The Last Airship (7 page)

For
each hundred feet they flew towards the Hayward Bulk, the outermost wall of the
eye seemed to advance two hundred feet closer.

Tom
felt like a child who feared with certainty that he would be the last one
standing at the end of a game of musical chairs, he would be crashing his
helicopter at the same time the storm would reach the Hayward Bulk.

Five
hundred feet from the Hayward Bulk, he watched the small ripples crease at the
back of the vessel’s hull, then turn white – the storm had returned.

They
were too late.

With
the wind speed at over one hundred knots, it was going to be very hard to put
the Sea King down on the helipad.

Tom
started making the descent.

Unlike
a normal descent by helicopter, this was more like a controlled fall than a
standard approach.

Below
him, the storm blew the enormous antennae off of the radar tower on top of the
ship.

He
was coming in fast.

When
his rotors finally hit the other side of the eye of the storm, he could do
little to maintain control. It was more a case of his forward momentum and
gravity keeping him moving towards the helipad.

His
arms and feet fought with the pedals, joystick, and collective to keep the
helicopter from crashing into the sea, at a speed much faster than his mind
could ever grasp purposefully. He was now relying solely on his subconscious
ability, developed over many years of flying.

No
longer concerned about crashing, but simply about staying out of the sea, Tom
threw caution to the violent wind.

In
doing so, he overshot the helipad.

Two
hundred feet past the helipad, further along the hull of the Hayward Bulk, he
slowed his rate of descent, hovered for an instant, and then elegantly dropped
onto the deck of the crippled vessel.

The
skids could be heard breaking apart as the Sea King set down hard.

Tom
immediately reversed the pitch of the rotor blades, so that instead of creating
lift, they forced the helicopter down hard against the deck, stopping it from
being blown off into the sea.

They
were alive.

For
now.

“Okay,
everyone out!” Tom turned his head and saw the pale faces of his terrified
passengers.

No
one moved.

“The
wind is going to blow her overboard pretty soon, so I suggest you all get out
of here if you want to live.”

It
was enough to get them moving again.

Tom
watched as the four passengers struggled with the 150Kg impeller.

“Good
luck.”

“Where
are you going?” said one of the engineers, who looked even more startled than
before, if that was even possible.

Tom
smiled.

“Just
cleaning up the deck.” He then raised the collective to full, locked it in
position, rotated the angle to the portside, and stepped gingerly out of the
helicopter.

The
Sea King then disappeared into the ocean.

“Well
gentlemen, there goes the only chance we had of taking off again,” Tom said
calmly. “I’ve done my part.  Let’s hope to hell that you’re able to do yours.”

“Come
on, let’s get this stuff down below,” said the oldest engineer with an air of
fatalism.

Sam
watched as the wall of water rapidly approached.

There
was little that he could do about it. 
Second Chance
would survive or
she wouldn’t. His only option was to hold on.

He
turned away, his back facing the oncoming barrage of water and closed his eyes.
Taking one last deep breath, he grasped the inside grab bar with all the
strength in both hands, and hoped that today wasn’t going to be his last.

The
turbid wave of water hit him with the force of a Mac truck. The initial impact
nearly rendering him unconscious. The strong flow swept his feet out from under
him, and his hands, locked onto the grab bar, fought to prevent him from being
flushed down the galley passage way. 

The
water was just starting to recede as a second wave struck the port side.

Sam
had just enough time to take one more deep breath before the entire area was
swamped with water again.

He
thought his ship may broach and then roll, but
Second Chance
held true
to her name.

Slowly,
the water receded. Sam heard the familiar drone of the powerful automatic pumps
deep in the bilge kick into life.

Picking
himself up, he scanned the cabin.

It
was going to take a lot of work to clean her, and some of the electronic
equipment would need to be replaced, but all told, he had escaped lightly, he
decided.

Another
large wave struck, and he heard the mechanical workings of the autopilot
struggling to maintain her course.

Then,
he heard the sound that is every sailor’s worst nightmare.

It
was the sound of a cable snapping under pressure, followed by the sudden jolt
of the yacht as its rudder stopped struggling to maintain her direction. The
tiny storm jib, the only sail which remained, and formed a triangle no longer
than a couple feet, could now be heard flapping in the wind.

Sam
didn’t wait to feel the pounding of the giant swell on his port side. Without
the rudder, there was no way to control how
Second Chance
would face the
oncoming swell. 

In
these seas, failure to run with the swell could only result in catastrophic
damage to his yacht and his certain death by drowning. 

He
climbed up the stairs and stepped out through the tiny hatchway.

The
storm surrounded him now. If he failed to gain control of the rudder within
minutes he, and
Second Chance
, would be well on their way to the bottom
of Bass Strait.

The
autopilot was flashing and making an irritating noise as its computer tried to
determine how to make adjustments. It was completely ineffective as long as the
cable running from the steering block to the rudder was broken.

Sam
hit the wait button on the autopilot in utter frustration.

He
didn’t need to hear that sound anymore. Then, without waiting to harness up and
run a travel line, he quickly made his way to the transom. There, above the
enormous rudder, were the remains of his old weather vane and next to them, the
emergency tiller.

A
simple, direct link to the rudder, the tiller was of little mechanical aid to
steering, but it was something; the emergency tiller gave Sam at least the
possibility of steering
Second Chance
by hand.

Sitting
aft Sam had little protection from the giant waves, running from behind him. If
another wave flooded his deck again, harnessed or not, the force would send him
overboard to his inevitable death.

As
if to emphasize his exposure, a medium sized wave broke and splashed over him;
its icy chill immediately jarring his mind into making a change in his course
of action.

The
one saving grace was the fact that up ahead, his tiny storm jib, little more
than a couple of feet of canvas, provided just enough speed to maintain a
strong enough flow of water over the rudder to keep a course. Sam angled
Second
Chance
diagonally along the large, breaking swell, a motion more like
surfing with the wave than fighting against it.

He
was in for a long night if he were to survive at all.

His
survival so far had been more about luck than skill, he acknowledged, but by
the morning the storm had settled.

The
next day, he limped to the outskirts of Hobart, where he was able to anchor in
the lee of the mountain and make repairs. Running a second steering cable on
Second
Chance
was easier than it sounded, because Sam had insisted on a redundant
set of cables running side by side.

In
the end, that repair took under an hour, but he then spent the next two days
draining the bilge to protect the inner hull from salt water corrosion.

On
the third day, Sam set the autopilot on a northerly heading, trimmed the sails,
and commenced his long journey home to Sydney, where more serious repairs to
his flooded yacht could be made.

Two
hours later, well on his way north, and with the weather relatively calm, Sam
took one last look at the horizon, checked his instruments, and climbed into
the bunk he normally used when he was offshore.

Sam’s
eyes closed, and comforted by the direction of the compass at the end of the
bunk, he slept.

*

Tom
watched as his beloved Sea King helicopter disappeared into the sea. 

The
wind was too strong and the landing space too poor to ever manage to keep her
on the deck of the Hayward Bulk. Flying her back to the Maria Helena wasn’t
even an option. She crashed into the sea a mere twenty seconds later, floating
for a couple of minutes, and then swamped by a large wave.

Its
sinking was enough to bring Tom back to the problem at hand.

The
four scientists, who had been aboard the Sea King, along with a number of other
crewmen from the Hayward Bulk, made their way down into the bowels of the ship,
with the gigantic impeller.

Tom
followed them to the entrance of the hull.

A stupid
smile crossed his lips as he considered the ridiculousness of the situation,
and his inability to now have any effect on its outcome.

The
impeller, designed to bring in cold sea water to actively cool the engine, had
split. Consequently, the engine wasn’t being cooled, and left unrepaired, would
ultimately cause the engine to seize, turning a $20,000 repair job into a
$1,000,000 need for a new engine. To avoid this, Global Shipping’s chief
engineer had ordered a built-in safety system for each of his engines, to
automatically shut down the engine should the impeller cease to draw in water.

The
result of such a simple system was that everyone on board the Hayward Bulk, and
potentially another three hundred thousand people, living in and around Cairns,
were going to die, despite the engine being fully operational.

The
irony of the system’s theoretical safe guard almost made Tom laugh as he
watched the four engineers struggle to maneuver the massive impeller deep into
the hull, where it could be fitted to the enormous super tanker’s engine.

Tom
was just about to follow them, when he noticed that the man in the Armani suit,
who appeared unsettlingly confident about the situation, was following the rest
of the engineers to the door, but just before entering it, he looked around and
then continued to walk toward the front of the ship.

What’s
he up to?
Tom wondered.

Following
him, Tom didn’t even attempt to hide. The wind was gusting so strongly, and
there was so much sea spray in the air, Tom feared that he might likely be
blown overboard before the man even realized that he was being followed.

The
closer the man came to approaching the bow, the more Tom worried about what he
was up to. There were no working engines at the Hayward Bulk’s bow, so why was
he headed there? Tom fully intended to find out.

The
man was carrying a work bag, but for what purpose, Tom didn’t know.

Ahead,
the man opened one of the hatchways into the hull, looked from right to left,
and then disappeared below.

Tom
ran ahead, trying to catch up.

He
opened the hatchway and listened. The soft background lights, that allowed the
crew to see the inner workings of the ship’s bowels, allowed him to see only a
short distance ahead. Down below, he could hear the sound of someone moving
fast, skipping a number of steps as they descended; not that Tom could hear
very much over the sounds of the storm.

The
man may have had a valid reason for being there. It seemed reasonable to assume
that if he were an engineer with a purpose, he would be running down the
stairs.

Tom
followed the stairs to the bottom.

The
bilge could be heard, the ship having already taken on large quantities of the
water which had flooded the deck, and was now swishing around the bottom.

Once
he reached the bottom and looked around, Tom couldn’t see where the man had
gone. It appeared to be a dead end, which served little purpose other than to
provide buoyancy. Tom turned around to see if he could find another direction
in which the man might have gone. 

Shining
his flashlight around the large room it appeared to serve little purpose. At
the furthermost point of the bow, two comparatively small engines could be seen,
which must have been used for the bow thruster.

At
the portside engine, something caught his eye.

Tom
saw the faint glow of a single red dot which was flickering on and off.
Ordinarily, Tom wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but in the absence of
any other light, the single red light seemed out of place.

Climbing
down to the engine, he placed his hand on the red light. It glowed on his hand
as though its source was emanating from elsewhere.

His
eyes followed the beam to its origin, and then stopped.

On
the side of the hull, and about ten feet above him, were two single sticks of
dynamite wired to a timer with a red LED light. As explosives go, it wasn’t
much, but it was certainly enough to blow a big hole in the hull, one big
enough to sink the Hayward Bulk – if cyclone Petersham didn’t sink it first.

Tom’s
mind grasped the outcome.

Above
him, he heard the sound of a single steel bar sliding over the top of the
hatchway.

He
was trapped.