Chapter 37 – Charter Party Pooper
100km North East of London, The North Sea. 10:50pm, 8th November 2032.
The plan in itself is quite basic; get onto the ship and find Rasmus.
Getting onto the ship required a helicopter that Penelope already acquired a long time ago and which she flies as fast as possible using the most direct route towards the ship's publically available location. The sea below is reasonably calm, but they can't see much from their position. The only lights they can see come from the distant coastline or from the few ships using this stretch of water.
"It's about 10 kilometres further." Matt says, getting the job of monitoring the situation from the back since he didn't want to jump onto the ship.
"They've probably got some security on there so we're going to fly past once and scan the deck before I come back around to line up for the jump." Penelope instructs to both Alex and Erin who have their backpacks sitting on their laps in the cramped passenger space.
"We'll sneak right past them." Erin adds to her brother, mainly to calm him down about any possible fighting that may take place if everything goes wrong.
"I think they know we're coming." Alex says.
"Yeah, but they won't know exactly when or where. This helicopter has radar reflecting paint and the heat signature of a mosquito; no one would suspect a thing." Penelope confidently asserts.
"I still feel nervous." Matt exclaims.
"Go put a spare parachute on if you're so worried." Penelope jokes, but Matt heeds this joke anyway and puts one on. The set of spotlights coming from the booms of the two ship mounted cranes make it easy to see the target and illuminate the deck in white as they come up from it's 11 o'clock. The profile of the ship increases in size as they move closer and closer to it, revealing more of the decks contents; it looks exactly the same as before.
"We're looking for guards, weapons… anything that might be a problem." Penelope advises. What she didn't count on was a bright flash of yellow from shooting down rapidly towards the the bottom of the ship, accompanied by a cloud of smoke.
"Missile!" Penelope shouts as they all gaze at the horrific sight ahead and gathering pace as it arcs its trajectory towards them.
"Hold on!" Penelope shouts as she initiates the counter measures necessary to defend such an attack; not a flare, but a virus that automatically self-destructs any guided missile. It's beamed in every direction and half a second after the button is pressed, the rocket engine stalls and flies harmlessly to the left of them at several hundred kilometres an hour towards its date with the bottom of the sea. Penelope tilts the helicopter forward the maximum angle, turning to fly straight towards the ship and descending rapidly to get as close to the water as possible.
"You three are jumping out of here as soon as I fly above the container bay, deploy your parachute and then release it, drop down into the container bay and fight your way up." Penelope shouts; from the tone of her voice, there is no negotiation to be had. The helicopter stays low to prevent more surface to air attacks and at the last second pulls hard up on the joystick to get the clearance they need. The occupants jump off the helicopter and 3 of them quickly pull their parachutes and detach them as soon as they lose most of their speed. A fall from this height is not troubling for Alex or Erin as the Thievius Raccoonus contained techniques that showed how they could survive much higher falls than most. They see the missile battery set in the container bay pointed directly upwards with one empty silo being the one that missed. Erin and Alex land successfully but they turn straight to Matt who is bracing himself, but he's caught by an invisible diving Penelope.
There is no time to halt as attackers come quickly to subdue them, but they all get to work; even Alex gets his cane into action.
"Self destruct sequence initiated." A booming computer generated voice shouts throughout the ship via loudspeakers around the ship. "1 minute."
"1 minute?!" Erin remarks.
"There's always an off switch, isn't there?" Alex panics.
"Of course, only an imbecile wouldn't do…" Penelope remarks as she dashes around to look for it whilst staying stoically calm.
"I saw a lifeboat at the rear of the ship, we have to go!" Matt cries quickly, urging his friends to run instead of trying to disarm the bomb.
"Let's go!" Penelope concurs, abandoning her search on realisation that there will probably be no off switch. Another thing that comes into her head is the lack of opposition, is everyone running away or are they instructed to not fire near the missile battery? The mouse runs first towards a small hatch door before finding the staircase that runs up to the top. Everyone follows in this direction, even the attackers flee for their lives once they have back up.
"30 seconds." The indifferent computer voice warns as the gang as well as everyone else on the ship flees to the stern for the single lifeboat on board. People are cramming themselves inside the boat hanging off the rear, ready to be launched into the water. It's like everyone has forgotten what they were supposed to do and reverted back to the most basic of needs; staying alive. Everyone jumps on board before one of the crew unlocks a button that releases the boat from its tether to the ship and sends it hurtling to the water, it dives into the sea before resurfacing and floats on the water. The mood inside the enclosed shell of fibreglass is awkwardly calm. No one is attacking anyone and everyone is looking around and waiting for the explosion they all expect. Some henchmen are counting down the seconds on their watches and once that count gets to zero. There is no explosion immediately, instead, there is the sound of another rocket launching.
"Open the hatch." Penelope says, instantly coming up with an audaciously challenging plan to save everyone. Someone twists open the hatch door and swings it open for the mouse to hurl herself onto the roof to see that it's not 1 missile being launched; but the entire remainder in the missile battery; another 7 in total. They are all being launched up into the sky in slightly different directions, but in any case, Penelope prepares her last possible defence; her custom designed and made, collapsible rifle. It takes only 5 seconds to construct the rifle up before she points it to the sky. The missiles begin to turn around in mid air and head straight down towards the ship, ready to blow it to pieces. Looking into the scope on her rifle, pointing towards the missiles in the sky.
Now there's a reason why Penelope's hit rate is fantastically high, and it's not to do with skill. Rather, it's the technology implemented to improve accuracy which was made her more deadly than any of her peers. The bullets are guided and move inflight to hit the target to compensate for either the external, such as the wind or Penelope's own error. It's right here she hopes that it can work the best and shoot down as many missiles as possible and attempt to salvage the gold on board before the authorities show up. She aims for the one's closest to her which are aiming at the bridge. She expects them to hit seconds after, but there is no mid air explosion or rocket engine failure. So with all hopes of saving the ship lost, she dives into the water to shield herself from the debris whilst holding into the edge of the fleeing lifeboat, motoring away as fast as it can.
The sight of the ship being stuck is not filled with bright fireballs that would light up the night sky, but the loudness of the explosions is what is most felt by everyone nearby; the sharp walls of noise punctuated by the metallic fracturing of the ship. The lights on the ship have gone completely dark so they can't see the demise of several thousand tonnes of steel sink slowly to the bottom via the rear open hatch door that Penelope emerges from, cold and drenched, back into the cabin before shutting it behind her. There is only but quiet murmuring going whilst they all peer in to look for the ship and watch it sink, but there is one big problem which is going through the three youngest on board; why haven't they attacked us?
"Why aren't we dead yet?" Matt whispers to Erin sitting to his left, but the hyena sitting opposite him overhears his conversation.
"Money." he replies in an African accent, like the answer is blindingly obvious.
"They're all mercenaries." Penelope replies to Matt, sitting to the rat's right.
"And money is what we want."
The others nod in agreement.
"You're wondering why your body is not filled with bullets, no?" The hyena asks. "It is easy, the Scandinavian dog didn't pay us well enough. Le Paradox, he wants to keep you alive and he pays extremely well for doing so. When he hears about this… we could retire."
Matt is feeling completely left out of the situation, being the weakest out of everyone and add the fact that there are around 15 mercenaries with loaded weapons in close proximity to an enclosed space. Nervousness is sure to set in. As skilled as he thinks Alex, Erin and Penelope are; he doubts any of them could stop a barrage of bullets.
"Where are we going?" Penelope asks to the front.
"Land, we have to disappear." The driver shouts to the rear.
"I've lost my computer." Matt whispers across to Erin, much quieter than before so that it's not overheard by anyone else because he's afraid that making such a comparatively weak complaint will only further enhance that line of reputation.
"We can get another one." Erin replies, money isn't a problem.
"But… I worked hard on it, building it, ordering parts…"
"If we get through this, you can get all the parts you want." Erin replies.
"Thanks." Matt says, pausing before leaning to his left, towards Erin in an audacious show of affection. Gently he leans in, worrying every step of the way that it's going to be too much; but it never happens. The overall affect gives him a warm tingling inside, something that can be attributed to the complex emotion of love. The small watercraft continues at full pace on the sea, heading as the crow flies to the nearest land point; a remote beach in rural England where they hope there will be no distressed onlookers watching all these armed mercenaries land on the beach. As the boat gets closer to the shore, Penelope orders everyone with a submachine gun or any weapon that can't be concealed is thrown into the water; knowing that Le Paradox can replace them. The only exception to this rule are the canes, which can be replaced, are much harder to make as opposed to the conventional weaponry. The driver rotates the boat around and reverses it so they can jump out the back and get onto the shore easily.
"Good luck." The henchman gestures as they all run along the beach to find a way out of the area and eventually regroup once they make contact with any of Le Paradox's businesses; but the four, who are not hired mercenaries, stay behind.
"So where should we go?" Matt asks, standing in the cold night shivering his tail off.
"Away from them." Penelope says, so they all head along the beach in the opposite direction.
"Why?" Matt replies.
"They'll all get jealous." Penelope says. "And maybe a bit annoyed."
"I still don't get why they would blow up the ship and all the gold onboard." Alex wonders out loud. "Is that to stop us from getting it, like, if Rasmus doesn't have it then no one can type of thing?"
"Just because I'm smart, it doesn't mean I know everything." Penelope replies.
"But you know more than me."
"About stuff that has nothing to do with this problem." Penelope responds. "You guys have to make the calls yourself, you can't just rely on whoever has the most brains because sometimes you'll be the only brain that can make that decision. Your father was really good at that, he wasn't a genius, above average sure, but he wasn't a genius. But he could think and move his way out of any situation because he what you two don't have; self confidence, self belief; none of you trust yourselves enough and you're always asking questions and hoping that someone else is going to hold your hand. Well it's not and…"
"Why two?" Erin asks. "You said two of us, who is it?"
"Take an educated guess." Penelope replies, this causes the three of them to look at each other, but Alex and Matt look towards Erin who can only look at herself.
"You beat Rasmus twice!" Penelope asserts. "No wonder he's not here, he's afraid of you."
"Twice? I thought it was just the one time on the ship." Matt responds. Erin stays silent, concealing the fact that she beat him in the dark sewer tunnel even when he had a gun.
"Can we not mention it?" Erin asks, clearly peeved off about Penelope bragging about her exploits. "Let's just get out of here." She says as she wants to keep on walking.
"You can't keep hiding it, you've need to take some of the credit; why do you think Sly always left a calling card?" Penelope replies; but Erin is not pleased. Fighting Rasmus was nothing to celebrate; it's simply another act of survival in the lifelong quest to stay alive, not to be cherished.
"If we want to find a way out we'll have to go inland." Erin says, wanting to keep pushing on. Penelope can't change her efficient nature, never pausing for a second, so she calls in their ride out of here. A helicopter's lights turn on from several hundred metres above before it descends and lands automatically on the beach; the same one they all hurled themselves out of on the ship.
"Some autopilot." Matt comments as he watches the wheels sink into the hard wet sand.
"She's an expert at remote controlled items." Alex adds, recalling the countless stories about her from the Thievius Raccoonus. "Maybe your computer survived the ride."
The sudden thought it might still be okay brings joy to Matt, which he conceals in order not to act like inappropriately like an 8 year old in this very serious situation. He doesn't reply but follows everyone onto the helicopter which takes off as soon as Matt climbs aboard and gets to the rear of the helicopter where he searches for his computer and finds it with scratches around the corners, but it still works and that's what he hoped for.
"Where are we going?" Alex asks to Penelope.
"I don't know." Penelope replies. "You tell me."
"We're going back into London." Erin instructs. "We're getting all 5 of our friends out and talking to Le Paradox; he'll lead us right to Rasmus."