Crescent Dawn (Dirk Pitt 21)

Ignoring Maria, Pitt sprang to a crouch, then backpedaled up the inclined deck, dragging Lazlo behind him. Maria immediately fired, peppering a handful of shots in their direction. Her shots struck close but missed both men before Pitt had them safely out of sight. Regaining a touch of strength, Lazlo had Pitt pull him to his feet. The commando’s jacket was soaked red, and a trail of blood had followed him across the deck.

The tanker suddenly lurched beneath their feet, listing almost thirty degrees to starboard. Pitt quickly realized that their most immediate danger wasn’t from the pending explosives.

“Can you climb with me?” Pitt asked Lazlo.

The tough commando nodded, and with an arm around Pitt for support he took shaky steps up the deck.

Behind them, Maria continued shooting, her target again the battered stairway. Several more well-aimed shots at the ramp’s joint finally weakened the metal, which had bent sharply with the sinking tanker. Stomping the ramp with her foot, its joint finally broke free, releasing the upper stairway to swing hard against the ship.

Free at last, Maria sneered at the tanker from the bow of the slowly sinking yacht. The tanker would drift well clear before exploding, and she might have time to make it back to the bridge for safety. At the very least, she thought, Pitt and Lazlo would die with the ship.

She might have been right, only she failed to account for the Dayan’s own bit of vindictive wrath.

81

FROM THE TWENTIETH FLOOR OF HIS HIGH-RISE OFFICE situated on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus, Ozden Celik watched the events unfold with increasing dread. He had barely been able to make out the shadow of the tanker when it first approached Istanbul under the faint light of dawn. But the slowly graying sky had expanded his panoramic view until the towering minarets of Süleymaniye Mosque were clearly visible across the waters of the strait.

With a tripod-mounted pair of high-magnification binoculars, he focused on the Dayan just as its emergency lifeboat was released off the stern. He watched in dismay as the tanker crossed under the Galata Bridge while the Sultana appeared alongside in an apparent gun battle. Celik could feel his heart pounding when he saw the tanker complete a wide turn and reemerge beneath the far end of the bridge.

“No, you are supposed to run ashore by the mosque!” he cursed aloud at the sluggish tanker.

His frustration mounted when repeated phone calls to Maria went unanswered. He lost sight of the yacht when the tanker turned, its high profile obscuring the smaller vessel. Holding his breath, Celik hoped that the yacht had turned and fled up the Golden Horn to escape the blast, which he knew was now imminent. But his eyes bulged in horror when the Dayan passed close to the dredge ship, then turned toward the channel, revealing that the yacht was still alongside its starboard flank.

Focusing the binoculars, he saw his sister on the yac

ht’s bow, shooting a gun first at the tanker, then at the metal stairway. Celik couldn’t help but notice the tanker listing precariously above her.

“Get away! Get away!” Celik shouted to his sister from two miles away.

The eyepieces dug into his brow as he watched the scene with horror. Maria at last succeeded in freeing the yacht from the stairway’s clasp, but it didn’t move far. Celik had no idea that the yacht had been stripped of its propellers and was itself sinking. Baffled by the sight, he couldn’t understand why the yacht hung close to the heavily listing tanker.

From his vantage point across the strait, Celik could not hear the symphony of creaks and groans that emanated from the bowels of the tanker as its center of gravity was upset. The massive flooding across the Dayan’s entire length augmented the starboard list until the deck rose like a steep mountain. Crashing sounds erupted throughout the tanker as dishes, furniture, and equipment lost their fight with gravity and tumbled against the starboard bulkheads.

As the starboard rail touched the water, the hulking tanker wallowed completely up onto its side, holding the awkward position for several seconds. The Dayan could have broken up or simply sank on its side, but it instead held together and resumed its death roll with a flourish.

Still standing on the bow of the yacht, Maria felt the shadow of the tanker cross her body as the ship began to flip over. Drifting just a few yards from the bigger Dayan, the yacht was well within its reach. There would be no escaping its destructive blow.

Maria looked up and raised an arm, as if to ward off the blow of the giant tanker as it rolled over. Instead, she was flattened like an insect. The capsizing Dayan slammed the water’s surface, engulfing the yacht while creating a ten-foot wave that crashed toward the shoreline, tossing the Ibn Battuta about like a rowboat. The dark, barnacle-encrusted hull of the tanker filled the horizon, its mammoth bronze propeller spinning idly in the morning sky. Muffled bangs from collapsing bulkheads mixed with rushing water echoed throughout the hull as the overturned ship slowly began to settle by the bow.

Celik gripped his binoculars with trembling hands as he watched his sister die beneath the weight of the capsized tanker. Frozen in shock, he stared unblinking before his emotions brimmed over. Heaving the tripod across his office with a wail, he fell to the carpet, then covered his eyes and sobbed uncontrollably.

82

CELIK WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WHO WATCHED IN HORROR as the tanker capsized. Giordino was just climbing into the Bullet when he heard a crashing sound behind him and turned to see the Dayan turn turtle atop the yacht. He quickly sealed the rear hatch as the resulting wave barreled into the Ibn Battuta, carrying the submersible up and away from the dredge ship.

Giordino quickly fired up the diesel engines and motored toward the tanker. He thought anxiously of Pitt, who had waved at him from the bridge of the tanker just minutes before. The bridge was now far underwater, and all he could see was the cold, lifeless underbelly of the Israeli tanker.

Ignoring the danger that the tanker might explode at any time, he raced along its near side. Surprisingly little debris had floated away when the ship turned over, and he was able to speed quickly down its length to search for bodies in the channel. He knew that Pitt was like a dolphin in the water. If he had somehow survived the capsizing, there was at least a chance that he had swum clear.

Nearing the submerged bow, Giordino swung around and motored back close to the hull, either not knowing or caring that the timed explosives would detonate in less than two minutes. The waters ahead of him remained empty as he passed the tanker’s midsection and approached the stern. With a heavy heart, he reluctantly considered the notion that his old friend had not made it off alive.

Nudging the throttles higher, he started to turn away when he noticed a pair of ropes stretched over the hull. Oddly, the lines appeared to run from the ship’s submerged port rail up the hull and over the keel, a short distance in front of the propeller. With a glimmer of hope in his eye, Giordino accelerated briskly, sweeping around the tanker’s broad stern, which was now rising high into the air.

Reaching the tanker’s opposite side, he spotted the ropes dangling high from the keel, but the hull was otherwise empty. Then barely fifty yards away in the water he spotted two objects. Turning instantly, he raced closer, seeing with joy that it was Pitt towing an injured Lazlo away from the ship.

Giordino sped in closer, then expertly reversed engines to quickly drift alongside. Pitt hoisted Lazlo onto a pontoon, then shouted at Giordino as the latter moved to open the hatch.

“No time,” Pitt yelled. “Get us out of here.”