Assignment - Ankara

by Edward S. Aarons

  In a moment he shone the beam of an emergency torch over the damp, riveted aluminum walls. The water sloshed heavily, eighteen inches deep here. At that instant, the KT-4 lifted sluggishly on a long, high sea, raising the tail section where they stood. The water gushed from around their feet, pouring forward as the derelict surged with the push of the ocean swell. Twisted metal gleamed for an instant, well below the water level, from behind a stand of apparatus.

  “There it is,” Durell said. “The skin’s doubled, I think-The big rupture must be on the outside.”

  “Can we move this equipment?” Anderson asked.

  “I doubt it. It’s built as an integral part of the ship.” The KT-4 lifted and fell again on the seas while Durell tried to squeeze into the narrow space for a better look at the torn metal. He saw only enough to convince him that this was the leak they were looking for.

  Anderson’s face was dim, frowning. “Can we fix it?” “We’ve got to,” Durell said. “Otherwise, we won’t last an hour.”

  “Perhaps we’ll be rescued by then.”

  “Or captured,” Durell pointed out.

  “Better than drowning, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know. The leak has to be fixed from the outside, if it can be done at all.” Durell spoke quietly, so the others in the cabin could not hear. “I can’t ask you to volunteer to go out there—”

  Anderson’s pale eyes looked cold when he grinned. “Sorry, pal. I’m not a good swimmer. If the ship founders, I go down into the briny deep, anyway. But I couldn’t possibly make it around the tail from the outside.”

  Durell wondered if he was lying. But there was no way he could decently prove it. Obviously, Anderson was challenging him to leave things as they were and take the chance they’d be picked up before the KT-4 sank. But the rate at which they were taking water didn’t offer much hope of rescue. He drew an impatient breath. Everything had gone wrong, right in Ankara, and he hadn’t wanted to be responsible for the lives of all these people aboard the KT-4. He knew that nothing was more important than the safe delivery of the Uvaldi tape to Washington. His life, and the lives of the others, didn’t matter in this. In Durell’s world, the individual had to be subordinate to the mission. It was not an easy thing to practice or accept. When you were called on to choose between the life of a friend and the success of an assignment, you had to choose the job first. But now—

  He drew another deep breath. There was Francesca and Kappic and Colonel Wickham—and even the Stuyvers whatever they were.

  Maybe Anderson would sacrifice him as readily, if things were the other way around. He didn’t know. He couldn’t tell what the big man was thinking. He turned away, his eyes searching the cabin.

  “What are you going to do?” Anderson asked.

  “I’ll have to go out there, if you won’t,” Durell said. “Kappic has a broken leg, Wickham is in shock, John Stuyvers can’t be trusted. You’ll have to help me when I’m out there, of course.”

  Anderson’s laughter was a low, explosive sound, harsh and sardonic. “You’re going to trust me at the end of your lifeline?”

  “Not entirely,” Durell said. “Let’s go forward.”

  He started down the aisle to the pilot’s compartment again, and Susan Stuyvers reached out for him and stood up to face him. The blonde girl’s face was pale and tense.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said tightly. “Alone, Sam.” “There’s no place we can be alone,” he said.

  “We could go back there—where you’ve just been.” “We’ll make it later.”

  “Please—it’s important, Sam.”

  “At the moment, the most important thing is to stay afloat, Susan.”

  It was cold and damp in the cabin now. Susan shivered, and her lisp were blue. John Stuyvers, slumped in his seat nearby, huddled under a blanket. His mouth moved, as if he were talking silently to himself. Then suddenly his eyes opened wide and he stared at Durell with his fanatical gaze. “Are we going to die, sir?”

  “I hope not,” Durell said easily.

  “It’s very cold in here. Can we have a little heat?”

  “I think that’s quite impossible.”

  As if stirred by the voices that broke the silence in the cabin, Colonel Wickham sat up. In his left hand he held an empty bottle of raki from when he first came aboard. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright. His white hair looked stiff and bristly; his uniform was stained with the blood from his scalp wound.

  “Got to get to Washington,” he muttered. “Most important. Highly placed people concerned—about me—and Betsy will raise hell. Got to avoid any more delays, Durell.”

  Durell stared at the fat man. “Don’t you know what’s happened?”

  “We’re wrecked, huh? I’m not stupid. All your fault, too!” Wickham’s voice grew harsh. “Going to give you a few minutes more—then take command myself. Understand? Court-martial for you. Traitors, all of you! Trying to kill me—” Durell shrugged and went forward, leaving Wickham to relapse into incoherent muttering again. Anderson gathered up two or three wads of blanketing and a length of nylon rope from the emergency compartment. Up forward, Kappic and Francesca had removed Hackitt’s body from the control seat and placed him in a cramped corner of the cockpit. Durell had to step over the dead man’s boots to stand beside the Turk. Francesca looked ill, and her gray eyes touched Durell in entreaty; he shook his head and turned to Kappic. “Can you raise anything, Mustapha?”

  The Turk squeezed a shaking hand over his moustache. He had the earphones over his head and he stared at the radio in frustration.

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell if the message is going out. We have power from emergency batteries, but I can’t raise an acknowledgement from Ankara or Istanbul.”

  “Keep trying,” Durell said. “I’m going out on the fuselage to plug a leak in the tail section. Anderson will hold my lifeline.”

  Kappic looked at him curiously, as if wondering how he could trust anybody now. But then he nodded. “I will stay with the radio. Be careful out there.”

  A moment later Durell pushed back the shattered canopy and climbed onto the tapering wing. The instant he stepped from the shelter of the cabin he was shocked by the brutally cold wind that roared over the surface of the sea. Rain beat at him with icy intensity. The noonday sky was leaden, and nowhere in all the circle of the horizon was anything to be seen except the dim, heaving seas crowned with smoking combers. It seemed miraculous that the broken hull of the KT-4 had floated this long. The port wing was now definitely under water more often than not, and the graceful tail fin canted perceptibly as Durell found slippery footing and faced aft. He hooked one arm around the stubby radio mast that rose behind the pilot’s compartment and then leaned down to shout at Anderson’s upturned face.

  “Pay out the line easily. If I tug twice, haul me in fast.” Anderson nodded and grinned. “Don’t worry, chum.”

  A sea broke over the wing and drenched Durell with salt spray. The wadding of blankets and line with which he hoped to caulk the tear in the hull was clumsy and dangerous, but he worked his way slowly aft, following the slender antenna wire that stretched to the towering vertical stabilizer. He could see from here that one of the horizontal tail fins had torn partly loose from the crash—or perhaps one of the MIG cannon shells had burst just there. He ran for a dozen steps, then crouched as the derelict lifted violently under him above a racing sea. His feet slid helplessly outward until another sea made the wreck lurch the other way. More spray soaked him, and he clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. The wind cut through him as if he were naked. He looked back, but he could not see into the pilot’s canopy now, and there was nothing to do but go on.

  He reached the tail section in a last desperate rush, a race against the violent treachery of each sea that broke over him. With his free hand he clung to the towering stabilizer and caught his breath. His legs felt shaky. The wind moaned with new fury around the metal that protected him sow. He l
eaned aft as far as he could and stared into the foaming sea around the pointed tail of the ship.

  Water broke in spurts of white spume around the conical after-section. When the wreck heaved up again on the next Swell, he glimpsed the shining edge of torn metal, ripped backward in a foot-square area. The next moment the tom plate was under water again.

  The only way he could fashion a batten to hold back the leak was to lower himself into the sea.

  He looked forward again. The nylon line seemed a slender thread to depend on, and the other end was in Anderson’s hands. But the longer he paused here, the weaker he would become in the freezing wind and spray. With no more hesitation, Durell slid into the welter of white water surging around the tail section.

  He was pleasantly surprised when the sea felt wanner than the air. The surge of the swell pulled him away from the hull and he came up gasping and twisted to orient himself. The tail loomed enormously high from the surface of the sea, and it was drifting rapidly away from him. He struck out and caught the horizontal stabilizer and pulled himself along it. The torn gap in the hull was now a menace of sharp metal as the sea alternately pushed him toward it and pulled him away. The hull rose high again, then came down massively, smashing foam over his head. He gasped, coughed, twisted with the blankets under his free arm and tried to reach the hole where the water came into the aft compartment. The lifeline held him back. He pulled once on it for more free play, but nothing happened. Alarm rang in him. If he pulled again, Anderson might deliberately mistake it as a signal to haul him in again. And the job wasn’t done yet. Then another sea broke over him and he felt the line go slack abruptly and he was swept away from the ship, buried under roaring foam, then swept hard against the metal bulkhead. Something caught his leg and seemed to twist and he pushed away desperately. He was at the torn plate now. He shook his head and slammed the blankets into the gaping hole in the aircraft’s skin. But he could not hold them there. The tail lifted again, high overhead. For a moment he thought he had lost the battens as they streamed away from him. But they had hooked on a snag of tom aluminum and clung there. When the tail slammed down again, he crammed the rest of the blankets desperately into place, then grabbed at the lashings he had brought anri dived under the narrow, pointed segment and came up on the other side. The sea was deceptive and it took several moments to orient himself this time when he surfaced. He suspected he was growing weaker faster than he thought. He had only a few more minutes in which to finish the job.

  Somehow he managed to throw the lashings around and around the broad stabilizer. He dived back under, caught the ends of the lines, and hauled them tight. The blankets he had stuffed into the hole were snug now. But he had to repeat the maneuver twice more before he was satisfied that the leak was caulked as best he could do it.

  By then he had only enough strength to cling precariously to the edge of the stabilizer fin, washed by the surging seas, half-buried in the roaring tides that lifted him and dropped him into the bitter water. He waited, aware of the roaring wind, the pelting rain, the merging of gray sea and gray sky in a dark, confused world of water and air that had no definition in any direction.

  Twice he tugged desperately on the lifeline.

  Nothing happened.

  Again he signalled for Anderson to pull him in.

  And again there was no reply.

  Chapter Thirteen

  DURELL felt panic touch him. The nylon rope seemed slack and lifeless in his grip. He tugged a third time, felt the sea lift him up and away from the tail stabilizer. He fought back to the slippery surface and let the sea wash him halfway across it, and caught at the vertical fin. His wet fingers found no grip and slipped helplessly. When he tried to straighten up, the wind slammed at him with maniacal force. Its cold fury set up a violent trembling in him. He wanted to let go and fall back into the sea. He told himself he couldn't let go. The sea’s friendliness was deceptive. If he v. ent into it again, he would die.

  He turned his face to the wind and let the rain slash at him. The sea had grown wilder in the last few moments, ind the horizon had closed in perceptibly. The KT-4 lurched is he clung to it, like a broken bird on the wilderness of the ocean. A sea broke all the way across the cabin and fumed down on the opposite wing. He straightened again. His fingers were numb. He waited until the tail section lifted sluggishly, then used the impetus to haul his feet under him, rise, and then ran quickly down the roof of the cabin, guiding himself by the slender radio antenna. He slipped at the last instant, his legs pulled from under him as if the sea were a malevolent entity bent on destroying him. Another comber broke over him and he fell, sliding down the side of the canopy to crash on the wing section below. Salt water closed over his head and he felt himself lifted away from the aircraft by the tidal surge.

  At the last moment a hand reached out and caught his wrist, thrusting through the window next to the pilot’s seat. Pain twisted through his arm. His legs dangled over the leading edge of the wing. He struggled up, got one foot back on the wing, and threw himself out of the water again.

  It was Anderson who had saved him.

  The big man, grinning in triumph, shouted something that was snatched away by the wind. Durell caught the edge of the sliding window. His muscles trembled with fatigue as he tried to lift himself inside and failed. But Anderson’s huge strength helped him, dropped him, streaming water, into the cockpit at Kappic’s feet.

  “You are all right?” Kappic shouted. He gestured to Anderson, who slammed the window shut. “You found the leak?”

  Durell nodded, shivering. His eyes were locked with Anderson’s. He felt sick with fatigue, and now that he was in the comparative warmth of the plane’s cabin, his shuddering was beyond control.

  Francesca threw a blanket around him.

  “You’re a brave man, Durell,” Anderson said quietly.

  “Why didn’t you pull me in when I signalled?”

  “But you didn’t signal.”

  “I did. More than once.”

  “Perhaps I confused it with the tugging of the sea. We lost sight of you when you went into the water. I really thought you’d been drowned.”

  Kappic nodded. “True. We did not know you were still alive until we heard your footsteps on the roof over our heads.”

  Durell watched Anderson’s smile. The man’s challenge seemed obvious, but it could not be proved that he had acted wrongly. He turned back to Kappic. “Any luck with the radio?”

  “I do not know,” The Turk said. “There is a bad storm all around us. Once I thought I heard an acknowledgement, asking for a better fix on our positon. I could not help, of course. I do not know where we are. But I kept sending, until the power faded.”

  “We’ll hope for the best, then,” Durell said. “Let’s check the water level back in the cabin.”

  “Please, you ought to rest,” Francesca said.

  “Later.”

  He went aft. The water in the main cabin seemed to be at the same level as before. It was colder in here now, and his breath plumed in vapor as he walked aft to the tail compartment where the leak first became evident. For several moments, because of the surging lift and fall of the derelict, he could not tell if more water was coming in, or not. But in any case, even if it was, it was at a much slower rate than before. Slow enough to remove the immediate peril of sinking, he decided.

  He found lifejackets for everyone and insisted they be put on. Colonel Wickham was too apathetic to bother, and Durell had Susan adjust the jacket around the fat man’s shoulders. Susan’s teeth were chattering with the cold as she worked beside him.

  “I’m so hungry. Isn’t there any food?” she whispered.

  “Emergency rations, in the lockers. But it should be saved for later. If the storm worsens, nobody will find us for hours, perhaps not until tomorrow.”

  She made a wry face. “If we’re still afloat, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re in a pretty bad spot, aren’t we?”

  �
��Yes, Susan.”

  “I mean, we could be picked up by the wrong people, and for you that would be as bad as drowning, right?”

  He nodded. “No use thinking about that now, though.” “I just wanted to tell you—if these are our last hours— I wanted to tell you something about myself—”

  He shook his head. “Not now, Susan.”

  “But I want to warn you about John, if we’re picked up and—”

  “There will be other troubles, aside from John, then.” She bit her lip and looked angry. “You won’t let me touch you in any way, will you? I keep trying to reach you, and you just turn away from me. Why?” Her voices was low and intense, pitched just for his ears as she turned away from Wickham. “What is it you do that makes me feel like this?”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Like a person who’s afraid of falling, but who goes on to the roof of a tall building and looks down, anyway, even though he knows he might jump and kill himself, just on impulse. I feel that way about you. I think you might kill me, somehow. I’m afraid of you. But I can’t stay away from you.” “Help me with the other life jackets,” he said.

  “You’re cold. You’re soaking wet and cold and shivering.” “I’ll be all right.”

  “There’s an extra flight suit in the back,” she said. “Come with me. You have to get out of those wet things.” Her eyes glittered. “Please let me help you. It doesn’t matter what you do to me later. Let me help you now.”

  “All right, Susan.”

  They went aft to the rear compartment. Susan reached into a small locker and pulled out a blue khaki flight jumper and an extra pair of socks and Texas boots, reminding Durell sharply of the young pilot who lay dead up forward. Susan closed the small door behind her and they stood crowded against each other in the narrow, gloom space. “Let me take your clothes off,” she whispered. “Hurry.” His fingers were numb and clumsy when he tried to strip out of his wet coat and shirt. A violent spasm of shuddering left him helpless, and her hands deftly helped him. She breathed quickly, made small moaning sounds of commiseration. “You’ve saved our lives so far. I heard Anderson talking about it to that Italian bitch—”