Clive Cussler - Deep Six

Almost before the explosion faded, Captain Pokofsky shook off stunned disbelief and rushed to the bridge. The young watch officer was pounding desperately on the automated ship console in agonized frustration.

“Close all watertight doors and actuate the fire control system!” Pokofsky shouted.

“I can’t!” the watch officer cried helplessly. “We’ve lost all power!”

“What about the auxiliary generators?”

“They’re out too.” The watch officer’s face was wrapped in undisguised shock. “The ship’s phones are dead. The damage-control computer is down. Nothing responds. We can’t give a general alarm.”

Pokofsky ran out on the bridge wing and stared aft. His once beautiful ship was vomiting fire and smoke from her entire midsection. A few moments before there was music and relaxed gaiety. Now the entire scene was one of horror. The open swimming pool and lounge decks had been turned into a crematorium. The two hundred people stretched under the sun were almost instantly incinerated by the tidal fall of fiery oil. Some had saved themselves by leaping into the pools, only to die after surfacing for air when the heat seared their lungs, and many had climbed the railings and thrown themselves overboard, their skin and brief clothing ablaze.

Pokofsky stood sick and stunned at the sight of the carnage. It was a moment in time borrowed from hell. He knew in his heart that his ship was lost. There was no stopping the holocaust, and the list was increasing as the sea poured into the Leonid Andreyev’s bowels. He returned to the bridge.

“Pass the word to abandon ship,” he said to the watch officer. “The port boats are burning. Load what women and children you can into the starboard boats still intact.”

As the watch officer hurried off, the chief engineer, Erik Kazinkin, appeared, out of breath from his climb from below. His eyebrows and half his hair were singed away. The soles of his shoes were smoldering but he appeared not to notice. His mind was numb to the pain.

“Give me a report,” Pokofsky ordered in a quiet tone. “What caused the explosion?”

“The fuel tank blew,” answered Kazinkin. “God knows why. Took out the power generating room and the auxiliary generator compartment as well. Boiler rooms two and three are flooded. We managed to manually close the watertight doors to the engine rooms, but she’s taking on water at an alarming rate. And without power to operate the pumps…” He shrugged defeatedly without continuing.

All options to save the Leonid Andreyev had evaporated. The only morbid question was whether she would become a burned-out derelict or sink first? Few would survive the next hour, Pokofsky accepted with dread certainty. Many would burn and many would drown, unable to enter the pitifully few lifeboats that were still able to be launched.

“Bring your men up from below,” said Pokofsky. “We’re abandoning the ship.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said the chief engineer. He held out his hand. “Good luck to you.”

They parted and Pokofsky headed for the communications room one deck below. The officer in charge looked up from the radio as the captain suddenly strode through the doorway.

“Send out the distress call,” Pokofsky ordered.

“I took the responsibility, sir, of sending out Mayday signals immediately after the explosion.”

Pokofsky placed a hand on the officer’s shoulder. “I commend your initiative.” Then he asked calmly, “Have you managed to transmit without problem?”

“Yes, sir. When the power supply went off, I switched to the emergency batteries. The first response came from a Korean container ship only ten miles to the southwest.”

“Thank God someone is close. Any other replies?”

“The United States Navy at Guantanamo Bay is responding with rescue ships and helicopters. The only other vessel within fifty miles is a Norwegian cruise ship.”

“Too late for her,” said Pokofsky thoughtfully. “We’ll have to pin our hopes on the Koreans and American Navy.”

With the soaked blanket over his head, Pitt had to feel his way along the passageway and up the smoke-filled staircase. Three, four times he and Giordino tripped over the bodies of passengers who had succumbed to asphyxiation.

Larimer made a game effort of trying to keep in step, while Loren and Moran stumbled along behind, their hands clutching the belted trousers of Pitt and Giordino.

“How far?” Loren gasped.

“We have to climb four decks before we break out on the open promenade area,” Pitt panted in reply.

At the second landing they ran into a solid wall of people. The staircase became so packed with passengers struggling to escape the smoke it became impossible to take another step. The crew acted with coolness, attempting to direct the human flow to the boat deck, but calm gave way to the inevitable contagion of panic, and they were trampled under the screaming, terror-driven mass of thrashing bodies.

“To the left!” Giordino shouted in Pitt’s ear. “The passageway leads to another staircase toward the stern.”

Relying on a deep trust in his little friend, Pitt veered down the passageway, pulling Larimer along. The senator finally managed to get his footing on the smooth surface and began carrying his own weight. To their vast relief the smoke decreased and the frightened tidal wave of people thinned. When at last they reached the aft staircase they found it practically empty. By not following the herd instinct, Giordino had led them to temporary safety.

They emerged in the clear on the deck aft of the observation lounge. After a few moments to ease their coughing spasms and cleanse their aching lungs with clean air, they looked in awe over the doomed ship.

The Leonid Andreyev was listing twenty degrees to port. Thousands of gallons of oil had spilled out into the sea and ignited. The water around the jagged opening caused by the blast was a mass of fire. The entire midsection of the ship was a blazing torch. The tremendous heat was turning steel plates red hot and warping them into twisted, grotesque shapes. White paint was blistering black, teak decks were nearly burned through and the glass in the portholes popped like gunshots.

The flames spread with incredible speed as the ocean breeze fanned them toward the bridge. Already the communications room was consumed and the officer in charge burned to death at his radio. Fire and swirling smoke shot upward through the companion-ways and ventilating ducts. The Leonid Andreyev, like all modern cruise liners, was designed and constructed to be fireproof, but no precise planning or visionary foresight could have predicted the devastating results of a fuel tank explosion that showered the ship like a flamethrower.

An immense billowing cloud of oily smoke reached hundreds of feet above, flattening in the upper air currents, stretching over the ship like a pall. The base of the cloud was a solid torrent of flame that twisted and surged in a violent storm of orange and yellow. While below, in the deeper reaches of the hull, the flames were an acetylene blue-white, fed into molten temperatures by the intake of air through the shattered plates, creating the effect of a blast furnace.

Though many of the passengers were able to fight their way up the stairways, over a hundred lay dead below, some trapped and burned in their cabins, others overtaken by smoke inhalation during their attempt to escape topside. The ones who made it were being driven by the flames toward the stern and away from the lifeboats.

All efforts by the crew to maintain order were engulfed by the chaos. The passengers were finally left to fend for themselves and no one knew which way to turn. All port lifeboats were ablaze, and only three were lowered on the starboard side before the fire drove the crew back. As it was, one boat was beginning to burn by the time it hit the sea.