Patriot games - Tom Clancy [95]
He stood alone in the pilothouse and looked at his radios-smashed. With them he could call for help, a tug, a merchantman, anything that could put a line on his bow and pull him to safe harbor. But all three of his radio transmitters were wrecked beyond repair by a whole clip of machine gun bullets.
Why did the bastards leave us alive? he asked himself in quiet, helpless rage. His engineer appeared at the door.
"Can't fix it. We just don't have the tools we need. The bastards knew exactly what to break."
"They knew exactly what to do, all right," the Captain agreed.
"We're late for Yarmouth. Perhaps-"
"They'll write it off to the weather. We'll be on the rocks before they get their thumbs out." The Captain turned and opened a drawer. He withdrew a flare pistol and a plastic box of star shells. "Two-minute intervals. I'm going to see to the passengers. If nothing happens in forty minutes, we launch the boats."
"But we'll kill the wounded getting them in-"
"We'll lose bloody everyone if we don't!" The Captain went below.
One of the passengers was a veterinarian, it turned out. Five people were wounded, and the doctor was trying to treat them, assisted by a member of the crew. It was wet and noisy on the vehicle deck. The ferry was rolling twenty degrees, and a window had been smashed by the seas. One of his deck crew was struggling to put canvas over the hole. The Captain saw that he would probably succeed, then went to the wounded.
"How are they?"
The veterinarian looked up, the anguish plain on his face. One of his patients was going to die, and the other four
"We may have to move them to the lifeboats soon."
"It'll kill them. I-"
"Radio," one of them said through his teeth.
"Lie still," the doctor said.
"Radio," he persisted. The man's hands were clasping bandages to his abdomen, and it was all he could do not to scream out his agony.
"The bastards wrecked them," the Captain said. "I'm sorry-we don't have one."
"The truck-a radio in the fucking truck!"
"What?"
"Police," Highland gasped. "Police van-prisoner transport radio "
"Holy Jesus!" He looked at the van-the radio might not work from inside the ferry. The Captain ran back to the pilothouse and gave an order to his engineer.
It was an easy enough task. The engineer used his tools to remove the VHF radio from the truck. He was able to hook it up to one of the ferry's antennas, and the Captain was using it within five minutes.
"Who is this?" the police dispatcher asked.
"This is the Cenlac, you bloody fool. Our marine radios are out. We are disabled and adrift, three miles south of Lisle Court, and we need assistance at once!"
"Oh. Very well. Stand by." The desk sergeant in Lymington was no stranger to the sea. He lifted his telephone and ran his finger down a list of emergency numbers till he found the right one. Two minutes later he was back to the ferry.
"We have a tugboat heading towards you right now. Please confirm your position three miles south of Lisle Court."
"That is correct, but we are drifting northeast. Our radar is still operating. We can guide the tug in. For Christ's good sake, tell him to hurry. We have wounded aboard."
The Sergeant bolted upright in his chair. "Say again-repeat your last."
The Captain explained in as few words as possible now that help was en route to his ship. Ashore, the Sergeant called his superior, then the local superintendent. Another call went to London. Fifteen minutes later, a Royal Navy flight crew was warming up a Sea King rescue helicopter at Gosport. They flew first to the naval hospital at Portsmouth to pick up a doctor and a medical orderly, then reversed course into the teeth of the gale. It took twenty dreadful minutes to find her, the pilot fighting his aircraft through the buffering winds while the copilot used the look-down radar to pick the ferry's profile out from the sea return on the scope. That was the easy part.
He had to give his aircraft more than forty knots of forward speed just to hold her steady over the boat-and the wind