Текст книги "Dragon"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Steen was gone almost before Korvold finished speaking. He assembled his men and was lowered down into the swirling water within ten minutes. The boarding party consisted of himself and four seamen—the assistant chief engineer, Olaf Andersson, and the communications man, David Sakagawa, the only crewman on board the Narvikwho could speak Japanese. The seamen were to probe the vessel while Andersson examined the engine room. Stem was to take formal possession of the auto carrier if it was found abandoned.

With Steen at the helm, the double-ender launch plowed through the heavy seas, struggling over the crests of the waves that threatened to swamp her before plunging down into the troughs. The big Volvo marine engine growled without a miss as they bore down on the auto carrier with the wind and sea astern of them.

A hundred meters from the Divine Starthey discovered they weren’t alone. A school of sharks circled the listing ship as though some inner sense told them it was going to sink and maybe leave behind some tasty scraps.

The seaman at the wheel slipped the boat under the stubby bow on the lee side. It seemed to them the Divine Starwas going to roll over on them with each wave that broke against her hull. When the great ship rolled down, Steen heaved up a light nylon boarding ladder with an aluminum grappling hook on one end. On the third try the hook caught on the top edge of the bulwark and gripped.

Stem scrambled up the rope ladder first and over the side. He was quickly followed by Andersson and the rest. After assembling beside the huge anchor winches, Steen led them up a fire escape-like stairway that was attached to the windowless forward bulkhead. After climbing five decks, they entered the largest bridge area Steen had ever seen during his fifteen years at sea. After the small, efficient wheelhouse on the Narvik, this one looked as vast as a gymnasium, and yet the impressive array of electronic equipment filled only a small section in the middle.

It was empty of life but littered with charts, sextants, and other navigation equipment that spilled from open cabinets. Two briefcases lay open on a counter as if their owners had just left the room for a short time. The exodus appeared to be bathed in panic.

Stem studied the main console. “She’s fully automated,” he said to Andersson.

The chief engineer nodded. “And then some. The controls are voice operated. No pushing levers or giving helmsmen course instructions here.”

Steen turned to Sakagawa. “Can you turn this thing on and talk to it?”

The Norwegian-born Asian leaned over the computerized console and silently studied it for several seconds. Then he pushed a pair of buttons in quick succession. The console’s lights blinked on and the unit began to hum. Sakagawa looked at Steen with a slight smile. “My Japanese is rusty, but I think I can communicate with it.”

“Ask it to report the ship’s status.”

Sakagawa rattled off Japanese into a small receiver and waited expectantly. After a few moments a male voice answered in slow, distinctive tones. When it stopped, Sakagawa stared at Steen blankly.

“It says the sea cocks are open and the flood level in the engine room is approaching two meters.”

“Order it to close them!” snapped Steen.

After a short exchange, Sakagawa shook his head. “The computer says the sea cocks are jammed open. They can’t be shut off by electronic command.”

“Looks like I’ve got my work cut out,” said Andersson. “I’d better get down there and get them turned off. And tell that damned robot to start the pumps.” While he spoke he motioned for two of the seamen to follow him, and they disappeared down a companionway on a dead run toward the engine room.

One of the remaining seamen came up to Steen, his eyes wide in shock and face as white as plaster. “Sir… I found a body. I think it’s the radioman.”

Steen hurried into the communications room. An almost shapeless corpse sat in a chair hunched over the radio transmitter panel. He might have been a human when he stepped on board the Divine Star, not now. There was no hair, and but for the fully exposed teeth where the lips had been, Steen couldn’t have told whether he was looking at the front or back. The pathetic abhorrence looked as though his skin had been blistered off and the flesh beneath burned and partially melted.

Yet there wasn’t the slightest indication of excessive heat or fire. His clothes were as clean and pressed as though he’d just put them on.

The man seemed to have burned from within.

2 

THE HORRIBLE STENCH and the shocking sight staggered Steen. It took him a full minute to recover. Then he pushed the chair with its hideous owner off to one side and leaned over the radio.

Fortunately the digital frequency dial was labeled in Arabic numerals. After a few minutes of trial and error, he found the correct switches and hailed Captain Korvold on the Narvik.

Korvold answered immediately. “Come in, Mr. Steen,” he replied formally. “What have you discovered?”

“Something sinister has happened here, Captain. So far we’ve found a deserted ship with one body, that of the radio operator, who was burned beyond recognition.”

“Is there fire on board?”

“No sign. The computerized automated control system shows only green lights on its fire warning systems.”

“Any indication as to why the crew took to the boats?” asked Korvold.

“Nothing obvious. They seemed to have left in a panic after attempting to scuttle the ship.”

Korvold’s mouth tightened, his knuckles turned ivory as he squeezed the phone. “Say again.”

“The sea cocks were turned and jammed open. Andersson is working to close them now.”

“Why on earth would the crew scuttle a sound ship with thousands of new cars on board?” Korvold asked vaguely.

“The situation must be viewed with suspicion, sir. Something on board is abnormal. The body of the radio operator is ghastly. He looks like he was roasted on a spit.”

“Do you wish the ship’s doctor to come over?”

“Nothing the good doctor can do here except perform a postmortem.”

“Understood,” replied Korvold. “I’ll remain on station for another thirty minutes before I leave to search for the missing boats.”

“Have you contacted the company, sir?”

“I’ve held off until you’re certain none of the original crew is alive to challenge our salvage claim. Finish your investigation. As soon as you’re satisfied the ship is deserted I’ll transmit a message to our company director notifying him of our taking possession of the Divine Star.”

“Engineer Andersson is already at work closing the sea cocks and pumping her dry. We have power and should be under way shortly.”

“The sooner the better,” said Korvold. “You’re drifting toward a British oceanographic survey vessel that’s holding a stationary position.”

“How far?”

“Approximately twelve kilometers.”

“They’re safe enough.”

Korvold could think of little else to say. At last he said simply, “Good luck, Oscar. Make port safely.” And then he was gone.

Steen turned from the radio, his eyes avoiding the mutilated body in the chair. He felt a cold shudder grip him. He half expected to see the spectral captain of the Flying Dutchman pacing the bridge. There was nothing as morbid as a deserted ship, he thought grimly.

He ordered Sakagawa to hunt up and translate the ship’s log. The two remaining seamen he sent to search the auto decks while he systematically went through the crew’s quarters. He felt as though he was walking through a haunted house.

Except for a few bits of scattered clothing, it looked as if the crew might return at any minute. Unlike the mess on the bridge, everything seemed lived in and ordinary. In the captain’s quarters there was a tray with two teacups that had miraculously failed to fall on the deck during the storm, a uniform laid out on the bed, and a pair of highly polished shoes side by side on the carpeted deck. A framed picture of a woman and three teenage sons had dropped flat on a neat and clean desk.

Steen was hesitant to pry into other men’s secrets and their memories. He felt like an uninvited intruder.

His foot kicked something lying just under the desk. He leaned down and picked up the object. It was a nine-millimeter pistol. A double-action Austrian Steyr GB. He pushed it into the waistband of his pants.

The chiming of a wall-mounted chronometer startled him, and he swore he felt his hair rise. He finished his search and beat a quick path back to the bridge.

Sakagawa was sitting in the chart room, his feet perched on a small cabinet, studying the ship’s log.

“You found it,” said Steen.

“In one of the open briefcases.” He turned back to the opening pages and began to read. ” ‘ Divine Star, seven hundred feet, delivered March sixteenth, nineteen eighty-eight. Operated and owned by the Sushimo Steamship Company, Limited. Home port, Kobe.’ On this voyage she’s carrying seven thousand, two hundred and eighty-eight new Murmoto automobiles to Los Angeles.”

“Any clues as to why the crew abandoned her?” Steen asked.

Sakagawa gave a puzzled shake of his head. “No mention of disaster, plague, or mutiny. No report of the typhoon. The last entry is a bit odd.”

“Read it.”

Sakagawa took a few moments to be sure his translation of Japanese characters into English was reasonably correct. “The best I can get out of it is: ‘Weather deteriorating. Seas increasing. Crew suffering from unknown illness. Everyone sick including Captain. Food poisoning suspected. Our passenger, Mr. Yamada, a most important company director, demands we abandon and sink ship during hysterical outburst. Captain thinks Mr. Yamada has suffered nervous breakdown and has ordered him placed under restraint in his quarters.’ “

Steen looked down at Sakagawa, his face expressionless. “That’s all?”

“The final entry,” said Sakagawa. “There is no more.”

“What’s the date?”

“October first.”

“That’s two days ago.”

Sakagawa nodded absently. “They must have fled the ship shortly after. Damned funny they didn’t take the log with them.”

Slowly, unhurriedly, Steen walked into the communications room, his mind trying to make sense out of the final log entry. Suddenly he stopped and reached out to support himself in the doorway. The room seemed to swim before his eyes and he felt nauseous. Bile rose in his throat, but he forced it down. Then, as quickly as the attack came, it passed.

He walked unevenly over to the radio and hailed the Narvik. “This is First Officer Steen calling Captain Korvold, over.”

“Yes, Oscar,” answered Korvold. “Go ahead.”

“Do not waste time on a search effort. The Divine Star‘s log suggests the crew left the ship before they were struck by the full force of the typhoon. They departed nearly two days ago. The winds would have swept them two hundred kilometers away by now.”

“Providing they survived.”

“An unlikely event.”

“All right, Oscar. I agree, a search by the Narvikwill be useless. We’ve done all that can be expected of us. I’ve alerted American sea rescue units at Midway and Hawaii and all vessels in the general area. Soon as you regain steerageway we’ll resume course for San Francisco.”

“Acknowledged,” Steen replied. “I’m on my way to the engine room to check with Andersson now.”

Just as Steen finished transmitting, the ship’s phone buzzed. “This is the bridge.”

“Mr. Stem,” said a weak voice.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Seaman Arne Midgaard, sir. Can you come down to C cargo deck right away? I think I’ve found something—”

Midgaard’s voice stopped abruptly, and Steen could hear the sounds of retching.

“Midgaard, are you sick?”

“Please hurry, sir.”

Then the line went dead.

Stem yelled at Sakagawa. “What button do I push for the engine room?”

There was no reply. Stem stepped back into the chart room. Sakagawa was sitting there pale as death, breathing rapidly. He looked up and spoke, gasping the words with every breath.

“The fourth button… rings the engine room.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Steen asked anxiously.

“Don’t know. I… I feel… awful… vomited twice.”

“Hang on,” snapped Steen. “I’ll gather up the others. We’re getting off this death ship.” He snatched the phone and rang the engine room. There was no answer. Fear flooded his mind. Fear of an unknown that was striking them down. He imagined the smell of death pervading the whole ship.

Stem took a swift glance at a deck diagram that was mounted on a bulkhead, then leaped down the companionway six steps at a time. He tried to run toward the vast holds containing the autos, but a nausea cramped his stomach and he weaved through the passageway like a drunk through a back alley.

At last he stumbled through the doorway onto C cargo deck. A great sea of multicolored automobiles stretched a hundred meters fore and aft. Amazingly, despite the buffeting from the storm and the list of the ship, they were all firmly in place.

Stem shouted frantically for Midgaard, his voice echoing from the steel bulkheads. Silence was his only reply. Then he spotted it, the oddity that stood out like the only man in a crowd holding aloft a sign.

One of the cars had its hood up.

He staggered between the long rows, falling against doors and fenders, bruising his knees on the protruding bumpers. As he approached the car with the open hood, he shouted again. “Anyone here?”

This time he heard a faint moan. In ten paces he had reached the car and stared frozen at the sight of Midgaard lying beside one tire.

The young seaman’s face was festered with running sores. Froth mixed with blood streamed from his mouth. His eyes stared unseeing. His arms were purple from bleeding beneath the skin. He seemed to be decaying before Steen’s eyes.

Steen sagged against the car, stricken with horror. He clutched his head between his hands in helplessness and despair, not noticing the thicket of hair that came away when he dropped them to his sides.

“Why in God’s name are we dying?” he whispered, seeing his own grisly death mirrored by Midgaard. “What is killing us?”

3

THE DEEP-SEA SUBMERSIBLE Old Gerthung suspended beneath a large crane that sat on the stern of the British oceanographic vessel Invincible. The seas had calmed enough to launch Old Gertfor a scientific probe of the seafloor 5,200 meters below, and her crew were following a tight sequence of safety checks.

There was nothing old about the submersible. Her design was the latest state of the art. She was constructed by a British aerospace company within the past year and was now poised for her maiden test dive to survey the Mendocino fracture zone, a great crack in the Pacific Ocean floor extending from the coast of Northern California halfway to Japan.

Her exterior was a complete departure from other aerodynamic submersibles. Instead of one cigar-shaped hull with a pregnant pod attached beneath, she had four transparent titanium and polymer woven spheres connected by circular tunnels that gave her the appearance of a jack from a child’s game. One sphere contained a complex array of camera equipment, while another was filled with air and ballast tanks and batteries. The third held the oxygen equipment and electric motors. The fourth sphere, the largest, sat above the other three and housed the crew and controls.

Old Gertwas built to withstand the immense pressures found at the deepest parts of the world’s seabeds. Her support systems could keep a crew alive for forty-eight hours, and she was powered to travel through the black abyss at speeds up to eight knots.

Craig Plunkett, the chief engineer and pilot for Old Gert, signed the last of the check-off forms. He was a man of forty-five or fifty, with graying hair combed forward to cover his baldness. His face was ruddy and his eyes a medium brown with a bloodhound droop. He had helped design Old Gertand now treated her as his own private yacht.

He pulled on a heavy woolen sweater against the expected chill from the cold bottom water and slipped his feet into a pair of soft fur-lined moccasins. He descended the boarding tunnel and closed the hatch behind him. Then he dropped into the control sphere and engaged the computerized life-support systems.

Dr. Raul Salazar, the expedition’s marine geologist from the University of Mexico, was already in his seat adjusting a bottom sonar penetrating unit.

“Ready when you are,” said Salazar. He was a small dynamo with a huge mass of black hair, his movements quick, black eyes darting constantly, never staring at any one person or object for more than two seconds. Plunkett liked him. Salazar was the kind of man who accumulated his data with a minimum of fuss, made the right decisions without clouding the facts, and was accustomed to engineering a deep-sea probe from more of a business viewpoint than an academic project.

Plunkett glanced at the empty seat on the sphere. “I thought Stacy was on board.”

“She is,” answered Salazar without turning from his console. “She’s in the camera sphere making a final check of her video systems.”

Plunkett bent over the tunnel leading to the camera sphere and found himself staring at a pair of sweat-socked feet. “We’re ready to launch,” he said.

A feminine voice accompanied by a hollow tone came back, “Be finished in a sec.”

Plunkett eased his feet under his control panel and was settling into his low half-reclining seat when Stacy Fox wiggled her way backwards into the control sphere. Her face was flushed from working nearly upside down.

Stacy wasn’t what you’d call disturbingly attractive, but she was pretty. Her long, straight blond hair fell around her face, and she often hurled it back with a brief shake of the head. She was slim and her shoulders were broad for a woman. The crew could only speculate about her breasts. None had ever seen them, of course, and she always wore loose fitting sweaters. But occasionally, when she yawned and stretched, her chest gave an indication of firm substance.

She looked younger than her thirty-four years. Her eyebrows were thick, her eyes wide apart, irises reflecting a soft pale green. The lips above a determined chin easily parted in a bright, eventoothed smile, which was almost constant.

Stacy was once a California beach golden girl, majoring in the photographic arts at the Chouinard Institute in Los Angeles. After graduation she migrated around the world recording marine life that had never been captured on film. Twice married, twice divorced, with one daughter living with her sister, her presence on board Old Gertto photograph the deep ocean was actually a cover for a more demanding assignment.

As soon as she gained her seat on the right side of the sphere, Plunkett signaled an okay. The crane operator nudged the submersible down a slanted ramp through the ship’s open stern and gently lowered it into the sea.

The chop had died, but the swells still rolled past from one to two meters high. The crane man timed the entry so Old Gerttouched a wave crest and continued into the trough, where she settled and rose in perfect sequence with the swells. The lift cables were electronically released, and several divers made a last minute check of the exterior.

Five minutes later the surface controller, a jolly Scot by the name of Jimmy Knox, reported to Plunkett that the sub was cleared for descent. The ballast tanks were flooded, and Old Gertquickly passed under the sparkling sea and began her trip to the bottom.

Though Old Gertwas the newest submersible off the drawing boards, she still descended by the old tried and true system of filling ballast tanks with seawater. For rising to the surface, variable-sized iron weights were dropped to increase buoyancy, because current pump technology could not overcome the opposing pressures at great depths.

To Stacy, the long fall through the vast liquid void came like a hypnotic trance. One by one the spectral colors from the scattered light on the surface faded until they finally vanished into pure black.

Except for their separate control consoles mounted around the inner diameter of the sphere, they had an unobstructed 180-degree view ahead. The transparent polymer with the thin threading of titanium made vision equal to that of the resolution on a large-screen television set.

Salazar paid no attention to the blackness or the occasional luminescent fish that swam outside, he was more concerned about what they would find on the bottom. Plunkett monitored the depth and the life-support instruments, watching carefully for any bugs as the pressure increased and the temperature dropped with every passing moment.

The Invinciblecarried no backup submersible in case of an emergency. If disaster unexpectedly occurred and they somehow became wedged in rocks or the equipment malfunctioned, preventing Old Gert‘s return to the surface, they could jettison the control sphere and allow it to sail to the surface like a giant bubble. But it was a complex system never tested under high-pressure conditions. A failure here and they had no hope for rescue, only the certainty of death by suffocation and a lost grave deep in the eternal night of the abyss.

A small eel-like fish slithered past, its luminous body giving off flashes of light as though a stream of traffic was passing around a series of curves. The teeth were incredibly long in proportion to its head and fanged like a Chinese dragon’s. Fascinated with the interior light of the submersible, it swam up to the control sphere unafraid and cast a ghostly eye inside.

Stacy aimed her battery of still and video cameras and caught it in seven lenses before it was gone. “Can you imagine that thing if it was twenty feet long?” she murmured in awe.

“Fortunately blackdragons live in the depths,” said Plunkett. “The pressure of deep water prevents them from growing more than several centimeters.”

Stacy hit the exterior lights, and the blackness was suddenly transformed into a green haze. The void was empty. No life was to be seen. The blackdragon was gone. She turned off the lights to conserve the batteries.

The humidity rose inside the sphere, and the increasing cold began to seep through the thick walls. Stacy watched the goose bumps rise on her arms. She looked up, clutched her shoulders with her hands, and made a shivering gesture. Plunkett caught the signal and turned on a small heating unit that barely held off the chill.

The two hours it took to reach the bottom would have passed tediously if everyone hadn’t been busy at their own jobs. Plunkett found a comfortable position, and watched the sonar monitor and the echo sounder. He also kept a wary eye on the electrical and oxygen-level gauges. Salazar kept busy plotting their probe grid once they reached the bottom, while Stacy kept trying to catch the denizens of the deep off guard with her cameras.

Plunkett preferred the strains of Johann Strauss for stereo background music, but Stacy insisted on using her “new age” music in the cassette player. She claimed it was soothing and less stressful. Salazar called it “waterfall” music but went along.

Jimmy Knox’s voice from the Invinciblesounded ghostly as it filtered down on the underwater acoustic telephone.

“Bottom in ten minutes,” he announced. “You’re closing a bit fast.”

“Righto,” replied Plunkett. “I have it on sonar.”

Salazar and Stacy turned from their work and stared at the sonar screen. The digital enhancement showed the seabed in contoured three dimensions. Plunkett’s gaze darted from the screen into the water and back again. He trusted the sonar and computer, but not ahead of his own vision.

“Be on your guard,” Knox alerted them. “You’re dropping alongside the walls of a canyon.”

“I have it,” returned Plunkett. “The cliffs plunge into a wide valley.” He reached for a switch and dropped one of the ballast weights to slow the descent. Thirty meters from the bottom he dropped one more, giving the submersible almost perfect neutral buoyancy. Next he engaged the three thrusters mounted on the outer ends of the lower spheres.

The bottom slowly materialized through the jade gloom into a broken uneven slope. Strange black rock that was folded and twisted into grotesque shapes spread as far as they could see.

“We’ve come down beside a lava flow,” said Plunkett. “The edge is about a kilometer ahead. After that it’s another three hundred-meter drop to the valley floor.”

“I copy,” replied Knox.

“What are all those wormy rocks?” asked Stacy.

“Pillow lava,” answered Salazar. “Made when fiery lava strikes the cold sea. The outer shell cools, forming a tube through which the molten lava keeps flowing.”

Plunkett kicked in the altitude-positioning system that automatically kept the submersible four meters above the bottom slope. As they glided across the scarred features of the plateau, they spotted the trails of deep crawlers in scattered pools of silt, perhaps from brittle stars, shrimp, or deep-dwelling sea cucumbers that lurked in the darkness beyond the lights.

“Get ready,” said Plunkett. “We’re about to head down.”

A few seconds after his warning, the bottom dropped away into blackness again and the sub nosed over and fell deeper, maintaining its distance of four meters from the steep drop of the canyon walls.

“I have you at five-three-six-zero meters,” echoed Knox’s voice over the underwater phone.

“Righto, I read the same,” replied Plunkett.

“When you reach the valley floor,” said Knox, “you’ll be on the plain of the fracture zone.”

“Stands to reason,” Plunkett muttered, his attention focused on his control panel, computer screen, and a video monitor now showing the terrain below Old Gert‘s landing skids. “There’s no bloody place left to go.”

Twelve minutes passed, and then a flat bottom loomed up ahead and the sub leveled out again. Underwater particles swirled by the sphere, driven by a light current like flakes of snow. Ripples of sand stretched in front of the circular lit pattern from the lights. The sand was not empty. Thousands of black objects, roundly shaped like old cannonballs, littered the seabed in a thick layer.

“Manganese nodules,” explained Salazar as though tutoring. “No one knows exactly how they formed, although it’s suspected sharks’ teeth or whale ear bones may form the nucleus.”

“They worth anything?” asked Stacy, activating her camera systems.

“Besides the manganese, they’re valued for smaller quantities of cobalt, copper, nickel, and zinc. I’d guess this concentration could run for hundreds of miles across the fracture zone and be worth as high as eight million dollars a square kilometer.”

“Providing you could scoop it up from the surface, five and a half kilometers away,” Plunkett added.

Salazar instructed Plunkett on what direction to explore as Old Gertsoared silently over the nodule-carpeted sand. Then something gleamed off to their port side. Plunkett banked slightly toward the object.

“What do you see?” asked Salazar, looking up from his instruments.

Stacy peered downward. “A ball!” she exclaimed. “A huge metal ball with strange-looking cleats. I’d guess it to measure three meters in diameter.”

Plunkett dismissed it. “Must have fallen off a ship.”

“Not too long ago, judging from the lack of corrosion,” commented Salazar.

Suddenly they sighted a wide strip of clear sand that was totally devoid of nodules. It was as though a giant vacuum cleaner had made a swath through the middle of the field.

“A straight edge!” exclaimed Salazar. “There’s no such thing as prolonged straight edges on the seafloor.”

Stacy stared in astonishment. “Too perfect, too precise to be anything but manmade.”

Plunkett shook his head. “Impossible, not at this depth. No engineering company in the world has the capability to mine the abyss.”

“And no geological disturbance I ever heard of could form a clean road across the seabed,” stated Salazar firmly.

“Those indentations in the sand that run along the borders look like they might match that huge ball we found.”

“Okay,” muttered Plunkett skeptically. “What kind of equipment can sweep the bottom this deep?”

“A giant hydraulic dredge that sucks up the nodules through pipes to a barge on the surface,” theorized Salazar. “The idea has been tossed around for years.”

“So has a manned flight to Mars, but the rocketry to get there has yet to be built. Nor has a monster dredge. I know a lot of people in marine engineering, and I haven’t heard even a vague rumor about such a project. No mining operation of this magnitude can be kept secret. It’d take a surface fleet of at least five ships and thousands of men working for years. And there is no way they could pull it off without detection by passing ships or satellites.”

Stacy looked blankly at Salazar. “Any way of telling when it happened?”

Salazar shrugged. “Could have been yesterday, could have been years ago.”

“But who then?” Stacy asked in a vague tone. “Who is responsible for such technology?”

No one immediately answered. Their discovery did not fit accepted beliefs. They stared at the empty swath with silent disbelief, a fear of the unknown trickling down their necks.

Finally Plunkett gave an answer that seemed to come distantly, from outside the submersible. “No one on this earth, no one who is human.”

4

STEEN WAS ENTERING into a state of extreme emotional shock. He stared numbly at the blisters forming on his arms. He trembled uncontrollably, half mad from the shock and a sudden abdominal pain. He doubled over and retched, his breath coming in great heaves. Everything seemed to be striking him at once. His heart began beating erratically and his body burned up with fever.

He felt too weak to make it back to the communications compartment and warn Korvold. When the captain of the Norwegian ship received no replies from his signals to Steen, he would send another boarding party to see what was wrong. More men would die uselessly.

Steen was drenched in sweat now. He stared at the car with the raised hood and his eyes glazed with a strange hatred. A stupor descended over him, and his crazed mind saw an indescribable evil in the steel, leather, and rubber.

As if in a final act of defiance, Steen took vengeance against the inanimate vehicle. He pulled the Steyr automatic he’d found in the captain’s quarters from under his waistband and raised the barrel. Then he squeezed the trigger and pumped the bullets into the front end of the car.