Page 67 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
He was up to his knees when he came to the stairwell that would lead him to the main deck. He’d just turned into the vestibule when water burst into the burning room behind him. When the seawater hit the fiery-hot metal, it turned to steam in a flash reaction that tore through bulkheads like tissue.
Bell was just far enough away, and partially shielded, to not get burned, but it spurned him on with added urgency. The lights flickered just then and suddenly went dark. Bell turned his attention to the stairwell. It was narrow, which meant he had little headroom. He had to negotiate the space on his hands and knees, constantly slamming his shins on the unforgiving handrail as he rushed through the darkness.
He reached the “top” of the staircase and found the door to the outside impossible to open no matter how hard he pushed on it. Water seeped from one corner of the doorframe, telling him the whole thing had been warped by the explosion.
The men running toward the stern had been right all along.
Bell wasted no more time. He turned without another thought of being wrong and retraced his steps. He stayed low once he reached the long hallway, as steam from a ruptured pipe continued to gush from the destroyed compartment. He edged around the spears of metal that had been blown outward like the petals of some nightmarish plant. The heat was nearly unbearable. Sweat poured intoBell’s eyes, forcing him to close them to slits. The emergency lights gave off a feeble glow, so in effect he was moving blind.
Once past the damaged bulkhead, Bell kept crawling, one arm outstretched and sweeping back and forth like a blind man’s cane. Once he was able to wipe the sweat from his eyes, he got to his feet. The ship was shaking and bobbing like some demented funhouse ride, forcing Bell to run a hand along what had been the floor to keep steady.
He came across a sailor slumped on the deck, his legs outstretched, one at an unnatural angle below the knee, clearly broken. He’d crawled as far as he could.
“I’ve got you,” Bell said when he reached the sailor’s side.
The man blinked, not believing his eyes that there was someone to help him.
Bell got an arm under the man’s shoulders and lifted him up so he stood on one foot. The movement caused the broken ends of his tibia and fibula to grate at his already damaged flesh.
He screamed and Bell said, “Yes, let it out. Scream all you want.”
After a few more seconds, the man turned his head to look Bell in the eye. He nodded with fearful resignation, knowing more pain was to come.
With Bell acting as his crutch, the pair continued down the hallway, climbing up an ever-steepening ramp as the ship settled farther into the sea. There were pipes and handrails and door flanges to help find purchase against the metal wall, but still the going was slow. Air blew past them in a gusty wind as water forced it out of the parts of the destroyer already underwater.
They finally reached another stairway. This time, it was on the port side of the hall. Bell had to climb up and into the vestibule andthen gave the sailor a hand to lift him up. The man was of average build, but was so wasted by the ordeal that he could offer little help. Bell had to deadlift him up into the little crawl space, straining his shoulder almost to the point of tearing muscle. He finally got him up, the sailor’s face blistered in the sweat of agony, but he hadn’t screamed.
“Almost there.”
The ship shuddered again, its plates creaking and groaning as she neared the moment of her death spiral to the bottom of the harbor.
“Come on!”
Urgently, because they didn’t have the time to lose, Bell dragged the sailor through the disorienting stairwell. The man’s leg warped and twisted every time it hit the handrail. There was no help for it, and he screamed at the top of his lungs between blubbering pleas for Bell to just let him die. They reached the head of the stairwell and, to Bell’s surprise, there were three men waiting for them.
“Ahoy. Heard him screaming and came back,” said the only officer present, a young Welshman named Awbrey. He put his face close to the injured man’s. “Good set of lungs on you, Bobby. Likely saved your life.”
The two sailors with Awbrey relieved Bell of his burden by each lifting one of the injured man’s legs and draping his arms over their shoulders.
Awbrey and Bell followed as they went down one more dimly lit corridor to where a hatch had been opened to the outside. Soft sunlight poured in like the rays through a cathedral’s windows.
They emerged on the port side of the ship, thirty feet from the fantail, which was fully out of the water by then. Bell could see one of the ship’s propeller shafts and bronze screw. Out across theharbor, theSaarlandwas building up speed, disregarding all maritime safety rules on her quest to be free. Seeing her charging from her anchorage with smoke pouring from her tall funnels was all the proof Bell needed to know his guess about the explosion had been correct.
Had they so chosen, Rath’s band of cutthroats could have put another round into theMastiff, but they didn’t. Instead, the battleship steamed past the stricken destroyer, her massive bow wave further destabilizing the already mortally wounded ship. Two men lost their balance when the wave struck and fell into the water below. One surfaced, sputtering. The other never came up.
“We’ve got to get away before her final plunge,” one of the dozen or so survivors said.
“Not to worry,” replied Awbrey, wise beyond his years. “TheMastiffis longer than the harbor is deep. Any minute now…”
Just as those words left his lips the bow struck the bottom of the harbor, sending a shiver through the hull that nearly sent another man tumbling off had a buddy not yanked him back by the arm.
“She’ll be steady for a bit,” the officer said, his eyes down the channel to where theSaarlandcontinued to steam away.
Bell, too, looked after the fleeing battleship, the bitterness of failure like ash in his mouth. Awbrey believed the deadly vessel would be used to further harass shipping trying to reach his island nation in an effort to starve the British into a peace deal. Bell knew that wouldn’t be the case. He felt certain Rath was heading to New York in order to shell the city and push the United States into joining the war, not knowing Wilson was about to make that decision anyway.
He also felt certain that if the American people believed the Germans had launched an unprovoked attack on the homeland, theywould not settle for a negotiated armistice, but would demand the war not end until Germany had been burned to the ground.
He had to find a way to stop Rath, but his only real chance lay mortally wounded in a harbor more than two thousand miles from home.
