Dirk Pitt18-Black Wind

by Cussler, Clive

  chief engineer grunted. At his feet were three uneven-looking wooden

  poles, roughly ten feet in length. Each was constructed of three

  separate pieces of timber, crudely indented at either end with a hammer

  and screwdriver and fitted together in a notched tongue-and-groove

  fashion. Metal sheeting cannibalized from a test rack was hammered

  around the joints for stability and finished off in a wrapped layer of

  the handyman's favored duct tape.

  As Mcintosh sifted through the remaining pieces of scrap wood, a sudden

  rushing noise drifted up from the bowels of the ship. In a few

  minutes, the sound doubled in intensity, resembling the rumbling waters

  of a turbulent stream. Mcintosh stood slowly and addressed the captain

  in a somber, matter-of-fact voice.

  "Sir, they've opened the sea cocks. They mean to sink her."

  Several unseen voices gasped in horror at Mcintosh's words and numerous

  cries of "No!" echoed through the hold. Morgan ignored them all.

  "Looks like we'll have to make do with three spars," the captain

  replied calmly. "I need seven men on each pole. Let's get them up

  now."

  A rush of men moved forward and grabbed the spars as the first drops of

  seawater began trickling into the hold through a half-dozen small bilge

  drains mounted flush on the hold's deck. Within minutes, they were

  sloshing around in ankle-deep water as the men positioned the ends of

  the spars against the forward corner of the hatch, next to the entry

  ladder. On the top step, a man stood with a two-foot-high triangular

  block of timber, his job to insert it under the open hatch lid and keep

  it wedged open.

  "Ready ... lift!" Morgan shouted.

  In unison, the three teams of men pressed the tips of their spars

  against the hatch cover eight feet over their heads and pushed up with

  all their might. To everyone's surprise, the hatch cover burst open

  several feet, letting in a spray of muted light from the deck lights,

  before its weight shifted and the heavy cover slammed back down.

  The forlorn man at the top of the ladder froze an instant before trying

  to insert the block wedge and was too late. The hatch crashed down

  about his head as he tried to shove the wedge into the open gap, the

  lip nearly taking off the fingers of his right hand. The shaken man

  took a deep breath, then nodded at Morgan that he was okay to try

  again.

  "All right, let's give it another try," Morgan commanded as water now

  swirled about his knees, the salt water stinging his open leg wound.

  "One ... two ... three!"

  A loud crack ripped through the hold as the top joint on one of the

  spars broke clean in two, the loose section falling into the water with

  a splash. Mcintosh waded over and examined the damaged end piece,

  finding the grooved joint had broken completely off.

  "Not good, sir," he reported. "Will take some time to repair." "Do

  what you can," Morgan barked. "Let's continue with two spars ...

  Heave!"

  The remaining men shoved at their spars but it was a lost cause. There

  was no way of getting enough manpower behind the two spars to apply

  enough leverage. Additional men crowded in to try and help, but

  there was simply not enough room to put more hands on the timbers and

  push. Twice the men strained with the additional force and were able

  to pry the hatch open a few inches, but it was not nearly enough to

  block it so that a man could escape. The surging seawater was now up

  to Morgan's waist and he could see in the faces of the crew that the

  terror of drowning was about to incite panic in the hold.

  "One more try, men," he urged on while somewhere in the back of his own

  mind he morbidly calculated the estimated duration it took for a man to

  drown.

  With adrenaline pumping, the men jammed the two spars against the hatch

  cover one last time with all their might. This time, they seemed to

  find their strength and the lid began to creak up. But just as they

  pressed their leverage, another crack echoed through the hold. A

  second spar splintered at the joint and the hatch cover clanged back

  shut. Somewhere in a darkened corner a voice blurted out, "That's it,

  we're finished."

  It was enough for a trembling cook standing near the gasoline drums to

  lose his nerve.

  "I can't swim, I can't swim!" he cried out as the water level inched

  up his chest.

  In a frightened panic, he grabbed onto the iron rungs that ran to the

  vent hatch and scurried up into the shaft. Reaching the top rung in

  darkness, his frenzied terror continued and he began pounding on the

  small round hatch cover with his fists, crying to be let out. In a

  state of complete shock, he suddenly felt the hatch give way under his

  hands and drift open. With his heart pounding in disbelief, he

  squirmed through the hatch and stood on the deck beside the moon pool

  dumbfounded. It took nearly a full minute before his racing pulse

  began to slow and he regained composure over his senses. Realizing

  that he wasn't going to die just yet, he scrambled back into the hatch

  and down the ladder a few steps, then shouted into the hold at the top

  of his lungs.

  "The hatch is open! The hatch is open! This way, everybody!"

  Like an army of angry fire ants, the panicked crew swarmed to the

  ladder, crushing one another to escape. By now, most of the crew were

  treading water or clinging to the bulkheads, while a few drifted about

  the hold clinging to the now-floating rubber Zodiac. The small ROV

  also drifted freely, casting its bright lights in a surreal glow about

  the hold.

  "Ladies first," Morgan shouted, deferring to the traditional rule of

  the sea.

  Ryan, who stood near the ladder on his toes chin high to the water,

  tried to restore order amid the chaos.

  "You heard the captain. Ladies only. Back off, you," he growled at a

  pair of male biologists clamoring to get up the ladder. As the female

  crew members rapidly scurried up the vent and out the hatch, Ryan

  succeeded in maintaining some semblance of order with the dozens

  waiting their turn. Across the hold, Morgan could see that the water

  level was rising too fast. There was no way everyone was going to get

  out in time, assuming the ship didn't suddenly sink from under their

  feet to begin with.

  "Ryan, get up that ladder. See if you can get the main hatch off,"

  Morgan ordered.

  Ryan didn't take time to answer, following a ship's nurse up the ladder

  as fast as his legs would carry him. Squirming through the hatch and

  falling to the deck, he was shocked at what his eyes beheld. In the

  early dawn light, he could see that the Sea Rover was sinking fast by the

  stern. Seawater was already washing over the sternpost, while the

  bow poked up toward the sky at better than a twenty-degree angle.

  Scrambling to his feet, he saw a young assistant communications officer

  helping others move to a higher level on the ship.

  "Melissa, get to the radio room and issue a Mayday," he shouted,

  running past her.

  He
climbed a short stairwell to the rear hatch, his eye catching the

  sparkle of a light in the far distance to the north, the cable ship

  heading off over the horizon. Jumping up onto the hatch, he allowed

  himself a second to let out a brief sigh of relief. The rising waters

  off the stern had not yet lapped over the edge of the hatch nor had

  inundated the aft crane. In their haste, the commandos had even left

  the crane's hook-and-boom assembly attached to the hatch.

  Sprinting to the crane, he hopped into the cab and fired up its diesel

  engines, immediately shoving the hand controls to raise the boom. With

  unbearable slowness, the boom gradually rose into the air, lifting the

  massive hatch cover up with it. Ryan wasted no time rotating the boom

  a few feet to starboard before jumping out of the cab, leaving the

  hatch cover dangling in the air.

  Rushing to the edge of the hold, he found more than thirty men bobbing

  in the water fighting for their lives. The water level had already

  risen to within a foot of the hatch. Another two minutes, he figured,

  and the men would have all drowned. Reaching his arms in, he began

  tugging and grabbing at the men one by one, yanking them up and out of

  the hold. With those on deck helping, Ryan had every man out within a

  matter of seconds. He ensured that he personally eased the final man

  out of the water, Captain Morgan.

  "Nice work, Tim," the captain winced as he wobbled to his feet.

  "Sorry that I didn't personally check the vent hatch in the first

  place, sir. We could have gotten everyone out sooner had we known it

  was actually unlocked."

  "But it wasn't. Don't you get it? It was Dirk who unlocked it. He

  knocked on the door for us but we forgot to answer."

  A look of enlightenment crossed Ryan's face. "Thank God for him

  and Summer, the poor devils. But I'm afraid we're not out of the woods

  yet, sir. She's going down fast."

  "Spread the word to abandon ship. Let's get some lifeboats in the

  water, pronto," Morgan replied, stumbling up the inclining deck toward

  the bow. "I'll see about sending a distress."

  As if on cue, Melissa the communications officer came scrambling across

  the deck half out of breath.

  "Sir," she gasped, "they've shot up the communications system ... and

  satellite equipment. There's no way to send a Mayday."

  "All right," Morgan replied without surprise. "We'll deploy our

  emergency beacons and wait for someone to come looking for us. Report

  to your lifeboat. Let's get everybody off this ship now."

  While heading to assist with the lifeboats, Ryan now noticed that the

  Starfish was missing. Slipping into the auxiliary lab, he found that

  the recovered bomb canisters had been neatly removed, dissolving any

  doubts about the reason for the assault.

  After their ordeal in the storage hold, an unusual calmness fell over

  the crew as they abandoned ship. Quietly and in composed order, the

  men and women quickly made their way to their respective lifeboat

  stations, glad to have a second chance at life despite the fact their

  ship was sinking beneath their feet. The advancing water was

  proceeding rapidly up the deck and two lifeboats closest to the stern

  were already flooded before they could be released from their davits.

  The assigned crew was quickly dispersed to other boats, which were

  being launched to the water in a torrid frenzy.

  Morgan hobbled up the sloping deck, which was now inclined at a

  thirty-degree angle, till reaching the captain's boat, which sat loaded

  and waiting. Morgan stopped and surveyed the ship's decks a last time,

  like a gambler who had bet, and lost, the farm. The ship was creaking

  and groaning as the weight of the salt water filling its lower

  compartments tugged at the vessel's structural integrity. An aura of

  sadness enveloped the research ship, as if it knew that it was too soon

  for it to be cast to the waves.

  At last confident that all the crew were safely away, Morgan threw a

  sharp salute to his vessel, then stepped into the lifeboat, the last

  man off. The boat was quickly winched down to the rolling sea and

  motored away from the stricken ship. The sun had just crept over the

  horizon and cast a golden beam on the research ship as it struggled for

  its last moments. Morgan's lifeboat was just a few yards away from the

  Sea Rover when her bow suddenly rose sharply toward the sky, then the

  turquoise ship slipped gracefully into the sea stern first amid a

  boiling hiss of bubbles.

  As the ship slipped from view, its traumatized crew was overcome by a

  solitary sensation: silence.

  Something's rotten in Denmark." Summer ignored her brother's words and

  held a small bowl of fish stew up to her nose. After uninterrupted

  confinement for most of the day, the heavy door of their cabin had

  burst open and a galley cook wearing a white apron entered with a tray

  containing the stew, some rice, and a pot of tea. An armed guard

  watched menacingly from the hallway as the food was set down and the

  nervous cook quickly left without saying a word. Summer was famished

  and eagerly surveyed the food as the door was bolted back shut from the

  outside.

  Taking a deep whiff of the fish stew, she wrinkled her nose.

  "I think there's a few things rotten around here as well," she said.

  Moving on to the rice, she drove a pair of chopsticks into the bowl and

  began munching on the steamed grains. At last bringing relief to her

  hunger pangs, she turned her attention back to Dirk, who sat gazing out

  the porthole window.

  "Aside from our crummy lower-berth cabin, what's bugging you now?" she

  asked.

  "Don't quote me on this, but I don't think we're headed to Japan."

  "How can you tell?" Summer asked, scooping a mound of rice into ] her

  mouth.

  "I've been observing the sun and the shadows cast off the ship. We

  should be heading north-northeast if we were traveling to Japan, but

  it appears to me that our course heading is more to the northwest."

  "That's a fine line to distinguish with the naked eye."

  "Agreed. But I just call 'em as I see 'em. If we pull into Nagasaki,!

  then just send me back to celestial navigation school."

  "That would mean we're heading toward the Yellow Sea," she replied,

  picturing an imaginary map of the region in her head. "Do you think

  we're sailing to China?"

  "Could be. There's certainly no love lost between China and Japan.

  Perhaps the Japanese Red Army has a base of operations in China. That

  might explain the lack of success the authorities have had in tracking

  down any suspects in Japan."

  "Possibly. But they'd have to be operating with state knowledge or

  sponsorship, and I would hope they'd think twice before sinking an

  American research vessel."

  "True. Then again, there is another possibility."

  Summer nodded, waiting for Dirk to continue.

  "The two Japanese hoods who shot up my Chrysler. A forensics doctor at

  the county morgue thought that the men looked Korean."

  Summer finished eating the rice and set down the bo
wl and chopsticks.

  "Korea?" she asked, her brow furrowing.

  "Korea."

  Ed Coyle's eyes had long since grown weary of scanning the flat gray

  sea for something out of the ordinary. He nearly didn't trust his eyes

  when something finally tugged at the corner of his vision. Focusing

  toward the horizon, he just barely made out a small light in the sky

  dragging a wispy white tail. It was exactly what the copilot of the

  Lockheed HC-130 Hercules search-and-rescue plane had been hoping to

  see.

  "Charlie, I've got a flare at two o'clock," Coyle said into his

  micro-phoned headset with the smooth voice of an ESPN sportscaster.

  Instinctively, he pointed a gloved hand at a spot on the windshield

  where he'd seen the white burst.

  "I got her," Major Charles Wight replied with a slight drawl while

  peering out the cockpit. A lanky Texan with a cucumber-cool demeanor,

  the HC-130's pilot gently banked the aircraft toward the fading smoke

  stream and slightiy reduced airspeed.

  Six hours after departing Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, the

  search-and-rescue pilots had started wondering whether their mission

  was a wild-goose chase. Now they crept to the edge of their seats,

  wondering what they would find in the waters beneath them. A grouping

  of white dots slowly appeared on the distant horizon, gradually growing

  larger as the aircraft approached.

  "Looks like we've got us some lifeboats," Wight stated as the specks

  grew into distinguishable shapes.