A stupid smile crossed his lips as he considered the ridiculousness of the situation, and his inability to now have any effect on its outcome.
The impeller, designed to bring in cold sea water to actively cool the engine, had split. Consequently, the engine wasn’t being cooled, and left unrepaired, would ultimately cause the engine to seize, turning a $20,000 repair job into a $1,000,000 need for a new engine. To avoid this, Global Shipping’s chief engineer had ordered a built-in safety system for each of his engines, to automatically shut down the engine should the impeller cease to draw in water.
The result of such a simple system was that everyone on board the Hayward Bulk, and potentially another three hundred thousand people, living in and around Cairns, were going to die, despite the engine being fully operational.
The irony of the system’s theoretical safe guard almost made Tom laugh as he watched the four engineers struggle to maneuver the massive impeller deep into the hull, where it could be fitted to the enormous super tanker’s engine.
Tom was just about to follow them, when he noticed that the man in the Armani suit, who appeared unsettlingly confident about the situation, was following the rest of the engineers to the door, but just before entering it, he looked around and then continued to walk toward the front of the ship.
What’s he up to? Tom wondered.
Following him, Tom didn’t even attempt to hide. The wind was gusting so strongly, and there was so much sea spray in the air, Tom feared that he might likely be blown overboard before the man even realized that he was being followed.
The closer the man came to approaching the bow, the more Tom worried about what he was up to. There were no working engines at the Hayward Bulk’s bow, so why was he headed there? Tom fully intended to find out.
The man was carrying a work bag, but for what purpose, Tom didn’t know.
Ahead, the man opened one of the hatchways into the hull, looked from right to left, and then disappeared below.
Tom ran ahead, trying to catch up.
He opened the hatchway and listened. The soft background lights, that allowed the crew to see the inner workings of the ship’s bowels, allowed him to see only a short distance ahead. Down below, he could hear the sound of someone moving fast, skipping a number of steps as they descended; not that Tom could hear very much over the sounds of the storm.
The man may have had a valid reason for being there. It seemed reasonable to assume that if he were an engineer with a purpose, he would be running down the stairs.
Tom followed the stairs to the bottom.
The bilge could be heard, the ship having already taken on large quantities of the water which had flooded the deck, and was now swishing around the bottom.
Once he reached the bottom and looked around, Tom couldn’t see where the man had gone. It appeared to be a dead end, which served little purpose other than to provide buoyancy. Tom turned around to see if he could find another direction in which the man might have gone.
Shining his flashlight around the large room it appeared to serve little purpose. At the furthermost point of the bow, two comparatively small engines could be seen, which must have been used for the bow thruster.
At the portside engine, something caught his eye.
Tom saw the faint glow of a single red dot which was flickering on and off. Ordinarily, Tom wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but in the absence of any other light, the single red light seemed out of place.
Climbing down to the engine, he placed his hand on the red light. It glowed on his hand as though its source was emanating from elsewhere.
His eyes followed the beam to its origin, and then stopped.
On the side of the hull, and about ten feet above him, were two single sticks of dynamite wired to a timer with a red LED light. As explosives go, it wasn’t much, but it was certainly enough to blow a big hole in the hull, one big enough to sink the Hayward Bulk — if cyclone Petersham didn’t sink it first.
Tom’s mind grasped the outcome.
Above him, he heard the sound of a single steel bar sliding over the top of the hatchway.
He was trapped.
Chapter Four
The man in the Armani suit was feeling good.
Everything had fallen into place perfectly. At first, after his partner had destroyed the impeller, he’d been worried that they were going to be able to repair it before he could reach the stricken ship. Then, he heard about the cyclone, and the solution presented itself.
Malcolm Ford, a senior engineer for Global Shipping, was in Sydney at the time. It would be easy for him to offer assistance to the damaged ship. It would also provide him with more credibility, as the crew of the Maria Helena would most likely have never met the man.
The gamble had paid off, but he was worried that the pilot seemed to sense that something wasn’t quite right. The man appeared too aware, much brighter than usual. After research, he discovered that the pilot was Sam Reilly’s right hand man in Global Shipping’s special projects division — Deep Sea Expeditions.
As it was, that problem had been taken care of.
Now, he had less than an hour in which to retrieve it. He was going to have to work fast, but he was confident that he would have it in time.
The man ran back towards the main pilot house — the superstructure located at the rear of the ship, which housed the crew quarters, Navigation Bridge, and control tower.
To his relief, he didn’t run into anyone on his way there, and he quickly opened the door and stepped inside. The sound of the storm was instantly cut in half as he closed the door behind him.
He’d seen the schematics of the ship more than a week ago, and knew exactly where he was going — down more than a dozen sets of stairs, until he reached the bowels of the ship.
In the ordinarily locked room, he picked up the swipe card that his friend had left for him and unlocked the door.
The room was small when compared to the vast size of the rest of the Hayward Bulk. It was dark, with no portholes to let in outside light. He turned the lights on, but they did nothing to make the place feel more homely.
At the far end of the room stood a single bed, and next to it was a laptop computer.
He turned the computer on and waited until the security login page booted up. Then, quickly typing in the alpha-numeric code, he watched as the startup screen changed to his homepage.
In the top left-hand corner, he clicked on a file labeled, “Time to go”.
Opening the file, his heart began to race as he realized that he was close to achieving his goal. He clicked the “proceed” button, and the tool bar showed the time remaining before the process was complete.
Leaving the laptop open to continue running its program, and confident that its owner would be too focused on current events to return to it, the man casually departed.
The smile never left his face until he was free.
He had done it.
He’d betrayed a man, and stolen something even more valuable than money.
Tom, unable to move the hatch above him, quickly returned to the place where he’d spotted the bomb. There was no identifiable timer, so he had no way to determine how much time he had left.
Tom realized that it didn’t matter.
He was going to have to find a way of disposing of it. If he failed, the Hayward Bulk was going to be destroyed, and everything they’d done to save the lives of everyone within a thousand miles of the place was going to be for nothing.
To the right of the bomb, he found a spool of heavy chain. It weighed a lot and he was barely able to carry it to the steps above the bomb. Once there, he unrolled it as fast as he could and lowered one end. He then wrapped the other end around a bollard until it locked upon itself.