The Shipkiller
Page 20
“When LEVIATHAN next sails this coast,” replied Ogilvy, “Hardin will be in custody. Every port from Las Palmas to the Gulf of Guinea has been alerted, but I imagine they’ll nab him in Lagos. The Nigerian woman will take him there. You see, your Africans are a tribal lot. They go home when they’re afraid. Coffee, gentlemen?”
“You’re killing yourself,” said Ajaratu.
Hardin’s cracked lips tightened. He looked around with heavy eyes. The tropic sea lay limp and white beneath a sun so diffused by humid air that it seemed to fill the sky. Thick damp heat shrouded the boat and blurred the horizons. They hovered close and so it seemed he would sail forever on a small but endless pond.
“Let me take her for a few hours,” said Ajaratu. “Get some sleep.”
Hardin shook his head. The squint lines which arrowed toward his eyes had grown deeper as he drove the Swan south. He said, “The wind’s coming around. I want to use it. You sleep. Relieve me later.”
She went below reluctantly and when she was gone he swallowed a handful of vitamins and a heavy dose of amphetamine—his third in three days. By the time the wind had shifted, as he had expected, toward the northeast, the drug was singing in his brain. He hadn’t used speed since he had interned, but he had remembered to concentrate on his purpose before he swallowed it. If he hadn’t, he might have spent the next twelve hours gaping through thick clouds at an imaginary star.
With the wind almost dead astern, he rigged a whisker pole and boomed out a big jib—a reacher—opposite the genoa. Then he lowered the mainsail, lashed the boom, and returned to the helm. The Swan ran powerfully behind the pull of the double headsails. It was a classic self-steering rig—the kind you could leave untended for days in the tradewinds—but he was fighting for speed, and for speed he had to tend the wheel and the sheets and steer a perfect course.
Fifteen minutes later the wind dropped somewhat and he went forward and slacked the jib halyards to belly the sails so they would catch the lighter wind. In half an hour he was back on the foredeck, tightening the halyards, because the wind had risen. It held steady through the sunset, and he dozed, despite the drug, until a terrible banging started at the bow.
It was dark. There were no stars. He raced to the mast and found that the reacher had dropped the whisker pole and spilled its wind. He repositioned the pole, returned to the cockpit, and cranked the sheet. The sail bellied, then collapsed again. His eyes had adjusted to the dark and he saw that seas hitting aft on the port side had slued the Swan upwind. He put her back on course and adjusted the self-steering to compensate for the wave action.
The Swan sailed well for half an hour. Then the wind swung abruptly due east. He doused the reacher, stowed the pole and the sail, unlashed the boom, and raised the main. The east wind spawned new seas which set up a fierce cross chop with the swells from the previous wind, and the Swan began shipping spray. Hardin shrugged into his foul-weather jacket and dozed at the helm, his two-week beard dripping water.
He awakened with a start. The Swan had slowed. He looked at his watch. Four. It was pitch-black and the wind had shifted back to the northeast. He sheeted out the main and the genoa. Every bone ached for sleep, but he knew he would do better with the reacher. Cursing his decision to buy a sloop instead of a ketch or a yawl, he forced himself to boom out the big headsail and lower the main. Only when he sank exhausted at the helm, and saw the speed indicator reading eight and a half knots, did he admit that the advantages of numerous sail options on a two-masted boat were exaggerated. They might make you think you were doing more for speed, but the Swan was going faster than any ketch he had ever seen.
He woke again before dawn. Heavy seas were slamming the sloop broadside, knocking her off the wind. He doused the reacher, raised the main, and set a new course. Southeast, into the seas. The next time he awakened, the sun was warming the back of his head. The seas had subsided, so he put her back on a southerly course. He looked blearily at the empty ocean and decided it had been a pretty good night.
The sky promised another blazing tropical day. One of the last they would see.
They had crossed the equator three days ago and the fifth parallel of latitude yesterday. Ascension Island was six hundred miles to the west, the coast of Africa—the mouth of the Congo River—a thousand miles east. Ahead lay the South Atlantic Ocean, and astern was LEVIATHAN, steaming toward the Cape of Good Hope at more than twice his speed, regardless of wind, current, and storm.
Ajaratu came on deck. “You were supposed to wake me,” she said accusingly. “I slept all night.” She took his face in her hands as if to kiss him, but she examined it and said, “You’ve taken quite enough pills for several days. Your eyes look like marbles.”
Hardin showed her the course. Then he went below and collapsed on his bunk, too tired to wash the salt from his face.
Something shook the mast and Ajaratu’s scream tore him from his sleep. He stumbled up the companionway. The boat was sluing upwind. A gusty force 5 had kicked up whitecaps. The genoa had slipped its sheet and tangled in the shrouds and was slamming its stainless steel clew against the mast, banging from side to side and threatening to rip the main. Ajaratu was inching forward atop the coach roof, reaching for the lethally flying clew.
“Don’t!” he yelled, flinging himself forward and pinning her arm an instant before she could touch the flailing sail. He pulled her away, and waited until the Swan had turned more to the wind before grabbing the heavy clew. A gust slammed the genoa and it almost dragged him off the coach roof. Ajaratu lowered the halyard and together they secured the blowing sail.
He showed her where the steel clew ring had snapped. She marveled that such a thick piece of metal could break. Hardin replied that there wasn’t a piece of gear aboard that wouldn’t, pushed long and hard enough. They raised another genoa and he spent an hour sewing a new clew ring to the damaged sail. Then he went back to sleep.
At noon the heat drove him out of the cabin. Groggily, he came on deck, dangled a small bucket over the side, and poured warm seawater on his head. He checked the way Ajaratu had trimmed the sails. Then he shot the sun and fixed his position.
“Where are we?”
“Two thousand two hundred and three miles northwest of Capetown. We might make it.”
She started to speak, hesitated. Then she said, “I was about to say, ‘God willing,’ but that’s a bit much considering the circumstances. Isn’t it?”
“That depends whose side He’s on.” He stretched out in a sliver of shade cast by the billowing mainsail. Hot sun grazed him on either side, but Ajaratu steered so steadily that the shade patch barely moved. Her eyes flicked from the sails to the compass to his face.
“You’re tempting fate talking that way.”
Hardin propped himself up on one elbow. “We’ve sailed over four and a half thousand miles nonstop—two thousand miles in the last eleven days—we’re alive and the boat still floats. We’ve already tempted fate.”
“Go to sleep.”
The mainsail was luffing slightly. He worried that it had stretched from hard use. Ajaratu trimmed it before he could speak.
“Sleep.”
Hardin slept.
“Monrovia?” howled the helicopter pilot. He cocked his head at Ogilvy like a bird hearing the hawk’s rush. “What the hell am I gonna do in Monrovia?”
“Frankly, young man, I don’t care if you sell your helicopter for a handful of trinkets and go native. LEVIATHAN has no need of you.”
“I don’t even know where Monrovia is,” the pilot protested.
“Number Two will give you your course and the ADF frequencies.”
“But Captain Bruce—”
“Is not master of this ship. Begone, sir.”
Ogilvy stood on the wing and watched the bosun escort the pilot to his aircraft. The machine buzzed away until it was an empty space in the hazy eastern horizon.
“Number Two.”
“Sir?”
“What’s his ETA?”
>
“Fifteen hundred.”
Ogilvy looked at his watch. Two hours. Another hour to tell the Liberian office he’d been sacked. “I’ll be in my cabin when the Company calls.”
The second officer thought he saw a chance to ingratiate himself with the captain. He said, with a collusive grin, “Shall I have the bosun dismantle the shortwave aerial, sir?”
“Whatever for?”
The second’s grin faded. “The, uh, fittings are, should be inspected, sir. Maintenance . . .”
Ogilvy regarded the young officer with a chilly expression. “When you attain your own command, Number Two, you will learn why a ship’s master answers to none but God.”
The second swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
Ogilvy stared, his face like stone. Suddenly he broke into an unusual, warm smile. “You’ll also find, Number Two, that under such conditions you will rarely dodge a question.”
The call came while Ogilvy was dressing for dinner. As LEVIATHAN was an hour behind Greenwich time, James Bruce must have been called back to the London office from his house in Surrey. Ogilvy stared out the window at the soft tropic sea while he spoke. His steward waited with his uniform shirt, his eyes averted from the captain’s pale, white torso.
“Yes, Captain Bruce.”
“Cedric. The Monrovia office reports that your helicopter pilot landed there this afternoon.”
“Thank you, Captain Bruce. I’ll note such in the log.”
“Will you stop calling me Captain Bruce, Cedric?”
Ogilvy’s smug voice hardened. “I’m done with the helicopter. I steered around Hardin. He’s in my wake.”
“You can’t you know that.”
“We’re at sea, Bruce. I know it.”
“They’re mad as hell here, Cedric. You’ve gone too far this time.”
“It was damned foolishness carrying that helicopter. It was a menace to my ship every time it flew.”
“LEVIATHAN’s as stable as an airfield,” snapped Bruce.
“Cold comfort for the helicopter in a force eight.”
“The winds aren’t too strong for the helicopter that brings your fresh meat from Capetown.”
“That’s a twin-rotor Sikorsky built for the job and piloted by two chaps who know their business. There’s no comparison with that motorized mosquito you tried to burden me with. The freight helicopter is once on and once off, and my crew deserves its mail and decent food.”
“The Company wants you to take it back.”
Ogilvy’s voice turned harder still. “If that aircraft lands on LEVIATHAN, I will lash it down and put the pilot in irons.”
“Cedric.”
“Do you believe me?”
After a short pause, Bruce said, “Yes, Cedric, I believe you, but I don’t know if it will wash with the directors.”
“Tell the directors that I located the source of the fuel contamination that nearly caused LEVIATHAN to drift aground in the Solent. Tell them I repaired it. Tell them my maintenance checks unearthed a second frozen mooring winch. Tell them I repaired it. Tell them I’ve patched three dozen steam leaks in the engine room. Then tell them that the helicopter is useless in heavy weather. And if those boardroom commodores ask why I expect heavy weather, you might remind them that LEVIATHAN is bound for the Cape of Good Hope and July doesn’t mean summer down there.”
Hardin dreamed he was sledding. It was cold. The sled skidded over rough snow, the runners hissing, the wooden frame creaking. Birds circled above his path and shrieked for a conclusion he couldn’t predict. The sled leaped a hillock and careened down a steep slope. He hurtled toward a black wall at the foot of the slope, unable to stop the sled. He turned. The wall turned with him, surrounded him. It was everywhere. He yelled his fear.
“Peter!”
Ajaratu. He was on the boat. Oddly, there was a blanket over him. He opened his eyes. The sky was gone. Ajaratu sat at the helm, one hand on the wheel, the other on his shoulder. She was wearing foul-weather gear. Hardin ran his hand through his hair. It was soaked. He sat up and stared. The top of Swan’s mast was lost in thick fog.
“Jesus. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You couldn’t do anything.”
“How long did I sleep?” He rubbed his eyes.
“Four hours,” she answered quietly, staring into the fog. “It’s happened so fast, Peter. As if it had been lowered onto us. Or leaped out of the water.”
“We’ve reached the South Atlantic,” said Hardin.
“It’s got suddenly cold. And then the fog.” She sounded frightened.
“It’ll lift.” He glanced at the compass. They were on course, close-hauled into a wet southeast breeze. The surface of the sea was calm, but every few moments a swell from the southwest rolled the Swan sharply, as if something in the water had seized the keel and given the boat an experimental shake.
The sea was quiet, but there were sounds of life even though they were hundreds of miles from the nearest island. They heard the lonely cry of a single bird somewhere in the fog and surface life close to the boat—a mammalian snorting. Hardin cocked his ears toward the wet, fleshy, bubbling noise and scanned the thick fog for the ominous mass of a surfacing whale.
“It’s so strange,” whispered Ajaratu.
Hardin shivered.
“Winter?” she asked.
“Soon,” he replied, softly, as awed as she was by the eerie silence and the clinging mist.
He went forward and rigged a staysail. The boat responded with another quarter knot as it edged into an invisible sea.
The South Atlantic was a huge and empty ocean. After the fog lifted, they sailed for days in isolated frenzy, speeding between remote horizons—distant convergences of the blue sky and the darker sea unmarred by smoke or sail. In vivid contrast to the oppressive white haze of the tropics, the air was fresh and crisp and cooler, and the sky so clear that it seemed if they looked hard enough they might see through the color to the black space beyond.
The water was strangely unriled, calm, but not calm, because under its smooth surface the big swells continuously undulated from the southwest. Hardin watched them soberly. They were a record of the seas toward which he was steering and a promise of what he would find when he got there.
There were calms and there were gales, and the gales—forty-knot winds that raged for hours at a time—blew with increasing frequency. Since the winds were primarily from the direction they were heading, southeast, Hardin had to beat against them and that cost time. Rather than tacking toward the African coast where the winds would be lighter, he decided on a dogleg. Close-hauled, he bore west of Capetown, gambling that he would catch westerlies farther south.
He became obsessed with a fear that LEVIATHAN would beat him to the Cape of Good Hope, round the tip of Africa, and steam safely toward the Persian Gulf at twice his best speed. He drove the Swan as hard as he could, sailing on the edge, on a precarious line between the boat’s limits and disaster. His heaviest genoa—a sail too stiff for ordinary use—would take enormous punishment. In gales he flew the powerful jib long after instinct clamored to douse it; and when the Swan heeled at too steep an angle for efficiency and began spilling the wind, he reefed the main and let the big headsail keep pulling, despite the risk of a knockdown.
They were entering their sixth week at sea, and Ajaratu was becoming capable of handling the boat in any conditions. When exhaustion drove Hardin to his bunk, he replaced the genoa with a smaller jib and a staysail. If sail changes were necessary while he slept, Ajaratu could handle the two smaller sails by herself.
He came on deck one morning after a good sleep. It was blowing a strong gale. The sea was rolling and spray hissed from the crests. Ajaratu, her face etched with fatigue, looked apprehensively at the genoa he had dragged up the companionway.
“It’s getting worse,” she said.
“Get some sleep.”
“It’s blowing too hard for that sail, Peter.”
“I can handle her.”
He had just come back up to the cockpit and closed the main hatch when the gust struck the genoa. It knocked the Swan on its side before he could attach his lifeline.
Hardin fell out of the cockpit, over the coaming. Flailing out, he gripped the mainsheets, but before he could save himself he was into the cold water up to his waist. He heard Ajaratu’s frightened cry cut short. He saw her head in the froth beside the boat, then a wave folded over it and she was gone like Carolyn.
He struggled toward the helm, seized the wheel, and, turning around in the cockpit, searched for the sheets, which were underwater. The mast lay on the sea; the sails had filled with waves, but any second the weight of the keel would start to pull her up; and when she came, he had to release the sheets before the wind knocked her over again.
The mast started to rise. He found the jib sheet and yanked it free of the jam cleat. The sails whooshed out of the water and the Swan righted with a rush, rolling back and forth, and pitching violently as Hardin hauled on Ajaratu’s lifeline.
She broke surface, gasping. He pulled her into the cockpit, which was full of water. She took the wheel and he clipped on his lifeline and raced to the mast. The heavy genoa was flapping with the fierce wind. He lowered it as fast as he could, gathered the sail out of the sea, and hauled it back to the cockpit.
Ajaratu, still gasping and coughing, watched him with smoldering eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pouring the water out of the folds of the sail. “You were right.”
She steered downwind, filled the main, and put the boat back on course.