Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (23 page)

‘
No recovery
either winch,
’
Beauty told him.
‘
She is not moving.
’

Nick pulled back the
stainless steel levers, the needles sank swiftly back around their
dials, and Warlock reacted gratefully, shaking herself free of the piled
waters.

‘
You'll have to shear the tow.
’
Baker's disembodied voice . was muted by
the clamour of the storm.
‘
We'll take our chances, sport.
’

Beside him,
David Allen reached for the red-painted steel box that housed the shear
button. It was protected by the box from accidental usage; David Allen
opened the box and looked expectantly, almost pleadingly at Nick.

‘Belay that!’
Nick snarled at him, and then to Baker,
‘
I'm shortening
tow. Be ready to haul again, when I am in position.
’
David Allen stared
at him, his right hand still on the open lid of the red box.

‘
Close that bloody thing
,’
Nick said, and turned to the main cable
controls. He moved the green lever to reverse, and felt the vibration
in the deck as below him in the main cable room the big drums began to
revolve, drawing the thick ice-encrusted cable up over Warlock's stern.

Fighting every inch of the way like a wild horse on a head halter,
Warlock was drawn in cautiously by her own winches , and the officers
watched in mounting horror as out of the white terror of the blizzard
emerged the mountainous ice-covered bulk of Golden Adventurer.

She was so close that the main cable no longer dipped below the surface
of the sea, but ran directly from the liner's stern to the tug's massive
fairleads on her stern quarter.

‘
Now we can see what we are doing
,’
Nick told them grimly. He could see
now that much of Warlock's power had been wasted by not exerting a pull
on exactly the same plane as Golden Adventurer's keel. He had been
disoriented in the white-out of the blizzard, and had allowed Warlock to
pull at an angle. It would not happen now.

‘
Chief
,’
he said.
‘
Pull, pull all, pull until she bursts her guts!
’
And
again he slid the throttle handles fully home.

Warlock flung up against the elastic yoke, and Nick saw the water spurt
from the woven fibres and turn instantly to ice crystals as it was
whipped away on the shrieking
wind.

‘
She's not moving, sir
,’
David cried beside
him.

‘
No recovery either winch
,’
Baker confirmed almost immediately. 'She's
solid!
’

‘
Too much water still in her!
’
said David, and Nick turned on him
as though to strike him to the deck.

‘
Give me the wheel
,’
he said, his voice cracking with his anger and
frustration.

With both engines boiling the sea to white foam, and roaring like dying
bulls, Nick swung the wheel to full port lock.

Wildly Warlock dug her shoulder in, water pouring on board her as she
rolled, instantly Nick spun the wheel to full starboard lock and she
lurched against the tow, throwing an extra ton of pressure on to it.

Even above the storm, they heard Golden Adventurer groan, the steel of
her hull protesting at the weight of water in her and the intolerable
pressure of the anchor winches and Warlock's tow cable.

The groan became a crackling hiss as the pebble bottom gave and moved
under her.

‘
Christ, she's coming!
’
shrieked Baker, and Nick swung her to full port
lock again, swinging Warlock into a deep trough between waves, then a
solid ridge of steaming water buried her, and Nick was not certain she
could survive that press of furious sea. It came green and slick over
the superstructure and she shuddered wearily, gone slow and unwieldy.
Then she lifted her bows and, like a spaniel, shook herself free,
becoming again quick and light.

‘
Pull, my darling, pull
,’
Nick pleaded with her.

With a slow reluctant rumble, Golden Adventurer's hull began to slide
over the holding, clinging bottom.

‘
Both winches recovering
,’
Baker howled gleefully, and Warlock's ground
speed-indicator flicked into the green, its little angular figures
changing in twinkling electronic progression as Warlock gathered way.

They all saw Golden Adventurer's stern swinging to meet the next great
ridge of water as it burst around her.

She was floating, and for moments Nick was paralysed by the wonder of
seeing that great and beautiful ship come to life again, become a
living, vital sea creature as she took the seas and rose to meet them.

‘
We've done it, Christ, we've done it
!’
howled Baker, but it was too soon
for self-congratulation. As Golden Adventurer came free of the ground
and gathered sternway under Warlock's tow, so her rudder bit and swung
her tall stern across the wind.

She swung, exposing the enormous windage of her starboard side to the
full force of the storm. It was like setting a main-sail, and the wind
took her down swiftly on the rocky headland with its sentinel columns
that guarded the entrance to the bay.

Nick's first instinct was to try and hold her off, to oppose the force
of the wind directly and he flung Warlock into the task, relying on her
great diesels and the two anchors to keep the liner from going ashore
again - but the wind toyed with them, it ripped the anchors out of the
pebble bottom and Warlock was drawn stern first through the water,
straight down on the jagged rock of the headland.

‘
Chief, get those anchors up
,’
Nick snapped into the microphone. 'They'll
never hold in this.
’

Twenty years earlier, bathing off a lonely beach in
the Seychelles, Nick had been caught out of his depth by one of those
killer currents that flow around the headlands of oceanic islands, and
it had sped him out into the open sea so that within minutes the
silhouette of the land was low and indistinct on his watery horizon. He
had fought that current, swimming directly against it, and it had nearly
killed him. Only in the last stages of exhaustion had he begun to
think, and instead of battling it, he had ridden the current, angling
slowly across it, using its impetus rather than opposing it.

The lesson he had learned that day was well remembered, and as he
watched Baker bring Golden Adventurer's dripping anchors out of the wild
water he was driving Warlock hard, bringing her around on her cable so
the wind was no longer in her teeth, but over her stern quarter.

Now the wind and Warlock's screws were no longer opposed, but Warlock
was pulling two points off the wind, as fine a course as Nick could
judge barely to clear the most seaward of the rocky sentinels; now the
liner's locked rudder was holding her steady into the wind - but
opposing Warlock's attempt to angle her away from the land.

It was a problem of simple vectors of force, that Nick tried to work out
in his head and prove in physical terms, as he delicately judged the
angle of his tow and the direction of the wind, balancing them against
the tremendous leverage of the liner's locked rudder, the rudder which
was dragging her suicidal
l
y down upon the land.

Grimly, he stared ahead to where the black rock cliffs were still hidden
in the white nothingness. They were invisible, but their presence was
recorded on the cluttered screen of the radar repeater. With both wind
and engines driving them, their speed was too high, and if Golden
Adventurer went on to the cliffs like this, her hull would shatter like
a water melon hurled against a brick wall.

It was another five minutes before Nick was absolutely certain they
would not make it. They were only two miles off the cliffs now, he
glanced again at the radar screen, and they would have to drag Golden
Adventurer at least half a mile across the wind to clear the land. They
just were not going to make it.

Helplessly, Nick stood and peered into the storm, waiting for the first
glimpse of black rock through the swirling eddies of snow and frozen
spray, and he had never felt more
tired and
unmanned in his entire life
as he moved to the shear button ready to cut Golden Adventurer loose and
let her go to her doom.

His officers were silent and tense around him, while under his feet
Warlock shuddered and buffeted wildly, driven to her mortal limits by
the sea and her own engines, but still the land sucked at them.

‘
Look!
’
David Allen shouted suddenly, and Nick spun to the urgency in his
voice.

For a moment he did not understand what was happening. He knew only
that the shape of Golden Adventurer's stern was altered subtly.

‘
The rudder
,’
shouted David Allen again. And Nick saw it revolving slowly
on its stock as the ship lifted on another big sea.

Almost immediately, he felt Warlock making offing from under that lee
shore, and he swung her up another point into the wind, Golden
Adventurer answering her tow with a more docile air, and still the
rudder revolved slowly.

‘
I've got power on the emergency steering gear now!
’
said Baker.

‘
Rudder amidships,
’
Nick ordered.

‘
Amidships it is
,’
Baker repeated, and now he was pulling her out stern
first, almost at right angles across the wind.

Through the white inferno appeared the dim snow-blurred outline of the
rock sentinels, and the sea broke upon them like the thunder of the
heavens.

‘
God, they are close
,’
whispered David Allen.
‘
So close that they could
feel the backlash of the gale as it rebounded from the tall rock walls,
moderating the tremendous force that was bearing them down - moderating
just enough to allow them to slide past the three hungry rocks, and
before them lay three thousand miles of wild and tumultuous water, all
of it open sea room.

‘
We made it. This time we really made it!
’
said Baker, as though he did
not believe it was true, and Nick pulled back the throttle controls
taking the intolerable strain off her engines before they tore
themselves to pieces.

‘
Anchors and all
,’
Nick replied. It was a point of honour to retrieve
even the anchors. They had taken her off clean and intact - anchors and
all.

‘
Chief,
’
he said,
’
instead of sitting there hugging yourself, how about
pumping her full of Tannerax?
’
The anti-corrosive chemical would save
her engines and much of her vital equipment from further sea-water
damage, adding enormously to her salvaged value.

‘
You just never let up, do you?
’
Baker answered accusingly.

‘
Don't you believe it
,’
said Nick, he felt stupid and frivolous with
exhaustion and triumph. Even the storm that still roared about them
seemed to have lost its murderous intensity.
‘
Right now I'm going down
to my bunk to sleep for twelve hours - and I'll kill anybody who tries
to wake me!
’