“Fourteen-minute delay. That’s about right.” Blood from his torn nail left brown blotches on the cardboard as he took four of the pencils from the box, picked up the shotgun and hurried aft. The jet engine whine of the cyclone mounted deafeningly as he came closer to it.
Tracey was curled on the bare steel plating of the deck with
Johnny’s jacket folded under her head.
She was in a fatigue-drugged sleep, so deep as to be almost deathlike.
Every few minutes Johnny interrupted his restless patrol of the conveyor room to stand over her and look down on her unconscious form.
His worried expression softened a little each time he studied her pale lovely face. Once he stooped over her and tenderly lifted a strand of dark hair from her cheek, before resuming his pacing up and down the narrow cabin.
Each time he reached the door of the conveyor room he glanced through the tiny window. The glass had resisted his attempts to smash it with one of the spanners. He had wanted to open the window to call for help, but his efforts had not marked the thick armoured glass.
There was no way out of the cabin. Johnny had tried every possible outlet. The apertures for the conveyor system were guarded at one end by the furnace, and at the other by moving machinery which would ferociously chew to tatters anyone who became entangled in it.
They were caged securely, and Johnny paced his cage.
Again he stopped before the peephole, but this time he flung himself at the door with clenched fists. The steel plate smeared the skin from his knuckles as he hammered on it and the pain sobered him.
He pressed his face to the glass and through it watched Benedict van der Byl enter the conveyor room and, without glancing at the window, cross to the cyclone.
Benedict laid aside the shotgun he carried and for a moment stood looking up at the thick steel pipe that carried the gravel down from the deck pumps above. As he lifted the thick rope of plastique from around his neck, Johnny knew exactly what he was going to do.
He watched in fascination as Benedict mounted the steel ladder up the side of the cyclone. Hanging with one hand to the ladder, Benedict reached out with the other and clumsily tied the rope of plastique around the gravel pipe. It hung there like a necklace about the throat of some obscene prehistoric monster.
“You bastard! You murdering bloody swine!” Johnny shouted, and again he beat on the steel door with his fists.
But the thickness of the door and the whine of the cyclone drowned his voice. Benedict showed no sign of hearing him - but Tracey sat up and looked about her blearily. Then she came to her feet and staggering to the roll and pitch of the ship she went to Johnny and pressed her face to the window beside her.
Benedict was sticking the time pencils into the soft dark explosive. He used all four fuses, taking no chances on a misfire.
“What’s he doing?” Tracey asked after she had recovered from the surprise of recognizing her brother.
“He’s going to cut the pipe, and let Kingfisher pump herself full of gravel.”
“Sink her?“Tracey’s voice was sharp with alarm.
“She’ll pump water -and gravel into herself at pressures that will tear away all the inner bulkheads.”
“This one?” Tracey patted the steel plate.
“It’ll pop like a paper bag. God, you have no idea of the power in those pumps.”
“No.” Tracey shook her head. “He’s my brother. He won’t do it, Johnny. He couldn’t murder us.”
“By the time he’s finished - ” Johnny contradicted her grimly, Kingfisher will be lying in 200 feet of water. Her hull will be packed so tightly with gravel that it will be like a block of cement. We, and everything in her, including his little machine, will be so flattened as to be unrecognizable.
It would cost millions to salvage Kingfisher - and no one will care that much.”
“No, not Benedict.” Tracey was almost pleading. “He’s not that bad.” Johnny her brusquely. “He could get away with it.
It’s a good try - his best chance. Encase all the evidence against him in concrete, and bury it deep.”
“No, Benedict.” Tracey was watching her brother as he climbed down the cyclone ladder and picked up the shotgun. “Please, Benedict, don’t do it.” Almost as if he had heard her, Benedict turned suddenly and saw the two faces at the window. The shock of guilt held him rigid for a moment as he stared at them -
Tracey’s pale lips forming words he could not hear, Johnny’s eyes burning with accusation.
Benedict dropped his eyes, he made a gesture that was indecisive, almost pathetic. He looked up at the fused and charged rope of explosive - and then he grinned. A sardonic twitching of the lips, and he stumbled out of the cyclone room and was gone.
“He’ll come back” whispered Tracey. “He won’t let it happen.” “I wouldn’t bet on that - if I were you,” said Johnny.
Benedict reached Kingfisher’s rail and clung to it. He looked out to where Wild Goose bobbed and hung on the swells. He saw Hugo’s face as a white blob behind the wheelhouse window, but as the little trawler began closing in for the pick-up Benedict waved it away. He glanced at his watch again, then looked back anxiously at the bridge.
The long minutes dragged by. Where the hell was the Italian?
Benedict could not leave him - not while he still had that diamond; not while he could stop the dredge pumps and release the prisoners locked below.
Again Benedict checked his watch, twelve minutes since he had set the time pencils. He must go back and find Caporetti. He started back along the rail, and at that moment Sergio appeared on the wing of the bridge. He shouted a question at Benedict that was lost in the wind.
“Come on!” Frantically Benedict beckoned to him. “Come on!
Hurry!” With another last look about the bridge, Sergio ran to the ladder and climbed down to deck level.
“Where my boys?” he shouted at Benedict. “Why nobody at the con?
What you do with them?”
“They are all right,” Benedict assured him. He had turned to the rail and was signalling Wild Goose to come alongside.
“Where they?” Sergio demanded. “Where my boys?”
“I sent them to-“
Benedict’s reply was cut off as Kingfisher’s deck jarred under their feet. The explosion was a dull concussion in her belly, and Sergio’s jaw hung open.
Benedict backed away from him along the rail.
“Filth!” Sergio’s jaw snapped closed, his whole body appeared to swell with anger.
“You kill them, dirty pig. You kill my boys. You kill Johnny -
the girl.”
“Keep away from me.” Benedict braced himself against the rail, leaving both hands free to use the gun.
Not even Sergio would advance into the deadly blank eyes of those muzzles. He paused uncertainly.
“I’ll blow your guts all over the deck,” Benedict warned him, and his forefinger was hooked around the trigger.
They stared at each other, and the wind fluttered their hair and tore at their clothing.
“Give me those diamonds,” Benedict commanded, and when Sergio stood unmoving, he went on urgently, “Don’t be a hero, Caporetti. I
can gun you down and take them anyway. Give them to me - and our deal is still on. You’ll come with us. I’ll get you out of here. I swear it.” Sergio’s expression of outrage faded. A moment longer he hesitated.
“Come on, Caporetti. We haven’t got much time.” It may have been his imagination, but to Benedict it seemed that Kingfisher’s action in the water had altered, she was sluggish to meet the swells and her roll was more pronounced.
“Okay,” said Sergio, and began unbuttoning his jacket.
“You win. I give you.” Benedict relaxed with relief, and Sergio thrust his hand into his jacket and stepped towards him. He grasped the canvas bag by its neck, and brought it out held like a cosh.
Sergio was close to him, too close for Benedict to swing the shotgun on to him. Sergio’s expression became
