Raise the Titanic! (31 page)

“Do you think I'm a dead-brain? Don't you think I'd know if I carried a passenger? Besides, now you're insinuating a suicidal act. If that hammer had been thrown one minute sooner, when we were a hundred feet in the air, you and your crew would have had an ugly mess to clean up.”

“Wrong nomenclature,” Pitt said. “Not passenger, but stowaway. And he's no dead-brain either. He waited until your wheels kissed the deck before he made his play and escaped through the cargo hatch. God only knows where he's hiding now. A thorough search of fifty miles of pitch dark passageways and compartments is impossible.”

Sturgis's face suddenly paled. “Christ, our intruder is still in the copter.”

“Don't be ridiculous. He beat it the instant you landed.”

“No, no. It's possible to throw a hammer out and up through an open cabin window into the rotor blades, but escape is something else again.”

“I'm listening,” Pitt said quietly.

“The cargo compartment hatch is electronically operated and can only be activated from a switch in the control cabin.”

“Is there another exit?”

“Only a door to the control cabin.”

Pitt studied the sealed cargo hatch for a long moment, then turned back to Sturgis, his eyes cold. “Is this any way to treat an unexpected guest? I think the appropriate thing to do is for us to invite him into the fresh air.”

Sturgis became rooted to the deck as he spotted the Colt forty-five automatic, complete with silencer, that had suddenly materialized in Pitt's right hand.

“Sure…sure…” he stammered. “If you say so.”

Sturgis clambered up the ladder to the control cabin, leaned in, and pushed a switch. The electric motors made a whirring sound and the contoured seven-foot-by-seven-foot door rose open and upward over the helicopter's fuselage. Even before the locking pins clicked into position, Sturgis was back on the deck and standing warily behind Pitt's broad shoulders.

Half a minute after the door had opened, Pitt was still standing there. He stood there for what Sturgis thought was a lifetime without moving a muscle, breathing slowly and evenly, and listening. The only sounds were the slap of the waves against the hull, the low whine of the steadily building wind over the
Titanic
's superstructure, and the murmur of voices that carried through the gymnasium door, not the sounds he was tuned in for. When he was satisfied there were no sounds of feet scraping, rustling of clothing, or other tones relating to menace or stealth, he stepped into the helicopter.

The darkened skies outside dimmed the interior and Pitt was uneasily aware that he was perfectly silhouetted against the dusk light. At first glance, the compartment seemed empty, but then Pitt felt a tapping on his shoulder and noted that Sturgis was pointing past him at a tarpaulin tucked around a humanlike shape.

“I neatly folded and stowed that tarp not more than an hour ago,” Sturgis whispered.

Swiftly, Pitt reached down and dragged the tarpaulin away with his left hand while aiming the Colt as steadily as a park statue with his right.

A figure enveloped in a heavy foul-weather jacket lay huddled on the cargo deck, the eyes loosely closed in a state of unconsciousness that was obviously related to the ugly, bleeding, and purplish bruise just above the hairline.

Sturgis stood rooted in the shadows in shocked immobility, his widening eyes blinking rapidly, still adjusting to the diminishing light. Then he rubbed his chin lightly with his fingers and shook his head in disbelief. “Good lord,” he muttered in awe. “Do you know who that is?”

“I do,” Pitt answered evenly. “Her name is Seagram, Dana Seagram.”

With appalling abruptness,
the sky above the
Mikhail Kurkov
went pitch dark…great black clouds rolled overhead, obliterating the evening stars, and the wind returned and rose to a wailing gale of forty miles an hour, breaking the edges of the wave crests and carrying the foam in well-defined streaks toward the northeast.

Inside the large wheelhouse of the Soviet ship it was warm and comfortable. Prevlov stood beside Parotkin, who was watching the
Titanic
's blip on radar.

“When I took command of this ship,” Parotkin said, as though lecturing a schoolboy, “I was under the impression my orders were to carry out research and surveillance programs. Nothing was said about conducting an out-and-out military operation.”

Prevolv held up a protesting hand. “Please, Captain, the words
military
and
operation
are unmentionable. The little venture upon which we are about to embark is a perfectly legal civilian activity known in the western countries as a change in management.”

“Blatant piracy is closer to the truth,” Parotkin said. “And what do you call those ten marines you so kindly added to my crew when we left port? Stockholders?”

“Again, not
marines
, but rather civilian crewmen.”

“Of course,” Parotkin said dryly. “And every one armed to the teeth.”

“There is no international law I know of that forbids ship crewmen the right to possess arms.”

“If one existed, you would no doubt discover an escape clause.”

“Come, come, my dear Captain Parotkin.” Prevlov slapped him heartily on the back. “When this evening is played to the finale, we will both be heroes of the Soviet Union.”

“Or dead,” Parotkin said woodenly.

“Calm your fears. The plan is flawless, and with the storm that drove off the salvage fleet, it becomes even more so.”

“Aren't you overlooking the
Juneau
? Her captain will not stand idly by while we steam alongside the
Titanic
, board her, and raise the hammer and sickle over her bridge.”

Prevlov held up his wrist and stared at his watch. “In exactly two hours and twenty minutes, one of our nuclear attack submarines will surface a hundred miles to the north and begin transmitting distress signals under the name of the
Laguna Star
, a tramp freighter of rather dubious registry.”

“And you think the
Juneau
will take the bait and dash to the rescue?”

“Americans never reject an appeal for help,” Prevlov said confidently. “They all have a Good Samaritan complex. Yes, the
Juneau
will respond. She has to; except for the tugs, which cannot leave the
Titanic
, she is the only available ship within three hundred miles.”

“But if our submarine then submerges, nothing will show on the
Juneau
's radar screens.”

“Naturally, her officers will assume that the
Laguna Star
has sunk, and they will double their efforts to arrive in the nick of time to save the lives of a nonexistent crew.”

“I bow to your imagination.” Parotkin smiled. “Yet that still leaves you with such problems as the two United States Navy tugs, boarding the
Titanic
during the worst hurricane in years, neutralizing the American salvage crew, and then towing the derelict back to Russia, all without creating an international uproar.”

“There are four parts to your statement, Captain.” Prevlov paused to light a cigarette. “Number one, the tugboats will be eliminated by two Soviet operatives who are at this moment masquerading as members of the American salvage crew. Number two, I shall board the
Titanic
and assume its command when the eye of the hurricane reaches us. Since the wind velocities in this area seldom exceed fifteen knots, my men and I should have little difficulty in crossing over and entering through a hull loading door that will be conveniently opened on schedule by one of the operatives. Number three, my boarding party will then dispose of the salvage crew quickly and efficiently. And, finally, number four, it will be made to look to the world as though the Americans fled the ship at the height of the hurricane and were lost at sea. That, of course, makes the
Titanic
an abandoned derelict. The first captain who gets a towline on her is then entitled to the salvage rights. You are to be that lucky captain, Comrade Parotkin. Under international marine law, you will have every legal right to take the
Titanic
in tow.”

“You will never get away with it,” Parotkin said. “What you're suggesting is outright mass murder.” There was a vacant, sick look in his eyes. “Have you also considered the consequences of failure with the same dedication to detail?”

Prevlov looked at him, the ever-present smile tightening. “Failure has been considered, Comrade. But let us fervently hope our final option will not be required.” He pointed at the large blip on the radar screen. “It would be a pity to have to sink the world's most legendary ship a second time, and for all time.”

Deep in the
bowels of the ancient ocean liner, Spencer and his pumping crew struggled to keep the diesel pumps going. Sometimes working alone in the cold, black caverns of steel, with nothing but the pitiful comfort of small spotlights, they uncomplainingly went about their business of keeping the ship afloat. It came as somewhat of a surprise to find that in some compartments the pumps were falling behind the incoming water.

By seven o'clock the weather had deteriorated to the point of no return. The barometer slipped past 29.6 and was still falling steeply. The
Titanic
began to pitch and roll and take solid water over her bow and cargo deck bulwarks. Visibility under the shroud of night and the driving rain dropped to almost zero. The only sighting the men on the tugs had of the big ship came with an occasional bolt of lightning that vaguely silhouetted her ghostly outline. The main concern, however, was the cable that disappeared into the mad, swirling waters astern. The constant strain on this lifeline was enormous; every time the
Titanic
took the full onslaught from a wave of massive proportions, they watched in ominous fascination as the cable arched out of the water and creaked in agonized protest.

Butera never moved from his bridge, keeping in constant contact with the men in the afterdeck cablehouse. Suddenly, a voice from the speaker crackled over the howl of the outside wind. “Captain?”

“This is the Captain,” he replied into a hand phone.

“Ensign Kelly in the cablehouse, sir. Something mighty peculiar going on back here.”

“Would you care to explain, Ensign?”

“Well, sir, the cable seems to have gone berserk. First she swung to port and now she's carried over to starboard at what I must say, sir, is an alarming angle.”

“Okay, keep me posted.” Butera switched off and opened another channel.

“Uphill, can you hear me? This is Butera.”

On the
Morse
Uphill answered almost immediately. “Go ahead.”

“I think the
Titanic
has sheered off to starboard.”

“Can you make out her position?”

“Negative. The only indication is the angle of the cable.”

There came a silence of several moments as Uphill thrashed the new development over in his mind. Then he came back through the speaker: “We're hardly making four knots as it is. We have no alternative but to push on. If we stop to see what she's up to, she may swing broadside into the sea and roll over.”

“Can you pick her up on your radar?”

“No can do, the sea swept away our antennae twenty minutes ago. How about yours?”

“Still have the antennae, but the same sea that took yours shorted out my circuits.”

“Then it's a case of the blind leading the blind.”

Butera set the radio phone in its cradle and cautiously cracked the door leading to the starboard wing of the bridge. Shielding his eyes with his arm, he staggered outside and strained his eyes to penetrate the night gone crazy. The searchlights proved useless; their beams merely reflected the driving rain and revealed nothing. Lightning flashed astern, its thunder drowned out by the wind, and Butera's heart skipped a beat. The brief burst of backlighting failed to reveal any outline of the
Titanic
. It was as though she had never been. Water streaming down his oilskins, his breath coming in gasps, he pushed back past the door just as Ensign Kelly's voice rasped over the speaker again.

“Captain?”

Butera wiped the spray from his eyes and picked up the phone. “What is it, Kelly?”

“The cable, it's slackened.”

“Is it a break?”

“No, sir, the cable's still paid out, but it's settled several feet lower in the water. I've never seen one act like this before. It's as if the derelict took it in her mind to pass us.”

It was the words “pass us” that did it…and Butera would never forget the sudden shock of realization. A mental click triggered open a floodgate in his mind, released a nightmare of images in orderly sequence, images of a mad pendulum, its arc growing ever wider until it turned in on itself. The signs were there, the cable angled badly to starboard, the sudden slackness. He envisioned the whole scene in his mind: the
Titanic
driven slightly ahead and parallel to the
Wallace
's starboard beam and now the pull from the cable snapping the derelict back in the manner of a line of school children playing Crack the Whip. Then something broke the nightmare inside Butera's head and released him from its numbing thrall.

He grabbed the radio phone and rang the engine room in almost the same movement. “Ahead full speed! Do you hear me, engine room? Ahead full speed!” And then he called the
Morse
. “I'm coming at you full speed,” he shouted. “Do you read me, Uphill?”

“Please repeat,” Uphill asked.

“Order full speed ahead, damn it, or I'll run you down.”

Butera dropped the phone and fought his way outside onto the bridge wing again. The hurricane was beating the sea into a froth so savage, so angry, that it was nearly impossible to separate air from water. It was all he could do to maintain a hold on the railing.

Then he saw it, the immense bow of the
Titanic
looming up through the curtain of the thrashing deluge, hardly more than a hundred feet off the starboard quarter. There was nothing he could do now except watch in frozen horror as the menacing mass moved inexorably closer to the
Wallace
.

“No!” he cried above the wind. “You dirty old corpse; you leave my ship alone.”

It was too late. It seemed impossible that the
Titanic
could ever swing clear of the
Wallace
's stern. And yet the impossible happened. The great sixty-foot bow rose up on a mountainous wave and hung there suspended just long enough for the tug's screws to take bite and pull her clear. Then the
Titanic
dropped in the trough, missing the stern of the
Wallace
by no more than three feet, throwing up a surge that engulfed the entire smaller vessel, carrying away both its lifeboats and one of the ventilators.

The wave tore Butera's grip from the railing and swept him across the bridge, jamming his body against the wheelhouse bulkhead. He lay there totally submerged under the billow, his throat choking, his lungs gasping for air, his brain sluggishly taking strength from the strong pulsing beat of the
Wallace
's engines that transmitted through the deck. When the water finally drained away, he struggled to his feet and retched his stomach empty.

He clawed his way back into the safety of the wheelhouse. Butera, his senses stunned by the miracle of the
Wallace
's deliverance, watched the great black apparition that was the
Titanic
slide by astern until she disappeared again in the shroud of wind-whipped rain.