Page 66 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
Bell enjoyed his last few minutes on the bridge. Captain Finch was taking no chances. When they neared the harbor, he wanted his destroyer battle-ready. That meant hatches battened, guns manned, and their only guest stuck down in his tiny cabin until Finch determined it was safe for him to come out. Bell had tried to talk the man out of imprisoning him as they entered port, but to no avail.
A lookout on the bridge wing glassed the shoreline withbinoculars bigger than wine bottles. He lowered them and stepped inside. “Captain, I can see the breakwater. It’s clear of shipping.”
“Very well. XO, sound the alarm.”
The XO nodded to another sailor, who flipped a switch on the ship’s internal communications system. Throughout the ship, speakers mounted in nearly every compartment started wailing. Bell looked to Finch for a last-second reprieve, but the man was focused on the task at hand and never even gave him a glance.
The stairwells and corridors were scenes of controlled bedlam as the men got their ship in fighting shape. He kept tight to the walls to let each one pass as easily as possible. They were all young, but appeared well-drilled and ready for whatever came. Bell could sense the centuries of British naval tradition in each and every one of them.
He didn’t put on his life jacket when he got to his cabin, but he did pull it out from under the bed and set it next to him. He wanted to leave the medical bay door open as well, but an NCO inspecting that the ship was at battle stations admonished him with a sharp look and closed the heavy door tight.
Bell felt caged.
The harbor of Ponta Delgada was protected by a massive seawall that hid most of the coastal town from a ship as low to the water as theMastiff. They could see the hills dotted with houses and villas rising up the mountains behind the small city, but until they cleared a dogleg into the harbor they were blind as to what ships lay at anchor.
Finch had been here once before early on in his career and knew about entering the harbor blind. It was why he’d put the ship on alert. Until they made that turn, he acted as though the Germans had already captured theSaarlandand were coming out ready to fight.
“Make your speed one-quarter,” he called to the helmsman.
“Speed one-quarter, aye.” His hand went to the brass engine telegraph. He ratcheted the handle to alert the engine room and then set the needle to “One-Quarter.”
The seawall was off the port side. They could now see the western side of the harbor. There were several fishing boats at anchor as well as a small freighter having cargo in net slings pulled from one of its holds. Everything looked normal, to Finch’s relief.
That’s the moment when the hulking prow of the German battleship came into view. She was absolutely enormous, but it wasn’t that she was more than twice theMastiff’s length or two and a half times her width, it was that she was sixteen times her weight. It was like the ship had its own gravity to draw in the attention of anyone who looked at her. She towered above the town like a cathedral over a medieval village.
A moment passed. Nothing seemed amiss. There was smoke coiling from only one of her three funnels, but that wasn’t particularly alarming. The Brazilian skeleton crew needed lights and heating and needed to keep the ship in good order if they were ever to take full possession of it.
It looked to Finch that they’d beaten the Germans to the island. Bell could warn the local authorities about the plot to steal the ship and they could go home knowing they’d kept a deadly marauder out of the Atlantic sea-lanes.
Just then a great gush of smoke erupted from theSaarland’s second and third amidships funnels. Those boilers had been lit all along, but now someone was calling for a full head of steam.
Finch went a little pale, but his voice was sure and steady. “Helm, full reverse. Keep us straight and mind that seawall.”
They only had to reverse for a few seconds to put another harbor wall between them and theSaarland’s massive main guns. Once safely out of view, they could keep backing out of the harbor and then pour on the speed in the open ocean. The battleship might lob a few shells their way, but theMastiffwas as agile as a mongoose and should get away clean.
Just a couple of seconds, the captain prayed in his head. “Lord just give me a couple—”
The range was only a few hundred yards, so the flash of the eleven-inch cannon firing and the impact of the quarter-ton high-explosive shell came so close as to be imperceptible. The destroyer’s armor was too thin to activate the shell’s impact fuse, but when it struck a solid bracing column within the hull, the main charge went off in a devastating explosion just below the pilothouse that ripped theMastiffin two.
A blooming cloud of fire, smoke, and shrapnel boiled up from beneath the shredded decking and a concussion wave tore across the water faster than the eye could track.
In his tiny cabin, Bell observed the steel wall opposite his bed actually rippling an instant before the concussive force of the blast tore through the ship. He was thrown from his cot and crashed into a wall up near the ceiling. Had the room been much larger, the impact would have broken bone. He crashed back to the deck, dazed and deafened, even as the banshee roar of the explosion continued to echo and re-echo around him.
Smoke began to coil out through the sick bay’s tiny ventilation grate.
Bell didn’t need to know what had caused the explosion, though he could guess. He just knew that such a massive explosion was afatal blow to a ship many times the size of the plucky little destroyer. He staggered to his feet. He hadn’t yet fully regained his wits, but knew to strap on the kapok-filled life jacket.
He touched the back of his hand to the door, testing it for heat. The metal was cool. Still, he ducked low and opened the door slowly. A cloud of black smoke roiled over his head and created a noxious fog clinging to the sick bay’s ceiling. Just then a sailor ran past. He was screaming in agony. He’d taken a jet of superheated steam to the face and hands and the sight of what had been left behind would haunt Bell’s dreams for the rest of his life.
He could hear metal rending as the ship came apart further and the chilling sound of water gushing into the hull. This wasn’t the first sinking ship he’d been aboard. That honor went to theLusitania. But just because he’d survived didn’t mean his heart rate hadn’t spiked or that he didn’t feel the icy grip of panic trying to cloud his mind.
TheMastiffwas sinking by the bow and in the few seconds he’d stood in the hallway outside the infirmary, he could feel her angle steepening. He had just a handful of minutes. More men were rushing past him. Scared kids who’d forgotten all their training, going on instinct to always seek higher ground.
Bell didn’t give in to panic. He turned and started striding down the deck, toward the sinking bow and away from what logic said was the safer option. He could feel the heat building and the smoke growing thicker, but he didn’t see any flame.
Without warning, the destroyer suddenly shifted, rolling at least fifteen degrees to starboard, settling there for a moment and then revolving completely onto her side. The wall suddenly became the floor. Bell had grabbed on to an overhead conduit and managed tokeep himself from being slammed into yet another unyielding metal surface.
He lowered himself and felt heat transfer through the soles of his boots. The room next to him was an inferno. He went farther down the corridor. Ahead, he could see water slowly creeping toward him as the ship slid beneath the waves.
