Page 56 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm (An Isaac Bell Adventure #15)

T he trouble didn’t start until they were five days out of Ponta Delgada.

The sky had been bright blue and the seas calm with a steady breeze that made the stumpy Alice N.

cut through the water like a clipper ship.

On the morning of the fifth day, dawn revealed the western horizon to be a towering wall of gray from the sea to the top of the sky.

It was some miles off, but Captain Grimm knew just by looking at the clouds that the storm was intense and absolutely massive.

From the fishing boat’s little bridge, he called to his crew, who were below preparing their morning meal.

“Zane, finish up making breakfast—double rations for everyone. It’s going to be a piece till we get another hot meal.

Then I want you to make us a mess of sandwiches and wrap ’em in wax paper.

Also brew up as much coffee as you can find a container for.

We’re gonna need it. Oh, and break out our slops. ”

“Slops?”

“Foul weather gear. Caleb, you and Bell batten everything inside and make sure the bilge is clear. After that start hauling down the sails and be ready to set the storm jib and the trysail.”

“Why not just reef the main?” the young mate asked.

“No, lad. That storm’s gonna hit like a polar hurricane and would rip the mainsail from the mast no matter how she’s reefed. Best we show her as little canvas as possible. Gentlemen, we’re in for a miserable time, make no mistake, but the Alice N. ’s a fine boat and she’ll see us through.”

The first squall ripped at the ocean’s surface as if it were being raked by machine-gun fire.

The wind puffed a strong chilled gust just then, died for a moment, and came roaring at the boat like an icy avalanche.

The seas dropped away from under them like the first big dip at a Coney Island roller coaster and rose again in a spine-compressing swoop just moments later.

After that, the rain came in earnest, slashing in every direction including up when the wind twisted into spiraling vortices.

As the men and the storm raced at each other, the sky overhead grew steadily darker until it was as if they were in deepest twilight and Grimm’s only sense of how the seas were running was by watching the lines of white spume that rode on the crest of each black wave.

Thirty minutes into the teeth of the storm, Grimm was forced to admit a mistake. He’d called for the larger of his two storm jibs, thinking he’d prefer to have better steerage, but the wind was just too strong, and it was only a matter of time before the storm tore it away.

“Sorry, men,” he said with rumbling reluctance. “That jib has to come down.”

“You want the white one up instead?”

“Aye.”

Bell and the young mate exchanged a look, one that said it was a tough job, but both felt confident of their abilities.

Caleb pulled the sail from a locker down below.

It was smaller than a twin bedsheet, but incredibly strong.

The two men already wore rain jackets and pants.

They each tied on their sou’wester hats, nodded to each other again, and Bell opened the door to the deck.

The wind tried to wrench it from his hand as rain filled the small enclosed cockpit.

He pushed through, shoulders hunched, knees flexing with each wild gyration of the Alice N. ’s hull. Caleb came out on his heels.

The wind pressed against them like a solid force and when it gusted it was like being shoved by a football lineman.

They stayed low, their chests against the deck as they slithered toward the bow.

Rain and salty spray found every chink in their protective clothing, sending icy fingers across their skin.

The sound of the storm was a visceral presence that made their bones vibrate.

Maintaining a grip to the boat’s deck was like riding an unbroken stallion, a wild unpredictable series of bucks, kicks, and lunges.

It took several minutes to crawl the thirty feet to the forestay, where the too-large storm jib was as tight as the head of a drum because of the storm’s intensity.

Bell turned his back to the bow and remained seated.

He took the smaller sail from the Alice N.

’s mate. Caleb uncleated the sail running up the forestay and started lowering it.

Bell gathered it up as it came down the wire brace, twirling his arms around each other like a mechanical mixer so the wind never had a chance to snatch it away.

He switched the sail he’d been sitting on with the new one and tied on the head of the smaller storm jib.

He had just finished tying the tack of the sail to the line when a wave came over the bow like a runaway locomotive.

Bell managed to keep hold of the stay, the thin wire digging into his palms until they bled.

Caleb lost his footing and washed across the deck, slamming into the railing with his back.

He was pressed there for many long seconds until the boat heaved itself out of the wave’s trough and water drained off the wooden plank deck.

Bell let momentum carry him over to check on the young New Englander.

Caleb was soaked through and moaned when he straightened his limbs, but was otherwise all right.

They waited for the boat to rock again and returned to the unfinished task of raising the small storm jib.

The wind took it as soon as it could, billowing the cloth with a sound like a cannon.

It took both Bell and the mate to raise it against the wind as it bellied out.

Once up and secured, they ran the jib sheet back from the clew corner of the sail to the protected cockpit. Bell ran it through a jib block and secured it to a sheet winch.

“Are you okay, boy?” Grimm asked as Caleb dumped water out of his waterproof hat.

“Aye, Cap. Breath knocked out of me is all.”

Grimm turned a weathered eye to Bell. “Fine job you done, Beacon Hill. I guess you know how to sail after all. That was a neat trick to bundle the sails. Very efficient. Where’d ya learn it?”

Despite the compliment and what sounded like a touch of grudging respect from the captain, Bell couldn’t help digging at Grimm’s belief in a working class/upper class false equivalency and said with a smile, “Oh, that. The sailmaster at the Boston Yacht Club.”

—

T he storm raged for a total of thirty hours, pushing all four men to their physical and mental limits. They partnered off in four-hour shifts, Bell and Caleb as one team and Captain Grimm and Zane Grey the other, but when it was all over the four were as tight a crew as had ever sailed together.

Luck or Grimm’s skills at estimating their course had been with them during the storm.

It had pushed them only a hundred or so miles off course.

That small miracle did nothing to allay Bell’s concerns.

The Saarland might have been slowed some by the storm, but not nearly as much as the Alice N .

The battleship’s lead had widened incalculably.

Bell had explained to Grimm and Caleb the stakes of their mission on their first day at sea and so they wasted no time setting progressively heavier sails as the storm abated.

Rain was still falling and the wind remained fierce when they hoisted a tightly reefed mainsail, only to keep letting more and more of it out as the storm continued to peter out.

Grimm kept their tacks crisp and precise, and eked every knot out of his trusty boat as he drove her ever westward.

By this point, he trusted Bell to take the helm when he was off watch down in the salon, so it happened to be Bell who spotted the tip of Long Island just as dawn cracked behind them.

He’d been steering for it by the pulse of the Montauk lighthouse for some time.

Not only was Grimm an amazing sailor—they’d made the crossing in just under ten days, averaging an astonishing nine knots despite the storm—he’d proved himself to be a master navigator as well.

They’d arrived exactly where they’d intended.

Bell noted the time and penciled in an entry on the meticulous log Grimm maintained.

He turned the helm a few points to the south so they would keep the island to starboard as they sailed for New York.

Soon the beaches were scrolling by. There was the occasional beach house, too, but all were still shuttered for the now-ending winter.

Bell rued that there were no proper harbors on Long Island.

Had it been summer and the population at their elevated levels, he could have hitched a ride on the Long Island Railroad at Southampton or paid a driver to take him to the city.

On more than one occasion he’d taken his Simplex Crane Model 5 to nearly seventy-five miles per hour on the Long Island Parkway.

It could have saved him hours. Instead, this part of the island was all but abandoned for another few months and the trains only ran once a week.

He was stuck with the Alice N . giving her best, but managing only seven knots as the breeze started to falter.

In his mind’s eye he saw the Saarland creeping through New York Bay, low and menacing like a jungle cat, her big guns trained and elevated, while the great city off her bows lay as supine as a sacrificial victim on some pagan altar.

Every second brought Manhattan closer to the range of those massive cannons.

He could imagine the first salvo, fire belching from the barrels and quarter-ton shells hurtling through the sky.

He saw the impact, saw buildings blown apart so that bricks turned into shrapnel that scythed down pedestrians in every direction.

He heard the panicked screams and could feel the chalky dust on the back of his throat.

The images filled Bell with impotent rage. There was nothing he could do but keep the fishing boat trimmed and on a tack to maximize every bit of the wind hitting her sails.

“Hey, gents,” he called down into the salon. “We’re parallel to Long Island now. We’ve no reason to think the Saarland hasn’t beaten us here by days, but I think we should keep a watch for her just in case.”

“Prudent idea,” Grey said. He popped up from below a moment later with a pair of binoculars hanging from a strap around his neck.

As New York was America’s busiest port it was little wonder there was so much shipping funneling into the lower bay.

The size and type of vessels was countless, but traffic was mostly dominated by freighters trailing long tethers of dissipating coal smoke.

Notably there were no large passenger ships heading into New York from Europe or going eastward toward the deadly ring of U-boats attempting to blockade the British Isles.

It was twilight by the time they reached the lower bay leading into New York Harbor. There was too much shipping to keep the sails out, so Bell and Caleb dropped them for the final leg of the journey.

“What’s it mean that we haven’t heard those guns?” Caleb asked as they furled the sails for storage in the large locker. “Did we actually beat them?”

Bell was contemplating the exact opposite; that Rath had already come and gone and once they reached the harbor proper they would see parts of the city aflame against the backdrop of the nighttime sky.

The other thought darkening his mood even further was that he’d been wrong about Rath’s intentions all along, that he’d never intended to attack New York and that he had some other nefarious mission for the infernal machine he’d stolen.

Rath could have his sights on another city, or maybe he had gone after shipping, as Churchill had intimated to his government to obtain their cooperation.

He voiced none of this to Caleb, who so wanted to win this race even if he didn’t fully grasp the consequences of losing. He’d never witnessed the horror of a modern artillery attack, as Bell had firsthand. Instead he said, “I doubt it, unless they had some major mechanical failure.”

They soon passed between Staten Island and Brooklyn through the Verrazano Narrows and entered the upper bay.

Everything seemed normal. The two boroughs were well lit, there were no people trying to flee, no unusual boat traffic of gawkers looking for a better angle at the destruction, nothing at all to indicate the city had been attacked.

Bell wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Finally lower Manhattan came into view and Bell let out a breath of relief.

The city blazed in all its glory, the high-rise buildings were all aglow as they stretched into the darkened sky.

There were no fires. There were no panicked throngs.

There was no monstrous warship just off Governors Island making ready to open fire with her eleven-inch cannons.

There was nothing but the hustle of the city, which many said never slept.

“What say you, Beacon Hill?” Grimm asked, using the nickname he’d dropped after the storm. Zane Grey noticed, but said nothing.

“Not sure,” Bell replied. “I doubt we beat them here and I am almost positive I deduced Rath’s intention.

Let’s stick to our plan. Put me ashore at the ferry dock, find someplace to berth the Alice N.

, and make your way to the Van Dorn offices at the Knickerbocker Hotel.

That’s on Broadway and Forty-Second. I appreciate you gents supporting me on this. ”

“We’ve come this far,” Grey said. “There’s no way I’m not sticking around to find out how it ends.”

“Let’s hope with egg on my face,” Bell said, “and that battleship sold for scrap.”