The main engines were warmed. The crew was aboard. The Gale Force was as ready as she was going to get. McKenna nodded to the men. “Cut her loose, fellas,” she told the Parents. “Let’s go catch us a Lion.”
11
The American Coast Guard brought Hiroki Okura and the rest of the Pacific Lion’s crew to Dutch Harbor—eventually.
First, the airmen flew Okura to the cutter Munro, where he rejoined the Lion’s crew in a helicopter hangar at the stern of the ship. The Coast Guard seamen brought the crew blankets, hot coffee, and soup, and the sailors from the Lion eyed Okura warily. They’d heard how he’d fought to remain on the ship.
The first Coast Guard airmen had flown back to Dutch Harbor. Now, in daylight, the Munro sent its own helicopter, a bright orange Eurocopter HH-65 Dolphin, to survey the ship. The Munro’s crew had opened the hangar doors, and the Lion’s survivors wandered out to watch.
Morning had broken, sunny and brisk, a beautiful day, the sea as close to flat-calm as Okura had ever seen in this part of the North Pacific. In the distance, three hundred yards off the starboard quarter, the Pacific Lion languished.
If only I’d had more time.
The crew of the Dolphin helicopter boarded the Lion and stayed there for about an hour. Okura smoked cigarettes on the Munro’s afterdeck and watched, until the Dolphin’s crew was winched back up to their helicopter and flying to the cutter. He did not see any sign that the crew had found Tomio Ishimaru.
Within five minutes, the Dolphin had touched down on the deck of the Munro. The pilot and his crew climbed down and hurried across the landing pad, conversing briefly with the Lion’s captain, before disappearing inside the ship.
The captain gathered his officers. “The ship is still very unstable,” he told the men. “The Coast Guard expects it will sink. There is no chance of retrieving our belongings.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Okura wondered.
“They are sending us home to Japan,” the captain replied. He looked at Okura, and his eyes narrowed. “I expect the company will want to know why the ballast transfer failed, Okura—and why you behaved so erratically after the disaster.”
* * *
• • •
A DAY LATER, Okura surveyed the small town of Dutch Harbor as he descended the Munro’s gangplank to the government dock. The town was pretty, that was for certain, a ramshackle crescent of houses and small buildings hugging the harbor bay, surrounded by lush mountains. The air was crisp and bracing and, here and there, the sun shined through the clouds. It was a beautiful day.
On the dock, a school bus was waiting to take the Lion’s crew to the town’s community center, where they would stay until a plane could take them home.
“Welcome to Alaska,” a customs official told the crew as they found their seats on the bus. “Your plane should arrive sometime this afternoon. Until then, we’ll make you as comfortable as we can.”
The chief engineer, a chubby man in overalls, raised his hand. He’d been on his way up from the engine room when the Lion had capsized. “We have no clothes,” he said.
The customs official nodded. “We’re going to try to scrounge up clothing for you. Everything we can provide, we will.”
“Food?”
“Yes, definitely. We have volunteers cooking you a meal as we speak.”
“Will we be allowed to go for a walk?” someone else wanted to know. One of the deckhands, a reputed alcoholic. Okura suspected he knew where the man wanted to go.
“No walks,” the official said. “As of right now, you’re not officially admitted into the United States. We’re just giving you a place to stay until you can go home.”
“What if we have our passports?”
The bus was moving now, rumbling across the dock toward a stretch of gravel road. The customs officer lost his balance and hit his head on the ceiling. Winced.
“We’ll deal with that on a case-by-case basis,” he said. “If you have any more questions, come and see me when we get there.”
The officer sat down, rubbing his head. Some other crew members shouted questions in halting English. Okura turned to stare out the window. If I had my passport, I wouldn’t need to go back to Japan.
But he didn’t have his passport. It was locked in the safe in his stateroom on the Pacific Lion, two hundred and fifty nautical miles to the southwest. And anyway, where would he go? What would he do?
If I had my passport, and fifty million dollars. Then I would be set.
But he had neither, and he sat and brooded in silence as the bus lurched and jostled its way into town.
12
SEATTLE
McKenna guided the Gale Force out of its berth and into Lake Union, past rows of fishing boats, pleasure craft, and tugs to the George Washington Memorial Bridge, where the water narrowed northwest into the Fremont Cut, splitting north Seattle in two. The ship canal was narrow and crowded with traffic, and McKenna piloted the tug carefully as she approached the system of locks at Salmon Bay that would drop the Gale Force twenty feet to the Puget Sound.
It was never the most relaxing way to start a journey, but McKenna felt calm anyway as the tug waited its turn and descended through the locks, ducked under the train bridge, and turned north into Shilshole Bay, leaving Seattle behind for the open water of the sound. She was happy, at least, to have escaped the city. The water was where she belonged.
There were problems to consider, of course, and all of them pressing. There was the problem of money; namely, that the Gale Force didn’t have much. There was the issue of the Pacific Lion’s pronounced list—the Coast Guard was reporting sixty degrees—and how McKenna would reverse it without the whiz kid in the picture.
She’d called around, tried every naval architect she could think of, some of them salvage experts with whom her dad had worked before Court Harrington, others she knew only by reputation. The response had been singularly depressing.
“No offense, but I just don’t know you, Ms. Rhodes,” a professor at the Webb Institute told McKenna. “I’m sure you’re just as good as your father at this stuff, but if you’re asking me to fly across the country to work with an unknown entity, I’m going to need at least a hundred thousand dollars up front.”
“I can’t offer you that much,” McKenna replied, “but I can assure you a share of the profits. We stand to make—”
“I know what you could make,” the professor interrupted. “I also know you could very well walk away with nothing. And I just can’t take that risk. Not with an unproven captain.”
The story didn’t change much, no matter who McKenna called. Nobody knew her, except as Riptide Rhodes’s little girl. No one trusted her ability to bring the Lion to safety.
* * *
• • •
BEYOND THE ARCHITECT CONUNDRUM, there was always the possibility, too, that the ship would sink before the Gale Force arrived, or that some other salvage outfit would put a line on her first. By rights, McKenna knew she should be pulling out her hair right now, or turning the tug back toward the dock and looking for a nice job in an office or something, but instead, she felt calm. Serene. She felt her dad here, somehow.
It would have been impossible not to feel Randall Rhodes’s presence in the wheelhouse. The man had molded the command center in his image, from the carpet on the wheelhouse floor to the leather on the captain’s chair. The wheel, salvaged from an old steam tug in Prince William Sound. The pewter picture frame beside the depth sounder, a Christmas gift from McKenna from aeons ago. It had held a picture of McKenna for as long as Randall Rhodes ran the boat, the same picture, Little League, age eight. Braces and a ponytail and a wide, awkward smile. She’d always been embarrassed when she caught a glimpse of that photo. Wondered how her dad could expect the crew to take her seriously.
But they had taken her seriously, or they hadn’t lasted long. Randall Rhod
es had seen to that—not that he’d cut her any slack, either, not while they worked. The girl in the picture might as well have been someone else’s daughter when they were out on a job; the old man worked every member of his crew just as hard as he worked himself, no quarter given, no excuses. She’d found it unfair at first. Hated her father. Thought about quitting, packed her bags plenty, stalked off in a huff every time the Gale Force made land.
Somehow, though, she was always aboard when they cast off again. And now that old pewter frame held a picture of her father, faded flannel shirt, beard going to gray, a stained Baitmasters hat. And a smile for the camera that still caught McKenna off guard when she’d see it, even now.
* * *
• • •
NELSON RIDLEY CAME UP into the wheelhouse as the Gale Force approached Dungeness Spit, the top end of Puget Sound, some five hours after setting out from the Seattle docks. He handed McKenna a cup of coffee and stood beside her at the wheel. “How’s she looking, lass?”
“So far, so good,” McKenna replied. “Forecast is just fine, and we’re making steady time. Should clear Cape Flattery right on schedule.”
Ridley looked out through the forward windows. Up ahead, the Strait of Juan de Fuca stretched ninety-five miles to the open Pacific, the snowcapped mountains of the Olympic Peninsula to port, Vancouver Island and Canada to starboard, as far as the eye could see.
“How are the mains doing?” McKenna asked her engineer.
“That turbo’s humming like a champ,” Ridley replied. “All good so far.”
So far, McKenna thought, then admonished herself. No sense jinxing the operation any more than normal. Seafarers were a superstitious lot; you didn’t leave port on a Friday (it was Tuesday, thankfully), you didn’t dry your coffee mugs upside down (invited capsizing), and on some boats, you didn’t bring bananas on board—or women. McKenna was no fan of bananas, but she’d be damned if she was staying on shore, so maybe she wasn’t superstitious. Still, she wouldn’t be trimming her nails or running any laundry until the job was over, lest she anger the sea gods, or whatever.
Ridley let her stand in silence for a minute or two. “You getting anywhere with the architect situation, skipper? Any news from Court?”
“Not yet,” McKenna said, avoiding his eyes. “I’ve been calling around, other contacts, don’t have any leads yet. But I will.”
“Not many people can do what the whiz can.”
“Yeah, well, the whiz isn’t coming.” It came out rougher than she’d planned. “He’s busy, Nelson, and that’s all there is to it. We’ll make do.”
Ridley didn’t say anything for a moment, and McKenna could practically read his doubt.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, we’ll make do. We always do, right?”
“We have a long run up to Dutch, anyway,” McKenna said. “I’ll have a replacement by the time we make the wreck. I promise.”
13
The Commodore headquarters had found Christer Magnusson the only working salvage boat in Dutch Harbor. It wasn’t much to look at.
Magnusson had flown up from Los Angeles with a couple of crew, Foss and Ogilvy—young men, strong, more or less interchangeable. They’d caught a connection in Anchorage, a little PenAir turboprop, spent two and a half hours shuddering and bouncing through ragged clouds and harsh turbulence before the plane made its final, merciful descent.
They’d filed off the plane with about a dozen other passengers, walked through the tiny airport, and found a dirty minivan waiting, a decal on the side reading UNALASKA TAXI.
Magnusson dug in his coat for the name Mueller had given him. He leaned in through the cab’s open window.
“Bering Marine,” he’d told the driver. “Do you know it?”
Now Magnusson stood on the Bering Marine dock, surveying a tug called Salvation. She was about a hundred and twenty feet long—a modest white wheelhouse above raised blue bulwarks at the bow, a heavy-duty A-frame crane directly behind it, and then a long expanse of deck. The hull was blue in some places and grimy black in others; not the prettiest boat in the world by a mile, but the owner swore to Magnusson that she ran like a champion.
“Built for the war,” the man said. His name was Carew. “The Second World War, that is. Navy ship. She’s been repowered a couple times, but her bones are the same. There’s nowhere in the Pacific this ship can’t take you.”
Magnusson looked the ship over. The boat’s Caterpillar engines growled somewhere beneath its filthy hull; a greasy plume of exhaust smoke belched from the stake. Beside him, Foss and Ogilvy exchanged glances. Foss raised an eyebrow, an expression that meant I’m not sure about this hulk.
Neither was Magnusson. The Salvation was ancient, underpowered, and ill-equipped for a deep-sea salvage job. But Bering Marine was the only outfit in town, and Magnusson wasn’t ready to give up an eight-figure charter so soon.
“When can you be ready?” he asked Carew.
The captain shrugged. “Take me a day or two, get the gear your boss requested. We weren’t exactly prepared for this kind of operation, you know?”
“One day,” Magnusson said. “We don’t have time to screw around.”
Carew rubbed his chin. Mulled it over.
“One day, fine,” he said finally. Then he grinned. “Listen, when we save that ship, you make sure they know it was the Salvation that done it, all right?”
14
There was nothing to do but wait.
Okura had eaten until he was sure he would never feel hungry again. He’d smiled and attempted to make conversation with the well-meaning Americans who’d brought food to the little town’s community center. Now all but a few of the Americans were gone, and Okura stood alone in the corner of the center’s gymnasium, waiting for the customs official to return and tell them their plane had arrived.
Outside, it was no longer sunny. A thick layer of fog was settling on the mountains above the town. Okura watched it drift down. It did nothing to help his mood.
He’d given his life to the shipping company. No woman would marry a man who was away at sea for nine months of the year. He’d missed the death of his mother and the marriage of his younger sister. There was nothing else in his life but the work. Work, and the gambling parlors.
When he climbed aboard that plane, he would no longer have a job. That was a certainty. He might even face criminal charges for his role in the Lion’s disaster—especially if Tomio Ishimaru ever surfaced. And even, if by some miracle, Okura managed to escape with his professional life intact, he would still owe debts he was incapable of paying, huge debts, to men who regularly called on the yakuza to help them collect.
Put plain, he was finished. There was simply no hope.
* * *
• • •
TWO WOMEN WORKED at the front of the gymnasium, clearing empty dishes from the table. They talked, and their voices carried in the silent space.
“That was Robbie who just called,” the first woman said. “Some bigwigs just came down to the dock, want to charter Bill’s boat and head out to the wreck.”
Her friend cocked her head. “What, the big wreck? What for?”
“See if they can save it, I guess,” the first woman said. “I didn’t really get the whole story. Anyway, they’re leaving first thing tomorrow morning. Probably gone for a week, ten days, Robbie said. So you know what that means.”
The second woman smiled. “Girls’ night.”
“Girls’ week. If the guy’s going to leave, I’m having a party.”
The women walked out of the gym, laughing. Okura watched them go. So someone was going out to the Lion. Probably, they would find Tomio Ishimaru, and his briefcase. Maybe they would even take a cut of his profits.
Good luck to them. May they live long and happy lives. I will think of them often, from prison.
He dwelled on this unhappy though
t for a while. Then the customs officer came into the room, and everyone straightened and shifted and looked at him. The man wasn’t smiling.
“There’s a delay,” he told the crew. “It’s too foggy to land your jet. They’re going to fly on to Kodiak and try again tomorrow.”
15
The Gale Force chugged north up the west coast of Canada, skirting the wild western edge of Vancouver Island, dodging freighters and log tows, fishing boats with their trolling lines, and pleasure craft under sail and power.
In the Queen Charlotte Sound, between the north end of the island and the southern end of the Haida Gwaii archipelago, a pod of Dall’s porpoises appeared alongside the tug. It was morning, and McKenna was brushing her teeth on the afterdeck when the porpoises appeared, speed demons, racing alongside the tug and frolicking in the waves.
Some of the creatures were so close that McKenna imagined she could reach over the gunnels and touch them. They were so fast and carefree that she couldn’t help but smile as she watched.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Stacey Jonas said. She’d come out of the wheelhouse with her own toothbrush and a mug of water. “So fast and sleek.”
“They sure look like they’re having fun out there,” McKenna said, making room at the rail so Stacey could join her.
“Sure do.” Stacey grinned. “I love watching them. Any sea creatures, really. Sometimes I think I like animals more than I like human beings—present company excluded, of course.”
“Of course. And Matt, too, I hope.”
“Matt, too,” Stacey said. “And he’s the same way. I never love him more than when we’re both underwater, guiding a bunch of folks around some coral reef. We can’t talk to each other, but I still feel him there with me, and that’s more than enough for both of us. I don’t know what I would do if he didn’t feel the same way.”
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