats: Talbot, Ambrose and Jewel.
The Ambrose was next: set to fire at 12 noon from GPS co-ordinates Efl7M3.05-,mOM.S5.
That's right, he remembered. New York.
Wait a second, his mind stopped short.
This list was different to Book's list.
He looked at it more closely.
Some of the missiles on the lower half of the list had been
altered.
Book's list had featured only two varieties of missile: the Shahab
and the Taep'o-Dong.
Yet this one featured several others in their place: the Sky Horse (from Taiwan), the Ghauri-II (Pakistan), the Agni-II (India) and the Jericho-2B (Israel).
It also, Schofield saw, had an extra launch vessel on it—the last entry, the Arbella—set to fire more than two hours after the first group of missiles.
This wasn't even mentioning another disturbing fact: the Taiwanese and Israeli missiles on this list were armed with American nuclear warheads, the powerful W-88—
A withering volley of bullets smacked the water next to Schofield. He hardly noticed.
When he looked up, he saw that Knight had brought their lifeboat alongside a ladder leading up to a ceiling catwalk. Once upon a time that catwalk had been suspended eighty feet above the floor of the hold. Now it was barely eighteen feet above the fast-rising water level.
On it, however, sixty yards away in both directions and closing fast, were two four-man teams of IG-88 troops. They had just burst down through hatches in the ceiling and were now charging down the length of the catwalk from either end, firing hard, their bullets hitting the girders all around Schofield's boat. Ping!-ping!-ping!-ping!-ping!
'Bastard!' Knight yelled. 'He's not waiting for us to come up. He's forcing us up!'
Mother lifted Schofield up by the collar. 'Come on, handsome,
you can get back to your computer later.' She hauled him out of the lifeboat and up the ladder, covering him with her body.
They climbed the ladder quickly, shooting as they did so, reached the catwalk, where they were met by a million impact sparks.
Mother took up a covering position while Knight led Schofield aft.
Ping!-ping!-ping!-ping!-ping!
Bullets were spraying everywhere.
Knight and Schofield fired at the IG-88 men coming from the stern-end of the catwalk. Schofield went dry.
'Are we actually going anywhere in particular!' he yelled.
'Yes! To a safe place!' Knight called, still firing. 'A place where you can do your disarming thing, and where, at the same time, we can all get out of this sinking death-trap! Here!'
Knight cut sharply right, running past a small maintenance shack erected at a T-junction of this catwalk and another, emerging behind the shack to behold—
—the two yellow mini-submarines suspended on chains from the ceiling of the missile hold.
Like the catwalks, the subs weren't very high up anymore. Seventeen feet above the water level. A wide hood-like awning covered both the two subs and the catwalk between them. It now partially covered Schofield and Knight from the IG-88 teams.
Ping!-ping!-ping!-ping!-ping!
Trailing a dozen yards behind Knight and Schofield, Mother came to the maintenance shack at the T-junction, still returning fire at the IG-88 troops, now only twenty yards away from her on either side.
Schofield watched as she tried to make a break for the mini-subs, but the IG-88 troops blocked her way with a storm of bullets.
Mother ducked inside the shelter of the maintenance shack.
She was cut off.
'Mother!' Schofield yelled.
'Get out of here, Scarecrow!' she said over the radio.
The IG-88 men assaulted her shack with the most violent fusillade of MetalStorm rounds Schofield had seen yet.
The shack erupted in bullet impacts.
Mother ducked out of view—and Schofield feared that she'd been hit—but then she popped up again, firing and yelling, and took out two of the IG-88 men. 'Scarecrow! I said, get out of hereV 'I'm not leaving without you!' 'GoV She loosed two more shots. 'I won't lose you and Gant in one day!'
Mother's voice became serious. 'Scarecrow. Go. You're more valuable than an old grunt like me." Mother looked over at him from the shack. 'You always were. My value comes in keeping you alive. At least let me do that. Now, go, you sexy little thing! Go! Go! Go!'
And with that, Schofield saw Mother do something both courageous and suicidal.
She stood fully upright in the windows of the shack and, issuing a primal yell of 'Yaaaahhhhhhh!', started firing with two guns at both of the IG-88 forces.
Her sudden move stopped the two IG-88 teams in their tracks— each of them lost their front man in a gruesome fountain of blood—but crucially, it gave Schofield and Knight the opening they needed to escape.
'Get in!' Knight yelled, hitting the 'hatch' button on one of the yellow submarines. With a quick iris-like motion, the circular hatch on top of the sub opened. 'Don't let her sacrifice count for nothing!'
Schofield took a half-step into the hatch, looked back at Mother—just as the two IG-88 forces overwhelmed her with their fire.
'Damn it, no . . .' he breathed.
A volley of MetalStorm bullets hit Mother, slamming into her chest armour . . .
Mother snapped upright, swaying, not firing anymore, her mouth open, her eyes suddenly blank—
—and then she fell and in the haze of smoke and flying glass,
Schofield lost sight of her as she dropped out of sight below the maintenance shack's window frames.
A moment later the two IG-88 forces put the issue beyond doubt.
At the exact same time, both IG-88 teams fired rocket launchers at the maintenance shack.
Two fingers of smoke lanced toward Mother's little shack from both fore and aft.