Geoffrey Jenkins: A Ravel of Waters

Finally, Kay clasped my fingers round the dagger. They were as ungainly as bandaged bananas. I wondered whether I would ever be able to trigger the blade release. My success depended on one lightning-quick stroke before the guard suspected the suit had an occupant. If I fumbled even for a second, I was done. Then Kay was gone. I maintained the hanger pose — slumped, head down, arms out. Time ceased to pass.

My sole clock to mark the passage of the minutes — or was it hours? — was the drip of my sweat. The suit became a sauna.

I could not hear because of the waterproof cap; I dared not raise my head in case the next moment found the guard there. The next moment he was.

My sight of him was like a cut-off television camera shot — a trigger hand, a finned barrel, a pair of legs, a firing crouch. The muzzle held steadied on the suit. On me.

I waited for the shot. A blob of sweat chased itself inside my neck, down my chest, past my stomach. I felt every millimetre of its progress. No shot.

The guard's torso swung away. Feet followed. His boots were a boxer's ankle-hugging type. Now!

My fingers inside the glove were slippery with sweat. I flexed them for the stroke.

The guard's toes swivelled. A boxer dodging a knockdown punch couldn't have matched their speed. They pointed straight at me. Had the gunman heard? Had he seen? I froze — if that was the word in a bath of sweat.

Maybe he had caught, animal-like, some vibration of my rolling tension. Perhaps he even smelt my fear. I kept my head low, my eyes unsighted. Slowly, slowly, I watched his knees ease their tension. Slowly, slowly, that on-target barrel shifted away from my guts.

I did not know how long I could keep every muscle tight as a fence-wire without one making an involuntary giveaway ripple. Sweat cascaded down my knife-fingers.

The guard's toes pivoted ninety degrees. His back was towards me. Now!

Perhaps the switch-blade gave a click on release. Perhaps my body movements beat it by a milli-second. Or perhaps he only sensed rather than heard anything. Whatever it was, he was already turning, left shoulder following the UZI round, when I lurched at him.

There wasn't time for the orthodox overhand dagger thrust. The clumsy suit would not have allowed it. It was a low, savage up-and-under to the heart.

The jar up my arm could have been a glance off the UZI's breech, or the bone armour of his rib-cage.

I fell on him, enveloped him — a crude parody of a rugby smother-tackle. My knife hand skewered him. If he screamed or uttered any sound, I did not hear it. We cannoned off a partition wall, pitched into the main sickbay, carrying the curtain with us.

I had a momentary sight of the UZI being snatched up by another hand — Tideman's. The guard and I lay face-to-face, I on top. I was grateful for my visor. The man's mouth was contorted. Tell-tale pink sprayed from it. blurring the Perspex. He gave a final convulsion and was still.

It was Kay with shaking hands who freed my cap. Tideman knelt a pace away with the automatic's barrel trained on the guard's head. There was no need. He was dead. 'Quick!' I rapped out. 'The bridge — both of you!'

There was no direct access to the bridge from the sickbay. The wheel-house, radio office, chartroom and pilot office were all situated on the floor above us. The route from sick-bay to bridge was along a corridor running athwartships, flanked by officers' cabins. At the far end was the captain's suite. There were twin upward companion-ways, one to port, the other to starboard. These ladders debouched from our level into a central well immediately abaft the wheel-house itself. This well was bisected by № 2 mast, which I now intended to climb via the servicing door which Kay and I had used during our first ascent. The whole of this well area could be isolated in an emergency by means of watertight bulkheads. In short, the central well was the junction of all routes to the bridge. Tideman and Kay started to the sick-bay door.

'John!' I said. 'In ten minutes — no sooner, no later — you will blow the mast charges. Is that understood?' 'Aye,' replied Tideman. 'Whatever.' 'Good luck!' The two sprinted off.

I ballooned along the corridor in their wake. I felt like a grotesque carnival figure. That is where the resemblance to fun ended. The knife was bloodied to the hilt.

I lost Tideman and Kay at the first ladder to the mastwell. I negotiated it with the nimbleness of a baby elephant.

I found myself in the well itself. The mast towered in front of me like a burnished lift-shaft. The access door was shut. It had a type of fancy quick-release press-catch. My banana fingers fluffed it. I shifted hands with the dagger, tried again. I felt it yield, open. Sound poured down from the floor above — a burst of automatic fire. Then — shorter, staccato. The mast was relaying the sound of the bridge action. One — two — single shots.

The UZI seemed to appear from the direction of the captain's suite before the man. A seeking black muzzle, the unmistakable heavy finning, a hand on the trigger, Grohman!

Why didn't he blast me? I shall never know. He could not have missed, at less than four metres. I think it must have been the sight of the ludicrous apparition which froze his finger. Or perhaps it was the sight of that bloody dagger,

In that moment of arrested time I realized that Kay had failed in her part. She had not reached the hydraulics console in time to throw the vital bulkheads switch which would have caged Grohman and the other Group Condors. Those last isolated rat-tat-tats from above could have been her epitaph.

My savage despair at the attack's misfire gave me the courage to stand there facing my killer for a split-second long enough to ensure that he would come up the mast after me.

I slammed the door shut. A siren-like whoop reverberated everywhere. Emergency alarm! Kay had managed the bulkhead switch! But it was too late. Grohman had escaped the trap.

I fumbled with the lock of the mast door. Against it from outside came a savage battering. It wasn't done by hand. It was a magazine full of 9 mm shells.

The emergency siren told me that my part of the plan was still on. I had to get aloft — climb with feet like snow-shoes, a suit the size of a hangover, and mittened hands 1 could scarcely feel through! The visor and cap I left loose against the nape of my neck. It would only take a second to zip them into place when the mast blasted off.

I couldn't climb with my weapon hand encumbered. So I put the dagger between my teeth and hefted my leg on to the first rung.

The confined space rang with two or three concussions. Grohman was trying to shoot open the lock, carefully aiming individual shots.

I levered myself up the ladder. The going was tougher than I had expected. Until I managed the rhythm of lifting the feet and understanding their non-feel against the rungs, I was certain Grohman would pick me off before I reached the level of the lower mainyard. All he would have to do, once he had blasted open the door, was to fire straight upwards. I presented the perfect target against groups of lights fitted for servicing purposes at the juncture of each yard with the mast. The first group was at the lower mainyard. I had to reach them before Grohman broke in the door. I fought my way up. "There was another rattle of shots from below. Heavy slugs began to tear through the door and were banging about at the foot of the ladder. Grohman wasn't inside yet.

The group of four naked electric bulbs was close. I threw myself up at them. One foot slipped, and I hung on by my right hand.

The mast door crashed open. I glanced down. Grohman brought the UZI to his shoulder. I was clambering directly above him, like a bird waiting to be picked off a branch.

It is difficult to fire straight overhead. My position allowed him no angle, however slight. He would either have to lean completely backwards or lie on his back to aim.