Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (81 page)

‘
Can't you see this monster you have built is finished, finished! There
is no propeller, her back is broken, the superstructure will go minutes
after the wind hits again.
’

He dragged Duncan round to face him, their
eyes were inches apart.

‘
It's over, Duncan. We will be lucky to get away with our lives. We'll
be luckier still to save the cargo.
’

‘
But don't you understand - we've
got to save the hull
-
without it
-‘

Duncan started to struggle, he was a
powerful man, and quickly he was rousing himself, within minutes he
would be dangerous - and there was no time, already Warlock was swinging
up into her position on Golden Dawn's port beam for tank transfer.

‘
I'll not let you take off
–‘
Duncan wrenched himself out of Nicholas
grip, there was a mad fanatic light in his eyes.

Nicholas swivelled; coming up on to his toes and swinging from the
shoulders he aimed for the point of Duncan's jaw, just below the ear and
the thick sodden wedge of Duncan's red-gold sideburns. But Duncan
rolled his head with the punch, and the blow glanced off his temple, and
Golden Dawn rolled back the other way as Nicholas was unbalanced.

He fell back against the control console, and Duncan drove at him, two
running paces like a quarter-back taking a field goal, and he kicked
right-legged for Nicholas'
lower body.

‘
I'll kill you, Berg
,’
he screamed, and Nicholas had only time to roll
sideways and lift his leg scissoring it to protect his crotch. Duncan's
kick caught him in the upper thigh.
An explosion of white pain shot up into his belly and numbed his leg to
the thigh, but he used the control console and his good leg to launch
himself into a counterpunch, hooking with his right again, under the
ribs - and the wind went out of Duncan's lungs with a whoosh as he
doubled.
Nicholas transferred weight smoothly and swung his left fist up into
Duncan's face. It sounded like a watermelon dropped on a concrete
floor, and Duncan was hurled backwards against the bulkhead, pinned
there for a moment by the ship's roll. Nicholas followed him, hob
b
ling
painfully on the injured leg, and he hit him twice more.
Left and right, short, hard, hissing blows that cracked his skull
backwards against the bulkhead, and brought quick bright rosettes of
blood from his lips and nostrils.

As his legs buckled, Nicholas caught
him by the throat with his left hand and held him upright, searching his
eyes for further resistance, ready to hit again, but there was no fight
left in him.

Nicholas let him go, and went to the signal locker. He snatched three
of the small walkie-talkie radios from the radio shelves and handed one
to each of the two seamen.

‘
You know the pod tank undocking procedures for a tandem tow?
’
he asked.

We've practised it
,’
one of them replied.

‘
Let's go,
’
said Nicholas.

It was a job that was scheduled for a dozen men, and there were three of
them. Duncan was of no use to them, and Nicholas left him in the pump
control room on the lowest deck of Golden Dawn's stern quarter, after he
had closed down the inert gas pumps, sealed the gas vents, and armed the
hydraulic releases of the pod tanks for undocking.

They worked sometimes neck-deep in the bursts of green, frothing water
that poured over the ultra-tanker's fore-dec
k
. They took on board and
secured Warlock's main cable, unlocked the hydraulic clamps that held
the forward pod tank attached to the hull and, as David Allen eased it
clear of the crippled hull, they turned and lumbered back along the
twisted and wind-torn catwalk, handicapped by the heavy sea
-
boots and
oilskins and the confused seas that still swamped the tank-deck every
few minutes.

On the after tank, the whole laborious energy-sapping procedure had to
be repeated, but here it was complicated by the chain coupling which
connected the two ha
l
f-mile
-
long pod tanks. Over the walkie-talkie
Nicholas had to coordinate the efforts of his seamen to those of David
Allen at the helm of Warlock.

When at last Warlock threw on power to both of her big propellers and
sheered away from the wallowing hull, she had both port pod tanks in
tow. They floated just level with the surface of the sea, offering no
windage for the hurricane winds that would soon be upon them again.

Hanging on to the rail of the raised catwalk Nicholas watched for two
precious minutes with an appraising professional eye. It was an
incredible sight, two great shiny black whales, their backs showing only
in the troughs, and the gallant little ship leading them away. They
followed meekly, and Nicholas
’
anxiety was lessened. He was not
confident, not even satisfied, for there was still a hurricane to
navigate - but there was hope now.

‘
Sea Witch
,’
he spoke into the small portable radio.
‘
Are you ready to
take on tow?
’

Jules Levoisin fired the rocket-line across personally.
Nicholas recognized his portly but nimble
figure high in the
fire-control tower, and the rocket left a thin trail of snaking white
smoke high against the backdrop of racing, grey hurricane clouds.
Arching high over the tanker's tank
-
deck, the thin nylon rocket-line fell
over the catwalk ten feet from where Nicholas stood.

They worked with a kind of restrained frenzy, and Jules Levoisin brought
the big graceful tug in so close beside them that glancing up Nicholas
could see the flash of a gold filling in Jules'
white smile of
encouragement. It was only a glance that Nicholas allowed himself, and
then he raised his face and looked at the storm.

The wall of cloud was slippery and smooth and grey, like the body of a
gigantic slug, and at its foot trailed a glistening white slimy line
where the winds frothed the surface of the sea. It was very close now,
ten miles, no more, and above them the sun had gone, cut out by the
spiralling vortex of leaden cloud. Yet still that open narrow funnel of
clear calm air reached right up to a dark and ominous sky.

There was no hydraulic pressure on the clamps of the starboard forward
pod tank. Somewhere in the twisted damaged hull the hydraulic line must
have sheared. Nicholas and one of the seamen had to work the emergency
release, pumping it open slowly and laboriously by hand.

Still it would not release, the hull was distorted, the clamp jaws out
of alignment.

‘
Pull
,’
Nicholas commanded Jules in desperation.
‘
Pull all together.
’
The
storm front was five miles away, and already he could hear the deadly
whisper of the wind, and a cold puff touched Nicholas uplifted face.

The sea boiled under Sea Witch's counter, spewing out in a swift white
wake as Jules brought in both engines.
The tow-cable came up hard and straight; for half a minute nothing gave,
nothing moved - except the wall of racing grey cloud bearing down upon
them.

Then, with a resounding metallic clang, the clamps slipped and the tank
slid ponderously out of its dock in Golden Dawn's hull - and as it came
free, so the hull, held together until that moment by the tank
’
s'bulk and
buoyancy, began to collapse.

The catwalk on which Nicholas stood began to twist and tilt so that he
had to grab for a handhold, and he stood frozen in horrified fascination
as he watched Golden Dawn
begin the final break-up.

The whole tank deck, now only a gutted skeleton, began to bend at its
weakened centre, began to hinge like an enormous pair of nutcrackers -
and caught between the jaws of the nutcracker was the starboard after
pod tank. It was a nut the size of Chartres Cathedral, with a soft
liquid centre, a
nd a shell as thin as the span o
f a man's hand.

Nicholas broke into a lurching, blundering run down the twisting,
tilting catwalk, calling urgently into the radio as he went.

‘
Shear!
’
he shouted to the seamen almost half a mile away across that
undulating plane of tortured steel.
‘
Shear the tandem tow!
’

For the two starboard pod tanks were linked by the heavy chain of the
tandem, and the forward tank was linked to Sea Witch by the main
tow-cable. So Sea Witch and the doomed Golden Dawn were coupled
inexorably, unless they could cut the two tanks apart and let Sea Witch
escape with the forward tank which she had just undocked.

The shear control was in the control box halfway back along the tank
deck, and at that moment the nearest sea
man
was two hundred yards
from it.

Nicholas could see him staggering wildly back along the twisting,
juddering catwalk. Clearly he realized the danger, but his haste was
fatal, for as he jumped from the catwalk, the deck opened under him,
gaping open like the jaws of a steel monster and the seaman fell
through, waist deep, into the opening between two moving plates, then as
he squirmed feebly, the next lurch of the ship's hull closed the plates,
sliding them across each other like the blades of a pair of scissors.

The man shrieked once and a wave burst over the deck, smothering his
mutilated body in cold, green water.
W
hen it poured back over the ship
’
s side there was no sign of the man, the deck was washed glisteningly
clean.

Nicholas reached the same point in the deck, judged the gaping and
closing movement of the steel plate and the next rush of sea coming on
board, before he leapt across the deadly gap.

He reached the control box, and slid back the hatch, pressing himself
into the tiny steel cubicle as he unlocked the red lid that housed the
shear button. He hit the button with the heel of his hand.

The four heavy chains of the tandem tow lay between the electrodes of
the shear mechanism. With a gross surge of power from the ship's
generators and a flash of blue electric flame, the thick steel links
sheared as cleanly as cheese under the cutting wire - and, half a mile
away, Sea Witch felt the release and pounded ahead under the full thrust
of her propellers taking with her the forward starboard tank still held
on main tow.

Nicholas paused in the opening of the control cubicle, hanging on to the
sill for support and he stared down at the single remaining tank, still
caught inextricably in the tangled moving forest of Golden Dawn's
twisting, contorting hull. It was as though an invisible giant had
taken the Eiffel Tower at each end and was bending it across his knee.

Suddenly there was a sharp chemical stink in the air, and Nicholas
gagged on it. The stink of crude petroleum oil gushing from the
ruptured tank.

‘
Nicholas! Nicholas!
’
The radio set slung over his shoulder squawked,
and he lifted it to his lips without taking his eyes from the Golden
Dawn's terrible death throes.

‘
Go ahead, Jules.
’

‘
Nicholas, I am turning to pick you up.
’

‘
You can't
turn, not with that tow.
’