Two decks down toward the dead engines and Robin was drenched in sweat and choking from the fumes. The walls were hot and beginning to blister; the coconut matting on the floor gave off dangerous-looking little puffs of smoke when stepped on. The stairs themselves were far too hot to touch. She would not have risked going farther down even had she thought anyone could still have been alive down there.
Up she came toward main deck level, therefore, contenting herself with searching quarters that must have belonged to engineers. She found overalls. She found rags, scarves, and kaffiyah headcloths. She found a copy of the Koran.
It had been a Muslim crew then; Muslim engineers at least. But who would attack with such savagery a ship full of Muslims in the northern waters of the Indian Ocean?
Who and why?
She paused, lost in thought but uneasily aware that she was taking an unjustified risk. A personal adventure, away even from Richard for a little. Perhaps her last like this forever, right at the edge where she loved to be once in a while, with nobody at risk but herself.
Except for her unborn child.
That was the rub. She had started planning names already for the eight-week-old fetus lying so comfortably inside her, a pastime that warned her that she would soon have to give up the only drug she had ever really enjoyed — adrenaline.
Ah well, she thought wistfully, time to move.
She was in one of the cabins overlooking the afterdeck. There was a small window, its glass crunching under her feet, overlooking a small drop onto the wood outside, and then, forty-odd feet away, the back of the bridge-house. Beneath the window was the deck on which the Koran had lain, beside it, a bunk. At the foot of the bunk, a cupboard covering part of the wall and at right angles to that, the door out onto the stairway.
And even as she turned to exit, tapping the holy book tucked safely in her pocket, the stairwell exploded into flame.
The door had opened outward: the force of the explosion slammed it shut, then set it rattling thunderously in its frame.
All this happened so suddenly that Robin took a step backward, surprised, then walked toward the door with no real sense of danger. Even the noise it was making seemed hardly real. It was only when she touched its metal handle and burned her fingers that she really registered the fact that the stairwell outside was full of fire.
Still far from panicking, she crossed to the desk and looked out of the window. Yes. She could get through that. And suddenly the need to do so was borne upon her most forcefully. The farthest port of the hatches in the deck before her suddenly erupted into flame.
The window was big enough for her to get out of but it was fanged with stumps of thick glass. And it was early in the day, she reckoned, to deliver little Charlotte or William by cesarean section. Still, that was easily taken care of. She tore the mattress off the bunk and bundled it through the hole until it folded down over the glass. She should be able to slip through quite easily. Over the chair and onto the desk she moved, only to pause. It would be safer still if she had something outside to step down onto. Had she time to arrange that? The practiced eye of a fearless tomboy youth informed her that it would be an easy jump. Was she fussing too much? How roughly could you treat an unborn infant almost two months old?
She turned to look for something that would fit through the window and still be solid enough to step down onto. That was when she noticed the blue flames licking in round the corners of the wooden door and the realization finally hit her that if she didn’t move fast, then she could die here.
The forward deck was just as much of a mess as the bridge had been. The planes had come in low and the forecastle had taken the brunt. Richard and Sam picked their way through the mess quickly and carefully, eyes everywhere for clues. They stopped at the gaping top of what must once have been a safely battened hatch. The first few feet of ladder going down into the hold were in much the same condition as the last few feet of the ladder going down the side. Hood crouched down to check it and Richard found an instant’s leisure to look at his watch, the battered old steel Rolex given to him nearly fifteen years ago by Rowena Heritage. Rowena: Robin’s elder sister — Richard’s first wife. It was twelve minutes since Robin had disappeared. He went cold, fearing he knew not what.
Then Hood interrupted: “Okay. Let’s go,” and the two of them went down together.
Richard stepped down off the ladder into water. It was not deep — just enough to flood his canvas docksider shoes — but it was hot. It was absolutely dark down here, the ship’s lighting having died with her generators long-since. Sam Hood’s deep drawl came out of a nearby shadow, “We don’t find a flashlight in five seconds, I’m outta here.”
There was one clipped to the ladder at shoulder height. Richard switched it on and they found themselves surrounded by wooden crates stencilled in a range of scripts from Cyrillic through Roman to Arabic.
“See anything in English?” asked Sam.
“Not a thing.”
“What d’you reckon?”
“Open one quickly…”
Both men were bellowing over the roar, choking with every deep breath on increasingly acrid fumes. But the boxes were important. They had to be. Nobody strafed an unimportant ship. Therefore the planes were after the crew or the passengers. Or the cargo.
It was the cargo. The first crate they opened proved it. “Heavy ordnance,” opined Sam.
“Beyond me. Never seen anything like it.”
“Dangerous stuff.” Sam was ferreting in among the packing now. “Damn! Richard! This’s a guided missile.”
Richard was in action at once. The markings on the box, in Cyrillic, made no sense to him but they formed a recognizable pattern. It was repeated. Many times. “What d’you think, Sam?”
“I think we’d better get out of here, fast.”
“Let’s just check for documentation first. Anything on paper!” But an increasingly rapid search produced nothing. After five minutes the hot water was halfway to Richard’s knees and he had had enough. “Okay, Sam. Time to go!” And find Robin on the way, he thought to himself; though please God she was safely off already.
Behind the tiny cabin’s smoldering door, wedged into a corner, was a tall cupboard that had not yet really attracted Robin’s interest. She crossed to it now, however, her mind racing. There might be something — anything — to help her get safely through that window. She tore the door open and a box the size of a child’s coffin toppled out toward her. She screamed and jumped back, allowing it to fall with a hollow thud down onto the floor. Her muscles refused to move until her suddenly sluggish brain had worked out what it was. It was nearly five feet long and two square. There was a hemp rope loop at each end. There was a catch padlocked shut halfway along it. It looked like a gun box to her.
It would do. Without further thought, she took the rope at the nearest end and pulled it toward her. The box lifted easily but proved to be heavy and unwieldy. Only desperation gave her the strength to get it up onto the table so that it leaned on the mattress. Then it was easy enough to slide it up onto the window frame and guide it down onto the deck outside. She leaned out of the window and invested a few more seconds in tilting the box until it fell safely onto its side.
She had followed it up until she was standing on the desk and she turned sideways now, hesitating no longer. She hunched herself over and slid astride the window frame, putting her full weight onto the mattress. There was a tearing sensation on the back of her right thigh. Something scraped across her shoulders. She could sense the glass cutting its way through the bedding toward her as she reached down for the box with her foot.