room, meant to hold half a dozen people, was packed with deck officers and senior crew, and more were still arriving.
LeSeur didn’t even wait for them to sort out their places before he stood up, rapped his knuckles on the table, and began.
“I just talked to Mason,” he said. “She confirmed that her plan is to run the
He looked around.
“I’ve had several conversations with the captain of the
He paused, took a deep breath. “We’re in the middle of a storm, with forty-foot seas and forty- to sixty-knot winds. But our most intractable problem is the ship’s speed relative to the water: twenty-nine knots.” He licked his lips. “We would have many options if we weren’t moving—transfer of people to the
“What about disabling the engines?” someone asked. “You know, sabotaging them.”
LeSeur glanced at the chief engineer. “Mr. Halsey?”
The engineer scowled. “We’ve got four diesel engines boosted by two General Electric LM2500 gas turbines. Shut down one diesel and nothing happens. Shut down two, and you better shut down those turbines or you’ll get a gas compression explosion.”
“Disable the gas turbines first, then?” LeSeur asked.
“They’re high-pressure jet engines, sir, rotating at thirty-six hundred rpm. Any attempt to intervene while that bastard is running at high speed would be . . . suicide. You’d tear out the bottom of the ship.”
“Cut the shafts, then?” a second officer asked.
“There are no shafts,” said the engineer. “Each pod is a self- contained propulsion system. The diesel and turbines generate electricity that powers the pods.”
“Jam the drive gears?” LeSeur asked.
“I’ve looked into that. Inaccessible while under way.”
“What about simply cutting all electric power to the engines?” The chief engineer frowned. “Can’t do it. Same reason they hardened the bridge and the autopilot system—fear of a terrorist attack. The geniuses in the Home Office decided to design a ship that, if terrorists tried to commandeer it, there’d be nothing they could do to disable or take control of the vessel. No matter what, they wanted the officers locked into the bridge to be able to bring the ship into port, even if terrorists took over the rest of the vessel.”
“Speaking of the bridge,” a third officer said, “what if we were to drill through the security hatch and pump in gas? Anything that will displace the air within. Hell, the kitchen has several canisters of CO2. You know, knock her out.”
“And then what? We’re still on autopilot.”
There was a brief silence. Then the IT head, Hufnagel, a bespectacled man in a lab coat, cleared his throat. “The autopilot is a piece of software like any other,” he said in a quiet voice. “It can be hacked—in theory, anyway. Hack it and reprogram it.”
LeSeur rounded on him. “How? It’s firewalled.”
“No firewall’s impregnable.”
“Get your best man on it, right away.”
“That would be Penner, sir.” The head of IT stood up.
“Report back to me as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
LeSeur watched him leave the conference room. “Any other ideas?”
“What about the military?” asked Crowley, another third officer. “They could scramble fighters, take out the bridge with a missile. Or get a sub to disable the screws with a torpedo.”
“We’ve looked into those possibilities,” LeSeur replied. “There’s no way to aim a missile precisely enough. There aren’t any submarines in the vicinity, and, given our speed, there’s no way for one to intercept or catch us.”
“Is there a way to launch the lifeboats?” a voice in the back asked.
LeSeur turned to the bosun, Liu. “Possible?”
“At a speed of thirty knots, in heavy seas . . . Jesus, I can’t even
how you’d do it.”
“I don’t want to hear what you can’t imagine. If it’s even remotely possible, I want you to look into it.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll find out if it’s possible. But to do that I’ll need a full emergency launch crew—and they’re all tied up.”
LeSeur cursed. The one thing they lacked were experienced deckhands. Sure, they had every bloody plonker in the world on board, from croupiers to masseurs to lounge crooners—all so much ballast. “That man who came up here a while ago, what’s his name? Bruce. He was ex–Royal Navy and so were his friends. Go find him. Enlist his help.”
“But he was an old man, in his seventies—” Kemper protested.
“Mr. Kemper, I’ve known seventy-year-old ex-navy men who could drop you in two rounds.” He turned back to Crowley. “Get moving.”
A voice boomed from the door, in a broad Scots accent. “No need to find me, Mr. LeSeur.” Bruce pushed his way through the crowd. “Gavin Bruce, at your service.”
LeSeur turned. “Mr. Bruce. Have you been apprised of our current situation?”
“I have.”
“We need to know whether we can launch the lifeboats under these conditions and speed. Have you experience in that line? These are a new kind of lifeboat—freefall.”
Bruce rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We’ll have to take a close look at those boats.” He hesitated. “We might launch them after the collision.”
“We can’t wait until after the collision. Striking a shoal at thirty knots . . . half the people on board would be killed or injured by the impact alone.”
This was greeted by silence. After a moment, Bruce nodded slowly.
“Mr. Bruce, I give you and your group full authority to address this issue. The bosun, Mr. Liu, assisted by Third Officer Crowley, will direct you—they are thoroughly familiar with the abandon-ship routines.”
“Yes, Captain.”
LeSeur looked around the room. “There’s something else. We need Commodore Cutter. He knows the ship
