Crescent Dawn (51 page)

Despite the damage and heightened angle, two of the Janissaries had already leaped onto the ramp and were attempting a fast climb to the top. Lazlo aligned his gun on the rail and fired a sustained round, sending both men flailing over the side and into the water.

Suddenly feeling dizzy from a loss of blood, Lazlo curled back onto the deck and rummaged for a medical kit in his combat pack. Fighting the urge to lay down and go to sleep, he told himself he only needed to keep the yacht at bay a few more minutes. Then he glanced up toward the bridge and wondered how much more time Pitt really needed.

TIME WAS ANYTHING but an ally to Pitt now. The last time he checked, there were less than six minutes until detonation, but he tried not to think about it. His focus was simply on driving the tanker a short distance beyond the bridge.

Since the engine had quit, the tanker was sailing on pure momentum. Multiple shipboard generators provided auxiliary power for Pitt to turn the rudder, but the huge single propeller had spun its last turn. The Golden Horn’s gentle current pushed lightly at his stern, and Pitt hoped it would be enough to keep up speed for a few more minutes. Given enough time, the current was ultimately capable of carrying the tanker safely to the Sea of Marmara. But time was going the way of the ship’s fuel.

With agonizing slowness, the south span of the Galata Bridge grew larger in the forward bridge window, and Pitt was relieved to note that the
Dayan
was still gliding along at seven knots. Sporadic gunfire caught his attention again, and he dared a quick glance out the window. The yacht was so close to the tanker’s side that he could see only a fraction of the boat. He spotted Lazlo, lying near the head of the stairway, and felt assured that the tanker was still secure for the moment.

The underside of the bridge soon loomed up, casting the deck and wheelhouse in a brief shadow. Pitt took to the helm and feathered the rudder controls with nervous fingers. The rest would be up to Giordino, he thought quietly.

“I just hope you can hold your end of the bargain, partner,” he muttered aloud, then watched the shadow cast by the bridge gradually fall away.

A
T 454 FEET IN LENGTH, THE
IBN BATTUTA
WAS ONE OF the largest dredge ships Giordino had ever seen. Owned and operated by the Belgian company Jan De Nul, it was one of just a handful of self-propelled cutter suction dredges in existence. Unlike a regular suction dredge, which slurped up mud and goo from the seafloor using a long, trailing vacuum tube, the cutter dredge also had a digging mechanism, or cutter head. In the
Ibn Battuta
’s case, the head was a six-foot-diameter ball faced with counterrotating tungsten carbide teeth capable of chewing through solid rock. Affixed to a hull-mounted boom that could be lowered to the seafloor, the cutter head resembled the open jaws of a megalodon shark waiting to bite.

The dredger had been operating fifty feet from shore and was moored by a pair of huge support legs, called spuds, that protruded through the ship’s forward hull. The ship was perpendicular to shore, with its stern facing the channel, which played directly into Pitt’s hands.

Giordino, approaching the ship from the stern, spotted a heavy length of chain dangling over the dredger’s starboard rail. He eased the
Bullet
alongside, then cut power. Quickly climbing out, he snared the chain, and attached it to the
Bullet
before it could drift away. Hoisting himself up the chain, he grabbed the ship’s rail and pulled himself onto the deck.

As a potential hazard in the channel, the
Ibn Battuta
, named for a fourteenth-century Moroccan explorer, stood brightly illuminated by dozens of overhead lights. Giordino peered from one end of the ship’s deck to the other and found it completely empty, the crew still asleep in their bunks. Only a lone seaman stood early-morning watch on the bridge, and he had been oblivious to Giordino’s approach and boarding.

Giordino quickly moved aft, searching for the dredger’s controls, which he prayed weren’t located in the wheelhouse. In the center of the stern deck, forward of a large A-frame and well ahead of the cutter apparatus, he spotted a small, elevated shack with broad windows. Climbing up its steps, he entered it and took a seat in the rear-facing operator’s chair. He was thankful to find that the dredging mechanism could be operated by a single man, but he cringed when he saw that the control panel was labeled in Dutch.

“Well, at least it isn’t Turkish,” he muttered while quickly scanning the board.

Finding a switch marked “Dynamo,” he flicked it to the “Macht” position. A deep rumble shook the deck as the dredge’s massive power generator fired to life. Up on the bridge, the seaman standing watch rushed to the rear window at the noise and quickly spotted Giordino’s figure in the controls shack. His excited voice was soon blaring over a two-way radio affixed to the shack’s wall. Giordino calmly reached over and turned the radio off before gazing to his left.

The high prow of the tanker was just emerging from beneath the Galata Bridge, barely a hundred yards away. Giordino abandoned his efforts at trying to decipher the Dutch console and frantically started pushing buttons. One series initiated a grinding sound ahead of him, and he looked up with satisfaction to see the teeth of the cutter head rotating with a menacing whine. The supporting boom stretched horizontally off the dredger’s stern, holding the head some twenty feet above the water. It was way too high for what Pitt had in mind.

“Wat doe jij hier?”
a deep voice suddenly grumbled at Giordino.

Giordino turned to see a squat man with tousled hair climbing into the small controls house. The
Ibn Battuta
’s pump engineer, still wearing his pajamas under a dingy overcoat, stepped over and clamped a hand on Giordino’s shoulder. Giordino calmly raised a finger and pointed out the window.

“Look!” he said.

The engineer glanced to the side and froze in shock at the sight of the
Dayan
bearing down on the dredge ship. He started to say something as he turned back toward Giordino only to be met with the balled fist of a right cross. Giordino’s knuckles struck him on the button of his chin, and he wilted like a wet noodle. Giordino quickly caught the man in his arms and laid him gently on the floor.

“Sorry, my friend. It ain’t the time for pleasantries,” he said to the unconscious engineer before scrambling back to the console. He sensed the shadow of the high tanker blanket the controls shack as he hurriedly surveyed the console. Noticing a small lever to the side, he reached over and pushed it down. With great relief, he watched the end of the boom suddenly drop toward the water. He held the lever down until the cutter head was nearly submerged, its rotating teeth creating a foamy froth on the surface.

Releasing the lever, he glanced up the channel. The bow of the huge tanker was now less than twenty feet away. With a helpless feeling, he stood and watched it approach, knowing there was nothing else to be done.

P
ITT KNEW IT WAS A DESPERATE GAMBLE, BUT HIS OPTIONS were nearly nonexistent. There had simply been no time to get the tanker safely to open sea, and with the engine now dead there was no chance of escaping the crowded shores of Istanbul. Even if the tanker detonated in the center of the Golden Horn, thousands would die. Pitt’s only hope was to try to submerge at least some of the explosives and minimize their destructive force.

And that’s where the
Ibn Battuta
came into play. With its rock-eating cutter head, Pitt knew the dredger had the ability to slice through the tanker like a can opener. But he had to put the tanker right on the money for it to work. If he came in too tight, he would rip the boom right off the back of the dredger. Approach too wide, and he would miss the head completely.

Gliding powerless under the Galata Bridge, he gazed ahead at the dredger off his bow. Though the cutter head was still elevated above the water, he could see its rotating teeth and knew that Giordino was at work. He lightly tapped the rudder control, then stepped to the starboard window and poked his head out. Riding high in the water, he couldn’t quite see down the tanker’s slab sides to the surface, which added to the difficulty of alignment. He tried not to focus on the fact that he had one, and only one, chance to succeed.

Quickly approaching the Belgian dredger, Pitt was relieved to see its stern boom drop, lowering the cutter head into the water. A few seconds later, he spotted Giordino standing near the stern rail, waving at him to edge the tanker in closer. Pitt sprinted back to the helm and turned a few degrees to starboard, then waited for the bow to respond. When the tanker inched in closer, Giordino raised his arms in the air, giving Pitt the thumbs-up.

Pitt left the helm and returned to the side window to watch the impact. Behind him, he suddenly noticed the roar of a high-revving engine, punctuated by the shrill scream of a woman’s voice. He glanced down to see Lazlo still lying prone on the deck at the head of the stairway. This time, he noticed a small pool of blood on the deck near his chest. Beyond Lazlo, he saw the yacht alongside, wildly weaving back and forth, once even banging into the side of the tanker.

Pitt idly wondered why the yacht was even still hanging around. But it wasn’t worth pondering now, he thought, as he turned and faced the dredger, and the moment of truth.

“GET US CLEAR!” Maria screamed for at least the third time.

The normally controlled tyrant was flush with panic as she repeatedly looked at her watch. There were just minutes to go.

Sweat ran down the yacht captain’s brow as he swung its rudder to and fro, fighting to break free of the embedded ramp. He had waited until they cleared the Galata Bridge before reversing engines, bucking against the momentum of the tanker. Yet the ramp remained lodged in the yacht’s deck like a barbed hook in the mouth of an angry marlin.

The yacht’s engines howled as the captain applied full reverse power before trying to swing the boat wide. Unknown to the captain, the stairway’s lower wheels and axle had caught around the anchor chain in the yacht’s anchor locker and was now hopelessly entangled by the wrenching motion of the boat.

The stairway now was a twisted pretzel of steel, yet the platform refused to break apart. With its props churning a maddening boil of water off its stern, the yacht was dragged alongside the tanker like a puppy on a short leash. The captain looked ahead at the dredger, waiting for the
Dayan
to turn away from the Belgian ship. But as they drew closer, he came to the grim realization that the tanker wasn’t going to move clear.

With desperate urgency, he swung the yacht hard side to side, slapping against the side of the tanker before pulling wide. But the stubborn platform refused to break free. The
Dayan
’s bow was now abreast of the dredger, but he could see that there was a narrow gap between the vessels, although a boom hung low in the water.

With Maria still staring him down, he nodded toward the dredger.

“The boom will break our tie to the ramp,” he said. “We will be free shortly.”

P
ITT’S ALIGNMENT WAS LESS THAN PERFECT, BUT NOT by much.

The
Dayan
’s bow grazed several feet past the cutter head before the rotating teeth made contact with the tanker’s hull. Though muffled somewhat by the water, the cutter emitted a screeching wail as its teeth ground against the steel hull plates. For several feet, the head simply forged a deep indentation into the tanker’s side. Then the endless line of teeth caught a hull plate seam and ripped open a gaping hole.

Once breached, there was no going back. The rotating cutter ball ate through the hull like a hungry beaver, fed by the forward momentum of the 8,000-ton tanker. The tungsten teeth chewed past the hull and into the stainless steel tanks that held fresh water when the ship was under load. But instead of being fresh, it was now murky green, as the waters of the Bosphorus rapidly began filling the tanks.