Алистер Маклин - Seawitch

Some hour later they arrived at the Houston International Airport. With much of the remaining ten million dollars still remaining at his disposal, Cronkite was not the man to worry about incidental expenses. Mulhooney and his friends immediately hired a long-range helicopter and set out for the Gulf.

In the fourth hour of his sleep, which had remained undisturbed by the sound of a considerable underwater explosion, Lord Worth was unpleasantly awakened by a call from a seethingly mad Cronkite who accused him of killing two more of his men and that he, Cronkite, was going to exact a fearful vengeance. Lord Worth hung up without bothering to reply, sent for Mitchell and learned that Cronkite had indeed made another attempt to sabotage the western leg. The depth-charge had apparently done everything that had been expected of it, for their search-lights had picked up the bodies of two divers floating on the surface. The craft that had been carrying them could not have been seriously damaged, for they had heard the sound of its diesels starting up. Instead of making a straight escape, it had disappeared under the rig and by the time they had reached the other side it had so vanished into the darkness and rain that they had been unable to pick it up. Lord Worth smiled happily and went back to sleep.

In the fifth hour of his sleep he would not have been smiling quite so happily if he had been aware of certain strange activities that were taking place in a remote Louisiana motel, one exclusively owned and managed by Lord Worth himself. Here it was that the Seawitch ’s relief crew spent their weekly vacation in the strictest seclusion. In addition to abundant food, drink, films, TV and a high-class bordello that might have been run by Sally Stanford herself in her hey-day, it offered every amenity for which off-duty oil rig men could ever have wished. Not that any of them wished to step outside the compound gates: when nine out of ten men are wanted by the law, total privacy is a paramount requirement.

The intruders, some twenty in all, arrived in the middle of the night. They were led by a man – a humanoid would have been a better term for him – called Gregson: of all Cronkite’s associates he was by far the most dangerous and lethal and was possessed of the morality and instincts of a fer-de-lance with toothache. The staff were all asleep and were chloroformed before they had any opportunity of regaining consciousness.

The rig relief crew, also, were all asleep but in a somewhat different fashion and for quite different reasons. Liquor is forbidden on oil rigs and the relief crews on their last night before returning to duty generally made the best of their last chance. Their dormant states ranged from the merely befuddled to the paralytic. The rounding up of them, most of whom, once afoot, remained still asleep on their feet, took no more than five minutes. The only two relatively sober members of the relief crew made to offer some show of resistance. Gregson, with a silenced Biretta, gunned them down as if they had been wild dogs.

The captives were pushed inside a completely standard, albeit temporarily purloined, removal van and transported to an abandoned and very isolated warehouse on the outskirts of town. To say the least it was somewhat less than salubrious, but perfectly fitted for Gregson’s purpose. The prisoners were neither bound nor gagged, which would have been pointless in the presence of two armed guards who carried the customary intimidating machine-carbines. In fact the carbines were also superfluous: the besotted captives had already drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

It was in the sixth hour of Lord Worth’s equally dreamless slumber that Gregson and his men lifted off in one of Lord Worth’s helicopters. The two pilots had been reluctant to accept them as passengers but Schmeissers are powerful persuasive agents.

It was in the seventh hour of Lord Worth’s slumber that Mulhooney and his two colleagues touched down on the empty helipad of the Georgia. As Cronkite’s own helicopter was temporarily marooned on the Seawitch he had no compunction in impounding both the helicopter and its hapless pilot.

At almost exactly the same moment another helicopter touched down on the Seawitch and a solitary passenger and pilot emerged. The passenger was Dr Greenshaw, and he looked, and was, a very tired, elderly man. He went straight to the sick-bay and, without as much as trying to remove his clothes, lay down on one of the cots and composed himself for sleep. He should, he supposed, have reported to Lord Worth that his daughter Melinda and John Roomer were in good hands and in good shape: but good news could wait.

On the eighth hour, with the dawn in the sky, Lord Worth, a man who enjoyed his sleep, awoke, stretched himself luxuriously, pulled on his splendidly embroidered dressing-gown and strolled out on to the platform. The rain had stopped, the sun was tipping the horizon and there was every promise of a beautiful day to come. Privately congratulating himself on his prescience that no trouble would occur during the night, he retired to his quarters to perform his customary and leisurely morning ablutions.

Lord Worth’s self-congratulation on his prescience was entirely premature. Fifteen minutes earlier the radio operator, newly returned to duty, had picked up a news broadcast that he didn’t like at all and gone straight to Mitchell’s room. Like every man on board, even including Larsen and Palermo, he knew that the man to contact in an emergency was Mitchell: the thought of alerting Lord Worth never entered his head.

He found Mitchell shaving. Mitchell looked tired, less than surprising as he had spent most of the night awake. Mitchell said: ‘No more trouble, I hope?’

‘I don’t know.’ He handed Mitchell a strip of teletype. It read: ‘Two tactical nuclear weapons stolen from the Netley Rowan Armoury yesterday afternoon. Intelligence suspects they are being flown or helicoptered south over Gulf of Mexico to an unknown destination. A world-wide alert has been issued. Anyone able to provide information should–’

‘Jesus! Get hold of this armoury any way you can. Use Lord Worth’s name. With you in a minute.’

Mitchell was with him in half a minute. The operator said: ‘I’m through already. Not much cooperation, though.’

‘Give me that phone. Hello? My name’s Mitchell. Who’s speaking, please?’

‘Colonel Pryce.’ The tone wasn’t exactly distant, just a senior officer talking to a civilian.

‘I work for Lord Worth. You can check that with the Lauderdale Police, the Pentagon or the Secretary of State.’ He said to the operator, but loudly enough that Pryce could hear: ‘Get Lord Worth here. I don’t care if he is in his bloody bath, just get him here now. Colonel Pryce, an officer of your standing should know that Lord Worth’s daughters have been kidnapped. I have been engaged to recover them and this I have done. More importantly, this oil rig, the Seawitch , is under threat of destruction. Two attempts have already been made. They were unsuccessful. Further questioning of the Pentagon will confirm that they have stopped three foreign warships headed here for the purpose of destroying the Seawitch. I want information about those tactical weapons and I must warn you that Lord Worth will interpret any failure to provide this information as a gross dereliction of duty. And you know the immense power Lord Worth has.’

There was a far from subtle change in Colonel Pryce’s tone. ‘It’s quite unnecessary to threaten me.’

‘One moment. Lord Worth’s just arrived.’ Mitchell gave a brief résumé of what he had said, making sure that Pryce could hear every word that was spoken.

‘Nuclear bloody bombs! That’s why Cronkite said he could blast us out of the water!’ Lord Worth snatched the phone from Mitchell. ‘Lord Worth here. I have a hot line to the Secretary of State, Dr Belton. I could catch him in fifteen seconds. Want I should do that?’