Dead Sea (31 page)

Nic and the stick-stiff Richard helped the two pilots and one engineer fire up the diesel-fuelled generators that powered the gas pumps, though the flight crew insisted on overseeing the refuelling themselves. So, by eighteen hundred they were in the air again, with the pilot reporting to the nearest flight controller, at Barking Sands Airfield, Kauai, Hawaii, that the avgas supplies on Sand Island needed the Boeing gas supply team's urgent attention. The hostess served an early dinner – or a late lunch, depending on which time zone their stomachs were in. And by the time they had consumed their vichyssoise, chicken chasseur and wild rice accompanied by a medley of green vegetables, followed by
pots de crème au chocolat
, they were on long finals once again.

The airstrip on Tern Island, French Frigate Shoals, was like that on Midway – unmanned but well maintained. At nineteen hundred hours on a tropical evening it was dark, and, had it not been for the crew of the chopper awaiting them there, there would have been no landing lights, and the runway as impossible for them to see as Howland Island had proved for the unfortunate Amelia Earhart. But the crew of the Changhe CA 109 which was waiting for them there had had the opportunity and the forethought to get everything ready.

Richard and Nic transferred to the helicopter and left the Gulfstream's flight crew loading enough avgas to get them down to Hilo International on Hawaii. Then, pausing only for Richard to make a swift survey of the deadly shoals that had nearly stopped the redoubtable Robin in her tracks, they were whisked up into the night sky once again.

The Changhe's accommodation was far less sumptuous than aboard the Greenbaum International Gulfstream, but Richard and Nic were strapped safely into bucket seats and given headsets that dulled the relentless thrumming of the rotors. Luckily neither of them was hungry, and both had relieved themselves before the Gulfstream touched down on French Frigate Shoals.

By nine thirty p.m., the Changhe was settling on to the landing area aft of the massive bridgehouse of the Heritage Mariner supertanker
Prometheus
, which, having emptied its huge tanks of a quarter of a million gallons of fresh water at Tuvalu, was now making its leisurely way north towards Alaska to fill up with oil for the European market. Like all Heritage Mariner supertankers it carried an emergency supply of avgas suitable for use in choppers. There was a quick turnaround on
Prometheus
and the Changhe was off again by ten p.m.

And so, by midnight local time, though it was only coming up for eight p.m. in the heads of its passengers, even as eight bells were sounding for the change of watch from the first to the middle, the Changhe arrived home. And waiting to greet her on the afterdeck of the adapted corvette
Poseidon
as she carried the submersibles
Neptune
and
Salacia
at flank speed into the all-too actual Pacific Garbage Patch, were Captain Mongol Chang and her first officer, Lieutenant Straightline Jiang.

‘
Ho
,' she said in characteristically gruff greeting as they both climbed – equally stiffly – down on to the deck. ‘I hope you will not bring me any monster jellyfishes or Moby-Dick whales this time!'

I
t was only an overdose of the pills which Nic had got from the Tokyo hospital that allowed Richard six hours' solid sleep. He took a handful while concluding a swift briefing with Captain Chang. And then another as he stood increasingly dopily through a couple of abortive attempts to contact
Katapult,
whose red dot seemed so tantalizingly close ahead of them. Then he went into his bunk at one a.m., lay down as though poleaxed and woke at seven the next morning.

He knew at once that something was not quite right. He eased himself on to the thrumming, choppily heaving deck and was shocked and relieved both at the same time to note that he had collapsed into bed without getting undressed. Even his shoes were still in place. But at least the fact that he was still dressed meant he could get on to the bridge more quickly than would otherwise have been possible. Pausing only to freshen up, check his reflection, brush his hair and rinse his mouth, he rushed up two decks. Rushed, he observed wryly, like a centenarian who has lost his Zimmer frame.

When he did make it up there, he found himself standing stiffly between the silent forms of Captain Chang and her first lieutenant, staring ahead over the garish brightness of the two submersibles on the foredeck. The morning had dawned overcast a couple of hours earlier, and the leaden colour of the sky was reflected by the surface of the ocean, in sharp contrast to the brightness of
Neptune
and
Salacia
.

As far as the eye could see, the legendary blue of the Pacific was hidden beneath a layer of plastic. The majority of the rubbish seemed to be clear bottles of every conceivable size from 330-millilitre water bottles through two-litre stalwarts the same size as Tanaka's good ship
Cheerio,
to family-sized containers capable of holding a gallon or maybe two. There were personal items: trainers, flip-flops, footballs. Then there were the ubiquitous bags – from small ones that had once contained crisps or chips to big silver-throated multipacks. Shopping bags without number, from a worldwide range of stores and business outlets. There were black bags that had once held garbage – and some of them still appeared to do so. Green bags full of garden rubbish. And, floating in among the billions of bags, there were commercial containers. There were square ones – everything from Tupperware sandwich boxes to plastic dustbins – to massive water tanks such as could be found in any Western attic. There were barrel-shaped ones varying in size from fizzy drink cans to oil drums to the occasional hot water central heating cylinder.

And that was before he began to add in the kinds of flotsam that he was already familiar with from his adventures with the jellyfish. Floats and nets from day fishermen's tackle to huge commercial trawler gear. Fish crates, life jackets, Day-Glo working jackets that looked at first glance like the torsos of corpses, thick red rubber gloves, yellow boots, tyres, ships' fenders of every sort, size and shape. There were even full-sized containers like modest houses floating half submerged out there. And God alone knew what they contained.

Frowning with concern, Richard hobbled over to the starboard bridge wing and opened the bulkhead door that connected to the outside world. At once the bridge was filled with a strange, unearthly rumbling grating sound and a piercing, oily stench. ‘Where is
Katapult
?' he croaked, concerned for Robin.

‘Dead ahead,' answered Straightline. ‘We have had to cut speed but so has she. We'll be up with her by midday.'

‘Which is when she will be at the bottle Cheerio's location,' added Captain Chang. ‘Though how Captain Mariner will find one bottle in the midst of this . . .'

Nic arrived on the bridge then. ‘What the . . .' he said in disgust, looking out at the mess on the water.

‘What about the others?' asked Richard, swinging the bridge door closed.

‘The same,' said Straightline. ‘Mr Greenbaum's daughter in
Flint
seems to be making steady headway towards us. The wind is a light northerly – they can both tack across it even though they are heading in opposite directions. The two vessels are in the teeth of a fierce competition now, but they don't seem to be taking any risks from what I can judge of heading and speed from the locator beacons and the radar.'

‘Other than sailing through this crap in the first place,' grated Nic. ‘Where's Professor Tanaka?'

‘Here,' Straightline gestured to the twin displays that showed the red dots familiar from the laptop screens, and
Poseidon
's combat-standard radar display. ‘We will all get there to the same place at about the same time – the middle of nowhere – and the middle of whatever this excrescence is.'

‘That's something I must remember to ask Professor Tanaka when I see him,' said Richard thoughtfully.

Then Nic demanded suddenly, ‘Are we all right to be doing this? It looks pretty flaming dangerous out there.'

‘It is!' snapped Chang. ‘Dangerous for us but also very dangerous for
Katapult
and
Flint
. Much more dangerous for them, in fact. If we cut and run to safer waters, then who will help them if anything goes wrong?' She swung round and looked at her two employers with her fiercest frown. ‘And is that not what we are here for?
To help them if anything goes wrong?
'

Over a breakfast of cold noodles,
congee
warm rice porridge and
crullers
deep-fried doughsticks, Richard and Nic began to finalize their plans for the fast-approaching endgame as eight quiet chimes announced the start of the forenoon watch at eight a.m. ship's time. As the bustle of the watch change went on all around them, they fell into an increasingly deep discussion. For they had a fine equation to balance: two yacht captains locked in the final stages of a race that neither was willing to lose – though neither of them knew the true worth of their prize. To make matters worse, communications with the vessels in question was intermittent. And, as wild card against them,
Dagupan Maru
was also closing on the bottle. Also being highly selective with regard to communications. And she was a container vessel more than capable of running them both down, smashing them to kindling and killing everyone aboard. ‘I wonder,' mused Richard, mid-conversation, almost an hour later, ‘if Sittart could have had anything to do with the car that almost killed us?'

‘What put that in your head?' asked Nic quietly.

‘I don't know. But there's
something
here. Something not quite right.'

Nic nodded, frowned and shrugged, used to Richard's sudden flashes of insight. Feeling a little like Dr Watson sitting opposite Sherlock Holmes.

But after a moment's silence, their discussion resumed. For they had to assume that someone aboard the sinister container ship – some
one
at the very least – knew very well what a colossal fortune the bottle might represent.

And
then,
like the extra odds always skewed in the house's favour in Las Vegas casinos, there was the fact that Tanaka's predictions turned out to be true beyond anyone's wildest dreams. The weather around the Pacific Rim had clearly speeded up the currents of the North Pacific Gyre so that there was in fact a small but expanding continent of floating garbage, a plastic Sargasso Sea, gathering here. A Sargasso that was not yet solid enough to present a hazard to shipping in terms of blocking progress or hard enough to make collision damage likely – unless someone was unlucky enough to run into one of the containers – but which was sure to be full of other, as yet uncalculated, dangers.

After breakfast, the two men returned to the bridge and stood side by side with the captain and her navigator for a while, as three quiet chimes Warned that it was nine thirty a.m. aboard
Poseidon
, only two-and-a-half hours from their projected rendezvous. The four of them stood watching as the vessel pushed its way with increasing caution through the slowly thickening trash. Richard's unease continued to mount and he found himself limping out on to the outer bridge wing where he could come closer to the strange conditions they were sailing through, as though experiencing them with all five senses would also bring him closer to understanding the danger.

As Nic, less seawise than his battered friend, went below and started looking into business of his own, Richard leaned against the forward rail of the bridge wing, his whole aching body seeming to yearn forward as though some part of him could fly far ahead of
Poseidon
and come aboard
Katapult
to Robin. But it wasn't long before his fatigue-enhanced fancifulness gave way to the need for urgent physical action and he hurried below again, as fast as his bruised and battered body would allow.

On A deck, he found Nic deep in conversation with Ironwrist Wan and Fatfist Wu, controllers of the submersibles on the foredeck. And it didn't take long for the four of them to agree that action – any action – would be better than this relentless waiting, made infinitely worse by the amount of decisive energy that it had taken to get two of them here in the first place. And that decision seemed to lift a weight from each man's shoulders. For, given where they were, there was only one course of action open to each of them.

But before either Richard or Nic could take anything like the action that they agreed, they were called back up on to the bridge by a peremptory summons broadcast by Captain Chang. ‘What is it?' demanded Richard as he limped through from the lift abaft the bridge. Captain Chang did not answer. She simply gestured. And there, heaving over the port-quarter horizon was the massive bulk of
Dagupan Maru
, black against the wide grey sky
.

Richard grabbed the binoculars from their holster on the console beneath the clearview and was limping out on to the port bridge wing even before Nic arrived on the bridge itself behind him. This was the first time he had seen the freighter with his own eyes. And her picture on the laptop files that Jim sent from London Centre – let alone the photo of her name on the drifter's camera phone – came nowhere near to doing her justice.

Dagupan Maru
was a bloody big brute of a vessel, he thought. Not quite the size of his three-hundred-metre, quarter-of-a-million-ton supertankers like
Prometheus
, but bigger than any other vessels in the Heritage Mariner fleet. She looked every one of her two hundred metres in length, each of her twenty-five metres beam. And her deadweight tonnage could even be more than
Prometheus
's, let alone
Poseidon
's. Her command bridge, six decks above her weather deck, watched the watery world ahead of her over the tops of four blunt cranes that seemed like roughly squared oak tree trunks, the arms of their gantries squared away fore and aft in a line above the centre of her deck. There was a forest of satellite, GPS and communications equipment on top of her bridge house which served to make her radio silence more sinister still. There was a tall mast at her forepeak, festooned with radar equipment. And, focusing in on the massive flare of her bow at the foot of this foremast – a broad bow which seemed to him to be little more than a brutal black wall smashing arrogantly through the relative scum of waste – he could all too easily see how its larger sister had ridden down an eight-man Transpac without noticing the impact. How it could equally easily grind down
Katapult
, or
Flint
– or both. She was certainly not bothering with
Poseidon
's increasingly careful approach. She must be running at full speed, Richard calculated, relying on the huge ram of her bulbous bow to get her safely through the rubbish. But even taking Chang's caution into account,
Poseidon
could outsail
Dagupan Maru
any day of the week.