The dredger had been operating fifty feet from shore and was moored by a pair of huge support legs, called spuds, that protruded through the ship’s forward hull. The ship was perpendicular to shore, with its stern facing the channel, which played directly into Pitt’s hands.
Giordino, approaching the ship from the stern, spotted a heavy length of chain dangling over the dredger’s starboard rail. He eased the Bullet alongside, then cut power. Quickly climbing out, he snared the chain, and attached it to the Bullet before it could drift away. Hoisting himself up the chain, he grabbed the ship’s rail and pulled himself onto the deck.
As a potential hazard in the channel, the Ibn Battuta , named for a fourteenth-century Moroccan explorer, stood brightly illuminated by dozens of overhead lights. Giordino peered from one end of the ship’s deck to the other and found it completely empty, the crew still asleep in their bunks. Only a lone seaman stood early-morning watch on the bridge, and he had been oblivious to Giordino’s approach and boarding.
Giordino quickly moved aft, searching for the dredger’s controls, which he prayed weren’t located in the wheelhouse. In the center of the stern deck, forward of a large A-frame and well ahead of the cutter apparatus, he spotted a small, elevated shack with broad windows. Climbing up its steps, he entered it and took a seat in the rear-facing operator’s chair. He was thankful to find that the dredging mechanism could be operated by a single man, but he cringed when he saw that the control panel was labeled in Dutch.
“Well, at least it isn’t Turkish,” he muttered while quickly scanning the board.
Finding a switch marked “Dynamo,” he flicked it to the “Macht” position. A deep rumble shook the deck as the dredge’s massive power generator fired to life. Up on the bridge, the seaman standing watch rushed to the rear window at the noise and quickly spotted Giordino’s figure in the controls shack. His excited voice was soon blaring over a two-way radio affixed to the shack’s wall. Giordino calmly reached over and turned the radio off before gazing to his left.
The high prow of the tanker was just emerging from beneath the Galata Bridge, barely a hundred yards away. Giordino abandoned his efforts at trying to decipher the Dutch console and frantically started pushing buttons. One series initiated a grinding sound ahead of him, and he looked up with satisfaction to see the teeth of the cutter head rotating with a menacing whine. The supporting boom stretched horizontally off the dredger’s stern, holding the head some twenty feet above the water. It was way too high for what Pitt had in mind.
“Wat doe jij hier?” a deep voice suddenly grumbled at Giordino.
Giordino turned to see a squat man with tousled hair climbing into the small controls house. The Ibn Battuta ’s pump engineer, still wearing his pajamas under a dingy overcoat, stepped over and clamped a hand on Giordino’s shoulder. Giordino calmly raised a finger and pointed out the window.
“Look!” he said.
The engineer glanced to the side and froze in shock at the sight of the Dayan bearing down on the dredge ship. He started to say something as he turned back toward Giordino only to be met with the balled fist of a right cross. Giordino’s knuckles struck him on the button of his chin, and he wilted like a wet noodle. Giordino quickly caught the man in his arms and laid him gently on the floor.
“Sorry, my friend. It ain’t the time for pleasantries,” he said to the unconscious engineer before scrambling back to the console. He sensed the shadow of the high tanker blanket the controls shack as he hurriedly surveyed the console. Noticing a small lever to the side, he reached over and pushed it down. With great relief, he watched the end of the boom suddenly drop toward the water. He held the lever down until the cutter head was nearly submerged, its rotating teeth creating a foamy froth on the surface.
Releasing the lever, he glanced up the channel. The bow of the huge tanker was now less than twenty feet away. With a helpless feeling, he stood and watched it approach, knowing there was nothing else to be done.
78
Pitt knew it was a desperate gamble, but his options were nearly nonexistent. There had simply been no time to get the tanker safely to open sea, and with the engine now dead there was no chance of escaping the crowded shores of Istanbul. Even if the tanker detonated in the center of the Golden Horn, thousands would die. Pitt’s only hope was to try to submerge at least some of the explosives and minimize their destructive force.
And that’s where the Ibn Battuta came into play. With its rock-eating cutter head, Pitt knew the dredger had the ability to slice through the tanker like a can opener. But he had to put the tanker right on the money for it to work. If he came in too tight, he would rip the boom right off the back of the dredger. Approach too wide, and he would miss the head completely.
Gliding powerless under the Galata Bridge, he gazed ahead at the dredger off his bow. Though the cutter head was still elevated above the water, he could see its rotating teeth and knew that Giordino was at work. He lightly tapped the rudder control, then stepped to the starboard window and poked his head out. Riding high in the water, he couldn’t quite see down the tanker’s slab sides to the surface, which added to the difficulty of alignment. He tried not to focus on the fact that he had one, and only one, chance to succeed.
Quickly approaching the Belgian dredger, Pitt was relieved to see its stern boom drop, lowering the cutter head into the water. A few seconds later, he spotted Giordino standing near the stern rail, waving at him to edge the tanker in closer. Pitt sprinted back to the helm and turned a few degrees to starboard, then waited for the bow to respond. When the tanker inched in closer, Giordino raised his arms in the air, giving Pitt the thumbs-up.
Pitt left the helm and returned to the side window to watch the impact. Behind him, he suddenly noticed the roar of a high-revving engine, punctuated by the shrill scream of a woman’s voice. He glanced down to see Lazlo still lying prone on the deck at the head of the stairway. This time, he noticed a small pool of blood on the deck near his chest. Beyond Lazlo, he saw the yacht alongside, wildly weaving back and forth, once even banging into the side of the tanker.
Pitt idly wondered why the yacht was even still hanging around. But it wasn’t worth pondering now, he thought, as he turned and faced the dredger, and the moment of truth.
“Get us clear!” Maria screamed for at least the third time.
The normally controlled tyrant was flush with panic as she repeatedly looked at her watch. There were just minutes to go.
Sweat ran down the yacht captain’s brow as he swung its rudder to and fro, fighting to break free of the embedded ramp. He had waited until they cleared the Galata Bridge before reversing engines, bucking against the momentum of the tanker. Yet the ramp remained lodged in the yacht’s deck like a barbed hook in the mouth of an angry marlin.
The yacht’s engines howled as the captain applied full reverse power before trying to swing the boat wide. Unknown to the captain, the stairway’s lower wheels and axle had caught around the anchor chain in the yacht’s anchor locker and was now hopelessly entangled by the wrenching motion of the boat.