Thunderbolt by Wilbur Smith (reading strategies book .txt) 📕

‘I just do. Trust me.’

‘I’ll ask,’ said Mo. ‘But don’t hold your breath.’

‘I’ve never understood that expression,’ Amelia said, with her does-not-actually-compute face on. It was a relief to see it – familiar and reassuring – again, given the contrast with what we’d just witnessed. ‘When I ask a question, I never hold my breath while waiting for the answer.’

Mo looked like he might reply but he must have sensed my agitation, because instead of debating the point he set off to put the actual question to the captain.

21.

Mo had underestimated his influence over the captain who, it turned out, thought reorganising us all across the two boats was a good precaution. Xander did well to come up with that idea. Maybe my T-shirt-waving helped. I was the troublemaker to be kept apart from the others.

Barrel-man, who seemed to be second in command, would watch me in the speedboat. Mo joined us as an extra pair of eyes. Flip-flops and the captain rode in the bigger boat with Xander, Amelia and the wounded Bear, who retreated to his bunk, as if a quick lie-down might cure him of the bullet he’d taken to the forearm.

It’s possible the captain would have set sail for home to patch up his man, injured in the attack, but I couldn’t be sure of that. With the speedboat out of action, however, they’d be less capable of hunting down more victims. Helping Pete prepare to launch the boat earlier in the week had given me an idea of how I could successfully sabotage it, but I had to wait for nightfall before I could risk executing my plan.

I spent the time on the rearmost bench seat, looking out at our wake. Once again, the pirates had chosen to tow the speedboat at a safe distance behind the cruiser, so for now the big outboards were silent. In the aftermath of the storm the sea had turned glassy and we were drawn on smoothly, tugged by the cruiser, our wake quietly etched across the mirrored face of the sea. I ran my eyes out to where the expanding silver V disappeared over and over again. As the afternoon dropped into evening the wake vanished closer to the boat. After nightfall I had to look straight down to see it.

At some point Mo had come to sit closer to me. I could tell that he wanted to talk to me, but the feeling wasn’t mutual. I still didn’t know whether I could trust him. It seemed so, but why take the risk?

Well, with his help I could have made sure Barrel-man didn’t wake up and spot me when I set to work; without it I’d have to wait until I was sure both of them were sound asleep before taking the plunge. Possibly because I knew that Mo would try to persuade me not to do it, I decided on the latter course of action.

I lay back on the bench seat and waited for Barrel-man’s head to loll and stay lolled. He was still sprawling in Pete’s chair with his feet up on the boat’s dash. When Mo got no joy out of me he retreated to his own bench so that he could lie down flat. I watched him too, waiting until both of them had stayed still for a good quarter of an hour before chancing it.

My plan, such as it was, was to use Pete’s siphon to do exactly what he’d warned me to avoid doing with it at all costs. I’d made sure I was stationed in the stern, next to the fuel tank and within reach of the compartment in which I knew Pete had stowed the long, thin coil of fuel hose we’d used as a siphon.

When the time came, I pried open that compartment super-slowly and retrieved it. Then I sprang the catch on the dive boat’s fuel tank. So far, so good. I unwound the coiled pipe. This was the moment of truth. Would it be long enough, fully uncoiled, for one end, draped between the big outboards, to reach into the sea, while the other end was tucked inside the fuel tank?

Easily, it turned out. To make sure I got a good flow going I sucked on the other end of the hose hard and long enough to flood my mouth with saltwater. It didn’t taste as bad as all that. Once the water started to flow, I carefully angled the end of the hose I’d sucked into the fuel tank.

Sitting where I was, so close to the tank, the wash of the sea against the hull wasn’t quite loud enough to mask the tinkling of seawater into the petrol, and though that probably wouldn’t have been the case even just a few feet away, I couldn’t be sure, so it was a relief when I found I could stop the trickling sound by angling the tip of the tube sideways into the lip of the tank.

Pete had explained that the engine could handle a bit of water contamination, but a lot would quickly wreck the injectors, so I topped the tank up a fair way, not right to the top, because that would have made the tampering obvious, but with enough seawater to cause a problem.

I kept one eye on the man in the captain’s chair, occasionally checking that Mo was still asleep on his side. It’s amazing that a bit of suction can make water flow uphill. Amelia would probably have wanted to explain the physics of the thing – no doubt Mo could recite whatever equations made it happen too – but for me the incapacitating sound of the trickling was enough.

When I was sure I’d trashed the fuel properly I eased the tube out of the tank and gently secured the lid again. The whole operation, carried out so slowly, had taken a good ten minutes, and I wasn’t done yet. Not quite.