Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  One of the tanker's junior officers came out of the radio room at the back of the bridge.

  ‘Still no score’ he said, ‘and only injury time left now,’ and they fell into a concerned discussion of the World Cup soccer match being played under floodhghts at Wembley Stadium on the other side of the Atlantic.

  ‘If it's a draw then it means that France is in the-‘

  There was an excited shout from the radio room, and the junior officer ran to the door and then turned back with an excited grin. ‘England has scored!’

  The deck officer chuckled happily. ‘That will wrap it up.’ Then with a start of guilt he turned back to his duties, and had another start, this time of surprise, when he glanced into the radarscope.

  ‘What the hell are they playing at!’ he exclaimed irritably, and hurried forward to scan the sea ahead.

  The fishing boat had continued its turn and was now bows on.

  ‘Damn them. We'll give them a buzz.’ He reached up for the handle of the foghorn and blew three long blasts, that echoed out mournfully across the shallow greenish water of the Straits. There was a general movement among the officers to get a better view ahead through the forward bridge windows.

  ‘They must be half asleep out there.’ The deck officer thought quickly about calling the Captain to the bridge. If it came to manoeuvring the ship in these confined waters, he flinched from the responsibility. Even at this reduced speed, it would take Golden Dawn half an hour and seven nautical miles to come to a stop; a turn in either direction would swing through a wide arc of many miles before the ship was able to make a 90° change, of course - God, then there was the effect of the wind against the enormously exposed area of the towering stern quarters, and the full bore of the Gulf Stream driving out of the narrows of the Straits. The problems of manoeuvring the vessel struck a chill of panic into the officer - and the fishing boat was on collision course, the range closing swiftly under the combined speeds of both vessels. He reached for the call button of the intercom that connected the bridge directly to the Captain's quarters on the deck below, but at that moment Captain Randle came bounding up the private staircase from his day cabin.

  ‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What was that blast on the horn?’

  'Small vessel holding on to collision course, sir.’ The officer's relief was evident, and Randle seized the handle of the foghorn and hung on to it.

  ‘God, what's wrong with them?’

  ‘The deck is crowded,’ exclaimed one of the officers without lowering his binoculars.’ Looks as though they have a movie camera team on the top deck.’ Randle judged the closing range anxiously; already the small fishing vessel was too close for the Golden Dawn to stop in time.

  ‘Thank God,’ somebody exclaimed. ‘They are turning away. They are streaming some sort of banner. Can anybody read that?’

  ‘They are heaving-to,’ the deck officer yelled suddenly. ‘They are heaving-to right under our bows.’

  Samantha Silver had not expected the tanker to be so big. From directly ahead, her bows seemed to fill the horizon from one side to the other, and the bow wave she threw up ahead of her creamed and curved like the set of the long wave at Cape St Francis when the surf was up.

  Beyond the bows, the massive tower of her navigation bridge stood so tall it looked like the skyline of The Miami beach, one of those massive hotel buildings seen from close inshore.

  It made her feel distinctly uneasy to be directly under that on-rushing steel avalanche.

  ‘Do you think they have seen us?’ Sally-Anne asked beside her, and when Samantha heard her own unease echoed by the pretty girl beside her, it steeled her.

  ‘Of course they have,’ she announced stoutly so that everyone in the small wheelhouse could hear her. ‘That's why they blew their siren. We'll turn aside at the last minute.’

  ‘They aren't slowing down,’ Hank Petersen, the helmsman, pointed out huskily, and Samantha wished that Tom Parker had been on board with them. However, Tom was up in Washington again, and they had taken the Dicky to sea with a scratch crew, and without Tom Parker's written authorization. ‘What do you want to do, Sam?’ And they all looked at her.

  ‘I know a thing that size can't stop, but at least we're going to make them slow down.’

  ‘Are the TV boys getting some stuff?’ Samantha asked, to delay the moment of decision. ‘Go up, Sally-Anne, and check them.’ Then to the others, ‘You-all get the banner ready, we'll let them get a good look at that.’

  ‘Listen, Sam.’ Hank Petersen's tanned intelligent face was strained. He was a tunny expert, and was not accustomed to handling the vessel except in calm and uncluttered waters. ‘I don't like this, we're getting much too close. That thing could churn us right under, and not even notice the bump. I want to turn away now.’ His voice was almost drowned by the sudden sky-crashing blast of the tanker's fog-horns.

  ‘Son of a gun, Sam, I don't like playing chicken-chicken with somebody that size.’

  ‘Don't worry, we'll get out of their way at the last moment. All right!’ Samantha decided. ‘Turn 90° to port, Hank. Let's show them the signs, I'm going to help them on deck.’

  The wind tore at the thin white canvas banner as they tried to run it out along the side of the deckhouse, and the little vessel was rolling uncomfortably while the TV producer was shouting confused stage directions at them from the top of the wheelhouse.

  Bitterly Samantha wished there was somebody to take command, somebody like Nicholas Berg - and the banner tried to wrap itself around her head.

  The Dicky was coming around fast now, and Samantha shot a glance at the oncoming tanker and felt the shock of it strike in the pit of her stomach like the blow of a fist. It was huge, and very close - much too close, even she realized that.

  At last she managed to get a turn of the thin line that secured the banner around the stern rail - but the light canvas had twisted so that only one word of the slogan was readable. ‘POISONER', it accused in scarlet, crudely painted letters followed by a grinning skull and crossed bones.

  Samantha dived across the deck and struggled with the flapping canvas; above her head the producer was shouting excitedly; two of the others were trying to help her; Sally-Anne was screaming 'Go back! Go back!’ and waving both arms at the great tanker. ‘You poison our oceans!’ Everything was becoming confused and out of control, the Dicky swung ahead into the wind and pitched steeply, the person next to her lost his footing and knocked painfully into Samantha, and at that moment she felt the change of the engine beat.

  Tricky Dicky's diesel had been bellowing furiously as Hank opened the throttle to its stop, using full power to bring the little vessel around from under the menace of those steel bows.

  The smoking splutter of the exhaust pipe that rose vertically up the side of the deckhouse, had made all speech difficult - but now it died away, and suddenly there was only the sound of the wind.

  Even their own raised voices were silenced, and they froze, staring out at Golden Dawn as she bore down on them without the slightest check in her majestic approach.

  Samantha was the first one to recover, She ran across the plunging deck to the wheelhouse.

  Hank Petersen was down on his knees beside the bulkhead, struggling ineffectually with the conduit that housed the controls to the engine room on the deck below.

  ‘Why have you stopped?’ Samantha yelled at him, and he looked up at her as though he were mortally wounded.

  ‘It's the throttle linkage,’ he said.’ It's snapped again.’

  ‘Can't you fix it?’ and the question was a mockery. A mile away, Golden Dawn came down on them - silent, menacing, unstoppable.

  For ten seconds Randle stood rigid, both hands gripping the foul weather rail below the sill of the bridge windows. His face was set, pale and finely drawn , as he watched the stern of the wallowing fishing boat for the renewed churning of its prop.

  He knew that he could not turn nor stop his ship in time to avoid collision, unless the sma
ll vessel got under way immediately, and took evasive action by going out to starboard under full power.

  ‘Damn them to hell,’ he thought bitterly, they were in gross default. He had all the law and the custom of the sea behind him; a collision would cause very little damage to Golden Dawn, perhaps she would lose a little paint, at most a slightly buckled plate in the reinforced bows - and they had asked for it He had no doubts about the object of this crazy, irresponsible seamanship. There had been controversy before the Golden Dawn sailed. He had read the objections and seen the nut-case environmentalists on television. The scarlet painted banner with the ridiculously melodramatic Jolly Roger made it clear that this was a boatload of nutters attempting to prevent Golden Dawn entering American waters.

  He felt his anger boiling up fiercely. These people always made him furious - if they had their way, there would be no tanker trade, and now they were deliberately threatening him, placing him in a position which might prejudice his own career. He already had the task of taking his ship through the Straits ahead of the hurricane. Every moment was vital - and now there was this.

  He would be happy to maintain course and speed, and to run them down. They were flaunting themselves, challenging him to do it - and, by God, they deserved it. However, he was a seaman, with a seaman's deep concern for human life at sea. It would go against all his instincts not to make an effort to avoid collision, no matter how futile that effort would be. Then beside him one of his officers triggered him.

  ‘There are women on board her - look at that! Those are women!’ That was enough. Without waiting for confirmation, Randle snapped at the helmsman beside him.

  ‘Full port rudder!’ And with two swift paces he had reached the engine room telegraph. It rang shrilly as he pulled back the chromed handle to ‘Full Astern'.

  Almost immediately, the changed beat came up through the soles of his feet, as the great engine seven decks below the bridge thundered suddenly under all emergency power, and the direction of the spinning main propeller shaft was abruptly reversed.

  Randle spun back to face ahead. For almost five minutes, the bows held steady on the horizon without making any answer to the full application of the rudder. The inertia of a million tons of crude oil, the immense drag of the hull through water and the press of wind and current held her on course, and although the single ferro-bronze propeller bit deeply into the green waters, there was not the slightest diminution of the tanker's speed.

  Randle kept his hand on the engine telegraph, pulling back on the silver handle with all his strength, as though this might arrest the great ship's forward way through the water.

  ‘Turn!’ he whispered to the ship, and he stared at the fishing boat that still lay, rolling wildly, directly in Golden Dawn's path. He noticed irrelevantly that the tiny human figures along the rear rail were waving frantically, and that the banner with its scarlet denunciation had torn loose at one end and was now whipping and twisting like a Tibetan prayer flag over the heads of the crew.

  ‘Turn,’ Randle whispered, and he saw the first response of the hull; the angle between the bows and the fishing boat altered, it was a noticeable change, but slowly accelerating and a quick glance at the control console showed a small check in the ship's forward speed.

  ‘Turn, damn it, turn.’ Randle held the engine telegraph locked at full astern, and felt the sudden influence of the Gulf Stream current on the ship as she began to come across the direction of flow.

  Ahead, the fishing boat was almost about to disappear from sight behind Golden Dawn's high blunt bows.

  He had been holding the ship at full astern for almost seven minutes now, and suddenly Randle felt a change in Golden Dawn, something he had never experienced before.

  There was harsh, tearing, pounding vibration coming up through the deck. He realized just how severe that vibration must be, when Golden Dawn's monumental hull began to shake violently - but he could not release his grip on the engine telegraph, not with that helpless vessel lying in his track.

  Then suddenly, miraculously, all vibration in the deck under his feet ceased altogether. There was only the calm press of the hull through the water, no longer the feel of the engine's thrust, a sensation much more alarming to a mariner than the vibration which had preceded it, and simultaneously, a fiery rash of red warning lights bloomed on the ship's main control console, and the strident screech of the full emergency audio-alarm deafened them all.

  Only then did Captain Randle push the engine telegraph to ‘stop'. He stood staring ahead as the tiny fishing boat disappeared from view, hidden by the angle from the navigation bridge which was a mile behind the bows.

  One of the officers reached across and hit the cut-out on the audio-alarm. In the sudden silence every officer stood frozen, waiting for the impact of collision.

  Golden Dawn's Chief Engineer paced slowly along the engine-room control console, never taking his eyes from the electronic displays which monitored all the ship's mechanical and electrical functions.

  When he reached the alarm aboard, he stopped and frowned at it angrily. The failure of the single transistor, a few dollars’ worth of equipment, had been the cause of such brutal damage to his beloved machinery. He leaned across and pressed the test button, checking out each alarm circuit, yet, while he was doing it, recognizing the fact that it was too late. He was nursing the ship along, with God alone knew what undiscovered damage to engine and main shaft only kept in check by this reduced power setting - but there was a hurricane down there below the southern horizon, and the Chief could only guess at what emergency his machinery might have to meet in the. next few days.

  It made him nervous and edgy to think about it. He searched in his back pocket, found a sticky mint humbug, carefully picked off the little pieces of lint and fluff before tucking it into his cheek like a squirrel with a nut, sucking noisily upon it as he resumed his restless prowling up and down the control console.

  His on-duty stokers and the oilers watched him surreptitiously. When the old man was in a mood, it was best not to attract attention.

  ‘Dickson!’ the Chief said suddenly. ‘Get your lid on. We are going down the shaft tunnel again.’

  The oiler sighed, exchanged a resigned glance with one of his mates and clapped his hard-hat on his head. He and the Chief had been down the tunnel an hour previously. It was an uncomfortable, noisy and dirty journey.

  The oiler closed the watertight doors into the shaft tunnel behind them, screwing down the clamps firmly under the Chief's frosty scrutiny, and then both men stooped in the confined headroom and started off along the brightly lit pale grey painted tunnel.

  The spinning shaft in its deep bed generated a high-pitched whine that seemed to resonate in the steel box of the tunnel, as though it was the body of a violin. Surprisingly, the noise was more pronounced at this low speed setting, it seemed to bore into the teeth at the back of the oiler's jaw like a dentist's drill.

  The Chief did not seem to be affected. He paused beside the main bearing for almost ten minutes, testing it with the palm of his hand, feeling for heat or vibration. His expression was morose, and he worried the mint humbug in his cheek and shook his head with foreboding We are going on up the tunnel.

  When he reached the main gland, he squatted down suddenly and peered at it closely. With a deliberate flexing of his jaw he crushed the remains of the humbug between his teeth, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  There was a thin trickle of seawater oozing through the gland and running down into the bilges. The Chief touched it with his finger. Something had shifted, some balance was disturbed, the seal of the gland was no longer watertight - such a small sign, a few gallons of seawater, could be the first warning of major structural damage.

  The Chief shuffled around, still hunched down beside the shaft bed, and he lowered his face until it was only inches from the spinning steel main shaft. He closed one eye, and cocked his head, trying once again to decide if the faint blurring of the shaft's outline was real
or merely his over-active imagination, whether what he was seeing was distortion or his own fears.

  Suddenly, startlingly, the shaft slammed into stillness. The deceleration was so abrupt that the Chief could actually see the torque transferred into the shaft bed, and the metal walls creaked and popped with the strain.

  He rocked back on to his heels, and almost instantly the shaft began to spin again, but this time in reverse thrust. The whine built up swiftly into a rising shriek. They were Pulling emergency power from the bridge, and it was madness, suicidal madness.

  The Chief seized the oiler by the shoulder and shouted into his ear, ‘Get back to control - find out what the hell they are doing on the bridge.’

  The oiler scrambled away down the tunnel; it would take him ten minutes to negotiate the long narrow passage, open the watertight doors and reach the control room and as long again to return.

  The Chief considered going after him, but somehow he could not leave the shaft now. He lowered his head again, and now he could clearly see the flickering outline of the shaft. It wasn't imagination at all, there was a little ghost of movement. He clamped his hands over his ears to cut out the painful shriek of the spinning metal, but there was a new note to it, the squeal of bare metal on metal and before his eyes he saw the ghost outline along the edge of the shaft growing, the flutter of machinery out of balance, and the metal deck under his feet began to quiver.

  ‘God! They are going to blow the whole thing!’ he shouted, and jumped up from his crouch. Now the deck was juddering and shaking under his feet. He started back along the shaft, but the entire tunnel was agitating so violently that he had to grab the metal bulkhead to steady himself, and he reeled drunkenly, thrown about like a captive insect in a cruel child's box.

  Ahead of him, he saw the huge metal casting of the main bearing twisting and shaking, and the vibration chattered his teeth in his clenched jaw and drove up his spine like a jack hammer.