straight down to the water.
He slung the SMG over his back and dragged the man to the gangway. He heaved him up, leaned him over the top rail, picked up his heels and let the weight take him the rest of the way over. The man fell silently into the blackness. At first. But instead of a distant plop as he hit the water, a couple of dull thuds followed by a single deeper one came back up, as though the body had struck something very solid.
Stratton had no time to worry about the man’s fate. He was dead either way. The good news was that there was now one fewer enemy to fight. The bad news was that the clock had started ticking, for it would only be a matter of time before the man was declared missing and the reason for it became obvious.
He hid the Somali’s weapon and moved across to the door that led into the accommodation block.
Rowena and Jason were waiting on the spider deck for Binning when Pirate’s body struck the span across the gap from them and jammed awkwardly in a joint. Rowena lost her balance at the shock of it and might have fallen off the spar had Jason not been close enough to grab her.
As she steadied herself the thought hit her. Binning!
Mansfield jolted as if he’d had the same thought. ‘Stay here,’ he said. He shuffled to the end of the girder and climbed through an angled junction to the span where the body lay.
After a brief examination he made his way back. ‘It’s not Binning, or Stratton.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘For his sake I sincerely hope so. There’s little that anyone can do for him if he isn’t.’
‘Then where’s Binning?’ Rowena asked. They peered up into the complex web of light beams and shadows.
There was nothing more for it. She had to see for herself and so she clambered up the ladder. Jason wanted to stop her but instead climbed up behind her.
‘He’s gone with Stratton,’ she decided as Jason stepped onto the next spider deck.
‘He wouldn’t allow that,’ Jason said.
‘What other explanation could there be? Binning was supposed to set up the G43 here. Where the hell is he?’
‘Maybe he had to go further up,’ Jason suggested, craning to look for his colleague.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t go with him too. You and Binning are so keen to prove you’re better than Stratton.’
‘One minute you hate him, the next you’re a fan.’
Rowena ignored the comment. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘He may be having trouble securing the device. Be patient. He’ll be back soon.’
‘Then what about him down there? I suppose he was just taking a stroll in the storm and slipped. Are you going to tell me you can’t sense that something is really wrong here? Binning is not setting up the device anywhere here. He’s gone, Jason.’
Mansfield could not ignore her or the situation any longer. She was right.
‘I’m not going to wait for him,’ Rowena said, taking hold of the ladder. ‘I want to know where he is and that he’s placing the device. You stay if you want to.’ He grabbed her hand. ‘Don’t try to stop me, Jason, or so help me . . .’ Her expression was one of pure anger.
‘I’m not trying to stop you,’ he replied in a deliberate, calm voice. ‘We’ll both go but if we simply bimble around we could end up on the news ourselves. There’s no point in that, right?’
Rowena could see the sense of this.
Mansfield took out his pistol and held it firmly pointing upwards. ‘Let me take the lead, please.’
She hesitated, a long-time critic of the gender-weakness thing.
‘Consider it a condition of me letting you go up there at all.’
She gave in and let him go ahead of her up the ladder.
They reached the level below the machinery deck as the rain and wind whipped at them.
‘He’s not here,’ Rowena said loudly above the noise of the weather.
‘Perhaps he set up the G43 and then went off to help Stratton.’
She considered the possibility. ‘How can he do this without telling us?’ she said in frustration.
Jason began to have a change of heart. ‘Rowena! Tell me why we’re risking our lives for them. They’ve chosen to do this. We should go back down, get into the water and rendezvous with Jackson at the mini-sub, just as Stratton said. You forget why we’re here.’
‘Forget why we’re here?’ Rowena repeated, stupefied. ‘I don’t have a goddamned clue why we’re here, other than to satisfy your and Binning’s egos. We’ve lost Smithy. God only knows if Jackson’s still around out there. We can’t do anything about them but we might be able to do something about Binning. I can’t stand him but he’s still one of us.’ It did not look as if she was getting through to Jason. ‘If you don’t know what to do, ask yourself what Stratton would do,’ she shouted finally. The comment stung him, as it was meant to. ‘There’s another difference between you and Stratton,’ she continued. ‘He knows when it’s time to forget what you’re supposed to do and try to save the life of someone else instead.’
Rowena took out her pistol and was about to move to the narrow staircase when she paused to say something else. ‘I’m too damned scared to go back down. I don’t think I’ll be any less a victim by jumping back into that ocean and floating off into the beyond in the hope that someone might find me.’
She walked on up towards the next level. Jason gripped his pistol, exhaled tiredly and marched on after her.
Stratton let the outer door close behind him and opened the inner one slowly and smoothly. No one. He stepped inside and allowed the door to close quietly against his back. The hum of ventilation pipes. Suppressed sounds of weather or machinery.
He padded along the corridor, leaving a line of wet footprints behind him. Doors on either side, some closed, those open revealing compact bedrooms, toilets, showers. Personal items on the floor in rooms and along the corridor signs of a hurried departure by the occupants.
He came to the end door and opened it carefully. Another corridor ran across his path.
Stratton couldn’t remember the living deck too well, not having spent much time in the private quarters of the platform during his time here. He’d trained on the Morpheus, concentrating on familiarising himself with the main operations deck and on practising climbing the structure. But he knew there were a couple of places large enough to keep a hundred and sixty men out of the weather. The first he planned to check was the galley. A simple diagram of the deck and its main locations was posted on the opposite wall.
He walked along a wider corridor past soft-drink machines, a water fountain, snack dispensers and cupboards of emergency equipment. Up ahead was a pair of swing doors, a clear glass panel in each of them. After them another corridor and the galley. As he approached the swing doors he kept tight to the wall.
Stratton lowered his body and placed an ear against one of the doors but he could hear nothing above the sounds of air vents and humming machinery. He decided to take a risk.
He moved his face to the corner of the glass and took a quick look, his eyes in the window frame long enough to make out a couple of figures standing ten or fifteen metres down the corridor.They were near the entrance to the galley, a strong indication that they were playing at being jailers.
He leaned back against the wall. He had to think. This was the pivotal juncture of his private task. The next point of no return. He hadn’t really believed he would get here and now that he had the questions were starting. It was a bit on the crazy side, he had to admit. He could still change his mind. But Jordan had been even crazier when he’d driven into that Afghan village to rescue him. The man had been selected to be executed by the hijackers, and Stratton owed him his life, and that meant he owed Jordan a future.
Stratton put all other thoughts aside and examined the next phase. He needed to disrupt the hijackers’ flow. If he could release the workers - assuming they were all in the galley - that would drastically alter the hijackers’ plan. He asked himself how many of them there were, how they would react, what price they were willing to pay to succeed, and what they were willing to sacrifice when faced with failure.There were endless gambles. Endless consequences of his actions.
‘Bollocks,’ he muttered as he stood to face the swing doors and brought his weapon’s butt into his shoulder. The gods had got him this far. He took a deep breath, exhaled, pushed open the doors and marched into the
