Suddenly there was a thump on the deck beside his head. He sat up, swinging round to see what was going on. Weary was standing behind him, by the mast. Richard looked down. Lying on the deck close at hand was one of the black disks he had just been thinking about.
“Don’t know what made me think of it,” Weary’s tone was conversational. He might have been talking about the weather. “Because they’d all dried off, I guess. When we were packing them away I thought I’d better try one. Can’t take anything for granted. And now seems as good a time as any.”
“Of course. Good idea. We’re far enough out. Try one now.”
Weary nodded. “Fact is, I have tried one, Richard. I’ve tried several. Brought this one up for you to try.”
Richard knew then, at once, and he actually gasped with shock. But he picked up the heavy little disk anyway, twisted the top, and threw it into the sea, counting to three as he did so. The water closed over it, and he recognized the mysterious sea-sound he had been listening to just now.
And nothing else happened. No explosion. Nothing.
Like two out of the three he had fired at the eel.
“Looks like it was a mixed batch you found,” said Weary. “Some disarmed. Some not. We pulled up the wrong box. Bad luck.”
“Okay,” said Richard quietly. He tried always to meet crisis with calm. “First, let’s see if there’s any way we can check the rest without detonating any live ones. Then we’ll have a think.”
They went through the boxful in silence. It soon became obvious that each grenade, like the box they came in, had been marked with the letter X. And, it seemed, X meant they had all been disarmed. They were all useless.
They heard the buzz of the inflatable some time before it came alongside and so they had time to dress in flannels and shirts, and to be waiting silently on deck for the others to arrive. Hood jumped aboard cheerfully. Robin climbed up in a cloud of silk and soap, and Richard at once felt grimy as well as frustrated. What luck! he seethed silently. Angus boomed aboard sparking with energy and all thoughts other than those of action were driven from Richard’s head. After the briefest of pleasantries, they retired below to plan their next few moves in detail.
Richard chaired the meeting automatically, as a matter of course. “What we need,” he said as soon as they were all seated, “is a careful plan of campaign. Angus, you’ve been at the center of things so far, what’ve you arranged?”
“You want contacts made, action taken, or events expected?” asked Angus calmly, as though this were some humdrum board meeting and not a council of war.
“Start with events expected.”
“Okay. First, Martyr flies in from New York later tonight. He should arrive at Muharraq in two and a half hours’ time.”
“We’ll meet him,” decided Richard.
“I tried to contact Salah Malik but with no success at all. He may even be dead for all we know. Beirut…”
“Yes,” said Richard, a little too quickly, his eyes on Robin. “But we can keep trying. What about news?”
“Still nothing. It’s incredible, I know, but there has still been no word from anyone about either situation. We can’t even be certain that they are connected. But we’ve been working on the assumption that they are…”
Richard’s eyes stayed on Robin as Angus detailed the conclusions he had reached with the help of Helen Dufour, Heritage Mariner, the International Maritime Bureau, and all their worldwide contacts. The same conclusions Richard and Robin had arrived at alone.
She sat, pale, tired, yet completely intrepid. The shower had gone some way toward restoring her but what seemed to be making the most difference was the white robe she had bought this evening in Manama. It was silken and flowing, covering her from neck to ankle — and so, obviously, perfect protection from the sun — but so light as to give an overwhelming impression of coolness. She had also bought a little hand-carved wooden fan and, as she waved it gently by her left cheek, she filled the whole cabin with the scent of sandalwood.
“Right,” he snapped again as Angus completed his report. “Action taken. This one’s mine, I think; have you taken any specific action I don’t know about, Angus?”
“No.”
“Okay. What we have is this. Thanks to the U.S. Navy, we have the communications system we need to mount a concerted attack on Prometheus. We have the transport we need. Armaments…” He broke off. Leave the useless grenades out of the calculations for the moment, he decided. “We have two trained soldiers: Sam and Weary here. Then we have me. Robin. You, Angus, and finally Martyr, when he arrives. I don’t envision us all going aboard, however. We need a backup system as well as a strike force, remember.”
“So, do we go in blind?” Angus leaned forward, part of the plan unhesitatingly.
“Not if I can help it. Fast, yes. Blind, no. I need to know exactly where Prometheus is. Admiral Stark has helped there, but his information is several days old. I need an update. Ideally we need to know how many terrorists are aboard and where they are likely to be…”
“We can surmise a lot of that information,” chimed in Robin. “There are places where they would have to be…”
“That’s right,” said Richard. “And we could do with knowing what they have done with the crew. Are they just locked in their cabins or are they all together in some central location…”
“Depends on how many terrorists there are,” opined Robin. “They need men on the bridge. In the engine control room if they want to use the generators. They need patrols. Lookouts. If there are as few as, say, a dozen, the crew would have to be locked in some central location. They’d need more than twenty to police the cabins efficiently for any length of time.”
“A terrorist unit of more than twenty?” Hood’s tone was skeptical.
“Right. It’s likely to be a smaller unit than that. Twelve people, tops,” agreed Robin.
“So, Prometheus’s crew are likely to be in one central location,” said Angus. “Now where would that be, Richard?”
“If it was me,” Robin answered slowly, clearly having been thinking about this already, “I’d put them in the gym.”
Prometheus, like most modern tankers, had a full range of leisure facilities. After all, she did not dock like a cargo ship and release the crew for shore leave during loading and unloading. She simply moved from terminal to terminal, hardly ever going nearer to the shore than ten miles out, filling and emptying her holds through great pipes in the sea. Crews aboard had no end of voyage to look forward to, simply a turnaround leading to a return journey. Time after time. Under these circumstances, a library, a cinema, videotapes, radios, televisions, a swimming pool, and a gymnasium, as well as the more traditional haute-cuisine dining facilities and inevitable bars, became absolute necessities — bulwarks against the stultifying boredom that could dangerously blunt the edge of even the most able and experienced crew.
“Yes,” struck in Richard again. Caught up in the urgent practicalities of planning action, their minds unconsciously clicked into unison. Their words and phrases wove around each other like braided rope until there was neither one mind nor the other, but a union stronger than either. “The gym.”