Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (19 page)

Now waist-deep in the oily, churning water, he
struggled to drive the shackle pin and secure the block to one of the
main frames of the hull. Every few minutes a stronger surge would hurl
the water over his head, forcing him to cling helplessly, until it
relinquished its grip, and his visor cleared sufficiently to allow him
to continue his task.

He had to pull out and rest after forty minutes of it.He sat as close as he could to the heat-exchangers of the running diesel
engine of the alternator, taking warmth from them and drinking Angel's
strong sweet Thermos coffee. He felt like a fighter between rounds, his
body aching, every muscle strained and chilled by the efforts of
fighting that filthy churned emulsion of sea water and oil, his flanks
and ribs bruised from harsh contact with the submerged machinery. But
after twenty minutes, he stood up again.

‘
Let's go
,’
he said and resettled the helmet. The hiatus had given him a
chance to replan the operation, thinking his way around the problems he
had found down there; now the work seemed to fall more readily into
place, though he had lost all sense of time alone in the infernal
resounding cavern of steel and he was not sure of the hour, or the phase
of the day, when at last he was ready to carry the messenger out through
the gap.

‘
Send it down
,’
he ordered into his headset, and the reel of light line
came down, swinging and circling under the glaring floodlights to the
ship's motion and throwing grotesque shadows into the far corners of the
engine room.

The line was of finely plaited Dacron, with enormous strength and
elasticity in relation to its thinness and tightness. One end was
secured on the deck high above, and Nick threaded it into the sheave
blocks carefully, so that it was free to run.

Then he clamped the reel of line on to his belt, riding it on his hip
where it could be protected from snagging when he made the passage of
the gap.

He realized then how close to final exhaustion he was, and he considered
breaking off the work to rest again, but the heightened action of the
sea into the hull warned him against further delay. An hour from now
the task might be impossible, he had to go, and he reached for the
reserve of strength and purpose deep inside himself, surprised to find
that it was still there - for the icy chill of the water seemed to have
penetrated his suit and entered his soul, dulling every sense and
turning his very bones brittle and heavy.

It must be day outside, he realised, for light came through the gash of
steel, pale light further obscured by the filthy muck of mixed oil and
water contained in the hull.

He clung to one of the engine-room stringers, his head seven feet from
the opening, breathing in the slow, even rhythm of the experienced scuba
diver, feeling the ebb and flow through the hull, and trying to find
some pattern in the action of the water. But it seemed entirely random,
a hissing, bubbling ingestion followed by three or four irregular and
weak inflows, then three vicious exhalations of such power that they
would have windmilled a swimming man end over into those daggers of
splayed steel.

He had to choose and ride a middling-sized swell, strong enough to take
him through smoothly, without the dangerous power and turbulence of
those viciously large swells.

‘
I'm ready to go now, David
,’
he said into his helmet.
‘
Confirm that the work boat is standing by for the pick-up outside the
hull.
’

‘
We are all ready.
’
David Allen's voice was tense and sharp.

‘
Here we go
,’
said Nick, this was his wave now. There was no point in
waiting longer.

He checked the reel on his belt, ensuring that the line was free to run,
and watched the gash suck in clean green water, filled with tiny bright
bubbles, little diamond chips that flew past his head to warn him of the
lethal speed and power of that flood.

The in
flow slowed and stopped as the hull filled to capacity, building
up great pressures of air and water, and then the flow reversed abruptly
as the swell on the far side subsided, and trapped water began to rush
out again.

Nick released his grip on the stringer and instantly the water caught
him. There was no question of being able to swim in that mill-race, all
he could hope for was to keep his arms at his sides and his legs
straight together to give himself a smoother profile, and to steer with
his fins.

The accelerating speed appalled him as he was flung head first at that
murderous steel mouth, he could feel the nylon line streaming out
against his leg, the reel on his belt racing as though a giant marlin
had struck and hooked upon the other end.

The rush of his progress seemed to leave his guts behind him as though
he rode a fairground roller-coaster, and then a flick of the current
turned him, he felt himself beginning to roll - and he fought wildly for
control just as he hit.

He hit with a numbing shock, so his vision starred in flashing colour
and light. The shock was in his shoulders and left arm, and he thought
it might have been severed by that razor steel.

Then he was swirling, end over end, completely disorientated so he did
not know which direction was up. He did not know if he was still inside
Golden Adventurer's hull, and the nylon line was wrapping itself around
his throat and chest, around the precious air tubes and cutting off his
air supply like a stillborn infant strangled by its own umbilical cord.

Again he hit something, this time with the back of his head, and only
the cushioning of his helmet saved his skull from cracking. He flung
out his arms and found the rough irregular shape of ice above him.

Terror wrapped him again, and he screamed soundlessly into his mask, but
suddenly he broke out into light and air, into the loose scum of slush
and rotten ice mixed with bigger, harder chunks, one of which had hit
him.

Above him towered the endless steel cliff of the liner's side and beyond
that, the low bruised wind-sky, and as he struggled to disentangle
himself from the coils of nylon, he realized two things. The first was
that both his arms were still attached to his body, and still
functioning, and the second was that Warlock's work boat was only twenty
feet away and butting itself busily through the brash of rotten broken
ice towards him.

The collision mat looked like a five-ton Airedale terrier curled up to
sleep in the bows of the work boat, just as shaggy and shapeless, and of
the same wiry, furry brown colour.

Nick had shed his helmet and pulled an Arctic cloak and hood over his
bare head and suited torso. He was balanced in the stern of the work
boat as she plunged and rolled and porpoised in the big swells; chunks
of ice crashed against her hull, knocking loose chips off her paintwork,
but she was steel-hulled, wide and sea-kindly. The helmsman knew his
job, working her with calm efficiency to Nick's hand-signals, bringing
her in close through the brash ice, under the tall sheer of Golden
Adventurer's stern.

The thin white nylon line was the only physical contact with the men on
the liner's towering stack of decks, the messenger which would carry
heavier tackle. However it was vulnerable to any jagged piece of
pancake ice, or the fangs of that voracious underwater steel jaw.

Nick paid out the line through his own numbed hands, feeling for the
slightest check or jerk which could mean a snag and a break-off.

With hand-signals, he kept the work boat positioned so that the line ran
cleanly into the pierced hull, around the sheave blocks he had placed
with such heart-breaking labour in the engine room, from there up the
tall ventilation, out of the square opening of the stack and around the
winch, beside which Beauty Baker was supervising the recovery of the
messenger.

The gusts tore at Nick's head so that he had to crouch to shield the
small two-way radio on his chest, and Baker's voice was tinny and thin
in the buffeting boom of wind.

‘
Line running free.
’

‘
Right, we are running the wire now
,’
Nick told him.

The second line was as thick as a man's index finger, and it was of the
finest Scandinavian steel cable. Nick checked the connection between
nylon and steel cable himself, the nylon messenger was strong enough to
carry the weight of steel, but the connection was the weakest point.

He nodded to the crew, and they let it go over the side; the white nylon
disappeared into the cold green water and now the black steel cable ran
out slowly from the revolving drum.

Nick felt the check as the connection hit the sheave block in the engine
room. He felt his heart jump. If it caught now, they would lose it
all; no man could penetrate that hull again, the sea was now too
vicious. They would lose the tackle, and they would lose Golden
Adventurer, she would break up in the seas that were coming.