Valhalla Rising (9 page)

The crew of the survey vessel manned the boats and frantically fished people out of the water as more and more of them threw themselves into the sea. The water under the stern soon became alive with screaming men and women, hands reaching out for the boats, afraid they might be missed.

The crew on board the ship also operated the crane equipment, which dropped rafts and nets over the side for swimmers to clamber onto before lifting them up to the work deck. They even threw over hoses and tied stepladders to the railings for swimmers to climb. As unwavering in their efforts as they were, however, they were simply overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people struggling in the water. Later, they would agonize over those who drowned and were lost before the boats could reach them.

The women scientists took over once the passengers came on board, greeting and cheering them up before tending to the burned and injured. A great number had been blinded by the smoke and fumes and had to be led to the hospital or the aid station in the mess room. None of the scientists were trained in treating smoke inhalation, but they all learned fast and it would never be known how many lives were spared by their dedicated efforts.

They guided the unhurt down to designated interior staterooms and compartments, spacing them out to maintain the ship’s stability and balance. They also set up a passenger assembly area to list the survivors and to help them find friends and relatives that had become missing or lost in the confusion.

During the first thirty minutes, more than five hundred people were pulled out of the water by the boats. Another two hundred made it to the rafts alongside the
Deep Encounter
and were lifted on board by the slings attached to winches. The rescuers concentrated only on the living. Any bodies found to be dead when pulled into the boats were returned to the sea to make room for those who still clung to life.

Retrieving and carrying twice the capacity of passengers allowed under maritime regulations, the boats came around to the stern, where they were quickly lifted on board by one of the boom cranes. The survivors were then able to step on deck without climbing the side, and those who were injured were immediately laid onto stretchers before being carried to the ship’s hospital and medical station. This system, devised by Pitt, was far more efficient and actually emptied the boats and put them back in the water in half the time it would have taken to unload the exhausted survivors from the boats and heave them over the sides one at a time.

Burch could not allow his mind to stray to the rescue operation. He concentrated on keeping the
Deep Encounter
from bashing in her hull. He felt it was his task, and his task only, to try to keep his ship from destroying itself against the great cruise liner. He’d have given his left arm to have engaged the ship’s dynamic positioning system, but with both ships drifting under wind and current, it proved futile.

With a wary eye on the increasing height of the swells sweeping against the port side of his ship, he boosted the power to the thrusters and Z-drives every time one threatened to shove
Deep Encounter
crashing against the massive stern of
Emerald Dolphin.
It was a battle that he did not always win. He’d wince, knowing that hull plates were being crushed and buckled. He didn’t have to be a psychic to know that water was beginning to spurt through the ruptures. A few feet away in the pilothouse, Leo Delgado computed weight and list factors as literally tons of survivors poured on the survey ship like an unending tidal wave. Already, the Plimsoll marks, indicating the maximum load level on the hull, were eighteen inches below the surface.

Pitt took on the job of masterminding and directing the rescue operation. To those working frantically to save more than two thousand people, it seemed he was everywhere, giving orders over his portable radio, pulling survivors from the water, directing the boats to where those in the water had drifted away, helping work the cranes as the boats were brought on board and unloaded. He shepherded survivors descending down the lines into the waiting arms of the scientists who then guided or carried them below. He caught children in midair whose arms and hands had gone numb from the effort and let go of the last ten feet of line. With no small apprehension, he saw that the ship was becoming dangerously overloaded with another one thousand passengers yet to save.

He ran up to the pilothouse to check with Delgado on the weight distribution. “How bad is it?”

Delgado looked up from his computer and gave a gloomy shake of his head. “Not good. Add another three feet to our draft and we’ll become a submarine.”

“We’ve still another thousand bodies to go.”

“In this sea, the waves will start surging over the gunnels if we take on another five hundred. Tell your scientists they’ve got to spread more survivors toward the bow. We’re getting too heavy in the stern.”

Absorbing the bad news, Pitt gazed up at the multitude of people sliding or being lowered on the lines. Then he looked down to the work deck as a rescue boat unloaded another sixty survivors. There was no way he could condemn hundreds of people to their deaths by refusing to save them aboard the little survey ship. A solution, although partial, formed in his mind. He hurried to the work deck and assembled several of the ship’s crew.

“We’ve got to lighten the ship,” he said. “Cut the anchors and chain and drop free. Hoist the submersibles over the side and let them drift in the water. We can pick them up later. Every piece of equipment that weighs over ten pounds, toss it overboard.”

After the submersibles were swung over and released to float away, the huge A-frame on the stern of the ship that was used to launch and recover oceanographic equipment was unmounted and dropped over the sides as well. Except that
it
didn’t float. It went straight to the bottom of the sea, followed by several winches and their miles of heavy cable. He was cheered to see that the hull rose out of the water by nearly six inches.

Next, as another weight-saving measure, he instructed the men in the boats as they came alongside, “Our load problem has become critical. After you pick up your final haul of survivors, remain adrift next to the ship, but do not send anyone aboard.”

The message was acknowledged by a wave of the hand as the helmsmen steered the boats back toward the mass of people struggling in the water.

Pitt looked up as McFerrin hailed him from above. From his vantage point, the second officer could see that the survey ship, despite the equipment that was jettisoned, was still dangerously low in the water. “How many more can you take on board?”

“How many people are still left up there?”

“Four hundred, give or take. Mostly crew now that the passengers have fled.”

“Send them down,” Pitt instructed him. “Is that the lot?”

“No,” answered McFerrin. “Half the crew escaped to the bow.”

“Can you give me a number?”

“Another four hundred and fifty.” McFerrin looked at the big man on the
Deep Encounter
who seemed to be running the evacuation with incredible efficiency. “May I have your name, sir?”

“Dirk Pitt, special projects director for NUMA. And you?”

“Second Officer Charles McFerrin.”

“Where is your captain?”

“Captain Waitkus is missing,” McFerrin replied, “and believed dead.”

Pitt could see that McFerrin had suffered burns. “Hurry down, Charlie. I’ve got a bottle of tequila waiting for you.”

“I prefer scotch.”

“I’ll distill a bottle especially for you.”

Pitt turned away and raised his hands to snatch a little girl off a line and pass her into the waiting arms of Misty Graham, one of the
Deep Encounter’s
three marine biologists. The mother and father followed and were quickly guided below. Moments later, Pitt was lifting swimmers onto the work deck who were too exhausted to climb from the rescue boats on their own.

“Circle around to the cruise ship’s port side,” he ordered the boat’s helmsman, “and pick up the people who were carried away by the current and waves.”

The helmsman looked up at Pitt, exhaustion straining his face, and managed a faint grin. “I’ve yet to receive one tip.”

“I’ll see they put it on the tab later,” Pitt said, grinning back. “Now get going before —”

The piercing cry of a child seemed to come from beneath his feet. He ran to the rail and looked down. A young girl, no more than eight years old, was hanging on to a rope that dangled over the side. Somehow she had fallen overboard after coming on board and been overlooked in the confusion. Pitt lay on his stomach and reached down, gripping her by the wrists as she crested on a wave. Then he pulled her free of the water and onto the deck.

“Did you have a nice swim?” he asked, trying to diminish her shock.

“It’s too rough,” she said, rubbing her eyes, which were swollen from smoke.

“Do you know if your parents came with you?”

She nodded. “They climbed out of the boat with my two brothers and sister. I fell in the water and nobody saw me.”

“Don’t blame them,” he said softly, carrying her over to Misty. “I’ll bet they’re worried sick about you.”

Misty smiled and took the little girl by the hand. “Come along and we’ll find your mommy and daddy.”

In that instant, a glimmer of light brown hair caught Pitt’s eye, spread on the blue-green water like lace filaments on a satin sheet. The face could not be seen, but a hand made a slight gesture, as if trying to paddle through the water, or was it simply movement caused by the waves? Pitt ran twenty feet down the deck for a closer look, hoping against hope that the woman—the hair had to be that of a woman—had not drowned. The head rose slightly above the water, far enough for him to see two large beautiful blue eyes that appeared languid and dazed.

“Pick her up!” Pitt yelled to the rescue boat’s helmsman, motioning to the woman. But the rescue boat was already halfway around the stern of the
Emerald Dolphin,
and the helmsman failed to hear him. “Swim toward me!” he shouted to the woman. He could see that she was staring in his direction without seeing him.

Without another second’s hesitation, Pitt climbed on top of the railing, balanced for a moment and then dove into the water. He did not immediately rise to the surface but stroked mightily underwater, like an Olympic swimmer after leaping from a platform. As his hands and head broke clear, he barely spotted the head sinking below the surface. Twenty feet and he was there, pulling her head from under the water by her hair. Despite her drowned-rat appearance, he could see that she was a very attractive young woman. Only then did he notice that she was gripping the handle of some sort of small suitcase that had filled with water and was dragging her down.

“You fool!” he snapped. “Let loose of it!”

“I can’t!” she abruptly hissed, with a determination that surprised him. “And I won’t!”

Elated that she wasn’t on death’s doorstep, he didn’t argue the matter but grabbed her by the halter and began towing her to the
Deep Encounter.
When he reached the side of the hull, willing hands reached down, clutched her by the wrists and pulled her on board. Released from his burden, Pitt climbed up a rope ladder. One of the female scientists threw a blanket around the woman and was about to guide her down a companionway when Pitt stopped her.

He looked into those blue eyes and asked, “What’s so important in that briefcase that you almost died trying to save it?”

She gave him an exhausted look. “My father’s lifework.”

Pitt looked at the case with new respect. “Do you know if your father was saved?”

She slowly shook her head and looked forlornly into the ash-coated water with its many floating bodies. “He’s down there,” she whispered.

Then she abruptly turned and disappeared down the companionway.

F
inally, the boats had retrieved as many of the living as could be found. They transferred those who were badly in need of medical attention onto the survey ship, and then pulled away a short distance, carrying as many survivors as they could hold without endangering them and helping to relieve the tightly packed conditions aboard.

Pitt contacted the boat crews through his portable radio. “We’re heading around to the bow to look for more survivors. Follow in our wake.”

No anthill could have been more congested than the
Deep Encounter
when the final living survivor was taken on board. Bodies were crammed in the engine room, the scientific storerooms, the laboratories and the crew and scientists’ quarters. They were sitting or stretched out in the lounge, the galley, staterooms and mess room. Every passageway was full. Five families were crowded in Captain Burch’s cabin. The pilothouse, chart room and radio room were filled with people. The 3,400-square-foot main work deck was like an unseen street, a sea of souls packed on top of it.

The
Deep Encounter
was sitting so low that water sloshed over the gunnels onto the work deck whenever the hull was struck by waves higher than four feet. Meanwhile, the crew of the
Emerald Dolphin
did themselves proud. Only when the cruise ship’s stern was free of the last passenger did they begin to drop down the lines themselves and board the crowded survey ship. Many had suffered burns, having waited until the last moment to see the passengers off before fleeing the consuming flames and abandoning the ship.

No sooner had they stepped on deck than those of them who were able to began assisting the overworked scientists to make the passengers’ congested situation more comfortable. Death also came aboard the
Deep Encounter.
Several of the badly burned and those injured from the fall into the water succumbed and died amid the low murmur of prayers and weeping, as the bodies of loved ones were carried out and put over the side. Space for the living was too valuable.

Pitt sent the ship’s officers up to the pilothouse to report to Captain Burch. To a man, they offered their services, which were gracefully accepted.

McFerrin was the last man down.