Gale Force

by Owen Laukkanen

  Would he have done what you just did, if it was Jason Parent in the water?

  She shook the thought from her mind. Watched the Salvation until Magnusson and Robbie Peters were long gone from the deck and Jason Parent had the raft reeled in and the line coiled.

  “Okay, enough of this amateur hour,” she said, starting back to the wheelhouse. “Let’s get our line on that ship.”

  40

  McKenna called the Coast Guard on channel 16, the maritime distress frequency. “We’re taking over. The Salvation has agreed to relinquish the tow.”

  The Munro responded quickly. “Copy, Gale Force. Please advise if there’s any way we can assist.”

  “Actually, there is,” McKenna told the radio operator. “The Salvation left a man aboard the wreck, one of the Japanese sailors. He’s somewhere in the cargo hold, looking for lost property, but the last thing we need is some treasure hunter in our way right now.”

  A pause. Then the Munro returned. “Roger, Gale Force. Funny thing, the customs agents in Dutch Harbor reported a missing Japanese sailor. We’ll pick him up and make sure he gets home.”

  McKenna thanked the radio operator and hung up the handset. Then she picked up the satellite phone and placed a call to Japan.

  * * *

  • • •

  IT TOOK McKENNA THIRTY minutes of holding and transferring before she reached who she was looking for, a vice president of the Japanese Overseas Lines, a man named Matsuda.

  “We already have signed an agreement,” Matsuda told her. “Commodore Towing is handling our ship.”

  “Commodore tried and failed,” McKenna replied. “Technical difficulties. Gale Force Marine is taking over.”

  Matsuda didn’t answer for a minute. “I assume you are calling to negotiate,” he said at last. “In which case, I can offer you an Open Form agreement. Five percent of the Pacific Lion’s value, as established by an independent arbitrator.”

  McKenna laughed. “Commodore brought five guys and a seventy-year-old hulk, and I know you gave them a better offer. I have a crew of salvage experts and a deep-sea tug. You’re going to have to do better.”

  “Double, then,” Matsuda said. “Ten percent.”

  McKenna pursed her lips. Ten percent of the Lion’s value would net the Gale Force approximately fifteen million dollars. Even after paying off the crew, it would make for a substantial windfall. But McKenna didn’t bite.

  “Ten percent is the industry floor,” she told the executive. “And this is an extraordinary job. We’ll sign the Open Form for thirty percent of your ship’s value.”

  Matsuda gave a sharp bark of disbelief. “This is a one-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar ship, Ms. Rhodes. You’re asking me for forty-five million dollars?”

  “Those pretenders on the Salvation jerked our chain for days,” McKenna told him. “Now I’m fighting a gale and a sinking ship. My crew’s going to earn every penny of that award. Thirty percent, or I’ll let the arbitrator figure it out.”

  Matsuda went silent again. McKenna pictured the man in his office, hoped he was gripping the phone tight. “Twenty percent,” he said finally. “Thirty million dollars. We sign the agreement now, and save the legal costs.”

  McKenna looked out at the Pacific Lion through the wheelhouse windows. The ship wallowed in the swell, waves breaking over her red keel.

  Matsuda coughed. “Ms. Rhodes?”

  She blinked back to focus. Idled the Gale Force toward the Pacific Lion’s stern. “Twenty percent,” she agreed. “Fax me the paperwork. And Mr. Matsuda?”

  A pause. “Yes?”

  “It’s Captain Rhodes,” McKenna said. Then she ended the call.

  41

  Okura woke up in darkness. In cold and damp, with the ship still moving, still shuddering as the waves outside battered the hull. He was lying on something hard, something painful, and for a moment, he couldn’t move his arms or his legs, and he panicked, afraid the fall had paralyzed him.

  Gradually, though, he regained feeling in his limbs. Brought his hand up to his face, felt blood, warm and sticky. His face hurt, his nose. The side of his head. He reached for his headlamp, but it wasn’t there. The cargo hold was pitch-black. Water sloshed beneath him, but Okura had no way of telling how far below.

  The briefcase.

  He’d landed on a car. He could feel the windshield beneath him, cold steel at his back, the wipers digging through the fabric of his pants. The car rocked with the movement of the freighter, and the tie-up straps groaned.

  Where is the briefcase?

  Slowly, cautiously, Okura steadied his body with his hands and sat up. Felt the car shift beneath him, unsteady, dangling from the deck. He groped in the darkness, but couldn’t find the case. Down here, he was blind.

  There was a new noise, unfamiliar, from high above. An irregular banging against steel. Then, there were voices, and light. Okura could see them through the windshields, and the windows of the cars that hung above him, thin beams cutting through the dark. He couldn’t make out what the voices were saying.

  “Robbie?” Okura struggled to sit up. “Help me. I’m down here.”

  The lights swung around in the darkness, blocked by rows of cars. Okura remained obscured in darkness.

  “Anyone down there?” someone called. “This is the Coast Guard. It’s time to go home.”

  Okura watched the men’s beams, saw the light play off of their Coast Guard flight suits. Rescue jumpers, he realized. Survival technicians.

  He said nothing.

  The men ventured out onto Ishimaru’s platform. Peered over, and now their headlamps found Okura’s rope. Okura shifted farther into the shadows, felt the Nissan rock unsteadily beneath him. Tried not to breathe.

  He’d been waiting for Robbie to return, help him retrieve the briefcase, and rescue him from the ship. But the Coast Guard’s arrival meant something had happened up there on the surface. And whatever it was, it was bad news for Okura.

  As Okura watched, the techs rigged a harness and looped it over a pipe on the ceiling. One of the technicians climbed inside while the other stayed on the platform, gripping the rope and belaying his partner, slowly, through the rows of cars.

  “Hello?” the first technician called. “Anyone down here?”

  His light swept over the cars above Okura’s head. Shone through the windshield above Okura, paused for a split-second on something alien to this space, something shiny, and Okura felt his breath hitch.

  The briefcase.

  It lay wedged against a car tire, just above Okura, well within reach. He could retrieve it easily from his position. But the technician was still dropping closer to Okura, closer still. Okura didn’t move. Held his breath and stayed motionless until his muscles screamed from the effort. Finally, the technician was passing him, two or three cars away, and as he dropped farther, Okura let himself breathe, let himself shift, just a little.

  Then, from above, the other technician’s voice, and another beam of light. “Hey, Tommy, over there. I think I see something.”

  42

  McKenna stared up at the Lion as two Coast Guard ASTs winched something large and black from the listing deck of the freighter to the HH-65 Dolphin helicopter hovering above the wreck.

  “What do you make of it, skipper?” Ridley asked beside her.

  McKenna frowned. “It doesn’t look good,” she said. “They were supposed to get that sailor off. I hope nobody got hurt.”

  Through her binoculars, she studied the helicopter and the cargo on the end of the winch line. The object was long and shapeless, and the ASTs handled it awkwardly. McKenna watched it rise toward the open door of the helicopter, felt a sudden lurch of recognition.

  The object was a body bag. Someone onboard the Lion was dead.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE CARGO HOLD, Hiroki Ok
ura gripped the briefcase to his chest and thanked the fates for his incredible luck.

  He’d nearly given himself up when the technician had called out from above, thought he’d been spotted, that the game was over. But the technician’s light hadn’t found him; it had swung past, swung deeper into the hold, and Okura listened as the second tech descended to investigate.

  “Anything?” the first tech called down. “Thought I saw something that looked human.”

  A beat. Then: “Oh, it’s human all right. But I’d say we’re a little late for a rescue.”

  For a moment, Okura was confused. Then he understood. Ishimaru. They’ve found Tomio’s body.

  In an instant, Okura realized he’d just won the lottery. The Coast Guard would assume Ishimaru was the missing Japanese second officer. The only men who could correct them were already back in Japan.

  This was a gift. Divine intervention. This was a fifty-million-dollar stroke of good luck.

  Okura had lain in the dark. Listened to the techs discuss how to retrieve the stowaway’s body. Lay still and waited for the men to retreat and leave him alone with the briefcase.

  43

  McKenna maneuvered the Gale Force to the stern of the Pacific Lion. Dropped Al and Jason Parent on the big freighter’s slanted afterdeck to wrestle the Salvation’s towing gear off of the bollards. The line still dangled in the water, and McKenna was leery of fouling the Gale Force’s twin propellers. She idled away from the Lion as the Parents struggled with the gear.

  As McKenna watched, Al climbed up the listing deck to the Salvation’s towing bridle and, using an acetylene torch, cut through the heavy chain and shoved it free of the bollard. The gear hit the water with a splash and disappeared instantly, sinking toward the sea floor some three thousand fathoms below.

  Then Al Parent’s voice came over the radio. “Clear, skipper. We’re good to go.”

  With Al and Jason on the radios, and Nelson Ridley at the winch, McKenna backed the Gale Force to the stern of the Lion again, guiding her tug with the rear-mounted controls at the back of her wheelhouse. Spike hopped up on the mantle beside her to assess the tug’s progress, the self-fashioned master and commander of the ship.

  “Keep an eye on things, cat,” McKenna told him. “It’s all hands now.”

  She petted the cat absently, and for once Spike tolerated the intrusion. McKenna reversed the tug to within a boat length of the Lion, watched as Ridley fired a messenger line across to Al and Jason. The two men were practically standing on the bollards to keep upright, the deck like a high, slippery wall, and they fought to maintain their balance as they hauled in the messenger line.

  For an instant, McKenna thought of Al Parent singing songs to his grandson on the satellite phone, Jason Parent kissing Angel and little Ben good-bye on the dock. She watched her crew work, and thought of the body bag the Coast Guard had just pulled from the wreck. Then she pushed the thoughts from her mind. They would do her no good here, not now.

  McKenna backed the tug as close as she could to the freighter, conscious of the tug’s proximity to the massive, multibladed propeller jutting out of the water just yards away. Al and Jason wrestled the messenger line around the bollards, and Jason heaved the line back to Nelson Ridley, who used the Gale Force’s own winch to haul the towing gear from the tug’s stern and across to the Lion.

  It was a slow, painstaking job. Al and Jason kept the line as secure as they could as the heavy towing bridle fell off the stern of the Gale Force and was pulled across to the Lion. The bridle itself was heavy chain, designed to prevent the towing wire from chafing against the bollards during an open-ocean operation, and Jason and Al labored to maneuver it around the bollards and shackle it back to the line between the ship and the tug.

  The seas continued to batter the Lion. The men fought the towing gear, and fought to remain upright, and even McKenna, in the wheelhouse, was exhausted by the time the bridle was secured and the towline in place.

  This ain’t your everyday barge tow, girl.

  She crossed back to the front of the wheelhouse, checked her GPS. Waited on Al and Jason to return to the tug, and began to swing both the Gale Force and the Lion into the wind again, to steady things out a little bit. According to her GPS, the Lion was now less than forty nautical miles from the Fox Islands in the Aleutian chain, drifting steadily. Job one was complete; the Gale Force had the Lion. Job two involved getting the ship upright again, and that came with a ticking clock.

  Behind McKenna, Spike leaped down from the mantle. Padded across to the stairs, and paused to look back at the skipper. The cat yowled once, his pessimism obvious, before disappearing down the stairway and out of sight.

  Show a little team spirit, cat, McKenna thought, watching him go. We could use it.

  * * *

  • • •

  FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, McKenna stood on the afterdeck of the Gale Force as the Coast Guard’s HH-65 Dolphin hovered above, lowering down a steel basket to the waiting crew. Nelson Ridley captured the basket and held it steady as Stacey Jonas, outfitted in full climbing gear, stepped aboard, grinning like a kid at the front gates of Disney World. This was what she’d been waiting for, the adrenaline bit, the whole appeal of the job. McKenna figured even the payoff was just a bonus to her diver.

  The Dolphin winched Stacey up, then Matt, then Nelson Ridley. McKenna stepped forward, only to be beaten to the basket by Court Harrington, laptop in tow.

  McKenna grabbed him by the shoulder. “No way,” she told him. “You’re too valuable to risk on that ship.”

  “Bull,” Harrington replied. “You need me on board. You’re not going to get radio reception inside the hull of that ship. I need to be with you when you take the fluid measurements.”

  “And what if you get hurt?”

  “What if you get hurt? Or Matt or Stacey?”

  “Difference is, I can find another diver,” McKenna replied. “Or Al can run the boat. Nobody can work that computer like you.”

  Harrington grinned. “Then listen to me,” he said. “I need to be on board to do my job, McKenna. Are you going to let me do it, or what?”

  She looked up at the helicopter. “Damn it, Court. Fine.”

  He smiled wider. “Knew you’d see it my way,” he said, and climbed in.

  As the basket inched skyward, Harrington kept his computer open in his lap, checking numbers, seemingly unconcerned by the heavy gusts of wind that buffeted him, thirty feet above the tug. McKenna watched, wondered why she’d capitulated—if she’d capitulated. Wondered if Court even knew she was captain.

  She shook the thought away. Focus on the job.

  “Keep an eye on things while we’re gone,” she told Al Parent as the basket descended again. “We could be gone for a while.”

  “Fair enough.” Parent grinned. “I won’t have the boy cook you dinner, then.”

  “Better wait for my word on that. But I might call you up for a lullaby.” McKenna climbed into the basket and flashed the thumbs-up to the flight mechanic, who started the winch and began to lift the basket from the deck.

  McKenna gripped the side of the basket as it rose. She’d never been very good with heights, and dangling in a flimsy shopping cart in a gale wasn’t exactly going to help with that. The tug grew smaller and smaller beneath her. Al Parent returned to the wheelhouse, and McKenna almost envied the relief skipper, who would spend the next day or two in the captain’s chair, feet up, the ship’s cat in his lap and a paperback novel in his hands, his only worry being to keep the tug’s bow to the sea and the Lion’s drift arrested.

  You wanted to chase the big scores. It’s going to get much harder yet.

  * * *

  • • •

  SAFELY ABOARD THE DOLPHIN, Harrington nudged McKenna as the helicopter climbed. Pointed out the window at the Pacific Lion, the freighter’s portside weather deck only a few feet ab
ove the water. Every time the swell hit, the ship dipped and rolled, and the portside railings dropped toward the sea.

  Harrington pointed at a series of vents just below the railing. “I’ve been looking over the design of the ship,” he told McKenna, hollering over the roar of the helicopter. “Those vents are for the cargo hold, to keep car exhaust from building while they’re loading. They go all the way down to deck four, the first cargo hold.”

  McKenna followed his eyes. Got the point quickly. The way the seas rocked the freighter, those vents were dipping into the water, allowing more leakage into the holds. If the seas got any bigger, those waves could flood the vents, starting a chain reaction that could sink the Lion within hours. And the seas were forecast to get bigger, much bigger.

  “Not good,” McKenna told Harrington. “How do we fix that?”

  Court studied his laptop. “Depends on how much water’s already on board. I might be able to lessen the list a little bit just by pumping out some of the cargo hold. But we’re going to have to hurry.”

  “Yeah,” McKenna hollered back. “No shit.”

  44

  The helicopter dropped McKenna and her crew on the Lion’s starboard weather deck, high above the water—or more accurately, onto the wall of the accommodations house on the starboard side of the ship. From there, the Gale Force team descended to the cargo holds through an access hatch amidships and a long, dark, tilting stairwell. Ridley remained topside.

  The rest of the crew had tied off lines and dropped them into the abyss, then tied loops in the lines to create hand- and footholds to aid the descent. They all wore climbing harnesses and bright headlamps, and they clipped their harnesses into the loops in the ropes as they descended.