Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  The US Airforce B52 hit the first clear-air turbulence one hundred and fifty miles from the storm's centre. It was as though an invisible predator had seized the fuselage and shaken it until the wings were almost torn from their roots, and in one surge, the aircraft was flung five thousand feet straight upwards.

  ‘Very severe turbulence,’ the pilot reported, ‘We have vertical wind speeds of three hundred miles an hour plus.’ The senior forecaster in Miami picked up the telephone and called the computer programmer on the floor above him. ‘Ask Charlie for a hurricane code-name.’

  And a minute later the programmer called him back. ‘Charlie says to call the bitch “Lorna”.’ Six hundred miles south-west of Miami the storm began to move forward, slowly at first but every hour gathering power, spiralling upon itself at unbelievable velocities, its high dome swelling upwards now through fifty thousand feet and still climbing. The centre of the storm opened like a flower, the calm eye extended upwards in a vertical tunnel with smooth walls of solid cloud rising to the very summit of the dome, now sixty thousand feet above the surface of the wind-tortured sea.

  The entire mass began to move faster, back towards the east, in a directly contrary direction to the usual track of the gentle trade winds. Spinning and roaring upon itself, devouring everything in its path, the she-devil called Lorna launched itself across the Caribbean Sea.

  Nicholas Berg turned his head to look down upon the impressive skyline of Miami Beach. The rampart of tall elegant hotel buildings followed the curve of the beach into the north, and behind it lay the ugly sprawled tangle of urban development and snarled highways.

  The Eastern Airlines direct flight from Bermuda turned on to its base leg and then on to final approach, losing height over the beach and Biscayne Bay, Nicholas felt uncomfortable, the nagging of guilt and uncertainty. His guilt was of two kinds. He felt guilty that he had deserted his post at the moment when he was likely to be desperately needed.

  Ocean Salvage's two vessels were out there somewhere in the Atlantic, Warlock running hard up the length of the Atlantic in a desperate attempt to catch up with Golden Dawn, while Jules Levoisin in Sea Witch was now approaching the eastern seaboard of America where he would refuel before going on to his assignment as standby tug on the exploration field in the Gulf of Mexico. At any moment, the Master of either vessel might urgently need to have his instructions.

  Then there was Golden Dawn. She had rounded the Cape of Good Hope almost three weeks ago. Since then, even Bernard Wackie had been unable to fix her position.

  She had not been reported by other craft, and any communications she had made with Christy Marine must have been by satellite telex, for she had maintained strict silence on the radio channels. However, she must rapidly be nearing the most critical part of her voyage when she turned west and began her approach to the continental shelf of North America and the passage of the islands into the Gulf - Peter Berg was on board that monster, and Nicholas felt the chill of guilt. His place was at the centre, in the control room of Bach Wackie on the top floor of the Bank of Bermuda building in Hamilton town. His post was there where he could assess changing conditions and issue instant commands to coordinate his salvage tugs.

  Now he had deserted his post, and even though he had made arrangements to maintain contact with Bernard Wackie, still it would take him hours, perhaps even days, to get back to where he was needed, if there was an emergency.

  But then there was Samantha. His instincts warned him that every day, every hour he delayed in going to her would reduce his chances of having her again.

  There was more guilt there, the guilt of betrayal. It was no help to tell himself that he had made no marriage vows to Samantha Silver, that his night of weakness with Chantelle had been forced upon him in circumstances almost impossible to resist, that any other man in his position would have done the same, and that in the end the episode had been a catharsis and a release that had left him free for ever of Chantelle.

  To Samantha, it had been betrayal, and he knew that much was destroyed by it. He felt terrible aching guilt, not for the act sexual intercourse without love is fleeting and insignificant - but for the betrayal and for the damage he had wrought.

  Now he was uncertain, uncertain as to just how much he had destroyed, how much was left for him to build upon. All that he was certain of was that he needed her, more than he had needed anything in his life. She was still the promise of eternal youth and of the new life towards which he was groping so uncertainly. If love was needing, then he loved Samantha Silver with something close to desperation.

  She had told him she would not be there when he came. He had to hope now that she had lied, he felt physically sick at the thought that she meant it.

  He had only a single Louis Vuitton overnight valise as cabin luggage so he passed swiftly through customs, and as he went into the telephone booths, he checked his watch. It was after six o'clock, she'd be home by now.

  He had dialled the first four digits of her number before he checked himself.

  ‘What the hell am I phoning for?’ he asked himself grimly. ‘To tell her I'm here, so she can have a flying start when she runs for the bushes?’

  There is nothing so doomed as a timid lover. He dropped the receiver back on its cradle, and went for the Hertz desk at the terminal doors.

  ‘What's the smallest you've got?’ he asked.

  ‘A Cougar,’ the pretty blonde in the yellow uniform told him. In America, small is a relative term. He was just lucky she hadn't offered him a Sherman tank, The brightly painted Chevy van was in the lean-to shelter under the spread branches of the ficus tree, and he parked the Cougar's nose almost touching its tail-gate. There was no way she could escape now, unless she went out through the far wall of the shed. Knowing her, that was always a possibility, he grinned mirthlessly.

  He knocked once on the screen door of the kitchen and went straight in. There was a coffee pot beside the range, and he touched it as he passed. It was still warm.

  He went through into the living room, and called:

  ‘Samantha!’

  The bedroom door was ajar. He pushed it open. There was a suit of denims, and some pale transparent wisps of underwear thrown carelessly over the patchwork quilt.

  The shack was deserted, he went down the steps of the front stoop and straight on to the beach. The tide had swept the sand smooth, and her prints were the only ones. She had dropped her towel above the high-watermark but he had to shade his eyes against the ruddy glare of the lowering sun before he could make out her bobbing head - five hundred yards out.

  He sat down beside her towel in the fluffy dry sand and lit a cheroot.

  He waited, while the sun settled in a wild, fiery flood of light, and he lost the shape of her head against the darkening sea. She was half a mile out now, but he felt no urgency, and the darkness was almost complete when she rose suddenly, waist-deep from the edge of the gentle surf, waded ashore and came up the beach, twisting the rope of her hair over one shoulder to wring the water from it.

  Nicholas felt his heart flop over and he flicked the cheroot away and stood up. She halted abruptly, like a startled forest animal, and stood completely still, staring uncertainly at the tall, dark figure before her. She was so young and slim and smooth and beautiful.

  ‘What do you want?’ she faltered.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  ‘Why? Are you starting a harem?’ Her voice hardened and she straightened; he could not see the expression of her eyes, but her shoulders took on a stubborn set.

  He stepped forward and she was rigid in his arms and her lips hard and tightly unresponsive under his.

  ‘Sam, there are things I'll never be able to explain, I don't even understand them myself, but what I do know very clearly is that I love you, that without you my life is going to be flat and plain goddamned miserable.’

  There was no relaxation of the rigid muscles. Her hands were still held stiffly at her sides and her body felt cold and wet and unyiel
ding.

  ‘Samantha, I wish I were perfect - I'm not. But all I am sure of is that I can't make it without you.’

  ‘I couldn't take it again. I couldn't live through this again,’ she said tightly.

  ‘I need you. I am certain of that,’ he insisted.

  ‘You'd better be, you son of a bitch. You cheat on me one time more and you won't have anything left to cheat with - I'll take it off clean, at the roots.’ Then she was clinging to him. ‘Oh God, Nicholas, how I hated you, and how I missed you - and how long you took to come back,’ and her lips were soft and tasted of the sea.

  He picked her up and carried her up through the soft sand. He didn't trust himself to speak, it would be so easy to say the wrong thing now.

  ‘Nicholas, I've been sitting here waiting for your call.’ Bernard Wackie's voice was sharp and alert, the tension barely contained. ‘How soon can you get yourself back here?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It is starting to pop. I've got to hand it to you, baby, you've got a nose for it. You smelled this coming.’

  ‘Come on, Bernie!’ Nicholas snapped.

  ‘This call is going through three open exchanges,’ Bernie told him. ‘You want chapter and verse, or did nobody ever tell you that it's a tough game you are in? There is a lot of competition cluttering up the scene. The cheese-heads have one lying handy.’ Probably Wittezee or one of the other big Dutch tugs, Nicholas thought swiftly. ‘They could be streaming a towing wire within a couple of days, And the Yanks are pretty hot numbers, McCormick has one stationed in the Hudson River.’

  ‘All right,’ Nick cut through the relish with which Bernie was detailing the threat of hovering competition.

  ‘There is a direct flight at seven tomorrow morning - if I can't make that, I'll connect with the British Airways flight from Nassau at noon tomorrow. Meet me,’ Nick ordered.

  ‘You shouldn't have gone running off,’ said Bernard Wackie, showing amazing hindsight. Before he could deliver any more pearls of wisdom, Nicholas hung up on him.

  Samantha was sitting up in the centre of the bed. She was stark naked, but she hugged her knees to her chest with both arms, and under the gorgeous tangle of her hair her face was desolate as that of a lost child and her green eyes haunted.

  ‘You're going again,’ she said softly. ‘You only just came, and now you're going again. Oh God, Nicholas, loving you is the toughest job I've ever had in my life. I don't think I have got the muscle for it.’ He reached for her quickly and she clung to him, pressing her face into the thick pad of coarse dark hair that covered his chest.

  ‘I have to go - I think it's Golden Dawn,’ he said, and she listened quietly while he told it to her, Only when he finished speaking did she begin to ask the questions which kept them talking quietly, locked in each other's arms in the old brass bed, until long after midnight.

  She insisted on cooking his breakfast for him, even though it was still dark outside and she was more than half asleep, hanging on to the range for support and turning up the early morning radio show so that the music might shake her awake.

  ‘Good morning, early birds, this is W.W.O.K. with another lovely day ahead of you. A predicted 85o at Fort Lauderdale and the coast, and 80o inland with a 10% chance of rain. We've got a report on hurricane Lorna for you also. She's dipping away south, towards the lesser Antilles - so we can all relax, folks - relax and listen to Elton John.’

  ‘I love Elton John,’ Samantha said sleepily. ‘Don't you?’

  .Who's he?’ Nicholas asked.

  ‘There! I knew right away we had a lot in common.’ She blinked at him owlishly. ‘Did you kiss me good morning? I forget.’

  ‘Come here,’ he instructed. ‘You're not going to forget this one.’

  Then, a few minutes later, ‘Nicholas, you'll miss your plane.’

  ‘Not if I cut breakfast.’

  ‘It would have been a grotty breakfast anyway.’ She was coming awake fast now.

  She gave him the last kiss through the open window of the Cougar.

  ‘You've got an hour - you'll just about make it’

  He started the engine and still she held on to the sill.

  ‘Nicholas, one day we will be together - I mean all the time, like we planned? You and me doing our own thing, our own way? We will, won't we?’

  ‘It's a promise.’

  ‘Hurry back,’ she said, and he gunned the Cougar up the sandy driveway without looking back.

  There were eight of them crowded into Tom Parker's office. Although there was only seating for three, the others found perches against the tiered shelves with their rows of biological specimens in bottles of formaldehyde or on the piles of reference books and white papers that were stacked against the walls.

  Samantha sat on the corner of Tom's desk, swinging her long denim-clad legs, and answered the questions that were fired at her.

  ‘How do you know she will take the passage of the Florida Straits?’

  ‘It's an educated guess. She's just too big and clumsy to thread the needle of the islands.’ Samantha's replies were quick. ‘Nicholas is betting on it.’

  ‘I'll go along with that then,’ Tom grunted.

  ‘The Straits are a hundred miles wide-‘

  ‘I know what you're going to say,’ Samantha smiled, and turned to one of the other girls. ‘Sally-Anne will answer that one.’

  ‘You all know my brother is in the Coast Guard - all traffic through the Straits reports to Fort Lauderdale,’ she explained. ‘And the coastguard aircraft patrol out as far as Grand Bahama. ‘We'll have a fix on her immediately she enters the Straits - we've got the whole U.S. Coast Guard rooting for us.’

  They argued and discussed for ten minutes more, before Tom Parker slapped an open palm on the desk in front of him and they subsided reluctantly into silence.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. Do I understand the proposal to be that this chapter of Green-Peace intercepts the tanker carrying cad-rich crudes before it enters American territorial waters and attempts to delay or divert the ship?’

  ‘That's exactly it,’ Samantha nodded, and looked about her for support. They were all nodding and murmuring agreement.

  ‘What are we trying to achieve? Do we truly believe that we will be able to hold up the delivery of toxic crudes to the refinery at Galveston? Let's define our objectives,’ Tom insisted.

  ‘In order for evil men to triumph it is necessary only that good men do nothing. We are doing something.’

  ‘Bullshit, Sam,’ Tom growled. "Let's cut down on the rhetoric - it's one of the things that does us more harm than good. You talk like a nut and you discredit yourself before you have begun.’

  ‘All right,’ Samantha grinned. ‘We are publicizing the dangers, and our opposition to them.’

  ‘Okay,’ Tom nodded. ‘That's better. What are our other objectives?’

  They discussed that for twenty minutes more, and then Tom Parker took over again.

  ‘Fine, now how do we get out there in the Straits to confront this vessel - do we put on our water-wings and swim?’

  Even Samantha looked sheepish now. She glanced around for support, but the others were studying their fingernails or gazing with sudden fascination out of the windows.

  ‘Well,’ Samantha began, and then hesitated. ‘We thought –‘

  ‘Go on,’ Tom encouraged her. ‘Of course, you weren't thinking of using University property, were you? There is actually a law in this country against taking other people's ships - it's called piracy.’

  ‘As a matter of fact -' Samantha gave a helpless shrug.

  ‘And as a senior and highly respected member of the faculty, you would not expect me to be party to a criminal act.’

  They were all silent, watching Samantha, for she was their leader, but for once she was at a loss.

  ‘On the other hand, if a party of graduate researchers put in a requisition, through the proper channels, I would be quite happy to authorize an extended field expedition across the Stra
its to Grand Bahama on board the Dicky.’

  ‘Tom, you're a darling,’ said Samantha.

  ‘That's a hell of a way to speak to your Professor,’ said Tom, and scowled happily at her.

  ‘They came in on the British Airways flight from Heathrow yesterday afternoon. Three of them, here is a list of the names,’ Bernard Wackie slid a notepad across the desk, and Nicholas glanced at it quickly.

  ‘Charles Gras - I know him, he's Chief Engineer at Construction Navale Atlantique,’ Nicholas explained.

  ‘Right,’ Bernard nodded. ‘He gave his occupation and employer to Immigration.’

  ‘Isn't that privileged information?’

  Bernard grinned. ‘I keep my ear to the ground,’ and then he was deadly serious again. ‘All right, so these three engineers have a small suitcase each and a crate in the hold that weighs three hundred and fifty kilos, and it's marked “Industrial Machinery”.’

  ‘Don't stop now,’ Nicholas encouraged him.

  ‘And there is an S61N Sikorsky helicopter sitting waiting for them on the tarmac. The helicopter has been chartered direct from London by Christy Marine of Leadenhall Street. The three engineers and the case of machinery are shuttled aboard the Sikorsky so fast that it looks like a conjuring trick, and she takes off and egg-beats for the south.

  ‘Did the Sikorsky pilot file a flight-plan?’

  ‘Sure did. Servicing shipping, course 196 magnetic. ETA to be reported.’

  ‘What's the range of the 61N - 500 nautical miles?’

  ‘Not bad,’ Bernard conceded. '533 for the standard, but this model has long-range tanks, she's good for 750. But that's one way, not the return journey. The helicopter hasn't returned to Bermuda yet.’

  ‘She could refuel aboard - or, if they aren't carrying avgas, she could stay on until final destination,’ Nicholas said. ‘What else have you got?’