chief engineer grunted. At his feet were three uneven-looking wooden
poles, roughly ten feet in length. Each was constructed of three
separate pieces of timber, crudely indented at either end with a hammer
and screwdriver and fitted together in a notched tongue-and-groove
fashion. Metal sheeting cannibalized from a test rack was hammered
around the joints for stability and finished off in a wrapped layer of
the handyman's favored duct tape.
As Mcintosh sifted through the remaining pieces of scrap wood, a sudden
rushing noise drifted up from the bowels of the ship. In a few
minutes, the sound doubled in intensity, resembling the rumbling waters
of a turbulent stream. Mcintosh stood slowly and addressed the captain
in a somber, matter-of-fact voice.
"Sir, they've opened the sea cocks. They mean to sink her."
Several unseen voices gasped in horror at Mcintosh's words and numerous
cries of "No!" echoed through the hold. Morgan ignored them all.
"Looks like we'll have to make do with three spars," the captain
replied calmly. "I need seven men on each pole. Let's get them up
now."
A rush of men moved forward and grabbed the spars as the first drops of
seawater began trickling into the hold through a half-dozen small bilge
drains mounted flush on the hold's deck. Within minutes, they were
sloshing around in ankle-deep water as the men positioned the ends of
the spars against the forward corner of the hatch, next to the entry
ladder. On the top step, a man stood with a two-foot-high triangular
block of timber, his job to insert it under the open hatch lid and keep
it wedged open.
"Ready ... lift!" Morgan shouted.
In unison, the three teams of men pressed the tips of their spars
against the hatch cover eight feet over their heads and pushed up with
all their might. To everyone's surprise, the hatch cover burst open
several feet, letting in a spray of muted light from the deck lights,
before its weight shifted and the heavy cover slammed back down.
The forlorn man at the top of the ladder froze an instant before trying
to insert the block wedge and was too late. The hatch crashed down
about his head as he tried to shove the wedge into the open gap, the
lip nearly taking off the fingers of his right hand. The shaken man
took a deep breath, then nodded at Morgan that he was okay to try
again.
"All right, let's give it another try," Morgan commanded as water now
swirled about his knees, the salt water stinging his open leg wound.
"One ... two ... three!"
A loud crack ripped through the hold as the top joint on one of the
spars broke clean in two, the loose section falling into the water with
a splash. Mcintosh waded over and examined the damaged end piece,
finding the grooved joint had broken completely off.
"Not good, sir," he reported. "Will take some time to repair." "Do
what you can," Morgan barked. "Let's continue with two spars ...
Heave!"
The remaining men shoved at their spars but it was a lost cause. There
was no way of getting enough manpower behind the two spars to apply
enough leverage. Additional men crowded in to try and help, but
there was simply not enough room to put more hands on the timbers and
push. Twice the men strained with the additional force and were able
to pry the hatch open a few inches, but it was not nearly enough to
block it so that a man could escape. The surging seawater was now up
to Morgan's waist and he could see in the faces of the crew that the
terror of drowning was about to incite panic in the hold.
"One more try, men," he urged on while somewhere in the back of his own
mind he morbidly calculated the estimated duration it took for a man to
drown.
With adrenaline pumping, the men jammed the two spars against the hatch
cover one last time with all their might. This time, they seemed to
find their strength and the lid began to creak up. But just as they
pressed their leverage, another crack echoed through the hold. A
second spar splintered at the joint and the hatch cover clanged back
shut. Somewhere in a darkened corner a voice blurted out, "That's it,
we're finished."
It was enough for a trembling cook standing near the gasoline drums to
lose his nerve.
"I can't swim, I can't swim!" he cried out as the water level inched
up his chest.
In a frightened panic, he grabbed onto the iron rungs that ran to the
vent hatch and scurried up into the shaft. Reaching the top rung in
darkness, his frenzied terror continued and he began pounding on the
small round hatch cover with his fists, crying to be let out. In a
state of complete shock, he suddenly felt the hatch give way under his
hands and drift open. With his heart pounding in disbelief, he
squirmed through the hatch and stood on the deck beside the moon pool
dumbfounded. It took nearly a full minute before his racing pulse
began to slow and he regained composure over his senses. Realizing
that he wasn't going to die just yet, he scrambled back into the hatch
and down the ladder a few steps, then shouted into the hold at the top
of his lungs.
"The hatch is open! The hatch is open! This way, everybody!"
Like an army of angry fire ants, the panicked crew swarmed to the
ladder, crushing one another to escape. By now, most of the crew were
treading water or clinging to the bulkheads, while a few drifted about
the hold clinging to the now-floating rubber Zodiac. The small ROV
also drifted freely, casting its bright lights in a surreal glow about
the hold.
"Ladies first," Morgan shouted, deferring to the traditional rule of
the sea.
Ryan, who stood near the ladder on his toes chin high to the water,
tried to restore order amid the chaos.
"You heard the captain. Ladies only. Back off, you," he growled at a
pair of male biologists clamoring to get up the ladder. As the female
crew members rapidly scurried up the vent and out the hatch, Ryan
succeeded in maintaining some semblance of order with the dozens
waiting their turn. Across the hold, Morgan could see that the water
level was rising too fast. There was no way everyone was going to get
out in time, assuming the ship didn't suddenly sink from under their
feet to begin with.
"Ryan, get up that ladder. See if you can get the main hatch off,"
Morgan ordered.
Ryan didn't take time to answer, following a ship's nurse up the ladder
as fast as his legs would carry him. Squirming through the hatch and
falling to the deck, he was shocked at what his eyes beheld. In the
early dawn light, he could see that the Sea Rover was sinking fast by the
stern. Seawater was already washing over the sternpost, while the
bow poked up toward the sky at better than a twenty-degree angle.
Scrambling to his feet, he saw a young assistant communications officer
helping others move to a higher level on the ship.
"Melissa, get to the radio room and issue a Mayday," he shouted,
running past her.
He
climbed a short stairwell to the rear hatch, his eye catching the
sparkle of a light in the far distance to the north, the cable ship
heading off over the horizon. Jumping up onto the hatch, he allowed
himself a second to let out a brief sigh of relief. The rising waters
off the stern had not yet lapped over the edge of the hatch nor had
inundated the aft crane. In their haste, the commandos had even left
the crane's hook-and-boom assembly attached to the hatch.
Sprinting to the crane, he hopped into the cab and fired up its diesel
engines, immediately shoving the hand controls to raise the boom. With
unbearable slowness, the boom gradually rose into the air, lifting the
massive hatch cover up with it. Ryan wasted no time rotating the boom
a few feet to starboard before jumping out of the cab, leaving the
hatch cover dangling in the air.
Rushing to the edge of the hold, he found more than thirty men bobbing
in the water fighting for their lives. The water level had already
risen to within a foot of the hatch. Another two minutes, he figured,
and the men would have all drowned. Reaching his arms in, he began
tugging and grabbing at the men one by one, yanking them up and out of
the hold. With those on deck helping, Ryan had every man out within a
matter of seconds. He ensured that he personally eased the final man
out of the water, Captain Morgan.
"Nice work, Tim," the captain winced as he wobbled to his feet.
"Sorry that I didn't personally check the vent hatch in the first
place, sir. We could have gotten everyone out sooner had we known it
was actually unlocked."
"But it wasn't. Don't you get it? It was Dirk who unlocked it. He
knocked on the door for us but we forgot to answer."
A look of enlightenment crossed Ryan's face. "Thank God for him
and Summer, the poor devils. But I'm afraid we're not out of the woods
yet, sir. She's going down fast."
"Spread the word to abandon ship. Let's get some lifeboats in the
water, pronto," Morgan replied, stumbling up the inclining deck toward
the bow. "I'll see about sending a distress."
As if on cue, Melissa the communications officer came scrambling across
the deck half out of breath.
"Sir," she gasped, "they've shot up the communications system ... and
satellite equipment. There's no way to send a Mayday."
"All right," Morgan replied without surprise. "We'll deploy our
emergency beacons and wait for someone to come looking for us. Report
to your lifeboat. Let's get everybody off this ship now."
While heading to assist with the lifeboats, Ryan now noticed that the
Starfish was missing. Slipping into the auxiliary lab, he found that
the recovered bomb canisters had been neatly removed, dissolving any
doubts about the reason for the assault.
After their ordeal in the storage hold, an unusual calmness fell over
the crew as they abandoned ship. Quietly and in composed order, the
men and women quickly made their way to their respective lifeboat
stations, glad to have a second chance at life despite the fact their
ship was sinking beneath their feet. The advancing water was
proceeding rapidly up the deck and two lifeboats closest to the stern
were already flooded before they could be released from their davits.
The assigned crew was quickly dispersed to other boats, which were
being launched to the water in a torrid frenzy.
Morgan hobbled up the sloping deck, which was now inclined at a
thirty-degree angle, till reaching the captain's boat, which sat loaded
and waiting. Morgan stopped and surveyed the ship's decks a last time,
like a gambler who had bet, and lost, the farm. The ship was creaking
and groaning as the weight of the salt water filling its lower
compartments tugged at the vessel's structural integrity. An aura of
sadness enveloped the research ship, as if it knew that it was too soon
for it to be cast to the waves.
At last confident that all the crew were safely away, Morgan threw a
sharp salute to his vessel, then stepped into the lifeboat, the last
man off. The boat was quickly winched down to the rolling sea and
motored away from the stricken ship. The sun had just crept over the
horizon and cast a golden beam on the research ship as it struggled for
its last moments. Morgan's lifeboat was just a few yards away from the
Sea Rover when her bow suddenly rose sharply toward the sky, then the
turquoise ship slipped gracefully into the sea stern first amid a
boiling hiss of bubbles.
As the ship slipped from view, its traumatized crew was overcome by a
solitary sensation: silence.
Something's rotten in Denmark." Summer ignored her brother's words and
held a small bowl of fish stew up to her nose. After uninterrupted
confinement for most of the day, the heavy door of their cabin had
burst open and a galley cook wearing a white apron entered with a tray
containing the stew, some rice, and a pot of tea. An armed guard
watched menacingly from the hallway as the food was set down and the
nervous cook quickly left without saying a word. Summer was famished
and eagerly surveyed the food as the door was bolted back shut from the
outside.
Taking a deep whiff of the fish stew, she wrinkled her nose.
"I think there's a few things rotten around here as well," she said.
Moving on to the rice, she drove a pair of chopsticks into the bowl and
began munching on the steamed grains. At last bringing relief to her
hunger pangs, she turned her attention back to Dirk, who sat gazing out
the porthole window.
"Aside from our crummy lower-berth cabin, what's bugging you now?" she
asked.
"Don't quote me on this, but I don't think we're headed to Japan."
"How can you tell?" Summer asked, scooping a mound of rice into ] her
mouth.
"I've been observing the sun and the shadows cast off the ship. We
should be heading north-northeast if we were traveling to Japan, but
it appears to me that our course heading is more to the northwest."
"That's a fine line to distinguish with the naked eye."
"Agreed. But I just call 'em as I see 'em. If we pull into Nagasaki,!
then just send me back to celestial navigation school."
"That would mean we're heading toward the Yellow Sea," she replied,
picturing an imaginary map of the region in her head. "Do you think
we're sailing to China?"
"Could be. There's certainly no love lost between China and Japan.
Perhaps the Japanese Red Army has a base of operations in China. That
might explain the lack of success the authorities have had in tracking
down any suspects in Japan."
"Possibly. But they'd have to be operating with state knowledge or
sponsorship, and I would hope they'd think twice before sinking an
American research vessel."
"True. Then again, there is another possibility."
Summer nodded, waiting for Dirk to continue.
"The two Japanese hoods who shot up my Chrysler. A forensics doctor at
the county morgue thought that the men looked Korean."
Summer finished eating the rice and set down the bo
wl and chopsticks.
"Korea?" she asked, her brow furrowing.
"Korea."
Ed Coyle's eyes had long since grown weary of scanning the flat gray
sea for something out of the ordinary. He nearly didn't trust his eyes
when something finally tugged at the corner of his vision. Focusing
toward the horizon, he just barely made out a small light in the sky
dragging a wispy white tail. It was exactly what the copilot of the
Lockheed HC-130 Hercules search-and-rescue plane had been hoping to
see.
"Charlie, I've got a flare at two o'clock," Coyle said into his
micro-phoned headset with the smooth voice of an ESPN sportscaster.
Instinctively, he pointed a gloved hand at a spot on the windshield
where he'd seen the white burst.
"I got her," Major Charles Wight replied with a slight drawl while
peering out the cockpit. A lanky Texan with a cucumber-cool demeanor,
the HC-130's pilot gently banked the aircraft toward the fading smoke
stream and slightiy reduced airspeed.
Six hours after departing Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, the
search-and-rescue pilots had started wondering whether their mission
was a wild-goose chase. Now they crept to the edge of their seats,
wondering what they would find in the waters beneath them. A grouping
of white dots slowly appeared on the distant horizon, gradually growing
larger as the aircraft approached.
"Looks like we've got us some lifeboats," Wight stated as the specks
grew into distinguishable shapes.
Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind Page 29
