The Fire Ship Read Free Page A

The conversation was automatic. Neither Richard nor Hood was really attending to it.
    They moved forward to the corridor, then followed it left as it turned into the shadowed, stultifying bowels of the bridge-house until they came to a stairwell. An elevator shaft gaped before them, doors wide and car gone, leaving a pendant tangle of cable lit by fire from below. The bottom of the stairwell glowed and rumbled as though a volcano were active down there. They glanced meaningfully at each other and ran on up toward the bridge itself.
    The bridge was a deserted wreck. The totality of the destruction told of terrible carnage. The windows were gone, blasted in with the helm and all the consoles that should have stood forward, overlooking the bows. Now they lay scattered against the torn, bullet-pocked rear wall. It was difficult to distinguish among the smokingwreckage on the floor what was oil and what was blood; what was wiring and what was entrails.
    There should have been a chart table. There should have been logs. There were only dark-stained rags and smoldering splinters. Twisted lumps of lead slid among the mess they had made. The whole place smelled like a slaughterhouse.
    “Have you ever seen anything like this?” whispered Richard.
    “No,” breathed Hood. “I did two full tours in Nam and I ain’t never seen nothing like this.”
    As they searched the bridge they began to reconstruct what must have happened, from the unexpected, lowlevel airborne attack to the intrepid collecting of the dead and wounded—and the launching of the two largest lifeboats onto the deadly, shark-infested sea. Two lifeboats that should be out there somewhere, back along the ghostly, smoke-born track of the dying freighter’s wake. By the time they reached the main deck again, they were both determined to do all in their power to rescue the people who had been through this. What sort of officers and crew had the awesome discipline under this withering attack to remove each other, themselves, and all their records so completely? But there was nothing anywhere to give a clue to their identity—or that of their ship.
    Nor was there any sign of Robin.
    “Risk the foredeck?” asked Richard, at the top of the stairway down to the furnace in the engine room.
    Hood nodded. Both men were too well aware that the fire down below was burning more fiercely now than it had been when they first came aboard. But such was the mystery that both were compelled to continue. No ship about legitimate business with a normal crew could ever be as anonymous as this.
    Robin was in the sterncastle: here the crew had left more of themselves. The sterncastle itself was a warren of corridors, quarters, and storerooms, reaching one full level up from the well of the main deck then down three—maybe four decks—to the after engineering sections. These were as fiercely ablaze as the sections beneath the bridge, and Robin was as well aware as the men that the fire was getting worse.
    Two decks down toward the dead engines and Robin was drenched in sweat and choking from the fumes. The walls were hot and beginning to blister; the coconut matting on the floor gave off dangerous-looking little puffs of smoke when stepped on. The stairs themselves were far too hot to touch. She would not have risked going farther down even had she thought anyone could still have been alive down there.
    Up she came toward main deck level, therefore, contenting herself with searching quarters that must have belonged to engineers. She found overalls. She found rags, scarves, and kaffiyah headcloths. She found a copy of the Koran.
    It had been a Muslim crew then; Muslim engineers at least. But who would attack with such savagery a ship full of Muslims in the northern waters of the Indian Ocean?
    Who and why?
    She paused, lost in thought but uneasily aware that she was taking an unjustified risk. A personal adventure, away even from Richard for a little. Perhaps her last like this forever,