Ghost Ship (NUMA Files 12)

“I can’t explain,” Paul said, “but I’ve grown attached to this ship and I’m not giving up on the old gal yet. Not after all she’s been through.”

“Who are you?” Gamay asked. “And what have you done with my sensible New England husband?”

Paul gave her a quick kiss, took her flashlight, and ran for the stairs. He heard her calling over to the Condor as he raced down into the dark.

Four flights down, he could already hear the sound of water coming in. It was a powerful rushing noise as if a fire hydrant had been busted wide open.

As he reached the bottom landing, Paul’s feet plunged calfdeep into water.

“Chief, where are you?” he shouted.

“Aft bulkhead!” a voice shouted from down the hall. “Hurry!” Paul charged toward the stern, past the boilers and coal bunkers, to the old engine room. He saw light coming from a ladder well that descended into the aft bilge, which was the lowest section of the ship where all the bilgewater collected. Beneath it lay only the cold sea.

As Paul played his light around, he spotted water blasting in through a ruptured seam in the hull plating. It coursed through the compartment in an angry, foaming stream, before swirling down the ladder like it was a gigantic drain. The water level was rising with alarming speed.

“We can’t stop this,” Paul said, suddenly shocked back to reality. “We have to get out of here.”

“I can’t,” the chief said. “I’m trapped.”

Paul saw nothing holding the chief in place. “What are you talking about?”

“My legs are stuck in the sediment,” the chief shouted. “The shock wave from the explosion liquefied the muck. When I dropped down here to take a look, I sunk knee-deep into it. It might as well be quicksand.”

Paul stepped onto the ladder, grabbed the chief’s hand, and pulled with all his might. The chief remained stuck right where he was. Paul aimed the flashlight down into the water. The chief was indeed sunk up to his knees.

Paul stepped down another rung as the water swirled around him and pounded his shoulders. Hanging on tight, he got into a position where he could use more leverage, grabbed under the chief’s arm, and pulled again. It was no use.

“Wiggle your feet.”

“I can’t,” the chief said. “It’s like they’re stuck in concrete.” By now the water was up to the chief’s waist and rising fast.

Paul stepped back. He needed something to dig the chief out with. Shining the light around, he caught sight of a metal pipe with a barbed end. It might have been a picker bar used by the firemen on the old ship to rake the coals with. It would have to do.

He grabbed the picker bar, came back to the well, handed the chief his flashlight, and jabbed the bar into the sediment near the chief’s legs. Shoveling at first and then stirring, he began to dislodge the muck.

“It’s working,” the chief said. “Keep going.”

Paul could hardly see. He worked vigorously as the water reached the chief’s chest and then his neck. The chief tilted his head to keep his nose and mouth above the water.

Paul kept digging and the chief began to come free, pulling on the rungs of the ladder and drawing himself up.

One leg came free and then the other, minus a boot. The chief went up the ladder and Paul followed. The last six inches of the bilge filled rapidly, and soon the main engine room began flooding.

Exhausted from the struggle, the two men stumbled for the bulkhead. By the time they reached it, water was pouring over the sill like a miniature version of Niagara Falls.

“Think it’ll hold?” Paul asked, looking at the hundred-year old version of a watertight door.

“Only one way to find out.”

Paul grabbed the door and tried to force it shut, but a century of corrosion prevented it from moving much. Putting his shoulder into it, Paul managed to move it halfway to a closed position before it seized once again.

Stepping back, he took the iron picker bar and banged on the hinges, trying to knock the corrosion off. A few flakes were all he managed to clear. Putting the bar down again, he and the chief got behind the door and leaned into. It closed threequarters and then almost flush, but the weight of the water pouring through was too much and it pushed them back. “It’s no use,” the chief said.

“One more try,” Paul said. From the corner of his eye he saw a figure come running down the stairs behind them. Some assis

tance at last. “Help us!”

With the water surging through waist-high at this point, Paul leaned into the door one more time. He felt the chief pushing with all his might and then felt a powerful shove from behind as the crewman who’d come to help reached them.