Target 5 (42 page)

Beaumont stayed near the stern, saw the frantic effort to
bring the
Revolution
round in time, saw the great wake be
hind her which showed the extreme course she was taking
, to save herself, then he saw that she had saved herself. He
gave very brief instructions to Grayson, Langer and Borzoli,
and went straight to the bridge of the
Elroy,
his face grim,
his boots thudding on the deck. When he reached the bridge
Schmidt turned round from the rear window he had been
gazing through.

'You were right, Beaumont,' he said tersely. 'She tried to
sink us.'

'She'll try it again. You can't outrun her.'

'Outrun her? With my top speed sixteen knots?'

'So if possible she's got to be stopped. For the sake of your crew, for the sake of everyone on board .. .'

'DaSilva is cooperating with you over the explosives ?'

Beaumont stared at Schmidt who was nodding his head cynically. 'You think I don't know what's
going on aboard
my own ship, Mr Beaumont?'

'She's got to be stopped,' Beaumont repeated.

'This is something I may forget to put in the ship's log.'
The captain looked across the bridge at Beaumont and
spoke two words. 'Stop her.'

The Carley float, a raft for throwing overboard if the ship
had to be abandoned, was packed with one hundred
pounds of gelignite, was wired for detonation. The timer
mechanisms were in place, the clocks had been set to trigger
detonation in ten minutes' time, but they hadn't been acti
vated. The float was now a potential mine.

Schmidt had to reduce speed considerably when they
winched the launch over the side near the stern, and this
was a nerve-racking decision because the
Revolution
was now
coming up behind them, still a distance away, but she was
overhauling the icebreaker. And the view ahead from the
bridge was hardly more encouraging than the view beyond
the stern. Heavy mist still drifted to starboard, half-
obscuring the ghost berg which lay half a mile ahead. To port a whole column of icebergs had appeared, narrowing the channel of clear water, and in the distance dead ahead
two massive bergs stood on either side of the channel, like sentries guarding a gateway. It was indeed an alley of ice
bergs Schmidt had to take his ship through.

'How long before she overtakes us?' Beaumont asked
DaSilva.

'I'd say about ten minutes - and that's a guess.'

'Looks more like five minutes to me,' Grayson said grimly.
He frowned and looked to starboard. 'Schmidt's changing course - he's moving closer to that line of icebergs.'

'I asked him to,' Beaumont snapped. 'He's going to leave
a wider channel between the
Elroy
and the ghost berg.'

'So the
Revolution
can slip through on that side? He must
be crazy ...'

'Then I'm crazy, too. We'd better get down in that
launch.'

DaSilva followed him across the deck to where Borzoli
and other seamen waited by the launch suspended from
davit cables. 'Beaumont, I still haven't asked you what
you're going to do - my guess would be you hope this blows up under the bows of the
Revolution.'

'It wouldn't work - she's moving too fast. Now, lower us -and for Pete's sake watch that float when you send it down.'

The whole operation was diabolically tricky. The launch - with Beaumont, Langer and Grayson inside it - had to be
winched down over the side of a moving vessel and then
held there until the float joined them. The only thing work
ing in their favour was the calmness of the sea. They hit the
water with a heavy slap and then held on to the cables
while they looked up. The float was already on its way down
to them.

While still on deck Langer had given DaSilva a little
warning. 'Technically, if the float hits the side of the hull on
its way down nothing will happen.' He had paused and
smiled without humour. 'And heaven is full of demolition
experts playing harps who said the same sort of thing.'

The airborne mine came down to them with a terrible
slowness, suspended from ropes gripped by seamen high
above them. Langer watched its descent with his hand
gripped tightly round the winch cable. They only had to un
balance it, to let it slant downwards, and securely as the
gelignite was lashed something devastating could happen.
Then somebody let a rope slip. The large missile
suspended
above their heads canted at an angle and Langer drew in
his breath with a hiss of fury and fear. 'They'll do Papanin's
job for him,' he muttered.

The angled float swayed, bumped with a heavy thud
against the ship's hull, a thud heavy enough to dislodge its
cargo. Beaumont glanced towards the stern, suppressing his
impatience; now the
Revolution
had changed course and she
was heading fast for the open channel which would take her
to starboard of the
Elroy.
For Christ's sake hurry it up! His prayer was answered - with unnerving speed. The float
dropped and kept on dropping, coming down on their
heads.

It jerked to a halt three feet above them, still canted at its
dangerously unstable angle, then it was lowered more
gently. Langer activated the clocks - the only clocks aboard
which hadn't been put out of action because they hadn't
been working when the ghost berg struck. The float was put
over the stern, attached by ropes to the launch. Beaumont
started the engine, took over the wheel, shouted up to
DaSilva, the winch cables were released and they moved
away from the
Elroy
at speed, dragging the float behind them.

'I think we're too late,' Langer shouted, looking back at the Russian ship.

Beaumont opened the throttle wide and the launch
roared across the calm sea, heading direct for the ghost berg,
following a course at right-angles to the receding
Elroy,
to
the oncoming
Revolution.
The mist was parting now, draw
ing back to expose the towering wall of ice they were speed
ing towards. The berg reared up like the edge of some great continent, seemed even bigger than when they had moved across its treacherous surface behind the cliff wall.

As they came closer to the section of the cliff they hadn't seen earlier Beaumont saw that it was hollowed out at the base, arched into caves which disappeared inside the cliff,
For the first time he realized how the ocean reached the
lake they had found on the far side of the cliff; there were subterranean channels leading into the lake, channels under
the arched caves. He took his decision almost without
thinking.

'We're going in closer - we'll let the float go at the edge
of the iceshelf,' he shouted.

'We'll never get back to the
Elroy.'
There was alarm in
Grayson's shout. 'We'll never catch her up again.'

'We'll have to chance that. I'm going to get the float
inside one of those channels - then it may detonate on the
far side of the berg.'

Beaumont's plan was simple, a very long shot indeed.
The ghost berg was on the verge of collapse, should have collapsed when it first struck the bay where the
Elroy
was
marooned; even more it should have collapsed when it
wrenched itself free from the other berg. But it was still intact and every hour it drifted brought it closer to final dissolution.
It could be that the detonation of a large quantity of
gelignite close to the ice would trigger off the catastrophe.
Or it could no more than tickle the berg, blowing up a few
pounds of ice.

And yet there were recorded cases where the unguarded shout of an Eskimo in his kayak had shattered one of these monsters, had brought it down into the ocean, falling like a mountain. Beaumont's plan - his faint hope - was to bring down the ghost berg ahead of the
Revolution,
filling the
channel with minor bergs which would stop the Russian ship. It was a very long shot indeed.

'We are gaining on them! When the time comes I will take
the wheel myself.' Papanin growled. He was staring through the clear-vision panel, watching the distant silhouette of the
Elroy
pass through a mist trail. 'You will take charge of the
telegraph, control the speed,' he told Kramer.

'There will be no room for manoeuvre,' Tuchevsky protested. Unlike the Siberian he was
constantly switching his gaze from port to starboard and back again. And he was impressed by the enormous size of the great berg to starboard coming up, but he had no suspicion of its fragility as he stared at the towering wall. 'A launch has left the American vessel,' he said suddenly. 'It is crossing the channel ahead of us . . .'

'Don't worry about that! Increase speed .. .'
'It is dangerous - we are going too close to that berg . . .'
'Full power!' Papanin shouted at Kramer. 'Full
power ...'

The cliff rose vertically above their heads as the launch
nosed its way through ice floes close to the shelf where the ocean lapped the base of the ghost berg. Throttled back, the
launch bobbed among the floes, a mere speck under the lee of the berg. Twenty yards to the south of them a great cave
went inside the ice, the current flowed in under the berg. Beaumont could see the turn of the moonlit water as he
shouted the order. 'Release the float!'

Grayson was ready with his knife. He slashed at the rope,
holding it in one gloved hand while he sawed with the other,
and it took him longer than he had. anticipated to cut
through the tough fibres. Behind him Beaumont and Langer suppressed their impatience with difficulty. Beaumont esti
mated they had about five minutes left before detonation -
but without a working watch he couldn't be sure.

Grayson cut savagely at the frayed rope - the last few
strands still held them to the float. Langer cursed, struggled
to get his own knife out of the sheath under his parka. Beau
mont watched helplessly, unable to leave the wheel. The
arched opening drifted closer. Langer found his knife,
hauled it out, cut at the rope Grayson was holding for him.
The fibres parted. The float left them. Beaumont opened
the throttle and the craft surged away from the ghost berg with a burst of power. The engine beats of the
Revolution
were much louder as he headed out diagonally down the
channel, speeding after the
Elroy
he could hardly see.

In the stern Grayson clung to the gunwale, twisted round as he watched the Carley float bobbing in the current, sail
ing past the arched entry under the berg. At the last moment the float caught on the ice, hovered, then the current sucked
it inside and sent it down the ice tunnel leading to the lake
on the far side.

'It went in!' Grayson shouted.