Black Wind - Cussler Clive - Страница 53

Mcintosh and Ryan picked up the portable ROV and walked it toward the center of the hold, then slowly turned it in a 360-degree circle the bright beams spraying an arc of light over the people and objects in its path. As a storeroom for the Starfish, the hold resembled a large electronic parts bin. Coils of cabling hung from the bulkheads, while spare electronic components were stored in multiple cabinets mounted on the aft wall. Racks of test equipment lined one side of the hold, while at the forward end of the bay a sixteen-foot Zodiac inflatable boat sat on a wooden cradle. Off to one corner, a half-dozen fifty-five-gallon drums of gasoline were wedged alongside two spare outboard motors. Ryan held the light shining on the drums for several minutes, illuminating a series of iron rungs that ran up the bulkhead and under an overhang in back of the drums.

“Captain, there's a venting hatch located up those rungs that opens up onto the aft moon pool deck,” Ryan said. “It locks from the deck side, but there's a chance it may have been left open.”

“One of you men there,” Morgan barked at a trio of scientists huddled near the drums. “Climb up that ladder and see if the hatch is unlocked.”

A barefoot oceanographer clad in blue pajamas jumped at the captain's request and scampered up the metal rungs, disappearing into a narrow vent shaft that was carved through the overhang. A few moments later, he climbed back into view, his feet now sensitive to the crude ladder steps.

“It's locked solid, Captain,” he said with disappointment.

Mcintosh suddenly piped up from the center of the hold.

“Cap'n, I think we can construct a couple of spars from the wooden supports underneath that Zodiac,” he said, pointing an arm toward the rubber boat. “With six or eight men on each, we ought to be able to prod up a corner of the main hatch.”

“Poke it off with a couple of big chopsticks, eh? That, indeed, might work. Go to it, Mcintosh. You men over there, help get that Zodiac off its stand,” he growled at a party assembled near the boat.

Limping over, he grabbed hold of the boat's bow and helped muscle it off the wooden stands and onto the deck. Several men assisted Mcintosh in dissecting the support cradle and laying out its separate pieces while the ship's carpenter assessed how to reassemble the material into several spars.

While they worked, they could hear the muffled voices of the commandos on deck and the whirring and clanking of the Baekje's crane as it loaded and hoisted away the I-411's ordnance. At one point, the faint echo of machine-gun fire was heard emanating from a distant part of the ship. A short time later, Morgan detected the sound of the Starfish being hoisted out of the moon pool and dropped to the deck, followed by the shrieking cry of a woman's voice he knew to be Summer's. The activity above them grew quieter after some banging on the bulkhead above their heads. Eventually, the humming of the cranes and the sporadic voices fell silent. As it became evident that the commandos had left the ship, Morgan quietly wondered about the fate of Dirk and Summer. His thoughts were suddenly jarred by the rumble of the Baekje's engines vibrating through the hold as the cable ship pulled away from Sea Rover.

“How are we coming along, Mcintosh?” he asked loudly to mask the sound of abandonment, although he could clearly see the progress in front of him.

“We've two spars together and are close to completing a third,” the chief engineer grunted. At his feet were three uneven-looking wooden poles, roughly ten feet in length. Each was constructed of three separate pieces of timber, crudely indented at either end with a hammer and screwdriver and fitted together in a notched tongue-and-groove fashion. Metal sheeting cannibalized from a test rack was hammered around the joints for stability and finished off in a wrapped layer of the handyman's favored duct tape.

As Mcintosh sifted through the remaining pieces of scrap wood, a sudden rushing noise drifted up from the bowels of the ship. In a few minutes, the sound doubled in intensity, resembling the rumbling waters of a turbulent stream. Mcintosh stood slowly and addressed the captain in a somber, matter-of-fact voice.

“Sir, they've opened the sea cocks. They mean to sink her.”

Several unseen voices gasped in horror at Mcintosh's words and numerous cries of “No!” echoed through the hold. Morgan ignored them all.

“Looks like we'll have to make do with three spars,” the captain replied calmly. “I need seven men on each pole. Let's get them up now.”

A rush of men moved forward and grabbed the spars as the first drops of seawater began trickling into the hold through a half-dozen small bilge drains mounted flush on the hold's deck. Within minutes, they were sloshing around in ankle-deep water as the men positioned the ends of the spars against the forward corner of the hatch, next to the entry ladder. On the top step, a man stood with a two-foot-high triangular block of timber, his job to insert it under the open hatch lid and keep it wedged open.

“Ready ... lift!” Morgan shouted.

In unison, the three teams of men pressed the tips of their spars against the hatch cover eight feet over their heads and pushed up with all their might. To everyone's surprise, the hatch cover burst open several feet, letting in a spray of muted light from the deck lights, before its weight shifted and the heavy cover slammed back down.

The forlorn man at the top of the ladder froze an instant before trying to insert the block wedge and was too late. The hatch crashed down about his head as he tried to shove the wedge into the open gap, the lip nearly taking off the fingers of his right hand. The shaken man took a deep breath, then nodded at Morgan that he was okay to try again.

“All right, let's give it another try,” Morgan commanded as water now swirled about his knees, the salt water stinging his open leg wound. “One ... two ... three!”

A loud crack ripped through the hold as the top joint on one of the spars broke clean in two, the loose section falling into the water with a splash. Mcintosh waded over and examined the damaged end piece, finding the grooved joint had broken completely off.

“Not good, sir,” he reported. “Will take some time to repair.” “Do what you can,” Morgan barked. “Let's continue with two spars ... Heave!”

The remaining men shoved at their spars but it was a lost cause. There was no way of getting enough manpower behind the two spars to apply enough leverage. Additional men crowded in to try and help, but there was simply not enough room to put more hands on the timbers and push. Twice the men strained with the additional force and were able to pry the hatch open a few inches, but it was not nearly enough to block it so that a man could escape. The surging seawater was now up to Morgan's waist and he could see in the faces of the crew that the terror of drowning was about to incite panic in the hold.

“One more try, men,” he urged on while somewhere in the back of his own mind he morbidly calculated the estimated duration it took for a man to drown.

With adrenaline pumping, the men jammed the two spars against the hatch cover one last time with all their might. This time, they seemed to find their strength and the lid began to creak up. But just as they pressed their leverage, another crack echoed through the hold. A second spar splintered at the joint and the hatch cover clanged back shut. Somewhere in a darkened corner a voice blurted out, “That's it, we're finished.”

It was enough for a trembling cook standing near the gasoline drums to lose his nerve.

“I can't swim, I can't swim!” he cried out as the water level inched up his chest.

In a frightened panic, he grabbed onto the iron rungs that ran to the vent hatch and scurried up into the shaft. Reaching the top rung in darkness, his frenzied terror continued and he began pounding on the small round hatch cover with his fists, crying to be let out. In a state of complete shock, he suddenly felt the hatch give way under his hands and drift open. With his heart pounding in disbelief, he squirmed through the hatch and stood on the deck beside the moon pool dumbfounded. It took nearly a full minute before his racing pulse began to slow and he regained composure over his senses. Realizing that he wasn't going to die just yet, he scrambled back into the hatch and down the ladder a few steps, then shouted into the hold at the top of his lungs.