The Nemesis Program

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Four minutes. Two hundred seconds. A hundred and eighty. A hundred and sixty. Time became very compressed when every moment mattered this much.

Ben led the way with the bleeding, half-conscious dead weight of Jack Quigley draped across his shoulders. Behind him, Boonzie had Jeff’s arm around his neck, half carrying him, half dragging him as they struggled through the ship’s passageways, clattered up steps, stumbled through hatches in a race to reach the upper deck in time. Ahead they could hear the echoing steps of the personnel members running in panic to abandon the vessel any way they could now that the word had spread like wildfire that they were about to self-destruct.

A deep vibration seemed to come from the core of the ship. The lights flickered and dimmed, as if some gigantic power drain were sucking in all its energy.

Ben kept moving, hanging tightly onto Quigley with his teeth gritted in determination. He could suddenly see Brooke’s face in his mind and held that image there, letting it spur him on to run faster. ‘Come on!’ he yelled behind him to the others. ‘Keep going!’

Ninety seconds. The fresh air and bright light hit them as they burst out of the last hatchway into the morning sun. The sea was calm, the sky an unbroken expanse of blue except for the smoke still rising from the smouldering fires on deck. Running figures raced ahead of them between the cargo containers. Some of the personnel were trying to lower lifeboats, others clambering over the rail and leaping wildly into the sea from a height that would almost certainly be fatal.

Seventy-five seconds. Ben blinked the sweat from his eyes. He thought of the rope ladder hanging from the ship’s side down to the moored rigid inflatable below. They’d never make it down to the boat.

One minute. ‘The helipad!’ he yelled. It was a short sprint across the deck to the resting chopper. Could he get it up in the air in time? He didn’t know, but it was the only chance they had.

He ran, legs straining from his burden. He could hear Jeff and Boonzie’s grunts of pain as they laboured to keep up.

Fifty seconds. Crossing the helipad, he tore open the aircraft’s side hatch. He roared with effort as he bundled Quigley into the back. Racing around to the pilot’s seat, he hurled himself in behind the controls. Boonzie and Jeff were clambering aboard now. Boonzie’s grating rasp in Ben’s ear: ‘Fly this thing, laddie!’

Forty seconds. Ben glanced around him at the unfamiliar cockpit layout. Come on. Get it together. He flipped switches. Powered up the turbine. The rotors began to turn. Slowly, maddeningly slowly, then a little faster. Then faster still, until the yellow blade tips became a solid halo above the cockpit and the engine revs were rising to a howl. Go, go, screamed the voice in his mind.

Ten seconds. Nine.

The chopper’s skids shifted on the deck as the aircraft started to go light.

Eight. Seven.

‘Fly it!’ Boonzie yelled.

Ben hauled on the controls. The chopper rose into the air, hesitated, rose a few feet more.

Five seconds. Four.

The helicopter climbed steadily upwards. The Triton’s towering superstructure was like a skyscraper next to them. Up and up. They were going to make it.

Then the ship seemed to disappear in a soundless explosion. It was as if an invisible hurricane of unimaginable fury had suddenly struck out of nowhere. Every intact window burst apart. Railings and cables and containers and bits of walkway and masts were suddenly shearing away, toppling, tumbling through the air. The hull crumpled and was torn apart at the seams just as easily as if it had been a child’s plastic model. The ship’s prow reared up as its back broke, hurling thousands of tons of cargo loose and crashing about the deck. The sea exploded all around. Foam and spray leaping skywards. The air black with flying debris.

Ben never even saw the steel cable that fouled the rotor blades with a massive shrieking crunch and sent the chopper gyrating wildly off course just as it cleared the deck enough to accelerate upwards and away. He couldn’t hold it. The aircraft began to spin and then plunge towards the mountainous swell.

The last thing Ben saw before he blacked out was the white water surging up to swallow them whole.

It was the cry of a seagull that woke him. The bird flapped down to land beside him, eyeing him curiously. The sky above was clear blue and the grey sea rose and fell gently, tugging his body back and forth on the swell. He blinked and looked around and realised he was clinging to a shattered rotor blade. What had happened? His fogged mind began to piece the memories together.

Where the ship had been, there was nothing but a circle of floating wreckage half a mile across. He was alone. Just him and the bird, and the silence and emptiness of the whispering sea.

As he bobbed there on the slow heave of the ocean, he thought about his life, his past, his future. Maybe he had none to look forward to; maybe he’d die out here. Maybe that wasn’t such a terrible thing, he reflected, and not undeserved either.

But if he somehow ever got back to shore, what would his life be then? A future with Brooke? He didn’t know. Didn’t even know if he’d ever see her again.

He thought about his friends. He’d brought them into this and now they were gone. Gone, like all the plans he’d made. More regrets. He had so many.

He drifted numbly, getting colder in the water. The seagull lost interest in him and flapped away to investigate the wreckage elsewhere. ‘Be like that,’ he called after it.

Then he was alone.

Though not as alone as he’d thought he was.

‘Ben!’ came a cry from across the water. He knew that voice. Clutching at the buoyant piece of rotor blade, he began to paddle through the drifting debris.

When he saw them, he let out a yell of joy and paddled faster.

‘Look what we found,’ Jeff said. His face was pale from blood loss and pain, but he was grinning from ear to ear. He, Boonzie and the weakly conscious but smiling Jack Quigley were sitting in the rigid inflatable boat.

‘You got room for one more?’ Ben let the rotor blade drift away. He swam to the boat and clambered aboard.

‘Outboard’s buggered,’ Boonzie said.

‘Guess I’m the only one fit to row,’ Ben said, unclipping the single oar.

‘Then you’d best get started, laddie. It’s a fair distance to shore.’

The sun rose and fell overhead as the hours passed. Nobody spoke. Quigley fell asleep. Jeff and Boonzie silently nursed their wounds. The only sound was the slap and gurgle of the paddle in the water as Ben rowed. Somewhere beyond the horizon was the coast of Estonia.

‘My son loves the sea,’ Ben said absently after about four hours’ silence.

‘You have a son?’ Boonzie said, amazed despite his pain.

‘That’s a long story,’ Ben said.