Raise the Titanic! (36 page)

JUNE 1988

Hurricane Amanda was
dying, slowly but inevitably. What would long be remembered as the Great Blow of 1988 had cut its devastating swath across three thousand miles of ocean in three and a half days, and it had yet to deliver its final apocalyptic blow. Like the final burst of a supernova before disintegrating into obscurity, it suddenly swung on an eastward track and slammed into the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, lashing the coast from Cape Race north to Pouch Cove.

In minutes, one town after another was inundated by the fallout from the storm's cloud mass. Several small seashore villages were swept out to sea by the runoff that came thundering down into the valleys. Fishing boats were driven onto land and battered into unrecognizable, shattered hulks. Roofs were blown off downtown buildings in St. John's as its city streets were turned into rushing rivers from the deluge. Water and electricity were cut off for days and, until rescue ships arrived, food was at a premium and had to be rationed.

No hurricane on record had ever unleashed such raw fury that its winds would carry it so far, so fast with such terrible velocity. No one would ever evaluate the enormous cost of the damage. Estimates ran as high as $250 million. Of this, $155 million represented the almost totally destroyed Newfoundland fishing fleets. Nine ships were lost at sea; six with no survivors. The death toll behind the storm's wake ran between 300 and 325.

 

In the early hours of Friday morning, Dr. Ryan Prescott sat alone in the main office of the NUMA Hurricane Center. Hurricane Amanda had finally run her course, accomplished her destruction, taken her lives, and only now was she dissipating over the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The battle was over, there was nothing more the weathermen at the center could do. After seventy-two hours of frenzied tracking and nonsleep, they had all straggled home to bed.

Prescott stared through tired and bloodshot eyes at the desks strewn with charts, data tables, computer readout sheets, and half-empty coffee cups, the floors carpeted with sheets of paper filled with notations and the strange looking symbols common to meteorologists. He stared at the giant wall map and silently cursed the storm. The sudden swing eastward had caught them all by surprise. A completely illogical pattern; it was unparalleled in hurricane history. No storm on record had ever behaved so erratically.

If only it had given some hint of its impending deviation, some minute clue as to its fanatical behavior, they might have better prepared the people of Newfoundland for the onslaught. At least half, a hundred and fifty lives, might have been spared. A hundred and fifty men, women, and children might have been alive now if the finest scientific sources available for weather prediction had not been swept aside like so much hokum at Mother Nature's capricious whim.

Prescott rose and took his last look at the wall chart before the janitors came and erased Hurricane Amanda out of existence, and wiped clean her confounding track in preparation for her as yet unborn descendant. One small notation out of all the rest caught his eye. It was a small cross, labeled “
Titanic
.”

The last report he'd had from NUMA headquarters in Washington was that the derelict was in tow by two Navy tugs that were desperately attempting to drag her out from under the path of the hurricane. Nothing more had been heard of her for twenty-four hours.

Prescott raised a cup of cold coffee in a toast. “To the
Titanic
,” he said aloud in that empty room. “May you have taken every punch Amanda threw at you and still spit in her eye.”

He grimaced as he downed the stale coffee. Then he turned and walked out of the room into the early-morning dampness.

At first light
the
Titanic
still lived. There was no rhyme or reason for her continued existence. She still wallowed aimlessly broadside-on to the sea and wind, trapped in the churning turmoil of the tormented waves left in the wake of the departing hurricane.

Like a dazed fighter taking a fearful beating while hanging on the ropes, she rose drunkenly over the thirty-foot crests, shouldering each one, taking salt spray across her Boat Deck, and then struggling free and somehow staggering upright in time for the next assault.

To Captain Parotkin, as he stared through his binoculars, the
Titanic
looked a doomed ship. Her rusty old hull plates had been subjected to a stress far beyond anything he thought they could stand. He could see the popped rivets and opened seams, and he guessed that she was taking water in a hundred places along her hull. What he could not see were the exhausted men of the salvage crew, the SEALs, and the Navy tugmen laboring shoulder to shoulder deep in the black hell under the waterline in a desperate effort to keep the derelict afloat.

From Parotkin's viewpoint, safe from the elements inside the wheelhouse of the
Mikhail Kurkov
, it seemed a miracle that the
Titanic
hadn't vanished during the night. Yet she still clung to life, even though she was down a good twenty feet at the bow and was listing nearly thirty degrees to starboard.

“Any word from Captain Prevlov?” he asked without taking his eyes from the glasses.

“Nothing, sir,” answered his first officer.

“I fear the worst has happened,” Parotkin said. “I see no sign that Prevlov is in command of the derelict.”

“There, sir,” the first officer said pointing, “atop the remains of the aft mast. It looks like a Russian pennant.”

Parotkin studied the tiny frayed cloth through the glasses as it snapped in the wind. “Unfortunately, the star on the pennant is white rather than the red of our Soviet ensign.” He sighed. “I must assume that the boarding mission has failed.”

“Perhaps Comrade Prevlov has had no time to report his situation.”

“There is no time left. American search planes will be here within the hour.” Parotkin pounded his fist in frustration on the bridge counter. “Damn Prevlov!” he muttered angrily. “‘Let us fervently hope our final option will not be required'; his exact words. He is the fortunate one. He may even be dead, and it is I who must take the responsibility for destroying the
Titanic
and all who remain on board her.”

The first officer's face paled, his body stiffened. “There is no alternative, sir?”

Parotkin shook his head. “The orders were clear. We must obliterate the ship rather than let her fall into the hands of the Americans.”

Parotkin took a linen handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. “Have the crew ready the nuclear missile carrier and steer a course ten miles north of the
Titanic
for our firing position.”

The first officer stared at Parotkin for a long moment, his face void of expression. Then he slowly wheeled and made for the radio telephone and ordered the helmsman to steer fifteen degrees to the north.

Thirty minutes later, all was in readiness. The
Mikhail Kurkov
dug her bow into the swells at the position laid for the missile launch as Parotkin stood behind the radar operator. “Any hard sightings?” he asked.

“Eight jet aircraft, a hundred and twenty miles west, closing rapidly.”

“Surface vessels?”

“Two small ships bearing two-four-five, twenty-one miles southwest.”

“That would be the tugs returning,” the first officer said.

Parotkin nodded. “It's the aircraft that concern me. They will be over us in ten minutes. Is the nuclear warhead armed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then begin the countdown.”

The first officer gave the order over the phone and then they moved outside and watched from the starboard bridge wing as the forward cargo hatch swung smoothly aside and a twenty-six-foot Stoski surface-to-surface missile slowly rose from its concealed tube into the gusty dawn air.

“One minute to firing,” came a missile technician's voice over the bridge speaker.

Parotkin aimed his glasses at the
Titanic
in the distance. He could just make out her outline against the gray clouds that crawled along the horizon. A barely perceptible shiver gripped his body. His eyes reflected a distant sad look. He knew he would be forever cursed among sailors as the captain who sent the helpless and resurrected ocean liner back to her grave beneath the sea. He was standing braced and waiting for the roar of the missile's rocket engine and then the great explosion that would pulverize the
Titanic
into thousands of molten particles when he heard the sound of running footsteps from the wheelhouse, and the radio operator burst onto the bridge wing.

“Captain!” he blurted. “An urgent signal from an American submarine!”

“Thirty seconds to firing,” the voice droned over the intercom.

There was unmistakable panic in the radio operator's eyes as he thrust the message into Parotkin's hands. It read:

“Ten seconds and counting,” came the disembodied voice of the missile technician over the speaker. “Seven…six…”

Parotkin looked up with the clear, unworried expression of a man who has just received a million rubles through the mail.

“…five…four…three…”

“Stop the countdown,” he ordered in precise tones, so there could be no misunderstanding, no misinterpretation.

“Stop countdown,” the first officer repeated into the bridge phone, his face beaded with sweat. “And secure the missile.”

“Good,” Parotkin said curtly. A smile spread across his face. “Not exactly what I was told to do, but I think Soviet Naval authorities will see it my way. After all, the
Mikhail Kurkov
is the finest ship of her kind in the world. We wouldn't want to throw her away because of a senseless and foolish order from a man who is undoubtedly dead, now would we?”

“I am in complete accord.” The first officer smiled back. “Our superiors will also be interested to learn that in spite of all our sophisticated detection gear, we failed to discover the presence of an alien submarine practically on our doorstep. American undersea penetration methods must truly be highly advanced.”

“I feel sure the Americans will be just as interested in learning that our oceanographic research vessels carry concealed missiles.”

“Your orders, sir?”

Parotkin watched the Stoski missile as it sank back into its tube. “Set a course for home.” He turned and peered across the sea in the direction of the
Titanic
. What had happened to Prevlov and his men? Were they alive or dead? Would he ever know the true facts?

Overhead the clouds began turning from gray to white and the wind dropped to a brisk breeze. A solitary seagull emerged from the brightening sky and began circling the Soviet ship. Then, as if heeding a more urgent call to the south, it dipped its wings and flew off toward the
Titanic
.

“We're done in,”
Spencer said in a voice so low that Pitt wasn't sure he heard him.

“Say again.”

“We're done in,” he repeated through slack lips. His face was smeared with oil and a rustlike slime. “It's a hopeless case. We've plugged most of the holes Drummer opened with his cutting torch, but the sea has battered the hull all to hell and the old girl is taking water faster than a sieve.”

“We've got to keep her on the surface until the tugs return,” Pitt said. “If they can add their pumps to ours we can stay ahead of the leaks until the damage can be patched.”

“It's a damned miracle that she didn't go down hours ago.”

“How much time can you give me?” Pitt demanded.

Spencer stared wearily down at the water sloshing around his ankles. “The pump engines are running on fumes now. When their fuel tanks are sucked dry, the pumps will die. A cold, hard, sad fact.” He looked up into Pitt's face. “An hour, maybe an hour and a half. I can't promise any more than that when the pumps go.”

“And if you had enough fuel to keep the diesels going?”

“I could probably keep her on the surface without assistance until noon,” Spencer answered.

“How much fuel will it take?”

“Two hundred gallons would do nicely.”

They both looked up as Giordino plunged down a companionway and splashed into the water covering the deck of the No. 4 boiler room.

“Talk about frustration,” he moaned. “There are eight aircraft up there, circling the ship. Six Navy fighters and two radar recon planes. I've tried everything except standing on my head and exposing myself and all they do is wave every time they make a pass.”

Pitt shook his head in mock sadness. “Remind me never to play charades on your team.”

“I'm open for suggestions,” Giordino said. “Suppose you tell me how to notify some guy who's flying by at four hundred miles an hour that we need help, and lots of it?”

Pitt scratched his chin. “There's got to be a practical solution.”

“Sure,” Giordino said sarcastically. “Just call the Automobile Club for a service call.”

Pitt and Spencer stared with widened eyes at each other. The same thought had suddenly occurred to them in the same instant.

“Brilliance,” Spencer said, “sheer brilliance.”

“If we can't get to a service station,” Pitt said grinning, “then the service station must come to us.”

Giordino looked lost. “Fatigue has queered your minds,” he said. “Where are you going to find a pay phone? What will you use for a radio? The Russians smashed ours, the one in the helicopter is soaked through, and Prevlov's transmitter caught two bullets during the brawl.” He shook his head. “And you can forget those flyboys upstairs. Without a brush and bucket of paint, there's no way to get a message across their eager little minds.”

“That's your problem,” Spencer said loftily. “You always go around looking up when you should be looking down.”

Pitt leaned over and picked up a sledgehammer that was lying among a pile of tools. “This should do the trick,” he said casually, swinging the sledge against one of the
Titanic
's hull plates, sending a cacophony of echoes throughout the boiler room.

Spencer dropped wearily onto a raised boiler grating. “They ain't going to believe this.”

“Oh I don't know,” Pitt managed between swings. “Jungle telegraph. It always used to work in the Congo.”

“Giordino was probably right. Fatigue has queered our minds.”

Pitt ignored Spencer and kept hammering away. After a few minutes, he paused a moment to get a new grip on the sledge handle. “Let us hope and pray that one of the natives has his ear to the ground,” he said between pants. And then he went on hammering.

 

Of the two sonar operators who were on watch aboard the submarine
Dragonfish
, the one tuned into the passive listening system was leaning forward toward his panel, his head cocked to one side, his mind intent on analyzing the strange beat that emitted through the earphones. Then he gave a slight shake of his head and held up the earphones for the officer who was standing at his shoulder.

“At first I thought it was a hammerhead shark,” the sonarman said. “They make a funny pounding noise. But this has a definite metallic ring to it.”

The officer pressed the headset against one ear. Then his eyes took on a puzzled look. “It sounds like an SOS.”

“That's how I read it, sir. Someone is knocking out a distress call against their hull.”

“Where is it coming from?”

The sonarman turned a miniature steering wheel that activated the sensors in the bow of the sub and eyed the panel in front of him. “The contact is three-zero-seven degrees, two thousand yards north of west. It has to be the
Titanic
, sir. With the departure of the
Mikhail Kurkov
, she's the only surface craft left in the area.”

The officer handed back the earphones, turned from the sonar compartment, and made his way up a wide curving stairway into the conning tower, the nerve center of the
Dragonfish
. He approached a medium-height, round-faced man with a graying mustache, who wore the oak leaves of a commander on his collar.

“It's the
Titanic
all right, sir. She's hammering out an SOS.”

“There's no mistake?”

“No, sir. The contact is firm.” The officer paused and then asked, “Are we going to respond?”

The commander looked thoughtful for a few moments. “Our orders were to deliver the SEAL and fend off the
Mikhail Kurkov
. We were also to remain obscure in case the Russians decide to make an end run with one of their own submarines. We'd be in poor position to protect the derelict if we were to surface and move off station.”

“During our last sighting, she looked to be in pretty rough shape. Maybe she's going down.”

“If that was the case, her crew would be screaming for help over every frequency on their radio—” The commander hesitated, his eyes narrowing. He stepped over to the radio room and leaned in.

“What time was the last communication sent from the
Titanic?
”

One of the radio operators scanned a sheet in a log book. “A few minutes shy of eighteen hundred hours yesterday, Commander. They requested an up-to-the-minute report of the hurricane's speed and direction.”

The commander nodded and turned back to the officer. “They haven't transmitted for over twelve hours. Could be their radio is out.”

“It's quite possible.”

“We'd better have a look,” the commander said. “Up periscope.”

The periscope tubing hummed slowly into the raised position. The commander gripped the handles and stared through the eyepiece.

“Looks quiet enough,” he said. “She's got a heavy list to starboard and she's down by the bow, but not bad enough to be considered dangerous yet. No distress flags flying. No one in sight on her decks—wait a moment, I take that back. There's a man atop the bridgehouse roof.” The commander increased the magnification. “Good lord!” he muttered. “It's a woman.”

The officer stared at him with a disbelieving expression. “You did say a woman, sir?”

“See for yourself.”

The officer saw for himself. There was indeed a young blond woman above the
Titanic
's bridgehouse. She seemed to be waving a brassiere.

Ten minutes later, the
Dragonfish
had surfaced and was lying under the shadow of the
Titanic
.

Thirty minutes later, reserve fuel from the sub's auxiliary diesel engine was coursing through a pipe that arched across the still thrashing swells and passed neatly into a hastily cut hold in the
Titanic
's hull.