Max complied, typing a few commands that told the computer to ignore the heat building up in the massive cryo pumps. He watched his screen as the columns indicating temperature turned red and then climbed above the safety limit. He reached out deliberately and shut off the computer monitor. “Sorry, my darlings.”
Juan could feel his ship’s torment through the soles of his boots as she fought the tow. The vibrations were tearing her apart, and each shudder sent a lance into his chest.
“Come on, you bitch,” he snarled. “Move.”
A rumble built across the bay, so deep and resonant that it was a feeling across the skin rather than a sound that hit the ears. The top of the mountain was hidden by a dense cloud of ash, and the ground shook so strongly that the beach seemed to become a liquid. This was it. The main eruption. The volcano was going to blow like Mount Saint Helens, and a wall of superheated ash and gas would tear down from the summit in a deadly avalanche that scientists called a pyroclastic flow, one of the most destructive forces on earth. Juan had gambled all and was about to lose everything. It was too late to go back and save any of the Chinese. Tears stung his eyes, but the firm line of his jaw never slackened.
“We’ve got to cut the tow,” Max said.
Cabrillo said nothing.
“Juan, we’ve got to go. We need a couple of miles between us and that volcano if we’re getting out of here alive.”
He didn’t doubt the words. The pyroclastic flow would reach far out to sea in an enveloping noxious cloud that would smother anything in its path. But still he remained silent.
“Movement!” Eric shouted. “Port winch is recovering, five yards a minute.”
“Must be slippage,” Max countered. “She’s dragging across the sea floor.”
It was as if the sun had been eclipsed. Darkness came so swiftly that it left Juan’s eyes swimming. He could barely see the Selandria through the swirling ashfall. Hot ash stung his bare hands as he held the binoculars to his face. He just couldn’t tell if the liner had moved or whether Max was right and the anchor had slipped.
No one spoke for what felt like an eternity. Stone’s eyes never left the speed indicators, which remained stubbornly at zero.
Then over the sound of the eruption, the Selandria screamed, a mortal, almost human sound, as if she could no longer endure the tremendous pressures of tow and storm.
“Got her,” Eric shouted as his speed indicators tickled ever so slightly.
Max turned his computer screen back on. “Recovery on both winches.”
“Speed over the bottom is ten yards a minute. Fifteen. Twenty.”
As more and more of the ship’s weight felt the buoyancy of her natural element, the speed continued to increase. Tory clutched Juan’s hand as they watched the Selandria get drawn back to the sea, her hull plates shrieking in protest as she was dragged over the rocks. And when a particularly large wave pounded the beach, she gave it a squeeze as the ship rode up its face, her stern coming high in her first moment of freedom.
“She’s free,” Juan called down to the op center and heard a roar of approval from his crew. Someone, probably Max, who was a rank sentimentalist under his tough veneer, sounded the ship’s horn — a keening celebratory note that echoed and echoed.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Juan said and led Tory back inside the bridge. They descended into the op center. Another cheer rose from the throats of his people, and his back was slapped black and blue.
Now that the Selandria was refloated, Juan ordered the power output cut to fifty percent and had the view from the aft-facing cameras brought up on the main screen. Already water frothed along the liner’s waterline as the Oregon continued to accelerate down the bay.
“Dear God.” Tory gasped.
The top of the mountain had been vaporized. A solid black wall of ash was pouring down the mountain, a swirling, choking mass that seemed alive. Everything before its fury was cut flat. Trees that had stood for a hundred years were ripped from the ground and tossed like matchsticks. A second later the sound of the explosion reached the ship, a painful assault on eardrums that was the loudest yet.
Workers on the Selandria scrambled to get back inside the ship as the pyroclastic flow finally reached the surf line in an explosion of steam, and still the ash roared onward, spreading outward so it swallowed the other ships left abandoned on the beach. One of the smaller ones was blown onto its side, while the barge carrying the processing plant was flipped completely upside down.
“Hold on,” someone said unnecessarily as the ash enveloped the Selandria and completely filled the camera’s view.
It hit the Oregon like a sledgehammer blow, a hurricane of ash and pumice that shattered windows and heeled the ship over so her starboard rail was buried into the sea. But she kept driving, shouldering aside the fresh onslaught of nature’s fury until she burst out of the cloud and into shadowy daylight.
No one moved or even breathed as they watched the screen. Seconds dribbled like molten lead. Then suddenly the bow of the Selandria emerged through the curtain of ash like a ghost becoming real. Her hull was covered in clinging dust, but she’d never looked more beautiful. But still the crew waited, watching. A tiny movement caught everyone’s attention. Mark Murphy quickly zoomed in as a door on the upper deck opened tentatively. A small figure stepped out, looked around, and then motioned at someone inside the ship. In seconds there were a dozen people on the deck, kicking up clouds of ash in a spontaneous game to celebrate their survival.
Maurice appeared in the op center as if by magic. The tray in his hand held a trio of Dom Perignon bottles and enough cut crystal flutes for everyone on duty.
Amid the raucous celebration, Tory whispered into Juan’s ear, “So who was the bitch?”
“Huh?”
“When we were on the flying bridge you said, ‘Come on, you bitch, move.’ Who was the bitch you were talking about? The Oregon or the Selandria?”
“Neither.”
The corner of her mouth turned downward as she thought about his answer. And then her lips parted in a beaming smile. “Max is right. You are a crafty bastard. You were talking to Mother Nature.”
He couldn’t keep the satisfied smile from his lips. “I knew there’d be a major earthquake just before the main eruption. Water-saturated soils undergo what’s called liquefaction. Basically, the shaking causes the ground to turn into quicksand. That broke the suction that had built under the Selandria’s hull and allowed us to drag her off.”
“Cutting it awfully close, weren’t you?”
“You only get the big rewards when you’re willing to face the big risks.”
“Chairman.” Mark Murphy was still at his weapons station. “I’ve got a radar contact six miles dead ahead, moving at seven knots.”
“The tug,” Max said.
“Speaking of rewards.”
Even with the Selandria in tow it took the Oregon only fifteen minutes to come within visual range of the fleeing tugboat. Juan scrambled the deck crew to get in position as he ordered Eric to take the squat tug down the port side. There were only a handful of pirates on the tug, so they were almost on top of them before anyone realized they weren’t alone. Two of them raced out onto the tug’s flying bridge with their AK-47s, but they quickly ran for cover when Murph opened up with one of the gimble-mounted fifty-calibers housed in hidden bunkers on the Oregon’s deck.
“Mike, Ski, can you hear me?” Juan called over the radio.
“I thought you’d forgotten all about us,” Pulaski replied over the tactical communications channel. “Mike and I were thinking we were in for a long cruise vacation.”
“Sorry, boys. You’re not up for leave for while yet. I can see the two containers on the tug’s stern. Which one are you on top of?”