The Wheel of Darkness (40 page)

“Understood. Fire away.”

Liu turned to the freefall launch control panel. There were thirty-six lifeboats, eighteen on the port side and eighteen on starboard, each with a capacity of up to 150 people. Even launching one boat virtually empty like this, they still had plenty of capacity to spare. He glanced at his watch. If it worked, they’d have fifty minutes to evacuate the ship. A very doable proposition.

He murmured a short prayer.

As he initiated the launch sequence, Liu began to breathe a little easier. It
was
going to work. These damn boats were overengineered, built to withstand a sixty-foot free fall. They could take the extra strain.

Green across the board. He unlocked the switch that would began the countdown on lifeboat number one, opened the cover. Inside, the little red breaker-lever glowed with fresh paint. This was a hell of a lot simpler than in the old days, when a lifeboat had to be lowered on davits, swinging crazily in the wind and roll of the ship. Now all you had to do was press a lever; the boat was released from its arrestors, slid down the rails, and fell sixty feet to land, nose first, in the sea. A few moments later it bobbed to the surface and continued on, driving away from the ship. They’d been through the drill many times: drop to recovery took all of six seconds.

“You read, Bruce?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Hang on. I’m releasing the switch.”

He pulled the red lever.

A woman’s voice sounded from a speaker mounted overhead. “Lifeboat number one launching in fifteen seconds. Ten seconds. Nine, eight . . .”

The voice echoed in the metal-walled half deck. The countdown ran out; there was a loud
clunk
as the steel arrestors disengaged. The boat slid forward on the greased rails, nosed off the end into open space, and Liu leaned over the side to watch it fall, as gracefully as a diver, toward the churning sea.

It struck with a tremendous eruption of spray, much larger than anything Liu had seen during the drills: a geyser that rose forty, fifty feet, swept backward in ragged petals by the tearing wind. The VHF channel let loose a squeal of static.

But instead of plunging straight into the water and disappearing, the lifeboat’s forward motion, combined with the added speed of the ship, pitchpoled it sideways, like a rock skipping over the surface of a pond, and it struck the ocean a second time full force along its length, with another eruption of spray that buried the orange boat in boiling water. And then it began to resurface, sluggishly, the Day-Glo hull brightening as it shed green water. The static on the VHF abruptly died into silence.

The woman—Emily Dahlberg—caught her breath, averted her eyes.

Liu stared at the lifeboat, which was already rapidly falling astern. He seemed to be seeing the boat from a strange angle. But no, that wasn’t it: the lifeboat’s profile had changed—the hull was misshapen. Orange and white flecks were detaching themselves from the hull, and a rush of air along a seam blew a line of spray toward the sky.

With a sick feeling Liu realized the hull had been breached, split lengthwise like a rotten melon, and was now spilling its guts.

“Jesus . . .” he heard Crowley murmur next to him. “Oh, Jesus . . .”

He stared in horror at the stoved-in lifeboat. It wasn’t righting itself; it was wallowing sideways, subsiding back in the water, the engine screw uselessly churning the surface, leaving a trail of oil and debris as it fell astern and began to fade away in the gray, storm-tossed seas.

Liu grabbed the VHF and pressed the transmit button. “Bruce! Welch! This is Liu! Respond!
Bruce
!”

But there was no answer—as Liu knew there wouldn’t be.

O
N THE AUXILIARY BRIDGE,
L
ESEUR WAS FACING A TORRENT OF
questions.

“The lifeboats!” an officer cried over the others. “What’s happening with the lifeboats?”

LeSeur shook his head. “No word yet. I’m still waiting to hear from Liu and Crowley.”

The chief radio officer spoke up. “I’ve got the
Grenfell
on channel 69.”

LeSeur looked at him. “Fax him on the SSB fax to switch to channel . . . 79.” Maybe choosing an obscure VHF channel to communicate with the
Grenfell
—channel 79, normally reserved for exchanges between pleasure boats on the Great Lakes—would keep their conversations secret from Mason. He hoped to God she wouldn’t be scanning the VHF channels as a matter of course. She’d already seen, of course, the radar profile of the
Grenfell
as the ship approached and heard all the chatter on emergency channel 16.

“What’s the rendezvous estimate?” he asked the radio officer.

“Nine minutes.” He paused. “I’ve got the captain of the
Grenfell
on 79, sir.”

LeSeur walked up to the VHF console, slipped on a pair of headphones. He spoke in a low voice. “
Grenfell
, this is First Officer LeSeur, acting commander of the
Britannia
. Do you have a plan?”

“This is a tough one,
Britannia
, but we’ve got a couple of ideas.”

“We’ve got one chance to do this. We’re faster than you by at least ten knots, and once we’re past, that’s it.”

“Understood. We’ve got on board a BO-105 utility chopper, which we could use to bring you some shaped explosives we normally use for hull-breaching—”

“At our speed, in this sea and gale conditions, you’ll never land it.”

A silence. “We’re hoping for a window.”

“Unlikely, but have the bird stand by just in case. Next idea?”

“We were thinking that, on our pass, we could hook the
Britannia
with our towing winch and try to pull her off course.”

“What kind of winch?”

“A seventy-ton electrohydraulic towing winch with a 40mm wire rope—”

“That would snap like a string.”

“It probably would. Another option would be to drop a buoy and tow the wire across your course, hoping to foul your propellers.”

“There’s no way a 40mm wire rope could stop four 21.5-megawatt screws. Don’t you carry fast rescue craft?”

“Unfortunately, there’s no way we can launch our two fast rescue craft in these seas. And in any case there’s no way we can come alongside to board or evacuate, because we can’t keep up with you.”

“Any other ideas?”

A pause. “That’s all we’ve been able to come up with.”

“Then we’ll have to go with my plan,” LeSeur said.

“Shoot.”

“You’re an icebreaker, am I right?”

“Well, the
Grenfell
’s an ice-strengthened ship, but she’s not a true icebreaker. We sometimes do icebreaking duties such as harbor breakouts.”

“Good enough.
Grenfell
, I want you to chart a course that will take you across our bow—in such a way as to shear it off.”

A silence, and then the reply came. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I read you,
Britannia
.”

“You read me fine. The idea is, by opening selected bulkhead hatches we can flood forward compartments one, two, and three. That will put us down by the head enough to lift our screws almost out of the water. The
Britannia
will be DIW.”

“You’re asking me to
ram
you? Good God, have you lost your mind? There’s a good chance I’d sink my own vessel!”

“It’s the only way. If you approach head-on just a few points off our starboard side, moving not too fast—say, five to eight knots—then, just before contact, back one screw hard while engaging your bow thrusters, you could shear off our bows with your reinforced forward hullplates, swing free, and we would pass clear of each other on the starboard side. It’d be close, but it would work. That is, if you’ve got the helmsmanship to pull it off.”

“I’ve got to check with Command.”

“We’ve got five minutes to our CPA rendezvous,
Grenfell
. You known damn well you’re not going to get clearance in time. Look, do you have the knackers to do this or not? That’s the real question.”

A long silence.

“All right,
Britannia
. We’ll give it a try.”

C
ONSTANCE’S EYES FLEW OPEN, HER WHOLE BODY JERKING ITSELF
awake with a muffled cry. The universe came rushing back—the ship, the rolling room, the splatter of the rain, the booming seas and moaning of the wind.

She stared at the
dgongs
. It lay in an untidy coil around an ancient scrap of crumpled silk. It had been untied—for real.

She looked at Pendergast, aghast. Even as she stared, his head rose slightly and his eyes came back to life, silvery irises glittering in the candlelight. A strange smile spread across his face. “You broke the meditation, Constance.”

“You were trying . . . to
drag
me into the fire,” she gasped.

“Naturally.”

She felt a wash of despair. Instead of pulling him out of darkness, she had almost been pulled in herself.

“I was trying to free you from your earthly fetters,” he said.

“Free me,” she repeated bitterly.

“Yes. To become what you will: free of the chains of sentiment, morality, principles, honor, virtue, and all those petty things that contrive to keep us enchained in the human slave-galley with everyone else, rowing ourselves nowhere.”

“And that’s what the Agozyen has done to you,” she said. “Stripped away all moral and ethical inhibitions. Let your darkest, most sociopathic desires run rampant. That’s what it offered me as well.”

Pendergast rose and extended his hand. She did not take it.

“You untied the knot,” she said.

He spoke, his voice low and strangely vibrant with triumph. “I didn’t touch it. Ever.”

“But then how . . . ?”

“I untied it
with my mind
.”

She continued to stare. “That’s impossible.”

“It is not only possible, but it happened, as you can see.”

“The meditation failed. You’re the same.”

“The meditation
worked
, my dear Constance. I have changed—enormously. Thanks to your insistence that we do this, I have now fully realized the power given to me by the Agozyen. The power of pure thought—of mind over matter. I’ve tapped into an immense reservoir of power, and so can you.” His eyes were glittering, passionate. “This is an extraordinary demonstration of the Agozyen mandala and its ability to transform the human mind and human thought into a tool of colossal power.”

Constance stared at him, a creeping feeling of horror in her heart.

“You wanted to bring me back,” he continued. “You wanted to restore me to my old, conflicted, foolish self. But instead, you brought me forward. You opened the door. And now, my dear Constance, it’s your turn to be freed. Remember our little agreement?”

She couldn’t speak.

“That’s right. It is now your turn to gaze upon the Agozyen.”

Still, she hesitated.

“As you wish.” He rose and grabbed the neck of the canvas sack. “I’m through looking after you.” He moved toward the door, not looking at her, hoisting the sack onto his shoulder.

With a shock, she realized he had no more regard for her than for anyone else.

“Wait—” she began.

A scream from beyond the door cut her off. The door flew open and Marya came backing in. Beyond, Constance caught a glimpse of something gray and unevenly textured moving toward them.

Where did that smoke come from? Is the ship on fire?

Pendergast dropped the sack and stared, taking a step backward. Constance was surprised to see a look of shock, even fear, on his face.

It
blocked the door. Marya screamed again, the thing enveloping her, muffling her screams.

As the thing came through the door, it was backlit for a moment by a lamp in the entryway, and with a sense of growing unreality Constance saw a strange, roiling presence deep within the smoke, with two bloodshot eyes, a third one on its forehead—a demonic creature jerking and moving and heaving itself along as if crippled . . . or perhaps
dancing
. . .

Marya screamed a third time and fell to the floor with a crash of breaking glass, her eyes rolling and jittering in her head, convulsing. The thing was now past her, filling the salon with a damp chill and the stench of rotting fungus, backing Pendergast into a corner—and then it was on him,
in
him, swallowing him, and he issued a muffled cry of such raw terror, such agonizing despair, that it froze Constance to the marrow.

L
ESEUR STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CROWDED AUX BRIDGE
, staring at the S-band radar image of the approaching ship. It loomed ever larger, a phosphorescent shape expanding dead ahead on the radar screen. The Doppler readout indicated a combined closing speed of thirty-seven knots.

“Two thousand five hundred yards and closing,” said the second officer. LeSeur made a quick mental calculation: two minutes to contact.

He glanced at the more sensitive X-band, but it was awash with sea return and rain scatter. Quietly and quickly, he’d briefed the rest of the officers on his plan. He knew it was at least possible Mason had heard everything he’d said to the captain of the
Grenfell
: there was no failsafe way to block communications on the main bridge. But either way, once the
Grenfell
made its move, the
Britannia
would be hard pressed to respond.

Chief Engineer Halsey came up to his side. “I have the estimates you asked for.” He spoke in a low voice so the others wouldn’t hear.

So it’s that bad
, thought LeSeur. He withdrew Halsey to one side.

“These figures,” said Halsey, “are based on a direct collision with the center of the shoal, which is what we anticipate.”

“Tell me quickly.”

“Given the force of that impact, we estimate the death rate at thirty to fifty percent—with almost all the rest seriously injured: broken limbs, contusions, concussions.”

“Understood.”

“With its draft of thirty-three feet, the
Britannia
will make initial contact with a small shoal some distance from the main portion of the reef. By the time the ship is stopped by the main rocks, it will already be ripped open from stem to stern. All the watertight compartments and bulkheads will be breached. Estimated sinking time is less than three minutes.”