Raise the Titanic - Cussler Clive. Страница 69

"Legitimate boarding?" Sandecker echoed. "The Civil Salvage Service laws define a derelict vessel as one whose crew has abandoned at sea without intent of returning or attempt at recovery. Since this ship still retains its crew, your presence, sir, constitutes a blatant act of high-seas piracy."

"Spare me your interpretation of maritime legalities." Prevlov held up a protesting hand. "You are quite right, of course, for the moment."

The implication was clear. "You wouldn't dare cast us adrift in the middle of a hurricane."

"Nothing so mundane, Admiral. Besides, I am well aware that the Titanic is taking on water. I need your salvage engineer, Spencer, I believe his name is, and his crew to keep the pumps operating until the storm abates. After that, you and your people will be provided with a life raft. Your departure will then guarantee our right to salvage."

"We cannot be allowed to live to testify," Sandecker said. "Your government would never permit that. You know it, and I know it."

Prevlov looked at him, calm, unaffected. Then he turned casually, almost callously, dismissing Sandecker. He spoke in Russian to one of the marines. The man nodded and, tipped over the radio, and pounded it with the stock of his machine pistol into mangled pieces of metal, glass, and wiring.

"There is no further use for your operations room." Prevlov motioned around the gymnasium. "I have installed my communication facilities in the main dining room on D Deck. If you and the others will be so kind as to follow me, I will see to your comfort until the weather clears."

"One more question," Sandecker said without moving, "You owe me that."

"Of course, Admiral, of course."

"Where is Dirk Pitt?"

"I regret to inform you," Prevlov said with ironic sympathy, that Mr. Pitt was in your helicopter when it was swept over the side into the sea. His death must have come quickly."

Admiral Kemper sat opposite a grim-faced President and casually poured four teaspoons of sugar into his coffee cup.

"The aircraft carrier Beecher's Island is nearing the search area. Her planes will begin searching at first light." Kemper forced a thin smile. "Don't worry, Mr. President. We'll have the Titanic back in tow by mid-afternoon. You have my word on it."

The President looked up. "A helpless ship adrift and lost in the middle of the worst storm in fifty years? A ship that's rusted half through after lying on the bottom for seventy-six years? A ship the Soviet government is looking for any excuse to get their hands on? And you say not to worry. You're either a man of unshakable conviction, Admiral, or you're a hyperoptimist."

"Hurricane Amanda." Kemper sighed at the name. "We made allowances for every possible contingency, but nothing in our wildest imagination prepared us for a storm of such tremendous magnitude in the middle of May. It struck so fearfully hard, and on such short notice, that there was no time to reshuffle our priorities and time schedules."

"Suppose the Russians took it into their heads to make their play and are on board the Titanic this minute?"

Kemper shook his head. "Boarding a ship under a hundred-plus-mile-an-hour winds and seventy-foot seas? My years at sea tell me that's impossible."

"A week ago, Hurricane Amanda would have been considered impossible too." The President looked up dully as Warren Nicholson sank in the opposite sofa.

"Any news?"

"Nothing from the Titanic," Nicholson said. "They haven't reported since they entered the eye of the hurricane."

"And the Navy tugs?"

"They still haven't sighted the Titanic-which isn't too surprising. With their radar inoperative, they're reduced to a visual search pattern. A hopeless chore, I'm afraid, in near-zero visibility."

For long moments, there was a suffocating silence. It was finally broken by Gene Seagram. "We can't lose it now, not when we were so close," he said, struggling to his feet. "The terrible price we've paid . . . I've paid . . . the byzanium, oh God, we can't let it be taken away from us again." His shoulders drooped and he seemed to wither as Donner and Collins eased him back down on the sofa.

Kemper spoke in a whisper. "If the worst happens, Mr. President? What then?"

"We write off Sandecker, Pitt, and the others."

"And the Sicilian Project?"

"The Sicilian Project," the President murmured. "Yes, we write that off too."

The heavy gray wool slowly began to fade away and Pitt became aware that he was lying in an upside-down position on something hard and in something wet. He hung there long minutes, his mind in the twilight zone between consciousness and unconsciousness, until gradually he was able to pry open his eyes, or at least one eye; the other was caked shut by coagulated blood. Like a man who had just struggled up from a deep dark tunnel into the daylight, he squinted his good eye from right to left, up and down. He was still in the helicopter, his feet and legs curled upward along the floor and his back and shoulders lay against the aft bulkhead.

That accounted for the hardness. The wetness was an understatement. Several inches of water sloshed back and forth around his body. He wondered vaguely how he had come to be contorted in this awkward position.

His head felt as if little men were running around inside it, jabbing pitchforks into his brain. He splashed some water over his face, ignoring the sting of the salt, until the blood diluted and ran off, allowing the eyelid to open. Now that he had regained his peripheral vision he turned his body so that he was sitting on the bulkhead and looking up at the floor. It was like staring at the crazy room of an amusement park fun house.

There was to be no exiting through the cargo door; it had been jammed shut from the beating the fuselage had taken during its journey across the Titanic's decks. Left with no other choice but to get out through the control cabin hatch, Pitt began climbing up the floor, using the cargo tie-down rings for handgrips.

One ring at a time, he pulled himself toward the forward bulkhead. or what now constituted the ceiling. His head ached and he had to stop every few feet, waiting for the cobwebs to clear. At last, he could reach up and touch the door latch. The door wouldn't budge. He pulled out the Colt and pounded at the latch. The force of the blow knocked the pistol out of his wet hand, and it clattered all the way to the rear bulkhead. The door remained stubbornly closed.

Pitt's breath was coming now in heaving gasps. He was on the verge of blacking out from exhaustion. He turned and looked down. The aft bulkhead seemed a long way away. He gripped a cargo tie-down ring with both hands, swung in a series of ever-widening arcs, and then lashed out with both feet, using all the muscle a man can use when he knows it is his last try.

The latch gave and the door sprung upward at an angle of thirty degrees before gravity took over and brought it slamming back down. But the brief opening was all Pitt needed to thrust a hand over the door frame, using his fingers as a jam. He gasped in agony as the door fell across his knuckles. He hung there, soaking up the pain, gathering the strength for the final hurdle. He took a deep breath and heaved his body through the opening as one would climb through a trapdoor in an attic without benefit of a ladder. Then he rested again, waiting for the dizziness to pass and his heart to slow down to a near-normal beat.