Part 22 (1/2)

Then ca of the drive shaft as the cable fouled the propeller - followed by a crack as the shaft snapped Wild Goose's engine screao shut the throttle, and there was silence in the wheelhouse

Wild Goose swung bea in over her deck Without her propeller she was transformed from a husky little sea creature to a piece of driftwood at the o's head swung slowly until he was looking doind to where the h the rain squall

Cover your ears - tight!” Johnny Lance pressed Tracey against the bulkhead as far froet ”There are twenty-five pounds of plastique in there - it will blow like a volcano

He will have used short fuse, fourteento wait” Johnny set Tracey's shoulders squarely against the steel plating and crouched over her - trying to shi+eld her with his own body

They stared into each other's eyes, teeth clenched, the heels of their palms jammed hard over their ears and they cowered away from the blast that est minutes of Tracey's life

She could not have borne the hard body covering her - even with it she felt her fearthe ed at her, driving the breath froainst her The blast sucked at her eardruhts flashed across her vision and she felt the steel plates heave under her shoulders

Then her head cleared, and although her eardru relief that she was still alive

She reached out for Johnny, but he was gone In panic she groped, then opened her eyes He was lurching down the long conveyor room, and when he reached the locked door at the far end he pressed his face to the peephole

The fu bluish fog, but through them Johnny could e cyclone had been torn froainst the far bulkhead - crushed It orth only a single glance before Johnny froze into rigidity at the true horror

The gravel pipe had been severed cleanly just below its juncture with the upper deck It protruded for six feet, but now the force of the jet through it was flicking and whipping it about as though it were not steel but a rubber garden hose

The jet was a solid eighteen-inch coluravel and sea water that beat against the steel plates of the hull with a hollow dru roar

In the few seconds since the explosion the cyclone rooe that rushed from wall to ith the movement of the shi+p It was like soht and strength

Tracey reached Johnny's side and he placed his arlass and he felt her body stiffen

At thatit co of the steel plates under his hands They fluttered and bulged, then began to protest aloud at the intolerable pressure A seaap and soaked icily through Johnny's jersey

”Get back”Johnny dragged Tracey away fro the narrow conveyor roo with difficulty for the deck beneath their feet was slanting as Kingfisher began to lean under the increasing weight in her belly

Still holding Tracey, he reached the locked door and resisted the futile desire to attack it with his bare hands

Instead he forced his brain to work, tried to anticipate the sequence of events that would lead to the final destruction of Kingfisher - and all those aboard her

Benedict had left the other entrance to the cyclone room wide open Already that viscous h the lower levels of the hull, following always the avenue of least resistance finding the weak spots and bursting through theainst the pressure, the rest of the hull would be filled and they would be enfolded in the tentacles of that great yellow monster a small bubble of air trapped within it and taken doith it when it returned to the depths from which it had come

Would the bulkheads of the conveyor room hold? The answer caainstrivets

The h the drying furnace into the conveyor, ripping away the fragile baffles, bursting through the furnace in a cloud of Steae stench of deep-sea ish roll, so different fro down the tunnel in a solid knee-high wall

It sla strength, and the feel of it was cold and loathsofisher rolled back and the ainst the far bulkhead then charged at theain

Waist-deep it struck them, and tried to suck the now, nerves andto Johnny, coated to the waist in stinking ooze, her eyes andup for its next assault

Johnny groped for some hold to anchor them They must keep on their feet to survive that next rush ofhandle of the door and braced hith

The ain, silently, murderously It burst over their heads and punched the

Then it sucked back once more, and left therip on the locking handle

Tracey was vo the foulthe

Johnny could feel her weakening in his arain her feet

His own strength was going It needed his last reserve to drag theers, spinning open

The steel door against which he was braced fell away, so that he staggered backwards without support but still clutching Tracey

There was just a io Caporetti beside him and feel an arm like the trunk of a pine tree steady him before the rush of mud down the conveyor roo theth dissipated in the new space beyond the conveyor room door

Johnny pulled himself up the bulkhead He had lost Tracey Dazed but desperate he looked for her,ai on her face He took a handful of muddy hair and lifted her face out, but the ed back and forth

”Sergio Helpp he croaked ”For God's sake, Sergio” And Sergio was there, lifting her like a child in his ar to the ladder that led to the deck above The io was cli steadily up the ladder

Despite the ht, he could see that Sergio's wide back, from shoulders to hips, was speckled with dozens of punctures as though he had been stabbed repeatedly with a knitting needle From each tiny wound oozed droplets of blood that spread like brown ink on the blotting-paper of his sodden jacket

At the head of the co Tracey in his ar down at Johnny ing and slipping in the o switch off your bloody machine She drown ht way No bloody fancy ainst the bulkhead and called up at hiio, what happened to Benedict van der Byl, where is he?”

”I think he go with Wild Goose - but first he shoot the hell out of me, not half Fix yourTracey