At the point where each of the six yard-arms joined the mast there was a servicing compartment. Apart from a maze of pipes and valves, the main feature of these compartments was a pair of massive vertical rollers, each ten and a half metres in length, on which the sails were rolled in along tracks like a giant roller blind.
The bottom compartment, whose lights I had just smashed, was the largest. It measured about two and three-quarter metres long and was about half that broad. A steel cat-walk extending from the main ladder enabled technicians to stand and work.
I hesitated for a moment on this cat-walk. Its open grille provided no protection against a volley from underneath. There was a metallic clinking from below. What was Grohman up to? He hadn't fired off the UZI's full forty rounds. There was another snap and clink, then — unmistakable — the clack of a magazine being rammed home.
I knew enough about the UZI to realize that the big forty-rounder was too heavy to climb with. He had substituted for it a smaller twenty-five rounder. That still didn't account for all the delay. Another series of clicks reached me. He was probably unhitching the skeleton butt, converting the weapon into a compact, manoeuvrable automatic pistol. He was taking his time — he was very sure of me, pinned without hope of escape inside an ever-narrowing field of fire.
I could see faint Antarctic night-light filtering in through the chinks through which the sails rolled and unrolled. Urgently I looked for some weapon.
From the heel of each roller projected what looked like an old-fashioned car crank. I'd seen these before — manual back-up cranks in case the power-driven mechanism failed by which the sails were furled. I wrenched it from its socket and peered down. Below was darkness. I could not see Grohman's position but I heard faint movements.
I dropped the heavy bar and leapt upward again. There was a thud and a savage oath. For an answer, a shot whanged and whined from side to side inside the mast. The initial impact of the slug was much too close for comfort. I deduced from this that Grohman could now raise the automatic to a deadlier elevation.
I hadn't gone more than a couple of metres when the thought crashed home on me — at the next yard-arm bay I would have to stand and fight! It was the last bay before the juncture of the top-mast and top-gallant where the ring charges were sited. How much was left of the ten minutes until Tideman fired them? I hurried upwards.
Grohman hadn't fired again. I suspected that he was holding back until he thought I was trapped at the crow's nest and the top.
If I were going to use the dagger, I would need elbow room, provided just above my head, in the cat-walk of the next bay.
I hauled myself on to the next set of steel gratings. Now my second enemy was the light coming through the gaps between the sail rollers. I blocked some of the light by standing back against it, but the upper section-still emitted a give-away glow. How to fool Grohman into believing that I was still climbing? Perhaps if I pitched another crank-handle — but I was afraid that if I moved he would see me against the light. While I stood still where I was, I was tolerably safe. The automatic clanked against the ladder.
God! He was close! I even thought I could hear his rapid breathing.
I felt round desperately. My hand touched something metallic that felt like a small dumb-bell. It must have a function in snugging home the sail into the roller. I tried to insinuate myself between the two sail rollers in the same way, as according to Grohman's lies, Captain Mortensen had died. Perhaps the 'dumb-bell' was the blunt instrument whose mark the London pathologist had detected.
I tossed the heavy metal thing carefully through the catwalk ladder opening. At the same moment I thrust myself, back first, between the two sail-covered rollers.
There was a cry, an oath, a scrabbling of feet and a jangle of gun against rung. From the sound of it, Grohman must have slipped and fallen a few rungs. I could plainly hear his rasping breath.
This time he did not waste ammunition. The silence that followed was more gut-tearing than noise. I could picture the man in the darkness, steadying up, getting a grip on his fury before elevating the UZI into a firing position. The gun would have to be held well above his head if he didn't want to blind or maim himself.
The volley came — a cut-off six-rounder. It crashed and screamed through the confined space. There were also noises high above. Some slugs must have travelled all the way up to the masthead. If I had been on the ladder, I'd have been ripped apart from backside to neck.
There were more flashes of flame from the muzzle — I could almost reach down and touch them!
I took the knife from between my teeth and got a firm grip of the haft. My moment would come as Grohman came into the bay at cat-walk level. There the UZI's handiness would be at its most limited.
The light was dim, elusive. The grating poised crisscross like a steel trap waiting for Grohman's head. Red-painted stop-cock valves glowed danger signals. Copper hydraulic tubes writhed like disembowelled viscera. I waited.
It wasn't Grohman's head that came first. I heard a grunt, then his right hand clutching the UZI swung up and over on to the cat-walk. He wasn't much more than a metre from my funk-hole. My reflexes were swifter than my thinking.
In a flash I was out. I stamped on the UZI, pinning the gun-hand to the gratings.
They'd been right in choosing Grohman to lead Group Condor. He was tough; he could take it.
That booted foot must have hurt like hell. He didn't make the mistake of releasing the weapon. Instead, he used my ankle to lever himself into a fighting position. His head and body seemed to explode out of the opening. Crank and bull-whanger had done more damage than I thought. Blood was pouring from a long gash across his head.
With his free hand he swept my other foot from under me. I crashed beside him on the gratings. He rolled sideways, with cat-like agility. I followed, with survival-suit agility. Now the gun was under him; equally, the knife was trapped under my own bulk.
I pawed at him with a right fist, but even a punch-drunk palooka could have dodged the blow. Grohman jack-knifed on to his hunkers..The UZI must have been heavier than I guessed, or else my first savage stamp must have damaged his wrist more than I — or he — thought. He hadn't the strength in his right hand alone to raise the barrel fully to aim. It wavered, wandered off-target. A target bigger than a house.'
The split second more he needed to get his left round to heft up the UZI to fire was too long. I threw the knife. It stuck out from his Adam's apple.
He just knelt there with the UZI raised to blast me, with that obscene brass haft projecting from his throat. Then he pitched forward through the ladder gap.
I heard the body hit the bottom of the mast and the single shot that went off. He must have hung on to the trigger, even in death. I crouched on the cat-walk, gulping air. I seemed to be swimming inside a suit of sweat. My muscles kicked from reaction. Time! The ring charges! Twenty-one metres, seventy feet to go!
I threw myself at the rungs. The anti-blast cap! I stopped, jerked cap and visor over my head and face. Securing the sealing zipper with my outsize fingers seemed to take a year. Up!
I was still scrambling feverishly, blindly, in darkness on the upper mast-head side of the top-gallant bay, heading for the crow's nest, when the charges blew.
My first thought from the concussion's hammer-blow was that I had slipped and fallen the entire length of the mast.
Pilots who eject to safety are heroes; circus human cannons have a soft ride compared to mine from Jetwind.
The cap and visor saved my ear-dreams from blast, my eyes from flash, and my lungs from compression. All I knew was that one moment I was battling upwards and the next I felt a vertebrae-ripping punch in the back. The detonation pinned me like a fly against the steel rungs. The detached mast cartwheeled high into the air.
The water was to be my cushion on splash-down; I will never believe it provides cosmonauts with a soft landing. The jar when the tube of light alloy hit the sea was certainly almost as bad as take-off. Bet
ween the two, there was a merciful time-warp of oblivion.
I became aware of water glinting inside the floating mast. A circle of light showed at the severed end. It was filling fast. I knew I had to get out — faster — before it sank.
I crept towards the opening on all fours through icy water which deepened at every pace. Then-I was out.
Chapter 29
There was no horizon. Everything was a neutral white. 1 panicked. I thought irrationally that I had been blinded by the mast charges.
Then I realized the reason for my white-out vision: ahead and above me towered a skyscraper of ice five hundred metres high.
I had been catapulted so near Trolltunga that I had to turn on my side to get a view of the top.
I trod water, got my bearings. The lighted fleet was to my right, Jetwind at my back. Ahead was the pinnace, perhaps a hundred metres away — an easy swim. The water was icier than a mortuary slab. Without the survival suit, I would have been gasping my last.
I started for the pinnace. I had gone only a few clumsy dog-paddle strokes towards my objective when a searchlight stabbed out from the Sposobny towards Jetwind. The bulk of the Berezina sprang into silhouette in front of the light. The searchlight, inhibited in range because of the fogginess, picked out a splash near Jetwind's bows — the anchor had gone!
Tideman was wasting no time. I almost ceased paddling, the sight of the sail-setting was so beautiful. An ethereal quintuple bank of white mounted up on Jetwind’s foremast, clean as a swan's breast against the blue-white night. Sail on four other masts followed — not on the ship's full number. Tideman wasn't risking the structure of Number Two after the ring charges blast.
Then — the fore-yards went aback: Tideman was emulating the manoeuvre I had used to spin Jetwind round in Port Stanley.
Like an angry hornets' nest coming alive, beam after beam leapt out from the fleet, spotlighting the lovely fabric of the sailer. They had heard the concussion of the ring charges — what now?
I propelled myself towards the pinnace. The whole anchorage was ablaze with hostile light. I felt sure someone would spot my give-away splashing.
My hand grabbed the pinnace's gunnel. I yanked my clumsy body aboard and my head came up. On the summit of Trolltunga a group of men were gesticulating and yelling, although I could not hear the sound. It wasn't at the searchlights; it was at me.
How long would the fastest of them take to race down the cliff? Would he have a gun?
The thought goaded me. I crawled on all fours to a locker in the bows. I fumbled at the latch — I was about as nimble as a whale stranded on a reef. I finally managed to open it.
There it was! There was no mistaking the characteristic box-explosives!
Time fuses were already mounted in the heads of the charges. These were about the size of half a brick. Each fuse setting had a pointer, a gnarled rotatable screw, and numbers punched at intervals. I read: FUMS. ASXX. 01. 02. 00 (03). 10’9. What the devil did it mean?
I dragged out the box. The Trolltunga men were slipping and sliding down the cliff like cross-country runners.
I took a blind guess as to how to set the fuses on six charges I set aside. On two of them I would set the firing pointer to the first digit; on the next two to the second, and on the final pair to the third. What if I blew myself up?
I set my teeth, turned the first pointer to 01. Nothing happened. I fused its twin charge. Rapidly I followed with the other four. Now!
I yanked the starting-cord of the engine. It was an inboard type. I prayed that it wasn't too cold. It fired first time.
I unmoored the pinnace and motored clear of the cliff at low throttle.
Jetwind had almost completed her turn and her bows now pointed slightly at an angle to the fleet. That was our escape direction — northeast!
I manoeuvred the pinnace to aim at a gap between the Berezina and Sposobny. I hauled the explosives box well into the open to ensure maximum flash effect. I stopped in my tracks.
A boat was being lowered from the enclosed stern section of the Berezina. I caught the reflection of gun barrels as a party of men jumped from the deck overhang into the boat.
Would the cutting-out party reach Jetwind before my fire-craft slipped in among the fleet?
I jammed the pinnace's throttle wide and threw myself into the sea. I paddled frantically for Jetwind. I willed Tideman to break out without waiting for me — he could not have failed to see the boarding-party. As if in response, Jetwind's after yards also were backed in order to mark time waiting for me.
I thrashed and flailed onwards. Then I was against Jetwind’s side and a rope was in the water beside me. I snatched it up, snicked the loop under my arms. On the rail above, Jim Yell was grinning and gesturing. Once he was certain I was secure, he raised an arm to the bridge. That was the signal Tideman had been waiting for.
Even before Yell had dragged me inboard and freed me of my suit I could feel the sternway come off the ship and the beginning of headway take its place. 'You were great, sir!' Yell burst out. 'We'll lick 'em yet!'
I ran to the rail. Without the suit, I felt as light as a disembodied ghost. 'Where's their boat?'
It was there, all right. But it was not coming at Jetwind. It was heading towards the pinnace!
I stared in disbelief and anguish. I was brought to earth by a muffled tat-tat from Jetwind’s stern.
Yell spun on his heel. 'The gang is still fighting it out aft — I've got to help.'
I sprinted up a bridge ladder. I saw Kay first. For the eternity of one second our eyes locked. Neither of us said anything. There was no need.
Tideman stood at the control consoles. The bloodied mess that had been the bridge guard lay in one corner.
'Course as ordered, Peter? Same route?' Tideman asked without any show of agitation. 'Aye. Get the sails on the damaged mast also.' 'Think it will take it?' 'We need all the speed we can get. You've seen the boat party?' 'I have.'
'They've sheered away from the pinnace! They're coming this way!' exclaimed Kay.
I guessed what had happened — when the boarding party had got close enough and seen the pinnace unmanned, they had decided on Jetwind as their primary target. They knew — as we knew — that with all the fuel about they dared not risk a long shot. 'Oh, Jesus!'
I was accustomed to Tideman never raising his voice under almost any provocation: his breathed imprecation was as shattering as a close-up burst of automatic fire.
'Look!' he exclaimed. 'Look at the sub!' The blue.hull with its blue-mauve sail was swinging at its mooring near the destroyer. Its snout was turning deliberately, menacingly, slowly pointing towards Jetwind. 'She's going to fire!' 'She can't risk it…'
'Compressed air has no flash,' Tideman replied. 'Torpedoes are fired by compressed air.'
It took Jetwind twenty to thirty seconds to set sail. The damaged Number Two mast sails were in the process of slotting home; the other backed yards were swinging into position to pick up the wind on Jetwind’s starboard quarter. As yet the ship was barely under way. With half one mast missing, perhaps we accounted for the maximum scheduled time of thirty seconds. They were not thirty seconds; they were thirty years.
Jetwind seemed to hang. The sub's nose swung at her, round, round. There was a faint quiver through the hull as the wind gripped the aerofoils. Was Jetwind moving — at all? 'There!' Tideman pointed.
There was a white burst at the sub's bows. She was chancing a shot in a surfaced position. Perhaps the torpedo-men were over-eager, perhaps the skipper had miscalculated the running depth in Molot's shallow waters.
As it was, the silver-white tube leapt into the air. Then it plummeted back again in a flurry.
Tideman said unemotionally, 'Shooting is tricky when they run shallow like that.'
Half my mind noted one fact- Jetwind was moving! The other half seemed paralysed, fixated on the torpedo's progress. 'Give her two points of starboard helm!'
The long gleaming menace leaped clear of the water aga
in. It shimmied, nose-dived. That leap gave away its target course. It would, I saw, intercept Jetwind a little onwards as she gathered speed. What a sub commander could not know was a windjammer's power to brake. 'Back the foremast! All aback!'
Tideman threw the toggle switches. Jetwind stopped as if held by a drag parachute.
The torpedo's trail streaked under Jetwind's bows. Now it headed straight for Trolltunga. It seemed to flash over the intervening distance I had laboured across in a matter of seconds. It detonated against the ice cliff.
It was not the concussion of a warhead filled with torpex TNT, cyclonite and aluminium powder which stunned and raped our sense of hearing. It was Trolltunga. Years of drifting, years of Antarctic weathering attrition, years of Southern Ocean corrosion, had shaken the interior architectural structure of the monster iceberg. Perhaps the final deep-down pummelling on the iron-bound tips of Molot seamount had also contributed to its inner break-up. Perhaps that very disintegration had been the reason why the Red scientists had been eager to probe its secrets.
Whatever it was, the torpedo completed the process. It was its coup de grace.
The warhead's explosion was a puny thing compared to what followed.
Trolltunga split, rolled, buckled, fell apart, in a thousand fragments, each tearing at the other like cannibal killer whales. There was a stupendous broadside of sound as the iceberg writhed in its death-agony — heaving, twisting, convulsing, ice platforms the size of islands clumping and inverting as if activated by vast unknown sources of energy. Only the last few kilometres of iceberg were visible to us — it was anyone's guess what was happening to the main body out of sight in the fog. I tore my eyes from the sight — the sub!
The world might be falling apart, but that Red skipper knew his job. His target was Jetwind, and he meant to get her. The submarine's blue-mauve bows steadied on target. This time he did not mean to miss.
'Brace those yards — quick!' As I shouted the order I wondered if the sound of my voice was audible to Tideman only a metre or two away.
A Ravel of Waters Page 22
