the Spy (2010) by Cussler Clive (early readers .txt) 📕

if it weren't, Falconer snapped through gritted teeth. He was white from loss of blood, and Bell doubted he would be conscious much longer. The effort to climb the few steps to the bridge must have been herculean. Who's in the engine room? Falconer asked.

Uncle Darbee claims he was coal stoker on the Staten Island Ferry, and assistant engineer when the regular fellow got drunk.

Dyname burns oil.

He figured that out when he couldn't find a shovel. We've got plenty of steam.

I don't see the Holland.

It's gone up and down. I saw the periscope a moment ago. There!

The stubby conning tower broke the surface. The hull itself emerged briefly and rolled back under.

Tide's battering him, muttered Falconer. It's ebbing under a full moon.

Good, said Bell. We need all the help we can get.

Dyname streaked through the patch of roiled water. The submarine was nowhere to be seen. Falconer tugged at Bell's sleeve, whispering urgently, He's some sort of A-Class Royal Navy Holland-triple our tonnage. Look out, if he surfaces. He'll be faster on his main engine. With that warning, the captain slid unconscious to the deck. Bell throttled back and turned the speeding yacht around until it was pointing upstream again. He was several hundred yards beyond the Brooklyn Bridge now, scanning the water in the failing light.

A ferryboat pulled abruptly from its Pine Street Pier, cut off a big Bronx-bound Pennsylvania Railroad ferry, and raced up the East River. Their wakes combined to render vast stretches of water too choppy for Bell to distinguish the periscope from breaking seas. He drove into the chop and circled. Suddenly he saw it far ahead. It had trailed behind the ferries, masked by them, and was pulling abreast of the navy yard.

The Holland submarine burst from the water, revealing her conning tower and the full hundred feet of her hull. Blue smoke spewed. Gasoline exhaust, Bell realized, from her powerful main engine. On the surface now, she was a full-fledged torpedo boat, quick and nimble.

But vulnerable.

Bell shoved the steam lever forward, seizing this precious chance to ram her. But even as the steel yacht gathered speed, the long Holland heeled into a tight turn and pointed straight at Dyname. Her bow reared. Bell saw the dark maw of an open bow tube. From it leaped a Mark 14 Wheeler torpedo.

Chapter 55

THE TORPEDO SUBMERGED.

Isaac Bell could only guess whether to steer left or right. He could not see the torpedo bearing down on him underwater. Nor whether it was veering left or right. Whatever wake it trailed was erased by the heavy chop. Dyname was one hundred feet long and ten feet wide. The instant he turned, he would present a bigger target broadside. If he guessed wrong, the TNT warhead would blow the yacht to pieces. O'Shay would submerge to reload at leisure and continue his attack.

Bell steered straight ahead.

The Holland saw him coming. It began to submerge. But it was descending too slowly to escape the knife-thin steel hull bearing down on it at nearly forty knots. It turned abruptly to the right, Isaac Bell's left. He still could not see the torpedo's wake, nor any trail of bubbles. Hang on, Uncle Danny! he shouted down the voice pipe, and turned left to ram.

A flash of light and an explosion behind him told Bell he had guessed correctly. Had he not counterpunched, the torpedo would have sunk him. Instead, it had detonated against an impervious stone pier of the Brooklyn Bridge, and he was close enough to the Holland to see its rivets. He braced for the impact by pressing hard against the helm the second before she hit the submarine just behind its conning tower. At the speed Dyname was traveling, Bell expected to shear through the Holland and cut it in half. But he had miscalculated. With her sharp bow lifting from the water as her nine propellers churned, the yacht rode up onto the Holland's hull, perched across it, then slid off with screech of tearing steel and shearing rivets.

Dyname's propellers were still spinning, and they pushed the yacht hundreds of yards from the collision before he could stop them. The Holland had vanished, submerged or sunk, he could not tell. Then Uncle Donny poked his head up to report, Water's coming in.

Can you give me steam?

Not for long, the old man answered. Bell circled the site of the collision. He could feel the water weighing down Dyname's hull.

Seven minutes after the Holland submerged, it reappeared a short distance away.

Bell steered to ram again. The yacht resisted the helm. He could barely coax her into a turn. Suddenly the Holland's conning-tower hatch flipped open. Four men scrambled out and jumped into the river. The tidal current swept them under the bridge. None were Eyes O'Shay, and the Holland was circling, pointing slowly but inexorably toward the four-hundred-fifty-foot hull of the New Hampshire. At a range of less than four hundred yards, the spy could not miss.

Bell wrestled with the helm and forced the stricken yacht on a course to ram. He shoved the steam lever to flank speed. There was no response. He yelled down the voice pipe. Give me everything you can, and get out before she sinks!

Whatever the old man managed in the engine room caused the yacht to lumber ahead fitfully. Bell steered at the Holland, which had stopped in place, low in the water, with the East River waves lapping the rim of its open hatch. The thrashing propeller held it against the tide. Its bow was completing its turn, lining its torpedo tube up with the New Hampshire.

Isaac Bell drove Dyname into the submarine. The vessels lurched together like bloodied, bare-knuckle prizefighters staggering through their final round. The yacht bumped the heavier submarine slightly off its course and scraped alongside. As the effect of the impact receded and the submarine resumed lining up its torpedo, Bell glimpsed through the open hatch Eyes O'Shay's hands manipulating the rudder wheels.

He jumped down from the bridge,