An Incident At Bloodtide

Chapter Eleven

I couldn't tell if they were amused, because I couldn't even be certain they understood me, but it did seem certain that they considered the unauthorized presence of a hog-tied dwarf on board their vessel a sufficient reason to seek the counsel of higher authority. They proceeded to untangle the line from around me-no easy proposition, and done none too gently-and then perfunctorily grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me to my feet. Then, keeping a tight grip on my arms, they hustled me around the oil drums, across a section of the foredeck, then down a sloping companionway into what appeared to be the crew's quarters of the ship, which looked like an outtake from a cheap submarine movie and smelled of engine oil and cooking grease.

As I was half marched, half dragged along I became aware of a new problem, one that not only was causing considerable discomfort but also posed a real danger. Hypothermia. It was early August; the night was quite warm, despite the wind and rain. However, I'd been walking, waiting, dropping, swinging, bouncing, and rolling in that wind and rain for nigh unto two hours, and my body had decided to register a protest; it was saying that I had been knocked seriously unconscious earlier in the day and that I was supposed to be resting; it was saying that if I was so stupid as to flagrantly ignore the doctors' orders, then it was going to take matters into its own hands, as it were, and shut me down until such time as I got more sense into my head-or died, whichever came first. My body was going to lower its core temperature and see how I liked them apples. I was suddenly very cold and began to shiver uncontrollably. I didn't know the Spanish word for towel, but I asked for one anyway. Due to the language barrier or indifference, or both, I didn't even get a response, much less a towel. We just kept marching along.

We marched down one long, narrow corridor, then turned right and marched down another one, which ended at a scarred wooden door with a slatted portal. The man on my right, who had pushed back his hood and whom I now recognized as the sallow-faced crewman I had seen at the railing earlier in the day, used his free hand to knock on the door. Without waiting for a response, he opened the door, and I was pushed through it.

The captain's cabin was spacious, somewhat baroque with its walls of dark oak, matching rolltop desk, and large chart table set up in the middle of the floor. To my immediate left was a bunk bed bolted to the wall. Indeed, with its four quaint, barred portholes to provide a scenic view, the cabin would have seemed to me a most pleasant floating studio apartment, were it not for the smell: a mixture of disgusting odors that served to amplify my already screaming headache into something even louder, and made me nauseous. Underlying the stink of rotting food, an unwashed body, and spilled liquor was the even more acrid odor of vomit. This was no seagoing pied-a-terre but a sickroom; the man swaying unsteadily in his chair at the chart table, which was littered with half-empty liquor bottles, unwashed dishes, and greasy papers, was obviously sick, and had been for a long time. He wasn't likely to get any better as long as Carver Shipping, incredibly, kept him on the payroll and afloat in what had become for him nothing more than a steel tomb.

Although this man had, presumably, initiated plans to kill Garth and me not too many hours before, he gave no sign of recognition as he stared at me. One of the crewmen said something to him, and then both turned and walked out of the cabin, closing the door behind them, leaving me alone with the balding, bloated, pasty-faced drunk. He kept staring at me, bleary-eyed and swaying back and forth, then spoke to me in a hopelessly slurred mumble. Not having brought along my jiffy Universal Translator, I suspected we were going to have some difficulties communicating. But then he repeated it, and I thought I got the general drift.

What the fuck are you?

What the fuck was I, indeed? I was damn cold was what I was, and without further ado I stripped off the shirt that was pasted to my skin, grabbed a blanket off the unmade bunk bed, and wrapped it around me. The blanket felt greasy, and smelled as foul as everything else in the room, but at least it would help to preserve my rapidly diminishing body heat. Captain Julian Jefferson didn't protest and was in no position to do anything about it if he did; I doubted he could stand. I pulled up a wobbly wooden chair and sat down across from him at the wobbly chart table cum bar. The other man's dark brown eyes were glassy and occasionally rolled in his head as he tried to fix his gaze on me. There seemed no easy way to slide into the topic I wished to discuss, so I decided to dispense with any talk about the wretched weather, get right to the subject at hand, and see what happened.

"My name's Frederickson," I said through chattering teeth. "I'm investigating the death of a man by the name of Tom Blaine, who got chopped up by some very big propeller blades not too many weeks ago. I believe it was this tanker that killed him. Uh, the state police and Coast Guard are following right behind me, but they don't like working in the rain. I want to know why you started up your engines while the ship was moored and you were washing out your holding tanks. Now, I know you're shipping-"

I stopped speaking when I saw his lips moving. He was mumbling something in his drunken slur, and I leaned forward, trying to decipher it. "What?" I asked.

He repeated it, or mumbled something else, and this time I thought I understood him.

He was saying that the guy who was killed should have minded his own business.

Well. For a moment I forgot about both my headache and the bone-deep cold that was racking my body as I stared at the man in stunned silence. It certainly sounded like a confession of sorts to me. I had hoped to initially shock him into at least a denial of the accusation, which I had then hoped to use to pressure him into saying something, anything, incriminating, which I had then hoped to use to goad him into saying something even more incriminating. But he had apparently been impatient for me to get on with my masterly interrogation, since he had interrupted my opening gambit to effectively admit he had known there was a diver under his ship when he'd activated the engines. Or so it seemed.

"You're saying you knew there was a diver under your tanker when you started those props spinning around?"

He drained off the bourbon in his glass, poured himself some more from a bottle of Wild Turkey, then mumbled something to the dark liquid in front of him.

Sure he'd known, the drink was informed. It wasn't the first time this troublemaker had visited them, diving around and under the ship. He'd started the first night they were moored, and he'd been nosing around the last time they came upriver. He was on to the company's trick of flushing out tanks in the river and taking on water, and he was getting ready to make big trouble for the captains of the tankers, and the company.

"You've been selling the water in the Middle East?"

Yes. Kuwait.

"Whose idea was it?"

Company policy. Wanted to increase profits.

"Were your orders in writing?"

He shook his head.

"Who gave you the orders?"

The devil.

"Fuck the devil," I said with disgust. "Jesus Christ, Captain, do you really think a tankerful of water is worth a man's life?"

He slowly, determinedly, shook his head back and forth, then again spoke to his tumbler of bourbon.

The devil made him do it.

At his first mention of the devil, I'd assumed that, in his stupor, he'd been trying to be funny. Now I wasn't so sure. There was certainly nothing funny about the look of horror and anguish in his eyes. The captain, it seemed, had not only imagination but a conscience as well. And all his drinking had failed to erase his visions of what happens to a man when he's sucked up into the whirling props of an oceangoing tanker.

"What devil, Captain? Who told the captains to start taking on river water? Who ordered you to turn on your engines while there was a diver under your ship?"

He said the name, enunciating it clearly, with no need for straining to understand. "Mr. Carver."

"Charles Carver?"

He nodded.

"Mr. Charles Carver ordered you to kill a man."

"Start up engines."

"It's the same goddamn thing. He was on board this ship the night that man was killed?"

The question elicited a response, but Julian Jefferson's speech had reverted to slurred mumbles. However, by now I'd gotten somewhat used to the alcoholic garble, and I didn't think I missed much.

In regard to the illegal water-hauling operation, Roger Wellington was the administrator all the captains reported to and received their orders from-but all communications to and from Roger Wellington went through Charles Carver, a man most of the shipping personnel considered very strange, and whom many feared. He was rumored to be the son of the founder and to have more power and influence in the company than his tide would suggest. A number of the captains had warned Mr. Carver that there was a man who seemed to be on to what they were doing and who was actually diving under their ships while they were flushing their tanks in order to gather evidence of pollution. They had been ordered to continue the practice, since the fines involved if they were ever brought to court were likely to be considerably less than the profits they were realizing from the operation. Then Mr. Carver had unexpectedly shown up one night, driving the company's black cigarette boat, and come aboard to wait for the diver to show up. The man had come and had made a dive under the ship as the tanks were being flushed out. Then Mr. Carver had ordered the captain to activate the main engines. At first the horrified captain had refused, but Mr. Carver had reminded him of his drinking problem and of the accidents in which he had been involved. The captain had been told that his family connections would not prevent him from being fired this time if he did not comply with the order to start up the engines. He had done so.

It had been Mr. Carver, followed by a crewman in one of the tanker's motorized dinghies, who had driven off the diver's boat and wrecked it, after throwing everything on board into the water.

Now the captain couldn't sleep, didn't want to sleep, because he was tormented by a vivid, recurring nightmare of how the diver under the boat must have felt in the cold and dark when he heard the engines come on, and the terror he must have experienced in the seconds before he was torn apart. Even awake, the captain couldn't stop thinking about it, seeing the images, and no amount of liquor seemed to help. He stayed in his cabin all the time now and let the crew handle the ship. He was terribly sorry for what he'd done, but felt he'd had no choice.

When the captain had finished, he drained off the tumbler of bourbon.

My heart was beating very rapidly, sending adrenaline-laced blood through my system, temporarily warming me. Never in the history of the world, I thought, had a complete confession been so easy to obtain. The problem, of course, was that it was worthless in the form it had been given, with me as the only witness. I had to find somebody else to listen to it.

I cleared my throat, half rose to reach out and touch his shoulder, then thought better of it and sank back down into my chair. "You've done the right thing, Captain Jefferson," I said carefully, watching him. "You're going to start feeling a whole lot better about things now that you've gotten this off your chest. Now we're going to get the man who's really responsible, the man who ordered and pressured you into doing this thing. But you're going to have to repeat what you just told me in front of another witness. Where can I find your second-in-command?"

The glassy-eyed captain hiccupped, mumbled some more.

There was no second-in-command; he was the only one in command. But he wasn't interested in commanding anything. The crew ran things, and shared the bonus money, and just carried him along. Everybody seemed to prefer things that way, and he really had no place to go anyway. He wasn't even sure he would be allowed to leave the ship if he wanted to. He didn't care just so long as they kept bringing him liquor, which they did.

I thought about going up on deck to try to coax one of the crewmen, perhaps the English-speaking Greek, down to listen to the captain's confession, then decided that wasn't such a great idea; the Greek, indeed all of the crew, might take serious exception to any plans of mine that would upset the status quo, attract the unwelcome attention of the Coast Guard, and possibly implicate them all in a murder. That meant exposing myself in an attempt to get to their radio. I just wanted to obtain Julian Jefferson's confession in some usable form, then get off this damned tanker as quickly as possible, notify the Coast Guard of what I had, then sit down under a hot shower and do some serious drinking of my own, concussion or no.

"Okay," I said, "then do you have something to write with? Paper and pen or pencil? I'll write down everything you said to me, and you can sign it. Just tell me where the stuff is. I'll get it."

I'd been wrong about him not being able to stand; he knocked his chair over and not only managed to stand but proceeded to stumble and sway his way across the garbage-strewn cabin to a chest of drawers at the foot of the bunk bed. He opened the top drawer, began rummaging around, strewing clothes over the floor at his feet. It seemed an odd place to keep writing materials, but a perfectly logical place to keep a revolver, which was what he was holding when he removed his hand from the drawer. He raised the gun, aimed at me, and pulled the trigger at almost the precise moment that I rolled out of my chair to my right and onto the floor. Moving turned out to be a dangerous mistake; his aim was off by about four feet, which meant that the bullet pierced the front edge of the chart table and thudded into the floor about an inch from my nose. The report of the large gun in the relatively small, closed space was not only deafening but had a most unpleasant, amplifying effect on my headache, and for a moment it felt like my head was literally going to explode.

He fired again, and this time the bullet missed by a good six feet, smacking into a framed picture on the wall to my right. So far, so good, but sooner or later this very drunk man was going to get lucky with one of his shots-or simply walk around the overturned table and put the gun to my head, where, smashed as he was, he would still be hard put to miss.

To make matters worse, if that was possible, I was all tangled up in the greasy blanket I had wrapped around me. However, after some shrugging and kicking, I managed to free myself. On my hands and knees behind the totally inadequate barrier of the chart table, which had been turned on its side by the force of the bullet smashing into it, I glanced behind me at the door. It was twenty feet away, and closed; it also opened inward, which was to my distinct disadvantage. The captain might keep missing if I simply stood up, ran to the door, and pulled it open-but then again, he might not. But then again, again, I obviously couldn't stay where I was.

I raised myself to a crouch, gripped the bottom edge of the chart table, came up with it. The oak table was a good deal heavier than I'd anticipated, but I heaved it as far as I could in the general direction of Julian Jefferson, then ran to the door, turned the knob, and pulled. The door was stuck.

The gun exploded again behind me. For a split second I thought I was hit, but it was only another matching explosion of pain inside my head from the noise of the revolver. I waited nanoseconds for a bullet to rip into my back, through my heart and lungs, but instead it whacked through the louvers on the door about two feet above my head. As I yanked on the doorknob, a rather unusual theory formed in my mind, that maybe the smartest move I could make was no move at all, to simply stand still and wait for Julian Jefferson to run out of ammunition.

Perhaps another time. I yanked once more on the knob, and the door flew open. I headed out of the cabin, sprinting down the narrow outside corridor as the revolver fired again and a bullet whistled through the air an inch or two from my left ear. I skidded around the corner into the second corridor that led up to the deck, and found myself less than three feet from the dark-skinned crewman with the black, puffy birthmark on his cheek who had been at the railing that afternoon watching Garth and me float by on the catamaran. He grunted with surprise, crouched, and put his arms out to his sides to block the corridor. I didn't even slow down. I lowered my very sore head and rammed him hard in his exposed midsection. The air whooshed out of his lungs and he went back and down. I skipped over him, using his face for a stepping-stone, trying to ignore the spikes of pain flashing through my skull.

I could hear the captain shouting something unintelligible behind me. I raced down the corridor and up the companionway at the end. At the top of the companionway I ducked under the outstretched arms of two more crewmen, darted between two pallets loaded with crates of supplies, turned right and ran half the length of the vast foredeck until I saw the dark shape of a loading crane looming before me in the rainswept darkness. I ducked under the crane's huge counterweight and crouched, huddling and shivering in the night, holding my throbbing head with both hands as I tried to figure out just what it was I was going to do for my next trick.

From where I was crouched under the crane, it certainly looked like nothing less than, well, a very dark and stormy night indeed. Bare-chested, without the blanket that had for a time helped to restore my body heat, my core temperature was dropping again, and my shivering was threatening to turn into uncontrolled spasms. I was going to have to find a way to get warm soon, or I was going to lose control of my movements, probably pass out, and certainly die.

Of course, on this night there was no shortage of ways to depart this very wet veil of tears. The captain, against all odds, had somehow managed to ambulate up on deck, and above the wind and through the drumbeat patter of the rain hitting on the steel all around me I could hear him shouting what I presumed were orders in his drunken slur. The revolver he had drawn held seven rounds, and he had already fired four of them. Of course, he could have reloaded or brought more rounds with him, but considering his condition I doubted he had done either. Then again, whether he managed to put a bullet in me or even simply stay on his feet was largely irrelevant in light of the fact that he had any number of crewmen to help search for me. If and when they did find me, the captain would no doubt order me knocked unconscious and thrown overboard, and the crew would no doubt do it.

I took off my shoes and socks, since they were thoroughly soaked anyway and of absolutely no use to me. A great shudder convulsed my body, passed, and then I resumed my garden-variety shivering. My teeth were chattering so hard I was afraid I was going to start chipping them. I looked east, toward the Westchester side of the river, which would be closest, but could see nothing. I estimated the shore would be a half to three quarters of a mile from our present position in the deep channel, and even if I weren't half frozen to death and suffering the effects of a concussion, it would have been a very risky proposition, if not downright suicidal, to try to swim to shore without a life jacket in the six-foot waves crashing against the hull. I could always dive overboard and take my chances if I ended up cornered, but that would be a last-probably literally-resort.

What I really wanted was to be picked up-preferably by the Coast Guard, but any old Sheriffs Patrol along the river would do nicely. That meant I was going to have to find a way to signal, and a large fire on board would make a dandy emergency flare. The problem, of course, was finding a way to start such a fire. There were pallets loaded with diesel oil on the deck, but diesel fuel won't burn if you drop a match in it-assuming I had a match to drop, which I didn't. I needed gasoline and a means to light it.

There was a large tool box bolted to the deck on the starboard side of the crane. I could hear snatches of voices carried by the wind, but at the moment nobody seemed to be too close to me. I ducked out from beneath the counterweight, tried the lid of the steel box. It wasn't locked. I opened the lid, fumbled around inside. I had desperately hoped to find a supply of emergency flares, but there weren't any. What I did find was a crowbar, which would make a very effective weapon at close range. I closed the lid and, crowbar in hand and trying very hard not to think of how very cold I was, set off, keeping close to the railing on the starboard side, in search of gasoline and a life jacket. Not necessarily in that order.

The wheelhouse at the top of the soaring superstructure that separated the massive foredeck from the stern was visible now as a pale yellow glow in the driving rain. I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at what might be on the stern section of the ship, but that meant negotiating a very narrow section of deck on either the port or starboard side of the tanker, where I would be completely exposed and vulnerable if anybody should happen to be glancing in that direction. I crouched down next to the pallet loaded with barrels of diesel fuel and looked around, watching and listening. Men shouted to each other in the darkness, and once I heard the captain's voice rise in a bellow of rage, but as far as I could tell all of the voices were coming from the foredeck. The barrels of diesel fuel were fitted with petcocks, and I opened every one I could reach. Oil began to lap out on the deck. Diesel fuel might not burn if you dropped a match in it, but it will certainly explode if the right combination of heat and pressure is applied. At the moment I didn't even know how I was going to start a fire, much less cause an explosion, but I wanted to create as many options for myself as possible.

A crewman appeared at the opposite end of the narrow section of deck to starboard. I lay down flat on the wet, oily, ice-cold deck as he came toward me, then walked past. It was time to make my move. When I could no longer hear the man's footsteps, I got to my feet and sprinted to the stern area, holding the crowbar at the ready in a position to whack anybody who might suddenly appear in front of me. But when I reached the stern section, there was nobody there. And there in front of me, vaguely illuminated by the stern running lights, I saw what I wanted.

The tanker carried two large wooden lifeboats on mechanical hoists. Next to the lifeboat on the starboard side was an inflatable Zodiac dinghy with a wooden rib designed to hold an outboard motor. The motor was secured to the deck beneath the dinghy, and next to the motor, nestled in protective netting to keep them from sliding overboard, were two red plastic five-gallon containers of what had to be gasoline.

Pressing close to the railing so as to avoid the lighted area as much as possible, I inched along the deck. The tanker was designed as an oceangoing vessel, so the relatively puny six-to-seven-foot waves now roiling the Hudson didn't even cause the great ship to roll. However, the noise and spray generated by the waves crashing against the hull were considerable, and the wet deck was treacherously slippery. I reached the containers, stripped off the safety netting. One container was full, too heavy to throw any distance, but the gasoline in the second container sloshed around; I estimated it was about half full, which I thought should be just about right for my purposes. I picked up the container, scampered back along the railing, and ducked into the partial shelter provided by one of the lifeboats on its hoist. I was so cold that for a moment I was tempted to climb up into the boat and cover myself with canvas, but I knew that was too passive; sooner or later somebody was going to look there, and I would be trapped.

Shouts and the sound of running footsteps rose over the furious noise of the storm, and the footsteps were coming right at me. I moved back as far as I could, pressed hard against the railing, and tensed, ready to lash out with the crowbar at the first unlucky soul who stooped down to peer into the shadow under the lifeboat. But the sailor ran past me. I looked out, watched as the man made a quick survey of the stern area, then ran back along the narrow deck on the port side of the superstructure.

My hands had nearly lost all feeling. I set down the crowbar, wrung my hands and slapped them against my thighs until some sensation came back. Then I picked up the bar again and used the sharp, notched end to tear at my right pants leg until it was shredded. I tore off a length of fabric, wrung as much water out of it as I could, then twirled it around to form a kind of wick. Then I unscrewed the top of the container, soaked both ends of the makeshift wick in the gasoline inside. Next, I wadded one end into the top of the container, leaving a two-foot strip hanging out.

I was trucking right along, so far, and now all I needed was to get lucky. There was, to say the least, lots of room for error in what I was about to try; it was possible I was going to succeed only in making a lot of noise, alerting the murderous captain and his crew to my position; or I could be too successful, getting myself real warm in a hurry, only to cool off permanently. However, short of stopping some crew member and asking him for a light, I had no other options.

I set down the container at the very edge of the deck, draped the end of my gasoline-soaked wick over the bottom rung of the railing, then hauled back with the crowbar and struck a glancing blow at the steel, just in front of the fabric. What I managed to produce in the partially enclosed space was a loud, melodious bong worthy of the percussion section of the New York Philharmonic, and a shower of sparks, but nothing else. I glanced out from beneath the lifeboat when I heard shouts, but nobody appeared on the narrow section of deck. I swung again, with the same result-or lack of it; sparks shot out over the end of the wick, but it didn't catch fire.

Shaking violently, I snatched the twisted rag from the container, used my forearms to raise the container and splash gasoline over the railing. I replaced the wick, once again draped the end over the rail, willed my fingers to close around the crowbar, and once again banged steel against steel. And again.

That did it. There was a different percussive sound, a loud poof as the rag lit, and suddenly I was crouched next to a live bomb, the mother of all Molotov cocktails, and reflecting, quite insanely, on how very good the flame's warmth felt on my gelid flesh.

Now I had to deliver my bomb to the diesel fuel dump, and be damn quick about it. There was no time to waste worrying about who was going to see me doing my Captain Flash number, which would include just about everyone on the foredeck, and I could only hope that the captain with his revolver wasn't too close by. I grabbed the jug of gasoline by its handle, darted out from beneath the lifeboat, and ran as best I could on my cold-numbed legs alongside the superstructure toward the foredeck.

A crewman suddenly appeared out of the darkness, running toward me, but when he saw the flaming package in my hand he promptly skidded to a halt on the slippery deck, his arms windmilling, managed to get himself turned around and running in the opposite direction.

When I came to the end of the superstructure, I slowed, then used what was left of my momentum to spin around twice, holding the handle of the blazing gasoline container with both hands, and then released the container like a hammer thrower, letting it fly up and away into the darkness in the general direction of the pallet of diesel fuel where I had opened the barrels' pet-cocks. The missile created a flaming arc, cutting through the cloak of night, descending.

There was the sharp report of a gun, and a bullet thwacked into the wooden frame of the superstructure, just above my head. The captain's aim was improving. There was a disappointingly small explosion off in the direction of where I had thrown the container. I turned around, began stumbling back toward the stern. I had gone only a few steps when there was a second, thoroughly satisfying, very large and loud explosion that made the deck beneath my feet shudder.

Now that, I thought, should manage to get somebody's attention. My only remaining job was to stay alive and out of sight, virtually the same thing, long enough to be able to enthusiastically greet the first visitors. In the meantime, I assumed the little conflagration I had started would keep the crew, if not the captain, occupied for the time being.

But the fact remained that I was trapped on the open stern deck, and that did not seem a good place to be. There was only one direction left in which to go, and that was up-so up I would go. I ran back to the lifeboat, retrieved the crowbar, then went to the door at the rear of the superstructure that I hoped opened on stairs leading up to the wheelhouse. I opened the door, saw stairs-but they suddenly looked very steep, and they only led to another closed door at the top. If that door was locked, and the captain made an appearance soon, he was going to find killing me as easy as shooting a dwarf in a stairwell.

But there was no place else to go. I stepped inside, closed the door behind me. There was no lock. I stumbled on the first step, pulled myself to my feet, started up. But now my vision was blurring, and I was having a great deal of difficulty making my trembling legs and knocking knees work properly. I'd climbed mountains-but none that seemed so steep and insurmountable as these steps seemed to me at the moment. I could no longer breathe properly, and the constant trembling of my body was starting to cause my muscles to spasm and seize up. I wanted nothing more than to curl up where I was and go to sleep. But I had to get up the stairs.

Using the crowbar as a kind of staff, levering myself up step by step, I struggled toward the top of the stairs. Twice I thought I was going to pass out, and I paused, leaning back against a wall and taking deep, shuddering breaths until my vision cleared.

And then, finally, I was at the top. I turned the knob, pushed the door open. There was a crewman standing at a large control panel, legs spread wide apart, leaning forward as he tried to see out through a wraparound window that was smeared with oil. The noise of the inferno below rose above the insistent tattoo of the driving rain.

I tapped on the wooden floor with the crowbar to get his attention. He whirled around, and his pale brown eyes opened wide with surprise when he saw me. He cried out and started toward me, then stopped when I raised the crowbar. I moved away from the door, giving him plenty of room to get by me, then motioned with the length of steel to indicate he should leave. He stayed where he was, staring hard at me, thinking about it. I had no idea what I looked like, but suspected that I didn't present too daunting a figure. But then, I was holding a crowbar, and that must have been daunting enough, because after another fifteen seconds or so of hesitation, he darted past me through the door and clambered down the stairs. I closed the door. The bolt-type lock on the door looked pretty frail, but it was better than nothing. I threw the bolt across, braced the crowbar under the knob, then staggered across the small wheelhouse to the control console.

My intent was to steer the tanker toward the relatively unpopulated east shore, where a railroad bed served as a buffer between the river and any houses. This would not only avoid a collision with any ships traveling up the deep channel, but should also enable me to make a hasty exit, since the momentum and mass of the tanker would drive its nose right into the riverbank.

But steering the tanker anywhere wasn't going to be easy, what with my blurred vision, trembling hands and knees, and nary a clue as to what the various controls on the panel under my chin did, or how they operated. At least a dozen red lights were flashing, and the feel of the ship under me was different, somehow draggy, as if the helmsman had reversed engines in an attempt to stop, or at least slow, the ship; that would be the logical action to take under the circumstances, but I couldn't be sure what had been done, or how to undo it. There was no wheel, but there was a stubby steel joystick on a track in the very center of the console, and I assumed this was a steering device. I moved it up and down, back and forth; the joystick moved without any resistance, which didn't feel quite right to me. I blinked, trying to focus my vision on the various lights on the console. There was a bright amber light to the right of the stick; by going up on my toes and virtually putting my nose to the light, I could just make out a switch below it, and a blurry sign that read AUTOMATIC PILOT. I flipped the switch and the light went off. When I moved the joystick again, there was some resistance. I pushed it all the way to the left, held it there.

I had no idea how long it would take for a vessel this size to change course, especially if its engines were reversed; but the tanker was still making headway, which meant it could still be steered. With the window totally smeared with oil and smoke residue, it was impossible to tell what was happening.

There didn't seem to be much more I could do, even if I was capable of doing it. And there was nowhere to go. It seemed as good a time as any to take a nap, particularly in view of the fact that I no longer felt cold; indeed, I no longer felt much of anything at all. The floor seemed very far away, so instead of trying to ease myself down on it, I just fell forward on my face. The noise level all around, over, and under me was increasing. Somebody was pounding on the door. Then the whole ship shuddered, and a very deep, grinding sound came up through the steel hull, through the superstructure, and vibrated inside my throbbing skull. I didn't care. I was warm all over, very sleepy, and filled with the most wondrous sense of well-being; I couldn't remember what it was I had been so excited about.

The last thing I heard, piercing through all the roaring, grinding, banging, and pounding around me, was a single gunshot, loud and seemingly very close, a sonic exclamation point to a jumbled paragraph of chaos that weighed down on me and pushed me into unconsciousness.