Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

The answer made no sense to her. She was only aware of the evil in his eyes as he pressed a cloth damp with a strange-smelling liquid against her face. Then a black pit opened beneath her feet and she fell into it.

30

It was a race against death now. That explosives had been placed on the hull was a certainty in Pitt's mind. The Martins had discovered them, but were murdered before they could alert Captain Baldwin. Pitt called Giordino over the portable radio. "You can knock off the search and call in the inspectors. The explosives are not inside the ship."

Giordino simply acknowledged the message and hurried to the bridge. "What do you know that I don't?" Giordino asked, as he rushed through the door, followed by Rand O'Malley.

"We just got word that the divers were killed," Pitt told them.

"That nails it," Giordino muttered angrily.

"The divers inspecting the bottom of the boat?" asked O'Malley.

Pitt nodded. "It's beginning to look as though the explosives were set to detonate while we were over deep water."

"Which is where we are now," said Giordino quietly, as he stared uneasily at the depth meter.

Pitt turned to Baldwin, who was standing at the control console with the helmsman. "How soon before we pass into shallow water?" he asked.

"Twenty minutes will put us over the edge of the trench and onto the Continental Slope," Baldwin answered, his face beginning to show signs of stress now that he had come to believe his boat was truly in danger. "In ten more minutes, we'll reach the surface, which will enable us to increase our speed by half and reach shallow water."

Abruptly, the seaman standing at the ship's main console called out. "Captain, something is happening with the evacuation pods."

Baldwin and O'Malley stepped over and stared at the console in shock. All sixteen lights representing the evacuation pods were showing red except for one that still read green. "They've been activated," Baldwin gasped.

"And before anyone could board," added O'Malley grimly. "We'll never get the crew and passengers off the boat now."

The vision of an explosion on the hull, water flooding inside and dragging the boat unhindered into the abyss with seven hundred passengers and crew, was too horrible to contemplate but too real to dismiss.

Pitt knew that whoever had activated the evacuation pods had probably abandoned the boat in one of them, which meant that the explosives could detonate at almost any moment. He stepped over to the radar screen that sat side by side with the side-scan sonar display. The Continental Slope was rising, but too slowly. There were still almost a thousand feet of water below them. The Golden Marlin's hull was built to withstand the water pressure at that depth, but any hope of rescue would be next to impossible. Every eye stared at the depth meter, every mind counted the seconds.

The seabed rose with agonizing slowness. Only another hundred feet remained before the boat broke the surface. A collective sigh of relief was heard in the control room as the Golden Marlin passed the edge of the Continental Slope, and the bottom came within six hundred feet of the hull. The water outside the view ports was becoming much lighter now and the restless surface could be seen sparkling under the sun.

"Depth under hull five hundred fifty and rising," called out Conrad.

The words had barely left his mouth when the boat shuddered with sickening violence. There was barely time to react, to contemplate the inevitable disaster. The boat twisted, completely out of control. Those great technically advanced engines wound down to a stop as the hungry sea poured into the two wounds caused by the underwater explosives.

The Golden Marlin lay motionless, drifting in the mild current, but sinking foot by inexorable foot toward the sea floor. Tons of water began flooding into the hull in locations yet unknown to the men in the control room. The surface looked so tantalizingly near it seemed as if it could be touched with a yardstick.

Baldwin was under no illusions. His boat was going down. "Call the engine room and ask the chief to ascertain the damage," he snapped to his second officer.

The reply came back almost immediately. "The chief engineer reports they're taking water in the engine room. The baggage compartment is also flooding, but the hull is still intact. He has the pumps flowing at maximum capacity. He also reports that the ballast tank pump system was damaged by the forward blast water and is pouring into the tanks through the exhaust tubes. The crew is struggling to shut down the flow, but the water is rising too fast and they may have to evacuate the engine room. I'm sorry, sir, the chief says h

e can no longer keep the boat from losing neutral buoyancy."

"Oh, God," murmured a young officer standing at the control console. "We're going to sink."

Baldwin quickly came on keel. "Tell the chief to close all the watertight doors below and keep the generators going as long as he can." Then he looked at Pitt, silent, expressionless, and said, "Well, Mr. Pitt, I guess now is the time for you to tell me 'I told you so.' "

Pitt's face was set, stonily thoughtful, the face of a man who was considering every possible contingency, every potential to save the ship and its passengers. Giordino had seen the look many times in the past. Pitt shook his head slowly. "I take no satisfaction in being right."

"Bottom coming up." First Officer Conrad's eyes had never left the radar and side-scan sonar displays. He had no sooner spoken the words than the Golden Marlin struck the sea floor with loud creaking and groaning sounds of protest, as her hull settled into the silt, throwing up a vast brown cloud that blotted out all vision beyond the view ports.

It didn't take a motion picture of the event for the passengers to know something very tragic was in the making. Yet as long as the passenger decks remained water-free and none of the crew looked frightened-since this was their first voyage in a submarine, none of them realized what real danger they were in-no one panicked. Captain Baldwin came on the speaker system and assured everyone that although the Golden Marlin had lost power, things would be back to normal shortly. The story, however, did not fly with the passengers and crew who'd noticed that almost all the pod chambers were empty. Some milled around in confusion. Some remained at the view ports and gazed at the fish who appeared after the silt settled. Some retired to the lounge and ordered drinks that were now on the house.

Captain Baldwin and his officers began studying emergency procedures that came out of corporate manuals written by those who had no concept of how to deal with a submarine cruise liner lying helpless on the bottom with seven hundred souls on board. While the hull was sounded to make certain it was still mostly watertight and the bulkhead doors closed, the engineering crew set the pumps in operation to keep up with the sea flowing into the engine room and baggage compartment. Fortunately, all the systems but propulsion appeared unaffected by damage from the explosions.

Baldwin sat in the communications room like a man in a daze. With great effort, he opened up communications with Lasch at the company headquarters, the Coast Guard and any ships that were within fifty miles, in that order. He issued a Mayday and gave the Golden Marlin's position. That done, he sat back and laid his head in his hands. At first, he worried that his long career at sea would be ended. Then it came to him how unimportant his career was under the circumstances. His first duty was to his passengers" and crew. "Damn the career," he muttered under his breath. He stood and walked from the bridge, first to the engine room for a full report and then he roamed the ship reassuring the passengers that they were in no immediate danger. He gave out the story that there was a problen with the ballast tanks, and repairs were in effect.