going on, Mister?”
“We came over hard,” Gosling told him. “Something… something bearing down on us.”
“What?”
The question was addressed to Gosling, but Iverson couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Ghosts, sir,” he said, tittering under his breath. “Just ghosts.”
23
The captain’s Christian name was Arlen Morse.
The sea was in his blood and always had been. When other boys had wanted to be Major League ball players or pilots or locomotive engineers, Morse had only wanted to be a sailor. He wanted to be ship’s master and have a craft of his own. Something big, something powerful, something important. In his twenty years in the Navy he’d helmed destroyers, tankers, minesweepers, patrol boats, light cruisers, and even tugs. It was his life and he wanted no other.
Then one day the Navy soured for him. He’d been a petty officer. Then, through ROTC, had made ensign. He climbed through the ranks to captain almost effortlessly. He did what he was told and in the way he was told to do it. There were only two types of men in any navy – those who followed orders and went by the book and those that didn’t. And those that didn’t went nowhere.
Morse played the game by the rules.
And in the end, the rules turned on him.
He had command of his own ship but that was it. Because he was not an Annapolis graduate he would never go beyond where he already was. His career was over. And this is why he left the Navy. Took his retirement at twenty years and went into the commercial service. He had no regrets. Life had been good to him.
Then came this voyage.
Like any other sailor, he’d heard stories and yarns from day one. Some sailors, it seemed, were more afraid of the water than kids were of dark closets. They made up stories. Missing ships were snatched by malefic forces or gobbled up by sea monsters. Howling winds were the moaning, disembodied voices of the drowned dead. Odd patches of mist were ghost ships. Stories of spooks and monsters and haunted seas were numerous.
Every sailor had a story.
But they were just that.
Stories.
But now Morse was really beginning to wonder.
24
The next bad thing happened toward morning.
The night seeped by like tar, slow and drawn-out, just as black and enveloping. Every man on board wanted daylight, hoping, praying maybe that it would burn off the fog and bring the world back to them. For everyone, even the ones who had not witnessed any of the true madness with their own eyes, was certain that they were lost now, lost in some terrifying plane of madness. Maybe it was the stories circulating like colds bugs, tall tales certainly no worse than the raw, unflinching reality of the situation. And maybe it was just something every man felt right down to his marrow, a sense that Hell had unzipped beneath them and swallowed them whole.
So the night moved toward day.
According to the ship’s digital chronometer, it was just after four a.m. when the shit duly landed and sprayed in every conceivable direction. Gosling, unable to sleep, unable to close his eyes without seeing immense mutant sea worms, was in the pilothouse. Pierce was at the wheel. At the chart table Gosling was drifting off, his eyes finally closing.
Then Pierce started shouting, spinning the wheel and moving the rudder hard to the right. About that time, the deckhand out on watch was on the intercom: “Barge… bearing down on us! We’re gonna collide! Hard over! Hard over! She’s running with no fucking lights on, no fucking lights…”
All of this happened within the span of a few seconds and by then Gosling was on his feet. He saw the mystery barge on the radar screen. Managed to see it, open his mouth… and then the barge slammed into the Mara Corday’s bow, port side, and he was thrown to the deck. The barge was a thousand-footer and carried enough iron and weight on her to cut a liner in two. She struck the Mara Corday doing 14 knots, shearing open the freighter’s stem, her own bow slicing into the forward cargo hold… the special double-hulled dangerous cargo hold which contained nearly 100 tons of hi-speed diesel fuel bound for French Guiana. Over two hundred barrels were shattered, their contents flooding the hold. Within seconds, the Mara Corday began settling to port. The barge, still under full thrust from its twin-screws, tore itself free from the freighter, swinging around and ramming her amidships with its stern. Immediately, millions of gallons of water flooded into the port holds. The list to port grew worse.
The initial impact had compromised the integrity of the superstructure, port-side decks collapsing beneath it. There was a screech of torn metal and the pilothouse yawned over a few feet, the windows shattering, the decks buckling.
Picking himself up, Gosling saw Pierce was down, his face covered with blood. Morse came stumbling through the door that led down to his private office.
All Gosling could say was: “Skipper… we got jeopardy…”
25
George Ryan came awake when he hit the floor.
In his ears, there was a phone ringing and ringing.
He opened his eyes slowly, wondering vaguely in the back of his mind who could possibly be calling at this time of night and what the hell he was doing on the floor. Then he came fully awake and felt the heave of the ship and realized where he was. The second thing he realized was that something was wrong. Dangerously wrong.
He could hear men shouting above the damned ringing.
Cushing was shaking Soltz. “Wake up, dammit!” he was shouting. “Fire! There’s a fire on board!”
George was on his feet then, mechanically pulling on his boots and pants and sweater. He slid his slicker on over this and finally sleep was slapped from his brain and reality insinuated.
“What? What’s going on?” Soltz said.
“Fire,” Cushing said as calmly as possible. But his voice wavered, trembled with anything but calm. “Fire… I think we’re on fire.. . we hit something…”
But by then, they could already feel the uncomfortable list to port. Smell something like smoke.
“What happened?” George asked.
“Hell if I know,” Cushing admitted. “I came awake hanging out of my fucking bunk, hearing that goddamn alarm. I heard someone shouting fire. We better get on deck.”
Soltz moved quickly then. Much quicker than either man could’ve imagined he’d move. By the time they’d gathered themselves together, Soltz was fully dressed and had his suitcase in hand.
“Jesus, nobody said we were sinking,” George said.
“I’m not leaving this behind. All my things are in here.”
Saks was barreling up the corridor as they went out. He looked angry. Maybe frightened, too, but probably just angry that he was frightened. He was carrying a heap of life jackets. “Put these on,” he said, throwing the life vests to the floor.
“Is it that bad?” Cushing asked.
