Path of the Storm

by Douglas Reeman

  Kroner watched the captain’s hands moving the dividers deftly across the stained chart and said in a strangled voice, ‘Bad, sir?’

  Gunnar spoke half to himself. ‘It’s situated within fifty miles of latitude twenty north and longitude one hundred and twenty-two east, moving north-west.’ He rolled the parallel rulers across the chart and marked off the calculations against the ship’s track. ‘It’s coming right up the Luzon Strait.’ He said sharply, ‘How is she holding, Paice?’

  Paice swallowed hard. ‘Wheel feels as if it’s made of glue, Captain, but I’m on course, three five zero!’

  Not for long, thought Gunnar grimly. The sea was pushing ahead of the storm centre, forcing its combined might across hundreds of miles of open water to hit the only moving object, the starboard quarter of the Hibiscus. He tapped his teeth with the pencil and stared at the chart. ‘A typhoon, Kroner, is a nasty thing.’

  Kroner stared at him as if he had expected some kind of miracle. ‘How fast is it moving, do you think?’

  Gunnar winced as another roller piled itself against the frail hull plates and made the deck cant at thirty degrees. Even at full speed the ship was only just keeping steerage way with little in reserve. If sea and wind ever matched the ship’s passage through the water, then the rudder would become so much useless weight. Two to three hundred miles a day mostly. But with the storm we’ve already had, it might be speeded up a bit.’

  His voice held neither fear nor hope, and Kroner’s face seemed to turn green as he stared at the maindeck. On the lee side the rail was almost hidden, and he could see a small, motionless group of oilskinned seamen clinging to a lifeline as they tried to put an extra lashing on the whaleboat.

  Gunnar said suddenly: ‘Keep a good lookout on the radar while you can. There may be some other unfortunate under way!’

  An extra big roller glided out of the mist of spray and rose leisurely above the starboard rail, but just as it appeared to be gathering itself for one more heave beneath the ship’s canting bilge keel it began to curve over and break.

  Gunnar sprang to the telegraph and jerked it viciously. The man who should have been awaiting his order was staring astern, his face full of fear like a mesmerised rabbit. ‘Rudder hard left! Hard left, Paice!’ Gunnar hung on as the mountain of water broke and fell across the fantail with the sound of an express train hitting a building. The port engine was already thrashing astern, but the ship began to slide, helpless on the edge of a trough which opened on her lee rail as if to swallow her whole.

  Paice clung to the wheel, his legs kicking for a foothold, his face only inches from the compass. A signalman fell spread-eagled, and was held against the port door like a pinned insect, his terrified face contorted with pain as a heavy locker tore itself from its lashings and crashed into his body.

  Paice yelled, ‘I can’t hold her, sir!’ He blinked at the compass. ‘Zero one zero! Christ, she’s goin’!’

  The deck was right over now, and Kroner seemed to be hanging at a forty-five-degree angle as he clung to an overhead lamp socket. The port wing of the bridge looked as if it was already touching the great mass of churning foam, and once when he looked down Kroner saw water actually spurting around the edges of the clamped door. ‘Christ!’ His voice broke in a whimper. ‘She’s going over!’

  Almost on her side, the stricken ship lay at the bottom of the giant trough, the whole world suddenly restricted to two great banks of shining black glass, above which the sky soared in long streaks of grey and silver. It was a world gone mad, of sudden silence as the wind passed over the small, hidden valley between the two careering rollers.

  Gunnar felt a pain in his ribs as he was pushed harder and harder against the telegraph. Somehow he managed to jerk a telephone from its hook, and wondered if Malinski was able to reach his receiver. ‘This is the captain!’ Gunnar was still shouting, his voice suddenly loud in the tomblike stillness of the listing wheelhouse. ‘I’m going to turn her!’ He paused, and thought he heard the engineer coughing, like a man on the end of a coast-to-coast line instead of one hundred feet away. ‘When I give the signal I want flank speed on the starboard screw. Put it full astern, and damn your gauges!’

  ‘Okay, sir!’ Malinski sounded tired.

  ‘And the port screw ahead full!’ Gunnar stared hard at the silent, clinging figures around him. Every eye was on his mouth, like a lot of deaf-and-dumb madmen, he thought wildly. ‘Right, Kroner, let’s get at it!’ He heaved himself against the telegraphs and swung the brass handles with determination, between his clenched teeth he snapped: ‘Bring your rudder hard right, Paice. Now!’

  The ship began to vibrate and quiver as if the engines were going to tear loose from the shafts as rudder and screws fought against the ship’s sodden, helpless length. Gunnar blinked away the sweat from his eyes as he stared fixedly at the gyro repeater. It did not move. The ship still lay beam on, her keel coming up to meet that one final thrust which would roll her over completely.

  Paice said weakly, ‘She’s swinging, sir!’ He sounded as if he no longer believed what he saw. ‘Zero one five—zero two five!’

  The trough seemed to fall away and the wind screamed into them once more. It sounded murderous and final, and with something like despair Gunnar watched a gaunt, high-crowned breaker surge over the starboard waist and explode against the stack, so that the wire guys thrummed and whined and threatened to tear themselves loose from the deck. The tons of water roared down the sloped, dripping steel and cascaded the full length of the vessel before dissipating themselves across the lee rail. When once the ship rose wearily to meet the next onslaught, Gunnar saw that the gig’s davits were empty and the guardrail looked like a roll of twisted wire. But she was fighting back. She was trying with every ounce of her twenty-three years’ experience and stubborn pride to turn and face her natural enemy.

  Paice said: ‘Still comin’ right, sir! Zero nine five!’

  Gunnar pulled the telegraphsman from his position of nerveless stupor and thrust his cold hands on the brass levers. ‘Starboard engine stop!’ He reeled away from the telegraph, rubbing his ribs as he peered through the clear-view screen. The bows were visible once more. A thin wedge of streaming metal almost lost in a welter of whitecaps and black rollers. Once heading into the sea she could take a second breath, mark time until … ‘Bring her right to one two zero!’

  He had done it. Already the ship was riding more easily, although the deck aft of the bridge was washed down continuously by the enraged water as it broke back from the bows. But anything seemed better after that moment of horror in the great hungry trough.

  Paice was an experienced helmsman, and in his hands the Hibiscus swung on to her new course. Only then did Gunnar ease the engine speed, and felt a sensation of cold satisfaction for the ship as with one final roll she straightened her deck and pointed into the storm.

  He watched the bows climbing skywards and felt his stomach tense to receive the shock as the ship plunged across and down into the next roller. Every rivet and fitting was jerking and tearing in a chorus of insane pandemonium, but she was holding her own. He wiped his face and noticed that his hand was shaking. He looked at Paice. ‘Okay?’

  Paice did not look up but his voice was shaky with relief. ‘Hell, yes, Captain! Remind me to sail with you again!’

  Gunnar smiled tightly. He felt tense, yet in some strange way cleansed, as if the life-battle had been a personal test.

  The signalman pushed the heavy locker away from his legs and said sheepishly, ‘Thought I was a goner that time.’

  Kroner still looked sick and seemed to have difficulty in putting his words in order as he checked each phone and voice-pipe. Eventually he said dazedly: ‘All systems checked, sir. A few cuts and bruises. No one lost overboard.’ He shuddered violently as a big wave towered above the port wing and surged down the length of the ship to disappear astern in a welter of bursting spray. It must have been fifty feet high. ‘What do we do now, Captain?’

  G
unnar leaned on the chart table and stared at the pencilled lines. ‘Too early yet for guesses. We can’t head for Taiwan, that’s for sure.’ He felt the relief crowding in on him. Even the signalman knew it would be death to try to resume the earlier course. ‘We can ride it out here and hope to dodge the storm centre, or we can run for cover.’

  Kroner said weakly, ‘There’s no cover, sir.’ He peered helplessly at the empty chart. ‘Not a goddamned thing!’

  Gunnar shrugged. ‘You give up too easily.’

  A telephone whistled impatiently, and Gunnar heard Malinski’s voice in the far distance. ‘Everything okay up top, sir?’

  Gunnar half smiled. ‘Sorry, I should have told you. Thanks a lot for your help just then!’

  Malinski coughed. ‘Yen. I knew we were still afloat. The fish would have been in here otherwise!’ His tone became formal and businesslike. ‘I’d have asked to take on ballast, but,’ Gunnar could almost feel him shrugging, ‘I thought you might have other ideas, sir.’

  Gunnar frowned. How did Malinski guess? Did he really know himself what he was about to do? He felt as if he was waiting for something, a sign, an outside hint of what step he should take which would commit himself and the ship yet again. He said, ‘I’ll let you know.’ To the wheelhouse at large he added, ‘See if you can rustle some coffee.’

  He noted with surprise that several figures in lifejackets had been sheltering behind the wheelhouse, probably in the radio room. It was strange that even when a ship was sinking men climbed up to its highest point like rats before actually jumping. A pitiful, useless gesture.

  One of the seamen called, ‘I’ll lay that on the line, Cap’n!’ It was one of the men who had stared at Gunnar earlier with such casual indifference, even contempt, and now looked at him as if at some kind of super-god. For the first time since he had taken command he had been seen as the captain, he thought bitterly. Only when he was needed.

  Kroner was saying anxiously, ‘Call from the doctor, Captain.’

  Gunnar snatched the phone, his mouth suddenly hard. ‘Captain here?’

  Connell sounded like an old man. ‘Bella’s dying, sir. He’ll not live much longer now.’

  Gunnar stared round suddenly impatient and gripped by a new feeling of urgency. ‘Where’s the exec, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Here, sir.’ Maddox stepped over the coaming through the rear door and stood shaking himself like a big dog, his khakis black with spray and torn in several places. ‘I couldn’t come earlier, I was trying to fix the depth-charges and put them to “safe”.’

  Gunnar nodded briefly, then brushing past him said: ‘Hold her on the new course. I’m going to see Bella.’

  Maddox blinked vaguely around the disordered wheelhouse at the crumpled and weary figures and at the raging water ahead of the plunging bows. ‘Now, sir?’ But Gunnar had already gone, and Maddox staggered to the compass and peered at it with disbelief. ‘Jesus, we’ll be back in Payenhau if we keep this up!’

  He clung to the voice-pipes and watched the fast-moving wave-crests. Even when the Hibiscus had actually left the pier he had felt that it was not all over. Not then, not just like that. Something in Gunnar’s eyes should have warned him, and he felt the grip of fear and uncertainty rising again inside him as if to jeer at his optimism.

  14

  Traitors or Patriots?

  AS DARKNESS CLOSED in across the storm-lashed waters and the Hibiscus met one gigantic roller after another with tired resentment, so came the rain. At first it was hard to tell the heavy drops from the great streamers of spray which drifted back from the bows with each savage thrust, until with sudden exuberance the black-bellied clouds seemed to burst open and the rain fell in a steady, unremitting downpour. It flayed the upper deck and rattled across the bridge windows like lead shot, and when a luckless sailor was forced into the open it reached and held him in long, diagonal fingers which left him gasping for breath as if he had been physically beaten.

  Gunnar clung to the pipe-cot and listened to it sweeping across the deck above his head. In the steel cabinets the medicine bottles rattled and clicked, and several times he heard the unexplained thud of some heavy object falling from its lashings in the next compartment. And, above all, the wind kept up its demented wail, drowning all else and leaving the dulled and prone to the worst fears of human imagination.

  He tried to shut out the sounds of his ship’s private battle and stared fixedly at Bella’s twisted face. The skin looked transparent and shining with moisture, and his eyes, when they flickered occasionally beneath the long, dark lashes, gleamed like hot stones.

  Connell said: ‘I’ll give him another shot. He can’t stand much more of this!’ He looked around at the vibrating, staggering shell of steel as if to blame the ship for Bella’s predicament.

  Gunnar crouched on the edge of the bunk and studied the dying face with sudden determination. ‘Leave it!’

  Connell stared. ‘I can’t. He’ll feel the pain again if I wait!’

  But Gunnar did not seem to have heard. ‘I must let him speak. It’s important!’

  Even as the doctor opened his mouth in protest Bella began to writhe in his harness, his mouth contorted with the rising flood of agony. Gunnar reached out and held one of the yeoman’s hands. It was ice-cold, and the fingers seemed to move independently like trapped animals in his grasp. ‘What is it, Bella? What are you trying to say?’ Gunnar squeezed the hand, his eyes boring into the agonised face. ‘Come on, man! Tell me!’

  Connell caught Gunnar’s arm. ‘For heaven’s sake, sir! What do you think you’re doing?’

  The captain’s eyes flashed in the lamplight, cold and hard. ‘Leave this to me, will you?’

  Connell stood up, his hair flopping across his face and making him look wild and angry. ‘He’s my patient! I insist!’

  Gunnar shook his arm away. ‘Be quiet! He’s trying to speak!’

  Bella opened his eyes and stared up at the two faces with shocked disbelief. ‘My God, where am I?’ His white teeth clamped along his lip until the blood showed bright and cruel on his pale skin. ‘Christ, the pain! Oh, Jesus, the pain!’

  But Gunnar squeezed his hand again and said in a low, fierce voice: ‘It’s me, Bella, the captain. Try and tell me what happened. I must know!’

  Bella fell silent, and for one instant Gunnar thought he was dead. Then in a strange, childlike tone he said: ‘They said they would get her from Hong Kong for me. They promised! They wanted to know about the ship and what we were doing here!’ He broke off and his dark, feverish eyes filled with uncontrollable tears. ‘Forgive me. I didn’t know what I was doing!’ He opened his mouth wide and screamed, the sound echoing around the small room and deadening the storm with its agony and terror.

  Gunnar said quietly, ‘Just tell me what happened.’

  Connell was almost sobbing. ‘Please, Captain! Leave him alone!’

  A hypodermic glittered in his hand, but Gunnar pushed him roughly aside. ‘Be silent!’ Then to Bella he continued, ‘What did you tell them?’ The yeoman’s eyes were tightly closed and beneath the blanket his body was beginning to writhe as the pain closed in once more. Gunnar bit his lip and shut his mind to all else but Bella’s words. Even the awful stomach-wrenching stench must not deter him.

  Bella whispered faintly: ‘I told them we were sailing. But I brought forward the date a couple of days.’ He bared his teeth like a snared animal. ‘They—they promised they would bring her from Hong Kong.’ The tears flowed ceaselessly across his sunken cheeks. ‘They lied! She never even knew about it!’ His head lolled from side to side and Gunnar steadied it with his free hand. It was a nightmare, a scene from some forgotten torture chamber in which he was the chief tormentor. Yet he must not stop, not now.

  ‘Who are “they”? Who did this to you, Bella?’

  ‘I don’t know. Chinese. Only one I knew by sight. That was on the last day, when I said I would report them to you unless they promised to keep their bargain!’ He arched his back a
nd screamed again, his breath hot and inhuman across Gunnar’s face.

  Gunnar felt the man’s life ebbing away like water from a broken pitcher. ‘Who was he?’

  Bella lay very quiet and his face looked almost youthful again. ‘He called himself the leader. The man of steel!’ He broke down into a fit of choking sobs. ‘Don’t let him get at me again! Don’t let him touch me!’ He threw himself almost clear of the bunk in spite of the lashing, and a bright flurry of blood gushed from his mouth. Then he fell silent, his eyes fixed un-blinkingly on the hidden distance.

  Gunnar stood up and almost fell as the ship rolled violently beneath him.

  The doctor caught his sleeve. ‘You butcher! You mad, bloody butcher!’ He hung on as Gunnar pulled at his arm. ‘You couldn’t even let him die in peace!’

  Gunnar prised his fingers away. ‘It was important. I didn’t enjoy it.’ Then as Connell clawed his way across the heaving deck towards him he seized the doctor’s sweat-stained shirt and pulled him close like a rag doll. ‘Listen to me, Doc! Listen! I don’t give a damn what you think of me. You can report me when you get to base, do what the hell you like.’ He held the limp man away from him, his eyes boring into his sickened face. ‘You wanted adventure and excitement, right? You thought you’d come aboard my ship for a little experiment, didn’t you?’ He pushed the doctor down on to a cot. ‘You patronising, hypocritical bastard! All you can think about is yourself. The whole world might erupt about our ears, yet you think you know all the answers with the power of God in your damned hands!’

  He looked down at Bella’s still face and said in a more controlled voice: ‘He thought he knew the answers too. Traded a few bits of information for his own pathetic hopes of getting his girl from Hong Kong.’ Bitterly he added, ‘You can’t trade with those bastards!’ Then he reached down and pulled the blanket across Bella’s vacant stare. ‘Well, Bella, you did me a good turn without knowing it. You brought forward the sailing date, and I did sail early after all! If anything’s happening on the island it’ll be right now!’ He looked across at the crouched figure of the doctor. ‘Did you hear, Doc? Man of Steel he called himself!’ He bared his teeth as if tasting the words. ‘In Mongolian it would be translated as “Bolod”! Now do you understand?’