San Andreas by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online Page B

survivors in there?’
    â€˜I wouldn’t even guess, sir. If there are, thank heavens we’re a hospital ship.’
    Patterson turned to Dr Sinclair and shook him gently. ‘Doctor, we need your help.’ He noddedtowards the superstructure. ‘You and Dr Singh—and the ward orderlies. I’ll send some men with sledges and crowbars.’
    â€˜An oxy-acetylene torch?’ said the Bo’sun.
    â€˜Of course.’
    â€˜We’ve got enough medical equipment and stores aboard to equip a small town hospital,’ Sinclair said. ‘If there are any survivors all we’ll require is a few hypodermic syringes.’ He seemed back on balance again. ‘We don’t take in the nurses?’
    â€˜Good God, no.’ Patterson shook his head vehemently. ‘I tell you, I wouldn’t like to go in there. If there are any survivors they’ll have their share of horrors later.’
    McKinnon said: ‘Permission to take away the lifeboat, sir?’
    â€˜Whatever for?’
    â€˜There could be survivors from the Andover .’
    â€˜Survivors! She went down in thirty seconds.’
    â€˜The Hood blew apart in one second. There were three survivors.’
    â€˜Of course, of course. I’m not a seaman, Bo’sun. You don’t need permission from me.’
    â€˜Yes, I do, sir.’ The Bo’sun gestured towards the superstructure. ‘All the deck officers are there. You’re in command.’
    â€˜Good God!’ The thought, the realization had never struck Patterson. ‘What a way to assume command!’
    â€˜And speaking of command, sir, the San Andreas is no longer under command. She’s slewing rapidlyto port. Steering mechanism on the bridge must have been wrecked.’
    â€˜Steering can wait. I’ll stop the engines.’
    Three minutes later the Bo’sun eased the throttle and edged the lifeboat towards an inflatable life raft which was roller-coasting heavily near the spot where the now vanished Condor had been. There were only two men in the raft—the rest of the aircrew, the Bo’sun assumed, had gone to the bottom with the Focke-Wulf. They had probably been dead anyway. One of the men, no more than a youngster, very seasick and looking highly apprehensive—he had every right, the Bo’sun thought, to be apprehensive—was sitting upright and clinging to a lifeline. The other lay on his back in the bottom of the raft: in the regions of his left upper chest, left upper arm and right thigh his flying overalls were saturated with blood. His eyes were closed.
    â€˜Jesus’ sake!’ Able Seaman Ferguson, who had a powerful Liverpool accent and whose scarred face spoke eloquently of battles lost and won, mainly in bar-rooms, looked at the Bo’sun with a mixture of disbelief and outrage. ‘Jesus, Bo’sun, you’re not going to pick those bastards up? They just tried to send us to the bottom. Us! A hospital ship!’
    â€˜Wouldn’t you like to know why they bombed a hospital ship?’
    â€˜There’s that, there’s that.’ Ferguson reached out with a boathook and brought the raft alongside.
    â€˜Either of you speak English?’
    The wounded man opened his eyes: they, too, seemed to be filled with blood. ‘I do.’
    â€˜You look badly hurt. I want to know where before we try to bring you aboard.’
    â€˜Left arm, left shoulder, I think, right thigh. And I believe there’s something wrong with my right foot.’ His English was completely fluent and if there was any accent at all it was a hint of southern standard English, not German.
    â€˜You’re the Condor Captain, of course.’
    â€˜Yes. Still want to bring me aboard?’
    The Bo’sun nodded to Ferguson and the two other seamen he had along with him. The three men brought the injured pilot aboard as carefully as they could but with both lifeboat and raft rolling heavily in the