Crescent Dawn (52 page)

From his high perch, Pitt could see water swirling around the bottom of the forward starboard tank. He could only hope that rising waters would spill over into the port tank and dilute the explosive force of both stockpiles. But time was not on his side.

Scanning the deck of the
Ibn Battuta
, he spotted Giordino already sneaking back to the NUMA submersible. He had been replaced at the stern rail by a handful of the dredger’s crew. Awakened by the racket, they stood staring dumbfounded at the physical carnage their ship was inflicting on the huge tanker just a few feet in front of them.

As the cutter head bore even with the bridge, Pitt stepped to the helm and as a final gesture cut the rudder fifteen degrees to port. Already slowed by the incoming water, the tanker might travel another half mile, Pitt guessed, before exploding, and he wanted to ensure that she was headed to the center of the channel. The head was still grinding across the hull with a metallic din when Pitt abandoned the bridge, hurrying down the stairwell to grab Lazlo and get off the ship.

He didn’t wait around to watch the fate of the yacht. With Maria still screaming in the
Sultana
captain’s ear, the captain tucked the yacht up against the tanker’s hull, hoping to avoid a direct collision with the dredger. He quickly noticed the subtle bank of the tanker as it eased to port, giving him a slim hope of escape. The turn allowed the yacht to pass just clear of the dredger’s boom, as the cutter head was pulled free of the
Dayan
. But there was no room to escape the head itself.

The masticating ball reached the bow of the yacht, striking the starboard hull. Still being dragged like a rag doll, the yacht was pulled up and across the top of the cutter head. The cutter easily chewed a six-foot swath across the underside of the yacht’s fiberglass hull before decapitating its whirling twin propellers. The yacht’s thumping motors fell silent as the engine compartment flooded, and the yacht began settling by its stern.

The captain stood frozen in shock, his hands still glued to the wheel. But Maria showed no such restraint. Retrieving a Beretta pistol from her purse, she stepped close to the captain, pressed the muzzle against his ear, and pulled the trigger.

Not waiting for his body to hit the floor, she scurried to the yacht’s bow to free them from the tanker once and for all.

B
Y THE TIME THAT PITT REACHED THE MAIN DECK, THE tanker had already developed a noticeable list. The cutter head had ripped a two-hundred-foot gouge down its length, slashing into every one of the starboard storage tanks. A full crew of men with pumps couldn’t have staved off the flooding for long. It was exactly the effect Pitt had hoped for, but now he had to find a way off for Lazlo and himself.

As the tanker rapidly leaned to starboard, Pitt figured it would be either a short hop down the stairway or, if necessary, a jump from the rail. As he approached Lazlo, he was surprised to see the yacht still clinging alongside. From the angled position of the tanker’s deck, he was able to peer right down onto the yacht and see the entangled stairway impaled in it. Of greater interest was the figure of Maria standing on the bow, wielding a pistol. She fired several shots into the twisted link of steel that held the ramp together, then spotted Pitt a short distance above her.

“Die with the ship!” she yelled, aiming the gun at Pitt and pulling the trigger.

Pitt was a hair faster, diving to the deck alongside Lazlo as the bullet whizzed over his head.

“Come on, Lieutenant, it’s time we find another exit,” he said to the commando.

Lazlo struggled to turn his way, looking at Pitt with glassy eyes that were barely open. Pitt suddenly realized the severity of his wound, seeing the bloody shoulder that Lazlo had managed to patch with a bandage. Every second counted now, though, so Pitt reached over and took a firm grip of the back of Lazlo’s collar.

“Hang on, partner,” he said.

Ignoring Maria, Pitt sprang to a crouch, then backpedaled up the inclined deck, dragging Lazlo behind him. Maria immediately fired, peppering a handful of shots in their direction. Her shots struck close but missed both men before Pitt had them safely out of sight. Regaining a touch of strength, Lazlo had Pitt pull him to his feet. The commando’s jacket was soaked red, and a trail of blood had followed him across the deck.

The tanker suddenly lurched beneath their feet, listing almost thirty degrees to starboard. Pitt quickly realized that their most immediate danger wasn’t from the pending explosives.

“Can you climb with me?” Pitt asked Lazlo.

The tough commando nodded, and with an arm around Pitt for support he took shaky steps up the deck.

Behind them, Maria continued shooting, her target again the battered stairway. Several more well-aimed shots at the ramp’s joint finally weakened the metal, which had bent sharply with the sinking tanker. Stomping the ramp with her foot, its joint finally broke free, releasing the upper stairway to swing hard against the ship.

Free at last, Maria sneered at the tanker from the bow of the slowly sinking yacht. The tanker would drift well clear before exploding, and she might have time to make it back to the bridge for safety. At the very least, she thought, Pitt and Lazlo would die with the ship.

She might have been right, only she failed to account for the
Dayan
’s own bit of vindictive wrath.

F
ROM THE TWENTIETH FLOOR OF HIS HIGH-RISE OFFICE situated on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus, Ozden Celik watched the events unfold with increasing dread. He had barely been able to make out the shadow of the tanker when it first approached Istanbul under the faint light of dawn. But the slowly graying sky had expanded his panoramic view until the towering minarets of Süleymaniye Mosque were clearly visible across the waters of the strait.

With a tripod-mounted pair of high-magnification binoculars, he focused on the
Dayan
just as its emergency lifeboat was released off the stern. He watched in dismay as the tanker crossed under the Galata Bridge while the
Sultana
appeared alongside in an apparent gun battle. Celik could feel his heart pounding when he saw the tanker complete a wide turn and reemerge beneath the far end of the bridge.

“No, you are supposed to run ashore by the mosque!” he cursed aloud at the sluggish tanker.

His frustration mounted when repeated phone calls to Maria went unanswered. He lost sight of the yacht when the tanker turned, its high profile obscuring the smaller vessel. Holding his breath, Celik hoped that the yacht had turned and fled up the Golden Horn to escape the blast, which he knew was now imminent. But his eyes bulged in horror when the
Dayan
passed close to the dredge ship, then turned toward the channel, revealing that the yacht was still alongside its starboard flank.

Focusing the binoculars, he saw his sister on the yacht’s bow, shooting a gun first at the tanker, then at the metal stairway. Celik couldn’t help but notice the tanker listing precariously above her.

“Get away! Get away!” Celik shouted to his sister from two miles away.

The eyepieces dug into his brow as he watched the scene with horror. Maria at last succeeded in freeing the yacht from the stairway’s clasp, but it didn’t move far. Celik had no idea that the yacht had been stripped of its propellers and was itself sinking. Baffled by the sight, he couldn’t understand why the yacht hung close to the heavily listing tanker.

From his vantage point across the strait, Celik could not hear the symphony of creaks and groans that emanated from the bowels of the tanker as its center of gravity was upset. The massive flooding across the
Dayan
’s entire length augmented the starboard list until the deck rose like a steep mountain. Crashing sounds erupted throughout the tanker as dishes, furniture, and equipment lost their fight with gravity and tumbled against the starboard bulkheads.

As the starboard rail touched the water, the hulking tanker wallowed completely up onto its side, holding the awkward position for several seconds. The
Dayan
could have broken up or simply sank on its side, but it instead held together and resumed its death roll with a flourish.

Still standing on the bow of the yacht, Maria felt the shadow of the tanker cross her body as the ship began to flip over. Drifting just a few yards from the bigger
Dayan
, the yacht was well within its reach. There would be no escaping its destructive blow.

Maria looked up and raised an arm, as if to ward off the blow of the giant tanker as it rolled over. Instead, she was flattened like an insect. The capsizing
Dayan
slammed the water’s surface, engulfing the yacht while creating a ten-foot wave that crashed toward the shoreline, tossing the
Ibn Battuta
about like a rowboat. The dark, barnacle-encrusted hull of the tanker filled the horizon, its mammoth bronze propeller spinning idly in the morning sky. Muffled bangs from collapsing bulkheads mixed with rushing water echoed throughout the hull as the overturned ship slowly began to settle by the bow.

Celik gripped his binoculars with trembling hands as he watched his sister die beneath the weight of the capsized tanker. Frozen in shock, he stared unblinking before his emotions brimmed over. Heaving the tripod across his office with a wail, he fell to the carpet, then covered his eyes and sobbed uncontrollably.

C
ELIK WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WHO WATCHED IN HORROR as the tanker capsized. Giordino was just climbing into the
Bullet
when he heard a crashing sound behind him and turned to see the
Dayan
turn turtle atop the yacht. He quickly sealed the rear hatch as the resulting wave barreled into the
Ibn Battuta
, carrying the submersible up and away from the dredge ship.

Giordino quickly fired up the diesel engines and motored toward the tanker. He thought anxiously of Pitt, who had waved at him from the bridge of the tanker just minutes before. The bridge was now far underwater, and all he could see was the cold, lifeless underbelly of the Israeli tanker.

Ignoring the danger that the tanker might explode at any time, he raced along its near side. Surprisingly little debris had floated away when the ship turned over, and he was able to speed quickly down its length to search for bodies in the channel. He knew that Pitt was like a dolphin in the water. If he had somehow survived the capsizing, there was at least a chance that he had swum clear.

Nearing the submerged bow, Giordino swung around and motored back close to the hull, either not knowing or caring that the timed explosives would detonate in less than two minutes. The waters ahead of him remained empty as he passed the tanker’s midsection and approached the stern. With a heavy heart, he reluctantly considered the notion that his old friend had not made it off alive.

Nudging the throttles higher, he started to turn away when he noticed a pair of ropes stretched over the hull. Oddly, the lines appeared to run from the ship’s submerged port rail up the hull and over the keel, a short distance in front of the propeller. With a glimmer of hope in his eye, Giordino accelerated briskly, sweeping around the tanker’s broad stern, which was now rising high into the air.

Reaching the tanker’s opposite side, he spotted the ropes dangling high from the keel, but the hull was otherwise empty. Then barely fifty yards away in the water he spotted two objects. Turning instantly, he raced closer, seeing with joy that it was Pitt towing an injured Lazlo away from the ship.

Giordino sped in closer, then expertly reversed engines to quickly drift alongside. Pitt hoisted Lazlo onto a pontoon, then shouted at Giordino as the latter moved to open the hatch.

“No time,” Pitt yelled. “Get us out of here.”

Giordino nodded, then waited until Pitt climbed aboard and wrapped an arm around Lazlo before accelerating. The two men were tossed and splashed as the
Bullet
charged quickly ahead, bounding over the harbor waters. Giordino turned and sped toward the Galata Bridge, determining that it would provide the closest cover.

The
Bullet
was a hundred yards shy of the bridge when a deep thump sounded across the channel. Though a portion of the explosive material had fallen to the seabed when the
Dayan
capsized, nearly half of the fuel oil and most of the HMX remained lodged in the two forward storage tanks. But with the ship sinking by the bow, the flooded tanks were almost entirely underwater, greatly diluting the blast’s impact.

A quick series of successive thumps sounded as the timed fuzes detonated, and then a huge explosion ripped open the tanker’s hull. The concussion echoed across the hills and streets of Istanbul like a sonic boom. A fountain of white water blew from the tanker’s underside, spraying chunks of steel and debris a hundred feet into the air. The jagged chunks fell to earth across a quarter-mile swath, raining down in a deadly hail from the heavens.

Yet the terrifying blast proved mostly benign. Due to the angle of the sinking tanker, the main force of the blast was centered ahead of it and toward the Bosphorus. Pitt’s last-second course adjustment had diverted the impact away from shore and toward a wide patch of empty water.

As the steel and debris splashed into the bay, a loud creak echoed from the tanker as the perforated section of hull gave way. The decimated bow broke free and promptly sank quickly to the channel bottom while the remaining hull lingered on the surface a few moments before foundering.

Bobbing beneath a span of the Galata Bridge, Giordino climbed out of the
Bullet
’s cabin to check on his passengers.

“Thanks for the lift,” Pitt said as he attended to Lazlo.

“You boys were cutting it a bit close there,” Giordino replied.

“We got lucky. Maria Celik wanted to use us for target practice on the starboard rail, so we hiked up the deck. Happened to find a pair of lines that had been lowered over the port side, and we were scrambling down them as the ship turned turtle. We managed to make it over the keel, then slid down the other side to avoid the yacht.”