Feeding Frenzy (Aristotle Soc Socarides) Read online

  FEEDING FRENZY

  By Paul Kemprecos

  SUSPENSE PUBLISHING

  Feeding Frenzy

  by

  Paul Kemprecos

  DIGITAL EDITION

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Suspense Publishing

  Feeding Frenzy

  Copyright 1993 Paul Kemprecos

  Cover Design: Shannon Raab

  Cover Photographer: Starr Gardinier Reina

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  To Chris Socarides, a Gentleman and a Scholar

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to express my grateful appreciation to Alex Carlson, who generously shared his knowledge of big ships; to Meg Ruley, who suggested as my agent at the time that a book about hungry creatures lurking under the sea would be scary indeed; to my former editor Kate Miciak, who beat me over the head with my manuscript until I turned it into a book; and to my wife Christi, my best friend and cheerleader, whose patient and loyal support sustained me through the ups and downs of this project.

  “The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.”

  —Sophocles

  FEEDING FRENZY

  CHAPTER 1

  Twenty-one minutes after midnight, seven miles east of Cape Cod, deep in the bowels of the Liberian freighter Pandora, demons began to stir.

  The malignant forces slumbering in the ship’s dark cargo hold were quickened into life by a moving wall of black water three stories high. The onrushing wave buried the Pandora’s bow under a foamy avalanche. The rounded stern lifted high into the spumy air. With no resistance to slow its spinning blades, the Pandora’s cavitating propeller chewed at nothing. The drive shaft from the engine room accelerated. A bolt-rattling shudder swept along the ship’s three-hundred-fifty-foot length.

  In the cavernous hold, a thin strand woven into a three-quarter-inch nylon line snapped under the strain of shifting cargo.

  The Pandora’s bow rose sluggishly, the deck leveled, the propeller bit hungrily into the water. The ship surged forward.

  High above in the dimly lit bridge, Captain George Zervas, commander of the Pandora, braced his shoulder against a bulkhead until his ship steadied on its course. The captain glanced at his watch: 12:25 A.M. He lit an unfiltered Camel cigarette and took a deep drag. The storm throbbed with a deep vibration, as if a thousand cathedral organs were stuck on the lowest bass chord, but an inner peace reigned in the captain’s mind. Zervas had weighed the external forces of wind and water against steel and welds, factored in navigational ski and experience, and concluded that the Pandora would come through her stormy ordeal beaten but intact.

  Zervas was neither a hysteric nor an oblivious fool when it came to dirty weather. The captain had been punished by the fierce summer meltemi of his native Aegean, and sailed through storms on both oceans. For all its blustery violence, a New England northeaster was no more dangerous than anything in his experience. He had done all he could. Long before clouds blotted out the stars, the crew had battened down the watertight hatches and pumped seawater into the freighter’s ballast tanks for more weight and stability.

  Zervas believed in the old adage that any ship, even a fifty-year-old relic like the Pandora, was stronger than the men who sailed her. His instincts were right about the Pandora. She had been a survivor since the day she slid off the ways at Maine’s Bath Ironworks in 1942. With the champagne barely dry on her hull, she was dodging torpedoes from the German U-boat wolf packs that prowled the East Coast. Only once was she damaged. In March ’43, a sub’s deck gun scored a direct hit amidships before rescue planes chased the attacker away.

  Passage of a half century and the neglect of uncaring owners accomplished more than the German untersee navy ever hoped for. Cancerous rust patches scarred the hull above the waterline. Reddish tears of oil and grime runoff streaked the blistered black hull. Corrosion ate away at the jutting masts and cranes. Water from a leaky bilge had settled to one side, and the ship listed drunkenly to starboard.

  In her glory days, when she was named the U.S.S. Eagle, her shiny decks were manned by a seasoned crew of American merchant marines. Now she was registered in Monrovia, a West African port where she had never dropped anchor. Her home was in Panama. The ship’s owner was a multinational shipping company in New York whose principals were Maltese. Most of her crewmen were Panamanian. The officers were Greek.

  Zervas had been on boats since he was able to walk. He was born on Santorini, the black-sand, volcanic island north of Crete. The first breath of air to fill his lungs was moist from the mists of the Aegean.

  George Zervas was of shorter-than-average height, with dark hair and a pencil-thin mustache, but he carried himself with military stiffness and placed a great premium on dignity.

  Had he not made a fateful decision five years before, Zervas might have commanded a supertanker or a cruise ship. Dog-tired from bridge duty on a small, undermanned tanker, he left his mate in charge, and went to his cabin for a nap. His slumber was cut short by an ear-splitting grinding. The mate had run the tanker onto a shoal that ripped into the ship’s bottom. Oil storage tanks ruptured; black number-two crude poured into the ocean off the Brittany coast. The spill cost millions to clean up, infuriated fishermen and hotel owners, and brought down the wrath of the French government and international environmentalists.

  Evidence on the real cause of the disaster, a malfunction in the tanker’s ancient navigational instruments, disappeared before it could be introduced at a hearing. The ship’s owners were insulated by layers of corporate paper and protected by political influence. In the end, George Zervas was held responsible. His captain’s license was revoked. He got his papers back eventually, but his reputation as a ship killer stuck like the smell of death. The only berths available to him were on rust buckets a voyage or two away from the scrap heap.

  Zervas took almost any ship handed to him. He learned not to be particular or to ask too many questions. He had a wife and two children to feed back in Santorini and he looked forward to the day he could retire. He accepted his fate stoically; what must be, must be. He was a proud man, nonetheless. The ships under his command might be derelicts. His crews could look like pirates. No matter. His uniform was always spotless and the creases ironed to razor sharpness.

  Now he rarely left his command to others, and never in a storm.

  Zervas walked over behind the helmsman, a wiry young Panamanian named Jésus. The helmsman stood, legs wide apart for balance, with his slim artist’s fingers curled around the sixteen-inch-diameter wheel. His flat Indian profile was plated in reddish copper by the soft ruby light from the gyrocompass dial, and his face was set in a beatific expression. He looked like a saint in a Renaissance painting. He stared at the nothingness beyond
the rain-dashed wheelhouse windows. Occasionally he glanced at the compass and adjusted the wheel, really an electronic switch which relayed commands to the hydraulic system that moved the great rudder of the again freighter.

  Having the Christos guide his ship tickled the captain’s Hellenic sense of irony, but Jésus was a natural helmsman.

  He had been at the wheel for hours and might have to remain at his post until the Pandora was safely out of the bad weather. Bringing in a new helmsman would have been dangerous; the Panamanian had an instinctive feel for the tempest. Better to let Jésus steer until he was exhausted. Luckily, the young man showed no sign of tiring.

  The captain had ordered the helmsman to maintain a course slightly to the east of the wind direction. If the freighter tried to go directly northeast into the waves, it would take a brutal beating. At this angle, the seas should break to one side of the bow. The engine room was keeping the ship at two knots, bare steerage way, the minimum speed necessary to maintain headway.

  Satisfied with the ship’s course, Zervas checked on Manos, the first mate, who was hunched over the pale glimmer of the radar screen. Manos was a bright, good-natured Athenian in his mid-thirties. Zervas sometimes wondered what the younger man had done wrong to be sentenced to the purgatory of duty on the Pandora, but he kept his questions to himself.

  Ragged whitish patches of storm clutter from waves and rain splotched the radar monitor. The captain studied the ghostly images, then recorded the digital position reading on the long-range navigation receiver. He went to the navigator’s table and penciled a circled dot on the chart to show the Pandora’s current position. He wrote the time inside the circle and on the outside, the distance from the last position.

  He planned to head north and west again, around the great curling arm of Cape Cod, for a straight shot to Boston, as soon as the ship was safely clear of land. He had radioed ahead that the storm would delay him. The anonymous people who awaited Pandora’s cargo were impatient. They promised him a bonus if he got the cargo to Boston that morning.

  Zervas thought about the dozens of black steel drums in the hold. They had been quietly loaded in the dead of night just before the ship left New Orleans. The bill of lading said the ship carried chemicals. The barrels themselves were stenciled with the word FERTILIZER. He wished he had had time to supervise the loading, but it was impossible to be everywhere. Most of the crewman came from farms and knew little of ships and sailing them. They were paid rock-low wages and gave equal effort in return. Manos was a good man, but even the first mate could be lackadaisical. Zervas hoped he wasn’t carrying dope, but he didn’t much care. His mind was on sunny Santorini and his family. Maybe he could retire with the unexpected windfall from this trip, buy a little boat, and take tourists on trips around the island.

  The captain went over to whisper a few words of encouragement to the helmsman. He again checked the radar and the loran and went back to the chart. He penciled another circled position dot and grunted softly. The waves and wind were driving the Pandora southward. He ordered Jésus to adjust course a few degrees more to the east. The new tack would take them into deeper water. There the swells were farther apart.

  Time passed, and Captain Zervas made further calculations. They were back on course. He let his thoughts drift home. But while he dreamed of whitewashed houses hugging the black lava cliffs, trouble was brewing less than a mile to the east. As if angered by the plodding progress of the defiant old freighter, the storm had reached deep into the ocean, packed thousands of tons of water into a giant sea, and sent it winging toward the Pandora.

  Captain Zervas took the Camels from his breast pocket and stuck a cigarette in his mouth.

  Now only a half mile away, the rogue wave rolled toward the unsuspecting ship like a snowball going downhill, growing to a terrifying size, absorbing mass and velocity from the waves in its path.

  The captain offered a cigarette to his first mate.

  The wave was a quarter mile away, bearing down hard. The hissing, foam-crested, white-veined monster was more than sixty feet high, taller than the ship’s rigging.

  Manos took the cigarette and borrowed the captain’s lighter.

  An eighth of a mile away.

  He was savoring his second puff when the Pandora seemed to stop, then rise in the air. Within seconds, the towering wave dashed over the bridge and aft house as if they were pebbles in a stream. The ship veered wildly to starboard.

  Zervas and the first mate were hurled to the deck.

  Still clutching the wheel, the helmsman fell to his knees.

  In the crew’s quarters under the aft house, eight Panamanians sat on the floor in a haze of cigarette smoke playing cards while those who weren’t nauseous watched from their bunks and fingered their rosary beads. When the wave caught the ship, the bunks tilted at a crazy angle. Bodies hurled out. The poker game became a tangle of arms and legs. Chips and cards clattered across the deck. Beer bottles became lethal projectiles.

  In the black hold where only the rats could bear witness, a stack of barrels, each about a yard in height and two feet in diameter, shifted weight, pressing against the line that secured them. More nylon strands parted.

  The wave had flung the freighter onto its starboard side, and now it oscillated in the other direction like a great pendulum. Again, the men in the crew’s quarters were tossed about like dice in a shaker. Again the barrels shifted. The ship rolled to starboard.

  The weakened nylon rope snapped under the strain.

  Barrels broke loose, rumbled across the hold like bowling balls, and crashed into the starboard bulkhead with a metallic thundering that sent the rats scurrying for cover.

  Up in the bridge, the helmsman pulled himself erect, swearing, and fought to regain control of the ship.

  The freighter rolled again. The barrels skittered across the hold and slammed into the port bulkhead.

  As the rudder came under control and the propeller powered the ship forward, the wallowing began to abate and the deck leveled. Zervas and his first mate helped each other to their feet. In the crew’s quarters, men picked themselves up, tested for broken bones, and started to argue over how the poker chips should be split among them.

  Manos staggered to the bridge telephone. He called down to the engine room. The engines were fine, the second engineer reported breathlessly. Manos cranked the telephone again and got through to the crew’s quarters. A man named Rodriques answered. Things were in a mess, he said, but nobody was seriously hurt.

  Captain Zervas brushed the knees of his uniform, tucked his shirt into his belt, and found his cap. He went over to the helmsman and patted him on the back. The man’s jersey was soaked with sweat. Zervas praised his helmsmanship, and said he’d be relieved as soon as they rounded the Cape. Jésus nodded. His grip on the wheel tightened.

  While Manos picked up the scattered charts and navigational instruments. Zervas listened to the droning voice of the NOAA weather announcer on the radio. The forecast was encouraging. The storm was moving away.

  The captain located his pack of Camels. The butts were crushed but smokable. He offered the mate another cigarette and lit up himself. He took a deep drag, blowing the smoke through his nostrils. Outside, the storm still raged, but the captain was satisfied that the ship had weathered the worst. He was carving out his own mental island of tranquility, thinking about the gifts he would bring home to his two rambunctious children and his wife.

  The ship’s telephone jangled. Three rings was the signal for the bridge to answer. But the phone rang at least a dozen times. The rings were jerky and spasmodic.

  Manos picked up the phone. “Bridge.”

  He listened for a few seconds without speaking. A deep furrow creased his brow.

  “Well?” the captain said.

  “I don’t know,” the first mate replied. “Listen.”
>
  He held the phone to the captain’s ear. Zervas heard a frenzied cacophony of screams and shouts. He took the phone in his hand. “Hello!” he yelled.

  No answer. Only the awful racket. Like the waiting room to Hell.

  “What is it, Captain?” Manos asked. “Is the crew fighting?”

  Zervas shook his head in puzzlement.

  A brawl was the first thing to enter his mind, too. The crew had been cooped up and bounced around in their stinking cabin for hours. There would have been drinking and gambling. He paused. No, these weren’t voices raised in anger. They were cries of terror.

  He barked into the phone again.

  A man’s voice came on. The words were unintelligible, more like a wet gargle than a sentence.

  “Who is this?” the captain snapped.

  “Mah, mah, Manuel. It’s Manuel.”

  “This is the captain. What’s going on? Is there a fight?”

  “No fight, Captain. It’s . . . Dios. Nononono. They come! Aieeeee!”

  “Manuel!” the captain shouted. “What are you saying?”

  There was no answer. Only the screams of men in torment. What was going on? There was no way to get from the bridge to the crew’s cabin without going onto the storm-washed decks. That would have been suicide. The phone suddenly went dead. Zervas cranked the handle. No answer. He tried again. Still nothing.

  As he stood there with the useless phone in his hand, he became aware of a change in the ship’s motion. A good seaman becomes one with his vessel, absorbing its rhythms through his feet. The captain’s legs were telling him the ship had lost power. The Pandora was starting to flounder.