Running Blind / The Freedom Trap (51 page)

‘There’s a flask of coffee and a packet of sandwiches in the boat. And a bottle of whisky. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

She turned to go, and I said, ‘Alison, there’s just one more thing; see if you can get a big axe. A felling axe used for cutting down trees.’

She looked puzzled and then doubtful. ‘I’m not sure they use those on Malta—there are not too many trees.’

‘Do your best.’ She left and I rescued the victuals before the bottle got broken, and then I uncoupled the steering cables on the boat and hoisted out the engines. I also used the block and tackle to turn the boat out of the cradle so that it lay upside down on trestles. I ate the sandwiches and drank the coffee while studying the problem; the whisky I left strictly alone because there was a job to be done, although I’d probably be glad of a stiff jolt before I set out.

I proceeded to get my hands dirty. The hull was of glass fibre and I began to ruin it by drilling holes in carefully selected places. The idea was to position the ram so that it was at least three feet below the water line when the boat was planing at speed, and it had to be fixed to the hull firmly enough so that it wouldn’t come adrift on impact. If that happened then the momentum given by those big engines would be lost and the ram wouldn’t penetrate
Artina’s
steel shell.

I cut up lengths of angle-iron and bolted them to the hull and through to steel cross-members which ran athwartship. Then I started to weld it up. It wasn’t pretty welding and would have won no prizes at a craft school but, by God, it was strong—I made sure of that. When I had got that far there were two steel triangles built into the hull, the apexes of which were a little over three feet below the bottom. I took the long steel bar and welded it to the apexes of my steel triangles so that it was parallel to the bottom of the hull and projecting two feet in front.

Alison was back long before I had got that far and gave me a hand. It was hot and sweaty work and it took time. It was seven in the evening when I put the finishing touch to it. ‘Did you get the axe?’

She produced just what I needed—a long-handled felling axe. I didn’t need the handle and wasted no time in fiddling but cut it off with the welding torch. Then I took the blade and welded it vertically to the end of the steel bar—that was the cutting edge of my ram.

I stood back and looked at what I had done. Oddly enough it did look like a weird kind of hydrofoil, but I didn’t like to think of what all that heavy ironmongery hung under the boat would do to her planing characteristics. I began to worry about the speed I was going to lose and if I could get her to plane at all.

‘I could use a drink,’ I said.

Alison poured some whisky into the cup from the vacuum flask and gave it to me. She looked at the boat, and said. ‘It’s going to be dangerous. I was wondering…’

‘Wondering what?’

She turned to face me. ‘I was wondering if this can’t be done more simply—by the police.’

‘That’s a great idea,’ I said sardonically. ‘Can you imagine the local coppers believing us? Christ, Wheeler comes here every year and he’s a respected figure, a British MP and an
eminent capitalist. He’s probably given prizes to the yacht club and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the sole support of a local orphanage. By the time we managed to convince anyone both he and Slade would have flown the coop.’

‘There’s still a body on
Artina,’
said Alison. ‘That would take a lot of explaining away.’

‘Same objection,’ I said. ‘Forget it. Let’s have a look at the fireworks.’

There were a lot of them and they were big; rockets that would go up under their own power and maroons designed to be fired from mortars. ‘This lot should add to the festivities,’ I said in satisfaction. ‘We must get the boat on to the cradle,’

I had to cut bits away from the cradle to accommodate our strange craft and it was forever ruined for handling normal boats. More expense for the Treasury. I installed the engines and hooked up the steering cables and tested them. When I jumped to the ground the boat, now right way up, looked a bit more practicable.

‘How much did you pay for her?’ I asked curiously.

‘Fifteen hundred pounds,’ said Alison.

I grinned. ‘Guided missiles always are expensive. Let’s put the cargo aboard.’

We filled up every spare inch of the hull with the big fireworks. Alison, as foreseeing as ever, had brought along a jerrican full of petrol and, after topping up the tanks, there was still half a gallon left, more than enough to start a fire to get things going. I now had a new worry; I had drilled a dozen holes in the hull to take bolts and had caulked them with putty, and I was wondering if I had sealed her tight. That couldn’t be tested until we put her in the water and that wouldn’t be until it was good and dark.

‘When do they start shooting off the fireworks for the
festa
?’ I asked.

‘Two hours after sunset.’

‘I’d like to ram
Artina
when the official fireworks are going full blast. It’ll help to confuse the issue.’ I sat down wearily and pulled out my ship plan; it was becoming worn and tatty and dirty at the creases, but it was still legible. ‘The trouble is that I might hit one of the main frames,’ I said. ‘In that case I doubt if I’ll get enough penetration.’

The frames were about two feet apart; statistically I had a good chance of missing—the odds were on my side.

Alison said, ‘If we’re going to do more underwater swimming we might as well do it comfortably.’ She got up and dragged some scuba gear from the corner. ‘I took the precaution of hiring this.’

‘That slipped my mind.’ I wondered what else I’d forgotten. I looked at the gear—there were two sets. ‘I’m going to do the swimming,’ I said. ‘Not you.’

‘But I’m coming with you,’ she expostulated.

‘For what? I don’t need you.’

She flinched as though I had slapped her face. I said, ‘You’re right—it’s a dangerous operation, and there’s no point in both of us going. Besides, I need you for something else.’ I thumped the side of the boat. ‘Whether this works or not there’s going to be ructions when these fireworks explode. If I don’t get back someone must be around to have another crack at Wheeler—and you’re elected.’

I reached out for the bottle and poured some more whisky. ‘You can try going to the police; they might be interested enough by then to take you seriously.’

She saw the point, but she didn’t like it. She set her face in a stubborn mould and prepared to argue. I forestalled her. ‘All right; this is what you do. You wait here until nightfall and help me to get the boat into the water. Then you hop over to Ta’Xbiex and hire another boat—if you can get anyone to trust you.’ I smiled. ‘Looking as you do now I wouldn’t trust you with a kid’s bath toy.’

She rubbed her smudged face and distastefully inspected her fingertips, ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll clean up.’

‘If you can’t hire a boat, steal one. There are plenty of loose boats at the Marina. Meet me at the seaward point of Manoel Island and then follow me in, but not too closely. When the balloon goes up watch out for Slade and Wheeler—they should be doing their best to jump overboard if all goes well. See they don’t get ashore.’

‘I lost the gun last night,’ she said.

‘Well, bat them over the head with an oar,’ I said. ‘I’ll be around somewhere so keep your oar away from me.’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’ll be dark enough for launching in about an hour.’

That hour seemed to stretch out interminably rather like I’m told it does in an LSD trip; I wouldn’t know about that—I haven’t tried it. We didn’t talk much and when we did it was of inconsequentialities. The sun set and the light slowly ebbed from the sky until at last it was dark enough to take the boat down the slip without anyone seeing it. Once it was in the water it wouldn’t appear too abnormal.

I patted the wickedly gleaming steel axe-head which formed the tip of the ram and went to open the big double doors of the shed, and we steered the cradle down the slip and into the water. I released the boat and we took the cradle away and I turned to see how my handiwork had turned out.

It wasn’t too bad; she was down by the head but not by too much considering the weight of iron under her bows, and she appeared quite normal apart from the bits of angle-iron which showed above water on each side of the hull. In another ten minutes it would be too dark to see even that, but even if I was picked up by a light in the harbour I doubt if anyone would notice anything particularly odd about her.

‘That’s it,’ I said wearily. I was bone-tired; no sleep, a beating-up and a hard day’s work did nothing to improve me.

‘I’ll go now,’ said Alison quietly. ‘Good luck, Owen.’ She didn’t kiss me, or even touch me. She just walked away, picking up her coat as she went.

I climbed into the boat and rearranged a few of the fireworks to make myself more comfortable. I put the scuba gear handy and checked my primitive system of fuses. Then there was nothing to do but wait another hour before I was due to move off.

Again it was a long wait.

I checked my watch for the twentieth time in fifteen minutes and decided that time had come. I put on the scuba gear, tightened the weighted belt around my waist, and hung the mask around my neck. Then I started the engines and the boat quivered in the water. I cast off the painter and pushed the boat away with one hand and then tentatively opened the throttles a notch, not knowing what to expect.

At a slow speed she didn’t handle too badly although there seemed to be something a little soggy about her response to the wheel. I switched on the lights because I didn’t want the harbour patrol to pick me up for running illegally, and went down French Creek into the Grand Harbour. Here, in time past, the British Battle Fleet had lain, line upon line of dreadnoughts and battle cruisers. Now, there was another, but odder, naval craft putting to sea, but this one was in an earlier tradition—more like one of Drake’s fireships.

Across the harbour Valletta was all lit up and there were strings of coloured lights spangling Floriana. Tinny music floated across the quiet water punctuated by the thumping of a bass drum. The merry-making was well under way.

I rounded the head of Senglea and steered to the harbour mouth. Nothing was coming my way so I decided to open up and see what the boat would do. The note of the engines
deepened as I opened the throttles and I felt the surge of acceleration as 200 hp kicked her through the water. In terms of horse-power per ton of displacement this little boat was perhaps forty times as powerful as
Artina;
that’s where the speed came from.

The steering was worse than bad—it was dreadful. The wheel kicked in my hands violently and my course was erratic, to say the least, and I went down the Grand Harbour doing a pretty good imitation of a water boatman, those jerky insects that run across the surface of ponds.

The damned boat wouldn’t get on the step and plane and I don’t suppose her speed was more than twelve knots, and that wasn’t going to be enough. All the power going into the screws was doing nothing more than raising waves and I wasn’t supposed to be in the wave-raising business. In desperation I slammed the throttles hard open and she suddenly rose in the water and took off, picking up at least an extra ten knots in as many seconds. But the steering was worse and there was a definite lag between hauling the wheel around and the corresponding reaction.

I throttled down again and she sagged into the water, and her speed dropped as though she’d run into a wall. This was going to be a dicey business. At a pinch I could get the speed, provided the engines didn’t blow up, but I didn’t know if I could steer her straight enough to hit my target. In spite of the flow of cooling night air I found I was sweating profusely.

If the only way to get her to plane was to run the engines at full bore I’d better not try that again. There would be no more trial speed runs because I was scared of the engines packing up, and next time this boat would be at speed again would be the last time. As for the steering, I’d have to handle that as best I could.

I dropped speed even further and plugged on towards St Elmo’s Point. Fort St Elmo reared up starkly against the
night sky as I passed between the point and the breakwater. Now I was in the open sea and the boat wallowed sickeningly. That heavy steel bar slung three feet under the water was acting as a pendulum. This lubberly craft was enough to give any self-respecting boat designer the screaming meemies.

I rounded the point and turned into Marsamxett Harbour, glad to get into sheltered waters again, and headed towards Manoel Island. Valletta was now to my left and I wondered from where they shot their fireworks. I checked the time and found I had little to spare.

As I approached Manoel Island I closed the throttles until the engines were barely ticking over, just enough to give me steerage way. Not far away a light flickered and I saw that Alison was in position; she had struck a match and held it so that it illuminated her face. I steered in that direction and made contact.

She was in what seemed to be a small runabout driven by a little outboard motor. ‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘I took your advice; I stole it,’ she said, and laughed quietly. I grinned in the darkness. ‘It’s our duty to save government money,’ I said virtuously.

‘How did you get on?’ she asked.

‘She’s a bitch,’ I said. ‘As cranky as the devil.’

‘She was all right when I brought her from Sliema.’

‘That was a different boat. She’s damned near uncontrollable at speed. How much time have we got?’

‘About ten minutes.’

I looked about. ‘I’d better get in position. We don’t want to stay here or we’ll be run down by the Sliema ferry—she’s coming now. Is
Artina
in the same place?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll be on my way. I’ll go right down Lazzaretto Creek and turn around so as to get a good run up. You keep
clear on the other side of
Artina?
’ I paused. ‘The steering is so bloody bad I might even miss her on the first pass. In that case I’ll turn around and have a go on the other side. Don’t be in my way or you’ll get run over.’

‘Good luck again,’ said Alison.

I said, ‘If you see Wheeler give him a good clout with my compliments. He was looking forward to seeing his Chinese friend operate on me. If things work out I’ll see you in Ta’Xbiex—at the same place as last night.’

Gently I eased the throttles forward and moved off. I passed
Artina
quite closely; there were three men on deck—Wheeler, the Skipper and the Chinese, Chang Pi-wu. I could see them quite clearly because they were illuminated, but I was low on the water in the dark and there was no chance of them recognizing me. I was just another ship passing in the night

Mentally I made a cross on the place on the hull I intended to hit, and then I carried on down Lazzaretto Creek. At the bottom, near the Manoel Island bridge I turned with idling engines. I switched on the air from the scuba bottle and checked the demand-valve, and then bit on the mouthpiece and put on the mask. If things went well I wouldn’t have time to do any of that later.

Behind me traffic passed on the road and presently a procession came by with a band of pounding drums and off-key brass. I ignored it and looked across to Valletta and the forthcoming firework display. There was what I thought to be a heavier thump on a drum but it was a mortar banging off. A maroon burst over Valletta in a yellow sunburst and in the echoing reflection from the water of the harbour I saw
Artina
clearly for a brief moment. The fireworks had begun and it was time for me to add my share to the festivities.

I advanced the throttles and moved off slowly as a rocket soared up and exploded in a shower of red and green fiery
rain. I steered with one hand and with the other liberally doused my cargo with petrol from an open can, hoping to God that the sparks from the fireworks were totally extinguished by the time they reached water level. It only needed one of those in the boat and I’d go up in a cloud of glory.

Then I pushed open the throttles wider and by the time I was making any kind of speed the sky was alive with lights as the Maltese spent their fireworks with reckless abandon.
Artina
was clearly silhouetted as, with equal abandon, I jammed the throttles wide open.

The engines roared and the boat reared up in the water almost uncontrollably as she began to plane. The wheel kicked in my hands as I strove to keep her on course and I zigzagged dangerously close to the line of yachts moored at the marina. I swung the wheel hard over but the bitch was late in responding and there was an outraged cry from the bow of one of the yachts. It sounded like the curry-voiced colonel who must have got the fright of his life as I scraped his paint at twenty knots.

Then I was past him and heading out into the harbour, bucking and twisting and steering a course which would have brought tears to the eyes of any self-respecting helmsman. The fireworks banged and flashed overhead striking dazzling reflections from the water and my heart jumped into my mouth as a small runabout came out of nowhere and cut across my bows. I cursed him and swung the wheel and missed him by a whisker. That made two damned fools at large in Marsamxett Harbour.

As I swung the wheel hard over the other way I looked for
Artina
and I saw that I was going to miss her by a sizeable margin. I cursed again at the thought of having to make another mad sortie. It occurred to me that with the steering being as crazy as it was then I’d better aim at anything but
Artina
and then I might have a chance of hitting her.

I estimated I was going to shoot under her stern but just then the hard-pressed port engine blew up and, with a nasty flailing rattle of a broken connecting rod, it expired. The boat checked a little in the water and her bow came over to aim directly at
Artina.
I hung on as she loomed over me and then, with a satisfying smash, my underwater ram struck her amidships.

I was thrown forward and bruised my ribs on the wheel but it saved me from going into the water. I still had one last thing to do. As I groped for my cigarette lighter I heard a shout on deck and I looked up into the eye-straining alternation of light and darkness and saw a movement as someone peered over the side to see what the hell had happened now. I couldn’t see much of him but I must have been clearly visible as another batch of rockets went up.

I flicked the lighter and it sparked but there was no flame. In the rocket’s red glare I saw that the boat’s bow was smashed and broken with the impact against
Artina’s
side. The ram must have been deeply embedded because she showed no sign of wanting to drift away.

Desperately I flicked the lighter again but again there was no flame. There was a bang from above and a bullet smashed into the instrument panel next to my elbow, ruining the rev counter. I leaned forward and put the lighter right next to a bunch of petrol-soaked fireworks. The boat was making water and I had to start a fire before she went under.

I flicked again and the whole damned lot went up in a brilliant sheet of flame. It was only because I was fully equipped in scuba gear that I wasn’t instantly incinerated. It went up, as suddenly ignited petrol does, in a soft explosion—a great
whooof
of flame that blew me overboard. And as I went something hit me in the shoulder very hard.

Whether or not I was actually on fire for a moment I don’t know. When I hit the water I was dazed, but the
sudden shock brought a reflex into action and I struck for the depths. It was then I found that my right arm was totally useless. Not that it mattered very much; in scuba diving the flippered feet do most of the work. But it worried me because I didn’t know what could be wrong with it.

I swam under water for a short while, then stopped because I didn’t know where I was going. I was absolutely disoriented and, for all I knew, I could have been swimming out to sea. So I surfaced cautiously and looked around to get my bearings and to see what was happening to
Artina.

I had not swum as far as I thought—she was about a hundred yards away, too close for comfort, especially in view of the little piece of hellfire that I had established amidships. My fireship was going great guns. With the ram stabbed into
Artina’s
side like a narwhal’s tusk she was securely fixed, and the fireworks were exploding like an artillery barrage, showering multi-coloured sparks and great gouts of flame which licked up her side. Already a canvas deck awning was on fire and men were running about the deck every which way.

A big maroon went off like a howitzer shell, sending out a burst of green flame and sparks which reached out to patter on the surface of the water about me, hissing viciously as they were extinguished. I was close enough to be seen if anyone had the time to look, so I sank beneath the surface again after a last glance around, and struck out for the shore.

I had not done a dozen strokes before I knew something was wrong. I felt curiously weak and light-headed and my right shoulder had developed a dull throb which was rapidly sharpening up into a stabbing pain. I eased off and felt my shoulder with my left hand and the pain jabbed me with such intensity that I nearly yelled aloud which is a good way of getting oneself drowned.

So I surfaced again and drifted, becoming more light-headed and feeling the strength ebbing from my legs more
swiftly every minute. The fire by
Artina
was still going strong but it all seemed blurred as though seen through a rain-washed window. It was then I knew that I was probably going to die, that I no longer had the strength to swim to the shore which was so close, and that I was drifting out to sea where I would drown.

I think I passed out for a moment because the next thing I knew there was a light flashing in my eyes from very close and an urgent whisper, ‘Owen; grab this!’

Something fell across my face and floated in the water next to my head and I put out my left hand and found a rope. ‘Can you hold on?’ I knew it was Alison.

An engine throbbed and the rope tightened and I was being drawn through the water. Desperately I concentrated all my attention on to holding on to that rope. Whatever strength I had left must be marshalled and pushed into the fingers of my left hand so that they would not relinquish their grip. The water lapped about my head, creating a miniature bow wave as I was towed behind Alison’s boat and, even in that extremity, I paid tribute to the efficiency of Alison Smith and Mackintosh’s training. She knew she could not haul an almost unconscious man into the boat without either capsizing or, worse, attracting attention.

It was a ridiculously short distance to the shore and Alison brought up at a slipway. She rammed the boat up it, careless of the consequences, and jumped overboard into two feet of water and hauled me out bodily. ‘What’s wrong, Owen?’

I flopped down and sat into the shallow water. ‘I think I was shot,’ I said carefully, and my voice seemed to come from miles away. ‘In the shoulder—the right shoulder.’

The pain washed over me as her fingers probed, and then I heard the rip of cloth and she bandaged the wound roughly but effectively. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had operated there and then, using a penknife and a hairpin to
extract the bullet. I was becoming used to her surprising range of talents.