Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (15 page)

‘
I'm going to penetrate.
’
Nick made the decision aloud, and beside him
the Chief was silent for long incredulous seconds, then he covered the
edge of fear in his voice with,

‘
Listen, cobber, every time I've ever
been into an orifice shaped like that, it's always meant big trouble.
Reminds me of my first wife.
’

‘
Cover for me
,’
Nick interrupted him.
‘
If
I'm not out in five minutes
-‘

‘
I'm coming with you
,’
said the Chief.
‘
I've
got to take a look at her engine room. This is good a time as any.
’

Nick
did not argue with him.

‘
I'll go first
,’
he said and tapped the Chief's shoulder.
‘
Do what I do.
’

Nick hung four feet from the gash, finning to hold himself there against
the current.

He watched the swirl of water rushing into the opening, and then gushing
out again in a rash of silver bubbles.
Then, as she began to breathe again, he darted forward.

The current caught him and he was hurled at the gap, with only time to
duck his helmeted head and cover the fragile oxygen bag on his chest
with both arms.

Raw steel snagged at his leg; there was no pain, but almost instantly he
felt the leak of sea water into his suit.
The cold stung like a razor cut, but he was through into the total
darkness of the cavernous hull. He was flung into a tangle of steel
piping, and he anchored himself with one arm and groped for the
underwater lantern on his belt.

‘
You okay?
’
The Chief Is voice boomed in his headphones.

‘
Fine.
’

Vin Baker's lantern glowed eerily in the dark waters ahead of
him.

‘
Work fast
,’
instructed Nick.
‘
I've got a tear in my suit.
’

Each of them
knew exactly what to do and where to go.
Vin Baker swam first to the water-tight bulkheads and checked all the
seals. He was working in darkness in a totally unfamiliar engine room,
but he went unerringly to the pump system, and checked the
valve-settings; then he rose to the surface, feeling his way up the
massive blocks of the main engines.

Nick was there ahead of him. The engine room was flooded almost to the
deck above and the surface was a thick stinking scum of oil and diesel,
in which floated a mass of loose articles, most of them undefinable, but
in the beam of his lantern Nick recognized a gumboot and a grease pot
floating beside his head. The whole thick stinking soup rose and fell
and agitated with the push of the current through the rent.

The lenses of their lanterns were smeared with the oily filth and threw
grotesque shadows into the cavernous depths, but Nick could just make
out the deck above him, and the dark opening of the vertical ventilation
shaft. He wiped the filth from his visor and saw what he wanted to see
and the cold was spreading up his leg. He asked brusquely,
‘
Okay, Chief?
’

‘
Let's get the hell out of here.
’

There were sickening moments of panic
when Nick thought they had lost the line to the opening. It had sagged
and wrapped around a steam pipe. Nick freed it and then sank down to
the glimmer of light through the gash.

He judged his moment carefully, the return was more dangerous than the
entry, for the raw bright metal had been driven in by the ice, like the
petals of a sunflower - or the fangs in a shark's jaw. He used the suck
of water and shot through without a touch, turning and finning to wait
for Vin Baker.

The Australian came through in the next rush of water, but Nick saw him
flicked sideways by the current, and he struck the jagged opening a
touching blow. There was instantly a roaring rush of escaping oxygen
from his breathing bag, as the steel split it wide, and for a moment the
Chief was obscured in the silver cloud of gas that was his life's
breath.

‘
Oh God, I'm snagged
,’
he shouted, clutching helplessly at his empty bag
plummeting sharply into the green depths at the drastic change in his
buoyance. The heavily leaded belt around his waist had been weighted to
counter the flotation of the oxygen bag, and he went down like a gannet
diving on a shoal of sardine.

Nick saw instantly what was about to happen. The current had him - it
was dragging him down under the hull, sucking him under that hammering
steel bottom, where he would be crushed against the stony beach by
twenty-two thousand tons of pounding steel.

Nick went head down, finning desperately to catch the swirling body
which tumbled like a leaf in high wind. He had a fleeting glimpse of
Baker's face, contorted with terror and lack of breath, the glass visor
of his helmet already swamping with icy water as the pressure spurted
through the non-return valve. The Chief's headset microphone squealed
once and then went dead as the water shorted it out.

‘
Drop your belt
,’
yelled Nick, but Baker did not respond; he had not heard,
his headset had gone and instead he fought ineffectually in the swirling
current, drawn inexorably down to brutal death.

Nick got a hand to him and threw back with all his strength on his fins
to check their downward plunge, but still they went down and Nick's
right hand was clumsy with cold and the double thickness of his mittens
as he groped for the quick-release on the Chief's belt.

He hit the rounded bottom of the great hull with his shoulder, and felt
them dragged under to where clouds of sediment blew like smoke from the
working of the keel.
Locked together like a couple of waltzing dancers, they swung around and
he saw the keel, like the blade of a guillotine, rise up high above
them. He could not reach the Chief's release toggle.

There were only micro-seconds in which to go for his one other chance.
He hit his own release and the thick belt with thirty-five pounds of
lead fell away from Nick's waist; with it went the buddy line that would
guide them back to the waiting Zodiac, for it had been clipped into the
back of the belt.

The abrupt loss of weight checked their downward plunge, and fighting
with all the strength of his legs, Nick was just able to hold them clear
of the great keel as it came swinging downwards.

Within ten feet of them, steel struck stone with a force that rang in
Nick's eardrum like a bronze gong but he had an armlock on the Chief's
struggling body, and now at last his right hand found the release toggle
on the other man's belt.

He hit it, and another thirty-five pounds of lead dropped away. They
began to rise, up along the hogging steel hull, faster and faster as the
oxygen in Nick's bag expanded with the release of pressure. Now their
plight was every bit as desperate, for they were racing upwards to a
roof of solid ice with enough speed to break bone or crack a skull.

Nick emptied his lungs, exhaling on a single continuous breath, and at
the same time opened the valve to vent his bag, blowing away the
precious life-giving gas in an attempt to check their rise - yet still
they went into the ice with a force that would have stunned them both,
had Nick not twisted over and caught it on his shoulder and outflung
arm. They were pinned there under the ice by the cork-like buoyancy of
their rubber suits and the remaining gas in Nick's bag.

With mild and detached surprise Nick saw that the lower side of the ice
pack was not a smooth sheet, but was worked into ridges and pinnacles,
into weird flowing shapes like some abstract sculpture in pale green
glass. It was only a fleeting moment that he looked at it, for beside
him Baker was drowning.

His helmet was flooded with icy water and his face was empurpled and his
mouth contorted into a horrible rictus; already his movements were
becoming spasmodic and uncoordinated, as he struggled for breath.

Nick realized that haste would kill them both now. He had to work fast
but deliberately - and he held Baker to him as he cracked the valve on
his steel oxygen bottle, reinflating his chest bag.

With his right hand, he began to unscrew the breathing pipe connection
into the side of Baker's helmet. It was slow, too slow. He needed
touch for this delicate work.

He thought, This could cost me my right hand, and he stripped off the
thick mitten in a single angry gesture. Now he could feel - for the few
seconds until the cold paralysed his fingers. The connection came free
and while he worked, Nick was pumping his lungs like a bellows,
hyperventilating, washing his blood with pure oxygen until he felt
light-headed and dizzy.

One last sweet breath, and then he unscrewed his own hose connection;
icy water flooded through the valve but he held his head at an angle to
trap oxygen in the top of his helmet, keeping his nose and eyes clear,
and he rescrewed his own hose into Baker's helmet with fingers that no
longer had feeling.

He held the Chief's body close to his chest, embracing like lovers, and
he cracked the last of the oxygen from his bottle. There was just
sufficient pressure of gas left to expunge the water from Baker's
helmet. It blew out with an explosive hiss through the valve, and Nick
watched carefully with his face only inches from Baker's.

The Chief was choking and coughing, gulping and gasping at the rush of
cold oxygen, his eyes watery and unseeing
,
his spectacles blown awry and
the lenses obscured by sea water, but then Nick felt his chest begin to
swell and subside. Baker was breathing again,
‘
which is more than I am
doing
’
Nick thought grimly - and then suddenly he realized for the first
time that he had lost the guide line with his weight belt.

He did not know in which direction was the shore, nor which way to swim
to reach the Zodiac. He was utterly disorientated, and desperately he
peered through his half flooded visor for sight of the Golden
Adventurer's hull to align himself. She was not there, gone in the
misty green gloom - and he felt the first heave of his lungs as they
demanded air. And as he denied his body the driving need to breathe, he
felt the fear that had flickered deep within him flare up into true
terror, swiftly becoming cold driving panic.

A suicidal urge to tear at the green ice roof of this watery tomb almost
overwhelmed him. He wanted to try and rip his way through it with bare
freezing hands to reach the precious air.

Then, just before panic completely obliterated his reason, he remembered
the compass on his wrist. Even then his brain was sluggish, beginning
to starve for oxygen, and it took precious seconds working out the
reciprocal of his original bearing.

As he leaned forward to read the compass, more sea water spurted into
his helmet, spiking needles of icy cold agony into the sinuses of his
cheeks and forehead, making the teeth ache in his jaws, so he gasped
involuntarily and immediately choked.

Still holding Baker to him, linked by the thick black umbilical cord of
his oxygen hose, Nick began to swim out on the reciprocal compass
heading. Immediately his lungs began to pump, convulsing in involuntary
spasms, like those of childbirth, craving air, and he swam on.

With his head thrown back slightly he saw that the sheet of ice moved
slowly above him; at times, when the current held them it moved not at
all, and it required all his self
-
control to keep finning doggedly, then
the current relaxed its grip and they moved forward again, but achingly
slowly.