Douglas Child - The Wheel of Darkness

The last thing he saw before he struck the water was another ship, blowing out of the sea-mist dead ahead of the

Britannia

, coming at them on a collision course.

71

LESEUR STARED OUT THE FORWARD WINDOWS OF THE AUXILIARY bridge. As the wind had increased the rain had lessened, and now the fog was breaking up, allowing occasional views ahead across the storm-tossed seas. He stared so hard he wondered if he was seeing things.

But suddenly there it was: the

Grenfell

, emerging from a pocket of mist, bulbous bows pounding the seas. It was coming straight at them.

As the

Grenfell

appeared, there was a collective intake of breath from the aux bridge.

“

Eight hundred yards.

”

The Grenfell made her move. A sudden boiling of white water along her starboard aft hull marked the reversal of the starboard screw; simultaneously, a jet of white water near the port bow signaled the engagement of the bow thrusters. The red snout of the Grenfell began to swing to starboard as the two ships closed in on each other, the giant Britannia moving much faster than the Canadian vessel.

“Brace yourselves!” LeSeur cried, grabbing the edge of the navigational table.

The maneuver of the Grenfell was almost immediately answered by a roar deep in the belly of the Britannia . Mason had taken the ship off autopilot and was reacting—alarmingly fast. The ship began to vibrate with the rumble of an earthquake, and the deck began to tilt.

“She’s retracting the stabilizers!” LeSeur cried, staring at the control board in disbelief. “And—Jesus—she’s rotated the aft pods ninety degrees to starboard!”

“She can’t do that!” the chief engineer yelled. “She’ll rip the pods right off the hull!”

LeSeur scanned the engine readouts, desperate to understand what Mason was trying to do. “She’s turning the Britannia broadside . . . deliberately . . . so the Grenfell will T-bone us,” he said. A horrifying, vivid split-second image formed in his mind: the Britannia coming about, offering her vulnerable midsection to the ice-hardened Grenfell . But it wouldn’t be a straight T-bone; the Britannia would not have time to come around that far. It would be even worse than that. The Grenfell would strike her at a forty-five-degree angle, cutting diagonally through the main block of staterooms and public spaces. It would be a massacre, a slaughter, a butchery.

It was instantly clear to him that Mason had thought through this countermove with great care. It would be as effective as crashing the ship into the Carrion Rocks. Opportunist that she was, the staff captain had seized her chance when she saw it.

“

Grenfell!

” LeSeur cried, breaking radio silence, “back your second screw! Reverse the bow thrusters! She’s turning into you!”

“Roger that,” came the extraordinarily calm voice of the captain.

The

Grenfell

responded immediately, water churning up all around its hull. The ship seemed to hesitate as its bows slowed their ponderous swing and her forward motion decreased.

Underneath them, the screaming, grinding shudder grew as Mason goosed the rotating aft screws to full, 43,000 kilowatts of power deployed at a ninety-degree angle to the ship’s forward motion. An insane maneuver. Without the stabilizers, and aided by a beam sea, the Britannia yawed as it heeled over even farther: five degrees, ten degrees, fifteen degrees from the vertical, far beyond anything envisioned by her engineers in their worst nightmares. The navigational instruments, coffee mugs, and other loose objects on the aux bridge went sliding and crashing to the floor, the men gripping whatever they could get their hands on to keep from following.

“The crazy bitch is putting the deck underwater!” Halsey cried, his feet slipping out from under him.

The vibration increased to a roar as the port side of the liner pressed down into the ocean, the lower main deck pushing below the waterline. The seas mounted, battering the superstructure, rising to the lowest port staterooms and balconies. Faintly, LeSeur could hear sounds of popping glass, the rumble of water rushing into the passenger decks, the dull noises of things crashing and tumbling about. He could only imagine the terror and chaos among the passengers as they and the contents of their staterooms and everything else on the ship tumbled to port.

The entire bridge shook with the violent strain on the engines, the windows rattling, the very frame of the ship groaning in protest. Beyond the forecastle the Grenfell loomed, rapidly approaching; she continued yawing heavily to port, but LeSeur could see that it was too late. The Britannia , with its astonishing maneuverability, had turned quartering to her , and the patrol ship was going to strike them amidships—2,500 tons meeting 165,000 tons at a combined speed of forty-five miles per hour. She would cut the Britannia diagonally like a pike through a marlin.

He began to pray.

72

EMILY DAHLBERG PAUSED IN THE CORRIDOR LEADING FROM THE port lifeboat deck, catching her breath. Behind her, she could hear the cries and screams of the mob—for a mob it was, and of the most primitive, homicidal kind—mingling with the roar of wind and water through the open hatches. Many other people had had the idea to head for the lifeboat stations, and a steady stream of passengers raced past her in a panic, heedless of her presence.

Dahlberg had seen enough to know that any attempt to use the lifeboats at this speed was sheer suicide. She’d seen it for herself. Now she had been tasked with getting this critical information to the auxiliary bridge. Gavin Bruce and Niles Welch had sacrificed their lives—along with another boat full of passengers—in getting that information, and she was determined to convey it.

She began moving again, trying to orient herself, when a burly man came barreling along the corridor, red-faced and goggle-eyed, crying out, “To the lifeboats!” She tried to dodge but wasn’t fast enough; he clipped her and sent her sprawling to the carpet. By the time she had risen to her feet again, he had vanished from sight.

She leaned against the wall, recovering her breath, keeping back from the stream of panicked people heading for the lifeboat deck. It shocked her how people were prone to the most grotesque displays of selfishness—even, or perhaps especially, the privileged. She hadn’t seen the crew and staff carrying on, shrieking and yelping and running around. She couldn’t help but think of the contrast with the dignified and self-restrained end of the passengers on the Titanic . The world had certainly changed.

When she felt herself again, she continued down the corridor, keeping close to the wall. The auxiliary bridge was at the forward end of the ship, directly below the main bridge—Deck 13 or 14, she recalled. She was currently on Half Deck 7—and that meant she had to ascend.

She continued along the corridor, past deserted cafés and shops, following the signs for the Grand Atrium—from which, she knew, she could better orient herself. Within minutes she had passed through an archway and reached a semicircular railing overlooking the vast hexagonal space. Even at this most extreme of times, she could not help but marvel at it: eight levels high, with glass elevators running up two sides, graced with innumerable little balconies and parapets draped with passionflowers. Grasping the railing, she looked out and down into the Atrium. The sight was shocking. The King’s Arms—the elegant restaurant five levels below—was almost unrecognizable. Cutlery, half-eaten food, trampled flowers, and broken glass were strewn across the floor. Overturned tables, spilling their contents, were scattered everywhere. It looked, she thought, as if a tornado had come through. People were everywhere—some running across the Atrium, others circling aimlessly, still others helping themselves to bottles of wine and liquor. Cries and shouts filtered up toward her.