Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (12 page)

‘
Closer
,’
snapped Nick.
‘
Get as close as you can.
’

Of the yellow
life-raft there was no longer any sign.
J
agged shards of ice had ripped open its fragile skin and the grinding,
tumbling lumps had trodden it and its pitiful human cargo deep beneath
the surface.

‘
Closer,
’
urged Nick. If by a miracle anybody had survived that
avalanche, then they had four minutes left of life, and Nick pushed
Warlock into the still rolling and broiling mass of broken ice - pushing
it open with ice strengthened bows.

Nick flung open the bridge doors beside him and stepped out into the
freezing air of the open wing. He ignored the cold, buoyed up by new
anger and frustration. He had paid the highest price to make this
rescue, he had given up his chance at Golden Adventurer for the lives of
a handful of strangers, and now at this last moment, they had been
snatched away from him. His sacrifice had been in vain, and the
terrible waste of it all appalled him. Because there was no other
outlet for his feelings, he let waves of anger sweep over him and he
shouted at David Allen's little group on the fore-dec
k
.

‘
Keep your eyes open. I want those people!
’

Red caught his eye, a flash
of vivid red, seen through the green water, becoming brighter and more
hectic as it rose to the surface.

‘
Both engines half astern,
’
he screamed. And Warlock stopped dead as the
twin propellers changed pitch and bit into the water, pulling her up in
less than her own length.

I
n a small open area of green water the red object broke out.

Nick saw a human head in a red anorak hood, supported by the thick
inflated life-jacket. The head was thrown back, exposing a face as
white and glistening with wetness as the deadly ice that surrounded it.
The face was that of a young boy, smooth and beardless, and quite
incredibly beautiful.

‘
Get him!
’
Nick yelled, and at the sound of his voice the eyes in that
beautiful face opened. Nick saw they were a musty green and unnaturally
large in the, glistening pale oval framed by the crimson hood.

David Allen was racing back, carrying life-ring and line.

‘
Hurry. God damn you.
’
The boy was still alive, and Nick wanted him. He
wanted him as fiercely as he had wanted anything in his life, he wanted
at least this one young life in return for all he had sacrificed. He
saw that the boy was watching him.
‘
Come on, David
,’
he shouted
.

‘
Here!
’
called David, bracing himself at the ship's rail and he threw the
life-ring. He threw it with an expert round arm motion that sent it
skimming forty feet to where the hooded head bobbed on the agitated
water. He threw it so accurately that it hit the bobbing figure a
glancing blow on the shoulder and then plopped into the water alongside,
almost nudging the boy.

‘
Grab it!
’
yelled Nick.
‘
Grab hold!
’
The face turned slowly, and the boy
lifted a gloved hand clear of the surface, but the movement was
uncoordinated.

‘T
here. It's
right
next to you
,’
David encouraged.
‘
Grab it, man!
’

The boy had
been in the water for almost two minutes already, he had lost control of
his body and limbs, he made two inconclusive movements with the raised
hand, one actually bumped the ring but he could not hold it and slowly
the life-ring bobbed away from him.

‘
You bloody idiot
,’
stormed Nick.
‘
Grab it,
’
And those huge green eyes
turned back to him, looking up at him with the total resignation of
defeat, one stiff arm still raised - almost a farewell salute.

Nick did not realize what he was going to do until he had shrugged off
his coat and kicked away his shoes; then he realized that if he stopped
to think about it, he would not go.

He jumped feet first, throwing himself far out to miss the rail below
him, and as the water closed over his head he experienced a terrified
sense of disbelief at the cold.

It seized his chest in a vice that choked the air from his lungs, it
drove needles of agony deep into his forehead, and blinded him with the
pain as he rose to the surface The cold rushed through his light
clo
th
ing, it crushed his testicles and his stomach was filled with
nausea. The marrow in the bones of his legs and arms ached so that he
found it difficult to force his limbs to respond, but he struck out for
the floating figure.

It was only forty feet, but halfway there he was seized by a panic that
he was not going to make it. He clenched his teeth and fought the icy
water as though it was a mortal enemy, but it sapped away his strength
with the heat of his body.

He struck the floating figure with one outflung
arm
before he realized he
had reached him, and he clung desperately to him, peering up at
Warlock's deck.

David Allen had retrieved the ring by its line and he threw it again.
The cold had slowed Nick down so that he could not avoid the ring and it
struck him on the forehead, but he felt no pain, there was no feeling in
his face or feet or hands.

The fleeting seconds counted out the life left to them as he struggled
with the inert figure, slowly losing command of his own limbs as he
tried to fit the ring over the boy's body. He did not accomplish it. He
got the boy's head and one arm through, and he knew he could do no more.

‘
Pull
,’
he screamed in rising panic, and his voice was remote and echoed
strangely in his own ears.

He took a twist of line around his arm, for his fingers could no longer
hold, and he clung with the remains of his strength as they dragged them
in.

jagged ice brushed and snatched at them, but he held the boy with his
free arm.

‘
Pull
,’
he whispered.
‘
Oh, for God's sake, pull!
’
And then they were
bumping against Warlock's steel side, were being lifted free of the
water, the twist of line smearing the wet skin from his forearm,
staining his sleeve with blood that was instantly dissolved to pink by
sea water. He felt no pain.

With the other arm, he hung on to the boy, holding him from slipping out
of the life-ring. He did not feel the hands that grabbed at him. There
was no feeling in his legs and he collapsed face forward, but David
caught him before he struck the deck and they hustled him into the
steaming warmth of Angel's galley, his legs dragging behind him.

‘
Are you okay, Skipper?
’
David kept demanding, and when Nick tried to
reply, his jaw was locked in a frozen rictus and great shuddering spasms
shook his whole body.

‘
Get their clothes off
,’
grated Angel, and, with an easy swing of his
heavily muscled shoulders lifted the boy's body on to the galley table
and laid it out face upwards.
With a single sweep of a Solingen steel butcher's knife he split the
crimson anorak from neck to crutch and stripped it away.

Nick found his voice, it was ragged and broken by the convulsions of
frozen muscles.

‘
What the hell are you doing, David? Get your arse on deck and get this
ship on course for Golden Adventurer
,’
he grated, and would have added
something a little more forceful, but the next convulsion caught him,
and anyway David Allen had already left.

‘
You'll be all right.
’
Angel did not even glance up at Nick as he worked
with the knife, ripping away layer after layer of the boy's clothing. A
tough old dog like you - but I think we've got a ripe case of
hypothermia here. Two of the seamen were helping Nick out of his sodden
clothing, the cloth crackled with the thin film of ice that had already
formed. Nick winced with the pain of returning circulation to
half-frozen hands and feet.

‘
Okay
,’
he said, standing naked in the middle of the galley and scrubbing
at himself with a rough towel.
‘
I'll be all right now, return to your
stations.
’
He crossed to the kitchen range, tottering like a drunk, and
welcomed the blast of heat from it, rubbing warmth into himself, still
shaking and shuddering, his body mottled puce and purple with cold and
his genitals shrunken and drawn up into the dense black bush at his
crotch.

‘
Coffee's boiling. Get yourself a hot drink, Skip
,’
Angel told him,
glancing up at Nick from his work. He ran a quick appreciative glance
over Nick's body, taking in the wide rangy shoulders, the dark curls of
damp hair that covered his chest, and the trim lines of hard muscle that
moulded his belly and waist.

‘
Put lots of sugar in it - it will warm you the best possible way
,’
Angel
instructed him, and returned his attention to the slim young body on the
table.

Angel had put aside his camp airs, and worked with the brusque
efficiency of a man who had been trained at his task.

Then suddenly he stopped and stood back for a moment.

‘
Would you believe! No fun gun!
’
Angel sighed.

Nick turned just as Angel spread a thick woollen blanket over the pale
naked body on the table and began to massage it vigorously.

‘
You better leave us girls alone together, Skipper
,’
said Angel with a
sweet smile and a twinkle of his diamond earrings, and Nick was left
with the memory of a single fleeting glimpse of the stunningly lovely
body of a young woman below the pale face and the thick sodden head of
copper and gold hair.

Nick Berg was swaddled in a grey woollen blanket, over the boiler suit
and bulk jerseys. His feet were in thick Norwegian trawlerman's socks
and heavy rubber working boots. He held a china mug of almost boiling
coffee in both hands, bending over it to savour the aroma of the steam.
It was the third cup he had drunk in the last hour - and yet the
shivering spasms still shook him every few minutes.

David Allen had moved his canvas chair across the bridge so he could
watch the Trog and work the ship at the same time. Nick could see the
loom of the black rock cliffs of Cape Alarm close on their port beam.

The morse beam squealed suddenly, a long sequence of code to which every
man on the bridge listened with complete attention, but it needed the
Trog to say it for them.

‘
La Mouette has reached the prize.
’
He seemed to take a perverse relish
in seeing their expressions.
‘
She's beaten us to it, lads.
12
½
%
salvage to her crew–‘

‘
I want it word for word,
’
snapped Nick irritably,
and the Trog grinned spitefully at him before bowing over his pad.