vent. The rising vapor cloud reached a hundred feet, lost its impetus, and gravity took over. The unseen cloud, mixing furiously with the night air, fell back to the sea and began to roll outward, away from the source, in all directions. Martin had lost, and he knew it. He was too late, and he knew that, too. He knew enough to realize what a floating bomb he had been riding since the Philippines, and that what was pouring out of the six missing hatches was invisible death that could not now be controlled.
He had always presumed the Countess of Richmond, now become again the Java Star, was going to drive herself into some inner harbor and detonate what lay below her decks.
He had presumed she was going to ram something of value as she blew herself up. For thirty days, he had waited in vain for a chance to kill seven men and take over her command. No such chance had appeared.
Now, too late, he realized the Java Star was not going to deliver a bomb; she was the bomb. And with her cargo venting fast, she did not need to move an inch. The oncoming liner had to pass only within three kilometers of her to be consumed.
He had heard the interchange on the bridge between the Pakistani boy and the deck officer of the Queen Mary 2. He knew too late the Java Star would not engage engines. The escorting cruisers would never allow that, but she did not need to.
There was a third control by Ibrahim’s right hand, a button to be hammered downward. Martin followed the flexes to a Very pistol, a flare gun, mounted just forward of the bridge windows. One flare, one single spark… Through the windows, the city of lights was over the horizon. Fifteen miles, thirty minutes cruising, optimum time for maximum fuel-air mixture. Martin’s glance flicked to the radio speaker on the console. A last chance to shout a warning. His right hand slid down toward the slit in his robe, inside which was his knife strapped to his thigh.
The Jordanian caught the glance and the movement. He had not survived Afghanistan, a Jordanian jail and the relentless American hunt for him in Iraq without developing the instincts of a wild animal. Something told him that despite the fraternal language, the Afghan was not his friend. The raw hatred charged the atmosphere on the tiny bridge like a silent scream.
Martin’s hand slipped inside his robe for the knife. Ibrahim was first; the gun had been underneath the map on the chart table. It was pointing straight at Martin’s chest. The distance to cross was twelve feet. Ten too many. A soldier is trained to estimate chances, and do it fast. Martin had spent much of his life doing that. On the bridge of the Countess of Richmond, enveloped in her own death cloud, there were only two: go for the man, or go for the button. There would be no surviving either.
Some words came into his mind, words from long ago, in a schoolboy’s poem: “To every man upon this earth / Death cometh soon or late…” And he recalled Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshir, talking by the campfire. “We are all sentenced to die, Angleez. But only a warrior blessed of Allah may be allowed to choose how!” Colonel Mike Martin made his choice… Ibrahim saw him coming; he knew the flicker in the eyes of a man about to die. The killer screamed and fired. The charging man took the bullet in the chest, and began to die. But beyond pain and shock, there is always willpower, just enough for another second of life.
At the end of that second, both men and ship were consumed in a rose pink eternity.
David Gundlach stared in stunned amazement. Fifteen miles ahead, where the world’s largest liner would have been in thirty-five minutes, a huge volcano of flame erupted out of the sea. From the other three men on the night watch came cries of “What the hell was that?”
“ Monterey to Queen Mary 2. Divert to port. I say, divert to port. We are investigating.”
To his right, Gundlach saw the U.S. cruiser move up to attack speed and head for the flames. Even as he watched, they began to flicker and die upon the water. It was clear the Countess of Richmond had sustained some terrible accident. His job was to stay clear; if there were men in the water, the Monferey would find them. But it was still wise to summon his captain. When the ship’s master arrived on the bridge, his first officer explained what he had seen. They were now a full eighteen miles from the estimated spot, and heading away fast. To port, the USS Leyfe Gulf stayed with them. The Monferey was heading straight for the fireball miles up ahead. The captain agreed that in the unlikely event of survivors, the Monterey should search for them. As the two men watched from the safety of their bridge, the flames began to flicker and die. The last blotches of flame upon the sea would be the remnants of the vanished ship’s fuel oil. All the hy-pervolatile cargo was gone before the Monferey reached the spot.
The captain of the Cunarder ordered that the computers resume course for Southampton.
EPILOGUE
There was an inquiry. Of course. It took almost two years. These things are never done in a few hours, except on television. One team took the real Java Star, from the laying of her keel to the moment she steamed out of Brunei loaded with LPG, destination Fremantle, western Australia. It was confirmed by independent witnesses with no reason to lie that Captain Herrmann was in charge, and that all was well. She was seen by two other captains rounding the northeastern tip of Borneo Island shortly after that. Precisely because of her cargo, both ships’ masters noted she was well away from them, and logged her name.
The single recording of her captain’s last Mayday message was played to a Norwegian psychiatrist, who confirmed that the voice was a fellow Norwegian speaking good English, but that he seemed to be speaking under duress. The captain of the fruit ship that had noted her given position and diverted to the spot was traced and interviewed. He repeated what he had heard and seen. But experts in fire at sea reckoned that if the fire in the Java Star’s engine room was so catastrophic that Captain Herrmann could not save her, it must have ignited her cargo eventually. In which case, there would be no fabric-tented life rafts left floating on the water where she sank. Filipino commandos carried out a raid, supported by U.S. helicopter gunships, on the Zamboanga peninsula, ostensibly on Abu Sayyaf bases. They trawled, and brought back two jungle-dwelling Huq trackers who occasionally worked for the terrorists but were not prepared to face a firing squad for them. They reported they had seen a medium tanker in a narrow creek in the heart of the jungle being worked on by men with oxyacety- lene torches. The Java Star team entered its report within a year. It declared the Java Star had not been sunk by an onboard fire but had been hijacked intact; and, further, that a lot of trouble had been gone to in order to persuade the marine world that she no longer existed when, in fact, she did. The entire crew was presumed dead already, and this had to be confirmed.
Because of need-to-know, all the arms of the inquiry were working on the various facets without knowing why. They were told-and believed-that it was an insurance investigation.
Another team followed the fortunes of the real Countess of Richmond. They proceeded from the offices of Siebart and Abercrombie in Crutched Friars, City of London, to Liverpool, and checked out the family and crew. They confirmed all was in good order when the Countess unloaded her Jaguars at Singapore. Captain McKendrick had run into a friend from Liverpool on the docks, and they shared a few beers before he sailed. And he telephoned home. Independent witnesses confirmed she was still in the command of her lawful captain when she took on valuable timber at Kinabalu. But an on-the-spot visit to Surabaya, Java, revealed she never even stopped there to take on her second part cargo of Asian silk. Yet Siebart and Abercrombie in London had received confirmation from the shippers that she had. So it was forged. A likeness of “Mr. Lampong” was created, and Indonesian homeland security recognized a suspected but never proven financial supporter of Jemaat Islamiyah. A search was mounted, but the terrorist had vanished into the human tides of Southeast Asia.
The team concluded that the Countess of Richmond had been boarded and hijacked in the Celebes Sea. With all her papers, ID radio codes and transponder stolen, she would have been sunk with all hands. Next of kin were advised.
The clincher came from Dr. Ali Aziz al-Khattab The wiretaps on his phones revealed he was booking a
