He changed the magazine on the Uzi and hammered the mangroves until the last round of ammunition was gone. Then he swung the boat round and opened up the throttle and headed out towards the open sea.
“Missy,” he cried elatedly. “Now we’re going away where they’ll never find us.”
Chapter 12
Marsh sat comfortably inside the cockpit bubble on board the Challenger and worked his way through a comprehensive check list that would ensure that all systems on board were satisfactory and he could proceed. It was barely dawn and the sea was almost like a mill pond. The Challenger was a little south-west of the Santaren Channel. There was little or no breeze to stir the air and the sun had lifted its head above the horizon to wash everything in a beautiful, golden glow. The earlier weather reports of a potential hurricane developing South East of the Caribbean out in the Atlantic Ocean had given them food for thought, and the rising wind of the previous day had only seemed to confirm what the meteorologists were saying. But now, for a while at least, they could enjoy a peaceful calm.
Marsh reckoned fortune was smiling on them, but if the burgeoning wind force developed, continued to grow and tracked North West, they would soon begin to feel the peripheral winds. Any dives that Khan had planned would have to be postponed, and the ship would have to sail into relatively calmer and safer waters. Not a bad thing, thought Marsh as he completed his checks.
The internal speaker behind Marsh’s head crackled into life, and a metallic voice broke the stillness.
“We are lifting now, Challenger. Acknowledge through the sonar phone at one hundred feet. Batista will detach the umbilical.”
Marsh said nothing but gave a hand signal to the men up on the deck of the Taliba. He felt Challenger judder slightly. Then it lifted suddenly as the deck winch hoisted it up and over the side of the ship. Marsh looked anxiously through the polymer walls of the cockpit, but transfer to the ocean was steady, and once the submersible was settled in the water, one of the divers removed the four lifting hooks.
There were four divers on station altogether: Batista and Zienkovitch, who were actually in the decompression chamber behind him, and two other divers who would be going down in the Galeazzi Tower. They would be breathing air with aqualungs and would remain with the tower at a depth of one hundred feet. Batista and Zienkovitch were breathing a mixture of helium and oxygen.
Once Marsh had received the all clear from the Taliba, he began flooding the ballast tanks. He watched the readout on the instrument panel for each tank as their internal pressures began to rise so that he could monitor the ingress of sea water and maintain an accurate stability and sink rate. This would allow the Challenger to settle slowly into the water without pitching and rolling excessively.
At one hundred feet he closed the air valves and the submersible settled. He waited for the instruments to stabilise then pulled the sonar phone from its cradle and put it to his ear.
“Challenger at one hundred feet. Please acknowledge.”
“Taliba. Acknowledged Challenger. Please call out the depth during descent.”
“Challenger acknowledged.” Marsh opened the air valves to flood the tanks and the Challenger began her silent descent to the bottom.
Francesini was in a deep sleep when an alarm bell began sounding off in the distance. The dream dissolved and he was suddenly aware of where he was as the telephone rang again beside his bed. His wife, sleeping beside him, stirred and rolled over muttering something unintelligible. She reached out and patted his back with the palm of her hand. Francesini sat up and pulled the covers back. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and glanced at the clock. It was 3.15 in the morning. He picked up the phone and turned on the small, bedside light.
“Francesini here,” he mumbled. “I hope this is important.”
“Good morning, sir,” the voice on the other end of the line began. “I’m sorry to call you this early in the morning. This is Sergeant Donaldson of the Bahamian police department. We’ve had a development here in the Walsh kidnapping that Inspector Bain thinks you should know about.”
“Go on,” Francesini told him. He was wider awake now but not wanting to hear what was likely to come next. It couldn’t possibly be good news at this time of the morning, he thought.
“We located the place where Sweeting Maclean was holding the woman, Helen Walsh. It was up on the northern swash land. We raided it just a couple of hours ago, but I’m afraid he gave us the slip; took the girl with him a well.”
Francesini closed his eyes and uttered a silent curse. The word ‘incompetents’ slipped into his mind apart from others. “Go on,” he said again.
“Well sir, Inspector Bain has been shot. He’s in hospital sir. I’m afraid we lost another officer. Terrible thing sir.”
Francesini wondered if the Bahamian police had ever been involved in gun battles, but he thought it wise to revise his earlier thoughts.
“How bad is the inspector?” he asked, genuinely concerned.
“He’s ok; he’ll live sir. He took a bullet in the arm. I’m afraid we didn’t stand a chance really against Maclean; he seemed to have plenty of firepower. I’m sure the Inspector will explain, sir.”
“Do you know where Maclean is now?” he asked hopefully.
“No sir; he slipped out through the mangrove swamps. He had a boat and headed out into the open sea. There was no way we could follow, seeing as we’d come by road.”
Francesini ran his fingers through his hair and looked at his wife who was already fast asleep. He was going to have to wake her and tell her he would be away for a while. Not that it made a great deal of difference telling her; she was always complaining that he should get a proper job, but she loved him and knew that he loved her and his job. He’d leave a note; she would understand. She always did.
“I’ll be over. Have someone meet me at the airport.” He put the phone down before the sergeant had a chance to reply.
Had they been diving during the day, Marsh would have been able to see the golden fingers of sunlight penetrating the depths and lighting the world of Marlin, Barracuda, Sting Rays, Manta Rays and a whole host of beautiful fish that lived in the watery, twilight world of the sea. But the dawn light offered no such spectacle and Marsh concentrated on bringing Challenger down gently to the sea bed.
To counter the effects of any drift that was unwanted, a small turbine no bigger than a beer can rotated in the current. By measuring the rate at which it spun, the on-board computer powered Challenger’s thrust motors at a sufficient speed to keep the submersible on station. It was a standard servo system cleverly adapted for accurate work in oil exploration and using a global positioning satellite that tracked the submersible to within fifteen feet of its reference point.
As Challenger descended, Marsh trimmed her out by transferring water from the aft tanks to the forward tanks and vice versa as the situation demanded. It was a delicate operation and could also be done by the on-board computer system, but Marsh preferred the ‘hands on’ approach knowing that in an emergency, his piloting skills would be better by having control of the submersible as often as possible.
And so the Challenger descended gracefully. It was like going down in a slow moving lift. And the deeper they went, so external vision deteriorated because less light penetrated the clear waters. Marsh switched on the submersible’s powerful floodlights.