Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

On the current course of both vessels, the Mayweather would be boxed out of entering the channel, unless it made a dangerous pass across the freighter’s bow to the east.

Gauge read the captain’s thoughts. “Looks like we should either hold position until they pass or duck into the western channel.”

Posey nodded, his anger at the other vessel receding into concern for his own ship’s safety. “Let’s steer clear of the idiot. All slow and easy toward the west channel until he passes.”

Gauge relayed the order to the helmsman, and the tanker’s bow nudged right, toward the lights of Detroit.

Posey shook his head as the black outline of the freighter drew closer, holding its aggressive course. Due to the nature of the waterway, the Duluth was heading directly for the Mayweather.

A mountain of white water was breaking off the other ship’s bow, and Posey asked Gauge her speed.

“She’s up to fourteen knots,” he said with tension in his voice.

The two ships were now nearly perpendicular. The freighter, closing fast, cleared the tip of Belle Isle and should have begun a turn to starboard. But it didn’t.

“Sir, she’s turning into us!”

There was no hiding the fear in Gauge’s voice. Radar showed the freighter was veering sharply to port and meant to strike the tanker.

“Hard right rudder!” Posey shouted. “Engine full astern.”

The helmsman yanked the rudder control hard over. There was no time for the tanker to respond. The freighter bore down on the 300-foot ship, its bow aimed square for the tanker’s midsection.

Seconds from impact, a sharp crack sounded from the Duluth, and the freighter’s pilothouse erupted in a fireball. Posey could only stare in wonder at the spectacle before bracing for collision.

The freighter struck amidships a moment later, driving halfway across the tanker’s deck before losing momentum. On the Mayweather’s stern bridge, the crewmen felt only a slight jar, but they heard the wicked screech of steel slicing through steel. Only a few yards away, they saw and smelled the smoldering remains of the Duluth’s bridge.

As alarm bells sounded, Posey ordered his second officer to assemble the crew. The Mayweather had been dealt a mortal blow, nearly cut in two. The captain already felt a severe list to port as he stepped onto the bridge wing to observe the damage.

The Duluth had somehow broken free and was churning upriver toward Grosse Pointe. A speedboat appeared and pulled alongside the freighter. Posey barely made out a rope ladder dangling from the freighter’s railing, with a long-haired figure climbing down it to the water. The speedboat plucked the person from the ladder, then turned and roared away. Like the freighter, it motored into the darkness with no running lights.

Posey turned to the remains of the Mayweather, which was losing its fight with the river. Miraculously, no one on his own ship was injured. The tanker’s small crew assembled behind the base of the bridge and climbed into an enclosed lifeboat. Posey was the last to enter, closing the hatch, then jettisoning the boat off an escape ramp.

The lifeboat struck the water and motored a short distance away as the Mayweather rolled heavily to her side. Posey looked at the scene and held his head in his hands. Thousands of gallons of gooey crude oil were now leaking into the Detroit River from the ship’s ruptured tanks—potentially the ugliest environmental marine disaster in years.

His concentration was broken by a muffled thud that echoed over the water. A few hundred yards upstream, the Duluth had carved through a small marina filled with pleasure boats, then run aground at Windmill Point Park.

Posey stared at the rogue freighter with a mix of dread and fury. What could explain its actions? The only reply came not from the freighter, but from his own wounded ship. With a gurgling protest from its flooded holds, the Mayweather somehow regained its upright position, then promptly sank to the river’s bottom.

9

The jetliner touched down on the east runway of Washington Dulles International Airport, jarring Pitt awake. He and Giordino shook off the effects of the early-morning flight from San Salvador, collected their bags, and drove to the NUMA headquarters building on the banks of the Potomac River. In the foyer of Pitt’s ninth-floor office, they were welcomed by Rudi Gunn.

Pitt’s Deputy Director, Gunn was a slight, wiry man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and tight-cropped hair. Bearing the erect posture of his days as a Navy commander, he brought a cerebral bearing and wit to the task at hand. He eyed the duffel bags the men had dropped in a corner of Pitt’s office and shook his head. “I’m not seeing our prototype multibeam sonar system that you departed with.”

“We left it in El Salvador,” Giordino said, “in about a thousand pieces.”

“It’s bad enough you desecrate the landscape of a friendly nation, but did you have to destroy our latest survey equipment in the process?”

“None of it was our doing, Rudi.” Pitt plopped into his desk chair.

“There is some good news for the accounting department, though,” Giordino said. “The guy who blew up our chartered boat did so after we returned the keys, or we’d be on the hook for that, too.”

“The State Department has indicated the Salvadoran government is requesting assistance from the FBI to investigate the matter,?

? Gunn said. “They believe the Cerrón Grande Dam was blown up intentionally, in conjunction with the murder of the U.S. agricultural team.”

“That much we figured,” Pitt said. “The question is why.”