The Shipkiller

by Justin Scott

  Bruce looked away, embarrassed for both men. Ogilvy’s transparent ploy was doomed to failure. Facts were facts and cutting Donner down wasn’t going to change the fact that the ship might be in danger. This was a company decision; Bruce would make it.

  “He got the sack for some damned reason,” Ogilvy crowed. “But as long as he cries wolf—or should I say ‘cries Hardin’—he’s back in a job. I can’t say I blame you, old chap, but I’m not about to jump LEVIATHAN through hoops to keep you employed.”

  Donner returned his cruel smile, but a vein pulsed in his temple.

  Ogilvy chuckled again, a heavy, gloating sound. “Not that I’m not grateful for services rendered, Mr. Donner. It was very helpful to know when Hardin was stalking LEVIATHAN.”

  James Bruce quickly regained the initiative. “Mr. Donner’s troubles are beside the point, Cedric. I am giving you a direct order. The company commands you to carry protection. Radio the helicopter immediately!”

  He wondered if he had shouted or whether it only sounded that way in his ears.

  Now a pulse was throbbing in Ogilvy’s temple. His face reddened. He picked up the wing phone. “Radio room.” His eyes sought Bruce’s. He thrust the phone at him.

  “If you insist, Captain Bruce, you had better ring up two helicopters . . . and have a pleasant voyage around the Cape, Captain Bruce.”

  He pushed the phone closer to Bruce. Bruce heard the radio officer picking up.

  “Now hold on, Cedric.”

  “Yes!” His voice cracked like a pistol shot.

  Bruce eyed the distant bows, his mouth working. Who but God, or Ogilvy, really knew what was going on up there?

  “All right, Cedric . . . you win.”

  Ogilvy hung up the phone. He buffed the braid on his shoulder, looked back at it, then turned expansively to Bruce.

  “Hardin came close, I’ll grant you that. As God is my witness, that rocket missed me by ten yards.”

  He led Bruce along the wing, closer to the sea that was frothing far below beside the rushing hull. Donner followed, his face a mask.

  “Over there you can still see the fresh paintwork,” said Ogilvy. He pointed where the smooth surface of the metal railing was marred by a seam between the old paint and the brighter new. Donner watched his large wrinkled fingers worry the paint seam as he spoke.

  “The concussion knocked me to the deck,” Ogilvy said, reciting what was, according to his officers, an oft-repeated story. “I fought the blaze with hand-held extinguishers until the bosun arrived with a fire gang. Singed my eyebrows. You can see they’re still a trifle short.” He paused, exactly as he must have a hundred times, and added with a solemnity they joked about beyond his earshot in the wardroom, “Someone was watching over the good men of LEVIATHAN.

  Ten yards, Donner thought, was how close Ogilvy had come to being totally wrong about Hardin. He said, “Firing from a rubber boat. Hardin was resourceful to say the least.”

  “Bloody lucky is more like it, Donner,” Ogilvy snapped back. “Bloody lucky.”

  “But rather determined, wouldn’t you say?”

  Ogilvy’s hand closed over the railing and covered the paint seam. He stared a long time and Donner wished he hadn’t spoken; taunting him wouldn’t help matters. The old man’s eyes boiled with rage. He had codified his story, ritualized the event, and settled on the facts. Hardin had been a fool. Hardin had been lucky. Hardin was dead.

  Donner looked at the weathered hand covering the paint seam as if to hide it. He wondered if Ogilvy repeated his story so often because he had been intimidated by events. Quickly he turned away before the captain could see him smile at an odd thought.

  Had Hardin exacted a posthumous revenge? Did Ogilvy tremble in his darkest moments with a fear that Hardin’s determined ghost might emerge from the sea one night with a blade in his teeth? Was that why he refused to consider this new information? Donner’s smile faded. Or was Ogilvy right? Was he clutching at straws, willing to believe anything to get back in the action?

  “Lucky!” Ogilvy spat. “I predicted his every move. It was fool’s luck that he penetrated the screen.” He fell silent and gazed with opaque eyes at the vast green deck. Donner and Bruce were left to wait upon his mood.

  Donner glanced amidships where the spare propeller was stowed on deck. Though it was three days since he had boarded from the Canaries, he was still awed by the size of LEVIATHAN. Along with its brothers that were churning the ship toward Arabia, that was the biggest propeller in the world. What would those blades leave of a man?

  He raised his binoculars and scanned the darkening horizon. When his gaze swept a sail, whose presence on the empty ocean had been obscured by the freighter behind it, his hands tightened only momentarily on the glasses. They’d had several false alarms in these warm waters.

  “A boat.”

  Ogilvy muttered an inaudible reply and continued to stare at his decks. The fingers of his right hand slid up his binocular strap. They left the strap to polish the insignia on his left shoulder and the way the captain turned his head to inspect the braid put Donner in mind of a fugitive eyeing pursuit.

  James Bruce was already studying the boat in his own glasses. “It’s not a Nautor Swan.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Donner, raising his again and gloomily fiddling the focus wheel.

  “Ketch-rigged multihull,” Bruce said slowly. “Trimaran.”

  Donner focused and saw two masts above a broad, flat hull. It was running before the land breeze, westward bound. When he had surmised Hardin’s intentions last summer he had read some small-craft voyagers’ diaries for a glimpse into the man’s character. The trimaran was probably setting out on a warm, pleasant trade-wind crossing to the Antilles. Perhaps through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific. Last summer he couldn’t imagine the lure of such simple, lazy isolation. Now, he was not so sure.

  “Can you see the crew?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” said Bruce.

  The trimaran was clinging to a course that would take it across LEVIATHAN’s path. It was moving quickly, fast enough to clear with plenty of room.

  Ogilvy spoke. “I thought you had decided that Hardin stole a Swan.”

  Donner lowered his binoculars and watched the setting sun lace red light through the tops of the swells.

  Like a doctor monitoring a heartbeat, Ogilvy fingered the vibrating handrail. It hummed with an intensity that had been increasing all afternoon. He picked up the wing phone and ordered shaft turns reduced by four revolutions.

  Gradually the vibrations eased to a tolerable tremor, but it would be an hour before LEVIATHAN slowed from sixteen to fifteen and a half knots. He continued to hold the railing. The thick seam between the old and new paint began to irritate his palm.

  He telephoned the bridge house and his first officer looked out at him on the wing as he answered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There’s a ridge on the railing, here, Number One. See that the carpenter files it down tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Otherwise it will get thicker and thicker every time we paint.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Satisfied, Ogilvy released the railing and eyed the ship that was his vast domain. She was magnificent, and yet not the titan she had been. The sea had found her wanting. Worse, she bore Hardin’s scars.

  It had saddened him, at first, but he had come to change his mind. He had been at sea nearly fifty years and he had finally accepted all that had happened as a reminder that survival, and survival alone, was the only victory the sea allowed.

  LEVIATHAN had survived. And she was still the greatest ship that ever sailed beneath the sky.

  Something intruded on his contentment. He glanced idly at the water. The trimaran had closed to one thousand yards and seemed to be turned directly toward LEVIATHAN’s bow.

  Again, he spoke into the wing phone.

  “Give that damned fool a hoot, Number One.”

  LEVIATHAN’s whistle s
ounded an imperious blast.

  The trimaran turned broadside to the tanker. A figure climbed out of the sailboat’s cockpit and leaned over a tripod on the aft deck.

  Donner said, “Captain—”

  Puzzled, Ogilvy raised his binoculars. “What the devil is that contraption on the stern?”

  The trimaran’s sails reflected a brilliant white flash.

  “Signal lamp?” asked Bruce.

  But Ogilvy was racing toward the bridge house as fast as his spindly legs could carry him, his mind screaming that no signal lamp could be so bright.

  33

  Hardin shook with a fierce joy as the rocket shrieked across the water. He pressed against the tripod, his eyes in the tracking sights, his fingers flickering on the electric switches that controlled the guide wire. The rocket grew smaller in the sights and he heard Ajaratu cry out when its white flame disappeared into LEVIATHAN’s bulbous prow.

  The black ship swallowed the bolt and forged on.

  “Jibe!” he yelled. “Run ahead of him.”

  Ajaratu, her regal face cast in bold relief by the light of the sinking sun, jibed about and steered ahead of LEVIATHAN on a broad port reach. The trimaran’s previous owners had smuggled guns across the Gulf of Guinea to diehard factions in Angola and it was very fast. Her eyes on Hardin, Ajaratu started the oversize auxilary engine. The boat gained speed and hurled spray back to the stern, wetting Hardin’s legs.

  He hoisted a second rocket from a stack beside the tripod and slid it from the canvas sling he had rigged for the job into the launcher’s breech. It was a bigger weapon than the Dragon—Ajaratu had located and bribed a corrupt Nigerian Army officer with sufficient seniority to steal the best—and it was capable of repeat fire as quickly as he could load the high-explosive shells.

  LEVIATHAN was catching up, unmarked by the first shot, looming higher. Hardin rejoiced in its nearness. He slid the shell off the sling and pushed the hoisting boom clear of the launcher’s fiery recoil. Then he attached the rocket’s wire guide, sighted LEVIATHAN in the optical tracker, and forced himself to wait until a long swell lifted the trimaran for a perfect shot.

  “Ready?” he shouted, his voice exultant.

  Ajaratu pointed the boat downwind so the rocket’s backfire would clear the sails. She covered her eyes.

  “Ready!”

  Hardin swiveled the weapon as the boat turned. LEVIATHAN surged implacably onward, smashing the seas, blotting the horizon. He sighted the bow dead center and fired.

  The rocket leaped clear, ignited, the searing flash darkened by the sight’s smoked lenses. Manipulating the guide, Hardin drew the second missile twenty feet above the water.

  The trimaran plunged into a deep trough and he lost sight of the target. When the boat rose, the last rays of the sun glinted on the guide wire. He dropped the missile to the waterline. A shimmering gold line slashed into the tanker. He felt the wire quiver with LEVIATHAN’s pulse.

  LEVIATHAN had no collision bulkhead in the sense of a second, powerfully reinforced interior bow, but the foremost cargo spaces were divided into small compartments. Some of these tanks were no more than ten feet wide, which put four vertical cargo-separation steel bulkheads in the foremost fifty feet of the hull.

  Hardin’s first shot splayed a ten-foot hole in the bow plates and water poured in as LEVIATHAN rammed the sea at sixteen knots. The first separating bulkhead burst immediately, but the second held.

  Ogilvy ordered both engines full astern. The giant propellers dug a deep pit in the sea behind the ship as they clawed the water in reverse, but they had no effect on its momentum and LEVIATHAN was still plowing full speed ahead when Hardin’s second shot slammed into its bow.

  The shell buckled a primary framing member. Bulkheads collapsed. Water and air rushed into the tanks and expelled the inert gases. Huge plates of quarter-inch steel broke the welds that held them together and began to flutter back and forth like eel grass in the tide. The peeling plates scraped each other and scattered sparks.

  Ogilvy pushed aside the helmsman and gripped the steering yoke.

  The din and clatter of the giant plates rending and crashing went unheard on the bridge a third of a mile away, and he could only wonder what damage the rockets had done. He said nothing when his first officer reported that Hardin had fired a second time. He had seen it. Just as he could see the monster raising a third rocket to his launcher.

  LEVIATHAN hadn’t slowed a whit. It was overtaking the sailboat, but not so quickly as to stop Hardin from firing again. He put the yoke hard over. She responded grudgingly. He pulled back on it as if to stop the ship with his will. Ahead, the fast trimaran turned with him, darting over the swells, and in a moment Hardin would be ready to fire again.

  As the inert gases escaped, air mixed with the residual oil fumes in the violated tanks. The first explosion was small. It too was unheard and unfelt on the bridge. It blasted in the direction of least resistance—inward, because the tanks were empty and the sea reinforced the outside of the hull. The first explosion destroyed several interior bulkheads and the mixing of oxygen and volatile residual oil fumes began again.

  Hardin saw a pillar of fire shoot from the bow deck. He heard a sharp bang like a single clap of thunder. A second explosion sent pieces flying into the air about the tanker and the fire vanished like a snuffed candle. The sea rippled toward him and he heard a long deep bellowing rumble spread across the water.

  He sighted the ship in the binocular tracker as LEVIATHAN’s decks peeled apart spouting smoke and flame. Flames engulfed its bows. Hardin aimed for the heart of the pyre and triggered his weapon again.

  The rocket lanced into the flames. Hardin hoisted a fourth rocket to the breech, loaded, fired. He brought up a fifth. His mind filled with the explosions. The fiery target grew larger and larger. He shot another, and another.

  He was out of control and in perfect control. He would fight forever, sailing before the monster, firing again and again until the very weight of his shells would sink it to the bottom of the sea. The closer it came, the faster he loaded. The flames grew hot on his face, and burning metal dropped hissing into the water around him.

  He hoisted, loaded, fired, and guided another rocket. It disappeared into the flaming maw and he reached for another. There were no more; the deck was empty. Ajaratu steered out of the path of the burning ship and as the trimaran raced beside it, Hardin leaned on the tripod, his chest heaving, and stared at what he had done.

  A great fireball marched aft until only the white bridge tower remained untouched. The bows began to go down, and a canopied lifeboat descended jerkily to the rushing water. LEVIATHAN dragged it like a hooked fish until, cut loose, it fell rapidly astern.

  Hardin lifted his face to the holocaust. A tremendous explosion resounded deep inside the tanker and burning shrapnel shrieked by his head. He stared, transfixed. Still charging forward at sixteen knots, LEVIATHAN drove under the waves, its infinite momentum carrying the titan to its grave.

  Hardin sailed to the end of LEVIATHAN’s wake, looked into the emptiness, and whispered good-bye to Carolyn. The sea had already begun to smooth the steaming maelstrom. When it filled the space where LEVIATHAN had been, he took Ajaratu’s hand and they set a course which would let the trade winds bear them to the oceans of the world.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many kind people helped with my research.

  I want to thank Stephen Fischer for showing me the craft of sailing.

  Captain Guiseppe Catelli, Second Officer Franco Valzania, and the crew of the VLCC Esso Skandia were hospitable and informative, as were Esso Marine’s Captain Franco Fenucci, and Captain Wlodzimierz Grzesiak, Second Officer Stefan Grosicki, and Radio Officer Czeslan Starczyk and the crew of the M.S. Roman Pazinski, and Peter Carling and John Fisher of the Southampton and Isle of Wight Pilots Service. Captain Donald Clark, Norman Toomer, and particularly Donald Ellis were generous hosts at the Esso Refinery in Fawley, England.

  Others who shared knowle
dge were R. J. Moore and Tony Hazell and John Blackwell of Lloyd’s Underwriters’ Claims Office; Jorma I. Leskinen; Michell C. Gibbons-Neff of Sparkman and Stephens; Greg and Robert Grey; Susan Szita Gore; Daniel David of Sky Books International; John Costello; David James M.P.; Ian Brett of the British Information Service; Tom McGeady; and Kennett L. Rawson.

  Many nautical adventurers are dazzling writers, among them Bernard Moitessier, Joshua Slocum, Richard Maury, Errol Bruce, K. Adlard Coles, Sir Francis Chichester, and Hal Roth. Marion Kaplan’s photographs and writings told beautifully the story of the vanishing dhows.

  I am particularly indebted to Noel Mostert, whose account in Supership of 50-ton South African fishing boats disappearing without a trace along the route of the giant tankers sent me scrambling to the typewriter with The Shipkiller fullblown in a question: What if a couple in love were sailing in the path of the monster?

  Thank you for towering editorial inspiration, James O’Shea Wade.

  Thank you for your presence when it counted, Miss Laura Patrick.

  I thank for fun, hope, and steadfast belief, my friend and literary agent of forty years, Mr. Henry Morrison. And I cannot imagine a writer more blessed than I was with mentors: Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Brian Garfield, Robert Ludlum, and my father, A. Leslie Scott.

  Finally, you are holding in your hand a beautiful new edition of The Shipkiller thanks to a bold young publisher who founded Pegasus Books when everyone agreed that publishing was a dying business, and then failed to comprehend that books made of paper, ink, and cloth were obsolete, Mr. Claiborne Hancock.

  BOOKS AS PAUL GARRISON

  THRILLERS & SEA STORIES

  Fire And Ice

  Red Sky At Morning

  Buried At Sea