The passage ended at a bulkhead door leading through to the engine room. Michelle peered in warily. To the right, immediately past the door, was a cubbyhole partly partitioned off from the rest of the compartment, with a chair, a tiny steel desk, and several shelves of charts and manuals. Opposite, on the left, was an open kit locker with steel steps leading up to what looked like a hatch out to the deck. Beyond was the engine room proper, built around the two main diesels standing parallel with a walkway between them. At the far end, past the engines, a steel ladder surrounded by more machinery led up to another hatch, which Michelle judged had to be near the stern somewhere.
As she was debating which way to go, a movement on a ledge near her head caught her eye. It was a mec—in fact, the peculiar one that Corfe called a “KE,” with a socket like a hat on top of its head, that plugged into computer cords. It was waving at her. There was no time for quizzing. She picked it up and set it on the palm of her hand. It jabbed an arm several times, pointing in the direction of the engine room. She went through, among valves and housings, generators, batteries, banks of electrical gear. It was hot and noisy, with one of the generator systems running, but at least the engines were quiet.
Gesturing like a tiny, animated compass, the mec guided her to a point up among a tangle of pipes and valves, where she found another mec. It was wielding what looked like a miniature saw blade, working at one of the pipes like a logger sectioning a felled trunk. The KE in Michelle’s hand pointed and gesticulated frantically, but she was too tense and fearful to grasp what the gestures meant. Then she heard shouts and voices behind her as the door above the stairs at the far end of the passage she had just come along was thrown open.
Michelle had a fraction of a second to make a choice. There were two directions she could take to a hatchway out. The one to the left, from the locker space, was closer but meant going back, toward whoever was approaching. She hurried the other way, between the main engines, scrambled up the steel ladder, and pulled herself through the stern hatch. Outside on the deck she froze, her head inches from the opening. A voice grew louder in the engine compartment below, calling back to somebody, but Michelle was unable to make out the words against the noise of the generator and auxiliary machinery.
Michelle eased back from the hatch opening and looked cautiously around. She had come up in the fishing cockpit, extending across the stern below the fantail extension of the after lounge, which sat above the engine room aft of the salon. Although she could hear voices and activity higher up and forward on the boat deck, the after superstructure hid her from view from all angles, unless somebody should come to the rail at the extreme end of the fantail, immediately above her.
Steps led up to the fantail, but that way was out of the question. The dock looked just a little too far away and too low to step across onto easily—and besides, seemed horribly exposed. Two gates through the stern rail of the fishing platform seemed to lead down even lower.
Voices sounded again from inside the hatch. “Hey, Cole, did you see that woman who was with the boss? She’s gone someplace.”
“Well, she ain’t in here.”
“How’s the starter? Can you rig it?”
“Nearly done.”
Michelle eased herself quietly across to one of the gates in the fishing cockpit rail. Below it, a short ladder led down to a swim platform that formed the stern, riding just a few feet above the water. And there, pulled up on the swim platform, was a small, outboard-driven, three-person inflatable. Her way off the yacht was right there. Well, it was about time, she thought to herself. By now, she deserved a break.
She checked quickly that no one was close, then turned and backed feet-first through the gate and down. The inflatable was tied by a line to a handrail. Michelle put her hands against the craft’s bow and gave it a test push. It moved more easily than she had expected. She slid it down off the platform into the water and threw after it one of several paddles from a rack. Then she turned, kneeling on the edge of the platform, and prepared to follow. Just as she was about to lower herself into the boat, a roar started up inside the yacht, and the hull shuddered. The diesels were running.
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