Larimer made a game effort of trying to keep in step, while Loren and Moran stumbled along behind, their hands clutching the belted trousers of Pitt and Giordino.
"How far?" Loren gasped.
"We have to climb four decks before we break out on the open promenade area," Pitt panted in reply.
At the second landing they ran into a Solid wall of people. The staircase became so packed with passengers struggling to escape the smoke it became impossible to take another step. The crew acted with coolness, attempting to direct the human flow to the boat deck, but calm gave way to the inevitable contagion of panic, and they were trampled under the screaming, terror-driven mass of thrashing bodies.
"To the left!" Giordino shouted in Pitts ear. "The passageway leads to another staircase toward the stern."
Relying on a deep trust in his little friend, Pitt veered down the passageway, pulling Larimer along. The senator finally managed to get his footing on the smooth surface and began carrying his own weight.
To their vast relief the smoke decreased and the frightened tidal wave of people thinned. When at last they reached the aft staircase they found it practically empty. By not following the herd instinct, Giordino had led them to temporary safety.
They emerged in the clear on the deck aft of the observation lounge. After a few moments to ease their coughing spasms and cleanse their aching lungs with clean air, they looked in awe over the doomed ship.
The Leonin Andreyev was listing twenty degrees to port. Thousands of gallons of oil had spilled out into the sea and ignited. The water around the jagged opening caused by the blast was a mass of fire. The entire midsection of the ship was a blazing torch. The tremendous heat was turning steel plates red hot and warping them into twisted, grotesque shapes. White paint was blistering black, teak decks were nearly burned through and the glass in the portholes popped like gunshots.
The flames spread with incredible speed as the ocean breeze fanned them toward the bridge. Already the communications room was consumed and the officer in charge burned to death at his radio. Fire and swirling smoke shot upward through the companionways and ventilating ducts. The Leonin Andreyev, like all modern cruise liners, was designed and constructed to be fireproof, but no precise planning or visionary foresight could have predicted the devastating results of a fuel tank explosion that showered the ship like a flamethrower.
An immense billowing cloud of oily smoke reached hundreds of feet above, flattening in the upper air currents, stretching over the ship like a pall. The base of the cloud was a Solid torrent of flame that twisted and surged in a violent storm of orange and yellow.
While below, in the deeper reaches of the hull, the flames were an acetylene blue-white, fed into molten temperatures by the intake of air through the shattered plates, creating the effect of a blast furnace.
Though many of the passengers were able to fight their way up the stairways, over a hundred lay dead below, some trapped and burned in their cabins, others overtaken by smoke inhalation during their attempt to escape topside. The ones who made it were being driven b
y the flames toward the stern and away from the lifeboats.
All efforts by the crew to maintain order were engulfed by the chaos. The passengers were finally left to fend for themselves and no one knew which way to turn. All port lifeboats were ablaze, and only three were lowered on the starboard side before the fire drove the crew back. As it was, one boat was beginning to burn by the time it hit the sea.
Now people began jumping into the water like migrating lemmings.
The drop was nearly fifty feet, and a number of those who had life jackets made the mistake of inflating them before plummeting over the side and broke their necks on impact. Women stood spellbound with terror, too frightened to leap. Men cursed in desperation. In the water the swimmers struck out for the few lifeboats, but the crews who manned them started up the engines and sailed beyond reach for fear of being swamped by overloading.
In the middle of the frenzied drama, the container ship arrived.
The captain eased his vessel within a hundred yards of the Leonin Andreyev and put his boats over as fast as they could be lowered.
A few minutes later, U.S. Navy sea rescue helicopters appeared and began plucking survivors from the sea.
LOREN CAZED IN ABSTRACT FASCINATIONat the sheet of advancing fire. "Shouldn't we jump or something?" she asked in a vague tone.
Pitt didn't answer immediately. He studied the slanting deck and judged the list to be about forty degrees. "No call to rush things," he said with expressionless calm. "The flames won't reach us for another ten minutes. The further the ship heels to port, the shorter the distance to jump. In the meantime, I suggest we start heaving deck chairs overboard so those poor souls in the water have something to hang on to until they're picked up."
Surprisingly, Larimer was the first to react. He began sweeping up the wooden deck chairs in his massive arms and dropping them over the railings. He actually had the look on his face of a man who was enjoying himself. Moran stood huddled against a bulwark, silent, noncommittal, frozen in fear.
"Take care you don't hit a swimmer on the head," Pitt said to Larimer, "I wouldn't dare," the senator replied with an exhausted smile.
"They might be a constituent and I'd lose their vote."
After all the chairs in sight had gone over the side, Pitt stood for two or three seconds and took stock. The blast from the heat was not yet unbearable. The fire wouldn't kill those packed on the stern deck, at least not for a few more minutes. He shouldered his way through the dense throng to the port railing again. The waves rolled only twenty feet below.
He shouted to Giordino, "Let's help these people over the side."
Then he turned and cupped his hands to his mouth.
"There's no more time to lose!" he yelled at the top of his lungs to make himself heard over the did of the frightened crowd and the roar of the holocaust. "Swim for it or die!"
Several men took the hint and, clutching the hands of their protesting wives, straddled the railing and slipped out of sight below.