Mayles hung back. He knew the drill. He knew how to use these lifeboats, he knew the onboard launch sequence, and he would be damned if he was going to share one with a bunch of crazy passengers. Fighting between the mob and Liu’s group was intensifying, and the passengers seemed to have forgotten about him in their eagerness to get into the nearest boat. He could get away before they even knew what was happening.
Liu’s face was bleeding freely from half a dozen cuts. “Get word to the auxiliary bridge!” he cried to Dahlberg before the angry mob overwhelmed him.
Mayles walked past the violence, toward the far end. As he did so, he casually pressed a couple of buttons on the launch control panel. He’d get in a boat, launch it, and be safe and away. The GPIRB would go off and he’d be picked up by nightfall.
He reached the farthest boat, keyed open the control panel with a trembling hand, and began activating the settings. He watched the crowd at the other end, fighting with the banker and stamping on the now motionless forms of Liu and Crowley. A head turned toward him. Another.
“Hey! He’s going to launch one! The son of a bitch!”
“Wait!” He saw a group of passengers coming toward him.
Mayles jabbed in the rest of the settings and the stern boarding hatch swung open on hydraulic hinges. He rushed for it but the crowd was there before him. He was seized, dragged back.
“Scumbag!”
“There’s enough room for all of us!” he shrilled. “Let go, you morons! One at a time!”
“You last!” An old, wiry geezer with superhuman strength belted him aside and disappeared into the boat, followed by a surging, screaming, bloody mob. Mayles tried to follow but was seized and dragged back.
“Bastard!”
He slipped on the wet deck, fell, and was kicked into the deck rail. Grasping it for support, he pulled himself to his feet. They were not going to keep him out. They were not going to take his boat. He grabbed a man crowding in front of him, slung him down, slipped again; the man rose and charged him, and they struggled in a tight embrace, staggering against the rail. Mayles braced himself with his foot, stepping on the rail to gain leverage, while the crowd surged and fought to get through the narrow hatch.
“You need me!” Mayles cried, struggling. “I know how to operate it!”
He pushed his assailant back and made another lunge for the hatch, but those inside the boat were now fighting to close the door.
“
I know how to operate it!
” he screamed, clawing over the backs of those trying to keep the door open.
And then it happened—with the spastic, abominable acceleration of a nightmare. To his horror he saw the wheel turn, sealing shut the hatch. He grabbed at the wheel, trying to turn it back; there was aclunk as the release hooks opened—and then the lifeboat shot down the ramp, jerking Mayles and half a dozen others forward. He tumbled down the greased metal rails with them, out of control, unable to stop, and—very abruptly—suddenly found himself in a free fall toward the roiling black ocean, somersaulting in slow motion, head over heels.
The last thing he saw before he struck the water was another ship, blowing out of the sea-mist dead ahead of the
Britannia
, coming at them on a collision course.
71
LESEUR STARED OUT THE FORWARD WINDOWS OF THE AUXILIARY bridge. As the wind had increased the rain had lessened, and now the fog was breaking up, allowing occasional views ahead across the storm-tossed seas. He stared so hard he wondered if he was seeing things.
But suddenly there it was: the
Grenfell
, emerging from a pocket of mist, bulbous bows pounding the seas. It was coming straight at them.
As the
Grenfell
appeared, there was a collective intake of breath from the aux bridge.
“
Eight hundred yards.
”
The Grenfell made her move. A sudden boiling of white water along her starboard aft hull marked the reversal of the starboard screw; simultaneously, a jet of white water near the port bow signaled the engagement of the bow thrusters. The red snout of theGrenfell began to swing to starboard as the two ships closed in on each other, the giantBritannia moving much faster than the Canadian vessel.
“Brace yourselves!” LeSeur cried, grabbing the edge of the navigational table.
The maneuver of the Grenfell was almost immediately answered by a roar deep in the belly of the Britannia . Mason had taken the ship off autopilot and was reacting—alarmingly fast. The ship began to vibrate with the rumble of an earthquake, and the deck began to tilt.
“She’s retracting the stabilizers!” LeSeur cried, staring at the control board in disbelief. “And—Jesus—she’s rotated the aft pods ninety degrees to starboard!”
“She can’t do that!” the chief engineer yelled. “She’ll rip the pods right off the hull!”
LeSeur scanned the engine readouts, desperate to understand what Mason was trying to do. “She’s turning theBritannia broadside . . . deliberately . . . so theGrenfell will T-bone us,” he said. A horrifying, vivid split-second image formed in his mind: theBritannia coming about, offering her vulnerable midsection to the ice-hardenedGrenfell . But it wouldn’t be a straight T-bone; theBritannia would not have time to come around that far. It would be even worse than that. TheGrenfell would strike her at a forty-five-degree angle, cutting diagonally through the main block of staterooms and public spaces. It would be a massacre, a slaughter, a butchery.
It was instantly clear to him that Mason had thought through this countermove with great care. It would be as effective as crashing the ship into the Carrion Rocks. Opportunist that she was, the staff captain had seized her chance when she saw it.
“
Grenfell!
” LeSeur cried, breaking radio silence, “back your second screw! Reverse the bow thrusters! She’s turning into you!”
“Roger that,” came the extraordinarily calm voice of the captain.
The
Grenfell
responded immediately, water churning up all around its hull. The ship seemed to hesitate as its bows slowed their ponderous swing and her forward motion decreased.
Underneath them, the screaming, grinding shudder grew as Mason goosed the rotating aft screws to full, 43,000 kilowatts of power deployed at a ninety-degree angle to the ship’s forward motion. An insane maneuver. Without the stabilizers, and aided by a beam sea, theBritannia yawed as it heeled over even farther: five degrees, ten degrees, fifteen degrees from the vertical, far beyond anything envisioned by her engineers in their worst nightmares. The navigational instruments, coffee mugs, and other loose objects on the aux bridge went sliding and crashing to the floor, the men gripping whatever they could get their hands on to keep from following.
“The crazy bitch is putting the deck underwater!” Halsey cried, his feet slipping out from under him.
The vibration increased to a roar as the port side of the liner pressed down into the ocean, the lower main deck pushing below the waterline. The seas mounted, battering the superstructure, rising to the lowest port staterooms and balconies. Faintly, LeSeur could hear sounds of popping glass, the rumble of water rushing into the passenger decks, the dull noises of things crashing and tumbling about. He could only imagine the terror and chaos among the passengers as they and the contents of their staterooms and everything else on the ship tumbled to port.
The entire bridge shook with the violent strain on the engines, the windows rattling, the very frame of the ship groaning in protest. Beyond the forecastle theGrenfell loomed, rapidly approaching; she continued yawing heavily to port, but LeSeur could see that it was too late. TheBritannia , with its astonishing maneuverability, had turned quartering to her,and the patrol ship was going to strike them amidships—2,500 tons meeting 165,000 tons at a combined speed of forty-five miles per hour. She would cut theBritannia diagonally like a pike through a marlin.
; He began to pray.
72
EMILY DAHLBERG PAUSED IN THE CORRIDOR LEADING FROM THE port lifeboat deck, catching her breath. Behind her, she could hear the cries and screams of the mob—for a mob it was, and of the most primitive, homicidal kind—mingling with the roar of wind and water through the open hatches. Many other people had had the idea to head for the lifeboat stations, and a steady stream of passengers raced past her in a panic, heedless of her presence.
Dahlberg had seen enough to know that any attempt to use the lifeboats at this speed was sheer suicide. She’d seen it for herself. Now she had been tasked with getting this critical information to the auxiliary bridge. Gavin Bruce and Niles Welch had sacrificed their lives—along with another boat full of passengers—in getting that information, and she was determined to convey it.
She began moving again, trying to orient herself, when a burly man came barreling along the corridor, red-faced and goggle-eyed, crying out, “To the lifeboats!” She tried to dodge but wasn’t fast enough; he clipped her and sent her sprawling to the carpet. By the time she had risen to her feet again, he had vanished from sight.
She leaned against the wall, recovering her breath, keeping back from the stream of panicked people heading for the lifeboat deck. It shocked her how people were prone to the most grotesque displays of selfishness—even, or perhaps especially, the privileged. She hadn’t seen the crew and staff carrying on, shrieking and yelping and running around. She couldn’t help but think of the contrast with the dignified and self-restrained end of the passengers on theTitanic . The world had certainly changed.
When she felt herself again, she continued down the corridor, keeping close to the wall. The auxiliary bridge was at the forward end of the ship, directly below the main bridge—Deck 13 or 14, she recalled. She was currently on Half Deck 7—and that meant she had to ascend.
She continued along the corridor, past deserted cafés and shops, following the signs for the Grand Atrium—from which, she knew, she could better orient herself. Within minutes she had passed through an archway and reached a semicircular railing overlooking the vast hexagonal space. Even at this most extreme of times, she could not help but marvel at it: eight levels high, with glass elevators running up two sides, graced with innumerable little balconies and parapets draped with passionflowers. Grasping the railing, she looked out and down into the Atrium. The sight was shocking. The King’s Arms—the elegant restaurant five levels below—was almost unrecognizable. Cutlery, half-eaten food, trampled flowers, and broken glass were strewn across the floor. Overturned tables, spilling their contents, were scattered everywhere. It looked, she thought, as if a tornado had come through. People were everywhere—some running across the Atrium, others circling aimlessly, still others helping themselves to bottles of wine and liquor. Cries and shouts filtered up toward her.
The glass elevators were still operating, and she headed toward the nearest. But even as she did so, a loud rumble filled the vast space: a growl from deep within the bowels of the ship itself.
And then the Atrium began to tilt.
At first, she assumed it was her imagination. But no: looking up at the great chandelier, she saw it was slanting to one side. As the deep growl grew in intensity, the chandelier began to vibrate, tinkling and jangling crazily. Dahlberg quickly backed into the protection of an archway as pieces of cut crystal began raining down, bouncing like hail among the tables, chairs, and railings.
My God
, she thought.
What’s happening?
The heeling grew more acute and she gripped the brass railing fixed to a pillar at one side of the archway. With a scraping noise, chairs and tables in the restaurant below started sliding to one side, slowly at first, then gathering speed. Moments later, she heard the crashing and breaking of glass as the wall of bottles on the elegant bar at one side of the restaurant came down.
She clung to the railing, unable to take her eyes from the carnage occurring below. Now the great Steinway concert grand in the center of the Atrium began to move, sliding on its casters until it careened headlong into the huge statue of Britannia, which shivered into pieces and fell in a ruin of broken marble.
It was as if the ship were caught in the viselike grip of a giant and, despite the groaning, protesting engines, was being forced onto its side. Dahlberg gripped the railing as the slant grew worse and all manner of things—chairs, vases, tables, linens, glassware, cameras, shoes, purses—came tumbling past her from the balconies above to land in the Atrium with staccato thuds and crashes. Over the din of cries and yells she heard a particularly sharp scream from above; a moment later, a short, thickset woman with frizzy blonde hair and wearing a supervisor’s uniform came hurtling past from an upper balcony, still screaming, and careened into the piano below with a horrifying crash, the ivory keys scattering, the strings popping in a bizarre symphony of high- and low-pitched twangs.
With a squeal of metal, the elevator nearest to her shuddered in its vertical housing, and then—with a popping of glass that ripped through the entire Atrium—the entire tube shattered all at once and began to fall in slow motion like a glittering glass curtain. The wreck of the elevator—now nothing more than a steel frame—was jarred out of its channel and swung loose on its steel cable. She could see two people aboard, clinging to brass bars inside the elevator cage and screaming. As she watched in horror, the elevator frame swung crazily across the vast interior of the Atrium, spinning as it went, then slammed into a row of balconies on the far side. The people inside were thrown into the air, tumbling down, down, to at last be lost in the chaotic jumble of furniture and fixtures now jammed up against the lower wall of the King’s Arms.
Dahlberg gripped the brass rail with all her strength as the floor continued to dip. A new sound suddenly erupted from below, loud as a massive waterfall, accompanied by a rush of cold salty air so strong it nearly blew her off her perch; then white water poured into the lowest level of the Atrium and began boiling up, a vicious surge churning with pulverized furniture, fixtures, and broken bodies. At the same time the huge chandelier above her head finally ripped lose with crack of iron and plaster; the huge glittering mass fell at an angle, crashed into the parapet just opposite her, then cartwheeled down the side of the Atrium, throwing off great masses of glittering crystal like pulverized ice.
The cold, dead smell of the sea filled her nostrils. Slowly—as if from far away—she began to realize that, despite the awful destruction taking place all around her, the ship didn’t appear to be sinking; at least not yet. Instead, it was heeling over and shipping water. The engines continued to roar, the ship continued to surge forward.
Dahlberg collected her thoughts, tried to drown out the sounds of crashing glass, roaring water, and screaming. Much as she wanted to, there was nothing she could do to help anybody here. What she could do,had to do, was inform the bridge that the lifeboats were not an option as long as the ship was moving. She looked around and spied a nearby stairwell. Carefully gripping the rail, she half crawled, half clung her way along it until she reached the stairwell, canted at a crazy angle. Gripping the banister with all her might, she began hauling herself upward, one step at a time, heading for the auxiliary bridge.
73
SPECIAL AGENT PENDERGAST STARED AT THE BIZARRE THING OF MIST and darkness that enveloped him. Simultaneously, he felt the cabin shudder and lean; a deep and powerful vibration hammered up from below. Something violent was happening to the ship. He fell backward, tumbled over an armchair, and slammed into a bookcase. As the ship tilted farther he could hear a sonorous fugue of destruction and despair sounding throughout it: screams and cries, crashing, breaking, the deep thrum of water along the hull. Books came tumbling down around him as the cabin rolled to a desperate angle.
He struck it all from his mind, focusing on the thing—the most bizarre thing. Within the animate smoke, an apparition was faintly visible: rolling red eyes, fanged smile, clawed hands outstretched as it enveloped him, it
s expression that of need and intense hunger.
Several things flitted almost instantaneously through his mind. He knew what this was, and he knew who had created it, and why. He knew he now faced a fight, not only for his life, but for his very soul. He braced himself mentally as the thing caught him in a clammy embrace, overwhelming his senses with the cloying odor of a damp, rotting cellar, of slippery insects and sagging corpses.
Pendergast abruptly felt calm wash over him—the indifferent, liberating calm he had so recently discovered. He had been taken by surprise; he had little time to prepare; but he could tap into the extraordinary mental powers the Agozyen had set free within his mind and, in so doing, emerge victorious. This contest would be a test for those powers, a baptism by fire.
The thing was trying to enter his mind, probing with damp tendrils of will, of pure desire. He let his mind go blank. He would give it no purchase, nothing to fasten on to. With breathtaking speed, he brought his mind first to the state ofth’an shin gha , the Doorstep to Perfect Emptiness, and thenstong pa nyid —the State of Pure Emptiness. The thing would enter and find the room empty. No—there would not even be a room for it to enter.
Vaguely, he was aware of the entity searching the emptiness, drifting, malevolent, eyes like glowing cigarette tips. It thrashed about, seeking an anchor, like a cat sinking in a bottomless ocean. It was already defeated.
It ceased thrashing—and suddenly, like lightning, it wrapped its greasy tendrils around him, sinking fangs directly into Pendergast’s mind.
A jolt of terrible pain seared through him. He responded immediately with the opposite tack. He would fight fire with fire, create an impassible mental barrier. He’d wall himself off with pure intellectual noise, deafening and impenetrable.
The Wheel of Darkness p-8 Page 34
