“Put your things on and get out.”
Fitzroy, his belly hanging down like a market sack, said, “It's you who'll be leaving.”
He fumbled in his jacket, and pulled out a silver-plated derringer, the kind a cardsharp might carry. Sinclair should not have been surprised. The girl, seeing her chance, ran past them both and out of the room.
The sight of the gun did not diminish Sinclair's determination. Rather, it inflamed it. “You bloody fat coward. If you aim that thing at me, you'd better plan to use it.” Sinclair took a menacing step forward, and Fitzroy fell back toward the windows.
“I will,” he cried. “I will use it!”
“Give it to me,” Sinclair growled, throwing out one hand.
Sinclair took another step, and Fitzroy, closing his eyes, shot the gun. Sinclair heard a loud pop, the sleeve of his uniform ripped away, and an instant later he felt a wetness-his blood-running down his arm.
He lunged at Fitzroy, glass crunching beneath his boots. Fitzroy flailed at him with the gun, but Sinclair was able to grab it and yank it from his grip. Fitzroy twisted, looking for somewhere to run, but where could he go?
Sinclair heard the heavy tread of John-O running up the main staircase, and Fitzroy must have heard it, too.
“John-O!” he shouted. “In here!”
He leered in victory at Sinclair, and Sinclair, in a blind rage, whirled him around, snatched him by the seat of his trousers, ran him three paces toward the closed windows, and hurled him straight through the glass. Fitzroy, screaming in terror, tumbled out and landed with a huge thump and a rain of shattered glass a few feet below, atop the bricks of the porte-cochere. The horses of a carriage parked beneath it whinnied in alarm.
John-O stood stunned in the bedroom door, as Sinclair turned around, a bloody patch of his sleeve flapping loosely from his left arm.
“Please advise Madame,” he said, brushing past the Jamaican, “to send me the bill from her glazier.”
Rutherford and Le Maitre, along with several others, anxiously awaited him at the bottom of the stairs.
“Good God, you've been shot?” Rutherford exclaimed, as Sinclair descended the stairs.
“Who was it?” Frenchie insisted. “Was it that blackguard Fitzroy?”
“Take me to that hospital we passed,” Sinclair said. “The one on Harley Street.”
Rutherford and Frenchie looked puzzled. “But that's for indigent women,” Rutherford said.
“Any port in a storm,” Sinclair replied.
It might yet be possible, he thought, to salvage something from this night.
CHAPTER NINE
December 1, 11:45 a.m.
The storm raged for hours, and only let up by late morning the next day. The damaged aloft con had been abandoned and sealed off for the duration of the voyage.
Dr. Barnes had helped the ship's own medic to remove the ice and glass shards from Lieutenant Kathleen Healey's face, but her eyes were still severely compromised and Charlotte thought she should be taken back to civilization-and a first-rate ophthalmologist-as fast as possible.
“She could permanently lose the sight in one or even both of her eyes,” she told the captain in his private cabin. Purcell didn't say anything, but looked down at his shoes, thinking hard, and when he looked up again a few seconds later, he said, “Start packing.”
“Come again?”
“I'd planned to get you closer to Port Adelie before launching the chopper, but I think we can make it from here.”
Charlotte really didn't like the sound of that “I think.”
“We'll just have to jettison some of the provisions and supplies, in order to lower the cargo weight. Then we can board you and Mr. Hirsch and Mr. Wilde, with your gear, and take off from here. The chopper should be able to carry just enough fuel to drop you there, and then get back to us while we're already heading back north. Lieutenant Ramsey!” he called out as the officer passed through the corridor outside.
“Sir?”
“Prepare the helicopter. Who are our pilots on this trip?”
“That would be Ensigns Diaz and Jarvis.”
“Order them to fuel it up and be ready to deliver our three passengers to Point Adelie ASAP.”
“From here, sir? Won't-”
But the captain cut him short, completed his instructions, then dismissed him. Returning his attention to Charlotte, he asked if she'd tell Wilde and Hirsch to get a move on, too.
“How long should I tell them they've got?”
The captain glanced at his watch, then said, “Let's shoot for 1300 hours.”
Charlotte still had to do the quick math-that meant 1 p.m. And that meant she had about fifty-five minutes.
Darryl she knew where to find-he was still lying in his cot, less green than he'd been the night before, but still a color no human being should ever be. When she told him the news, he closed his eyes, clearly willing himself to get up, and did.
“You gonna be all right?” she asked, watching him move, like a sleepwalker, toward his bags.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Go on, get Michael.”
“You know where?”
“Where else? On deck.”
Charlotte did not have time for a concerted search-she had her own stuff to get together-but she quickly went up on the main deck, looked toward the bow, and saw nothing, then looked aft, where several crewmen were wrestling the dark green tarp off the helicopter fixed to its raised pad. The wind was still strong, and the tarp whipped around like a monstrous cape. Getting a photo of the undertaking was Michael.
“Did you know we're supposed to be on that helicopter,” she said, “in less than an hour?”
“Yep,” he said, still kneeling to get the shot he wanted. “The crew told me. Most of my stuff never came out of my duffel. I'm ready to go in three minutes.”
“Aren't you Mr. Smarty Pants,” she said. “Well, I got things to do. When you go below for your stuff, make sure you bring Darryl with you. That boy still doesn't look all that steady on his feet.”
As Charlotte headed below, Michael finished taking a couple of shots, then hastily stowed his gear. He had finally gotten his sea legs, and could pretty well anticipate-and correct for-the rolling and rocking of the boat. But he wouldn't be sorry to leave it. Ever since his stroll on the deck the night before, not to mention his disastrous visit to the aloft con, he'd felt himself to be persona non grata and had studiously avoided bumping into any of the senior officers. Even Petty Officer Kazinski had looked at him like a bad-luck charm. When the accident had happened, he'd done everything he could think of for Lieutenant Healey helping her down the ladder like a fireman-which meant staying on the outside and one step below her-then going back up top to try to remove the dead albatross and somehow seal the conning tower window. But there wasn't much he could do-the bird's body was so tightly wedged into the broken window, with the edge of the Kent screen slicing into its breast like a scalpel, that he decided it was best to leave it where it was. At least that way there was something to keep the battering waves from flooding the con again.
No, he wouldn't be sorry to leave the boat and get to Point Adelie. That's where he could begin his work in earnest.
After the tarp was removed, Michael, who'd been on a pretty fair number of helicopters in his time, could see that it was one of the Dolphin class, a sturdy, twin-engined, single-rotor chopper that was routinely used for missions like drug interdiction, ice patrol, and search and rescue. Like the ship they were on, the helicopter was painted red, a common safety measure in icy climes where a spot of color could make all the difference between discovery- and survival-and being lost forever. As he looked on, several seamen began to run fuel lines and prepare the craft for departure; a couple of others began to off-load some crates. They reminded him of a pit crew at a NASCAR race, each one of them going about his business with practiced hands and almost no words exchanged. He
