Connor turned to get out of there. The captain would know by now that the fire alarm was a hoax, and he would have no doubt who had done it. Dailey remained stone cold on the floor next to his broken glasses.
Time to haul ass.
He pulled the metal fire door shut behind him as he left the bridge and twisted tight the wheel-lock. During the entire four-day trip down the west coast, Connor had never seen the bridge door closed. Bracing himself against the wall, he kicked viciously at the wheel-lock with his heavy work boot. The wheel bent, jammed.
The grin returned. “Try explaining that one, Captain Butthead!” They would need a blowtorch to get the door open again. Connor sprinted to the long cargo deck. This just might work out after all.
Fire alarms screeched. Cabin doors slammed open as groggy, offduty crewmembers scrambled into the corridors. Seamen shouted to each other, wanting to know what was going on. Instinctively three crewmen stumbled into the brisk night to man the water cannons, but they saw none of the crude-oil cargo burning.
On deck two, Captain Miles Uma found no sign of fire. Cramming his cap down on his frizzy hair, he stood by the alarm on the wall, saw that it had been pulled intentionally. Realization fell into place as a wave of cold anger coursed through him. His skin prickled. “I’m going to kill Brooks!”
Uma’s stomach soured with dread as he suddenly realized his mistake. Brooks had not followed him down the stairs. The slimeball must still be up on the bridge with Dailey. Even with such a small crew, Uma knew he should have locked the bastard up.
They were close to the narrow and treacherous Golden Gate. Too close. And Brooks was pulling some stupid stunt. Uma bounded back up to the bridge deck.
The door to his own bridge stood shut against him, the wheel-lock bent. Uma strained against the wheel, but it remained jammed. He hammered with a fist. “Open this door right now!”
He received no answer. Listening, he could hear the automatic collision-avoidance radar beeping a warning. His mind whirled, and his stomach tangled in impossible knots. Of their four-day, 2000 mile journey, this was the most crucial point, “threading the needle” through the deep channel under the Golden Gate Bridge to Oilstar’s North Bay refineries. Dead Man’s Curve.
Uma was appalled at his own stupidity, his overconfidence. Captain Joseph Hazelwood had done the same thing on the Exxon Valdez—left the command post at a critical moment. Uma angrily slapped the bulkhead; his hand stung. Stupid!
Uma stepped back and kicked as hard as he could. The thick metal door did not give.
A crewman panted up the stairs, followed by two others. Uma briefly wished they had given him a few more moments to get through the door; now everyone could see his helplessness.
“What is it, Captain?” asked the crewman. Uma did not turn to look at him.
“The door’s jammed.” He kicked again, hard enough to send a sharp pain through his shin. Uma threw his shoulder against it. His voice suddenly turned hoarse. “Help me get in there now!” He shoved the crewman forward. Another man joined him, but the three of them slammed against the door in vain.
Uma turned and pointed at the crewmen on the stairwell. “Get me a battering ram—anything. Move it!”
Muffled through the door, the collision-avoidance alarms kept beeping.
Out on the vast, cluttered deck, alarms bleated into the night. Connor wondered if Captain Butthead had made it back to the bridge yet. He wished he could be there to watch Uma’s expression as he tried to cope with the jammed door.
Connor hurried out to the storage shacks, pump control banks, and water-cannon valves. Everything was wet with spray, slimy with oil residue. He crumpled the incriminating papers as he faced the stiff ocean breeze and tossed the wad overboard. The white ball glimmered in the moonlight, then vanished forever. If he could just hide until the ship docked at the terminal, then slip off….
He looked across the ship, the twelve tank hatches, the catwalk down the center of the deck, the pressure and vacuum relief valves. The Zoroaster was so long the crew had to take bicycles from one end to the other. He would have little trouble finding a place to lie low for a few hours.
He couldn’t jump and swim to shore; years ago, maybe with a wetsuit and surfboard, he would have tried. The cold, fast-moving waters of the Bay were notorious—and even fully loaded, the tanker rode six stories above the water. He should have thought of that part before setting all this in motion, but Connor hated to waste time over-planning. He did what he needed to do, then tried to be flexible if the details didn’t work out right.
The alarms suddenly ceased, plunging the ship into an echoing silence. Off in the distance, he heard the asynchronous hoots and chimes of foghorns around the Golden Gate. Through sparse fog, the coastal cities lit up the shoreline like Christmas lights. Connor was glad to be approaching civilization again.
The twinkling outline of the Golden Gate Bridge seemed very, very close.
Using a pipe as a battering ram, the crew finally broke through the bridge door, letting it hang on one twisted hinge. Uma kicked the door aside, allowing access. He spotted second mate Dailey on his knees, groaning and trying to pull himself up.
The Golden Gate Bridge was much too close.
Uma ran three steps toward the controls, then stopped to stare across the Zoroaster’s sprawling deck at what lay ahead. The Golden Gate loomed, a narrow opening into the calm waters of the Bay. The Bridge cut across their path with a flickering necklace of automobile headlights. Rocky headlands crouched in the surf, where lighthouses sent their beacons out to sea.
Uma knew the north tower of the Bridge stood on rocks extending from the Marin shore; but the south tower rose straight out of the sea on the San Francisco side, built on a shelf of rock fifty feet deep and a quarter mile from land.
For a fraction of a second, Uma froze. His career was over. He could never save the ship in time. His mind numbed, unable to grasp the disaster about to happen in front of his eyes, all because of his stupidity.
The supertanker took about a mile to turn, and she’d had four days to build up speed. But he couldn’t just stand there.
He slapped at the intercom. “Full reverse!”
The grinding hum from the engine room sounded strained and uncooperative. The Zoroaster shuddered with the sudden change as the engine responded.
Collision-avoidance radar bleeped, a sound that frightened him much more than the fire alarms. He scanned the screens at the navigator’s station. Red danger circles overlapped the tanker’s silhouette and the south pier of the Bridge. Over the radio, the voice of a Coast Guard operator kept calling for a response.
At the radio station, he switched channels to the Coast Guard frequency. “Mayday, mayday! This is Oilstar Zoroaster. We are headed for the Golden Gate. Declaring an emergency and prepared to abandon ship!”
Uma squinted at the radar, watching the tanker’s projected path. The ship headed straight for one of the two great towers that supported the Golden Gate Bridge. He grunted, moving the rudder as far to port as the electronic control would allow.
He might be able to make the great ship swing just enough. Just by a fraction. Uma sounded the whooping general quarters alarm. He wondered how many of the Zoroaster’s crew would assume it to be another false emergency and go back to their bunks.
He held the rudder hard to port. His body felt drained, exhausted. Behind him, one of the seamen muttered, “Come on, we’ll make it… we’ll make it.”