North Cape (13 page)

"Outside!" Folsom exploded. "Captain, you can't go out there!" Larkin grinned. "Watch me. How else do you think we are going to get her around? You can't see worth a damn through that screen. This ship is going to have to be steered around those waves like a tin can. That means we come about as we crest a wave—and only the right wave at that—and complete the turn before we hit the bottom of the trough or else we will roll over and go right to the bottom." Folsom took a deep breath. "Captain, you. will freeze to death before we can come about."

"Not if you hurry about it."

Larkin turned away and hurried down to his cabin for his foul-weather gear. When he returned to the bridge a few minutes later, Folsom was just finishing his instructions to the helmsman. He looked up as Larkin came onto the bridge, zipping up his jacket. A marine came hurrying up with a nylon safety line and clipped one end to the harness already around Larkin's chest.

"Listen for my count. As we come up the wave I'll start counting backward from ten. When I get to one, be ready to put the helm over hard . . . and better keep the turbine engines idling up to speed as well. We'll have plenty of need of an extra kick" Folsom nodded and Larkin turned away, jamming the helmet down over his head. He snapped the throat mike into place, tested it quickly, then pulled down the faceplate and left through the emergency hatch. Once outside, still in the lee of the bridge, he checked the microphone again, then buckled his safety straps to the railing. With the safety line trailing behind, he was now about as safe as he could possibly be . . . until the first good wave decided to wash him overboard. Against the power of those tons, of water the line would snap; or, if it held, would probably cut him in half. The plates of the catway leading around the top of the bridge structure were caked solid with ice. That ice, washed constantly by spray, was slippery underfoot, and he moved carefully to keep his footing. As he came out of the lee of the deckhouse, Larkin grunted in surprise as the wind cut through the nylon and

electrically heated layers of foam padding as if they did not exist. Almost immediately his fingers and toes went numb. The temperature close to —20°, when combined with the 110-knot wind, gave a chill index of —98°. Unprotected, he would not last more than a minute before his heart stopped beating. As Larkin moved out onto the forward position of the weather deck, the wind pulled and plucked at him to send his feet sweeping away. He crashed against the steel wall of the deckhouse with stunning force, and for several minutes was unable to clear his head enough to get to his feet. The -forty-foot journey from the deck hatch, up the narrow ladder, and around the curve of the bridge was made, an inch at a time, on hands and knees. The wind was a solid wall of force through which he had to tunnel, and finally he was reduced to using his hands to pull himself from stanchion to stanchion along the railing. The stanchions were set every six feet, just beyond the grasp of his extended arm. He had to wait between each stanchion, arms stretched wide to hold the stanchion and the edge of the catway, resting, readying himself for the lunge to the next. Then, when he grasped it, he had to pull himself painfully up to the frozen metal and reach for the next. His task was made even harder by the fact that each stanchion supported a wedge of ice nearly two feet long to windward. His gloves froze to the ice and he had to pull them loose each time. If he lost a glove, he would also lose a hand. An uncovered hand would freeze into uselessness in less than two minutes. And Larkin needed the use of both hands to make any progress at all. Larkin stretched out full length on the ice-coated deck to reduce the amount of his body exposed to the wind. The wind was like a solid hammer of steel pounding away in rhythmic gusts, thumping him into the ice, and then, as it got under his body and lifted him clear of the deck, flinging him back against the safety line. The struggle soon became concentrated into forcing his Land out to grasp the next stanchion and pull himself along the deck. He had thirty-five more feet to go to reach the center of the catway.

The strain on Larkin's shoulders was causing the muscles to 'scream, in-protest each time he reached for the next stanchion. Then it happened.

Between the fourth and fifth stanchion, his hand slipped off the ice-coated tube. The wind reached, slamming him back against the harness, and the line fouled. Another gust of wind caught him and almost pulled him through the railing before he got the straps cleared. Then the petulant wind smashed him back, cracking his leg viciously against the bridge plating as if it were alive and frustrated by the puny efforts of this unbearable, unnoticeable insect. For a minute Larkin lay crumpled against the bulkhead while the pain in his leg slowly subsided. Then by sheer strength of will he pulled himself to the next stanchion.

After twenty minutes he had managed to get as close to the center of the bridge as he could.

So much ice, he thought. He would never have believed it. Every square inch of the ship above the water line was coated with several feet of ice that glistened here and there in the bridge lights. The forward part of the deck was covered with mounds of ice that obscured bollards and lines and winches. No wonder the RFK was riding so low. If he had filled that hull tank the extra tonnage of water in the bow would have brought her so low in the water that they would have been swamped in short order. Although the RFK

was no submarine, she could ride low for a long while, But eventually the weight of the steadily accumulating ice would send her to the bottom as surely as if the patch had opened.

Larkin rested against the railing with his arms wrapped around the icy stanchion. After a minute or so he regained enough strength to ask for the searchlights. Two powerful beams of light lanced out, swirling around to light the forepeak before disappearing into the twilight gray. Highlights of green and white foam were snatched from the waves and flung back at him by the wind.

Larkin pulled himself to his knees and wedged his body be-tween two close-set stanchions. Standing on his knees, he tried to peer ahead into the deep twilight gloom of the Arctic storm as water and ice smashed back at him from the knife-edged prow. He found that he could keep the faceplate of his electrically heated helmet and suit free of ice with his gloves, but the sea and sky were so close to the same shades of greenish gray that it was almost impossible to tell which was which. After a while he began to make sense of the scene. The waves, he found, were silhouetted in the searchlight as the ship climbed toward their crests. He

timed several, counting the seconds—one thousand . . . two thousand . . . three thousand—until he had gained a rough average of the time it took the RFK to climb, pause at the crest, then rocket down the far side into the deep trough. The motion of the ship was far too irregular to judge the size and height of the waves because of the tremendous forces being applied laterally to the ship by the wind blowing from only two points off the port bow.

He crouched, waiting, his arms wrapped around the railing. The water streamed back, soaking him thoroughly in spite of the waterproof clothing. The wind drove into his trouser legs between the sealed boot tops and cuffs, down his neck and beneath the helmet, disregarding the faceplate as if it did not exist. He waited, already half frozen, trying desperately to stay awake in the intense cold.

A towering roller built up in front of the ship. The bow followed, lifting toward the crest at an impossible angle, and Larkin started his count. He reached one, just as the ship crested, teetered for a moment. Now, he thought, just . . . "nowl" he screamed into the microphone and felt the ship vibrate through its shroud of ice as full power was fed from its nuclear engines to the spinning propeller shafts. The ship tilted and started its headlong rush for the trough.

For a curious moment Larkin was aware only of the beams of the twin searchlights probing into the depths of the trough, immeasurably distant. The stark, white light caught and held the peculiar green-blue color of the frigid Arctic waters. With an effort he wrenched his eyes away and strained through the gloom to the next wave, not quite a quarter of a mile away. Light flashes from the searchlights danced in front of his eyes, obscuring the express train speed of approach. In spite of the pounding, the cold, the spray, and the near panic, he found he was still counting smoothly.

"Now, hard to port, all engines emergency full." Again his voice was a near scream. In spite of the violence of the wind on the crest, the ship shuddered along its stem as the nuclear engines were supplemented by the six gas turbine engines spewing thirty thousand shp apiece in less than eight seconds from idle. The cruiser, which had begun to swing from the wind, stopped as suddenly as though it had hit a brick wall. The engines drove her deep down below the crest, and momentarily out of the full force of the wind. The RFK slewed to port, its stern snapping around as the rudders came hard over. As she reached the, trough she was broadside to the next mountainous wave. Larkin groaned in agony. That damned ice, he cursed. The vast tonnage of ice had slowed her, pressed her too deep into the water for the engines to cope. And the next wave was already towering above her and would roll her like a stick. The ship heeled, farther and farther over, until Larkin gave up hope. A deluge of' water washed him under, burying him completely. Then the great bat• tle cruiser broke free; shaking her head like an angry terrier, she righted herself and shed water in torrents. She came up with a bone in her teeth as she surged around to point in the opposite direction. The following wave rolled under and lifted her high into the wind. The ship skidded down into another trough, her bow smashing deeply into the water. For a heart-sickening moment, Larkin thought again she would never surface, but once. more the bow knifed up, and she shed water. The next wave was easier, as the engines were cut back to one third. And finally she ran before the wind, moving with an easy rolling motion through the towering waves.

Larkin hung exhausted and freezing as the: ship straightened and lifted more easily into the next wave, now chasing water to the crest. Water was no longer breaking over her bow in a steady stream, but came instead in fitful spurts. Larkin felt two hands go under his arms and he was lifted to his feet. The forward portion of.the bridge on which he stood was now in the lee of the wind as the storm pounded in from directly astern. Half supported, he stumbled across the deck and into the heat and glare of the bridge. After the intense cold, the 72° temperature of the interior was almost intolerable. He slumped into the seat and Folsom pulled off his helmet and boots. It was Bridges who had come out onto the deck for him, and now he stripped off his mask and gloves and fetched a cup of hot coffee. Larkin gulped it down as fast as the scalding liquid would allow.

Folsom walked easily across the bridge to where Larkin was seated clutching his coffee. He stopped and grinned down at the captain. "Aren't you the iron sailor," he chuckled in a low voice. Larkin smiled back.

'I thought I was before I went out there. Now I'm not so sure'

Folsom bent to read the dials on the strain gauges. "Well, at least that's one worry gone. At this rate we could keep on for the next ten years."

"Good. In that case, I'm going below for some sleep. Call me in two hours."

"I'll call you when we hit the rendezvous point, not before." Larkin glanced up, startled.

"Not before I said."

The captain stood up, trying valiantly to square his shoulders. "That is mutiny, I think, Mr. Folsom," he said in mock anger.

"Yeah, I know. Now get below, before I call a marine to escort you." Folsom watched fondly as Larkin went below to his quarters, then he turned and went back to the plotting table. He studied the map and the course he had laid out to the rendezvous point for a long while, then he went to stand before the screen. He reached down and flicked on the searchlights and swiveled them around to scan the sea on both sides of the bow. Clean circles of light were cut into the mountainous waves by the two million candlepower lights, which picked green out of the freezing Arctic waters and gleamed off white crests now blowing in the same direction as the RFK. He concentrated on the motion of the ship under his feet and found that she was moving in a rhythmic dance in time to the roll of the waves under her keel. Darkness had fallen in all of its intensity. The frozen air glistened with a million scattered stars, the very crispness of their light indicating the depth of the cold. Low on the southern horizon was the storm bank, spun out from the leading edge of the storm. Folsom knew that the seas would be at their worst in that area. But they could run on into the sheltering lee of the Soviet coast, safe in the knowledge that no Russian ship or aircraft could put out to look for them, nor would submarines be cruising near enough to the storm-wracked surface to spot them electronically. By the time the storm abated enough for the Russian Navy to resume regular patrols, they should be putting into the Glyde, their intermediate base before sailing for Newport Naval Base, Rhode Island.

Folsom turned away from the screen and started his regular watch tour of the various consoles, checking on the condition of the ship. He was still worried about the deck heaters. Even with the extra heat being piped up from the reactor cooling system, they still were not coping with the ice. Perhaps, now that they were running before the waves, they would not be taking aboard as much spray, not unless the wind veered, anyway. And to judge by the satellite photos of the storm center, if they maintained present speed and heading they would sail into a radial arm of wind within two hours. Then they would be taking the wind and spray across the bow quarter as well as one hell of a cross chop from the waves as the wind tried to push incalculable gallons of sea water from their already set path. It was going to be one hell of an afternoon. Two hours later Folsom was ready to modify his judgment as to what kind of afternoon it would be, but modify it downward. He turhed away from the ship's intercom. Barrows, the engineering officer, had every right to be extremely unhappy with Folsom, but his voice had been steady enough, with no hint that he did indeed blame the executive officer. Barrows had just finished reporting that the main condenser system had frozen solid. It had been Folsom's order to use the major part of the reactor heat to feed the deck heaters. This meant that the heat normally used to maintain the condenser system at an even 36° F had to be channeled into the deck heaters and the reactor crew had to vary the power output to control the condenser system by hand. When Larkin had called for full emergency power from all engines, an overload had been thrown onto the condensers. The temperature had dropped quickly while the reactor worked at full power, until, when the engines had been cut back to one third, the temperature in the condensers stood at 33° F. The reactor crew had gone furiously to work to try and bring the temperatures back up to a safe 36° F, but in the succeeding two hours the system had oscillated widely, and, finally, the first seed crystal of ice had formed in the outside banks. Even rechanneling all heat being fed to the decks had not been enough to stave off the rapid icing. Five minutes later the webbing of pipe was full of half-frozen slush. Barrows had closed down the main system and shifted to the auxiliary condensers. If needed, he could go directly to sea water, but the resulting corrosion would mean a major overhaul for the system and two months in drydock to complete the job. Damn it all, Folsom swore to himself. Why now of all times? This whole blasted cruise seemed to be jinxed. First the collision, then the storm, and now the condenser system. What in the name of the God was next? Barrows estimated that he would need at least three to four hours to thaw and flush out the condensers. In the meantime the auxiliary banks could handle slightly less than eight knots speed. That in itself would put them nearly forty minutes behind on the rendezvous.