Dead Sea (11 page)

All of this happened within the span of a few seconds and by then Gosling was on his feet. He saw the mystery barge on the radar screen. Managed to see it, open his mouth … and then the barge slammed into the
Mara Corday’s
bow, port side, and he was thrown to the deck. The barge was a thousand-footer and carried enough iron and weight on her to cut a liner in two. She struck the
Mara Corday
doing 14 knots, shearing open the freighter’s stem, her own bow slicing into the forward cargo hold … the special double-hulled dangerous cargo hold which contained nearly 100 tons of hi-speed diesel fuel bound for French Guiana. Over two hundred barrels were shattered, their contents flooding the hold. Within seconds, the
Mara Corday
began settling to port. The barge, still under full thrust from its twin-screws, tore itself free from the freighter, swinging around and ramming her amidships with its stern. Immediately, millions of gallons of water flooded into the port holds. The list to port grew worse.

The initial impact had compromised the integrity of the superstructure, port-side decks collapsing beneath it. There was a screech of torn metal and the pilothouse yawned over a few feet, the windows shattering, the decks buckling.

Picking himself up, Gosling saw Pierce was down, his face covered with blood. Morse came stumbling through the door that led down to his private office.

All Gosling could say was: “Skipper … we got jeopardy …”

George Ryan came awake when he hit the floor.

In his ears, there was a phone ringing and ringing.

He opened his eyes slowly, wondering vaguely in the back of his mind who could possibly be calling at this time of night and what the hell he was doing on the floor. Then he came fully awake and felt the heave of the ship and realized where he was. The second thing he realized was that something was wrong. Dangerously wrong.

He could hear men shouting above the damned ringing.

Cushing was shaking Soltz. “Wake up, dammit!” he was shouting. “Fire! There’s a fire on board!”

George was on his feet then, mechanically pulling on his boots and pants and sweater. He slid his slicker on over this and finally sleep was slapped from his brain and reality insinuated.

“What? What’s going on?” Soltz said.

“Fire,” Cushing said as calmly as possible. But his voice wavered, trembled with anything but calm. “Fire … I think we’re on fire … we hit something …”

But by then, they could already feel the uncomfortable list to port. Smell something like smoke.

“What happened?” George asked.

“Hell if I know,” Cushing admitted. “I came awake hanging out of my fucking bunk, hearing that goddamn alarm. I heard someone shouting fire. We better get on deck.”

Soltz moved quickly then. Much quicker than either man could’ve imagined he’d move. By the time they’d gathered themselves together, Soltz was fully dressed and had his suitcase in hand.

“Jesus, nobody said we were sinking,” George said.

“I’m not leaving this behind. All my things are in here.”

Saks was barreling up the corridor as they went out. He looked angry. Maybe frightened, too, but probably just angry that he
was
frightened. He was carrying a heap of life jackets. “Put these on,” he said, throwing the life vests to the floor.

“Is it that bad?” Cushing asked.

“Come on, you dumb shits,” he snapped, “unless you wanna be toast.”

George looked up in the rafters, the survival suits hanging there. They could keep a man afloat and warm for days, it was claimed. “The suits …”

“Fuck the suits,” Saks said. “Now move!”

The corridor was filling with smoke. It was more of a mist than anything, but it was getting heavier by the moment. The air had an awful scorched, acrid stink to it.

They followed Saks up to the deck, donning the vests as they went.

“What happened?” Cushing asked.

“Are we sinking?” Soltz wanted to know. “Are the lifeboats ready?”

“Barge slammed into us, slammed into us
hard.
We’re taking on water,” Saks said. “Fucking barge tore into the forward hold, lit up that diesel fuel in there. Amidships and forward hold are an inferno. The rest of those drums go and …”

He didn’t need to say more. They could pretty much envision what it would be like sitting on a stick of dynamite.

The first explosion rang out when they reached deck.

Fabrini felt the explosion before he actually heard it. He and Menhaus were standing by one of the graders, lost in the ever-present fog. The impact threw them face first to the deck. They heard the muffled, mushrooming roar while they were airborne, followed by the sound of shattering glass and men screaming.

And while all of that was bad, the worst thing was the ship itself. It shuddered with a heavy, crawling roll, seeming to shift alarmingly further port without righting itself, flinging men across the decks like jackstraw.

“This can’t be happening,” Menhaus kept saying as he pulled himself to his feet, wiped blood from his lips, and was spilled to the deck again by the violent heaving motion of the ship.

“Oh, it’s happening,” Fabrini said. “It’s happening just like I fucking knew it would.”

Containers stacked amidships had been reduced to shrapnel as the hatch covers beneath them were blown free, gouts of flame raining over the spar deck. It lit things up just fine. Encased in the luminous fog, the flames reflecting against it … the ship looked like something that had burst the gates of Hell.

Saks came charging forward, moving with an almost feline grace despite the jerking decks. “Give a hand with the lifeboats, you pussies,” he called out. “To the boat deck, move your asses! Come on, Fabrini, you fucking wop, move it!”

Menhaus grabbed his arm as he rushed by. “Saks? It isn’t happening, is it? Tell me it’s not happening! I got a wife … I don’t wanna die out there! I don’t wanna die!”

Saks shoved him to the deck. “Listen, you fucking baby! Your mommy’s titty ain’t nowhere in sight, so quit acting like a shit and lend a hand or so help me I’ll-”

There was a high pitched metallic groaning from below and the decks trembled, dropping Saks on top of Menhaus. He crawled free.

“Move it!
Move it!”
he shouted. “Fabrini, you fucking cock mite, what the hell are you standing around about? Lend a hand, goddamn you!”

The decks were mass confusion as crewmen and mates rushed about in the swirling mist, calling out orders, clearing debris, and desperately stripping tarps from lifeboats.

The ship continued to drift with a jolting, uneasy motion, leaning further and further port as the fire raged and the sea rushed in.

Gosling jogged across the lurching decks, climbing the see-sawing ladders to the pilothouse. The air was thick and pungent with belching black smoke and the stink of charred wood.

He saw the deck lights flicker in that cloistral fog.

Go out.

The ship was plunged into seething blackness. Men started to scream again and he wondered if they’d ever stopped. The world was a hive of noise. Timbers crunching, metal creaking and groaning with fatigue. Voices were calling for help. Voices were arguing. Grown men were shrieking like babes and he wanted very much to join in.

Then the lights came back on, flickered with a dim strobe effect, but finally caught.

As he entered the pilothouse, or was thrown into it, he saw Morse at the radio. He was shouting into it. “MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!” he bellered. “THIS IS AN SOS! THIS IS AN SOS! WE’RE SINKING … OUR POSITION …” he tossed the mic against the bulkhead. The lights kept flickering. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! We don’t have any goddamn juice!”

Gosling grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. “Captain, we have to get off her,” he stammered. “The sea’s coming in too fast for the pumps … if the rest of those drums go-”

“I’ve seen the Fourth of July, Mister, I know what’ll happen. Let’s get off this bitch. Lower those boats.”

Gosling had already given that order, just as he’d given the order for the men to don their survival suits just as they’d been trained to do … but in the confusion and panic with the ship yawing and rolling severely, well, he figured most never heard.

“Let’s go, First,” the captain said.

He took the lead, Gosling at his heels, making for the hatch … but never got there.

A tremendous ear-shattering roar ripped the night into shreds. The deck beneath them heaved and buckled. The pilothouse collapsed in a rain of splintered wood, glass, and twisted metal.

Gosling crawled from the wreckage, bleeding from a dozen gashes in his face. He found what was left of Morse: he’d been split in two by a beam.

It happened that quick.

Gosling made it out to the ladder, started climbing down the superstructure, deck by deck. The fog had thinned now, it seemed, been replaced by funneling black smoke. He almost made the spar deck when another explosion tossed him through the air. Girders and flaming sheet metal collapsed on top of him.

He tried to pull himself free, but his foot snagged.

“Help!” he called out. “Over here! Lend a hand!”

George, Soltz, and Cushing were gripping the portside handrail for dear life as they’d been instructed by one of the mates when the latest series of explosions barked in the night. They were thrown to the deck, but they all saw what happened.

And what a sight it was.

The explosions hit with more force than the previous ones. Like cannon shots.
Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!
The decks reeled and buckled with a cacophonous screech of tormented metal, splitting open with great jagged rents that emitted eruptions of boiling flames. George saw the hatch cover over the starboard cargo bay actually
bulge
momentarily like a balloon suddenly filled with air before bursting its latches with a thundering boom and shooting into the sky like a rocket. Great rolling clouds of mushrooming fire and black greasy smoke poured into the sky, mixing with that noxious fog into a seething storm of fumes that sucked the oxygen from the air.

“Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God,”
Soltz whimpered.

George held on to him and Cushing, almost afraid to let go. Flames licked over the decks now, engulfing everything in their path. Lifeboats went up like kindling. Men were blazing like torches. The big dozers were shrouded in fire. George saw four or five men dive off the writhing decks, stick matches consuming themselves.

The deck lights went out for good now.

They were no longer needed. The ship had become a flickering funeral pyre of orange and yellow billowing light, backlit by the mist.

There were flashes of purple and red light, more detonations from below, more flames, more dying and screams of agony. The air was reeking with a hot, raw stink of seared flesh and crackling thunderstorms.

“Come on!” George screamed over the jarring racket. “We gotta get off her before she goes!”

They got unsteadily to their feet as the ship lurched further and further to port, the mangled decks dipping down to the water line. There was a sudden awful blaring noise of screeching metal as both of the dozers snapped their moorings and slid across the decks, taking howling, crushed men with them as they burst through the railing and into the black waters below. Huge fireballs cascaded into the night.

George and the others ran towards the bow, vaulting the injured and the dying as the ship heaved. Jagged fissures opened up before them, swallowing one of the graders and four men who’d been trying to toss a lifeboat over the side. Their screams split the air.

“Over the side!” George screamed. “Now!”

“I can’t swim,” Soltz blubbered. “I’m afraid to-”

George shoved him into the darkness and planted his foot on Cushing’s backside. Both men careened to the waters below, vanishing into the fog. George took one last look around before doing the same. The ship was going down fast. It seemed he could almost feel it sinking. The decks and cabins were raging with fire now. He gripped the railing and made to jump.

But stopped.

Someone was calling for help.

Just go, goddamn you,
a voice cried out in his head.

But he couldn’t. This one voice seemed to rise up above everything else and he couldn’t ignore it. He jogged through the smoke and pillars of fire. The voice was louder. It was coming from up near the superstructure … or the jagged pile of burning shrapnel it now was.

“Help me out of here,” Gosling moaned. “For the love of God …”

His ankle was trapped between two timbers. George wrapped his hands around the upper one, the encroaching fire singing the hairs of his beard. With a great heave he budged it an inch, two inches, three. Gosling pulled his leg free.

They made it to the railing together.

“Over the side!” Gosling shrieked.

Another explosion rocketed through the night and both men were catapulted into the sea along with shards of steaming metal and burning wood. There was that dizzying moment of descent, lost in the fog and blackness, then the water. The sea was warmer than George anticipated. Warm and soupy, yet oddly refreshing after the heat of the ship. He plunged down into the waters, sinking and sinking, wondering why the lifejacket wasn’t working, and then he surfaced, sucking in smoky, salty air. Something gripped his shoulder and he realized it was Gosling’s hand.

“Swim!” he gasped. “Swim away from her!”

George followed in Gosling’s wake, distancing himself from the ship, realizing the vacuum of it going down would probably pull him under if he didn’t. The water was bobbing with wreckage. It was like swimming through an obstacle course. He heard voices crying out. Heard voices answering. At least they weren’t alone in their plight. The sea was flat as a tabletop … but the water itself … odd. Not just warm, but turgid, thick … water but
not
water as George knew it. But there was no time for observations. He kept up with Gosling and soon the ship was a flaming silhouette in the distance.

“We’re okay now,” Gosling panted. “Far enough.”