Snakehead

with rows of gauges and dials, TV screens, computers, and intricate switchboards. A single man sat in a high-backed chair, tapping at a keyboard. He looked half asleep. Certainly he wasn’t expecting trouble down here.
    Alex saw what he was looking for: a metal cabinet about fifteen yards high with thick pipes leading in and out and a warning sign.

    AIR SUPPLY
    DANGER: DO NOT CUT OFF

    He didn’t know what needed the air or what would happen if it didn’t get it, but the bright red letters were irresistible. He was going to find out.
    He reached into his pocket and took out the one-baht coin that Smithers had given him. Using it would mean he would only have the ten-baht coin left. With a bit of luck, he wouldn’t be needing it. Alex watched the man in the chair for a minute, then slipped into the control room and placed the coin against the pipe just where it entered the cabinet. The man didn’t look up. The coin clicked into place, activating the charge inside. Alex tiptoed out again.
    He found the chewing gum pack, slid the side open, and pressed the switch marked 1. The bang was very loud and, to his surprise and delight, highly destructive. The explosion not only tore open the pipe, it wrecked the electrical circuits inside the cabinet too. There was a series of brilliant sparks. Something like white steam gushed out into the control room. The man leapt up. Another alarm had gone off, and red lights were flashing all around him. Alex didn’t wait to see what would happen next. He was already on his way out.
    Down the stairs, past the engines, and back up again. This time he took the elevator, guessing that in an emergency, the crew would be more likely to use the stairs. He pressed the button for the sixth floor, and the elevator slid smoothly up.
    He knew where he was heading. He had seen the bridge when he was being loaded into the container at Jakarta and had noticed that it had its own deck, a sort of balcony with a railing and a view over the entire ship. This was going to be his way off the Liberian Star. For—once again—Yu’s guns might be pointing everywhere, but surely they wouldn’t be pointing here.
    The elevator reached the sixth floor and the doors slid open. To Alex’s dismay, he found himself facing a squat Chinese crewman who had been waiting to come down. The man was even more shocked than Alex and reacted clumsily, scrambling for the gun that was tucked into the waistband of his pants. That was a mistake. Alex didn’t give him time to draw it, lashing out with the point of his foot, aiming straight between the man’s legs. It wasn’t so much a karate strike, more an old-fashioned kick in the balls, but it did the trick. The Chinaman gurgled and collapsed, dropping the gun. Alex scooped it up and continued on his way.
    And now he was armed. Alarms were going off everywhere, and Alex wondered what damage he had done with the second coin. Good old Smithers! He was the one man in MI6 who had never let him down. The corridor led directly to the bridge. Alex passed through an archway, climbed three steps, and found himself in a narrow, curving room, surprisingly empty, with large windows looking over the decks, the containers, and, to one side, the port.
    There were two men on duty, sitting in what could have been dentist’s chairs in front of a bank of television screens. One was a second officer that Alex hadn’t seen before. The other was Captain De Wynter. He was on the telephone, talking in a voice that sounded strained and hoarse with disbelief.
    “It’s the reefers,” he was saying. “We’re going to have to shut them all down. The whole ship could go up in flames…”
    The reefers were refrigerated containers. There were three hundred of them on the Liberian Star, storing meat, vegetables, and chemicals that needed to be transported at low temperatures. The containers themselves needed constant cooling, and Alex had smashed the pipes that provided exactly that. At the very least, he was going to cause Major Yu tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of losses as the contents deteriorated. If the chemicals became unstable in the heat, he might even set fire to the whole ship.
    The other officer saw Alex first. He muttered something in Dutch, and De Wynter looked around, the phone still in his hand.
    Alex raised the gun. “Put it down,” he said.
    De Wynter went pale. He lowered the phone.
    What did he do now? Alex realized that he had made it this far without any real