“Why do you say that?”
“It generally comes to us via a number of a private security vans. You know, the kind they use to transport gold and money around for banks. Only, Jimmy’s different, he likes to use a number of them. Each one is armored to the hilt. They all crisscross their routes, so that any would-be pursuers are at a loss as to which van holds his valuables. In the end, there are usually three vehicles that enter the hull. When this happens, the old man is always on site. He says that he doesn’t trust anyone, and he has used that specific team for years. He then locks it away and he may or may not retrieve it for months or even years later.”
“And you’ve never found out what it was?”
“No, never. What Jimmy doesn’t want you to know, you simply don’t ask.”
“So then, once he locks whatever it is in his safe, who keeps it secure?”
“No one. Like I said, ‘It’s secured in his private vault.”’
“What’s to stop someone from boarding the ship and breaking into it?”
“The vault can only be accessed from the outside, along the waterline when the ship is empty. Then, when the ship is loaded, the entrance is well below the waterline, making it next to impossible to access when the ship is moving.”
“What about a submarine or divers?” Tom asked.
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“The Hayward Bulk is a 500,000-ton super tanker. Do you have any idea what sort of pressure is created near the hull of this ship when it’s moving?”
Tom nodded his head. He had a fair idea where the Captain was going with this.
“Anything that comes close to the ship would be pulled into her wake and destroyed in a matter of seconds.”
“I get it.”
He really didn’t, though. Tom had known James Reilly for years and other than being well past suffering with megalomania, the man had always seemed quite pragmatic.
Why would he transfer something so valuable this way? He could easily afford to transport it by plane, or some other secure method. If it was illegal, what could possibly be so rewarding that he would risk everything he already has?
Tom already had an answer to his own question – more money.
“What if the ship were to sink?”
“We have a state-of-the-art lifeboat aboard. We’ll evacuate well before the Hayward Bulk reaches the reef, and you’ll find that we’ll be quite safe.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Tom paused. “What I mean is… from what you’ve described, whatever it is that James Reilly is transporting, it is worth more than your ship, and we all know that even the best crew and ship can’t stay afloat indefinitely without risk. So, what happens to his prized possessions?”
“They would still be quite safe.”
“Even if the ship sinks?”
“Yes. You see Tom, when Jimmy had his private vault built, he did so in such a way that no one could break into it, even with a bomb. Structurally, if the Hayward Bulk sank to the ocean floor and was completely destroyed, his private vault would still be left safe at the sea bottom. Then, if and when he locates his precious ship, the contents of the vault could be retrieved using a diving hatch, which was designed with an air tight compartment. You know, the kind they use in submarines?”
“Okay, so someone is trying to sink us so that they can steal whatever James Reilly has in his private vault.”
“But even if we did sink, it would take months to gain access to the vault. You see, the door is stronger than any bank vault, and would take months to break.”
“How does it open under normal operations?”
“He has a secret room onboard and there he maintains a digital fortress…”
“A what?” Tom asked.
“A digital fortress. Basically, it works like this. The system constantly transmits a code every thirty seconds to the vault door telling it that everything is okay. If it fails to do so, even once, or the ship stops moving, the door seals shut.”
“What if someone destroys the computer?”
“Then the digital fortress fails to transmit and the vault locks. So, you see, it would take a lot more than a terrorist act or accidental sinking of the ship, for someone to steal the contents of James Reilly’s vault.”
Tom considered this for a moment.
“Was there something particularly important about his last most recent deposit, do you think?”
“Could be. He never tells me, but he had additional security this last time, and he told me to make certain I arrived four days ahead of schedule, and then left without loading any other cargo until we reached Newcastle.”
“Oh shit!” Tom said. “The Hayward Bulk is going to the bottom. Whatever James Reilly has stored down there, it’s going to the bottom too, where no one can protect it in this weather.”
*
Tom watched as Captain Ambrose’s smile distorted into a look of surprise.
“Why in the world would he try to sink us?” The captain was serious when he concluded, “Cyclone Charlotte will do that for him soon enough.”
“How soon do you think?” Tom asked.
“Four hours, at most.”
“So, that’s it then. We’re all dead men?”
“No, there’s a lifeboat ready and waiting to evacuate us well before we reach the reef. I’ve already sent a man out there to prepare it.”
That man then came through the door, soaking wet from the harsh storm outside, his face displaying an emotion far more painful than that of profound fatigue.
“Is the lifeboat in order?”
“No…”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean that it’s missing.”
“Shit, where does it normally rest?” Tom said.
“Mid-ship, on the starboard side.”
“Show me.”
The man looked at the captain who nodded his approval, and Tom quickly followed him to where the lifeboat should have been.
The crewman stopped at the spot where the large lifeboat would normally have been secured to the deck, a spot where no wave, no matter how large, could possibly knock it overboard. The mooring chains were all intact and the electronic winch was hanging alongside the railing.
“This lifeboat wasn’t inadvertently washed overboard,” the crewman said. “Someone has intentionally scuttled it, and has murdered us all in the process.”
“Can you see it anywhere in the distance?” Tom said.
“No. Not that it would make much difference. It’s not as though we could possibly retrieve it now that it’s in the water.”
The two of them each tried to spot it with their binoculars, which proved to be relatively useless in the storm. It was almost impossible to see much past the deck railings, let alone try to pinpoint anything on the surface of the turbid sea.
Tom had good eyesight, but in this weather he struggled to locate the missing lifeboat in the violent seas.
Then his eyes caught sight of something.
It was dark, and at first he dismissed it as being impossible. His eyes lost it as the next wave crested, but he managed to spot it again.
This time, he was able to ascertain exactly what he was seeing.
And, what he saw reaffirmed his worst nightmare.
*
“A submarine?” Captain Ambrose sounded more shocked than anything else.
“Yes,” Tom replied.
“But why would it surface here, in the middle of this cyclone?”
“It must take guts to surface a submarine in this weather – guts or desperation. Either way, I think it’s safe to say that our saboteur managed to successfully escape from the Hayward Bulk.”
“But will he still sink her?” Ambrose asked.
“He wasn’t carrying enough equipment on board to sink her. I’m starting to wonder if his plan was simply to stop our engineers from repairing the impeller, and in doing so, force the Hayward Bulk onto the reef. In shallow waters, it will be easier to retriev
e whatever he was so intent on accessing.” Tom then looked at the GPS and asked, “How are we doing time-wise? Do you think we’ll make it?”
Captain Ambrose showed him on the GPS monitor just where the reef would most likely tear open the hull of his ship. It was still 32 nautical miles away, but with the strong easterly winds, the Hayward Bulk was drifting at a rate of a just over 8 nautical miles per hour.
“Four hours? That’s the best estimate that we’ve got going for us?” Tom checked his math.
“That’s correct.” Captain Ambrose’s face showed that he’d already accepted the fact that he would be dying aboard his ship.
“How long do you think it will take them to change the impeller?”
“Under normal circumstances?” Ambrose laughed. “A couple of days.”
“And given what’s at stake?”
“I have no idea. Even skipping every safety check, I don’t see how it could be done in under eight hours.”
“Okay, so we need to cut our rate of drag by half.” Tom considered the question, as though he were struggling to complete a difficult crossword puzzle. “Surely there’s something else we can throw overboard to create a bit more drag?”
“Both anchors have slipped. There’s very little we can do now.”
“Do we have any more chain?” Tom knew he was being hopeful.
“Every last piece of chain we did have has already gone overboard.”
“Okay, you’re the captain, Ambrose. You must have spent years trying to reduce every inch of extra drag to please Global’s shareholders. What else might slow your ship down?”
“Barnacles, wind, currents…” The Captain started to list all the things which had troubled him throughout his forty-year career.
“Okay, so can we recreate any of those things now?”
“No.” Captain Ambrose looked at him as if he were an idiot.
“Where is the current going?”
“Away from the coastline, at a rate of half a knot.”
“So, then the wind is pushing us at 7.5 knots, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t we simply reduce our exposure to the wind?” Tom smiled, as though he believed that he’d found the solution to their problem, all by himself.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this Mr. Bower, but this is a bulker – we hold all our cargo down below. Apart from what’s left of your little helicopter, nothing else is on deck.”
“I realize that. But when I was flying in, I noticed that we’re showing more than sixty feet of freeboard. That’s a lot of exposure on the port side of the ship. If we could somehow reduce that, wouldn’t it buy us some more time?”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” The Captain’s approaching death loosened his tongue and his question was laced with more than a little sarcasm. “Stop at the next port and pick up some more cargo?”
“Can we begin to sink her?” Tom asked in complete seriousness.
“You want me to sink her?” The Captain responded, his lip curling as though he’d just tasted something pungent.
The thought was absurd, but then, failing to do anything at all meant that a lot of people were going to die. What did they have to lose?
Tom shrugged his shoulders, as though it was of little consequence whether or not they all survived the next four hours.
Then, he saw a look of realization on the Captain’s obdurate face.
“By God, you’re right! We can flood the ship. We can knock off twenty feet of freeboard by filling her with water without actually sinking her! It will make us much heavier and will reduce our exposure to the wind.”
*
Tom sat in the navigator’s chair, his feet lazily stretched out on the desk in front. Every muscle in his body was relaxed. He could have just as easily been sitting on his couch, watching the end of a sitcom, for all the effort he was putting in. But instead, he was watching the outcome of a very real drama – mostly indifferent of its outcome.
To a casual observer, cognizant of the situation, Tom might appear to be insane, but he was far from it. In fact, every inch of his body had been taut with stress ever since the Maria Helena left Sydney Harbor. It was only now that he had performed his duty and had no further assistance to offer, that he could begin to relax.
The outcome of the next four hours would determine his fate.
He would certainly prefer to live. He had a lot more to do and see in this world, but he had played his part, and performed his duty well in this maritime drama; now it was out of his hands.
Tom learned long ago that it’s only worth worrying about those things you have the ability to change, and to forget about those over which you have no control. With that level of indifference, he casually watched from the bridge, as the adventure on the Hayward Bulk was about to reach its final, dramatic conclusion.
Captain Ambrose flicked a number of electronic switches which opened the enormous sea-cocks and reversed the bilge pumps. The reason for such an option on a super tanker baffled Tom, but the Captain explained that the Hayward Bulk often flooded its enormous bilges to maintain stability in rough seas when depleted of its cargo.
To the right of Tom, the instrumentation in front of the Captain’s expressionless face, showed a line which portrayed the depth of the ship’s hull below the waterline.
Its reading: forty-two feet.
The line didn’t move, and after several minutes, Tom started to wonder whether or not his idea had any possibility of succeeding.
Then. The line moved to forty-two point five.
Once it started to move, it kept moving. Tom thought it was similar to an altimeter on a plane, as it slowly showed the supertanker’s descent into the ocean.
“She’s moving,” Captain Ambrose said tentatively, with just the tiniest hint of a grin appearing on his stubborn face.
“But is it having any effect on our drag?” Tom asked.
The captain looked to his left, where the Hayward Bulk’s speed could be read – eight point three knots.
“She’s slowing down, but not by much.” His grin receded.
Next to the speedometer was a GPS monitor, displaying the local geography reaching out toward the northeastern tip of Australia.
The captain clicked an asterisk over the little image of a ship on the map and then placed a second asterisk on the nearest point of the eastern edge of the shallow Great Barrier Reef. Instantly, a dotted line formed between the two points and a note popped up – Time to Destination: 3 hours: 35 minutes.
The reality of the computation was clear to Tom.
“How long will it take to fill the holding tanks to their maximum with sea water?”
“Perhaps another hour?” The Captain seemed slightly unsure of himself. “It might take as long as two hours, depending on how far we want to take it.”
Tom nodded.
Both men were professionals. Neither of them needed to have the simple math explained in greater detail.
They were going to die.
An hour later, the Hayward Bulk had sunk another 20 feet into the ocean. The Time to Destination reading was now: 3 hours: 5 minutes.
The ship’s drift speed had decreased again, but it still wasn’t slowing down quick enough.
Those few hours remaining had disappeared quickly, Tom noticed, and before he realized where the time had gone, another alarm sounded. It was a loud warning sound, more like an electrical hum than an air horn.
“What’s that?” Tom asked.
“That’s the sound of our death, Mr. Bower.” Captain Ambrose spoke the words with the fatalism of a seaman fully prepared to go down with his ship, rather than suffer the consequences of such a failure.
“That’s our proximity alarm. We are no more than a mile away from the reef.”
“Then that’s it?”
“That’s it. There is nothing more we can do, but prepare for the worst.”
Neither man was particularly religious; both just sat there and silently
acknowledged their imminent death.
Another alarm rang out.
This time, it was the engine room.
“Yes?” The captain asked.
The Captain’s facial expression lightened for the first time since Tom had met him earlier that afternoon, and he then placed the handset back on the table in front of him.
“Excellent. Start her up. And Mr. Thomas, skip all safety procedures, there are a lot of lives at stake here.”
The entire ship recoiled at the vibrations from the ship’s massive engines cranking over. It then settled down to a strong hum.
Tom watched as Captain Ambrose pushed both throttles forward to full speed, and locked the rudder at forty-five degrees – the maximum angle at which to efficiently turn a ship. At the front of the ship, he could hear the sound of the electric bow thruster whining.
Tom again looked down at the Time to Destination marker. It read: 4 minutes 32 seconds.
All systems were now back on.
But, did they have enough time for it to make a difference?
The ship started to turn as quickly as was possible for a super bulker like the Hayward Bulk.
It was painfully slow.
Through the large windows on the bridge, Tom could see the white froth of the waves breaking on the reef. Normally, nothing more than a patch of green in an otherwise deep blue water, the reef was now creating a gigantic bombora with the cyclonic waves.
The ship turned as if it were on a single giant axis and then that axis moved at a rate of 4 knots towards the lethal, jagged edge of the Great Barrier Reef.
It was going to be close.
There was no doubt about it. Tom decided that if he survived this, it would be his closest escape from death yet.
The stern of the ship approached the bombora, and Captain Ambrose straightened the rudder. For the first time since Tom landed on the ship, the Hayward Bulk started to make its way forward.
It was at less than half a knot, but it was progress away from their peril.
They had made it.
“I don’t believe it.” Captain Ambrose finally smiled. “We made it!”
“So we did!” Tom said jovially, and then, removing his feet from atop the table in front of him, where they’d comfortably rested throughout the entire drama, he jumped off the high navigator’s stool and said, “Is there any place I can get some food around here?”
The Sam Reilly Collection Page 7