Blindfold Game

by Dana Stabenow

  “What the-” The captain was training a pair of binoculars on the horizon. “What’s that?”

  It was, of all things, a freighter.

  The entire bridge crew stared. The chief put what they were all thinking into words. “What is she doing way the hell and gone up here? Especially at this time of year?”

  She wouldn’t have been such an odd sight if they’d spotted her four degrees south, where freighters and containerships hid from weather north of the Aleutians year round on the great circle route between Asia and North America, but here, crossing the Doughnut Hole, she was as exotic as a scarlet macaw in Kaktovik. She rode low in the water, indicating a full load. She had cargo containers strapped three high to her foredeck. Everything looked well secured, which made Sara think well of her master. The weather was clear enough to read the name lettered on her bow.

  “Ops,” the captain said.

  “On it, Captain,” Ops said, busy on the computer. A moment later he said, “Their IRCS checks out, captain. It’s the Star of Bali, a tramp freighter. Panamanian-owned.”

  “Give them a call.”

  Ops reached for the mike. “U.S. Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth to freighter the Star of Bali.”

  There was a momentary silence, then response. The voice was male, with an Indian accent that stumbled badly over the cutter’s name. “Cutter Sojourner Truth, freighter the Star of Bali. We read you loud and clear, over.”

  “Yeah,” Ops said into the mike, “freighter the Star of Bali, cutter Sojourner Truth, no problems here. Just wondering what you’re doing so far north.”

  “Coast guard, Star of Bali, we running from weather, over.”

  “Any farther north and you won’t have to worry about the weather, you’ll have to worry about the ice,” Ops said. He keyed the mike. “Yeah, Star of Bali, cutter Sojourner Truth, understood. What was your last port of call, what’s your next port of call, and what cargo are you carrying?”

  “Coast guard, Star of Bali, our last port of call was Petropavlovsk, our next port Seward is. Our cargo is steel and drilling equipment.”

  Ops looked at the captain, who looked at Sara, who shrugged. “No reason to stop them, sir.”

  “No.” The captain nodded at Ops.

  u Star of Bali, cutter Sojourner Truth, good copy. Be advised, there is another storm headed out of the southeast, rated hurricane force.“

  “Cutter Sojourner Truth, Star of Bali, many thanks for the advisory. Star of Bali out.”

  “Safe journey, Star of Bali, Sojourner Truth out.” Ops looked at Sara. “It takes all kinds.”

  “That it does,” the captain said. “Back to business, people.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  The radio erupted with an excited call from the lookout on watch above at the same time Chief Edelen said in a voice that was not quite a shout, uPheodora in sight, sir!“

  Everyone who had them raised binoculars.

  The Pheodora’s rust-streaked hull was plowing along at full throttle, as evidenced by the wake boiling up from the stern, but the Russian processor’s single-screw diesel was no match for the Sojourner Truth’s two, and they were closing fast. The helo, an orange flea to the Pheodora’s large bulk, was hovering on the starboard side of their bridge fifty feet off the water.

  “Tell the helo,” the captain said.

  Ops reached for the mike on the radio with the secure operations channel. “Coast Guard helo six five two seven,” Ops said, “this is the cutter Sojourner Truth. We have the target in sight, I say again, we have the Pheodora in sight.”

  “Two seven, Sojourner Truth, roger that. We have hailed them and requested that they heave to. They have not responded.”

  “Roger that,” Ops said, and looked at the captain.

  District, as fed up as the captain at the repeated incursions, had already given Truth the go-ahead. Captain Lowe nodded. Ops nodded back and said into the microphone, “Russian fishing vessel Pheodora, this is the United States Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth. You have intruded into American territorial waters and are in violation of the Maritime Boundary Line. Reduce speed and prepare to be boarded.”

  They waited. There was no noticeable reduction in the Pheodora’s speed. The captain’s mouth thinned. Sara saw it and rejoiced inwardly. Ops was grinning openly, and the bridge exuded an air of taut expectation. Partly it was a desire to do good to wipe out the Dutch Harbor debacle, and partly it was delight at the unexpected gift handed to them by this patrol that none of them had wanted to go on.

  It was also the John Wayne reflex, that intrinsically American instinct to chase after the bad guy, the chance to wear the white hat, the unmistakable thrill of the cops-and-robbers chase that came so seldom into the daily routine of their patrols. Sara bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning back at Ops.

  Ops keyed the mike to repeat the message and at the same moment the secure channel erupted into life again. “Sojourner Truth, Sojourner Truth, this is Coast Guard Hercules aircraft one seven five two, come in.”

  Ops raised an eyebrow at Sara and said into the mike, “Go ahead, five two.”

  The Here’s aviator’s voice was terse. “Truth, we’ve got another incursion about five miles south of your location.”

  The captain swung around in his chair and stared at Ops. “Here five two, how far inside the line?”

  “Sojourner Truth, five two, this one’s a little over two miles inside.”

  “Son of a bitch,” the captain said, frightening everyone within earshot. Captain David Josephus Lowe, officer, family man, and deacon of the Kodiak First Baptist Church, never, ever swore.

  Sara, however, sympathized, and was thinking a lot worse than the captain was saying out loud. The Coast Guard had run into this before in the Bering, one or more Russian vessels making an incursion over the line at the same time, so that the one vessel being boarded occupied the attention of the lone cutter on patrol, while the other vessel pulled in their gear more or less at their leisure and moved back to their side of the Line. Bait and switch.

  Ops said into the mike, “Here five two, this is the Sojourner Truth, have you identified the vessel, I say again, what is the vessel?”

  “Sojourner Truth, Here five two, their IRCS number is about six inches high and on the front of the flying bridge.”

  Which meant that the foreign ship’s four-letter international identification number had been deliberately painted too small for the Here’s crew to read from two hundred feet up going one hundred seventy knots, which meant the cutter couldn’t input it into their onboard database.

  “Five bucks says it’s the Agafia,” Seaman Razo said.

  Chief Edelen snorted. “No bet.”

  The Pheodora and the Agafia were both leased by the same Russian fish processor. In the litter of three-hundred-foot vessels maintaining a year-round presence in the Bering Sea next to the Maritime Boundary Line each year, the two could always be found near each other, and all too often a little too close to the line for comfort. This put them both in the HIV or High Interest Vessel category.

  The captain said nothing. Sara wanted to scream with impatience. Instead she said to Ops, “Ask the Here about fuel.”

  “Coast Guard Hercules aircraft one seven five two, Sojourner Truth, how much fuel do you have?”

  There was a brief pause. “Sojourner Truth, Here five two, we’ve got maybe four hours before the point of no return.”

  “Raise Kodiak and tell them to dispatch another Here,” the captain said. “Then get the helo back here to refuel. Tell the Here on the scene to maintain contact until they can hand off hot pursuit to our helo.”

  Kodiak came on the air and confirmed the dispatch of the second Here with so little questioning that Sara knew they’d been monitoring the channel from the beginning of the incident and had been standing by for just this request.

  Maintaining hot pursuit was critical in making a legal case in a federal court against a substantial piece of property owned by a fo
reign corporation. The Russians’ lawyers were usually American and the best that money could buy, and the first thing any decent attorney said in this kind of case was that the pursued vessel hadn’t heard the order to give way.

  As if she had spoken out loud, Ops keyed the mike and said, “Russian fishing vessel Pheodora, Russian fishing vessel Pheodora, this is the United States Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth. You are trespassing in American territorial waters, I say again, you are trespassing in American territorial waters. Reduce speed and stand by to be boarded.”

  “Any answer?” the captain said, formally and unnecessarily.

  “No answer, Captain,” Ops replied, equally formally.

  There was a long moment of silence. “Break out the.50 caliber.”

  “Sir?” Sara said.

  The captain chose to overlook her involuntary exclamation. “Muster the gun crew and mount it forward to starboard.”

  Sara pulled herself together. “Aye aye, Captain.”

  “I want two boarding teams ready to go when we catch up to her.” He paused, and added deliberately, maybe even raising his voice a little, “Each boarding team is to be issued shotguns.”

  Yeah, Sara thought, not without respect, the old man was really pissed. It gladdened her heart, even though she didn’t believe anyone should ever be shot over fish. “Aye aye, Captain,” she repeated.

  “XO?” the captain said.

  “Sir?”

  “I want you to go with one of the boarding teams.”

  There was a brief, startled silence. “I want you to report to me personally every step of the way,” the captain said. “Go codes one, two, three. Understood?”

  “Understood, Captain,” Sara said. She reached for the IMC and her voice boomed out over speakers all over the ship. Through the aft windows she could see men and women boiling out of various hatches and swarming around the two rigid-hulled inflatables lashed to cradles on either side of the ship.

  Like any capable executive officer Sara knew her crew, from EO Nathaniel McDonald, who so far as she knew never left the engine room except to eat, sleep, or depart the ship, to FS3 Sandra Chernikoff, a mess cook not a year out of boot camp and an Alaskan like herself and Eugene Razo. She knew which of three categories each member of the crew fit in, the keepers, the time-markers, and the no-hopers. She knew who was on watch and who wasn’t. From memory she reeled off a list of twenty names, beginning with Ensign Ryan, their legal enforcement officer and boarding officer, and ending with PO James Marion, a fireman, damage controlman, and boat crew member. Everyone on board had at least two jobs and probably three. She had about twelve the last time she looked, but then she was a keeper herself.

  By the time she got to the armory the rest of the team had donned their orange and black Mustang dry suits, Kevlar vests, helmets, life jackets, helmets, and sidearms. She jerked her chin at the rack of shotguns and said to Chief Petty Officer Marvin Katelnikof, “Break out the shotguns.”

  He complied without comment. Katelnikof, a balding veteran with twenty-nine years in, had earned his cutterman’s pin before Sara had graduated from high school. Not a lot surprised him. She accepted a shotgun and headed below to the fantail where the rest of the BTMs were mustering, followed by Katelnikof, who was their designated Russian translator on board. The two Zodiacs had already been lowered into the water with their three-man crews and were now circling back to pick up the boarding teams.

  Ryan saw her coming. “You’re stylin‘, XO. Something about Kevlar that really does it for you.” He nodded at the shotguns. “The old man must really be pissed off this time.”

  “The Agafias over the line just south of here.”

  Ryan whistled low and long. “Man, they’ve just got to push it, don’t they? You’d think they would have learned after the last time.”

  Sara scanned the horizon. “Yeah, where’s the Russian Federal Border Service when you really need them?”

  Ryan followed her eyes and stiffened. “Hey-”

  “I see them,” Sara said, and keyed the mike clipped to her shoulder. “Captain Lowe, XO. I’m seeing a couple of other vessels approaching our location at speed.”

  “We have them in sight, XO. There are three vessels, identified as the Nikolai Bulganin, the Nadeshda, and the Professor Zaitsev.”

  “So, okay, this is new,” Ryan said. He cocked an eye at Sara. “Do we go?”

  “Captain, do we go?”

  There was a momentary pause. The wind bit into her in spite of the dry suit, and her face was already damp with salt spray. “Go, XO,” the captain said.

  “Yep,” Ryan said, “seriously pissed.” He grinned and climbed over the side to scamper down the rope ladder and drop solidly into the small boat. The rest of the first boarding team followed. “Rrrrrraaaaamming speeeeeeeeeeeed!” Ryan yelled at the coxswain in a passable Animal House imitation. The Zodiac roared away and the second pulled up neatly behind it and Sara led the second team down.

  Petty Officer Duane Mathis hated not to be first in line for anything and roared after the first boat. The hull thudded over the top of the chop in a bone-jarring but exhilarating ride. Sara looked over at the coxswain and he was leaning forward, teeth bared as if he wanted to take a bite out of the wind. Mathis was from San Francisco, she remembered, and he’d grown up off the coast of Peru on the deck of his father’s tuna boat. He and Sara had swapped a lot of lies about fishing over this patrol, although it seemed to Sara that the only difference between fishing off Peru and fishing off the Aleutian Islands was the temperature and the species of bycatch.

  They stood off as Lowe goosed the Sojourner Truth to overtake the Pheodora, giving the Russian just enough sea room to slow down and no more. If you’re the captain of an oceangoing vessel in the middle of the Bering Sea, ninety miles from the nearest land and that land not under the flag of your own nation, there are worse things than having a two-hundred-and-eighty-four-foot Coast Guard cutter bearing down on your port side with no indication of slowing down before impact, but not many. When the distance between the two closed to two hundred yards the Pheodoras skipper caved and pulled back on the throttle. A moment later a rope ladder was tossed over the lee side.

  Sara was first on deck. The conditions of the processor were about what she’d expected, the deck slimy with guts and gurry, lines loose from gunnel to gunnel, and anything with a moving part so long overdue for an overhaul that it all probably ought to have been junked. Ten feet away the deck sported a jagged hole, which disappeared into darkness and whose edge had yet to be cordoned off and flagged.

  Seaworthiness had two entirely different meanings on either side of the Maritime Boundary Line. Sara revised severely downward her estimate of how much the Pheodora might fetch at auction. They might just possibly be able to sell her for scrap.

  “XO?” her radio said.

  She keyed the mike clipped to her shoulder. “Code one,” she said in a mild voice. She didn’t like anything about this situation, but as yet the boarding team had not been threatened, not counting the imminent peril everyone stood in of breaking an ankle tripping over crap scattered across the deck.

  “Code one, roger that,” the captain said. “Keep me advised.”

  She clicked the mike twice in reply. A man in a bulky sweater and stained pants stepped forward. In heavily accented English he said, “Vasily Protopopov. I am master of vessel.” It came out “wessel” and behind Sara there was a snicker, followed by the flat slap of a hand on someone’s helmet.

  Ryan stepped forward. “Captain Protopopov, I am Ensign Henry Ryan of the United States Coast Guard. You have been stopped because you were fishing over the Maritime Boundary Line in American waters.”

  Protopopov let his eyes slide past Ryan to Sara. He gave her a long, leisurely once-over. Sara, crammed into her dry suit like chopped pork into a sausage skin, girded about with Kevlar like a medieval knight in his armor and feeling almost that seductive, felt like laughing in his face. Instead, she remained silent, keepin
g her expression calm and nonconfrontational. Protopopov waited just long enough to make his rudeness clear, and then shifted his attention to CPO Katelnikof, standing at Sara’s elbow holding the shotgun she’d handed off to him in the Zodiac. “No gear in waters,” he told Katelnikof.

  Chief Katelnikof, a salty old fart and the last man to agree that women on board ship were a good thing, was already stiff with outrage at Protopopov’s insolence to his executive officer. This blatant untruth did not soften his attitude. He dropped the shotgun from shoulder arms to cradle it in deceptively casual hands, the barrel now pointing at the deck between himself and the Russian captain.

  Sara looked aft and saw that Protopopov was correct; the Pheodora’s gear had been reeled on board.

  The captain’s voice came over her radio. “XO? Status?”

  She keyed the mike. “Code two, Captain.”

  The codes were the captain and the executive officer’s way of assessing a boarding situation. Code one was standard operations, no threat. Code three was get us the hell of here. Sara didn’t see any weapons other than their own, but it was a big ship, the crew was obviously hostile, and there were too many windows and doors looking out on the foredeck in which someone with a weapon could be stationed.

  Lowe’s voice was full of grim purpose when he responded. “Stand by, XO, and we’ll fix that for you.”

  Sara clicked her mike twice in response. Ryan looked at Sara. He was the boarding team officer and the person to whom Protopopov should be addressing his remarks, but the Russian captain had good instincts for spotting a superior officer. Not to mention which, it was the first time since Ryan had rotated on board that she’d come along on a boarding. She jerked her chin and he turned to face Protopopov.

  “Captain,” Ryan said, “we have you, with your gear in the water, on videotape, a good mile to the east of the line. As this seems to becoming something of a habit with your vessel, I’m afraid we are left with no option but to seize your ship and your catch and to place you and your crew under arrest.”