Valhalla Rising (Dirk Pitt 16)

He suddenly straightened in awe as one of the small thirty-five-foot Coast Guard rescue boats abruptly shot across the water at full speed in the direction of the stern of the Mongol Invader. The crew, clutching the tops of their life vests, spilled over the sides as the boat's skipper gripped the helm and kept his bow on a straight, unde-viating course toward the huge ship.

"Suicide," Dover thought wonderingly. "Pure suicide, but God bless him."

Small-arms fire erupted from the Invader. Bullets clouded the rescue boat like swarms of hornets and whined around the young man at the helm. Splashes seemed to cover every inch of the water around the thin fiberglass hull. The man at the helm could be seen shaking the spray from his eyes with one hand while he gripped the wheel with the other. The little red, white and blue ensign flew stiff in the morning breeze.

After seeing the fighter jets crash, people had stopped their cars on the bridge and were standing in crowds along the railing, watching the drama unfold beneath them. The eyes of the men in the remaining helicopters were on the rescue boat, too, every man and woman silently urging the boat's commander to jump overboard before the collision.

"A glorious act of defiance," Dover muttered to no one but himself. "Close enough!" he yelled, knowing he could not be heard. "Abandon the boat!"

But it was not to be. Just when it looked like the skipper was about to leap clear of the cockpit, a spray of bullets stitched him across the chest and he fell backward onto the work deck. A thousand people gazed entranced as the boat, its engines racing in a crescendo, props churning the water into a froth, struck the big port rudder of the LNG tanker.

There was no fiery explosion, no burst of smoke and flame. The little boat simply disintegrated when it struck the massive steel rudder. The only visible evidence of the collision was a small cloud of dust and debris that sprayed the water. The great menacing ship continued on like an elephant attacked by a mosquito without feeling the bite.

Dover dragged himself erect, not noticing the blood flooding out of his shoe from another shrapnel wound in his right ankle. He watched the massive LNG tanker sail on unmolested. Her bow was almost to a point where it was directly under the bridge.

"Dear God, don't let us lose her now," he muttered in abject fear and anger. "God help everyone if she gets under the bridge."

The words had hardly escaped his mouth when there was an explosion in the water under the stern of the Mongol Invader. He stared disbelieving as the bows of the giant ship slowly, inexorably began to make a sweeping turn to port away from the bridge. Ever so gradually at first, then faster and faster.

51

That big Liquid Natural Gas carrier looks like a line of eight pregnant women lying on their backs in a spa," said Jimmy Flett, as he stood at the console helm and closed on the Mongol Invader.

"A helicopter, two cutters and two F-16s blasted to scrap within twenty minutes," Giordino muttered, eyeing the wreckage floating everywhere, scattered among the waves by the smaller boats that sped through it. "She's even deadlier than she is ugly."

"They'll never stop her now," Pitt said, gazing through a pair of thirty-by-fifty binoculars at the big ship doggedly heading for Manhattan and her rendezvous with nightmarish devastation.

"She's about a thousand yards from the bridge," judged Flett. "Just time enough for us to cut in, submerge and go for her screws and rudders."

From Giordino's point of view, it would be a near thing. "We'll only get one pass. Miss and we'll never be able to circle and come at her again. Her speed is too great. We couldn't surface, race ahead of her and submerge for another try until she was long past the bridge."

Pitt looked at him and grinned. "Then we'll just have to get it right the first time, won't we?"

The Coral Wanderer skipped over the waves like a smooth, flat stone thrown by a major-league pitcher. Pitt swung his glasses onto the burning Coast Guard cutters. The William Shea was crawling toward the Brooklyn shore, the Timothy Firms listing and down by the stern. The smaller Coast Guard rescue craft had gathered around to put on extra men for damage control. The New York fireboats also pulled alongside, their pipes and nozzles throwing a shower of water on the sections of the ships that were on fire. This was one time when the hounds were outclassed by a grizzly bear, he thought. He deeply regretted that they couldn't have arrived sooner and diverted the devastation.

He had acted cocksure in his words of optimism to Giordino, but deep down he felt the chilling fear of failure. He was determined to hinder the Mongol Invader and prevent her from entering the upper harbor, even if it meant putting his life and those of Giordino and Flett on the line.

It was too late to turn back; the point of no return had been passed. All trepidation and uncertainty were left far astern. He knew with calculated certainty that Omo Kanai was on board. There was a score to settle, and he felt a growing wave of rage.

He studied the shattered and shell-torn wheelhouse of the Invader, but saw no human figures moving inside. The hull below the funnel had more holes than a colander, but they were small and the damage looked slight.

It seemed to take half a lifetime for the Coral Wanderer to narrow the gap. Two hundred yards off the starboard bow of the LNG tanker, Flett eased back the throttles and switched on the ballast tank pumps. Faster than Pitt might have thought, the luxury submarine slipped beneath the surface of the water as smoothly as if guided by a giant hand. Once submerged, Flett picked up the speed again, pushing the Coral Wanderer faster than her designers had specified. From now on there could be no room for error.

Giordino stayed on the bridge with Flett, while Pitt dropped down to the main cabin and made his way forward to the bow and its big viewing port. Seated comfortably on a suede cou

ch, he picked up a phone set in one armrest.

"Are we connected?" he asked.

"We have you on the speaker," answered Giordino.

Flett read off the numbers. "One hundred fifty yards and closing."

"Visibility is less than forty feet," Pitt reported. "Keep a sharp eye on the radar."

"We have a computer image of the ship as she sails," said Giordino. "I'll let you know what section of the hull we come in contact with."

Three agonizing minutes dragged by as Flett read off the closing distance. "One hundred yards out," he notified Pitt. "Her shadow is beginning to show above on the surface."