Текст книги "Noah's Ark: Survivors"

Автор книги: Harry Dayle

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Sixty-One

ONCE JAKE HAD finished the soup and bread, Captain Coote took him upstairs to the main deck, through the control rooms, and into his cabin. He explained that although the lower deck had bunks for every crew member, they were tightly packed and not comfortable. Jake would be able to get some decent sleep in the captain’s quarters. The cabin opened directly into a communications control room manned by six crew members, but they didn’t make much noise. Besides, Jake was exhausted, and the painkillers were kicking in too. He knew he wouldn’t have much trouble sleeping. And indeed as soon as his head hit the pillow, he was gone.

While he slept, Captain Coote gathered all his crew who weren’t taking their sleep shift into the junior rating’s mess. He relayed the information that Jake had provided earlier, telling them about the toxic ash, the fate of Longyearbyen, and the survivors on the Spirit of Arcadia. The news was difficult to deliver, and to receive. The men were used to not seeing their families for long periods of time, but that did nothing to soften the blow of having it all but confirmed that they were almost certainly dead. Coote knew that keeping up morale was key to their own survival, and he put a great deal of emphasis on the mission ahead. They were to track down the cruise ship. The passengers were threatened. Weapons were involved. This was the kind of situation they were trained to deal with in the navy. Seamen rarely saw this sort of action once they left behind the surface skimmers for life below the waves, so the plan was met with enthusiasm. A welcome distraction from thoughts of the fate of those back home. There was work to be done, and everyone knew their place and their role. Coote’s boat ran like a well oiled machine.

• • • • •

Jake was woken by a knock at the door. He pulled himself upright and twisted round to a sitting position with his legs over the side of the bunk. His hand felt much improved, but his side was still very painful. He got to his feet, opened the door.

“Hi Jake, I brought you some breakfast,” Ewan said.

He walked in with a tray, set it down on a tiny table. It was loaded up with buttered toast, jam, fruit, cereal, and black coffee. There were also some more painkillers. Jake picked them up straight away, knocked them back and washed them down with a couple of gulps of coffee. It was obviously instant, but he wasn’t complaining.

“Thank you,” Jake managed at last.

“You’re welcome. We don’t get many visitors. Nice to see a new face around here. It sounds like we might get to see a lot of new faces soon?”

“Where are we? How long was I asleep?”

“You’ve been out for about ten hours. As to where we are, somewhere in the Norwegian sea, I’m not sure precisely where. They think they’ve picked up a signal from your boat.”

“But they’re not sure? Could it be other survivors? Another submarine perhaps?”

“Unlikely. Even after the end of the world, protocol would prevent most submarines from broadcasting a distress signal unless they were genuinely in trouble. We’re detecting a search and rescue radar transponder approximately thirty nautical miles ahead. No GPS location, we believe the satellites were taken out by the asteroid. We should have visual confirmation within the hour though.”

“If you’re picking up the SART, then I guess we’re not underwater?”

“No, we didn’t dive. The antenna array works better out of the water.”

“Will they see us coming?”

“Not from this distance.”

“We’ll need to get close though. Without being seen.”

“Not being seen is something we’re very good at.” Ewan hesitated, seemed to be debating with himself whether to speak further. He made up his mind. “If I may ask, was it really that bad? At Longyearbyen? Was everything destroyed?”

“I’m sorry,” Jake said. He stopped eating, looked at the young sailor. He could imagine what he was thinking. “Yes, it was bad. But it must have been over quickly. Like being in the blast radius of one of your nuclear warheads. The town was vaporised. The people, they wouldn’t have felt anything. It would have been over very quickly for them.”

Ewan nodded slowly. “It’s strange. We carry these weapons. We all know what they’re capable of, the damage they can do. And we all hope we never ever have to use one in anger. My father served in the navy all his working life. I was too young to really understand, but I knew he was afraid of all out nuclear war. He never said it, of course. But I knew. When I joined up the cold war was already over. Some of the older sailors, they talk about the old days. We talk a lot on here, there’s not much else to do. They tell me the same thing, about the fear they had that one day, one day they would have to launch these things, and that when the boat surfaced, months later, everything would be gone. Us younger ones, we never had that fear. We’re told that the nukes, they’re a deterrent, to make sure the end of the world never happens. And despite all that, for all the money, the technology, the arms race, the standoffs, the world still ended. We couldn’t stop it.”

“Ewan, the world didn’t end. Not for everyone. You’re still here. I’m here. There are three thousand people on the Spirit of Arcadia. And who knows how many others? Other submarines. Maybe other boats. Perhaps some corner of the world got spared, just like we did?”

Coote stuck his head round the door.

“Ah, awake! Excellent. Very good. Ewan told you that we’ve picked up a signal? We’re tracking it on the radar, it looks like it’s your boat. That or a bloody big whale with a radio transponder! When you’ve finished your breakfast, Ewan will bring you through to the communications suite. You need to meet Ralf. He’s something of an ace hacker, but I expect you can find us a quicker way in.”

Jake nodded. “I’ll be right out.”

He wolfed down the rest of the food on the tray. The previous night’s soup had settled his stomach, but he still felt like he hadn’t eaten in a week. By the time he was done the painkillers were taking effect, and he was starting to feel human again.

• • • • •

The communications suite was one of the rooms he had passed through when he arrived. Men sat at floor to ceiling workstations that Jake thought looked surprisingly old fashioned for such a recent vessel. It was something about the solidity of the equipment. He had no doubt it was state of the art, but it wouldn’t have looked out of place on Ewan’s father’s cold war ships.

Coote beckoned them over to the end station. A young man with a shaved head and tattoos up both arms was sitting in a swivel chair. He was the only crew member in the room not to be wearing a headset.

“This is Lieutenant Ralf Cormack, he’s one of our senior communications officers. Ralf can do things with a computer that even the makers wouldn’t think possible.”

Ralf held out a hand. Jake shook it, all the time thinking that the Lieutenant looked like anything but a hacker,

“We’re closing in on your ship. Coote tells me that you have the latest anti piracy measure on board?”

“That’s correct,” Jake said. “I just hope Flynn doesn’t know that and hasn’t disabled them.”

“That’s what I’m here to find out sir.”

“Jake, please. Call me Jake.”

“No problem. Does the system have a live feed, or record only Jake?”

“Both, live and record. There’s also a facility for remote playback. It can be triggered externally. There’s a web page interface, you just need a username and password. We can try mine, but I think it only works from an on board terminal. The navy are supposed to have some kind of access though.”

“We wouldn’t be issued with that. Fighting civilian piracy is a skimmer’s job, not something that us dolphin’s deal with.”

Jake looked enquiringly at Coote.

“Dolphin’s are submariners. Skimmers are surface ships,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse us, we have our own dialect down here.”

Jake was starting to sense how the crew really was like one family. Shared language, like code. Mutual respect despite the banter he had heard around the place. He wondered if it had been like that for Lucya when she was in the Russian navy, and whether she missed that camaraderie on the Spirit of Arcadia.

He brought his attention back to the task in hand, and reeled off some technical details to the communications officer, information about how to connect to the ship’s anti piracy system remotely. Ralf bashed away on his keyboard at an impressive rate of knots. The screen in front of him seemed even more incomprehensible to Jake than the submariner’s lingo. Tiny green text against a black background. But when Ralf hit Enter and sat back, the text was replaced by an image. It looked like a website was loading, but very very slowly.

“We’re too far away to get decent bandwidth…good connection speed. It will improve as we close in,” Ralf explained.

“I think it’s about time we made ourselves less visible,” Coote said.

He picked up what looked like a phone handset from the console, punched a button and relayed orders. Before he’d even replaced the handset, red lights began to flash, a speaker crackled into life and a voice called “Dive, dive!”. A klaxon sounded throughout the submarine, resonating around the confined space, blaring out its deafening message for ten full seconds before stopping as abruptly as it had started.

“You might want to hold onto something Jake,” Coote said smiling. “We’re about to dive.”

Jake grabbed onto the back of a chair. Ralf and Coote both burst out laughing.

“Sorry old chap,” Coote said grinning. “Couldn’t resist! We don’t see many newbies. At ease sailor. This boat is as smooth as they come.”

Jake felt the submarine tilt very slightly towards the front as it pushed itself below the surface. A minute later, the ride changed entirely. Since he had spent months at sea it was quite an unusual sensation to no longer be rolling. The submarine slid through the water with such stability and precision it was as if they weren’t moving at all. To Jake, it felt for all the world as if he had stepped off onto dry land.

Someone called across from another console on the other side of the room.

“Sir, I believe we have established visual contact.”

“Come with me,” Coote said to Jake.

The two men crossed the confined space of the suite to find another officer operating a colour screen. There was a clear image in the middle. It was distant, magnified and pixellated. But it was without question the Spirit of Arcadia.

“That’s her,” Jake said. “That’s my ship.”

Coote picked up another handset, pressed a button and relayed more orders to an unseen helmsman.

“Maintain periscope depth and heading, reduce speed to 15 knots. We’re closing in on them.”

He hung up, turned back to Jake.

“We’re not deep, but they won’t see us coming. Staying at this depth means we can keep the photonics mast up and get a good visual approach. I daresay we’ll get a better signal for accessing to the computers too.”

Jake nodded.

“About another thirty minutes and we should be close enough to have a look at getting into that system. In the meantime, maybe you’d like to get cleaned up a little? No offence, but you do look like you’ve been through the wars somewhat. Ewan can show you where the bathrooms are. We have some spare uniforms, I’m sure there’s something in your size.”

“That would be great, thank you.” Jake was glad of the diversion from the mix of emotions he’d felt on seeing his ship again.

Sixty-Two

JAKE SPENT TOO long in the shower, but he didn’t care. The hot water was bliss. When he was done, he found a clean pair of navy trousers, a shirt, and a navy jersey all laid out for him. They fitted almost perfectly.

Ewan was waiting for him outside the bathroom, and escorted him back through the submarine. Jake couldn’t imagine spending weeks or months cooped up in such a confined space. The ceilings were low, and although the fixtures and fittings were modern and clean, the complete lack of any natural light was oppressive. The crew had tried to make the place homely. Photos adorned many surfaces, drawings sent by children were common too.

Every room they passed through looked to have more than one use. Food was stored everywhere, even under bunks. The efficient use of every tiny nook and cranny reminded Jake of caravanning holidays, and of his first trips on small pleasure boats back home.

All the submariners he encountered were polite. Many were keen to talk to him, to hear first hand what he had seen outside, on the surface. Ewan did a good job of fielding these requests, hurrying his charge through bulkheads to the next room each time they were slowed down by these inquisitive sailors. Jake didn’t mind answering their questions, but they didn’t really have the time for it.

He was struck by the ways the crew kept themselves occupied. There appeared to be at least two separate poker tournaments going on. Ewan explained that these could last for weeks. When they went through the junior ratings’ mess he saw a group of young men huddled together, studying materials for a test that could see them promoted. They must have known that the exams would never happen now, but he could totally understand the desire to carry on as normal. Indeed down here, under water, cut off from the rest of the world, it was easier to just keep pretending everything was normal.

They called in on the medical berth, and Vardy changed the dressing on his hand. The rest had done some good and it was starting to heal nicely.

When they eventually got back to the communications control room, Ralf called them straight over.

“We’re right behind them, less than a nautical mile between us. We’ve got excellent visual contact, and a high bandwidth connection to the computer system. I’ve had a go at cracking the security. It’s not bad, not great. With time I can get in. But it would be worth trying your own password first.”

He moved to one side, making his keyboard accessible. Jake leaned over and typed in his username, and then a password below. It was masked by dots as he entered it. He hit Return, and the page refreshed in the web browser. A message written in red informed them that his account was not valid for remote access.

“Sorry,” Jake said. “I didn’t think it would work.”

“That’s okay. Actually what I really needed was your username. I can get into the authentication database. It’s one way encrypted, hashed and salted, difficult to break without a lot of computational horsepower and time. We’ve got the power, but my understanding of the situation is that time may not be on our side.”

“I have no idea what any of that means,” Jake said, feeling dumb.

Ralf laughed. “No probs. It just means I can’t crack your password quickly. But I don’t need to, I just need to change your access level. I already cracked into the database, and now I know your username, I only have to do this.”

He tapped a button and his screen switched from the web page back to the green text on black. He bashed away furiously at the keyboard sending lines of text scrolling up the screen, then sat back, tapped Return, and the screen flicked back to the web page.

“Try again,” he said.

Jake leaned over once more, and re-entered his username then his password. He hit Return. The page refreshed, and a message read “Processing…” A few seconds later the screen changed and a complex page came up. It was headed Spirit of Arcadia Anti Piracy Security System Console.

“Shit!” Jake said. “It worked!”

“Of course. That’s what we do here. Okay, let’s see. We should probably get Coote back before we do anything else.”

“I’m on it,” Ewan said, and sprinted off out of the console room.

“Do you have any idea of the date and time we need to access?” Ralf asked.

“The date was May third. The time, I’m not sure. Let’s see…the election meeting was called for twenty one hundred hours. It would have been maybe half an hour later that they marched me up to the bridge. Flynn didn’t come up straight away, he had to get his shoulder patched up where he took a bullet. I would estimate twenty two hundred hours, that would be a good starting point.”

“Okey dokey. Let’s see here.”

Ralf navigated his way through various menus relating to archived security information. He found a page labelled “Bridge Feed”. There were a list of dates. He selected one. The page reloaded, and in the middle was a large video player. He looked up at Jake and grinned.

Coote stepped through the bulkhead door.

“Righto lads, what have we got?”

“We’re about to find out. Ready when you are,” Ralf replied.

Coote took up position behind him. Ralf moved the playhead on the video window to 22:00 and hit the play button.

A circle of dots animated in the middle of the black video window, indicating that the file was buffering. Suddenly it filled with a colour image. The video couldn’t capture the whole of the bridge. but it showed enough. The camera must have been hidden somewhere above and in front of the captain’s seat, looking backwards over the room. Visible in the background was a chair, and Jake was tied to it. Flynn’s henchmen milled around close by. The sound quality wasn’t great, and they were talking in hushed voices. It was impossible to make out what they were saying.

“He’ll appear any minute,” Jake said without taking his eyes from the screen. “The guys guarding me were altogether in a group like that just before he arrived.”

The three men continued to watch the footage. Sure enough, three minutes later they saw the door open and Flynn stride in.

“Mr Noah, congratulations.” His voice could clearly be heard from the console’s little speaker.

“That him?” Coote enquired.

“That’s him,” Jake confirmed.

They watched for ten minutes as the video confirmed everything that Jake had told Coote about Flynn and his plan.

Sixty-Three

HALF AN HOUR later, Jake, Coote, Ralf, and two dozen submariners including Eric and Ewan were assembled in the junior ratings’ mess. The video of Flynn and Jake on the bridge had just been screened to all the men present. Ralf tapped at the touchscreen of a small tablet he was holding, and the big screen on the wall flickered, then settled.

“This is the live feed from the bridge,” he said.

“Jake, can you give us a quick who’s who? For the benefit of these men?” Coote looked around the room.

Jake stood up, walked to the screen.

“This man sitting in the captain’s chair is Flynn, as you just saw. He’s in charge, no doubt about that. He took a bullet to his shoulder, but I don’t think it affected his mobility in any way. This man here on the helm, that’s Pedro. The man watching him, the one with the gun, is called Zhang. He’s dangerous. I watched him kill a man, one of their own. It certainly looks like Pedro is acting under duress. He’s a good man, I don’t think he’s working with them by choice. These other men, I don’t know their names but they are all working with Flynn. They’re some of the disciples you heard him talk about.”

“He said there were twelve disciples in all,” Eric said. “With Zhang, I see five on the bridge. Where do you think the others are?”

“No idea. I am guessing they’re keeping some of the bridge crew captive somewhere. Hoping, anyway. We know that he took Lucya, the chief radio officer. And before that they took another hostage, the head of housekeeping. They may have other hostages, and they must be holding these women somewhere. Some of the disciples will be guarding them.”

“Any thoughts on where he would be holding them?” Coote asked.

“None. There’s no brig or secure cell on the ship. We looked for Tania and didn’t find her, even when we surveyed every cabin. I guess they moved her around. They could be anywhere. Maybe more than one location.”

“So we have no way of identifying these guys,” Ralf said.

“Not all of them. But anyone carrying a gun you can probably assume is one of them. Apart, maybe, from Max, our head of security. He had access to the gun locker, but I believe they took his key, violently. I might be wrong, and he could be armed and active, but I think it’s more likely he’s a hostage, or dead.”

“Thank you Jake. Ralf, the plans if you could?” Coote looked over to the tattooed man.

Ralf tapped away on his tablet. The screen flickered, then the image was replaced with deck plans.

“Our entry on board is here, the landing platform for the tender. We have visual confirmation that they haven’t closed it up. It provides access to deck two. The bridge is located on deck ten. This is the most direct route.”

As Coote spoke, Ralf zoomed in on the relevant sections of the blueprints. The plan was discussed in detail for two hours with Jake providing as much information as he could.

They were to board the Spirit of Arcadia at twelve thirty hours. There had been discussion about waiting until night when most passengers would be asleep and out of danger. The consensus was there was too great a risk that Flynn could already be harming or even killing people, that they should not waste any time. At the hour they had chosen, passengers were likely to be in the restaurants for lunch rations, so the risk was somewhat reduced.

They filed out of the mess to take up positions for the mission. Coote turned to Jake.

“Maybe this boat isn’t so poorly named after all eh? The Ambush is about to engage in an actual ambush!”

• • • • •

Jake was to remain aboard the submarine until the men had secured the bridge of the cruise ship. They were trained in combat, he wasn’t. He would only get in the way and risk the mission. Instead, he was stationed next to Ralf. They were to provide radio support. The live feed from the bridge would be crucial information.From a station next to Ralf’s, another officer was monitoring the video feed from the periscope array.

The most delicate part of the operation, Coote had explained, was surfacing at exactly the right spot. They wanted to remain hidden for as long as possible. The captain was now in the main control room overseeing the helmsman. An open audio feed between the two control rooms meant Jake had a good idea of what was going on. They had pulled alongside Spirit of Arcadia and matched her speed exactly. Using a fancy sonar trick, they had been able to engage some sort of autopilot that would keep them in position, provided the cruiser stayed on relatively straight course and didn’t execute any tight turns. They were now in the process of surfacing. Instead of just rearing up out of the water as they had done in front of the life raft, they were attempting to partially surface. Clipped orders were called out, status updates called back. Jake got the impression from the tense atmosphere that this was not something they practised regularly.

“Steady!”

“A little more out of the aft tank please Budden.”

“Aye sir.”

“Tower has broken the surface!”

“Keep it steady Budden. Another three metres.”

“Two…one…”

“Hold her here!”

“Holding.”

“How do we look from outside?”

The officer to Jake’s left replied into his headset: “Looks like we’re creating a slight bow wave, nothing too conspicuous.”

“Any sign they’ve spotted us?”

“Negative,” Ralf responded. “All quiet on the bridge. Primary target looks to be sleeping.”

“Red team, proceed with caution. I repeat, proceed with caution.”

Jake watched the periscope monitor intently. It had a wide field of view, and he was able to see a hatch on the top of the fin pop open. He counted a dozen armed submariners as they crawled out of the small round hole, then leapt from the tower onto the landing platform from which he himself had been dispatched so recently. They mounted the steps in formation. The lead man entered the boat. Thirty seconds later the others followed.

“Red team abord.”

“Roger. Blue team stand by.”

“Standing by.”

There was radio silence for a few very tense minutes.

“Red team approaching engine room.”

“Roger. Blue team go go go.”

Jake listened attentively. Ralf’s screen showed no movement on the bridge. On the other screen he saw twelve more men leave by the hatch. The followed the same formation, and within two minuets all had disappeared from view.

“Blue team aboard.”

“Red team, we have secure the engine room. I repeat, we have secured the engine room.”

“How many disciples?”

“Two gunmen. I don’t think they were expecting us.”

“Casualties?”

“None. No shots fired. These boys gave themselves up easily.”

Jake breathed a small sigh of relief. They knew that until a few days ago these so-called disciples were just regular passengers, not soldiers. They hadn’t expected too much of a fight. Even so, Coote had insisted that frightened men with guns could be unpredictable. Nothing was to be taken for granted.

“Blue team, we are on deck ten. Approaching bridge.”

“Roger. Keep this channel open.”

Jake’s heart was beating fast again. This was the most dangerous part of the operation. There was a good chance that Flynn had stationed men outside the bridge door. The speakers hissed quietly as the radio transmitted the breathing of the lead man. Then everything happened very fast. Shouting erupted from the speaker.

“Armed forces, drop your weapons! Get down on the ground, now!”

Incoherent noise, more shouting. Two shots fired. Then another.

“Down, now!”

On the monitor Jake watched as Flynn’s men ran to cover the door. They took up position behind consoles, two each side. Flynn ran.

“Primary target appears to be going for the escape hatch,” Ralf said into his headset. He turned to Jake “Looks like you were right about him trying to escape.”

“Blue four, confirm your position?”

“Blue four in position above bridge hatch.”

“Standby, primary target headed your way. Blue one report.”

“Blue one, one man down, dead. Another immobilised. No casualties on our side. About to blow the door.”

Flynn was halfway up the ladder, but stopped. He paused for an instant, then jumped back to the ground, landing in a crouching position. He sprang to his feet and sprinted to the rear of the bridge, and out of view of the camera.

“Primary target has changed direction, no longer headed for the hatch,” Ralf reported. “You’ve got two targets either side of the door. Repeat, two either side, behind consoles. Further target at five metres from door. Shit, what the hell is he doing?”

At the same instant, the screen flared bright white. The camera came back into focus. Dust was blowing across the room. More shouting issued from the speaker.

“Armed forces, drop your weapons and give yourselves up. You are outnumbered!”

Gunshots rang out.

Jake looked on in horror as he saw Pedro being walked up the middle of the bridge towards the door. Zhang was behind him, a gun held to the pilot’s neck.

One of the men behind the console popped his head over, fired off a shot. More shots were being fired from the door by the unseen navy men.

“He’s using Pedro as a shield,” Jake said. “He thinks he’s going to get out of there.”

Ralf relayed this to Blue team, but it was too late. As he spoke, Pedro and Zhang both dropped to the floor. The gunshots rang out through the speaker.

“I can’t watch this any more,” Jake said. “I’m going in. Flynn’s getting away. They could be held up there forever, it’s a standoff.”

“Coote wants you here until the bridge is secured,” Ralf said.

“That’s my ship. I’m responsible for those people. I’ve let them down once, I’m not doing it again.”

“I can’t stop you Jake, you’re a civilian. But I’d advise you to let us take care of this.”

“Your advice is noted, thank you.”

Jake smiled, then turned and left the communications room.