The Shipkiller

by Justin Scott

  He turned the wheel, heeling her; his heart leaped as she leaned over and extracted her bow and lay on her side. Locking the rudder at a slight angle, he fumbled a clasp knife out of a zippered parka pocket, opened the six-inch blade, and slashed at the lines. Strand by strand he cut their tenacious hold on the boat, sawing with both hands until they parted.

  The Swan surged forward. Unbound, she raced upon the wall of the wave, climbing as it caught up with her. The speedometer needle spun to its limit and the boat leaned on her side and skimmed the water like a surfboard. She attained the peak. Water bellowed around her and spilled into the cockpit, but the next moment she was sliding safely down the backside of the comber.

  He was back in control. Unencumbered by the dragging lines, the Swan responded quickly to the helm as he piloted her over the rollers, letting them pass under at a slight angle. By allowing the sea to plot the route instead of resisting, he became, if not its master, a tolerated partner.

  But after half a day, when the sea and wind gave no sign of abating, despite the lightening sky, Hardin’s exhilaration began to fade. The seas, as large as ever, were regularly breaking over the Swan. As she was tight, and her small cockpit drained quickly, it posed no danger to the boat, but he was battered brutally.

  He was drenched to the skin, bitter cold, and his strength was going. He was having difficulty holding the wheel. At first he thought it was jamming, then he realized he didn’t have the power in his arms. He needed warmth, dry clothing, and food, or he would quite simply die of exposure.

  His mind began to wander. He let the boat out of his hand and it came to near disaster by taking the seas too much abeam. The second time he nodded out, the wheel clipped him on the jaw, waking him, and he realized he had to go below before he passed out.

  He rigged the smallest wind vane on the self-steering and set it to hold the stern at a twenty-degree angle to the seas. Then he waited, his hands hovering over the helm, to see if the self-steering would duplicate his method of protecting the boat from the rollers.

  The Swan surfed along several waves with little difficulty, and it looked as if Walter could handle it as long as the seas stayed as uniform as they were now. There was a risk that they would change suddenly, but in the shape he was in, he had no choice.

  He waited for a sea to break, and when it had he quickly opened the hatch, scrambled down the companionway, and slid it shut. Then he fell down the last couple of steps and sagged to the deck, luxuriating in the void. It was dim and chilly in the cabin, but there was no spray, no wind, and the noise of the sea was muffled. He closed his eyes.

  But he shouldn’t waste his chance. He forced himself not to sleep. Without standing, he pulled off his soaking clothes. The parka, the sweater, the sweat shirt. His pants, underwear, and socks. Still slumped against the companionway, he found a dry towel in the drawers beneath the chart table and rubbed his cold skin. He dried his hair and his face and only then did he stand.

  He put on dry pants and turtleneck sweater, socks, and slippers, and hung his least-wet foul-weather gear by the companionway in case he had to go up in a hurry. Ajaratu was still sleeping. The straps had held her well, and her splinted arm was in place. He straightened her blankets and worked his way across the heaving cabin to the galley, where he boiled water and filled a big mug with a triple dose of packaged soup, and left the stove on to heat the cabin.

  Bracing himself on the settee across from Ajaratu, he sipped the hot liquid and marveled at what was probably the most luxurious moment of his life. He was alive when he had expected to be dead. He was dry and he was warm and his belly was filling, all because a thin skin of fiberglass stood between him and the South Atlantic.

  Ajaratu stirred. Hardin mixed another mug of soup and brought it to her. He undid the straps, lifted her head and brought the mug to her lips. She drank several mouthfuls, then smiled at him.

  “How you doing?”

  “Much better. That was quite an injection. I still feel it.”

  “No pain?”

  Tentatively, she raised her splinted arm with the other hand, and winced. “Not too much.” Favoring it, she propped herself up on her good elbow, automatically drawing the blankets over her breasts. Then she took the mug of soup and drank deeply. Her eyes settled on a window and she froze with the mug to her teeth.

  A wildly breaking comber was filling the sky. The Swan leaned over and surfed. “What has happened?” she breathed.

  “We’re still alive.”

  “You look exhausted.” The Swan heeled again. She rolled against the outside bulkhead, instinctively shielding her broken arm. “Walter?” she asked doubtfully.

  “He’s doing a pretty good job.”

  “Come in with me,” she said. “You should sleep.”

  “Can you stay awake in case it gets worse?”

  “Yes. I’ve had plenty of sleep.” She raised the blanket and pressed against the bulkhead, making room for him. “Come in.”

  Hardin crawled in beside her and put his face on her shoulder. Made clumsy by her arm, she worked his sweater up to his shoulders and pressed her warm skin to his. Hardin suddenly wanted her very much and she didn’t seem the least surprised.

  The Swan clawed out of a deep trough up onto the crest of a roller and the loran readout screen flickered alive with a line-of-position number. Hardin located the LOP on the latticed loran chart and marked it. The sea passed under the boat and she plummeted beneath the range of the paired radio pulses before he could get a reading on a second LOP. The signal-loss indicator lighted and the screen blinked out.

  Hardin waited anxiously while the Swan crossed the trough. He had tried to fix his position by a sun shot at noon, but though it had glimmered through the cloud, the seas were too chaotic to establish the horizon. It had taken an hour of carefully applied stove heat to coax the dampness out of the loran.

  He watched the readout with weary eyes as the Swan started another climb. He’d slept for several hours, but a cold, wet hour on deck fitting the bosun’s chair and flying the storm jib had left him exhausted. The screen lighted.

  The same LOP appeared. Hardin tensed, silently begging the Swan to stay atop the crest until he received another signal. Just as she began her descent, the numbers changed. He turned to the chart and found his fix where the two lines of position intersected.

  Triumph welled in his chest.

  They crossed astride a thick black line he had penciled earlier. LEVIATHAN’s course. He had reached this empty dot on the ocean ahead of the tanker. With luck, he had time to prepare.

  “How’s your arm?”

  “I can steer,” said Ajaratu.

  “No heroics. Tell me ahead of time if you can’t handle her. Or don’t want to.”

  “Tape my arm.”

  She sat on the engine box and braced her legs against the boat’s rolling. Hardin helped her peel off her sweaters. The chill air brought goose bumps to her breasts.

  He had already fashioned a new splint from a thin sheet of fiberglass, and now he anchored her forearm protectively to her chest with surgical tape. When the limb was immobile, he helped her on with her sweaters, a foul-weather parka, and a heavy life jacket, and then, on sudden impulse, pulled a stainless-steel mixing bowl from the galley cupboard.

  “What is that for?”

  He wrapped a heavy towel around her head like a turban and placed the bowl over it. “In lieu of a crash helmet.”

  “I must look like an idiot.”

  A slack grin loosened his face. His heart was pounding wildly, “If a wave sends you flying like they did me, you’ve only got one hand to protect yourself.” He worked the parka hood over the bowl and tightened the drawstrings. “Beautiful.” He felt giddy.

  “You should wear one, too.”

  “I can’t,” he replied soberly, trying to focus on the things he had to do. “It would get in the way of the sights.”

  Her gaze slid toward the open bilge.

  Hardin shrugged into his own
parka. It was damp and cold. In the zippered pockets were his knife, penlight, flashlight, cable cutters, pliers, and a screwdriver. A block and tackle was draped from the companionway, the line carefully threaded through the pullies. A canvas sling hung from its lower hook.

  By its sound in the rigging, the wind was rising. He got the radar antenna from the aft cabin, tied a piece of line between his wrist and the mounting, and carried it up the companionway. Before he opened the hatch he reached down and cupped Ajaratu’s chin in his fingers. He was back in control. She held his gaze when he spoke.

  “You got me here and I thank you. I can do the rest alone.”

  “I want to help you.”

  “Let’s go.”

  He opened the hatch, took a faceful of cold spray getting out, started the engine to drive the generator, then dragged the antenna to the mast. Reeling about the deck, which leaped and bucked like a frightened horse, he climbed onto the boom, worked his legs into the bosun’s chair, and began hauling hand over hand on the tackle. Four feet of line spilled from the multiple-pulley system for each foot he hoisted himself. Ajaratu coiled it in the cockpit.

  The mast swayed violently, swinging him off the coach roof—starboard over the water, back to port. The seas plucked at his legs. The Swan buried her nose. His side-to-side arc stopped abruptly. The lines fetched up and slammed him into the mast; he twisted frantically to protect the antenna, which dangled from his wrist.

  The bow climbed out of the water, but before he swung aft, he hooked his arm between the mast and a halyard—the topping lift— and held it in the crook of his elbow. The wire steadied him like a track as he pulled himself higher. He rested at the spreaders, thirty feet above the boat, and watched the South Atlantic play sullen host to a winter storm.

  The sky was as gray as the water; the giant rolling combers still marched from the southwest, and the rising wind was beginning to repeat its earlier maneuver of flattening the seas between them. Hardin resumed hoisting himself with grim satisfaction. He would have a clear shot from the top of one of those rollers.

  When he was secure at the masthead, he swabbed out the fitting with an oily rag and inserted the antenna. Then he guyed the light chicken wire and aluminum through which the wind shrilled thinly, removed the watertight plugs from the electrical connectors, and joined the antenna to the circuitry that protruded from the mast. Ajaratu waved that the radar showed a signal, and Hardin quickly lowered himself to the deck. The radarscope was next to the racing instruments above the companionway.

  Ajaratu was excited. “Is that it?” She pointed at a white-green flower in the outermost circle. It was on top in the noon position, dead ahead.

  Hardin cupped his hands over the screen to block the gray daylight and looked closely. The radar showed a fuzzy picture in the first two circles. That was expected. The jury rig wasn’t designed for short-range resolution. Beyond those circles, which represented the closest ten miles, pinpricks of light appeared and faded.

  The bright-green flower began to wilt.

  “It’s only a big sea,” said Hardin. “See? It’s fading.”

  Ajaratu crowded close, gripping his waist to support herself. Hardin braced his arms over the closed hatch and cupped the screen so she could see. The Swan climbed a high roller and the outer circle blinked other distant waves, but nothing as steady as the echo signal from a steel ship.

  “Beyond our range,” said Hardin. “Watch the scope. I’m going to jink her.” He transferred Ajaratu’s safety line to a handrail, and snubbed it short to give her something to brace against.

  Then he took the Swan off self-steering and guided her back and forth among the seas, pointing her bow from east to north, performed with the rudder the sweep ordinarily done by a spinning radar reflector. Several times Ajaratu thought she saw something, but each time the target faded. Though she was less than ten feet away, she had to shout for him to hear above the roar of the water and the blaring wind.

  He gave it up after a while. LEVIATHAN wasn’t near enough yet. That the radar wasn’t working or that the ship had already passed he couldn’t allow himself to think. It must have slowed for the giant seas.

  The sky was darkening in the west. The wind began hinting a shift to the south. It was dancing one way, then the other, too capricious yet to affect the seas, but sufficient to play havoc with the storm jib and fox the steering gear. Hardin helped Ajaratu to the helm, secured her safety line, and put her on a northeast course. If the storm was intensifying, his only chance was to intercept LEVIATHAN as soon as he could.

  He propped the boom in its crotch, then rigged the block and tackle from it and lowered the canvas sling back through the hatch. Going below, he slid the hatch cover closed against the rope to keep out the blowing spray. Then he manhandled the wooden crate out of the bilge and dragged it across the sole on a blanket.

  The Swan heeled sharply, surfing on a comber. Hardin yanked his feet out of the way an instant before the crate crashed into a bulkhead. He removed the lower companionway steps, jammed the crate against the engine box, levered off the top, and worked the canvas sling under the weapon. Then he hauled on the tackle until the lines angled tightly between the boom and the weapon and forced the hatch cover to slide open. A roller rumbled under the boat and an errant prong surged into the cockpit and down the companionway. The cold water poured down Hardin’s chest.

  He heaved on the block and tackle. It was rough going until the weapon cleared the engine box. Then the Dragon hung perpendicular to the boom and rose freely. It gyrated with the boat’s motion, however, and gouged large splinters out of the aft teak bulkhead.

  Hardin scrambled onto the engine box and blocked it with his shoulders while he hoisted. His face was level with the Brookes and Gatehouse instrument panel. He glanced at the radar screen. Still nothing. The speed indicator beside it registered eight knots. The needle spun to eleven as the Swan lunged down a slope. They were rocketing too fast under the storm jib. The wind was rising and he knew he should take it down, but first the weapon.

  He heaved on the line. The long pull up the mast in the bosun’s chair had taken a lot out of him and his arms were numb. The Dragon swung away before he could stop it and it shifted in the sling, threatening to fall out. Gripping the tackle in one hand, he wedged his shoulder under the weapon. One hundred fifty pounds slammed into his collar bone. The pain was blinding. He straightened his legs and heaved with all his strength. The Dragon settled properly into the sling. Gasping with pain, he continued to haul the tackle.

  “It’s getting bad again,” yelled Ajaratu. Hardin said nothing and she watched with fathomless eyes as the black cylinder slowly emerged from the cabin.

  Hardin pulled until it had cleared the hatch. Then he closed the cover, lowered the weapon onto it to get some slack, and shifted the block and tackle to the end of the boom. Now when he raised the Dragon, it swung over the front of the cockpit. He knelt on the cross-bench behind the hatch cover and carefully lowered the weapon until it touched his shoulder.

  He removed the lens caps and peered through the binocular sights, his heart pounding as much with excitement as exertion. The crosshairs bisected the top of a Cape roller and, quite abruptly, the Swan was a very potent piece of machinery.

  He covered the lenses, tied off the tackle, and looped a line from either end of the four-foot cylinder to deck cleats so the weapon wouldn’t swing. Ajaratu’s eyes were on him. He turned and met her gaze, prepared for resistance. He saw none. Only resignation—then something else, excitement, he thought, but she looked away before he could be sure.

  The wind continued to flatten the waves between the rollers. He took it as an omen for success. Visibility was getting better—at least when the rollers carried him above the turmoil—and he thought that if the wind held at this force—just below a strong gale—and didn’t shift and rile a bad cross sea, and if LEVIATHAN came before dark, he had a decent chance.

  “A light!” cried Ajaratu, bracing the wheel with her l
eg and pointing at the radarscope.

  Hardin cupped his hands over the screen.

  Outer edge of the inside ring. Too close. Upper quadrant. Twelve o’clock. A bright-green light. A wave? A glitch? It faded. But when the bow rose it blossomed again. Hardin stared—his excitement mounting—gauging its intensity, willing it not to be a wave, gradually realizing that a wave couldn’t last so long, praying it wasn’t another ship, but knowing that they were fifty miles west of the shipping lanes to Capetown and that if it was a ship, it could only be LEVIATHAN.

  How did it get so close? Perhaps the storm was too much for the radar. The light was nudging the second ring. Ten miles—less than an hour away. He backed away from the screen and joined Ajaratu at the wheel.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  He took the wheel and used the bright light on the radarscope like a compass needle to sail toward it. It glowed more and more brightly as the sky darkened from north to west. He held it dead center, steering toward the tanker. The lessening distance between them was symbolized by the light dot’s progress toward the center of the scope.

  The wind began to howl in the rigging, building the rollers but still smoothing the seas between them. Hardin shifted course only to tuck the Swan’s stern safely over the tops of the rollers. Then he lined the light up again and sprinted through the broad trough ahead of the next looming sea.

  “Thunder,” said Ajaratu, cocking her head and peeling open her parka hood. She closed it quickly against the cold.

  Minutes later Hardin heard it too. A deep, single report like thunder dead ahead, but no lightning tightened the gloomy sky nor lanced into the worsening seas.

  Without warning, the wind swung around to the northwest. The Swan was blown back, staggered by the sudden change. The radar-scope went dark. Hardin shoved past Ajaratu to check the set. He ducked instinctively as a shadow passed overhead. It was the radar antenna. The wind had ripped it off the mast.

  A dark line closed on the bow, and seconds later driven sleet lashed the boat. Hardin groped his way back to the wheel and bowed his head with Ajaratu, huddling from the stinging missiles. The thunderlike noise sounded again and again, louder than before, borne on the shrieking wind, closer and closer like the din of retreat heard in the rear lines with ever more frightening clarity. The sleet thinned, turned to bitter-cold rain, stopped.