Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Control transferred to bridge, sir,’ the Engineer confirmed, and Nick touched the shining stainless-steel levers with fingers as sensitive as those of a concert pianist. Warlock's response was instantaneous. She pivoted, shrugging aside a green slithering burst of water which came in over her shoulder and thundered down the side of her superstructure.

  ‘Anchor winches manned.’ Beauty Baker's tone was almost casual.

  ‘Stand by,’ said Nick, and felt his way through that white inferno. It was impossible to maintain visual reference, the entire world was white and swirling, even the surface of the sea was gone in torn streamers of white; the very pull of gravity, that should have defined even a simple up or down, was confused by the violent pitch and roll of the deck.

  Nick felt his exhausted brain begin to lurch dizzily in the first attacks of vertigo. Swiftly he switched his attention to the big compass and the heading indicator.

  ‘David,’ he said, ‘take the wheel.’ He wanted somebody swift and bright at the helm now.

  Warlock plunged suddenly, so viciously that Nick's bruised ribs were brought in brutal contact with the edge of the control console. He grunted involuntarily with the pain. Warlock was feeling her cable, she had come up hard.

  ‘Starboard ten,’ said Nick to David, bringing her bows up into that hideous wind.

  ‘Chief,’ he spoke into the microphone, his voice still ragged with the pain in his chest. ‘Haul starboard winch, full power.’

  ‘Full power starboard.’ Nick slid pitch control to fully fine, and then slowly nudged open the throttles, bringing in twenty-two thousand horse-power.

  Held by her tail, driven by the great wind, and tortured by the sea, lashed by her own enormous propellers, Warlock went berserk. She corkscrewed and porpoised to her very limits, every frame in her hull shook with the vibration of all her screws as her propellers burst out of the surface and spun wildly in the air.

  Nick had to clench his jaws as the vibration threatened to crack his teeth, and when he glanced across at the forward and lateral speed-indicators, he saw that David Allen's face was icy white and set like that of a corpse.

  Warlock was slewing down on the wind, describing a slow left-hand circle at the limit of the cable as the engine torque and the wind took her around.

  ‘Starboard twenty,’ Nick snapped, correcting the turn, and despite the rigour of his features, David Allen's response was instantaneous.

  ‘Twenty degrees of starboard wheel on, sir!’

  Nick saw the lateral drift stop on the ground speed indicator, and then with a wild lurch of elation he saw the forward speed indicator flicked into green. Its electronic digital read out changing swiftly - they were moving forward at 150 feet a minute.

  ‘We are moving her,’ Nick cried aloud, and he snatched up the microphone.

  ‘Full power both winches.’

  ‘Still full and holding,’ answered Baker immediately.

  And Nick glanced back at the forward speed across the ground, 150, 110, 75 feet a minute, Warlock's forward impetus slowed, and Nick realized with a slide of dismay that it was merely the elasticity of the nylon spring that had given them that reading. The spring was stretching out to its limit.

  For two or three seconds, the dial recorded a zero rate of speed. Warlock was standing still, the cable drawn out to the full limit of her strength, then abruptly the dial flicked into vivid red; they were going backwards, as the nylon spring exerted pressures beyond that of the twin diesels and the big bronze screws - Warlock was being dragged back towards that dreadful shore.

  For another five minutes, Nick kept both clenched fists on the control levers, pressing them with all his strength to the limit of their travel, sending the great engines shrieking, driving the needles up around the dials, deep into the red ‘never exceed’ sectors.

  He felt tears of anger and frustration scalding his swollen eyelids, and the ship shuddered and shook and screamed under him, her torment transmitted through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands.

  Warlock was held down by cable and power, so she could not rise to meet the seas that came out of the whiteness. They tumbled aboard her, piling up on each other, so she burrowed deeper and more dangerously.

  ‘For God's sake, sir,’ David Allen was no longer able to contain himself. His eyes looked huge in his bone-white face. ‘You'll drive her clean under.’

  ‘Baker,’ Nick ignored his Mate, ‘Are you gaining?’

  ‘No recovery either winch,’ Beauty told him. ‘She is not moving.’

  Nick pulled back the stainless steel levers, the needles sank swiftly back around their dials, and Warlock reacted gratefully, shaking herself free of the piled waters.

  ‘You'll have to shear the tow.’ Baker's disembodied voice . was muted by the clamour of the storm. ‘We'll take our chances, sport.’

  Beside him, David Allen reached for the red-painted steel box that housed the shear button. It was protected by the box from accidental usage; David Allen opened the box and looked expectantly, almost pleadingly at Nick.

  ‘Belay that!’ Nick snarled at him, and then to Baker, ‘I'm shortening tow. Be ready to haul again, when I am in position.’ David Allen stared at him, his right hand still on the open lid of the red box.

  ‘Close that bloody thing,’ Nick said, and turned to the main cable controls. He moved the green lever to reverse, and felt the vibration in the deck as below him in the main cable room the big drums began to revolve, drawing the thick ice-encrusted cable up over Warlock's stern.

  Fighting every inch of the way like a wild horse on a head halter, Warlock was drawn in cautiously by her own winches , and the officers watched in mounting horror as out of the white terror of the blizzard emerged the mountainous ice-covered bulk of Golden Adventurer.

  She was so close that the main cable no longer dipped below the surface of the sea, but ran directly from the liner's stern to the tug's massive fairleads on her stern quarter.

  ‘Now we can see what we are doing,’ Nick told them grimly. He could see now that much of Warlock's power had been wasted by not exerting a pull on exactly the same plane as Golden Adventurer's keel. He had been disoriented in the white-out of the blizzard, and had allowed Warlock to pull at an angle. It would not happen now.

  ‘Chief,’ he said. ‘Pull, pull all, pull until she bursts her guts!’ And again he slid the throttle handles fully home.

  Warlock flung up against the elastic yoke, and Nick saw the water spurt from the woven fibres and turn instantly to ice crystals as it was whipped away on the shrieking wind.

  ‘She's not moving, sir,’ David cried beside him.

  ‘No recovery either winch,’ Baker confirmed almost immediately. 'She's solid!’

  ‘Too much water still in her!’ said David, and Nick turned on him as though to strike him to the deck.

  ‘Give me the wheel,’ he said, his voice cracking with his anger and frustration.

  With both engines boiling the sea to white foam, and roaring like dying bulls, Nick swung the wheel to full port lock.

  Wildly Warlock dug her shoulder in, water pouring on board her as she rolled, instantly Nick spun the wheel to full starboard lock and she lurched against the tow, throwing an extra ton of pressure on to it.

  Even above the storm, they heard Golden Adventurer groan, the steel of her hull protesting at the weight of water in her and the intolerable pressure of the anchor winches and Warlock's tow cable.

  The groan became a crackling hiss as the pebble bottom gave and moved under her.

  ‘Christ, she's coming!’ shrieked Baker, and Nick swung her to full port lock again, swinging Warlock into a deep trough between waves, then a solid ridge of steaming water buried her, and Nick was not certain she could survive that press of furious sea. It came green and slick over the superstructure and she shuddered wearily, gone slow and unwieldy. Then she lifted her bows and, like a spaniel, shook herself free, becoming again quick and light.

  ‘Pull, my darling, p
ull,’ Nick pleaded with her.

  With a slow reluctant rumble, Golden Adventurer's hull began to slide over the holding, clinging bottom.

  ‘Both winches recovering,’ Baker howled gleefully, and Warlock's ground speed-indicator flicked into the green, its little angular figures changing in twinkling electronic progression as Warlock gathered way.

  They all saw Golden Adventurer's stern swinging to meet the next great ridge of water as it burst around her.

  She was floating, and for moments Nick was paralysed by the wonder of seeing that great and beautiful ship come to life again, become a living, vital sea creature as she took the seas and rose to meet them.

  ‘We've done it, Christ, we've done it!’ howled Baker, but it was too soon for self-congratulation. As Golden Adventurer came free of the ground and gathered sternway under Warlock's tow, so her rudder bit and swung her tall stern across the wind.

  She swung, exposing the enormous windage of her starboard side to the full force of the storm. It was like setting a main-sail, and the wind took her down swiftly on the rocky headland with its sentinel columns that guarded the entrance to the bay.

  Nick's first instinct was to try and hold her off, to oppose the force of the wind directly and he flung Warlock into the task, relying on her great diesels and the two anchors to keep the liner from going ashore again - but the wind toyed with them, it ripped the anchors out of the pebble bottom and Warlock was drawn stern first through the water, straight down on the jagged rock of the headland.

  ‘Chief, get those anchors up,’ Nick snapped into the microphone. 'They'll never hold in this.’

  Twenty years earlier, bathing off a lonely beach in the Seychelles, Nick had been caught out of his depth by one of those killer currents that flow around the headlands of oceanic islands, and it had sped him out into the open sea so that within minutes the silhouette of the land was low and indistinct on his watery horizon. He had fought that current, swimming directly against it, and it had nearly killed him. Only in the last stages of exhaustion had he begun to think, and instead of battling it, he had ridden the current, angling slowly across it, using its impetus rather than opposing it.

  The lesson he had learned that day was well remembered, and as he watched Baker bring Golden Adventurer's dripping anchors out of the wild water he was driving Warlock hard, bringing her around on her cable so the wind was no longer in her teeth, but over her stern quarter.

  Now the wind and Warlock's screws were no longer opposed, but Warlock was pulling two points off the wind, as fine a course as Nick could judge barely to clear the most seaward of the rocky sentinels; now the liner's locked rudder was holding her steady into the wind - but opposing Warlock's attempt to angle her away from the land.

  It was a problem of simple vectors of force, that Nick tried to work out in his head and prove in physical terms, as he delicately judged the angle of his tow and the direction of the wind, balancing them against the tremendous leverage of the liner's locked rudder, the rudder which was dragging her suicidally down upon the land.

  Grimly, he stared ahead to where the black rock cliffs were still hidden in the white nothingness. They were invisible, but their presence was recorded on the cluttered screen of the radar repeater. With both wind and engines driving them, their speed was too high, and if Golden Adventurer went on to the cliffs like this, her hull would shatter like a water melon hurled against a brick wall.

  It was another five minutes before Nick was absolutely certain they would not make it. They were only two miles off the cliffs now, he glanced again at the radar screen, and they would have to drag Golden Adventurer at least half a mile across the wind to clear the land. They just were not going to make it.

  Helplessly, Nick stood and peered into the storm, waiting for the first glimpse of black rock through the swirling eddies of snow and frozen spray, and he had never felt more tired and unmanned in his entire life as he moved to the shear button ready to cut Golden Adventurer loose and let her go to her doom.

  His officers were silent and tense around him, while under his feet Warlock shuddered and buffeted wildly, driven to her mortal limits by the sea and her own engines, but still the land sucked at them.

  ‘Look!’ David Allen shouted suddenly, and Nick spun to the urgency in his voice.

  For a moment he did not understand what was happening. He knew only that the shape of Golden Adventurer's stern was altered subtly.

  ‘The rudder,’ shouted David Allen again. And Nick saw it revolving slowly on its stock as the ship lifted on another big sea.

  Almost immediately, he felt Warlock making offing from under that lee shore, and he swung her up another point into the wind, Golden Adventurer answering her tow with a more docile air, and still the rudder revolved slowly.

  ‘I've got power on the emergency steering gear now!’ said Baker.

  ‘Rudder amidships,’ Nick ordered.

  ‘Amidships it is,’ Baker repeated, and now he was pulling her out stern first, almost at right angles across the wind.

  Through the white inferno appeared the dim snow-blurred outline of the rock sentinels, and the sea broke upon them like the thunder of the heavens.

  ‘God, they are close,’ whispered David Allen. ‘So close that they could feel the backlash of the gale as it rebounded from the tall rock walls, moderating the tremendous force that was bearing them down - moderating just enough to allow them to slide past the three hungry rocks, and before them lay three thousand miles of wild and tumultuous water, all of it open sea room.

  ‘We made it. This time we really made it!’ said Baker, as though he did not believe it was true, and Nick pulled back the throttle controls taking the intolerable strain off her engines before they tore themselves to pieces.

  ‘Anchors and all,’ Nick replied. It was a point of honour to retrieve even the anchors. They had taken her off clean and intact - anchors and all.

  ‘Chief,’ he said,’ instead of sitting there hugging yourself, how about pumping her full of Tannerax?’ The anti-corrosive chemical would save her engines and much of her vital equipment from further sea-water damage, adding enormously to her salvaged value.

  ‘You just never let up, do you?’ Baker answered accusingly.

  ‘Don't you believe it,’ said Nick, he felt stupid and frivolous with exhaustion and triumph. Even the storm that still roared about them seemed to have lost its murderous intensity. ‘Right now I'm going down to my bunk to sleep for twelve hours - and I'll kill anybody who tries to wake me!’

  He hung the mike on its bracket and put his hand on David Allen's shoulder. He squeezed once, and said: ‘You did well - you all did very well. Now take her, Number One, and look after her.’ Then he stumbled from the bridge.

  It was eight days before they saw the land again. They rode out the storm in the open sea, eight days of unrelenting tension and heart-breaking labour.

  The first task was to move the tow-cable to Golden Adventurer's bows. In that sea, the transfer took almost 24 hours, and three abortive attempts before they had her head-on to the wind. Now she rode more easily, and Warlock had merely to hang on like a drogue, using full power only when one of the big icebergs came within dangerous range, and it was necessary to draw her off.

  However, the tension was always there and Nick spent most of those days on the bridge, watchful and worried, nagged by the fear that the plug in the gashed hull would not hold. Baker used timbers from the ship's store to shore up the temporary patch, but he could not put steel in place while Golden Adventurer plunged and rolled in the heavy seas, and Nick could not go aboard to check and supervise the work.

  Slowly, the great wheel of low pressure revolved over them, the winds changed direction, backing steadily into the west, as the epicentre marched on down the sea lane towards Australasia - and at last it had passed.

  Now Warlock could work up towing speed. Even in those towering glassy swells of black water that the storm had left them as a legacy, she was able to make four kno
ts.

  Then one clear and windy morning under a cold yellow sun, she brought Golden Adventurer into the sheltered waters of Shackleton Bay. It was like a diminutive guide dog leading a blinded colossus.

  As the two ships came up into the still waters under the sheltering arm of the bay, the survivors came down from their encampment to the water's edge, lining the steep black pebble beach, and their cheers and shouts of welcome and relief carried thinly on the wind to the officers on Warlock's bridge.

  Even before the liner's twin anchors splashed into the clear green water, Captain Reilly's boat was puttering out to Warlock, and when he came aboard, his eyes were haunted by the hardship and difficulties of these last days, by the disaster of a lost command and the lives that had been ended with it. But when he shook hands with Nick, his grasp was firm.

  ‘My thanks and congratulations, sir!’ He had known Nicholas Berg as Chairman of Christy Marine, and, as no other, he was aware of the magnitude of this most recent accomplishment. His respect was apparent.

  ‘Quite good to see you again,’ Nick told him. ‘Naturally you have access to my ship's communications to report to your owners.’

  Immediately he turned back to the task of manoeuvring Warlock alongside, so that the steel plate could be swung up from her salvage holds to the liner's deck; it was another hour before Captain Reilly emerged from the radio room.

  ‘Can I offer you a drink, Captain?’ Nick led him to his day cabin, and began with tact to deal with the hundred details which had to be settled between them. It was a delicate situation, for Reilly was no longer Master of his own ship. Command had passed to Nicholas as salvage master.

  ‘The accommodation aboard Golden Adventurer is still quite serviceable, and, I imagine, a great deal warmer and more comfortable than that occupied by your passengers at present-’ 'Nick made it easier for him while never for a moment letting him lose sight of his command position, and Reilly responded gratefully.

  Within half an hour, they had made all the necessary arrangements to transfer the survivors aboard the liner.