Thunderbolt Wilbur Smith (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Inevitably, it was with the last bit of the job – returning the length of hose to its rightful place – that I messed up.

22.

I must have coiled the hose too tight. As I’d pulled it up over the stern, I wound it round one hand with the other, hoping that by keeping it in a ball I’d stop it slapping about. Water dripped in my lap as I did this, but silently, so it didn’t matter. Once I had the coil ready, I eased open the storage compartment beneath my seat and gently pushed the bundle inside.

Maybe I pressed it down too low, in among the other stuff, close to the hinge, or possibly it was just that winding the hose up tight gave the thing a spring-like purpose: to unravel. Either way, when I let go the compartment door sprung open immediately and a half empty plastic oil canister flopped out of the door and down onto the fibreglass deck.

I grabbed at it and missed, knocking it sideways against the hull. The hollow clattering sound it made was very different to the gentle plashing of the water around us and, as I was stuffing the damn thing back in the compartment, out of the corner of my eye I saw Barrel-man jerk upright in his seat.

He was shrugging himself awake and began to turn around.

If he’d done so he’d have seen that I was awake and panic-rummaging.

But a much louder wallop distracted him.

It shocked me too. I felt the noise as well as heard it, and briefly wondered whether we’d struck something in the water. But the noise was in fact Mo hitting the actual deck. He’d rolled off the bench. Now he was groggily sitting up.

Barrel-man fixed on him.

Mo, still rubbing his head, murmured something apologetic.

At that Barrel-man swung around in his chair and lifted his feet up next to the steering wheel again.

Had the noise of the stupid canister rolling on the deck disturbed Mo as well as the psychotic pirate? Possibly. Amelia would have come out with something about probability, decibel levels and heightened states of awareness, I imagine, but I preferred to trust my gut.

It told me the boy had fallen off his bench deliberately, to create a distraction. As in, to help me. That would mean that he’d seen what I was up to and not done anything to make me stop. He’d just covered for me when it looked like Barrel-man might rumble my act of sabotage.

The trouble with having a reliable gut instinct is that you learn over time it’s foolish to ignore it. If Mo really was meaning to help me – us – that was a good thing. Why did it niggle me then? Possibly it was the thought that he’d want something in return that set me on edge. I was in his debt now, and I didn’t particularly like it. That said, I’d have liked it a lot less if the maniac in Pete’s chair had caught me.

Over the next few minutes I eased my way along the bench seat until I was abreast of Mo, close enough to whisper, ‘That was no accident.’

‘Go back to sleep,’ he said.

‘I wasn’t asleep and neither were you.’

‘Whatever. Sleep now.’

‘You’re not denying it then.’

‘Nobody has to deny anything,’ he whispered, before repeating, ‘Go back to sleep.’

‘What do you want from me?’ I muttered under my breath.

‘Eh?’ He sounded genuinely incredulous.

‘Why cover for me if you don’t want something in return?’

‘Surely you see,’ he said at length, ‘that I want exactly the same thing as you. I’m literally in the same boat. Just because they stole me from my village in Somalia, not from some luxury holiday resort, doesn’t mean I don’t want to escape from these people every bit as much as you do. The only difference is that I’ve wanted to for longer, and I know them much better than you, which maybe makes me more cautious. But if I can see the point in a plan and think you can get away with it, why wouldn’t I want to help?’

Surely it was better to admit the truth of what he was saying and take him on as an ally. It wasn’t as if I had lots of other avenues of hope.

‘You want further proof?’ he went on. ‘Your mobile phone. Where is it?’

The truth was, I’d forgotten I didn’t know. After I used it to contact Mum, I’d fallen asleep with it beneath me and woken to find it gone. Then in the upheaval of the storm and everything since I’d not thought of it.

‘I saw you fetch it from your bag, use it, and fail to hide it properly.’

‘I hid it beneath the life jackets.’

‘You dislodged it while you slept. When I woke up, before you, it was in plain view on the bottom of the boat.’

‘Where the hell is it now then?’

‘Your phone is back where it was before you took the risk of using it. Much less hazardous for me to be seen looking through your stuff than it would have been if they’d spotted you returning it. They’ll probably take it from you anyway. But for now, your phone is back in your bag, where I put it.’

23.

I took ages to drift off after Mo told me that. I’m not a great believer in the relevance of dreams – I mean, I’ve had some pretty stupid ones – but that night, when I did eventually sleep, it was only in bursts. I kept jerking awake from a dream in which the frayed end of a rope had slipped from my hand, dropping me into a vast emptiness. That horrible lurching sensation. Where would I land? Ugh.

I must have found deep sleep at some point, however, as I woke to the thin light of just-before-dawn. Opening one eye, I saw Mo fiddling about with something in the stern. What was that there, in full view, at his feet? Only