by Wilbur Smith
“He’ll come back” whispered Tracey. “He won’t let it happen.” “I wouldn’t bet on that - if I were you,” said Johnny.
Benedict reached Kingfisher’s rail and clung to it. He looked out to where Wild Goose bobbed and hung on the swells. He saw Hugo’s face as a white blob behind the wheelhouse window, but as the little trawler began closing in for the pick-up Benedict waved it away. He glanced at his watch again, then looked back anxiously at the bridge.
The long minutes dragged by. Where the hell was the Italian?
Benedict could not leave him - not while he still had that diamond; not while he could stop the dredge pumps and release the prisoners locked below.
Again Benedict checked his watch, twelve minutes since he had set the time pencils. He must go back and find Caporetti. He started back along the rail, and at that moment Sergio appeared on the wing of the bridge. He shouted a question at Benedict that was lost in the wind.
“Come on!” Frantically Benedict beckoned to him. “Come on!
Hurry!” With another last look about the bridge, Sergio ran to the ladder and climbed down to deck level.
“Where my boys?” he shouted at Benedict. “Why nobody at the con?
What you do with them?”
“They are all right,” Benedict assured him. He had turned to the rail and was signalling Wild Goose to come alongside.
“Where they?” Sergio demanded. “Where my boys?”
“I sent them to-“
Benedict’s reply was cut off as Kingfisher’s deck jarred under their feet. The explosion was a dull concussion in her belly, and Sergio’s jaw hung open.
Benedict backed away from him along the rail.
“Filth!” Sergio’s jaw snapped closed, his whole body appeared to swell with anger.
“You kill them, dirty pig. You kill my boys. You kill Johnny -
the girl.”
“Keep away from me.” Benedict braced himself against the rail, leaving both hands free to use the gun.
Not even Sergio would advance into the deadly blank eyes of those muzzles. He paused uncertainly.
“I’ll blow your guts all over the deck,” Benedict warned him, and his forefinger was hooked around the trigger.
They stared at each other, and the wind fluttered their hair and tore at their clothing.
“Give me those diamonds,” Benedict commanded, and when Sergio stood unmoving, he went on urgently, “Don’t be a hero, Caporetti. I
can gun you down and take them anyway. Give them to me - and our deal is still on. You’ll come with us. I’ll get you out of here. I swear it.” Sergio’s expression of outrage faded. A moment longer he hesitated.
“Come on, Caporetti. We haven’t got much time.” It may have been his imagination, but to Benedict it seemed that Kingfisher’s action in the water had altered, she was sluggish to meet the swells and her roll was more pronounced.
“Okay,” said Sergio, and began unbuttoning his jacket.
“You win. I give you.” Benedict relaxed with relief, and Sergio thrust his hand into his jacket and stepped towards him. He grasped the canvas bag by its neck, and brought it out held like a cosh.
Sergio was close to him, too close for Benedict to swing the shotgun on to him. Sergio’s expression became savage, his intentions blazed in his dark eyes as he lifted the canvas bag and poised himself to deliver a blow at Benedict’s head, but he had not reckoned with the extraordinary reflexes of the natural athlete he was facing.
As Sergio launched the blow, Benedict rolled his shoulders and head away from it, lifting the butt of the shotgun as a guard.
Sergio’s wrist struck the seasoned walnut, and he grunted with the pain. His fingers opened nervelessly and the canvas bag flew from his grip, glanced off Benedict’s temple and flew on down the deck, sliding to stop against one of the compressed air tanks thirty feet away.
Benedict danced back, dropping the barrels of the shotgun until
Sergio looked into the muzzles.
“Hold it, you bastard, Benedict snarled at him. “You’ve made your choice. Now let’s see what your guts look like.” Sergio was hugging his injured wrist to his belly, crouching over it. Benedict was backing away to where the bag lay against the tank. His face was flushed and hectic with anger, but he kept darting side glances at the canvas bag.
At that moment Kingfisher took another wave over her bows, and the water came swooshin down the deck, picking up the bag and washing it towards the scuppers.
“Look out!” Sergio shouted. “The bag! It’s going.” Benedict lunged for it, sprawling full length. With his free hand he grabbed the sodden canvas as it was disappearing over the side. But he was thirty feet away from Sergio, and he still held the shotgun in his other fist. Sergio could not hope to reach him without getting both charges of buckshot in his belly.
Instead Sergio spun round and sprinted back along the deck towards the bridge.
Benedict was on his knees frantically stuffing the bag of diamonds into the side pocket of his jacket and shouting after Sergio.
“Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot!”
“ Sergio did not look back nor check his run, and Benedict had the bag in his pocket and now both hands were free.
He lifted the shotgun, and tried to balance himself against
Kingfisher’s wallowing motion as he aimed.
At the shot, Sergio stumbled slightly but kept on running. He reached the ladder and went up it.
Again Benedict aimed, and the shotgun clapped dully in the wind.
This time a spasm of pain shuddered through Sergio’s big body, and he froze on the ladder.
Benedict fumbled in his pocket for fresh shells, but before he could reload Sergio had begun climbing again. Benedict broke the gun and thrust the shells into the breech. He snapped the gun closed and looked up just as Sergio disappeared through the storm doors - and the two shots that Benedict loosed after him merely pockmarked the paintwork and starred the glass of the wheelhouse.
The stupid bastard.” Hugo watched from the wheelhouse of Wild
Goose. “He’s gone berserk.” Hugo had heard the explosion and seen the shooting.
“Fifteen years is enough - but not the rope as well.” He swung the wheel and Wild Goose sheered in towards Kingfisher’s side. Peering through the spray and salt, smattered windows, he saw Benedict drag himself to his feet and start after Sergio along the deck.
Hugo snatched the electric loudhailer from its bracket and pulled open the side window of the wheelhouse, holding the hailer to his lips.
“Hey! You stupid bastard, have you gone mad? What the hell you doing?” Benedict glanced down at the trawler, then ignored it to give all his attention to reloading the gun. He kept going back along the deck, following Sergio to finish him off.
“You’ll get us all strung up, you fool,” Hugo called through the loudhailer. “Leave him. Let’s get out of here.” Benedict kept scrambling and slipping towards Kingfisher’s bridge.
“I’m leaving - now! Do you hear me? You can stew in your own pot. I’m getting out.” Benedict checked and looked down at the trawler. He shouted and pointed at the bridge. Hugo caught one word:
“Diamonds.”
“All right, friend! Do what you like - I’ll see you around,” Hugo hailed, and hit the trawler’s throttle wide open. The roar of the diesels and the churning of her propeller convinced
Benedict.
“Hugo! Wait! Wait for me, I’m coming.” He scampered back to the ladder and started down it.
Hugo throttled back and brought Wild Goose in neatly under the ladder.
Jump!” he shouted through the hailer, and obediently Benedict jumped to hit the foredeck heavily. The shotgun flew from his hands to fall into the water alongside. Benedict cast one longing glance after the gun, then crawled to his feet and limped back to the wheelhouse.
Already Wild Goose was plunging away into the wind, but as
Benedict entered the wheelhouse Hugo turned on him with his
pink albino face set in a snarl of rage.
“What the hell have you done, you bastard? You lied to me. What was that explosion?”
“Explosion - I don’t know. What explosion?” Hugo hit him a stinging open-handed blow across the cheek.
“We agreed no killing - and you put us all on the spot.” Hugo’s attention was focused completely on Benedict who had backed into the furthest corner of the wheelhouse. He massaged the dark red finger marks that stained his cheek.
“You set scuttling charges in Kingfisher - didn’t you, you dirty son of a bitch. God, I hate to think what you’ve done with Lance and the girl.” Outside the storm was nearing its climax. A rain squall swept down on Wild Goose - a sure sign that the wind must soon drop.
Automatically Hugo switched on the rotating wipers to clear the rain from the screen, as he continued to harangue Benedict.
“I saw you trying to murder the Italian. Christ! What for?
He’s one of us! Am I next on Your list?”
“He had the diamonds,” mumbled Benedict. “I was trying to get them from him.” And Hugo’s expression changed; he turned away from the wheel and stared at
Benedict.
“You haven’t got the diamonds? Is that what you’re saying?” His tone was almost hurt.
“I tried - he wouldn’t-” And Hugo left the wheel and was across the wheelhouse like a white leopard. He grabbed the front of
Benedict’s coat, and screamed into his face.
“You left the diamonds! You stick my head in a noose and I get nothing out of it.” He was trembling with rage and his pale eyes bulged from their sockets.
Looking into those eyes Benedict realized his own danger. In the time it had taken him to leave Kingfisher’s deck and reach the wheelhouse of the trawler he had decided to let Hugo think that Sergio still had the diamonds. Squeamish as Hugo appeared to be about drowning Johnny and Tracey, despite his repeated demands for
“No killing’, Benedict knew intuitively that Hugo had no intention of splitting a million pounds” worth of diamonds with him.
Once Hugo was certain that Benedict had the stones on board, Benedict knew there was no chance that he would reach South America alive.
The crossing might take weeks, the crew of the trawler were in
Hugo’s pay and loyal only to him. Benedict must sleep, and they would take him in the night.
On the other hand, of course, Benedict had no intention of splitting a million pounds” worth of diamonds with Hugo Kramer. He let his voice whine as he cringed in Hugo’s grip.
“I tried. Sergio had them. He wouldn’t - that’s why I shot him.”
Hugo drew back his hand to slap Benedict again.
Benedict twisted slightly, and drove his knee into Hugo’s crutch, sending him staggering back across the wheelhouse, clutching himself between the legs and whimpering with the pain.
“Right, Kramer,” Benedict spoke softly. “That’s a little lesson for you. Behave yourself, and you’ll get your fifty grand on the other side of the Atlantic.” They stared at each other. Hugo Kramer weak and pale with agony, Benedict standing tall and arrogant again.
“Treat me gently, Kramer. I’m your meal-ticket. Remember it.”
Hugo gaped at him. The positions had reversed so swiftly.
He pulled himself upright and his voice was thick with agony, but humble.
“I’m sorry, Mr. van der Byl, I lost my temper. It’s been a hell of a-“
“Skipper! Ahead!” The warning was shouted by the coloured crewman, Hansie.
Hugo stumbled to the untended wheel, and peered out into t he storm.
Wild Goose was shooting down another slope of green water, and just ahead of her bows Hugo saw one of the huge yellow buoys that
Kingfisher had laid down and then abandoned. It was held captive in the trough of the swells by the anchor cable. The cable was drawn as tight as a rod of steel across the trawler’s bows, lifted just above the surface of the water; shivering drops of water flew from it under the tension of the buoy’s drag.
“Oh God!” Hugo spun the wheel and threw Wild Goose’s engine into reverse but she was racing down the swell, and her speed was unchecked as the cable scraped harshly along her keel.
Then came the harsh banging and clattering of the drive shaft as the cable fouled the propeller - followed by a crack as the shaft snapped. Wild Goose’s engine screamed into overrev as the load was lifted from it.
Hugo shut the throttle, and there was silence in the wheelhouse.
Wild Goose swung beam on to the seas which came boiling in over her deck. Without her propeller she was transformed from a husky little sea creature to a piece of driftwood at the mercy of each current and the whim of the wind.
Hugo’s head swung slowly until he was looking downwind to where the massive shapes of Thunderbolt and Suicide just showed through the rain squall.
Cover your ears - tight!” Johnny Lance pressed Tracey against the bulkhead as far from the cyclone room as they could get. “There are twenty-five pounds of plastique in there - it will blow like a volcano.
He will have used short fuse, fourteen minutes.“We won’t have long to wait.” Johnny set Tracey’s shoulders squarely against the steel plating and crouched over her - trying to shield her with his own body.
They stared into each other’s eyes, teeth clenched, the heels of their palms jammed hard over their ears and they cowered away from the blast that must come.
The minutes passed, the longest minutes of Tracey’s life.
She could not have borne them without screaming hysteria except for that big hard body covering her. - even with it she felt her fear mounting steadily during the molasses drip of time.
Suddenly the air lunged at her, driving the breath from her lungs.
Johnny was thrown heavily against her. The blast sucked at her eardrums, and burst in her head so that bright lights flashed across her vision and she felt the steel plates heave under her shoulders.
Then her head cleared, and although her eardrums buzzed and sang, she found with a leaping relief that she was still alive.
She reached out for Johnny, but he was gone. In panic she groped, then opened her eyes. He was lurching down the long conveyor room, and when he reached the locked door at the far end he pressed his face to the peephole.
The fumes of the explosion still filled the cyclone room, a swirling bluish fog, but through them Johnny could make out the shambles that was the aftermath.
The huge cyclone had been torn from its mountings, and now sagged against the far bulkhead - crushed. It was worth only a single glance before Johnny froze into rigidity at the true horror.
The gravel pipe had been severed cleanly just below its juncture with the upper deck. It protruded for six feet, but now the force of the jet through it was flicking and whipping it about as though it were not steel but a rubber garden hose.
The jet was a solid eighteen-inch column, a pillar of brown mud and yellow gravel and sea water that beat against the steel plates of the hull with a hollow drumming roar.
In the few seconds since the explosion the cyclone room was already half-filled with a slimy shifting porridge that rushed from wall to wall with the movement of the ship. It was like some monstrous jelly fish which each second gathered weight and strength.
Tracey reached Johnny’s side and he placed his arm around her shoulders. She looked through the armoured glass and he felt her body stiffen.
At that moment the yellow monster spread over the window, obscuring it completely. Johnny felt the first straining of the steel plates under his hands. They fluttered and bulged, then began to protest aloud at the intolerable pressure. A seam started, and a fine jet of filthy water hissed from the gap and soaked icily through
Johnny’s jersey.
“Get back.“Johnny dragged Tracey away from the squeaking, groaning bulkhead. Back along the narrow conveyor room they stumbled, moving with difficulty for the deck beneath their feet was slanting as Kingf
isher began to lean under the increasing weight in her belly.
Still holding Tracey, he reached the locked door and resisted the futile desire to attack it with his bare hands.
Instead he forced his brain to work, tried to anticipate the sequence of events that would lead to the final destruction of
Kingfisher - and all those aboard her.
Benedict had left the other entrance to the cyclone room wide open. Already that viscous mass of mud and water must be spreading rapidly through the lower levels of the hull, following always the avenue of least resistance finding the weak spots and bursting through them.
If the walls of the conveyor room held against the pressure, the rest of the hull would be filled and they would be enfolded in the tentacles of that great yellow monster a small bubble of air trapped within it and taken down with it when it returned to the depths from which it had come.
Would the bulkheads of the conveyor room hold? The answer came almost immediately in the squeal of metal against metal, and the crackle of springing rivets.
The monster had found the weak spot, the aperture through the drying furnace into the conveyor, ripping away the fragile baffles, bursting through the furnace in a cloud of Steam, it gushed into the conveyor room bringing with it the sewage stench of deep-sea mud.
Kingfisher made another sluggish roll, so different from her usual spry action, and the mud came racing down the tunnel in a solid knee-high wall.
It slammed both of them back against the steel door with a shocking strength, and the feel of it was cold and loathsome as something long dead and putrefied.
Kingfisher rolled back and the mud slithered away, bunched itself against the far bulkhead then charged at them again.
Waist-deep it struck them, and tried to suck them back with the next roll.
Tracey was screaming now, nerves and muscles reaching their breaking-point. She was clinging to Johnny, coated to the waist in stinking ooze, her eyes and mouth wide open in terror as she watched the mud building up for its next assault.
Johnny groped for some hold to anchor them. They must keep on their feet to survive that next rush of mud. He found the locking handle of the door and braced himself against it, holding Tracey with all his strength.