Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (17 page)

‘
Young lady
,’
he said.
‘
You have an absolute genius for being in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
’
And his tone was colder and more remote
than even he had intended it.

Before he turned away from her, he saw the moment of her disbelief turn
to chagrin, and the green eyes misted slightly. He stood stiffly
staring down the fore
-
dec
k
where David Allen's team was opening the
forward salvage hold.

Nick's anger evaporated almost at once, to be replaced by dismay. He
realized clearly that he had completely alienated the girl and he wanted
to turn back to her and say something gracious that might retrieve the
situation, but he could think of nothing and instead lifted the hand
microphone to his lips and spoke to Baker over the VFH radio.

‘
How's it going, Chief?
’

There were ten seconds of delay, and Nick was very conscious of the
girl's presence near him.

‘
Their emergency generator has burned out, it wi
ll
need two days
’
work to
get it running again. We'll have to take on the alternator,
’
Beauty told
him.

‘
We are ready to give it to you,
’
Nick told him, and then called David
Allen on the fore-dec
k
.

‘
Ready, David?
’

‘
All set.
’
Nick began edging Warlock back towards the
l
iner's towering stern, and now at last he turned back to the girl.
Unaccountably, he now wanted her approbation, so his smile was ready -
but she had already gone, taking with her that special aura of
brightness.

Nick's voice had a jagged edge to it as he told David Allen,
‘
Let's do
this fast and right, Number One.
’

Warlock nuzzled Adventurer's stern,
the big black Yokoharna fenders gentling her touch, and on her fore-dec
k
the winch whined shrilly, the lines squealing in their blocks and from
the open salvage hatch the four-ton alternator swung out. It was
mounted on a sledge for easy handling.

The diesel tanks were charged and the big motor primed and ready to
start
.
It rose swiftly, dangling from the tall gantry, and a dozen men
synchronized their efforts, in those critical moments when it hung out
over Warlock's bows. A nasty freaky little swell lifted the tug and
pushed her across, for the dangling burden was already putting a slight
list on her, and it would have crashed into the steel side of the liner,
had not Nick thrown the screws into reverse thrust and given her a burst
of power to hold her off.

The instant the swell subsided, he closed
down and slid the pitch to fine forward, pressing the cushioned bows
lightly back against Adventurer's side.

‘
He's good!
’
David Allen watched Nicholas work.
‘
He's better than old Mac
ever was.
’
Mackintosh, Warlock's previous skipper, had been careful and
experienced, but Nicholas Berg handled the ship with the flair and
intuitive touch that even Mac's vast experience could never have
matched.

David Allen pushed the thought aside and signalled the winch man. The
huge dangling machine dropped with the control of a roosting seagull on
to the liner's deck. Baker's crew leapt on it immediately, releasing
the winch cable and throwing out the tackle, to drag it away on its
sledge.

Warlock drew off, and when Baker's crew was ready, she went in to drop
another burden, this time one of the high
-
speed centrifugal pumps which
would augment Golden Adventurer's own machinery - if Baker could get
that functioning. It went up out of Warlock's forward hold, followed
ten minutes later by its twin.

‘
Both pumps secured.
’
Baker's voice had a spark of jubilation in it, but
at that moment a shadow passed over the ship, as though a vulture
wheeled above on wide-spread pinions, and as Nick glanced up he saw the
men on the fore-dec
k
lift their heads also.

It was a single cloud seeming no bigger than a man's fist, a thousand or
fifteen hundred feet above them, but it had momentarily obscured the
lowering sun, before scuttling on furtively down the peaks of Cape
Alarm.

‘
There is still much to do
,’
Nick thought, and he opened the bridge door
and stepped out on to the exposed wing.
There was no movement of air, and the cold seemed less intense although
a glance at the glass confirmed that there were thirty degrees still of
frost. No wind here, but high up it was
beginning
.

‘
Number One
,’
Nick
snapped into the microphone.
What's going on down there - do you think this is your daddy's yacht?
’

And David Allen's team leapt to the task of closing down the forward
hatch, and then tramped back to the double salvage holds on the long
stern quarter.

‘
I am transferring command to the stern bridge.
’
Nick told his deck
officers and hurried back through the accommodation area to the second
enclosed bridge, where every control and navigational aid was
duplicated, a unique feature of salvage-tug construction where so much
of the work took place on the afterdeck.

This time from the aft gantries, they lifted the loaded
p
allets of
salvage gear on to the liner's deck, another eight tons of equipment
went aboard Golden Adventurer. Then they pulled away and David Allen
battened down again.
When he came on to the bridge stamping and slapping his own shoulders,
red-cheeked and gasping from the cold, Nick told him immediately .

‘
Take command, David, I'm going on board.
’
Nick could not bring himself
to wait out the uncertain period while Beauty Baker put power and pumps
into action.

Anything mechanical was Baker's responsibility, as seamanship was
strictly Nick's, but it could take many hours yet, and Nick could not
remain idle that long.

From high on the forward gantry, Nick looked out across that satiny
ominous sea. It was a little after midnight now and the sun was half
down behind the mountains, a two dimensional disc of metal heated to
furious crimson. The sea was sombre purple and the ice-bergs were
sparks of brighter cherry red. From this height he could see that the
surface- of the sea was crenellated, a small regular swell spreading
across it like ripples across a pond, from some disturbance far out
beyond the horizon.

Nick could feel the fresh movement of Warlock's hull as she rode this
swell, and suddenly a puff of wind hit Nick in the face like the flit of
a bat's wing, and the metallic sheen of the sea was scoured by a
cat's-paw of wind that scratched at the surface as it passed.

He pulled the draw-suing of the hood of his anorak up more tightly under
his chin and stepped out on to the open boarding-ladder, like a
steeplejack, walking upright and balancing lightly seventy feet above
Warlock's slowly rolling fore-dec
k
.

He jumped down on to Golden Adventurer's steeply canted, ice-glazed deck
and saluted Warlock's bridge far below in a gesture of dismissal.

‘
I tried to warn you, dearie,
’
said Angel gently, as she entered the
steamy galley, for with a single glance he was aware of Samantha's
crestfallen air.
‘
He tore you up, didn't he?
’

‘
What are you talking
about?
’
She lifted her chin, and the smile was too bright and too quick.
‘
What do you want me to do?
’

‘
You can separate that bowl of eggs,
’
Angel
told her, and stooped again over twenty pounds of red beef, with his
sleeves rolled to the elbows about his thick and hairy arms, clutching a
butcher's knife in a fist like that of Rocky Marciano.

They worked in silence for five minutes, before Samantha spoke again.

‘
I only tried to thank him -,
’
And again there was a grey mist in her
eyes.

‘
He's a lower-deck pig,
’
Angel agreed.

‘
He is not
,’
Samantha came in hotly.
‘
He's not a pig.
’

‘
Well, then, he's a
selfish, heartless bastard - with jumped-up ideas.
’

‘
How can you say that
?’
Samantha's eyes flashed now.
‘
He is not selfish - he went into the water to get me!
’

Then she saw the
smile on Angel's lips and the mocking quizzical expression in his eyes,
and she stopped in confusion and concentrated on cracking the egg shells
and slopping the contents into the mixing basin.

‘
He's old enough to be your father,
’
Angel needled her, and now she was
really angry; a ruddy flush under the smooth gloss of her skin made the
freckles shine like gold dust.

‘
You talk the most awful crap, Angel.
’

‘
God, dearie, where did you learn
that language?
’

‘
Well, you're making me mad.
’
She broke an egg with such
force that it exploded down the front of her pants.
‘
Oh, shit!
’
she said, and stared at him defiantly. Angel tossed her a
dish-cloth, she wiped herself violently and they went on working again.

‘
How old is he?
’
she demanded at last.
‘
A hundred and fifty?
’

‘
He's thirty-eight
,’
Angel thought for a moment,
‘
or thirty-nine.
’

‘
Well,
smart arse
,’
she said tartly,
‘
the ideal age is half the man's age, plus
seven.
’

‘
You aren't twenty-six, dearie!
’
Angel said gently.

‘
I will be in two years
’
time!
’
she told him.

‘
You really want him badly, hey? A fever of lust and desire?
’

‘
That's
nonsense, Angel, and you know it. I just happen to owe him a rather
large debt - he saved my life, - but as for wanting him, ha!
’
She
dismissed the idea with a snort of disdain and a toss of her head.

‘
I'm glad
,’
Angel nodded.
‘
He's not a very nice person, you can see by
those ferrety eyes of his -
.’

‘
He has beautiful eyes -
,’
she flared at him,
and then stopped abruptly, saw the cunning in his grin, faltered and
then collapsed weakly on the bench beside him, with a cracked egg in one
hand.