The Fire Ship Read Free Page B

right at the edge where she loved to be once in a while, with nobody at risk but herself.
    Except for her unborn child.
    That was the rub. She had started planning names already for the eight-week-old fetus lying so comfortably inside her, a pastime that warned her that she wouldsoon have to give up the only drug she had ever really enjoyed—adrenaline.
    Ah well, she thought wistfully, time to move.
    She was in one of the cabins overlooking the afterdeck. There was a small window, its glass crunching under her feet, overlooking a small drop onto the wood outside, and then, forty-odd feet away, the back of the bridge-house. Beneath the window was the deck on which the Koran had lain, beside it, a bunk. At the foot of the bunk, a cupboard covering part of the wall and at right angles to that, the door out onto the stairway.
    And even as she turned to exit, tapping the holy book tucked safely in her pocket, the stairwell exploded into flame.
    The door had opened outward: the force of the explosion slammed it shut, then set it rattling thunderously in its frame.
    All this happened so suddenly that Robin took a step backward, surprised, then walked toward the door with no real sense of danger. Even the noise it was making seemed hardly real. It was only when she touched its metal handle and burned her fingers that she really registered the fact that the stairwell outside was full of fire.
    Still far from panicking, she crossed to the desk and looked out of the window. Yes. She could get through that. And suddenly the need to do so was borne upon her most forcefully. The farthest port of the hatches in the deck before her suddenly erupted into flame.
    The window was big enough for her to get out of but it was fanged with stumps of thick glass. And it was early in the day, she reckoned, to deliver little Charlotte or William by cesarean section. Still, that was easily taken care of. She tore the mattress off the bunk and bundled it through the hole until it folded down over the glass. She should be able to slip through quite easily.Over the chair and onto the desk she moved, only to pause. It would be safer still if she had something outside to step down onto. Had she time to arrange that? The practiced eye of a fearless tomboy youth informed her that it would be an easy jump. Was she fussing too much? How roughly could you treat an unborn infant almost two months old?
    She turned to look for something that would fit through the window and still be solid enough to step down onto. That was when she noticed the blue flames licking in round the corners of the wooden door and the realization finally hit her that if she didn’t move fast, then she could die here.
    The forward deck was just as much of a mess as the bridge had been. The planes had come in low and the forecastle had taken the brunt. Richard and Sam picked their way through the mess quickly and carefully, eyes everywhere for clues. They stopped at the gaping top of what must once have been a safely battened hatch. The first few feet of ladder going down into the hold were in much the same condition as the last few feet of the ladder going down the side. Hood crouched down to check it and Richard found an instant’s leisure to look at his watch, the battered old steel Rolex given to him nearly fifteen years ago by Rowena Heritage. Rowena: Robin’s elder sister—Richard’s first wife. It was twelve minutes since Robin had disappeared. He went cold, fearing he knew not what.
    Then Hood interrupted: “Okay. Let’s go,” and the two of them went down together.
    Richard stepped down off the ladder into water. It was not deep—just enough to flood his canvas docksider shoes—but it was hot. It was absolutely dark down here, the ship’s lighting having died with her generatorslong-since. Sam Hood’s deep drawl came out of a nearby shadow, “We don’t find a flashlight in five seconds, I’m outta here.”
    There was one clipped to the ladder at shoulder height. Richard