“Come on, you dumb shits,” he snapped, “unless you wanna be toast.”
George looked up in the rafters, the survival suits hanging there. They could keep a man afloat and warm for days, it was claimed. “The suits…”
“Fuck the suits,” Saks said. “Now move!”
The corridor was filling with smoke. It was more of a mist than anything, but it was getting heavier by the moment. The air had an awful scorched, acrid stink to it.
They followed Saks up to the deck, donning the vests as they went.
“What happened?” Cushing asked.
“Are we sinking?” Soltz wanted to know. “Are the lifeboats ready?”
“Barge slammed into us, slammed into us hard. We’re taking on water,” Saks said. “Fucking barge tore into the forward hold, lit up that diesel fuel in there. Amidships and forward hold are an inferno. The rest of those drums go and…”
He didn’t need to say more. They could pretty much envision what it would be like sitting on a stick of dynamite.
The first explosion rang out when they reached deck.
26
Fabrini felt the explosion before he actually heard it. He and Menhaus were standing by one of the graders, lost in the ever-present fog. The impact threw them face first to the deck. They heard the muffled, mushrooming roar while they were airborne, followed by the sound of shattering glass and men screaming.
And while all of that was bad, the worst thing was the ship itself. It shuddered with a heavy, crawling roll, seeming to shift alarmingly further port without righting itself, flinging men across the decks like jackstraw.
“This can’t be happening,” Menhaus kept saying as he pulled himself to his feet, wiped blood from his lips, and was spilled to the deck again by the violent heaving motion of the ship.
“Oh, it’s happening,” Fabrini said. “It’s happening just like I fucking knew it would.”
Containers stacked amidships had been reduced to shrapnel as the hatch covers beneath them were blown free, gouts of flame raining over the spar deck. It lit things up just fine. Encased in the luminous fog, the flames reflecting against it… the ship looked like something that had burst the gates of Hell.
Saks came charging forward, moving with an almost feline grace despite the jerking decks. “Give a hand with the lifeboats, you pussies,” he called out. “To the boat deck, move your asses! Come on, Fabrini, you fucking wop, move it!”
Menhaus grabbed his arm as he rushed by. “Saks? It isn’t happening, is it? Tell me it’s not happening! I got a wife… I don’t wanna die out there! I don’t wanna die!”
Saks shoved him to the deck. “Listen, you fucking baby! Your mommy’s titty ain’t nowhere in sight, so quit acting like a shit and lend a hand or so help me I’ll-”
There was a high pitched metallic groaning from below and the decks trembled, dropping Saks on top of Menhaus. He crawled free.
“Move it! Move it!” he shouted. “Fabrini, you fucking cock mite, what the hell are you standing around about? Lend a hand, goddamn you!”
The decks were mass confusion as crewmen and mates rushed about in the swirling mist, calling out orders, clearing debris, and desperately stripping tarps from lifeboats.
The ship continued to drift with a jolting, uneasy motion, leaning further and further port as the fire raged and the sea rushed in.
27
Gosling jogged across the lurching decks, climbing the see-sawing ladders to the pilothouse. The air was thick and pungent with belching black smoke and the stink of charred wood.
He saw the deck lights flicker in that cloistral fog.
Go out.
The ship was plunged into seething blackness. Men started to scream again and he wondered if they’d ever stopped. The world was a hive of noise. Timbers crunching, metal creaking and groaning with fatigue. Voices were calling for help. Voices were arguing. Grown men were shrieking like babes and he wanted very much to join in.
Then the lights came back on, flickered with a dim strobe effect, but finally caught.
As he entered the pilothouse, or was thrown into it, he saw Morse at the radio. He was shouting into it. “MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY!” he bellered. “THIS IS AN SOS! THIS IS AN SOS! WE’RE SINKING… OUR POSITION…” he tossed the mic against the bulkhead. The lights kept flickering. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! We don’t have any goddamn juice!”
Gosling grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. “Captain, we have to get off her,” he stammered. “The sea’s coming in too fast for the pumps… if the rest of those drums go-”
“I’ve seen the Fourth of July, Mister, I know what’ll happen. Let’s get off this bitch. Lower those boats.”
Gosling had already given that order, just as he’d given the order for the men to don their survival suits just as they’d been trained to do… but in the confusion and panic with the ship yawing and rolling severely, well, he figured most never heard.
“Let’s go, First,” the captain said.
He took the lead, Gosling at his heels, making for the hatch… but never got there.
A tremendous ear-shattering roar ripped the night into shreds. The deck beneath them heaved and buckled. The pilothouse collapsed in a rain of splintered wood, glass, and twisted metal.
Gosling crawled from the wreckage, bleeding from a dozen gashes in his face. He found what was left of Morse: he’d been split in two by a beam.
It happened that quick.
Gosling made it out to the ladder, started climbing down the superstructure, deck by deck. The fog had thinned now, it seemed, been replaced by funneling black smoke. He almost made the spar deck when another explosion tossed him through the air. Girders and flaming sheet metal collapsed on top of him.
He tried to pull himself free, but his foot snagged.
“Help!” he called out. “Over here! Lend a hand!”
28
George, Soltz, and Cushing were gripping the portside handrail for dear life as they’d been instructed by one of the mates when the latest series of explosions barked in the night. They were thrown to the deck, but they all saw what happened.
And what a sight it was.
The explosions hit with more force than the previous ones. Like cannon shots. Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! The decks reeled and buckled with a cacophonous screech of tormented metal, splitting open with great jagged rents that emitted eruptions of boiling flames. George saw the hatch cover over the starboard cargo bay actually bulge momentarily like a balloon suddenly filled with air before bursting its latches with a thundering boom and shooting into the sky like a rocket. Great rolling clouds of mushrooming fire and black greasy smoke poured into the sky, mixing with that noxious fog into a seething storm of fumes that sucked the oxygen from the air.
“Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God,” Soltz whimpered.
George held on to him and Cushing, almost afraid to let go. Flames licked over the decks now, engulfing
