Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (74 page)

Beyond the bows, the massive tower of her navigation bridge stood so
tall it looked like the skyline of The Miami
b
each, 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 shout
ing
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 small 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
J
olly Roger made it clear that this was a
boatload of nutters attempting to prevent Golden Dawn entering American
waters.

He fel
t 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.