Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

"I do not believe in tempting the fates."

Prevlov unzipped his sodden jumpsuit and let it fall on the floor. "I am afraid you are about to make an exception to that rule, Captain. We, you and I, are about to tempt the fates as they have never been tempted before."

57

Pitt could not escape the feeling he was being deserted on a lonely island as he stood on the foredeck of the Titanic and watched the salvage fleet get under way and begin moving toward the western horizon and safer waters.

The Alhambra was the last in line to slip past, her captain flashing a "good luck" with his addis lamp, the news people quietly, solemnly filming what might be the last visual record of the Titanic. Pitt searched for Dana Seagram among the crowd gathered at the railings, but his eyes failed to pick her out. He watched the ships until they became small dark specks on a leaden sea. Only the missile cruiser Juneau and the Capricorn remained behind, but the salvage tender would soon depart and follow the others once the tug captains signaled they had the derelict in tow.

"Mr. Pitt?"

Pitt turned to see a man who had the face of a canvas weary prizefighter and the body of a beer keg.

"Chief Bascom, sir, of the Wallace. I brought a two-man crew aboard to make fast the towing cable."

Pitt smiled a friendly smile. "I bet they call you Bad Bascom."

"Only behind my back. It's a name that's followed me ever since I tore up a bar in San Diego." Bascom shrugged. Then his eyes narrowed. "How did you guess?"

"Commander Butera described you in glowing terms... behind your back, that is."

"A good man, the commander."

"How long will it take for the hookup?"

"With luck and the loan of your helicopter, about an hour."

"No problem over the helicopter; it belongs to the Navy anyway." Pitt turned and gazed down at the Wallace as Butera very carefully backed the tug toward the Titanic's old straight up-and-down bow until he was less than a hundred feet away. "I take it the helicopter is to lift the tow cable on board?"

"Yes sir," Bascom answered. "Our cable measures ten inches in diameter and weighs in at one ton per seventy feet. No lightweight that one. On most tow jobs, we'd cast a small line over the derelict's bow which in turn would be attached to a series of heavier lines with increasing diameters that finally tied into the main cable, but that type of operation calls for the services of an electric winch, and since the Titanic is a dead ship and human muscles are way under matched for the job, we take the easy way out. No sense in filling up sick bay with a crew of hernia patients."

Even with the help of the helicopter, it was all Bascom and his men could do to secure the great cable into position. Sturgis came through like an old pro. Tenderly manipulating the helicopter's controls, he laid the end of the Wallace's tow cable on the Titanic's forecastle deck as neatly as though he'd practiced the trick for years. It took only fifty minutes, from the time Sturgis released the cable and flew back to the Capricorn, until Chief Bascom stood on the forepeak and waved his arms over his head, signaling the tugs that the connection was made.

Butera on the Wallace acknowledged the signal with a blast on the tug's whistle and rang the engine room for "dead ahead slow" as Uphill on the Morse went through the same motions. Slowly the two tugs gathered way, the Wallace trailing the Morse on three hundred yards of wire leash, paying out the main cable until the Titanic rose and dropped in the steadily increasing swells nearly a quarter of a mile astern. Then Butera held up his hand and the men on the Wallace's afterdeck gently eased on the brake of the tug's immense towing winch and the cable took up the strain.

From atop the Titanic's vast height, the tugs looked like tiny toy boats tossing over the enormous crests of the waves one moment before disappearing to their mastlights in the cavernous troughs the next. It seemed impossible that such puny objects could budge over forty-five thousand tons of dead weight, and yet slowly, imperceptibly at first, their combined forces of ten-thousand horsepower began to tell and soon a minute dog's bone of foam could be discerned curling around the Titanic's faded Plimsoll's mark.

She was barely making way-New York was still twelve hundred miles to the west-but she had at last picked up where she'd left off that cold night back in 1912 and was once again making for port.

The ominous-looking black clouds rose and spilled over the southern horizon. It was a hurricane bar. Even as Pitt watched, it seemed to expand and strengthen, turning the sea to a dark shade of dirty gray. Oddly, the wind became light, aimlessly changing direction every few seconds. He noticed that the sea gulls that had once swarmed about the salvage fleet were not in view. Only the sight of the Juneau, moving steadily five hundred yards abeam the Titanic, provided any sense of security.

Pitt glanced at his watch and then took another look over the port railing before he slowly, almost casually, approached the entrance to the gymnasium.

"Is the gang all here?"

"They're getting restless as hell," Giordino said. He was standing huddled against a ventilator in a seemingly vain attempt to hide from the icy wind. "If it wasn't for the admiral's restraining influence, you'd have had a first-class riot on your hands."

"Everyone is accounted for?"

"To a man."

"You're positive?"

"Take the word of Warden Giordino. None of the inmates have left the room, not even to go potty."

"Then I guess it's my turn to enter stage right."

"Any complaints from our guests?" Giordino asked.