Read Online The Last Airship by Christopher Cartwright - Free Book Online Page B

bottom.
    The
bilge could be heard, the ship having already taken on large quantities of the
water which had flooded the deck, and was now swishing around the bottom.
    Once
he reached the bottom and looked around, Tom couldn’t see where the man had
gone. It appeared to be a dead end, which served little purpose other than to
provide buoyancy. Tom turned around to see if he could find another direction
in which the man might have gone. 
    Shining
his flashlight around the large room it appeared to serve little purpose. At
the furthermost point of the bow, two comparatively small engines could be seen,
which must have been used for the bow thruster.
    At
the portside engine, something caught his eye.
    Tom
saw the faint glow of a single red dot which was flickering on and off.
Ordinarily, Tom wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but in the absence of
any other light, the single red light seemed out of place.
    Climbing
down to the engine, he placed his hand on the red light. It glowed on his hand
as though its source was emanating from elsewhere.
    His
eyes followed the beam to its origin, and then stopped.
    On
the side of the hull, and about ten feet above him, were two single sticks of
dynamite wired to a timer with a red LED light. As explosives go, it wasn’t
much, but it was certainly enough to blow a big hole in the hull, one big
enough to sink the Hayward Bulk – if cyclone Petersham didn’t sink it first.
    Tom’s
mind grasped the outcome.
    Above
him, he heard the sound of a single steel bar sliding over the top of the
hatchway.
    He
was trapped.

Chapter F our
    The
man in the Armani suit was feeling good.
    Everything
had fallen into place perfectly. At first, after his partner had destroyed the
impeller, he’d been worried that they were going to be able to repair it before
he could reach the stricken ship. Then, he heard about the cyclone, and the
solution presented itself.
    Malcolm
Ford, a senior engineer for Global Shipping, was in Sydney at the time. It
would be easy for him to offer assistance to the damaged ship. It would also
provide him with more credibility, as the crew of the Maria Helena would most
likely have never met the man.
    The
gamble had paid off, but he was worried that the pilot seemed to sense that
something wasn’t quite right. The man appeared too aware, much brighter than usual.
After research, he discovered that the pilot was Sam Reilly’s right hand man in
Global Shipping’s special projects division – Deep Sea Expeditions.
    As
it was, that problem had been taken care of.
    Now,
he had less than an hour in which to retrieve it. He was going to have to work fast,
but he was confident that he would have it in time.
    The
man ran back towards the main pilot house – the superstructure located at the
rear of the ship, which housed the crew quarters, Navigation Bridge, and
control tower.
    To
his relief, he didn’t run into anyone on his way there, and he quickly opened
the door and stepped inside. The sound of the storm was instantly cut in half
as he closed the door behind him.
    He’d
seen the schematics of the ship more than a week ago, and knew exactly where he
was going –down more than a dozen sets of stairs, until he reached the bowels
of the ship.
    In
the ordinarily locked room, he picked up the swipe card that his friend had
left for him and unlocked the door.
    The
room was small when compared to the vast size of the rest of the Hayward Bulk.
It was dark, with no portholes to let in outside light. He turned the lights on,
but they did nothing to make the place feel more homely.
    At
the far end of the room stood a single bed, and next to it was a laptop
computer.
    He
turned the computer on and waited until the security login page booted up.
Then, quickly typing in the alpha-numeric code, he watched as the startup
screen changed to his homepage.
    In
the top left-hand corner, he clicked on a file labeled, “Time to go”.
    Opening
the file, his heart began to race as he realized