“No more time. They blow the horn, we come running, remember? Get back down to the boat and try again tomorrow.”
Shit.
Okura looked at the deckhand, who shrugged. It is what it is.
“Tomorrow,” Okura said finally. “We come back early.”
22
The Gale Force made Dutch Harbor the next morning. Sailed up through Akutan Pass into the Bering Sea, around the top of Unalaska Island, into Unalaska Bay, and down toward the village.
Court Harrington joined McKenna in the wheelhouse as the Gale Force motored across the bay. “So this is Dutch Harbor,” he said.
“The one and only,” McKenna replied. “You never made it up here with my dad?”
“Not this far out. Most I know about this place, I learned from that fishing show, the crab guys. Kind of doesn’t seem real.”
It was a beautiful little town, and the mariner in McKenna was fascinated by the mix of traffic in the harbor, from deep-sea container ships to Coast Guard cutters to fish packers and freezer boats to trawlers and crabbers. Harrington pointed out the window at one of the boats. “Right there,” he said. “I definitely saw those guys on TV.”
“You want to motor on over there, see if they’ll give you a spot?”
The architect laughed. “I don’t think I’m cut out for it. It’s tough work on those crab boats. Hardest job in the world, they say.”
“Psh. They never worked on a salvage tug.”
“Settled, then. As soon as we save that Lion, I’m coming back to Dutch and ditching you for a crab boat. You can look for my ass on TV.”
McKenna throttled down, pointed the Gale Force at the fuel barge. “I’d better get your autograph now, then,” she told him. “Just in case.”
* * *
• • •
MCKENNA BROUGHT THE TUG into the fuel barge, nodded hello to the owner as Jason Parent and his dad secured the mooring lines.
“Gale Force,” the owner said, admiring the tug as he passed McKenna the fuel hose. “I remember this boat. Hell of a tug. Riptide Rhodes’s, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” McKenna replied. “My old man.”
“Your old man.” The owner squinted up at her, appraisingly. “Well, what brings you to Dutch, anyhow?”
McKenna shrugged. The law of the gold-rush mariner, whether fisherman or salvage speculator, was to keep one’s mouth shut, especially on the docks, where gossip was often the primary industry.
“Just come up to have a look around,” she told the owner. “The crew always wanted to meet those crab guys, and I figured maybe we’d run into somebody who could use our services.”
“Always a lot of guys needing help around here.” The owner gestured across the water. “Especially with Bill Carew and his gang out with those Commodore boys.”
McKenna felt her insides go a couple degrees colder. She followed the man’s eyes to some ramshackle barges tied up in the elbow of a long spit of land. “Commodore guys are in town?”
“You bet. You heard about that big car carrier that nearly flipped over the other day? No sooner had the Coast Guard rescued the crew than a couple of those Commodore guys were climbing off a plane, scrounging for somebody’s boat to take them out there.” He spit on the dock. “Dunno how they plan to actually save that wreck, but they’re the experts, I suppose.”
“They put a line on her?” McKenna asked.
“That’s what I heard from the Coast Guard.” The guy grinned up at her. “Pity your old man isn’t still around, huh? Tug like this, he could rack up a hell of a payday out there.”
“Yeah,” McKenna agreed, and she felt it like a punch in the gut. “A real pity, all right.”
23
Christer Magnusson could tell this job wouldn’t be easy.
Rescuing a ship was never a simple task, but in Magnusson’s experience, some salvage jobs came easier than others. A bulk freighter dead in the water and adrift in the open ocean with calm weather? Fairly straightforward. An oil tanker aground on a shoal in a storm, one hundred thousand tons of crude in the balance? A little more complicated. And this job, the Pacific Lion, definitely ranged closer to the latter.
She wasn’t filled up with oil, thank god; just Nissans. But the freighter would still make a mess if it landed on the rocks, a hundred nautical miles now to the north. Its bunker fuel alone would have a devastating impact on the Aleutians’ marine environment, would kill fish, birds, and mammals alike, coat the shore with black tar. Magnusson wanted to avoid that, and the bad publicity that would accompany such a spill. Anyway, if the Lion wrecked, he wouldn’t get paid.
Saving her, though, would be a challenge. He would need to get aboard, make sure she wasn’t taking on more water. Then he would have to figure out a way to reverse that list. And it was here that Christer Magnusson knew he was at a disadvantage.
There was one man—one person—in the northern hemisphere who Magnusson knew could save the Pacific Lion, and he wasn’t answering his phone. Magnusson had a fair idea as to why: Court Harrington had hired on with another operation somewhere. He was trying to save the ship for himself.
But which operation? Waverly’s best tug was out of commission. There were no other outfits on the coast that could handle the Lion. Hell, even this tug, the Salvation, would barely be up to the task. There was only one other name, Magnusson figured, that even remotely made sense.
Rhodes.
Gale Force.
Court Harrington had been close with Randall Rhodes. He’d spurned Magnusson’s entreaties to come work for Commodore time and again, even at the promise of better pay, steady work. If Harrington was allied with any tug, it was Riptide’s Gale Force.
But Riptide Rhodes was dead. And his daughter was towing barges. Could she really be making a run at the Lion?
Magnusson supposed he would find out soon enough. Knew he had the edge on experience over McKenna Rhodes, even if she had Court Harrington. But he would need to work quickly, secure the Lion for Commodore. Arrest the wreck’s drift north toward landfall, secure it offshore, and set to work on that list, Harrington be damned. With any luck, the weather would hold long enough for Commodore HQ to find him another architect. And maybe a bigger boat.
Either way, it was time to get working.
Magnusson descended from the Salvation’s wheelhouse, found the Japanese sailor, Okura, making coffee in the galley. Magnusson gathered the man’s search yesterday had not gone to plan, but that was hardly his problem.
“This tug will not be your taxi today,” he told Okura. “We came here for the Lion, and today we put a line on her.”
He turned on his heel before the sailor could answer. Climbed back up to the wheelhouse, a full day’s work looming ahead.
24
McKenna gathered the crew in the Gale Force’s galley. Matt and Stacey, Nelson Ridley, Court Harrington, and the Parents. The only crew missing was Spike, and McKenna figured the ship’s cat wouldn’t exactly have any sympathy to contribute, anyway.
“Commodore’s at the Lion,” McKenna told them. “According to the local gossip, they had a line on the wreck as of yesterday.”
From his corner of the galley, Al Parent muttered a curse. Matt and Stacey swapped pained looks. Jason Parent stared at the floor.
“Commodore?” Ridley scratched his head. “I thought the Titan was laid up in California.”
“It is,” McKenna replied. “That’s the funny thing. I thought we knew all the salvage outfits on the coast, but Commodore chartered a boat from in town. I guess the locals have a tug that can do the job.”
“Be kind of crazy to go all the way out there if they didn’t,” Ridley agreed.
“What does this mean for us?” Court Harrington asked. “They can’t really expect to right that list, can they?”
“What this means—” McKenna sighed. “What this means
is that Commodore has a claim on the Lion. It means we’re too late.”
“So what are we going to do?”
McKenna looked around at her crew. The guy at the fuel dock had disappeared into his office about halfway through the Gale Force’s refueling. Came back with a story about a processing ship needing a tow, Kodiak to Seattle, ten thousand dollars a day.
“Probably a ten-day trip,” the guy had said. “Hundred grand in your pocket, right there.”
A hundred grand. It would keep the lights on, anyway. Get the Gale Force back down to the lower forty-eight on a paying run. Maybe they could pick up another job, quick and easy, in Seattle.
Maybe.
“There’s a tow job available, Kodiak to Seattle,” McKenna told her crew. “I’ll need Al and Jason and Ridley aboard. Matt and Stacey and Court, I’ll pay you for your time, fly you anywhere you want to go.” She shrugged. “I wish I could do better, guys.”
“Kodiak to Seattle.” Ridley rubbed his chin. “How much are they paying?”
“Ten grand. Day rate.”
“Cripes. That barely covers our expenses. And what about the engine overhauls? We were counting on this score to fix up the tug.”
“I know, Nelson,” McKenna told him. “I wish I had better news. We’re just too late. That’s all there is to it.”
Ridley stared at her, his brow furrowed, his eyes dark, the rest of the crew’s expressions a match. McKenna figured she could read what they were thinking, every one of them.
This never would have happened if your dad was still around.
25
Okura followed Robbie off the flimsy skiff and back onto the wreck of the Lion. They climbed up through the bridge again, all the way to the top this time, and inched across the starboard deck as the wind roared in their ears and the wounded ship rolled in the swell.
It had not been a pleasant ride from the Salvation to the freighter, not in the tug’s tiny lifeboat. The weather was picking up; overnight, the swell had increased to approximately six feet, and the wind gusted strong enough to send an eerie howl through the stay wires on the Lion’s foremast. According to Carew, the weather wouldn’t get really nasty for another few days, but Okura knew forecasts could be wrong. And in his experience, the North Pacific rarely stayed peaceful for long.
Carew and the Commodore men had motored the Salvation to the rear of the freighter, where they would attach a towing line to the stern and attempt to keep the wreck under control as the weather built up. Tethered to the Lion, they wouldn’t be able to retrieve Okura and Robbie, who would have to navigate two football fields’ worth of water to return to the safety of the tug. It wasn’t a comforting notion.
They reached a door in the accommodations house, a couple hundred feet from the bridge. “The crew quarters are down here,” Okura told Robbie. “We’ll search them next.”
Robbie tied off a length of rope to a railing inside the doorway. Beyond was a long, gloomy hallway. It looked like a garbage chute, or some sadist’s slide.
Okura took the rope in his hands and began the descent, walking his feet down the steep hallway floor as he held himself upright. The thin light from the doorway above was all but gone by the time he reached the central passage with the galley to one side, the crew berths on the other. Okura turned on his headlamp and peered into the first of the crew’s rooms, could see two rumpled beds and a flimsy table. He couldn’t see Ishimaru. Couldn’t see the briefcase.
“Tomio?” Okura whispered.
There was no response.
26
McKenna sat in the skipper’s chair, staring out through the wheelhouse windows at the mountains surrounding Dutch Harbor. They were a luscious, verdant green, almost shockingly so, plain of trees or any significant foliage. To McKenna’s eyes, they looked as smooth as a painting, grassy carpet rising up from the water, interrupted here and there by jagged rock.
Weather was coming. The forecast predicted fog, and then increasing wind. Eventually, in a few days, a gale. McKenna had been on the phone through the morning, trying to scrounge a couple extra grand out of the day rate. The rate stayed firm, though. Ten thousand. Ten days. One hundred grand.
Then she’d called the airport. “Next flight’s at four thirty,” the PenAir guy told her. “Plenty of room for your crew. If you want off the island, I’d take it. Hard to say when we’ll get the next plane out, the weather forecast how it is.”
Four thirty. A few hours. It was time to make a decision, kiss the Lion good-bye. Anyway, a hundred thousand dollars wasn’t nothing. It was a job, a couple weeks on the water. Who could really complain?
McKenna called the airport back, booked tickets to Anchorage for Matt, Stacey, and Court. Matt and Stacey would fly back to Seattle, she imagined, to pick up Matt’s plane, and from there it was anyone’s guess. They might fly that bird down to Patagonia, or maybe leave the plane and fly commercial to Nepal. Whatever they did, it was bound to be more fun than this.
And Harrington? He’d fly back to Las Vegas, or maybe home to Carolina, ghost from her life yet again. This time, she wouldn’t be calling him back with any blockbuster jobs.
McKenna was about to call the guy in Kodiak, tell him she’d pick up that tow. She stopped when she saw Nelson Ridley steamrolling down the wharf toward the Gale Force, coming in hot.
McKenna watched her engineer climb aboard the tug. Heard him take the stairs so the wheelhouse double-time, burst in so fast he scared Spike off the dash.
“So, I’ve been asking around,” Ridley said, nearly breathless. “I figured it was kind of shady how we’d never heard of this Carew fella, thought I’d find out what he’s all about.”
Ridley had the ghost of a grin as he caught his breath.
“Yeah?” McKenna said. “And?”
“And, first of all, I hear it’s Christer Magnusson himself up here on that boat,” Ridley said. “But forget about that for a second, lass. Carew and his gang spend most of their time helping out the crab fleet, repairs and overhauls, that kind of thing. Sometimes they help out with the merchant ships, but not often.”
“Just our bad luck they decided to get frisky this time around, huh?”
“Maybe, or maybe not.” Ridley smiled now, full-on, wide. “See, the word is they went out on their biggest boat, the Salvation, a few days back. But skipper, that boat, it’s not the right equipment for the job.”
McKenna didn’t reply. The engineer’s smile was infectious, and so was his enthusiasm, but McKenna was still smarting from the big reveal at the fuel dock that morning. Whatever Ridley had to tell her, the skipper wasn’t about to fire up the mains and go roaring back out to sea just yet.
“The Salvation,” Ridley continued, “is an old navy ship—seventy years old, in fact. A hundred and twenty feet long, twin Cat 3508s for power.” He looked at McKenna. “That’s barely fifteen hundred horses.”
Now McKenna paid attention. The Gale Force’s twin EMDs put out 4,300 horsepower apiece, and though horsepower wasn’t the be-all and end-all in the towing business, it did tend to be pretty damn important if you were trying to haul a twenty-five-thousand-deadweight-ton cargo ship across the North Pacific. By McKenna’s calculations, anything above seven thousand horses should have handled the job easily, assuming the weather didn’t go hurricane. The Salvation and her engines would hardly be able to move the Pacific Lion, much less bring her to safe harbor, in anything less than dead calm and flat seas. And nowhere on the North Pacific was anything dead calm and flat for any length of time.
“Cripes,” McKenna said. “You sure they don’t have another tug on the way?”
“Not as far as I can figure,” Ridley replied. “Best I can tell, they’re going to hold the Lion for Commodore until they can get the Titan up here, the whole team, the works.” He exhaled. “I mean, heck, it’s almost criminal what they’re trying to pull off.”
Criminal migh
t have been an overstatement. But if Magnusson and his crew were telling the Coast Guard that they could keep the Lion off the rocks, maybe not. The ship was drifting north, and the weather was rising. The whole thing was a disaster in waiting.
“Fire up the mains,” McKenna told her engineer. “Get the crew aboard, and tell Al and Jason to be ready to cut us loose as soon as possible. Sooner or later, Christer Magnusson is going to realize he’s bitten off more than that old tug can handle.” She gave Ridley half a smile. “And I’d kind of like to be there for the moment of epiphany.”
Ridley was already halfway out of the wheelhouse. “Aye-aye, captain,” he called over his shoulder.
McKenna watched him go, felt her adrenaline pump as her eyes fell on her dad’s picture in that old pewter frame.
We’re still in the game, Dad.
27
There was a Coast Guard cutter off the Salvation’s starboard quarter when Okura woke up the next morning. It was the same ship that had brought the Lion’s crew to Dutch Harbor, long and sleek and white, a single-deck gun mounted ominously on the bow.
“The Munro,” Christer Magnusson said. “They showed up last night. Hailed us while you were sleeping, asked if we’d seen any sign of a Japanese sailor. Seems one went missing back in Dutch Harbor.”
Okura sipped his coffee, tried to calm his nerves, though the Coast Guard cutter outside loomed large. “What did you tell them?”
Magnusson spat into an empty microwave noodles cup. “I told them no,” he said. “I told them I had a couple of salvage specialists going over to the ship, trying to work out the optimal towing strategy.”
“Did they believe that?”
“They seemed to.” Magnusson put down the noodle cup, looked him in the eye. “But my fee just went up, Mr. Okura.”
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