Free Bond Movies 03 - Licence to Kill by John Gardner Page B

examine something towards the stern.
    Bond prayed the man was working alone. As he bent really low above Bond, so the agent lashed out with his feet, to give an upward momentum, fist clenched and his arm rigid, breaching the water like a small missile.
    More by luck than judgement, he felt his knuckles crunch on to the side of the operator’s jaw, and saw him reel back against the wall of the dock, his head hitting the metal with a nasty thud.
    With as much agility as he could manage in a wetsuit and the heavy scuba pack, Bond pulled himself up on to the narrow metal strip which ran around the probe’s docking area. The man was wearing a boiler suit, and he now looked like a pile of dirty laundry, crumpled in a heap, head sagging forward and one arm outstretched towards Sentinel and the water in which it still floated, hanging on chains.
    The probe operator was alive but out for the count, the force of his head hitting the metal wall having done the real damage. Bond saw that the probe’s control mechanism was still switched on – a box, set in the bulkhead, with an array of dials and two levers, like computer joysticks, with which the speed and direction was remotely controlled. Above the box a monitor flickered, busy with ‘snow’, which meant all picture signals from the probe had been cut off.
    Bond leaned against the bulkhead for a moment, looking around. On the far side, near a companionway ladder leading to the decks above, was a solid metal door, inset with thick glass. To one side, tubing connected to a high boxed-in control with a small, lightning-flash sticker and danger sign on it. Above the box was a big dial. A pressure gauge. A divers’ decompression chamber, Bond thought.
    He dragged the sagging body of the probe operator over to the chamber, pulled down on the heavy lever that controlled the door’s locking device, and pushed the body inside. Stacks of neat oblongs, shrink-wrapped in blue plastic, were piled inside the chamber, but he had no time to examine these now. Stripping off his scuba gear, retaining his knife in its sheath attached to a belt, Bond left the chamber and reactivated the door lock. It was time to see if Sanchez was on board.
    Barefoot, and wearing only the dark slacks and T-shirt that had been under his wetsuit, Bond slowly climbed the companionway ladder, leading to the main deck, abaft the main superstructure. The noises were normal for a ship at anchor during the dog watch: the light slapping of water as Wavekrest rode the slight sea; murmurs from for’ard, above, on the bridge. All the companionways would be open on such a warm night, he thought. Riding lights burned, green and red, with a few low deck lights so that crew could find their way around.
    Bond moved to the port side, where he had spotted the luxurious cabin door through the binoculars on Sharky’s fishing boat. In the far corner of his mind there was slight concern about Sharky, for the divers he had seen when disguised as the manta ray had been heading in the general direction of the fishing boat. He scrubbed the worry from his mind. Sharky was big enough to look after himself.
    From where he stood, in the darkness, Bond could make out the lines of a small lifeboat, swung in on its davits. The lifeboat would, he figured, be almost opposite the cabin from which he had seen Lupe – tall, slim, dark and with a figure that would tempt a saint – emerge during the previous morning. If Sanchez was aboard, that would be where Bond would find him.
    Almost silently he padded across the deck into the shadow, and relative safety of the lifeboat. It was as he crossed the strip of deck that he realised the cabin door he had seen through the binoculars stood slightly ajar, and lights shone brightly through the ports. Now there was even more. Voices. Milton Krest, slurred and aggressive, combined with Lupe Lamora’s angry, fiery accented English.
    ‘You’d better know you caused us a whole mess of trouble, girl.’