Valhalla Rising (8 page)

Burch trained his binoculars on the water around the
Emerald Dolphin’s
stern. “People are jumping off the lower decks like lemmings,” he exclaimed. “Those crammed higher up on the stern seem frozen.”

“Can’t really blame them,” said Pitt. “The upper decks are nine to ten stories high. From their viewpoint, the water must look like it’s a mile away.”

Burch leaned over the railing and shouted an order to his crew. “Away the boats. Get to those people swimming in the water before they float out of sight.”

“Can you bring
Deep Encounter
under the stern?” asked Pitt.

“You mean put our ship alongside?”

“Yes.”

Burch looked skeptical. “I won’t be able to get close enough for them to jump on board.”

“The nearer the fire gets to them, the more will leap over the side. Hundreds will die before we can pick them all out of the water. If we tie up to the stern, her crew can throw lines for the passengers to slide down to our deck.”

Burch looked at Pitt. “In this sea, we’ll beat hell out of
Deep Encounter
against that monster. Our hull plates will be crushed and open to the sea. We could easily sink ourselves as well.”

“Better to try to sink alongside than never to try at all,” Pitt said philosophically. “I’ll take full responsibility for the ship from my end.”

“You’re right, of course,” Burch agreed. He took over the helm and began orchestrating the controls of the two omnidirectional Z-drives and jet bow thrusters of the survey ship, gently nudging her starboard hull sideways against the massive stern of the
Emerald Dolphin.

A
s the passengers reached tentative relief from the fire on the afterdecks, the terror and panic subsided to common fear and apprehension. The officers and crew, especially the women, circulated through the milling crowds, calming the most overwrought and reassuring the children. Until the
Deep Encounter
seemingly appeared out of nowhere, almost all of them had conditioned themselves to the thought of going in the water rather than being burned alive.

When the slightest degree of hope had seemed all but destroyed, however, the sight of the turquoise-painted NUMA survey ship plowing through the water in the light of the new dawn came like a divine miracle. The more than two thousand people crammed on the afterdecks cheered madly and waved their arms frantically. They saw salvation close at hand. It was to prove an optimistic assessment. The ship’s officers quickly realized that the little ship was too small to take aboard even half the people still clinging to life.

Not yet realizing Pitt and Burch’s intent, Second Officer McFerrin, who had struggled down from the bridge and reached the stern with a bullhorn to help in calming the passengers, called out across the water. “To the ship off our stern. Do not come any closer. There are people in the water.”

In the mass of bodies crammed on the stern decks, Pitt could not see who was hailing him. He snatched his own bullhorn and shouted back. “Understood. Our boats will pick them up as fast as possible. Stand by, we’re going to approach and tie next to you. Please have your crew ready to take aboard our lines.”

McFerrin was astonished. He couldn’t believe the NUMA captain and crew were willing to risk their own lives and ship in a rescue attempt. “How many can you take on board?” he inquired.

“How many have you got?” Pitt asked back.

“Over two thousand. Up to twenty-five hundred.”

“Two thousand,” Burch groaned. “We’ll sink like a rock with two thousand people piled on the decks.”

Discovering the officer on the upper deck who was hailing him, Pitt shouted back. “Other rescue ships are on the way. We’ll take all if we can. Have your crew drop lines so your passengers can descend to our deck.”

Burch smoothly worked the propulsion controls, moving his ship slowly forward, then manipulating the bow thrusters with a deft hand, swinging his ship toward the liner inches at a time. Everyone on board
Deep Encounter
stared up in awe at the great stern soaring over them. Then came the scraping sound of steel against steel. Thirty seconds later, the two ships were firmly lashed together.

Hawsers were passed over by the survey ship’s crew, while the cruise liner’s crew uncoiled lines and threw them over the sides, their ends trailing into the waiting hands of the scientists, who hurriedly tied them to any object that held firm. The instant all lines were secure, Pitt shouted for the
Emerald Dolphin’s
crew to begin lowering the passengers.

“Families with children first,” McFerrin shouted through his bullhorn to the crew. The old tradition of women and children first was now commonly ignored by modern seamen in favor of keeping families intact. After the sinking of the
Titanic,
when most of the men had gone down with the ship, leaving widows with fatherless small children, practical minds had felt that families should either live as one or die as one. With few exceptions, the younger, single passengers and the senior citizens stood back bravely and watched as crewmen lowered husbands, their wives and young children down to the
Deep Encounter,
where they found themselves safe on the work deck amid the submersibles, robotic underwater vehicles and hydrographic survey equipment. Next came the elderly who had to be forced to drop over the side, not because they were afraid but because they believed the younger people, with their lives ahead of them, should go first.

Surprisingly, little fear was shown by the children descending down the lines. The cruise director and members of the ship’s band and theatrical troupe began playing and singing songs from Broadway shows. For a while, some people even began to sing along as the evacuation seemed to be going efficiently, without bottlenecks, but as the fire came closer, the heat intensified and the fumes made it difficult to breathe, the crowd turned back into a frightened mob. Suddenly, there was a mad rush by those who decided to take their chances in the water rather than wait their turn to shimmy down the lines to safety. The ones who jumped were mostly younger people who went over the railing from the lower decks. They fell like rain, colliding with those already floating in the water. Several miscalculated and dropped onto the deck of the
Deep Encounter,
sustaining major injuries or dying horribly on impact. Others fell between the ships and were crushed to death when the wave action pushed the hulls together.

The
Emerald Dolphin’s
crew did their best to instruct the passengers on how to jump. To strike the water with their arms over their heads meant the impact would tear the life vest over their heads, leaving them to stay afloat on their own. Those who did not grasp the collar of the life vest and pull down upon impact ran the risk of breaking their necks.

Before long, a small sea of dead bodies was drifting in the debris alongside the two ships.

K
elly was scared. The little survey ship looked so close, yet seemed so far. There were only ten people ahead of them on one of the lines attached to the vessel below. Dr. Egan was determined that he and his daughter would endure the heat and smoke and climb down to safety when their turn came. But the undisciplined rush by the choking, coughing mob forced Egan against the railing. Suddenly, a heavy man with red hair and a mustache that stretched across his cheeks to his sideburns emerged from the human surge and tried to snatch Egan’s leather case from his hands. Initially stunned, the engineer managed to hold on to the case in a death grip and refused to release it.

In horror, Kelly watched the struggle between the two men. An officer in an immaculate and unwrinkled uniform stood watching with what seemed total indifference. He was a black man with a face of hardened obsidian, his features chiseled and sharp.

“Do something!” Kelly screamed at him. “Don’t stand there! Help my father!”

But the black officer simply ignored her, stepped forward and, to Kelly’s astonishment, began to help the red-haired man in his struggle for the leather case.

Pushed by the combined physical force of the two men, Egan lost his balance and stumbled backward against the railing. His feet lifted free of the deck and the momentum pitched him overboard headfirst. Startled by the unexpected movement, the black officer and red-haired man froze, then melted back into the crowd. Kelly screamed and rushed to the railing and looked down just in time to see her father strike the water with a huge splash.

She held her breath, waiting for what seemed like an hour but was less than twenty seconds, before his head rose to the surface. His life vest was gone, having been torn from his body by the impact. She was distressed to see that he looked unconscious. His head dipped forward and rolled listlessly.

Suddenly, without warning, Kelly felt hands around her throat, and fingers squeezing relentlessly. Dazed and in shock, Kelly frantically kicked backward while attempting futilely to pull the hands from her throat. In what was a lucky thrust, her foot caught the attacker in the groin. There was a sudden intake of breath and the pressure on her throat relaxed. She spun around, and saw that it was the black officer again.

Then the red-haired man pushed the black man out of the way and launched himself at Kelly, but she clutched the collar of her life vest and leaped clear of the railing and dropped into the void, just as the red-haired man reached out for her.

Everything around her became a blur during the fall. In what seemed the wink of an eye, she splashed into the water, the impact knocking the breath out of her. Saltwater flowed up her nose, and she fought off the urge to open her mouth to exhale a breath to purge the flow.

Down she plunged in an explosion of bubbles, as the sea closed over her. When her impetus slowed, she looked up and saw the surface shimmering under the lights of the two ships. She stroked upward, helped by her life vest, before she finally burst into the air. She sucked in several deep breaths as she looked around for her father, and saw him floating limply about thirty feet away from the scorched hull of the cruise ship.

Then a wave swept over him and she lost him. Unnerved, she frantically swam to the spot where she had last seen him. A wave raised her on its crest and she spotted her father again, no more than twenty feet away. She reached him, put one arm around his shoulders and pulled back his head by the hair. “Dad!” she cried.

Egan’s eyes fluttered open and he stared at her. His face was twisted, as though he was in great pain. “Kelly, save yourself,” he said haltingly. “I can’t make it.”

“Hold on, Dad,” she encouraged him. “A boat will pick us up soon.”

Still clutching the brown case, he pushed it toward her. “When I fell in the water, I struck this. I must have broken my back. I’m paralyzed and can’t swim.”

A body floating facedown drifted against Kelly, and she fought to keep from gagging as she pushed it away. “I’ll hold on to you, Dad. I won’t let you go. We can use your hand case as a float.”

“Take it,” he muttered, forcing her to grab the case. “Keep it safe until the proper time.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ll know …” He barely got the words out. His face contorted in agony and he sagged.

Kelly was shocked at his defeatism until she realized that her father was dying before her eyes. As for Egan, he knew he was dying. But there was no panic, no terror. He accepted his fate. His biggest regret was not the loss of his daughter—he knew she would be all right. It was not knowing if the discovery he had created on paper would work. He looked into Kelly’s blue eyes and smiled faintly.

“Your mother is waiting for me,” he whispered.

Kelly looked around desperately for a rescue boat. The nearest was less than two hundred feet away. She released her father, swam several yards, waved her hands and shouted. “Over here! Come this way!”

A woman, weakened by smoke inhalation and foundering in the waves, saw Kelly just as she herself was plucked from the water, and pointed her out to a seaman, but the rescuers were too engrossed in pulling others from the sea, and they failed to see her. Kelly rolled over and backstroked back to her father, but he was not to be seen. Only the leather case floated there.

Egan had released his grip on the case and slipped beneath the waves. She grabbed for it and cried out for him, but at that instant a young teenager, jumping from the upper deck, splashed in the water nearly on top of her, his knee striking her on the back of the head and sending her into a pool of blackness.

A
t first the survivors streamed onto the
Deep Encounter,
but the stream soon became a flood of humanity that inundated the crew and scientists. There were not enough of them to handle it. The fifty-one men and eight women aboard the
Deep Encounter
could not work hard or fast enough.

Despite their feelings of frustration and anguish at seeing so many dead and dying in the water, the rescuers refused to slacken their efforts. Several of the oceanographic scientists and systems engineers, ignoring the risks, tied ropes around their waists and leaped into the churning waters to grab two survivors at a time, while their shipmates towed them back to the
Deep Encounter
and hauled them aboard. Their fervor to save lives would become legend in the annals of sea history.