Rawlins checked through her notes.
‘I wish they had a radio they could carry with them.’
‘Not much we could do if anything went wrong,’ said Sian.
‘A few weeks from now we might be in the same position. Climbing in the lifeboats, hoping for a miracle. If these folks don’t make it, I’d like to know why. What did they do wrong? What let them down? I hate to use them as lab rats, but that’s exactly what they are. The current should bring them right to our door. If it doesn’t, if they get carried west into the
North Atlantic, they’ll be dead and we’ll know our charts are wrong.’
Jane found Ghost in the pump hall. He was checking the gauge of an oxyacetylene tank.
‘Are you busy?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘If you’ve got a couple of minutes maybe you could give me a hand.’
He took off his turban. He stripped to the waist. Jane tried not to stare. He straddled a metal folding chair in front of a convection heater.
‘How long have you been growing it?’ asked Jane.
‘Pretty much all my life.’
‘What about your religion?’
‘Seems God isn’t answering the phone right now. Besides, I’m in the mood for a big gesture.’
Jane took scissors and hacked away hunks of hair. She gave Ghost a ragged crew cut. He filled a basin with hot water from a flask, foamed his head and shaved himself bald.
He sat in front of a hand mirror. He snipped his beard down to stubble then shaved himself clean.
‘Christ,’ he said, examining his reflection in a hand mirror. ‘A fucking boiled egg. A stranger to myself.’
‘What’s this stuff?’ asked Jane.
There were two kit-bags on the floor. One contained an air compressor. The other contained a large, steel claw.
‘Hydraulic spread-cutter. Emergency services use them to extract people from wrecked cars.’
‘Use them to open that space capsule?’
‘Yeah.’
‘After you fish those Raven guys out of the sea.’
‘Something like that.’
‘You run this rig. You realise that, right? We’d be lost without you.’
‘Is that what they say?’
‘The guys need a hero.’
‘Let me show you something.’
Ghost led Jane down a corridor to a wide storeroom. A winch bolted to girders in the vaulted ceiling. A huge trapdoor in the floor.
‘They used this room for hauling equipment aboard. The supply ship sails between the legs of the refinery. The floor opens and you can winch stuff aboard. Cargo containers full of food, fuel, stuff like that.’
There were three rows of oil drums welded to scaffolding poles. Ghost pulled a roll of paper from behind a locker and spread it on a table. Plans for a boat.
‘A sloop, like a round-the-world yacht. It’s a reliable design.’
‘Why oil drums?’
‘Ballasted keel. Stable. Unlikely to capsize.’
‘It’s going to be huge.’
‘Even for a two-man vessel you have to build big. You need to carry supplies to last weeks. Fresh water alone could weigh half a tonne.’
‘Two-man?’
‘I enjoy your company. Is that a problem?’
Nikki went looking for Nail.
‘Dive room,’ grunted Ivan. ‘Man get his head together.’
C deck. Dark, frozen passageways. Nikki was spooked. She paused, now and again, to shine her torch down the passageway behind her. She felt stalked.
She entered the dive store. The walls were hung with tanks, regulators, wetsuits and fins. A Tilley lamp sat on a table.
A knife blurred past her face and slammed into a locker. The titanium blade punched hilt-deep into the door. The door was peppered with slit-holes. Target practice.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ asked Nail. Metal shrieked as he jerked the serrated blade from the locker door.
‘Ghost is building a boat.’
‘What kind of boat?’
‘Some kind of crude yacht. He’s making it out of oil drums. He’s making it in secret.’
‘Why are you telling me?’
‘Everyone on this rig is going to die. They’re passive. Cattle. You and I are different. Survivors.’
‘One scumbag to another.’
‘You know what I’m saying. I’m not going to pretend I like you. But together we can make it home.’
‘Want to shake on it?’
‘Fuck yourself.’
‘How far has he got with his boat?’
‘Haven’t seen it. At a guess, early stages.’
‘I can’t picture him sailing away on his own. He’s not the type.’
‘He’s taking a holiday from virtue. He’s flirting with the idea of bailing out but, when the moment comes, he’ll pull back.’
‘Find the boat. Monitor his progress. When the job is done, we’ll take it.’
‘You and me?’
‘They’ve got you cooking in the kitchen, yeah?’
‘When Punch isn’t around. Rawlins’s last effort was a disaster.’ ‘Meal bars,’ said Nail. ‘Punch gives them to shore teams. He has a few boxes at the back of the storeroom. They give you the keys, right? Get a box. Shove the other boxes around so it looks like none are missing.’
‘Okay.’
‘Now fuck off. I’m busy.’
Nikki headed down an unlit passageway to the stairs. She heard the knife slam into metal.
Ghost and Rawlins got ready to leave. They met at the boat- house. Ghost loaded the spread-cutter into the zodiac.
Jane and Punch came to wave farewell.
Boxes piled on deck.
Rawlins pulled a tarpaulin aside.
‘Is this the gear?’
‘Yeah,’ said Punch. He opened crates. ‘Enough plastic explosive to put us on the moon. Blasting caps, det cord, initiators. And these babies.’
He handed Rawlins a red canister.
‘Ml4 thermite grenades. A couple of dozen. Seemed too good to leave behind.’
‘These guys were seriously tooled up.’
‘Reflection seismology. Make a big bang, then listen to the ground-echo on geophones.’
‘I want this shit off the rig, all right? Ghost. Soon as we get back, I want you to take this stuff to the bunker and hide it deep.’
‘Okay.’
‘Our little secret, yeah? Nobody else need know.’
Sian prepared dinner. She boiled two kilos of pasta in a saucepan. Nikki grated cheese.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ said Sian. ‘Alan and Simon. Your friends from the island. How well did you
