The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

They raced past the main deck cabins and into a mechanical space with even poorer lighting than the rest of the ship. Greasy machines hulked in the gloom, and the fishy stench of whale oil was overwhelming. They came to a forward bulkhead with a waist-high hatch rather than a traditional doorway. It was secured with dogging latch. Next to it were brackets holding three copper dry-chemical fire extinguishers. The copper was dull and pitted, but the mechanisms looked workable.

“This is where the springs and tensioners are located for the harpoon line,” Fyrie explained, popping the safety ring off one of the extinguishers and handing it to Bell while keeping a second for himself. “There’s a lot of wheels and pulleys, and everything is coated in grease. If we can’t contain this quickly, we’re in trouble.”

Bell nodded grimly.

Fyrie ducked below the bottom edge of the hatch, Bell staying upright but well to the side. When the captain swung open the hatch, he’d braced himself for a rolling wave of fire to billow from the room as a new source of oxygen was introduced. Nothing so dramatic occurred, and both men chanced looking into the burning space.

The room was rectangular and low-ceilinged and filled with machinery as complex as an industrial loom’s. The smoke was as dense as cotton and black, and it was drawn up through a hole in the ceiling as though by force of a powerful vacuum.

“Petr hasn’t sealed the harpoon line fairlead,” Fyrie shouted, and he jumped into the room, holding the extinguisher low with its rubber nozzle held at chest height.

Moving through the space required the skills of a contortionist, but Fyrie knew his ship so well he could maneuver by muscle memory alone. Bell needed to grab for handholds to keep his balance, which slowed him and left him smeared with grease up to the elbows.

The fire finally caught a taste of the additional oxygen reaching it from the open hatch and grew like an overinflating balloon. Fyrie was forced to bend over backward until his shoulders were almost level with his hips as flames licked and rolled along the ceiling just above his face. He recovered and went to work with the extinguisher. He ignored the river of fire dancing along the ceiling and directed a stream of white powder at the base of the fire. The chemical blanketed burning ropes and globs of molten grease. Bell reached his side and added his extinguisher to the battle.

With the fire intensifying, the heat inside the low chamber began to skyrocket. And still smoke was sucked up through the vent in the ceiling as though it had been designed as a chimney. The crewman Petr hadn’t yet done the simple task set to him.

For a moment it seemed they would get the best of the fire with just the two extinguishers, but then it found some old oil-soaked oakum left in a basket. The oakum ignited with a searing whoosh that forced both men back and gave the blaze a fresh toehold amid the machinery. The flames swelled and seemed to grow more confident as they enveloped more of the space, like an animal probing its freedom after being penned.

Bell and Fyrie exchanged a swift glance that affirmed for the detective what he sensed—the fire had just taken the upper hand and it was time to concentrate on saving their lives rather than the ship.

“Captain,” a crewman behind them called out over the mounting roar of the flames.

Fyrie turned to see Arn Bjørnson carrying two heavy metal pails through the tangled maze of ropes and wires and hydraulic pistons. He handed one to his captain as though it were empty, but in fact it was filled to the brim with clean white sand.

Fyrie grabbed it from his hands and with a deft touch flung its contents in a sweeping arc that smothered everything beneath it in a perfectly placed half-inch layer. What flames it smothered it killed. Arn had set the second pail on the deck so he could go get more. The captain snatched it up and wafted another spray of sand into the fire.

“Will there be enough?” Bell had to shout this to be heard.

“We keep tons of sand aboard for just this reason,” Fyrie shouted back. “Don’t know if we have enough crew to get it to us before the fire’s too big.”

Bell backed away from the captain. The man was trained for this kind of work. Bell was not. Instead, he met Arn halfway across the smoky room and took the two pails of sand Arn had returned with from him, adding himself as another link in a bucket brigade that stretched from here to a sand bunker located outside the main hold.

Each bucket weighed forty pounds, and the thin metal handle dug into the meat of Bell’s fingers like a wire garrote, but he dutifully took them from the harpooner and rushed back to Fyrie’s side. The pain suffered by the men who’d worked to get those two buckets of sand was for nothing, because just as Bell was passing the first to Fyrie, the whaling ship hove hard to starboard. The deck canted so quickly that Bell lost his footing and dropped both buckets, and their contents spilled uselessly.

Before either could react further, the unmistakable iron patter of machine gun bullets striking metal plating filled the chamber and drowned out the hellish din of fire. One round punched a hole through a thinner piece of plate and ricocheted between the two men.

Bell spoke first. “You fight the ship, I’ll fight the fire. Go!”

Fyrie needed no further encouragement. He raced from the room even as Arn struggled under the burden of two fresh pails. Bell took one from him, hunching down for fear of another raking attack by the unknown machine gunner, and tossed sand at the fire like it was a bucket of water. His technique lacked Ragnar Fyrie’s finesse. And did little to quell the flames.

“No,” Arn said. “Like this.”

He fanned the bucket sideways almost like he was swinging a baseball bat, and the arc of sand that spilled from it beat the fir

e back a few inches.

Knowing the Icelander had practiced tossing buckets during countless drills, Bell knew he’d best serve the effort by becoming a mule. “You pour,” Bell shouted, “I’ll haul.”

He left Arn’s side and raced over to the low hatchway. He was able to draw a few deep breaths of relatively fresh air. Lars Olufsen, the ship’s second engineer, rushed at him from down the hallway, lugging two buckets. Bell caught a glimpse of Vernon Hall turning back to descend the staircase from where he’d carried the pails up handed to him by some other crewman or miner. It seemed that everyone was in on the attempt to fight the blaze.

Another burst of machine gun fire raked the ship’s prow, but it hit with less fervor, as if coming from a greater distance. No new holes appeared in the hull plates.

Bell moved buckets as fast as they were brought to him, ignoring the strain on his shoulders, arms, and especially his hands, as well as the heat and the fact his lungs burned and his eyes streamed channels of tears through the soot caking his face. Each bucket he brought to Arn, Arn threw with the surety of a farmer sowing seeds on his land. He maximized the distribution, and thus the efforts of all the men, so that the fire was slowly being beaten back into the corner where it had been set.

Then something curious happened. The noxious smoke that had been rushing up to and then out the ceiling vent as though being pulled by a bellows suddenly began to amass in a roiling billow that grew until it was soon invading every corner and niche within the chamber. Arn backed out swiftly, turning and pushing Bell ahead of him and leaving two buckets still filled with sand behind. They staggered out through the hatch opening, each falling to the deck at Lars Olufsen’s feet, their chests convulsing with great, racking coughs that were forcing up tarry balls of phlegm from deep inside. The second engineer slammed the hatch closed. The smoke rising from Arn’s and Bell’s clothes made them look like they’d just escaped the Underworld.

“What happened?” Bell wheezed. Someone handed him a canteen of water and he drank from it greedily.