Night Probe! (Dirk Pitt 6)

"Martha?"

Shields stiffened and turned his head toward the faint cry that sounded from beyond the demolished partition separating him from the inside corridor. He listened intently, and then it came again.

"Martha?"

"In here," Shields shouted. "Please help me."

There was no reply, but he heard sounds of movement through the pile of rubble. Soon a fallen piece of the ceiling was pushed aside and a face with a gray beard poked through.

"My Martha, have you seen my Martha?"

The intruder was in a state of shock and his words came hollow and without inflection. His forehead was badly lacerated and his eyes darted about frantically.

"A young girl with long blond hair?"

"Yes, yes, my daughter."

Shields motioned toward the body of the girl. "I'm afraid she's gone.

The bearded man feverishly forced a larger opening and crawled through. He approached the girl, his face numb with un comprehension and lifted the bloodstained head, smoothing back the hair. For several moments

he did not utter a sound.

"She did not suffer," Shields offered gently.

The stranger did not reply.

"I'm sorry," Shields murmured. He could feel the ship listing sharply to starboard. The water was rising faster from below and there was little time left. He had to penetrate the father's grief and somehow persuade him to rescue the hand case.

"Do you know what happened?" he began.

"Collision," the answer came vagbely. "I was on deck. Another ship came out of the fog. Buried her bow in our side." The father paused, took out a handkerchief and dabbed the blood from the dead girl's face.

"Martha begged me to take her to England. Her mother was reluctant, but I gave in. Oh God, if only I'd known . . ." His voice trailed off.

"There is nothing you can do," Shields said. "You must save yourself."

The father turned slowly and looked at him with unseeing eyes. "I killed her," he whispered hoarsely.

Shields was not getting through. Anger smoldered within him and ignited in a flame of desperation.

"Listen!" he cried. "Lost in the wreckage is a travel case with a document that must reach the Foreign Office in London!" He was shouting now. "Please find it!"

The water swirled in small eddies a few feet away. The flood that would engulf them was only seconds away. The rising tide was stained with the slime of oil and coal dust while the night air outside was torn by the screams of a thousand dying souls.

"Please listen to me while there is still time," Shields begged. "Your daughter is dead." He was beating at the restricting steel with clenched fists, uncaring of the pain as his skin shredded away. "Leave before it's too late. Find my travel case and take it with you. Give it to the captain, he'll know what to do."

The father's mouth trembled open. "I cannot leave Martha alone . . . she fears the dark He muttered as though he were speaking at an altar.

It was the deathblow. There was no moving the grief-stunned father as his mind entered delirium. He bent over his daughter and kissed her on the forehead. Then he dissolved into a fit of uncontrolled sobbing.

Strangely, the fury of frustration fell away from Shields. With the acceptance of failure and death, fear and terror no longer held meaning. In the few short moments left he slipped beyond the boundaries of reality and saw things with abnormal clarity.

There came an explosion deep in the bowels of the ship as her boilers burst. She rolled over on her starboard side and slid stern first onto the waiting riverbed. From the moment of the collision in the darkness of early morning until she vanished from view of the mass of humanity struggling to stay afloat in the icy water, less than fifteen minutes had elapsed.

The time was 2:10 a.m.

Shields did not try to fight it, to hold his breath staving off the inevitable for a few more seconds. He opened his mouth and gulped in the foul-tasting water, gagging as it poured down his throat. Into the airless tomb he sank. The choking and the suffering passed quickly, and his conscious mind blinked out.