Gale Force

by Owen Laukkanen

Safety first.

  It was quieter inside the ship, out of the wind, though the swell swayed the ropes every time a wave hit. McKenna made sure she stayed clipped in at all times. It was a long way to fall if she made a mistake.

  There were nine cargo decks on the Lion, decks four through twelve. McKenna and the team headed straight to the bottom. It was a long climb down, damp and cold, with the crew’s rhythmic breathing as they dropped, the rush of the wind past the postage-stamp patch of daylight above, the crash of the ocean, and the maddening tilt of the stairs, a nine-story drop in the dark.

  Finally, McKenna reached bottom, a dark, geometric mishmash of shapes and angles, a watertight bulkhead door mounted on a wall that was now a floor. Beyond it lay the first cargo hold.

  There was another watertight door, too, in what had been the floor. It led deeper into the ship, to the decks and passageways beneath the cargo holds. The crew would need to access those areas to check fluid levels in the fuel and water tanks, but for now McKenna had her eyes on a deckload of Nissans.

  Matt and Stacey Jonas touched down shortly after McKenna, then Court Harrington behind them. The Jonases were breathing heavily, flushed with exertion. Court nudged Stacey. “Long way from Baja, huh?”

  Stacey smiled, unbowed. “Yeah, but the company’s better.”

  “This deck isn’t going to be underwater when we open the door, right?” McKenna asked Harrington. “I don’t really want to drown today.”

  Harrington checked his laptop. “There is water in there, but I don’t think this deck is fully flooded. Not based on my calculations, anyway.”

  “How much do you trust your calculations?” Matt asked.

  “Completely.”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” McKenna said, turning a wheel on the bulkhead to unlock the door. She held her breath as the door unlatched, ready for water to burst through—but nothing happened. McKenna opened the door slowly, peered through. Didn’t see water.

  What she did see, though, were cars. Row after row of cars, hanging precariously from their mounts on the oily deck. They descended in straight lines, fore and aft, strapped in by heavy-duty tie-down lines, every one of which seemed to protest every time a wave hit the ship. There were hundreds of cars—five thousand of them—dark and ghostly and ominous, descending from the high starboard side of the hold down toward the portside, outlasting the beam of McKenna’s headlamp and disappearing into the darkness.

  And somewhere down there, McKenna could hear water.

  “We have fluid in this hold, as expected,” she told the crew. “Court’s right. Let’s strap in and find it.”

  Matt Jonas tied off another line at the bottom of the stairs, dropped it through the bulkhead door, then a second line. There wasn’t enough room between the cars for a third, so McKenna would follow Harrington down on his line, one at a time, using the deck for handholds when they reached the portside of the ship and the water.

  Stacey dropped in first. The diver climbed down steadily, no sign of hesitation, no fear. McKenna knew she wasn’t susceptible to claustrophobia or anxiety or panic attacks. She was calm, and she would keep her head, even if things went awry.

  And they could very easily go awry. The Lion had three massive seven-story cargo ramps for offloading and unloading cargo. The main door sat at the stern, starboard side, well above the waterline. The second one lay amidships, also on the starboard side, so it wouldn’t be a problem, either. The third, though, was on the portside amidships, and because of the way the Lion lay in the water, much of that third door was also submerged. It was supposed to be watertight, but there was already water in the hold. Odds were the door was probably leaking, in addition to the vents above, and if it blew out, seawater would flood the hold within minutes.

  But there was no sense worrying about that right now. The door hadn’t blown yet.

  Court Harrington dropped through the hole next. McKenna gave him a minute. Beside her, Matt Jonas watched, stone-faced and silent. If he was worried about his wife down there, he wasn’t showing it.

  McKenna met his eye and he smiled back at her. “Go get ’em, skipper.”

  Here goes. She clipped onto the rope and backed through the bulkhead door.

  The deck was slick, covered in leaking oil from the fleet of hanging Nissans, and McKenna struggled for traction as she walked herself backward. The cars surrounded her. The ship swayed, and the cars shifted and creaked on their bindings, their deadly potential impossible to ignore.

  Then Stacey called up. “Found it. Geez, McKenna, there’s a lot of water down here.”

  Stacey and Harrington were about ten feet below McKenna, waiting at the edge of a lake of green oily water. McKenna could see at least two full rows of cars trapped beneath the surface, maybe more. It was murky down there. The submerged cars looked eerie, shipwrecks in the shadows. But the water wasn’t visibly rising, and that was good news.

  Stacey reached into a pack around her waist, and pulled out a distance finder, a little laser box similar to an electronic tape measure from the hardware store. She lowered herself as close as she could to the surface of the water, aimed the finder across to where the water met the top of the hold, and reported the distance to Harrington. Then she aimed the finder into the water, between a row of cars, and called out the distance to the portside hull.

  Harrington copied the distances into his notebook. “Basic trigonometry,” he told McKenna. “If we can get an idea how much water’s leaked into this hold, we’ll know how the ship will respond when we turn the pumps on her.”

  “Perfect.” McKenna peered over the architect’s shoulder at his chicken-scratch handwriting. “So how much water are we dealing with?”

  “Let’s see.” Harrington tapped his pencil on the notebook as Stacey called out another measurement. “Factoring the length of the ship, the cars in the water, the water on the decks below . . .” He paused, wrote down a couple figures. “I estimate we’re dealing with approximately fifteen hundred tons of leakage. And there’s more coming in with every wave this ship takes.”

  McKenna studied the architect’s notebook again. Couldn’t make high or low of anything on the page. “That’s a lot of water,” she said. “Do you maybe want to run topside, check your work on a calculator?”

  Harrington shook his head, because of course he was never wrong. “Not necessary. This is pretty basic math, McKenna. Now all we need to do is get measurements for the other fluids on board the ship—oil and ballast and drinking water and whatnot—and we’re good to go.”

  Another wave hit the ship, rocking the cars on their moorings. McKenna pictured the vents up top, a few feet from the surface, pictured more seawater spilling down inside them every few seconds. There were thirty-three tanks on the Pacific Lion, all of them needing measurements. The gale was building outside. There was no time to waste.

  “We need to do this in stages,” she told Harrington. “This ship won’t survive the storm unless we can prevent those vents from flooding.”

  “We could block them off,” Stacey suggested from the waterline. “Weld steel plates over the holes. We have the equipment.”

  McKenna mulled it over. Didn’t really like the idea of parking the Gale Force under the Lion for any length of time, not in this weather. “What else do we have?”

  Harrington wrote something in his notebook. “If we can pump all this floodwater out of the hold, we correct . . .” He tapped his pencil again. “Eight degrees of the list, right away. That would move us from the current sixty-three to a more manageable fifty-five.”

  “That should give us clearance,” McKenna said. “Move those vents higher above the waterline before the storm gets much worse.”

  “That’s a lot of pumping, McKenna,” Stacey said. “It’ll take all night to get that water out.”

  McKenna thought about her bunk on the Gale Force, Jason Parent’s cooking.
Not tonight, girl.

  “That sounds about right,” she replied. “So we’d better get started.”

  45

  McKenna climbed ten decks skyward, up to the starboard deck of the Lion. Ridley waited for her there, staring out at the low gray clouds. It was a quarter after nine in the evening, but there was plenty of light; the sun wouldn’t officially set until midnight at this edge of the world. And while there was still light, there was still time to work.

  McKenna raised the Munro on her handheld radio. Outlined the situation. The vents, the water in the hold.

  “My architect calculates that we can reverse the list about eight degrees if we pump out the floodwater,” she told the Munro. “Do you mind if we borrow your helicopter?”

  The radio operator came back with a laugh in his voice. “No problem at all, Captain. We’re billing the shipping company for every minute we spend out here. I’ll have that Dolphin on scene in a half hour or so.”

  McKenna thanked him. Ended the conversation and hailed Al Parent on the Gale Force, told him to ready the pumps for pickup.

  “Roger,” Parent replied. “You planning to spend the night on the wreck?”

  “Going to take nine or ten hours to get the hold pumped dry,” McKenna told him. “I might send a couple crew back, but I’ll stick around and keep an eye on things. We’re going to need hoses, too, Al. Miles of them.”

  “I’ll send you every hose I can find. Anything else?”

  McKenna surveyed the empty deck. Felt her stomach growl, and tried to remember the last time she’d eaten anything. “Send us some food, would you?” she said. “I’m starving over here.”

  * * *

  • • •

  AL AND JASON PARENT had a care package ready within an hour. Nelson Ridley and Court Harrington helped McKenna wrangle the Dolphin’s steel basket into the stairway through an access hatch through the hull on deck seven. They unloaded a lunch bag filled with thick sandwiches and thermoses of coffee, a couple spare sleeping bags, and a flashlight apiece. They stashed the goodies in the corner of the stairs, unloaded a couple long coils of hose, and then set to work maneuvering the heavy pump out of the basket.

  The pump was the size of a suitcase, the kind that just barely fits into the overhead bin. McKenna lashed it to a railing inside the stairs, holding the machinery secure as Harrington radioed the all-clear to the Coast Guard aircrew. The helicopter moved down the ship, a couple hundred feet astern, where Matt and Stacey Jonas had set up shop inside their own access hatch. Meanwhile, McKenna, Ridley, and Harrington began to wrestle their pump down three more decks to the water.

  It was a long, arduous process. Ridley and Harrington steadied themselves by the access hatch and belayed the pump down the dark stairwell while McKenna descended beside it, guiding the pump through the angled stairs to keep it from bashing against the walls. The men lowered the pump slowly, took their time, the sea doing everything it could to knock them off balance. Finally, McKenna guided the machine to a resting position at the bulkhead on deck four, and let the rope go slack.

  “Touchdown, fellas,” she called up. “Now send me some hose.”

  The men lowered the hose down to McKenna. Then they grabbed the sleeping bags and the food and dropped down to deck four themselves, to maneuver the pump into the cargo hold and through the maze of hanging cars, to the water. They tied the pump to four eyebolts in the deck a few feet above the waterline, then rigged up the hoses, one end in the oily green water, the other all the way up at the access hatch on deck seven, pointing out over the hull and down to the ocean.

  It was almost full dark when McKenna pushed the hose out of the access hatch. Nearly midnight, the gray clouds above gone black, the wind full of salt spray even this far from the waterline.

  McKenna secured the hose. Then she hollered down the stairway to Ridley and Harrington. “Okay, boys. Fire her up!”

  A pause. Then a rumble as the pump came to life. For a minute, nothing happened. Then the hose coughed and spasmed, and suddenly a gush of oily water spewed out and down the hull.

  Two hundred feet away, Matt and Stacey had their own pump working. McKenna waved at Matt from her access hatch. Then she dropped into the ship again, and climbed down toward deck four to find Ridley and Harrington and settle in for the night.

  46

  He couldn’t stay here.

  Okura lay across the rear windshield of the Nissan on cargo deck twelve, the Coast Guard long gone, the darkness absolute. He was hungry. His whole body hurt. The storm threw the ship violently, hurled it high atop monster waves and slammed it down into the troughs, bashing the tethered cars into the steel deck, again and again. Okura gripped the briefcase, knew he had to go, escape the cargo hold, find food and water. Wait for the gale to blow over and then attempt his escape.

  Fifty million dollars. Yes, but he would die like Ishimaru if he didn’t get out of here.

  First problem: light. Okura inched to the edge of the Nissan. Leaned down the side of the car, reached as far as he could, fumbled in the dark for the door handle. Found it with his fingertips, stretched as far as he could, and pulled. The door swung open, swung down. Inside the car, the dome light illuminated.

  The sudden bright nearly blinded him. He shielded his eyes, waited until they’d adjusted. The cargo hold looked chaotic. The dome light played spooky shadows on the cars nearby. All the same, the light was a comfort. The whole situation seemed surmountable at once.

  Okura looked up the slanted deck toward the bulkhead where he’d found Ishimaru. Thirty or forty feet above him. He would have to climb, and climb carefully.

  The Nissan was chained in four points to the deck; it was tethered to the cars ahead and behind, on both the driver’s and passenger’s side. The cars rose and slammed down with every fresh wave, sending spasms of shock through the tethers. Okura knew the storm would try its damndest to shake him loose as he climbed. Knew it was his only chance at escape.

  If only I had something to eat.

  There was canned food in the galley, lots of it, though the rest had gone bad. Medical supplies in the infirmary, fresh clothes in the staterooms. Even bedding to make a nest for sleeping. Everything he needed was waiting above him. All that remained was to get there.

  Okura maneuvered to the rear of the Nissan. Swung his feet over the side and stepped gingerly onto the oil-slick deck. Waited, timing the waves, felt the Lion drop into a trough and braced himself for the impact. The swell slammed the hull and moved on, and then Okura made his move.

  He dropped down to the deck, grabbing hold of the tethers with one hand, the briefcase with the other. Used his legs to push off from his Nissan’s rear bumper, reached high above his head for the next car in the line. Hurled the briefcase ahead and pulled himself higher, his feet struggling for traction against the slippery deck. He felt the Lion drop into another trough. Knew if he didn’t hold tight he’d be cut loose and falling. Grabbed the briefcase with one hand and a tether in the other, pulled himself to a tire and wrapped it in a bear hug. Felt the momentary weightlessness as the wave hit, and then the crash as the car hit the deck again.

  Okura held on. Climbed up onto the hood of the Nissan, scrambled across the roof to its trunk before the next wave rocked the Lion. One car. He’d made it one car, and he felt exhausted to his core. Felt like he’d just climbed a mountain. He looked up the long row of cars, the bulkhead just barely visible, and wondered how he would ever make it to the top.

  He’d made it one car, though. He could make it one more.

  47

  McKenna and Harrington bunked at the base of the stairs, by the bulkhead door leading to cargo deck four, while Nelson Ridley climbed back to the weather deck to maintain radio contact with the Gale Force. McKenna and Harrington unraveled their sleeping bags and dug into their provisions, and listened to the pump rumble away in the hold.

  “We’ll go two hours on, t
wo off,” McKenna told the architect. “Check the pump every hour or so, make sure the hose is still sucking water. Adjust as you see fit. Sound good?”

  Harrington chewed his sandwich, swallowed. “Makes sense to me.”

  “Remember to clip in. Every time you go up or down that line. Safety first.”

  “Right, McKenna.” Harrington grinned. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

  It’s practically mine, McKenna thought. And I don’t want to lose anyone. She rummaged in the dinner bag. Jason Parent had made sandwiches, thick ones, roast beef and big hunks of bread, and he’d somehow rustled up fresh lettuce and tomatoes, to boot. McKenna took a bite and savored it. Drank her coffee.

  High above them, the wind howled through the access hatch and up the stairway to the deck. Pitch-dark up there now, the only light the cold blue from the LEDs in their headlamps. They were alone here, might well have been the only people left alive on the planet, and McKenna couldn’t shake the sense of awkwardness. She hadn’t been this alone with Harrington, with so little to say, since she’d told him she thought she was falling in love.

  And that hadn’t exactly gone over well.

  “So we got this thing licked, or what?” McKenna asked after a beat. “You think you can save this wreck?”

  Harrington nodded. “I’m reasonably confident.”

  “‘Reasonably?’” McKenna arched an eyebrow. “Okay, but once we get all the fluid levels, you’re going to be sure, right?”

  Harrington laughed a little, the kind of laugh that made McKenna feel like she’d just asked something dumb. Like she was reading the situation all wrong yet again.

  “It’s not just the numbers,” he said. “We’ll get everything we can use, but there’s no guarantees.”

  McKenna stared at him. “You said if we input all the fluid levels into your models, the models would show us what to do. Are you saying that’s not true?”