by Paul Byers
Both men were looking at the winch assembly out the porthole on the stern door hatch when it was smothered and disappeared as a three-foot high wall of water washed across the deck.
“You really want to go out there?” Painter asked.
Bair shook his head. “No, but I don’t think we have a choice. I think the soft brake is gone and we have to see if we can fix it.”
“I’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong. That!” Painter said, point out the porthole. In the distance between the washes of spray and the low, swirling clouds, they could see the bulky outline of the iceberg. “We don’t have the right kind of foul weather gear to be towing that thing in a storm like this. That giant ice cube out there is going to rip our stern off if we’re not careful.”
“That’s why I have you Scotty.”
Painter frowned, he hated it when Bair compared him to the miracle working engineer from Star Trek. Bair reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet then flipped it open. “Beam me up, there’s no intelligent life here.” Both men laughed.
Painter sighed. “The teeth of the slip gears have probably been torn off by the sheer weight of that brute out there.”
“Can you fix it?”
Painter smiled. “Why do you think they call me the miracle worker?”
Ten minutes later both men were standing by the hatch with their survival suits on.
“Are you ready for this?” Bair asked.
“No, but let’s go anyway.” Painter picked up his tool bag as Bair placed one hand on the handle and looked at Painter, who gave him a tentative nod. Timing between the pitching swells, Bair opened the door and both men quickly stepped out and snapped themselves to the safety line.
Stepping from the relative calm of the cabin onto the deck was like moving from sanity and plunging into chaos. Sensing their presence, the wind swirled and howled around them like an angry banshee chasing its tail. The ocean, not to be outdone, assaulted the two men, alternating between pelting them with spray that felt like it was fired from a shotgun to rolls of water that pounded at their legs like a linebacker sacking a quarterback.
Driven by purpose, they ignored the raging elements as best they could as they carefully inched their way along the deckhouse toward the winch on the stern of the tug. Suddenly, the Rachel B. was slammed on her starboard side by a massive wave that pushed the stout vessel hard over to port. The men quickly found themselves submerged up to their waists in foaming, freezing water and watched as the port side of the tug was engulfed in water.
Gripping tightly to the rail, Bair stayed on his feet. As the swirling waters subsided, he stole a quick glance back to make sure his engineer was all right. He saw Painter wearing a grim smile on his face, then heard him shout above the wind, “This is fun.” Bair just shook his head then turned back around.
They finally reached the end of the deckhouse where they faced the most dangerous part of their trip: crossing the twenty feet of open deck to reach the winch.
“I’ll go first.” Bair shouted above the roar of the wind. “When I signal, you run to me as fast as you can.”
“No argument there,” Painter replied.
Bair stood like a statue staring at the ocean, reading, interpreting, looking for a sign of when he could cross. After nearly a minute of waiting, Painter was just about to ask his captain if he had fallen asleep, when suddenly Bair sprinted across a level deck and easily made it to the winch.
Now it was Painter’s turn as he waited at the corner of the deckhouse staring intently at his captain, like a base runner looking for his coach’s signal to steal second base. After only twenty seconds, Bair gave the signal and Painter dashed to second base, minus the slide.
Bair’s relief at the two of them making it safely across the open deck was short lived as he looked forward and shuddered, seeing a massive wall of water looming in front of them.
“Hang on!” He managed to shout just as the bow of the tug dipped down into the trough. The Rachel B. plunged into the base of the wave, then clawed up the other side and pushed her way through the wave halfway up. The bow split the swell in half, sending rivers of water running down both sides of the superstructure.
Bair looped his arm around the winch housing just before the water swept his feet out from under him. He felt his shoulder pop from the strain but managed to keep his grip. “Al, you okay?” He shouted as he spit out a mouth full of water. When he didn’t hear a ready answer from his engineer, he desperately looked around, only to find an empty deck. “Al!” he shouted as helplessness washed over him as real as any storm wave.
“What’s all the shouting about?” Painter said, stepping out from behind the winch.
“I thought you were washed overboard.” He replied, his knees suddenly feeling weak from the relief. “That wave nearly got me.”
“When I saw the wave, I moved in behind the winch for protection. Us engineers are smart that way.” He smiled.
“Yeah, how smart are you going to be when I have you inspect the bilges.” Bair shot back. “I’m going to check the deck bolts on the winch to see if there’s any damage there. Get that access panel off and let’s find out if the soft break can be fixed.”
Painter nodded and ducking under the tow cable and disappeared around to the other side. Bair stooped down and examined the first of four two-inch bolts that held the winch to the deck. As best as he could tell under the conditions, it looked like the deck plating had a slight bow to it and was starting to buckle under the strain.
He heard it first, the moaning of metal against metal as the tension stretched the winch and tow cable to its design limits as the stern began to rise. He heard it, then felt it as a rogue wave came over the stern of the tug, pushing it away from the berg, yanking the Rachel B. to a standstill. The sudden jerk staggered him to one knee and he had just managed to get one hand on the housing bar when the rest of the wave came rolling over the stern.
He held on through the initial crest of the wave, but the continual flow of thousands of gallons of water ripped his hand away and carried him off like a piece of driftwood. He tried to call out to Painter but his voice was drowned out as he was submerged in the deluge. Bair was slammed into the deckhouse and when the water subsided, he was left sitting on the deck, leaning against the wall like rag doll carefully placed there by its owner. Ignoring the pain from the beating he had taken from being dragged across the deck, he staggered to his feet and yelled for Painter. Bair half expected his friend to poke his head around the corner and make some smart aleck engineer remark, but the only reply he got was the mocking howl from the wind.
“A-L-A-N!” He shouted again, but still there was no reply. Frantically he searched for any sign of his friend when his eyes suddenly focused on Painter’s safety cable leading over the side of the tug. Bair ran to the railing and began hauling in the safety line as fast as he could pull it.
“No, no, no.” Bair kept saying, over and over, his words building in a crescendo as he was pulling. The line was coming up too easily; there no weight to it like there should be if there was a man attached to it. Suddenly his spirit burned brighter as he caught a flash of orange from Painter’s survival suit. But in an instant, his bright rays of hope were devoured by the black hole of despair; the safety line popped out of the water and landed on the deck with only a torn piece of the suit.
The suit had torn at the section where the safety line attached to the belt. Bair stood up and scanned the turbulent waters, searching for any sign of his friend as he called his name. He knew with a torn suit that his friend was in serious trouble. With the suit, it would not only keep him afloat, acting as a one-man raft but it would also protect him from the freezing water. In these conditions, Bair knew the suit would insulate him from the frigid water for 8 to10 hours but with a hole in it he would be exposed and have minutes, not hours, to live before hypothermia would set in and he would die.
Bair started for the hatch but was knocked down by another wave and washed alo
ng the deck like seaweed. Between swells, he was finally able to make it to the deckhouse and get in. He dashed up the stairs, still in his survival suit, barking out orders as he charged through the hatch.
“Get me the Alyssa B. and the Cheri B. on the horn. Tell them we have a man overboard and to get over here to look for him now!”
Beasley looked at Bair as they both understood. There was precious little time before the rescue mission turned into a recovery mission. Beasley had just grabbed the microphone when the Rachel B. lurched abruptly. Beasley was thrown down, and as he fell, he was still holding onto the microphone and he yanked the cord out of the radio.
With a calm voice, Bair looked at his first officer, “Matt, grab a walkie and raise the other two tugs with our distress call, then see if you can raise the iceberg so I can apprise them of our situation.” Bair then turned to the crewman manning the helm. “I’ll take the wheel, Jeff, go get another cord so we can fix the radio then find Palmer and tell him to bring us some coffee, lots of it.”
Chapter Twenty Eight
Thirty minutes later and feeling one hundred percent better, Pike stepped on to the bridge, flexing his fingers, still getting his feeling back.
“How’s it going back there?” Cain asked as Pike entered the doorway.
“Good, sir. The door seal is holding and the room should be filled by now and it should be frozen solid in an hour or two.”
“How’s Elizabeth doing?”
“Beth will be fine. Tabatha… Ms. Amies, is helping her back to her cabin.”
“And you?”
“I’m okay. I imagine I’ll be a little stiff and sore in the morning, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.
“Good.” Cain said, nodding. “Come here and take a look at this will you?”
Pike walked up to the console where Cain was standing. It was the sensor board for the towing assembly he’d seen earlier. It looked like a massive bank of traffic lights with all its flashing yellow and red lights.
“We’ve got trouble.” Cain said as he explained the situation with the Rachel B’s missing crewman and the damaged soft brake. Pike stood there for a moment, staring out the window at the lights of the Rachel B. and thinking.
“Can I talk to their captain?” Pike asked.
“Go ahead,” Captain Gregory said, “I’ve put it on speak.”
“Thanks,” Pike nodded. “Captain Bair, this is Gabriel Pike. I wish we could have met under better circumstances. I’m sorry to hear about your missing man.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pike.”
“Please, call me Gabe.”
“Pat.”
“I’m an engineer, but I don’t have much background in navel engineering, so help me out here. I understand that the problem is that what you call the soft brake is broken and that it acts as a buffer if you will to reduce the tension between the tow line, the tug and the iceberg in rough weather?”
“Basically, yes.”
“And it can’t be fixed?”
“We were working on it…”
Pike could hear Bair’s voice tighten with emotion.
“…when we lost Al.”
“So forgive my ignorance, why don’t we either release the cable or just maintain slack in the line so neither one of us gets torn apart?”
“If we release the cable it would be darn near impossible to hook it back up at sea, even in perfect weather. We could push the iceberg into port but it would mean at least a week’s delay in arrival time. Second, and more importantly, if we cut the cable or backed off we would lose steerage and the iceberg would be running free before the storm. That thing is not built to handle seas like this. The waves from this storm are large enough that if the iceberg got turned sideways in the troughs, the waves could capsize it.”
Pike thought for a moment, his mind turning things over. “So at this point it’s not really about how fast we go, it’s about keeping the bow straight, pointed into the waves?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Okay, and our problem right now is that there is no buffer between the two of us and we keep pulling against each other?”
“Yes.”
“Kind of like a light bulb, it’s either on or off?”
Bair thought about it for a couple of seconds. “Yeah, I suppose you could put it that way.”
“So what we need between us is a dimmer switch? Something to take up the slack slowly instead of all at once?”
Again, Bair had to think about it. “That’s kind of a strange way to think about it but I guess you could compare it that way.”
“How far away are you?”
“About five hundred yards.”
“How much cable do you have?”
“Our spool has 7500 feet of six-inch cable.”
“How much does all that weigh?”
“The cable itself weighs probably weighs three to four tons and….” Pike could tell that the Captain was beginning to follow his train of thought which was a good thing because if the captain picked up on it then it must have some chance of working. “…if we pay all the cable out, the cable itself will act as a soft break. The cable will sink at least 200 feet and the weight and depth of the cable moving through the water will put less strain on both the winch and the towing bridle on the barge. We won’t be making much headway but at least we’ll have steerage and keep the bow into the waves and the tension on both vessels will be greatly reduced. Brilliant Gabe.”
“In theory it sounds good, when can we put it to the test?”
“Right now.” Bair replied. ‘We can make all the adjustments from here in the wheelhouse. I want to pay the cable out slowly, so it should take about ten minutes to deploy the entire cable. Once that’s done, we’ll see if it works. I’ll let you know when we’re done. Rachel B. out.”
Almost immediately, most of the red sensor warning lights went to yellow and amber but the true test as Captain Bair had pointed out was when all the cable was all the way out and they were towing again.
“I certainly am getting my money’s worth out of hiring you Gabriel.” Cain said smiling. “I wish all my employees multitasked as well as you do.”
“Yeah, it’s amazing what you can do when your neck is on the line.”
“Very true.” Cain nodded.
“Now Beth is the amazing employee,” Pike said, “I don’t think it falls under her job description to be pouring fifty pound bags of ice down a twelve foot deep hole in the middle of a raging storm.”
“Actually it does. It falls under, ‘and all other related duties.’”
Pike looked at Cain and they both burst out laughing. “You are a hard man Mr. Cain. No wonder you rule the world.”
Cain smiled, “Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
“This is the Rachel B., do you copy?”
“Go ahead Captain Bair.” Cain said.
“We’ve payed out all the cable except for two layers that I’m keeping for reserve. Our ride over here has smoothed out greatly and we’re still maintaining a forward movement of three knots. How are things on your end?”
Cain and Pike studied the board for a moment. “All the sensors are looking good. Cain replied. “Barring anything unforeseen, we should be okay. We’ll keep you posted if things change.”
“Likewise. Rachel B. out.”
“Looks like a happy ending.” Cain said.
“Not for all of us.” Pike said, looking out the window, search-lights slashing at the water as the other two tugs searched for the missing crewman.
“I’m going to go and check on Elizabeth.” Cain said quietly.
“I think I’ll check in with Dean and make sure things are still on track in the anchor room.” Pike replied with equal reserve. Neither man really wanted to think or mention that someone had died. Pike could tell by the expression Cain wore that he felt he was somehow responsible. Logically he knew he wasn’t, but right now that didn’t seem to matter.
“We’ll meet in an hour or so in the Crystal Pala
ce,” Cain said, “you go ahead, I’ll be along shortly.”
Pike nodded and turned to leave. Just as he was going through the door he looked back and saw Cain rubbing the back of his neck then run his hand through his hair, clearly feeling the agony of the lost sailor. Right now he wouldn’t trade places with Cain for all the money in the world.
Chapter Twenty Nine
“Is everyone okay?” Pike asked as he walked up. Cain and Mallory were sitting alone at a table in the Crystal Palace, nursing their coffee. They were staring out the window, exhausted by the night. The seas had calmed, turning from angry, foaming white crests, into long, rolling swells. The clouds too, had lost their ominous, dark countenance and were beginning to lighten as the new day began pushing back the night.
Pike immediately noticed that Cain looked a lot happier than when he had last left him on the bridge. Cain spoke before Pike had a chance to ask what happened.
“About twenty minute after you left, the Rachel B. called and said that one of the other tugs had found the missing sailor, alive!”
“That’s great!” Pike said.
“Yes it is,” Cain beamed. “Seems that only the outer shell of his survival suit had torn so he was still somewhat protected. It had a built-in light and transponder so they were able to find him in time.”
“I can’t believe they were able to pick him up in such heavy seas.” Pike replied.
“Speaking of heavy seas,” Mallory said, “you would have thought we were at a Martian convention last night from all the green faced people. I’ve never seen so many seasick people in my life. I passed a few of the more hardy ones outside at Starbucks on my way here. I guess the rest are still in their rooms sleeping, which is where I should be.”
“Thanks Elizabeth.” Cain said as he reached over and patted her hand. “You performed above and beyond the call of duty last night. Go back to your room and get some rest.”