The Last Airship (8 page)

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.

He
then carefully descended the large chain links until he reached the bomb.

It
was only comprised of two sticks of dynamite with a simple internal timer.
Someone from his unit probably could have disarmed it without thinking twice.
Unfortunately, he knew nothing about bombs.

He
grasped it in his right hand and pulled gently.

It
separated from the wall easily enough, and since he was still alive, Tom
thought that he was doing well so far.

Although
he didn’t know much about the bomb itself, he’d seen enough explosives during his
time in the Corps to know that people didn’t usually rig these with long timers.

He
carried it to the top of the stairs and affixed it to the hatchway door.

If
it detonates before I get out of here, it’s going to create my escape route…

Tom
returned to the bottom of the stairs and started banging  against the steel
dividing wall, which made up part of the ship's watertight safety compartments.
It was foolish to think that such a sound might be heard above the sound of the
cyclone, but it didn’t stop him from trying.

He
found a fire extinguisher and used it to ram the side of the steel plate.

After
banging away for ten minutes, Tom took a break, followed by another ten minutes
of banging. At the end of his fifth attempt, the resonance of his banging was
much louder than it had been at the start.

At
first, he didn’t realize its origin; his ears still ringing and his head throbbing.

When
he looked up, he realized that above him a ten foot hole could be seen where
the hatchway had been.

He’d
found his exit.

If
only there was enough time left to save the Hayward Bulk.

*

It
took half a mile and fourteen flights of stairs for Tom to reach the bridge,
which was located at the very back of the boat, and raised high up off the
deck.

“Captain
Ambrose?” Tom greeted the man, whose white beard and captain’s hat would easily
identify him as the very image of any sea captain anywhere in the world.

“Yes,”
he acknowledged, his eyes looking Tom up and down, “and you must be Mr. Bower,
the pilot off the Maria Helena?”

“That’s
me, and we have a serious problem.”

“We
sure do, son. It appears that despite your valiant efforts, we’re going to hit
that reef and tear the hull of my ship open as if it was a sardine can.”

“We’ll
get to that in a second.” Tom paused, he had no idea how close they were to the
reef. “One of the engineers who I transported on to this ship, a Mr. Malcolm
Ford, is not who he says he is. I caught him planting a bomb at the front of
the ship, and now I have no idea where he is.”

“Christ,
my day just gets better and better.” The captain looked confused. “But why
would anyone want to destroy my ship?”

“Most
likely because of your payload and the catastrophic repercussions of its
possible spill in these waters. It will be the worst terrorist attacks in
history!”

“Are
you kidding me?” The captain laughed. “Our payload is going to go straight to
the bottom. The only harm it will do is to any fish who are unfortunate enough
to be swimming underneath us when we sink. Nothing else will come of it.”

“But,
I was told you were carrying a load of uranium?”

“What,
through the Torres Straits? Are you nuts? Jim Reilly would never allow it – not
that he’d complain about the environmental risk, but if he were caught carrying
uranium, the EPA would fine him so much that even he would never afford to sail
a ship in these waters again.”

“Then
what are you carrying?” Tom asked.

“Coal.”

“Just
coal? Anything else? Why would James Reilly request all this support and risk
all of our lives if you’re only carrying coal? What else would someone be
after?”

The
captain opened a special shipping manifest and noted an entry dated two weeks
ago. “Jim Reilly was aboard just before we left Japan. He accessed his private
vault.”

“He
has a private vault?”

“Sure
does. It’s rumored that he has a private suite on all of his supertankers, but
this is the only one with a private vault.”

“Really?”
Tom couldn’t imagine why James Reilly would need that. “What does he keep in
it?”

“I
have no idea, I’ve never known. I do know that it’s not drugs – I know that
much for sure. We’ve had many drug-sniffing dogs come on board at some of the
ports we dock at, and I’ve never seen a single one of them stop and alert at
his vault.”

“How
often does he access his vault?”

“Not
very often, perhaps a couple of times a year.” The Captain’s eyes widened.
“Whatever it is, we can safely assume that it’s quiet valuable.”

“Why
do you say that?”

“It
generally comes to us via a number of a private security vans. You know, the
kind they use to transport gold and money around for banks. Only, Jimmy’s
different, he likes to use a number of them. Each one is armored to the hilt.
They all crisscross their routes, so that any would-be pursuers are at a loss
as to which van holds his valuables. In the end, there are usually three
vehicles that enter the hull. When this happens, the old man is always on site.
He says that he doesn’t trust anyone, and he has used that specific team for
years. He then locks it away and he may or may not retrieve it for months or
even years later.”

“And
you’ve never found out what it was?”

“No,
never. What Jimmy doesn’t want you to know, you simply don’t ask.”

“So
then, once he locks whatever it is in his safe, who keeps it secure?”

“No
one. Like I said, ‘It’s secured in his private vault.”’

“What’s
to stop someone from boarding the ship and breaking into it?”

“The
vault can only be accessed from the outside, along the waterline when the ship
is empty. Then, when the ship is loaded, the entrance is well below the
waterline, making it next to impossible to access when the ship is moving.”

“What
about a submarine or divers?” Tom asked.

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“The
Hayward Bulk is a 500,000 ton super tanker. Do you have any idea what sort of pressure
is created near the hull of this ship when it’s moving?”

Tom
nodded his head. He had a fair idea where the Captain was going with this.

“Anything
that comes close to the ship would be pulled into her wake and destroyed in a
matter of seconds.”

“I
get it.”

He
really didn’t, though. Tom had known James Reilly for years and other than
being well past suffering with megalomania, the man had always seemed quite pragmatic.

Why
would he transfer something so valuable this way? He could easily afford to
transport it by plane, or some other secure method. If it was illegal, what
could possibly be so rewarding that he would risk everything he already has?

Tom
already had an answer to his own question –
more money.

“What
if the ship were to sink?”

“We
have state-of-the-art lifeboat aboard. We’ll evacuate well before the Hayward
Bulk reaches the reef, and you’ll find that we’ll be quite safe.”

“No,
I’m sorry,” Tom paused. “What I mean is… from what you’ve described, whatever
it is that James Reilly is transporting, it is worth more than your ship,
 
and
we all know
that even the best crew and ship can’t stay afloat
indefinitely without risk. So, what happens to his prized possessions?”

“They
would still be quite safe.”

“Even
if the ship sinks?”

“Yes.
You see Tom, when Jimmy had his private vault built, he did so in such a way
that no one could break into it, even with a bomb. Structurally, if the Hayward
Bulk sank to the ocean floor and was completely destroyed, his private vault
would still be left safe at the sea bottom. Then, if and when he locates his
precious ship, the contents of the vault could be retrieved using a diving
hatch, which was designed with an air tight compartment. You know,
the
kind they use in submarines?”

“Okay,
so someone is trying to sink us so that they can steal whatever James Reilly
has in his private vault.”

“But
even if we did sink, it would take months to gain access to the vault. You see,
the door is stronger than any bank vault, and would take months to break.”

“How
does it open under normal operations?”

“He
has a secret room onboard and there he maintains a digital fortress…”

“A
what?” Tom asked.

“A
digital fortress. Basically, it works like this. The system constantly transmits
a code every thirty seconds to the vault door telling it that everything is
okay. If it fails to do so, even once, or the ship stops moving, the door seals
shut.”

“What
if someone destroys the computer?”

“Then
the digital fortress fails to transmit and the vault locks. So, you see, it
would take a lot more than a terrorist act or accidental sinking of the ship,
for someone to steal the contents of James Reilly’s vault.”