'Thirty seconds to firing,' the voice droned over the intercom.
There was unmistakable panic in the radio operator's eyes as he thrust the message into Parotkin's hands. It read:
USS DRAGONFISH TO USSR MIKHAIL KURKOV DERELICT VESSEL RMS TITANIC UNDER PROTECTION OF UNITED STATES NAVY ANY OVERT ACT OF AGGRESSION ON YOUR PART WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE REPEAT IMMEDIATE RETALIATORY ATTACK
----SIGNED CAPTAIN USS SUBMARINE DRAGONFISH
'Ten seconds and counting,' came the disembodied voice of the missile technician over the speaker. 'Seven . . . six..' .
Parotkin looked up with the clear, unworried expression of a man who has just received a million rubles through the mail.
'. . . five . . . four . . . three . . .'
'Stop the countdown,' he ordered in precise tones, so there could be no misunderstanding, no misinterpretation.
'Stop countdown,' the first officer repeated into the bridge phone, his face beaded with sweat. 'And secure the missile.'
'Good,' Parotkin said curtly. A smile spread across his face. 'Not exactly what I was told to do, but I think Soviet Naval authorities will see it my way. After all, the Mikhail Kurkov is the finest ship of her kind in the world. We wouldn't want to throw her away because of a senseless and foolish order from a man who is undoubtedly dead, now would we?'
'I am in complete accord.' The first officer smiled-back. 'Our superiors will also be interested to learn that in spite of all our sophisticated detection gear, we failed to discover the presence of an alien submarine practically on our doorstep. American undersea penetration methods must truly be highly advanced.'
'I feel sure the Americans will be just as interested in learning that our oceanographic research vessels carry concealed missiles.'
'Your orders, sir?'
Parotkin watched the Stoski missile as it sank back into its tube. 'Set a course for home.' He turned and peered across the sea in the direction of the Titanic. What had happened to Prevlov and his men? Were they alive or dead? Would he ever know the true facts?
Overhead the clouds began turning from gray to white and the wind dropped to a brisk breeze. A solitary sea gull emerged from the brightening sky and began circling the Soviet ship. Then, as if heeding a more urgent call to the south, it dipped its wings and flew off toward the Titanic.
70
'We're done in,' Spencer said in a voice so low that Pitt wasn't sure he heard him.
'Say again.'
'We're done in,' he repeated through slack lips. His face was smeared with oil and a rustlike slime. 'It's a hopeless case. We've plugged most of the holes Drummer opened with his cutting torch, but the sea has battered the hull all to hell and the old girl is taking water faster than a sieve.'
'We've got to keep her on the surface until the tugs return,' Pitt said. 'If they can add their pumps to ours we can stay ahead of the leaks until the damage can be patched'
'It's a damned miracle that she didn't go down hours ago.
How much time can you give me?' Pitt demanded.
Spencer stared wearily down at the water sloshing around his ankles. 'The pump engines are running on fumes now. When their fuel tanks are sucked dry, the pumps will die. A cold, hard, sad fact.' He looked up into Pitt's face. 'An hour, maybe an hour and a half. I can't promise any more than that when the pumps go.'
'And if you had enough fuel to keep the diesels going?'
'I could probably keep her on the surface without assistance until noon,' Spencer answered.
'How much fuel will it take?'
'Two hundred gallons would do nicely,
They both looked up as Giordino plunged down a companionway and splashed into the water covering the deck of the No. 4 boiler room.
'Talk about frustration,' he moaned. 'There are eight aircraft up there, circling the ship. Six Navy fighters and two radar recon planes. I've tried everything except standing on my head and exposing myself and all they do is wave every time they make a pass.'
Pitt shook his head in mock sadness. 'Remind me never to play charades on your team.'
'I'm open for suggestions,' Giordino said. 'Suppose you tell me how to notify some guy who's flying by at four hundred miles an hour that we need help, and lots of it?'
Pitt scratched his chin. 'There's got to be a practical solution.'
'Sure,' Giordino said sarcastically. 'Just call the Automobile Club for a service call.'
Pitt and Spencer stared with widened eyes at each other. The same thought had suddenly occurred to them in the same instant.
'Brilliance,' Spencer said, 'sheer brilliance.'
'If we can't get to a service station,' Pitt said grinning, 'then the service station must come to us.'
Giordino looked lost. 'Fatigue has queered your minds,' he said. 'Where are you going to find a pay phone? What will you use for a radio? The Russians smashed ours, the one in the helicopter is soaked through, and Prevlov's transmitter caught two bullets during the brawl.' He shook his head 'And you can forget those flyboys upstairs. Without a brush and bucket of paint, there's no way to get a message across to their eager little minds.'
'That's your problem,' Spencer said loftily. 'You always go around looking up when you should be looking down.'
Pitt leaned over and picked up a sledgehammer that was lying among a pile of tools. 'This should do the trick,' he said casually, swinging the sledge against one of the Titanic's hull plates, sending a cacophony of echoes throughout the boiler room.
Spencer dropped wearily onto a raised boiler grating. 'They ain't going to believe this.'
'Oh I don't know,' Pitt managed between swings. 'Jungle telegraph. It always used to work in the Congo.'
'Giordino was probably right. Fatigue has queered our minds.'
Pitt ignored Spencer and kept hammering away. After a few minutes, he paused a moment to get a new grip on the sledge handle. 'Let us hope and pray that one of the natives has his ear to the ground,' he said between pants. And then he went on hammering.
Of the two sonar operators who were on watch aboard the submarine Dragonfish, the one tuned into the passive listening system was leaning forward toward his panel, his head cocked to one side, his mind intent on analyzing the strange beat that emitted through the earphones. Then he gave a slight shake of his head and held up the earphones for the officer who was standing at his shoulder.
'At first I thought it was a hammerhead shark,' the sonarman said. 'They make a funny pounding noise. But this has a definite metallic ring to it.'
The officer pressed the headset against one ear. Then his eyes took on a puzzled look. 'It sounds like an SOS.'
'That's how I read it, sir. Someone is knocking out a distress call against their hull.'
'Where is it coming from?'
The sonarman turned a miniature steering wheel that activated the sensors in the bow of the sub and eyed the panel in front of him. 'The contact is three-zero-seven degrees, two thousand yards north of west. It has to be the Titanic, sir. With the departure of the Mikhail Kurkov, she's the only surface craft left in the area.'
The officer handed back the earphones, turned from the sonar compartment, and made his way up a wide curving stairway into the conning tower, the nerve center of the Dragonfish. He approached a medium-height, round-faced man with a graying mustache, who wore the oak leaves of a commander on his collar.
'It's the Titanic all right, sir. She's hammering out an SOS.'
'There's no mistake?'
'No, sir. The contact is firm.' The officer paused and then asked, 'Are we going to respond?'
