8
Gordon doubled back at once, retracing over half the distance to the sleds before he located Scott. His brother was toiling along, dragging the second hose, just a few feet above the sea bottom. He moved slowly, in fits and starts, battered this way and that by the mischievous current.
Relieved, Gordon started toward him, dropping his own hose to reach his struggling brother a bit sooner. He couldn't see his face, of course; the girdle's sensor was quite unable to penetrate the reinforced glass of Scott's mask, and presented to his 'view' nothing but a smooth, curving white surface. A brief handclasp communicated his brother's feelings well enough, though.
Pulling out his board, Gordon took a grease pencil and a tiny, water-proof torch, and wrote a message:
Tkng U bk to slds/ Gng on myslf / Wt thr
Scott examined the hastily penciled words, then emphatically shook his head... and suffered a sudden, agonizing spasm as the motion injured his back muscles further. Accepting no more protest, Gordon put away the writing things, took hold of his older brother, and towed him back to where the water sleds bobbed and swayed on their tethers like reeds in a stiff breeze.
One more quick communication:
Sty hr/ Got ths/ B bk sn
...and then Gordon was off to the wreck, again, hoping that he really could handle the job himself.
London:
His Royal Majesty had received a brief, murmured update from one of his dark-suited retainers. Leaving the broadcasting center, he and his strawberry–blonde eldest child (Her Serene Highness, Princess Alais Alexandra Elizabeth Dianne Hanover) crossed the few yards to Mobile Control at a rapid walk.
"John," the King called out.
The younger man got to his feet and turned to face the approaching royals.
"Sir?"
"It appears that we've a acquired a would-be blackmailer. A person, or persons, unknown has posted a threat to detonate the submerged explosives remotely, unless two-hundred-fifty million Euros are deposited in a numbered Swiss bank account by 5 AM, Greenwich Mean Time. The call seems to have originated from a mobile phone, somewhere on the Autobahn. Our security forces are inclined to take the matter seriously, and certainly there would be little difficulty in broadcasting a signal that would penetrate to the shipwreck; unfortunately..., before we could do much at all to stop it. Have you any suggestions?"
John Tracy glanced over at Penelope, whose arched brows and slight nod indicated that Parker and his underworld cronies would be on the job in a matter of minutes. Casually reaching into her handbag, the young noblewoman withdrew a compact, and began touching up the non-existent sheen on her nose. No one there but John and Alanrealized just how special an item that compact really was, and who she was using it to speak with. Turning to regard King Denis,John said,
"Consider it handled, Sir."
Not long afterward, in an incident never officially connected with events in Britain, a black BMW sedan suffered a sudden tire blow-out while speeding down the German freeway. Losing control of his vehicle, the driver careened off the road and over a high cliff. All three men in the BMW were killed in the resulting explosion and fire, which (after a brief investigation) were declared accidental, and soon forgotten. After that, there were no more threats, or attempts at black mail.
Vindicator:
She'd been beautiful. That much, Gordon could see, even with just a tactile map to go by. An aluminum trimaran Seacoaster, about 31 meters in length and close to 10 in the beam, she'd been slender and elegant, a high-speed container ship capable of zipping 3700 tonnes of cargo across the North Sea at over 45 knots.
The storm that killed her had ripped through two of her three hulls and sheared in half the enormous bolts that held her hatch covers in place, leaving the poor lass to sink to the bottom, alone and broken in a shallow grave.
Briefly, he was reminded of another boat... a submarine? But that one had been different; deeper water, he thought... and a living crew. Vindicator held only ghosts now. It was her cargo he was there to deal with.
Taking a firmer grip on the hose nozzle, Gordon quickly crossed himself and went in, entering through the torn hull. With his memorized diagram to back up the tactile map, the young aquanaut picked a careful path through the drowned ship, avoiding sharp edges that might tear the hose, or snag his gear. He was very slow, very cautious; drifting about with just an occasional flick of his fins. Diving a wreck alone was disorienting and dangerous, something he could have had his license revoked for. But that wasn't the worst of it.
What got to him was the dead men. Sprawled against the bulkheads, or clinging to ladder rails, they gave silent testament to the speed with which Vindicator had gone down. Gordon slipped quietly past them, relieved that there wasn't light enough to see their faces, or read their names. He kept count, though, meaning to light a few candles, next time he went to Mass.
Finally, he reached the main hold. It was filled nearly to capacity with giant shipping crates, strapped down so firmly that not one had shifted so much as a centimeter. From Gordon's angle, floating just within the upper hatch, the hold seemed cavernous, fading off in shades of flickering grey as far as the sensor could detect.
Thinking, 'Hope Brains packed enough foam to do the job,' Gordon raised the hose nozzle, and made ready to declaw 3000 tonnes of slumbering munitions.
