Iceberg

Pitt sighed. 'We listen.'

Sandecker looked at him. 'Shut down our engines?'

Pitt nodded.

When Sandecker's hands went back on the wheel, they were white-knuckled, his mouth tight and drawn.

'What you're suggesting is one hell of a gamble. All one of those Sterlings had to do is balk at the starter button and we're a sitting duck.' He nodded toward the galley.

'Are you thinking of her?'

'I'm thinking of all of us. Stand or run, the chances are we get deep-sixed anyway. The last dollar bet of the gamblerall it what you wul, but however remote, it's a chance.'

Sandecker cast a searching stare at the tall man standing in the doorway. He could see that the eyes were determined and the chin set.

'You mentioned two advantages.'

'The unexpected,' Pitt said quietly. 'We know what they're out to do. They may have radar, but they can't read our minds. That is our second and most important advantage-the unexpected move.'

Pitt looked at his Doxa watch. One-thirty, still early in the afternoon. Sandecker had cut the engines, and Pitt had to fight to stay alert-the sudden silence and the calm of the fog began a creeping course to dull his mind. Above, the sun was a faded white disc that brightened and dimmed as the uneven layers of mist rolled overhead. Pitt inhaled slowly and evenly to keep a sensation of wet and chill from penetrating his lungs.

He shivered in his clothes, turned damp from the fine sparkling drops bunched in clusters on the material. He sat there on the forward hatch cover waiting until his ears lost the roar of the Sterlings, waiting until his hearing picked up the engines of the hydroplane. He didn't have to wait long. He soon tuned in the steady beat of the hydroplane as the explosions through its exhaust manifolds increased in volume.

Everything had to go perfect the first time. There could be no second chance. The radar operator on the hydroplane was probably at this instant reacting to the fact that the blip on his scope had lost headway and had stopped dead in the water. By the time he notified his commander and a decision was reached, it would be too late for a course change. The hydroplane's superior speed would have put its bow almost on top of The Grimsi.

Pitt re-checked the containers lying in a neat row beside him for perhaps the tenth time. It had to be the poorest excuse for an arsenal ever concocted, he mused.

One of the containers was a gallon glass jar Tidi had scrounged from the galley. The other three were battered and rusty gas cans in various sizes that Pitt had found in a locker aft of the engine room. Except for their contents, the cloth wicks protruding from the cap openings and the holes punched through the top of the cans, the four vessels had little in common.

The hydroplane was close now-very close. Pitt turned to the wheelhouse and shouted, 'Now!' Then he lit the wick of the glass jar with his lighter and braced himself for the sudden surge of acceleration he prayed would come.

Sandecker pushed the starter button. The 420-lip Sterlings coughed once, twice, then burst into rpm's with a roar. He swung the wheel over to starboard hard and jammed the throttles forward. The Grimsi took off over the water like a racehorse with an arrow imbedded in its rectum. The admiral held on grimly, clutching the wheel and expecting to collide with the hydroplane bow on. Then suddenly as a spoke flew off the wheel and clattered against the compass, he became aware that bullets were striking the wheelhouse. He could still see nothing, but he knew the crew of the hydroplane were firing blindly through the fog, guided only by the commands of the radar operator.

To Pitt the tension was unbearable. His gaze alternated from the wall of fog in front of the bow to the jar in his hand. The flame on the wick was getting dangerously close to the tapered neck and the gasoline sloshing behind the glass. Five seconds, no more, then he would have to heave the jar over the side. He began counting.

Five came and went. Six, seven. He cocked his arm.

Eight. Then the hydroplane leaped from the mist on an opposite course, passing no more than ten feet from The Grimsi's railing. Pitt hurled the jar.

The next instant stayed etched in Pitts memory the rest of his days. The frightful image of a tall, yellow- haired man in a leather windbreaker gripping the bridge railing, watching in shocked fascination that deathly thing sailing through the damp air toward him.

Then the jar burst on the bulkhead beside him and he vanished in a blast of searing bright flame. Pitt saw no more. The two boats had raced past each other and the hydroplane was gone.

Pitt had no time to reflect. Quickly he lit the wick on one of the gas cans as Sandecker swept The Grimsi on a hard-a-port, hundred-and-eighty-degree swing into the hydroplane's wake. The worm had turned. The hydroplane had slowed, and a pulsating yellowish-red glow could be easily seen through the gray mist. The admiral headed straight for it. He was standing straight as a ramrod now. It was certain that anybody who might have been shooting at The Grimsi thirty seconds ago would not be standing on a flaming deck in the hope of drilling an old scow full of holes. Nor was there now any possibility of the hydroplane ramming anything until the fire was out. 'hit 'em again,' he yelled to Pitt through the shattered forward window of the wheelhouse. 'Give the bastards a taste of their own medicine.'

Pitt didn't answer. He barely had time to throw the flaming can before Sandecker spun the wheel and turned-across the hydroplane's bow for a third running attack. Twice more they raced from the fog, and twice more Pitt lobbed his dented cans of searing destruction until his makeshift arsenal was used up.

And then it hit The Grimsi, a thunderous shock wave that knocked Pitt to the deck and blew out what glass was left in the windows around Sandecker. The hydroplane had erupted in a volcanic roar of fire and flaming debris, instantly becoming a blazing inferno from end to end.

The echoes had returned from the cliffs on shore and left again when Pitt pushed himself shakily to his feet and stared incredulously at the hydroplane. What had once been a superbly designed boat was now a shambles and burning furiously down to the water's edge. He staggered to the wheelhouse-his sense of balance temporarily crippled by the ringing in his ears from the concussion-as Sandecker slowed The Grimsi and drifted past the fiery wreck.

'See any survivors?' Sandecker asked. He had a thin slice on one cheek that trickled blood.

Pitt shook his head. 'They've had it,' he said callously. 'Even if any of the crew made it to the water alive, they'd die of exposure before we could find them in this soup.'

Tidi entered the wheelhouse, one hand nursing a purplish bruise on her forehead, her expression one of total bewilderment. 'What… what happened?' was all she could stamner.

'It wasn't the fuel tanks,' Sandecker said. 'Of that much I'm certain.'

'I agree,' Pitt said grimly. 'They must have had explosives lying above decks that got in the way of my last homemade firebomb.'

'Rather careless of them.' Sandecker's voice was almost cheerful. 'The unexpected move, that's what you said, and you were right. It never occurred to the dumb bastards that cornered mice would fight like tigers.'

'At least we evened up the score a bit.' Pitt should have felt sick, but his conscience didn't trouble him. Revenge-he and Sandecker had acted out of desire for self-preservation and revenge. They had made a down payment to avenge Hunnewell and the others, but the final accounting was a long way off. Strange, he thought, how easy it was to kill men you didn't know, whose lives you knew nothing about. 'Your concern for life, I fear, will be your defeat,' Dr. Jonsson had said.

'I beg you, my friend, do not hesitate when the moment arrives.' Pitt felt a grim satisfaction. The moment had arrived and he hadn't hesitated. He'd had no time even to think about the pain and death he was inflicting. He wondered to himself if this subconscious toleration of killing a total stranger was the factor that made wars acceptable to the human race.

Tidi's hushed voice broke his thoughts. 'They're dead; they're all dead.' She began to sob, her hands pressed tightly to her face, her body shaking from side to side. 'You murdered them, burned them to death in cold blood.'

'I beg your pardon, lady,' Pitt said coldly. 'Open your eyes! Take a good look around you. These holes in the woodwork weren't caused by woodpeckers. To quote from appropriate cliches from every western movie ever made-they drew first, or we had no choice, marshal, it was them or us. You've got the script all wrong, dearheart. We're the good guys. It was their intention to coldbloodedly murder us.'