“Ma’am, I’ve got a couple of master blasters in this outfit who could blow your bra off without bruising your… skin.”
The phrase “wooden ships and iron men” is a canard, a sly hint that the modern steel-age sailor is not the equal of his tar-and-oakum forebears. To Amanda Garrett, that concept was baseless. As a true mariner, she recognized the World Ocean as something elemental and unsubmitting. All of man’s strengths and technologies, no matter of what age or level, are toylike when matched in a direct confrontation.
That night, amid the screaming madness of Hurricane Ivan, the labors of Floater 1’s crew were as epic as any performed aboard the square-riggers of the past. It was “one hand for the ship and one hand for yourself” as the massive lengths of steel hawser were stricken up from below and shackled together. No plans had been made for such work when the platform had been built. No machinery was in place to perform the task.
Seabee muscle power jackassed tons of wire cable across the bucking, tempest-raked decks, feeding it through makeshift guides around the platform’ s perimeter to the Skye’s moorage. From there the far end was taken aboard the minesweep and down a passageway to be secured around a series of load-bearing hardpoints within the hull. Simultaneously, demolitions personnel worked in the flooded bilges of the little ship, grimly rigging their charges as stinking oil tainted seawater rolled over them with each storm toss.
Six of Floater 1’s barges were taking water by the time the task was done.
A small cluster of people huddled in the lee of a deck module: Amanda, Chief Tehoa, the demolitions team, and the remnants of the Skye’s crew.
Amanda cupped her hands protectively around the ear piece and microphone of the command headset she wore. Two other “weatherproof’ communicator units had already shorted out on her. “Tower, we’re ready to go down here,” she yelled into the mike.
“Standing by here as well.” The reply could be heard only faintly over the wind roar. “All capstan rooms manned and ready.”
“Proceeding.” Amanda lifted her eyes to the senior demo man. “Cut her loose!”
The Seabee nodded. Flipping a switch guard up on the detonator box he carried, he depressed a button.
Loops of det cord fired with a piercing crack, slicing through the Skye’s mooring lines and freeing the warship. The clawing talons of the storm caught at her blackened upper works and she began to drift downwind, a tattered white ensign still flickering at her jackstaff. Steel squealed and rasped as loops of heavy towing cable trailed over the side after her, far lighter wire peeling off the reel connected to the onboard scuttling charges.
Amanda saw the bleak expressions on the faces of the British seamen as they watched the Skye depart on her last voyage. Especially she noted the jaw-clinching despair on the face of the minesweep’ s young captain.
“Leftenant Traynor,” she called, “I am truly sorry we have to do this.”
“It’s quite all right, ma’am,” he replied, suppressing the tremor in his voice. “At least she’s dying for a good cause.” The British officer extended a hand to the demo man. “If you please, Chief. She’s my responsibility.”
Amanda nodded and the Seabee passed over the demolition control box. Traynor flipped up the second switch guard. “Ship’s company,” he called hoarsely, “salute!”
As best they could on the unsteady deck, the men of the Skye came to attention, hands lifting to honor the silhouette that was fading beyond the sheeting rain and spray. Traynor’s thumb stabbed down on the button and the Skye’s outline blazed with blue-white glory for an instant.
Then the sea avalanched through the dozen gaps blasted in her hull. In a matter of moments, the minesweep capsized, wrapping herself in the towing hawser as she settled. And then she was gone, and only the shriek of the cable going over the side marked her passage.
“Ship’s company,” Traynor’s voice trailed away in the wind, “stand at ease.”
“All right.” It was Amanda’s turn to lift her voice over the storm. “Let’s get this thing done!”
Amanda elected to place her command post on site at the winch station of Barge 2, the central segment of the forward-most tier of the platform. The wire cable would be fed up from belowdecks at this point, run through the cable brake, and fed over the barge’s bow. As the rest of the handling crew fell back to safety, Amanda and Tehoa hauled themselves onto the small open platform beside the cable feed. Exposed to the full force of the hundred-knot wind gusts and the buckshot patterns of rain and spray, they latched their safety belts to the railing. Chief Tehoa gave the broad horizontal wheel of the wildcat brake half a turn to test the mechanism, while Amanda activated the handheld Global Positioning Unit she carried. She acquired Floater 1’s coordinates on the palm-size screen of the little unit, locking down the platform’s position. With no visual reference points available in the storm murk, the GPU would serve as her drift gauge.
“Ready, Chief?” she yelled.
“Guess so, ma’am. Still think it’ll work?”
“No problem, Chief. It’s just like catching a thirty-pound catfish on a twenty-pound bass rig.”
She caught the flash of Tehoa’s grin in the glare of a lightning stroke. “I’ve never managed to pull that one off, ma’am.”
“Neither have I.” Amanda keyed her headset. “Tower, we’re ready to raise anchors.”
“Proceed, Captain. You are on circuit with the capstan rooms. Good Lord, ride all the way!”
Amanda wrestled another lungful of air from the torrent flowing over her. “All capstan rooms! Heave round!”
Moments later, Amanda felt the vibration. Massive electric motors engaged deep within each barge. Slime-covered steel links, each the diameter of a baseball bat, rose up out of the boiling waters of the anchor wells. Forty fathoms below, the anchors themselves, each an inverted ten-thousand-pound parasol of solid metal, started to shift and walk on the seafloor, the play coming out of their chains.
Another wave quartered onto the platform. Restrained now by her tautening ground tackle, Floater 1 moaned in agony as the waters crashed over her. Tie-downs snapped and a CONEX container toppled over the side. Then she lifted, and the sea shouldered under the platform with a prolonged, yielding shudder.
“Number four breaking ground,” a thin voice cried in the headset.
“Number one breaking ground.”
“Number seven breaking ground.”
“Number five…” “Number eight…” “Number six…” Calls overrode as, one after another, the anchors tore loose from the bottom.
“All anchors aweigh, Captain!”
The position numbers on Amanda’s GPU screen began to flicker and change. Floater 1 was adrift. No longer fighting the storm, the massive structure was now being driven before it.
Amanda pressed her lip mike close to her mouth. “Capstan rooms. Retract to ten fathoms! We’re passing over the wreck of the Skye. Get clearance! Don’t let her foul!”
Crack! One of the heavy nylon ropes that served as a cable guide parted like a piece of yarn. As the platform drifted back over the hulk of the British minehunter, the towing hawser peeled away from the barge railings, coming around from the lee side to align forward off the bow.
Crack! Crack! Crack! WHAM!
The last guide snapped, and the four-inch wire hawser whipped out ahead of the platform, taking half a dozen railing stanchions with it in an explosive sweep of sparks. As Amanda and the Chief looked on, cable began to feed up through the wildcat guides from belowdecks.