80
CAPTAIN, YOU HAVE A RADIO CALL FROM THE CANAL tug off our port beam.”
Captain Franco stepped across the cruise ship’s bridge and grabbed a handset from the deck officer.
This is Sea Splendour, Captain Franco speaking.”
Good morning, Captain. This is Dirk Pitt.” He stuck his head out of the tug’s wheelhouse and waved toward the cruise ship.
My friend Pitt!” the captain said. “It is a small world. What are you doing here? Working for the Canal Authority?”
Not exactly. There’s a critical situation at hand, and I need your help.”
Of course. I owe my ship and my career to you. What do you require?” He spoke for a few minutes, then hung up the phone with a sullen look. He stepped over to his assigned canal pilot, who stood at the helm, monitoring their track.
Roberto,” the captain said with a forced smile, “you look hungry. Why don’t you go down to the galley for a quick meal? We’ll call you to the bridge when we approach the locks at Pedro Miguel.”
The grizzled pilot, who was fighting a rum hangover, perked up at the offer. “Thank you, Captain. The channel is wide through the lake, so you’ll have no problems.” He departed the bridge.
The first officer looked at Franco. “This is most unusual, Captain. What are you doing?”
Franco stepped to the helm and stared out the window with a vacant gaze. “Completing the career that should have ended in Valparaiso,” he said quietly, then ordered the ship to turn about.
Pitt maneuvered the tug away from the cruise ship and drove hard toward the shoreline. His target was the rusty barge used in the canal’s ongoing dredging operations. Nearly full of thick mud, it rode low in the water, awaiting a tow to be dumped in the Pacific.
Pitt pulled inshore of the barge, tied the tug to its rail, and sprinted across her deck walkway. Near the bow, he found the barge’s mooring line, a thick rope that he wrestled to free from a massive cleat. Dropping the line over the side, Pitt raced back to the tug and put it to work.
He turned parallel to the side of the barge and nudged the barge into deeper water. It drifted close to the main channel, so Pitt backed away and took up a new position on its flat stern, shoving the barge toward the locks.
A few hundred yards away, the Chinese ship Santa Rita had inched in front of the locks, waiting for a gate to open. Glancing over his shoulder, Pitt saw the Sea Splendour sweep up behind him, having used its bow thrusters to quickly turn around.
When Pitt had first spotted the Sea Splendour, the cruise ship he had saved in Chile, he thought he might use her to block the entrance to the locks. But the Santa Rita was already positioned there, leaving no room for the cruise ship to intrude. His backup plan was much more audacious, if not foolhardy. If he couldn’t block the Santa Rita from entering the locks, then he’d prevent her from leaving them. From the confines of Miraflores Lake, there was only one way to do that.
Shoving the barge ahead, he guided it toward the locks, then veered south, following the fork in the waterway. Rather than aiming for the locks, the tug and barge were now headed for the adjacent dam. Pitt noticed the shadow of the massive cruise ship as it thundered alongside him.
Sea Splendour ready when you are,” the radio crackled.
Roger, Sea Splendour. I’ll guide you in.”
He eased the tug away from the barge and then directed the cruise ship into his place. Matching speed, the cruise ship, its high bow brushing against the barge’s stern, maintained headway.
Looking good, Splendour,” Pitt said. “Give it all you’ve got.”
Nudging against the barge, the cruise ship briefly applied full power. It was a short burst, but enough to send the barge racing through the water.
Pitt tried to keep pace in the tug, watching the dam loom closer until it was barely a hundred yards away. “Reverse engines,” Pitt radioed. “Thanks, Sea Splendour, I’ll take it from here.”
Good luck to you, Mr. Pitt,” Franco said.
Pressing the tug to full power, he caught up to the barge’s stern as the cruise ship dug in to reverse course.
The loaded barge was like a runaway freight train, with the tug simply maintaining its momentum. Pitt bumped its stern quarter, keeping it aligned as it raced toward the middle of the concrete dam. The barge closed quickly, charging dead center into the spillway.
Pitt braced himself for the impact, which came harder than he anticipated. The flat prow of the barge slammed into the spillway with a metallic thud—and stopped cold. The tug bounced off the barge’s stern, and Pitt went flying over the helm. Staggering back to the wheel, he turned the tug away, and considered his failed attempt to burst open a dam that had stood since 1914. He had succeeded in only wedging a barge into its century-old spillway.
Then a deep rumble sounded from below. Several feet beneath the waterline, the barge had fractured the dam facing. The fracture grew as the pressure of the lake’s water forced its way into the fissure. With a sudden buckle and roar, a fifty-foot section of the dam wall disintegrated, leading the way for the collapse of the entire dam.
Pitt looked in awe as the barge slid forward and disappeared over the edge, crashing with an audible impact as it struck the waterway forty feet below. The tug felt an immediate draw from the escaping water, and Pitt had to quickly steer clear to elude the suction. The Sea Splendour had already backed well clear as Captain Franco hurried to take the cruise ship to the deepest part of the lake, near Pedro Miguel. Pitt turned his attention to the Santa Rita. The freighter was still stationed in front of the locks, awaiting its passage to the Pacific.
As Pitt turned the tug away from the shattered dam, he saw the gates of the north chamber slowly swing open. He’d done what he could, he told himself. Now it was simply a matter of time and physics.