Pitt nodded. "Coming straight toward us." He stared unseeing into the fog. "Sounds strange, almost like the whine of an aircraft engine. They must have radar. No helmsman with half a brain would run at full speed in this weather."
"They know we're here then," Tidi whispered, as though someone beyond the railing would hear.
"Yes, they know we're here," Pitt acquiesced.
"Unless I'm much mistaken, they're coming to investigate us. An innocent passing stranger would give us a wide berth the minute our blip showed on his scope.
This one is hunting for trouble. I suggest we provide them with a little sport."
"Like three rabbits waiting to play games with a pack of wolves," Sandecker said. "They'll outman us ten to one, and . . ." he added softly, "they're undoubtedly armed to the teeth. Our best bet is the Sterlings. Once we're under way, our visitors stand as much chance of catching us as a cocker spaniel after a greyhoud in heat."
"Don't bet on it, Admiral. If they know we're here, they also know what boat we've got and how fast it will go. To even consider boarding us, they'd have to have a craft that could outrace The Grimsi.
I'm banking on the hunch they've got it."
"A hydrofoil. Is that it?" Sandecker asked slowly.
"Exactly," Pitt answered. "Which means their top speed could be anywhere between forty-five and sixty knots."
"Not good," Sandecker said quietly.
"Not bad either," Pitt returned. "We've got at least two advantages in our favor." Quickly he outlined his plan. Tidi, sitting on a bench in the wheelhouse, felt her body go numb, knew that her face beneath the makeup was paper-white. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She began to tremble until even her voice became unsteady.
"You . . . you can't mean what . . . you say."
"If I don't," Pitt said, "we're going to have bigger trouble than River City." He paused, looking at the pale, uncomprehending face, the hands twisting nervously at the knotted blouse.
"But you're planning a coldblooded murder." For a moment her mouth mumbled soundless words, then she forced herself on. "You just can't kill people without warning. Innocent people you don't even know!"
"'That will do," Sandecker snapped sharply. "We haven't got time to explain the facts of life to a frightened female." He stared at her, his eyes understanding, but his voice commanding. "Please get below and take cover behind something that'll stop bullets." He turned to Pitt: Use the fire ax and chop the anchor line. Give me a signal when you want full power."
Pitt herded Tidi down the galley steps. "Never argue with the captain of a ship." He swatted her on the bottom. "And don't fret. If the natives are friendly, you have nothing to worry about."
He was just lifting the ax into the air when the Sterlings rumbled to life. "Good thing we didn't lay out a damage deposit," he murmured vaguely to himself as the ax sliced cleanly through the rope into the wooden railing as the rope slid noiselessly into the sea and sending the anchor forever to the black sandy bottom.
The unseen ship was almost upon them now, the roar of its engine died to a muted throb as the helmsman eased back the throttles in preparation for coming alongside The Grimsi.i. From where he lay on the bow, clenching and unclenching his hands around the ax handle, Pitt could hear the hull splash into the waves as the diminishing speed pushed the hydrofoil deeper in the water. He raised himself carefully, narrowing his eyes and trying vainly to pierce the heavy fog for a sign of movement.
The area round the bow was in near darkness. Visibility was no more than twenty feet.
Then a shadowy bulk slowly came into view, showing its port glow. Pitt could barely make out several dim forms standing on the forward deck, a glow behind them that Pitt knew would be the wheelhouse. It was like a specter ship whose crew appeared as dim ghosts.
The erieform arose menacingly and towered above the Grimsi, the stranger had a length of a hundred feet or better, Pitt guessed. He could see the other men clearly now, leaning over the bulwarks, saying nothing, crouched as if ready to jump. The automatic rifles in their hands told Pitt all he needed to know.
Coolly and precisely, no more than eight feet from the gun barrels on the specter ship, Pitt made three movements so rapidly they almost seemed simultaneous.
Swinging the ax head sideways, e brought the flat face down loudly on an iron capstan-the signal to Sandecker. Then in the same swinging motion he hurled the ax through the air and saw the pick part of the head bury itself in the chest of a man who was in the act of jumping down on The Grimsi's deck. They met in midair, a ghastly scream reaching from the man's throat as he and the ax fell against the railing. He hung there for an instant, the bloodless nuckles of one hand clenched over the wooden molding and then dropped into the gray water. Even before the sea closed over the man's head, Pitt had hurled himself on the worn planks of the deck, and the Grimsi leaped ahead like a frightened impala, chased by a storm of shells that swept across the deck and into the wheelhouse before the old boat had vanished into the mist.
Staying below the gunwale, Pitt crawled aft and across the threshold of the wheelhouse doorway. The floor was littered with 49
glass and wood splinters.
"Any hits?" Sandecker asked conversationally, his voice hardly audible above the exhaust of the Sterling engines.
"No holes in me. How about you?"
"The bastards' aim was above my head. Add to that the fact that I was able to make myself three feet high, and you have a fortunate combination." He turned and looked thoughtful. "I thought I heard a scream just before all hell broke loose."
Pitt grinned. "I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little ax."
Sandecker shook his head. "Thirty years in the Navy, and that's the first time any crew of mine every had to repel boarders."
"The problem now is to prevent a repeat performance."
"It won't be easy. We're running blind. Their goddamned radar knows our every move. Our biggest fear is ramming. With a ten-to-twenty-knot edge they're an odds-on favorite to win at blindman's buff. I can't avoid the inevitable. If their helmsman is hallway on the dime, he'll use his superior speed to pass and then cut a ninety-degree angle and catch us amidships."
Pitt considered a moment. "Let's hope their helmsman is right-handed."
Sandecker frowned uncomprehendingly. "You're not getting through."
"Lefties are a minority. The percentages favor a right-hander. When the hydrofoil begins to close in again-its bow is probably no more than four hundred yards behind our ass end this second-the helmsman will have an instinctive tendency to swing out to his starboard before he cuts in to ram us. This will give us an opportunity to use one of our two advantages."
Sandecker looked at him. "I can't think of one, much less two."
"A hydrofoil boat depends on its high speed to sustain its weight.
The foils travel through the water the same as the wings of an aircraft travel through air. Its greatest asset is speed, but its greatest limitation is maneuverability. In simple English, a hydrofoil can't turn worth a damn."
"And we can. Is that it?" Sandecker probed.
"The Grimsi can cut two circles inside their one."
Sandecker lifted his hands from the spokes of the wheel and flexed his fingers. "Sounds great as far as it goes, except we won't know when they start their arc."
Pitt sighed. "We listen."
Sandecker looked at him. "Shut down our engines?"
Pitt nodded.
When Sandecker's hands went back on the wheel, they were white-knuckled, his mouth tight and drawn.
"What you're suggesting is one hell of a gamble. All one of those Sterlings had to do is balk at the starter button and we're a sitting duck." He nodded toward the galley.
"Are you thinking of her?"
"I'm thinking of all of us. Stand or run, the chances are we get deep-sixed anyway. The last dollar bet of the gamblerall it what you wul, but however remote, it's a chance."
Sandecker cast a searching stare at the
tall man standing in the doorway. He could see that the eyes were determined and the chin set.
"You mentioned two advantages."
"The unexpected," Pitt said quietly. "We know what they're out to do. They may have radar, but they can't read our minds.
That is our second and most important advantage-the unexpected move."
Pitt looked at his Doxa watch. One-thirty, still early in the afternoon. Sandecker had cut the engines, and Pitt had to fight to stay alert-the sudden silence and the calm of the fog began a creeping course to dull his mind. Above, the sun was a faded white disc that brightened and dimmed as the uneven layers of mist rolled overhead. Pitt inhaled slowly and evenly to keep a sensation of wet and chill from penetrating his lungs.
He shivered in his clothes, turned damp from the fine sparkling drops bunched in clusters on the material. He sat there on the forward hatch cover waiting until his ears lost the roar of the Sterlings, waiting until his hearing picked up the engines of the hydroplane. He didn't have to wait long. He soon tuned in the steady beat of the hydroplane as the explosions through its exhaust manifolds increased in volume.
Everything had to go perfect the first time. There could be no second chance. The radar operator on the hydroplane was probably at this instant reacting to the fact that the blip on his scope had lost headway and had stopped dead in the water. By the time he notified his commander and a decision was reached, it would be too late for a course change. The hydroplane's superior speed would have put its bow almost on top of The Grimsi.
50
Pitt re-checked the containers lying in a neat row beside him for perhaps the tenth time. It had to be the poorest excuse for an arsenal ever concocted, he mused.
One of the containers was a gallon glass jar Tidi had scrounged from the galley. The other three were battered and rusty gas cans in various sizes that Pitt had found in a locker aft of the engine room. Except for their contents, the cloth wicks protruding from the cap openings and the holes punched through the top of the cans, the four vessels had little in common.
The hydroplane was close now-very close. Pitt turned to the wheelhouse and shouted, "Now!" Then he lit the wick of the glass jar with his lighter and braced himself for the sudden surge of acceleration he prayed would come.
Sandecker pushed the starter button. The 420-lip Sterlings coughed once, twice, then burst into rpm's with a roar. He swung the wheel over to starboard hard and jammed the throttles forward. The Grimsi took off over the water like a racehorse with an arrow imbedded in its rectum. The admiral held on grimly, clutching the wheel and expecting to collide with the hydroplane bow on. Then suddenly as a spoke flew off the wheel and clattered against the compass, he became aware that bullets were striking the wheelhouse. He could still see nothing, but he knew the crew of the hydroplane were firing blindly through the fog, guided only by the commands of the radar operator.
To Pitt the tension was unbearable. His gaze alternated from the wall of fog in front of the bow to the jar in his hand. The flame on the wick was getting dangerously close to the tapered neck and the gasoline sloshing behind the glass. Five seconds, no more, then he would have to heave the jar over the side. He began counting.
Five came and went. Six, seven. He cocked his arm.
Eight. Then the hydroplane leaped from the mist on an opposite course, passing no more than ten feet from The Grimsi's railing. Pitt hurled the jar.
The next instant stayed etched in Pitts memory the rest of his days. The frightful image of a tall, yellow-haired man in a leather windbreaker gripping the bridge railing, watching in shocked fascination that deathly thing sailing through the damp air toward him.
Then the jar burst on the bulkhead beside him and he vanished in a blast of searing bright flame. Pitt saw no more. The two boats had raced past each other and the hydroplane was gone.
Pitt had no time to reflect. Quickly he lit the wick on one of the gas cans as Sandecker swept The Grimsi on a hard-a-port, hundredand-eighty-degree swing into the hydroplane's wake. The worm had turned. The hydroplane had slowed, and a pulsating yellowish-red glow could be easily seen through the gray mist. The admiral headed straight for it. He was standing straight as a ramrod now. It was certain that anybody who might have been shooting at The Grimsi thirty seconds ago would not be standing on a flaming deck in the hope of drilling an old scow full of holes. Nor was there now any possibility of the hydroplane ramming anything until the fire was out. "hit 'em again," he yelled to Pitt through the shattered forward window of the wheelhouse. "Give the bastards a taste of their own medicine."
Pitt didn't answer. He barely had time to throw the flaming can before Sandecker spun the wheel and turned-across the hydroplane's bow for a third running attack. Twice more they raced from the fog, and twice more Pitt lobbed his dented cans of searing destruction until his makeshift arsenal was used up.
And then it hit The Grimsi, a thunderous shock wave that knocked Pitt to the deck and blew out what glass was left in the windows around Sandecker. The hydroplane had erupted in a volcanic roar of fire and flaming debris, instantly becoming a blazing inferno from end to end.
The echoes had returned from the cliffs on shore and left again when Pitt pushed himself shakily to his feet and stared incredulously at the hydroplane. What had once been a superbly designed boat was now a shambles and burning furiously down to the water's edge. He staggered to the wheelhouse-his sense of balance temporarily crippled by the ringing in his ears from the concussion-as Sandecker slowed The Grimsi and drifted past the fiery wreck.
"See any survivors?" Sandecker asked. He had a thin slice on one cheek that trickled blood.
Pitt shook his head. "They've had it," he said callously. "Even if any of the crew made it to the water alive, they'd die of exposure before we could find them in this soup."
Tidi entered the wheelhouse, one hand nursing a purplish bruise on her forehead, her expression one of total bewilderment.
"What . . . what happened?" was all she could stamner.
"It wasn't the fuel tanks," Sandecker said. "Of that much I'm certain."
"I agree," Pitt said grimly. "They must have had explosives lying above decks that got in the way of my last homemade firebomb."
"Rather careless of them." Sandecker's voice was almost cheerful. "The unexpected move, that's what you said, and you were right. It never occurred to the dumb bastards that cornered mice would fight like tigers."
"At least we evened up the score a bit." Pitt should have felt sick, but his conscience didn't trouble him. Revenge-he and 51
Sandecker had acted out of desire for selfpreservation and revenge. They had made a down payment to avenge Hunnewell and the others, but the final accounting was a long way off. Strange, he thought, how easy it was to kill men you didn't know, whose lives you knew nothing about. "Your concern for life, I fear, will be your defeat," Dr. Jonsson had said.
"I beg you, my friend, do not hesitate when the moment arrives." Pitt felt a grim satisfaction. The moment had arrived and he hadn't hesitated. He'd had no time even to think about the pain and death he was inflicting. He wondered to himself if this subconscious toleration of killing a total stranger was the factor that made wars acceptable to the human race.
Tidi's hushed voice broke his thoughts. "They're dead; they're all dead." She began to sob, her hands pressed tightly to her face, her body shaking from side to side. "You murdered them, burned them to death in cold blood."
"I beg your pardon, lady," Pitt said coldly. "Open your eyes! Take a good look around you. These holes in the woodwork weren't caused by woodpeckers. To quote from appropriate cliches from every western movie ever made-they drew first, or we had no choice, marshal, it was them or us. You've got the script all wrong, dearheart. We're the good guys. It was their intention to coldbloodedly murder us."
She looked up into the lean, determined face, saw the green eyes full of understanding, and suddenly she felt ashamed. "You two were warned. I told you to gag me the next time I went hyster
ical and shot off my mouth."
Pitt met her gaze. "The admiral and I have tolerated you this far. As long as you keep us in coffee, we won't complain to the management."
She reached up and kissed Pitt gently, her face wet With tears and mist. "Two coffees coming up." She brushed her.eyes with her fingers.
"And go rinse your face," he said, grinning. "Your eye makeup goo is halfway to your chin."
Obediently she turned and climbed down into the galley. Pitt looked at Sandecker and winked. The admiral nodded back in masculine understanding and turned back to the blazing boat.
The hydroplane was going down by the stern, sinking rapidly. The sea crowded over the gunwales and swamped the flames, hissing in a cloud of steam, and the hydroplane was gone. In seconds, only a swirling welter of oily bubbles, unidentifiable bits of flotsam, and dirty, creaming foam remained to mark the grave.
It was as though the boat had been nothing but a nebulous nightmare that vanished with the passing of night.
With an extra effort of willpower, Pitt pulled his mind back to practical reality. "No sense in hanging around. I suggest we head back to Reykjavik as fast as we dare through this fog. The quicker and the farther we high tail it out of this area before the weather clears, the better for all concerned."
Sandecker glanced at his watch. It was now one forty-five. The entire action had barely lasted fifteen minutes. "A hot toddy is looking better all the time," he said. "Stand by the fathometer. When the bottom rises above a hundred feet, we'll at least know we're running too close to shore."