Red Dragon

by Jerry Pournelle

  Red Dragon

  by

  Jerry Pournelle

  Table of Contents

  RED DRAGON

  Jerry Pournelle

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

  book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1971 by Jerry Pournelle

  Red Dragon was previously published under the pseudonym Wade Curtis

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISB N10: 0-441-71092-1

  ISBN13: 978-0-441-71092-8

  Berkley Medallion Edition: May 1971

  Charter Edition: December 1985

  Baen Ebook edition October 2008

  Chapter One

  I woke up lying in the bilges with water sloshing over the floorboards. When I tried to get on my feet the boat took another lurch and threw me across the narrow cabin onto the chart table, squeezing water out of my clothes to drip on the Coast Pilot and charts secured there under their straps. A book fell off the shelf above me and clonked me a good one on the temple, and I grabbed it before it could swill around in the icy water at my feet.

  The flashlight wasn't where it belonged, and I cursed, cursed again when I reached for my emergency light and it wasn't in place either. "Damn you, Steen!" I shouted, but he couldn't hear me. The wind was tearing through the rigging and in the little cabin it sounded like water was gurgling into the boat. I didn't think it was, but there was altogether too much water down there. Without a light I couldn't see if it was rising or not.

  It was cold. Without my blankets around me I realized just how cold even before a gust blew through the open companionway, splattering me with sleet. As I reached for my boots the boat lurched again, throwing me into a sitting position on my bunk. I grabbed the mast, holding on with my left hand while I fished around under the bunk for my sea boots. The right one was half full of water, and I poured it out, cursing again but running out of anything original to say.

  Eventually I got my boots on, my feet trying to curl up into little balls of ice and escape the chilly water around them. Now that I had rolled through the bilge I was wet and cold. I got my ski parka pulled on over the wool sweater I had worn to bed, then put my arms through the frigid stiff sleeves of my yellow slicker and fished the sou'wester out of the pocket. The boat hadn't sunk yet, and I didn't feel like going out on deck until I had at least enough gear on to keep from freezing.

  When I climbed up the ladder through the companionway, I got the full shock of the wind, driving sleet and cold right through my slicker and four or five layers of clothes under it. The sailboat was heeled way over, her port rail under and water rushing along the deck almost up to the cabin sides. Back on the stern seat there was an apparition, a drenched figure in blue oilskins, salt crust hanging from his eyebrows and sleet spattered all across him, grimly holding the tiller and murmuring something like, "My God, stop it, please, stop it."

  Up on deck it wasn't so bad except for the cold. The boat was carrying too much sail, and the sleet was thick enough so that I couldn't see more than a few yards in the black night. There weren't any other lights in sight, and our own running lights seemed to be shining through fog, throwing pale red and green beams a few feet into the weather before giving up. If there was anybody fool enough to be out there he'd never see us. We heeled way over as another gust of nearly horizontal sleet spattered across the deck.

  I figured the wind at about forty knots, nothing to get excited about as long as we were careful, but the sea was much higher than it should have been for that wind. All around us were tall gray waves with creamy white breakers on top, maybe eight feet high but on no more than twenty-foot centers from crest to crest, a short choppy sea trying its best to break us in half.

  "You all right?" I shouted.

  "No." He looked up with an effort from the compass, seeing me for the first time, then struggled to pull his sleeve up to get a look at the luminous dial of his watch. "Yes! It is not time for you to relieve me, I have another hour yet."

  "Yeah," I answered. "Look, Iron Man, we ought to get some sail off this boat. I told you to call me if it got any worse!"

  He managed a grin, struggling for a second before he flashed it at me. I could just see his face two yards away. "You call this worse? This is a pleasant sail! But I think I am frozen to the tiller!"

  I moved aft to sit beside him, put my hand on the oak bar. "I have her," I told him. "Get up and stomp your feet, get the circulation going. In fact, go below and see if you can make some tea. I could use a warmup before I get out on that foredeck." When he didn't move I shouted again, "I have her! That's an order, Dr. Hoorne."

  "Yes, sir. Would the captain care for . . . oh, blast it, all right, thank you, I would like some relief, but I could have held her until my watch was over."

  "Sure you could, but I wouldn't be able to sleep the way you let her fall off. Threw me right out of my bunk!" I tried a grin, but it wasn't a very good one. Four days of this, three hours on deck and three below, no possible relief and the need to be attentive to every change in weather, do all the navigation, worry about the boat . . . I told myself for about the thousandth time that I'd never again go shorthanded on a long trip with a landsman. "What about the tea?" I asked. "I can hold her steady if you can manage the stove."

  To prove me a liar the sea threw a cross wave at me, a tidal eddy about six feet high riding at right angles to the seas we were plunging into. It broke against us and the boat heeled dangerously onto her beam ends, throwing her cockpit coaming under for a second. A couple of gallons of water slopped into the cockpit, sloshed around there while the little scuppers slowly drained it overboard. That reminded me, and I shouted again. "Where's the flash? Check the level of water in the cabin, we must be taking in some through the forehatch." In our haste to get away from Seattle I hadn't checked everything, and the forehatch couldn't be battened down tight enough, so that every time a wave broke across the foredeck—about three times a minute—there would be a trickle down onto the double berth in the forepeak, wetting the spare sails and soaking my partner's seabag because he hadn't thought to put a plastic bag inside the canvas. We weren't shipping enough through there to sink us, but I wanted to be sure that was the only source.

  "I have lost one of the lights overboard," he answered. "The other is here somewhere."

  "Blast it!" I exploded. "How many times do I have to tell you, the most important thing at night is to have a light were I can lay my hand on it instantly! What if we were running on the rocks and I had to find out where we were?"

  "I'm looking," he told me. "Ah, here it is." A sickly light bounced across the deck.

  "Not in my eyes, I have to see the compass and sails," I reminded him, trying to make my tone a little less unfriendly. "Fine, check the water level and see if you can operate the stove. Better pump a few strokes too, it'll warm you up."

  He clambered below, lurching heavily against the cabin side. "Damn!" he shouted.

  "Not again?" I said despairingly.

  "Yes. Oh, I got it, the chimney didn't break."

  "Good." The kerosene lamp over the stove was mounted a good eighteen inches outboard of the companionway, but somehow he managed to knock it off its gimbals every time he went below in the dark. After a few minutes he got it assembled and lit, and a warm yellow light flooded out of the cabin. It was too bright, but I didn't say anything. If it helped him get the stove operating, it was worth it. I wasn't thinking any too clearly, and a cup of tea would warm me up and get the cerebral action going again.

  I shook the sleet out of my eyes and stared at the compass. Our course
was south by west magnetic, which meant we were going a bit south of true west, beating our way up the Straits of Juan de Fuca from Seattle to the Pacific Ocean. I made sure of the time, decided it would be another couple of hours before we'd get anywhere near the shore. Ahead of us the Olympic Peninsula, Clallam Bay about dead ahead if my navigation wasn't too much off. Off to the right somewhere was Vancouver Island, part of the Canadian province of British Columbia, but we hadn't seen much of it this trip except for the tall striped spire of Race Rocks Light. On my last watch I'd driven the little cutter across the Straits as far as I dared, to within a few miles of the unlighted coast of Vancouver Island, so that I could turn in without worrying about navigation. The wind was steady, northwest by a half north, and all Hoorne had to do was keep her close-hauled on the starboard tack, giving us right of way over anything that happened to see us, not that boats in the Straits kept too good a watch. It was a risk, but not so much of one as keeping closer to land when there wasn't any visibility.

  It took him a while but he got the tea made, two cups of absolutely boiling Earl Grey laced with honey and rum, something to chase the sleet away and warm us up from the inside. I may have drunk something in my life that tasted as good, but I couldn't remember it.

  "You better get below and get some rest," I told him.

  "You said we should take some sail in," he reminded me.

  "We don't really have to. She's holding up pretty well." At sunset I had tucked a reef in the mainsail, set the small staysail and no jib, giving us a snug rig. "It isn't the wind so much as the sea anyway, and there's not enough to do anything but make us miserable. The danger in here is running into something hard." Such as a log, but it was early in the year for loggers. That was one consolation, anyway.

  "Will it be this bad all the way to Los Angeles?" he said.

  "Discouraged?"

  "A little. Will it?"

  "No and yes. Out at sea the wind ought to be behind us so we don't have to plow into it, and the seas won't be so steep without a lot more wind. This channel builds seas in here, some say this is one of the worst places in the world to sail." I didn't tell him that the Washington-Oregon coast was another contender for that title. He'd find that out when we rounded Tattoosh Island.

  "You are sure you need no more help?"

  "No, get below," I told him. I glanced at my watch. "Dawn in a couple of hours anyway. We ought to make Neah Bay tomorrow afternoon, we'll put in there and rest up before we take the big jump down the coast."

  The rest of the night was pure hell. It had no business sleeting in mid-April, but it kept up all night anyway, and when morning came there was fog so that I still didn't know where we were. I kept the boat tacking back and forth across the channel, never sighting land, until about noon the fog burned away and we had a real horizon. There wasn't a thing in sight but an ocean liner way off ahead of us, her masts and hull just visible. A jet whistled overhead, bound for Japan.

  "Are we lost?" Steen asked. When I laughed, he shouted at me. "Paul, I mean it, are we lost?"

  "Of course not."

  "Then why don't we see some land? This is a narrow channel, we should see land!"

  "It's a twenty-mile-wide channel and we must be in the middle of it. Now go get us something to eat and stop complaining. I told you it would be rough out here this time of year." I leaned back against the high coaming, letting the sun try to dry me off. It wasn't doing too good a job of it. Two small cuts on my hands were white abscesses from the constant soaking in salt water, and the cracks around my finger joints were already open sores despite the cold cream I had rubbed into them. Every time I adjusted a line I felt a stab of pain. We were both wet clear through, and even our spare clothes were damp. Still, it was reasonably warm now, the wind had dropped off to maybe twenty knots, and the seas were calm for the Straits. It wouldn't have been too bad if I'd had enough sleep.

  It was about two in the afternoon when we spotted Waada Island dead ahead, just where it should have been by my deduced reckoning. It really wasn't all that good as navigation—I mean, with a compass and a steady wind how can you get lost in a strait twenty miles wide at the most? But it was good to see land, even if it wasn't very friendly.

  We drew up on the island, a little pimple covered with low pine trees. All the way up to it there wasn't a thing in sight, just the rocky coast and the slate-gray water. A surf broke, throwing foam fifty feet high against cathedral-sized rocks to leeward. When we got close to Waada the boat took on a different motion, a great swooping.

  "Feel that?" I asked. "Real Pacific swells, not the chop we get in Juan de Fuca's territory. That's what we get from here south, you might as well get used to it." I stood, looked around the horizon ahead of us. "See—off the starboard bow, all the way out . . ."

  "There's nothing to see," he told me.

  "Exactly. There's nothing out that way but China. You sure you're able to go through with this?"

  "Look, we've put in five days getting this far. But is it safe? This is a small boat, will it stand . . ."

  I laughed. "This boat is thirty-four feet, built out of oak and mahogany and silicone bronze fastenings. Eric Hiscock took a thirty-foot sloop around the world with nobody aboard but his wife. Hell, there was a sixteen-year-old kid set out of L.A. alone, got around the world in a twenty-four-footer. The boat can take anything that ocean can give, the question is, can we?"

  "We have to, don't we . . . Are you putting into that port there?"

  We were drawing up on Neah Bay fast now, sailing with the tide. The little village, no more than twenty houses and the cannery, looked like a city after the lonely straits. The wind shifted another point north, so that I could let the sheets off and stop pinching Witch of Endor, and she showed her appreciation by racing through the water, making a good six knots easily, a river of white foam boiling smoothly past. I'd shaken out the reef and set the jib hours ago. "Yeah, I'm putting in. We're not in shape to keep going, neither one of us. We need some rest, a shave and a shower. Need some fresh water, too, but this isn't the place to get it. Mainly, though, I want to run our laundry through a washer and dryer." There was something sensuously wicked about the anticipation of warm dry clothes.

  "But there are people there . . . won't the FBI be alerted? They are looking for me pretty hard, you know."

  "If the Bureau's got a man out here on this godforsaken Indian reservation," I told him, "they deserve to catch us. There's nothing in Neah Bay but a cannery, some fish boats, and a lot of Indians. Watch out for the Indians."

  "Indians?" he laughed. "What do you mean, watch out?"

  "Liquor. They're friendly, but they're not allowed to buy booze in Neah Bay." I burst into song, a verse from a hideously obscene ballad a friend and I had made up about sailing in the Straits of Juan the—uh, de Fuca. "You'll lay in Neah Bay, day by day, and you'll stink as you turn slowly old and gray, for the water there is awful, and the women are all squawful, and NOT EVEN BEER IS LAWFUL, damn their eyes . . . speaking of which, open me a can, will you?"

  "Then what's the danger? Will they steal our beer?"

  I laughed. "No. They'll talk you into going with them to Clallam to buy some. A drunken Indian driving an old truck on a half-finished dirt logging road, barreling along at fifty miles an hour . . . now that's dangerous. Give me a storm in old Juan's Straits every time."

  Witch entered the protected bay, gliding over smooth water, the wind shifting aft more and more so that she tore across the water, the only sound a peaceful hiss after the wild thrum out in the Straits. "My God, this is great!" Steen shouted.

  "For a Norwegian, you sure don't know much about sailing, do you? But you're right, this is great." It was, too, the contrast with plowing into the steep seas now that we were as steady as a train on rails. Ahead lay a hot shower, dry clothes, all courtesy of the Bay Fish Company which had been nice enough to extend its facilities to me in the past when I'd sailed up this far. Not very many people were damn fool enough to sail to Neah Bay once
, certainly not twice . . . and it was just starting for me this time. Ahead we had a thousand miles of Pacific Ocean, the first half along a coast with no safe harbors at all for small boats.

  We put in at the floating pier, tied alongside just behind a big Seattle fishing boat. The grim old squarehead skipper sat in back cutting bait, the gulls screaming and wheeling about, diving for scraps he threw overboard. "OK, partner," I told Steen. "The shower's right over there. Oh, I don't think I'd shave, were I you. They do get newspapers out here. And keep your watch cap pulled down low, huh? I'd hate to have some sharp-eyed skipper spot you after all this trouble. I'll just get things secure here and I'll be along."

  He trudged off, weaving a bit as his brain kept trying to convince his reflexes that he wasn't on a moving deck any longer. I wasn't too steady myself. I got the last of the lines coiled, pumped the bilges, and out of habit straightened Witch up to be instantly ready for sea although there wasn't any real need for it. It wasn't as if we were anchored on an exposed shore; Neah Bay is a fully land-locked harbor, the only safe harbor for small craft along that coast. There are other harbors, La Push for example, but there's a bar across the entrance with big breakers, and even the fishing boats don't try to run in there during a storm.