Blindfold Game

by Dana Stabenow

  There was a knock at the door. “Come,” Lowe said.

  It was Ops. “Still no response from the Agafia, Captain. Either their radio’s down or they’re ignoring us. And e-mail is still down.”

  “Just as well,” the captain said with a hard look at Hugh. “District isn’t going to believe this anyway.”

  “Look, Captain,” Sams said, “we’re coming up hard on her stern, right? We’re going to be close enough that we don’t have to put the bird in the air. We can just put a boat in the water.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Sara said. “An aviator thinking up reasons not to fly. A thing unheard of in memory of man.”

  They all smiled, except for Hugh. It lightened the tension, just a little, maybe just enough.

  “Ah hell,” Sams said, shaking his head, “this’ll be one for round the bar.”

  “Yeah,” said Laird, “and I never said I wanted to live forever anyway. Let’s take a look at the pitch and roll.”

  They went back up to the bridge. They were close enough now to be able to see the Agafia‘s lights, diffused through the blowing snow and fog into an enormous halo off their port bow. There was a smaller glow illuminating the fog and snow to starboard, indicating the position of the Sunrise Warrior. The lights were bobbing up and down with the motion of the sea, no more so than the cutter. Sara took two quick steps to grab hold of a pipe to steady her footing.

  Ops got on the VHF again. “Fishing vessel Agafia, fishing vessel Agafia, this is the United States Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth, please respond, I say again, please respond.”

  The result was a weighty silence. Ops repeated the hail. Same response. Ops looked at Lowe and raised one shoulder. Lowe climbed up into his chair. “XO.”

  Sara presented herself. “Sir.”

  He nodded at Hugh, standing silently to one side. When Lowe spoke, he was at his most formal, which could be extremely intimidating and which immediately straightened the spines of everyone within hearing. “Regardless of the reliability of the intel provided by Mr. Rincon of the CIA”-his voice was even and pleasant but no one on the bridge was left in any doubt as to the captain’s opinion of Hugh’s employer-“the Agafia has already crossed the Maritime Boundary Line, trespassing multiple times on the territorial waters of the United States. We have in hand a letter of no objection from District. We can board and seize her at our discretion.”

  “Agreed, sir.”

  “However. We are looking down the maw of a nine-sixty-millibar low, heavy seas, and freezing spray. These are not ideal conditions for a boarding.” A wintry smile broke through. “I’m not even going to ask for a GAR assessment on launching the helo.”

  This actually raised a chuckle around the bridge, which did nothing to lessen the level of tense expectation. “We’re good to go, Captain,” Sams said, and next to him, Laird echoed his assent.

  “No, you’re not,” the captain said, “but if Mr. Rincon’s information is correct, we don’t have a lot of choice here. Therefore, I-”

  “Captain?” Tommy said, her puzzled expression reflected in the green back lighting of the radar screen.

  “Tommy-”

  “Captain, the Agafia. She’s come about.”

  “What?” Lowe pulled upright. “Come about? You mean she’s coming at us? Why would she-”

  They all looked up to see lights bearing down on them out of the fog. The next thing Sara knew she had been hit by a couple of hundred pounds of hurtling male that knocked her across the deck from next to the captain’s chair to up against the starboard hatch, which fortunately was closed or they would both have tumbled out onto the starboard wing of the bridge.

  She lay there, stunned into immobility, staring up at Hugh. She opened her mouth to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing and at that moment four of the forward bridge windows blew in with a sound like a thunderbolt, only ten times as loud. There were loud thumps and crashes as high-velocity metal projectiles stitched a line across the bridge five feet high.

  Glass broke, metal housing splintered, flesh was shredded, and the bridge was filled with screams, curses, the angry howl of the wind and the bitter force of the blowing snow.

  JANUARY

  MARITIME BOUNDARY LINE

  ON BOARD THE USCG CUTTER SOJOURNER TRUTH

  SARA HAULED HERSELF TO her feet with numb hands reaching for anything left intact. “Captain,” she said, groping her way forward, trying to find some footing in the debris on the deck, fighting the roll of the ship’s hull. The sleet driving through the shattered windows seemed to penetrate every pore.

  She heard a moan. Someone swore. This time she yelled. “Captain!”

  Her outstretched hand touched an arm. It was dangling down the side of the captain’s chair. The ship jerked, off course because the helmsman was no longer at his post, and the motion caused the body attached to the arm to fall to the floor. She had to jump out of the way to avoid being knocked over.

  She got her eyes open against the wind enough to see that Captain Lowe was dead, his torso severed almost in two by a large gaping wound, a bloody mass of torn tissue and splintered bones. The motion of the ship caused his body to roll onto his back. His eyes stared in surprise at the ceiling.

  Sara looked around and slowly the rest of the bridge came into focus.

  Tommy was clutching a shoulder, a dark liquid seeping from between her fingers, her other hand clutching the radar console to pull herself erect. The helmsman, Razo, had been thrown from his chair and lay facedown on the floor, unmoving. His head looked misshapen. Ops was bleeding from his right temple and Sara could hear him swearing. “Ops?”

  “I got hit by some glass, XO, I’m okay!”

  Everyone was yelling to be heard over the wind roaring in the broken windows. It didn’t help when general quarters sounded and alarms whooped up and down the length of the ship. “Chief? Chief!”

  A hand came up to grasp the controls console and Mark Edelen pulled himself to his feet. His face was bruised and his right eye was swelling shut, but the rest of him was mercifully intact. “Find out if our controls still work and put our ass to the storm!”

  “Aye aye, XO!” He stumbled over bodies and binoculars and broken glass to the helm. A few minutes later the gale roaring through the bridge had eased.

  “Sara!” Hugh said, voice fighting the sound of the wind. “You’re bleeding!”

  She looked down and saw with some surprise that he was right. No wonder her left arm felt so numb. She touched her reddened sleeve and found a three-inch splinter of metal run completely through the flesh. It didn’t hurt yet, but it would.

  She raised her head and saw them all gaping at her.

  “XO,” the chief said, taking a step forward and being thrown back by the movement of the ship.

  “Are you okay, XO?” Tommy said.

  “I’m fine.” She looked around and raised her voice. “How is everyone else?”

  There were more wounds from flying glass and debris. Due to the chest-high sills of the windows, most of those wounds were to the upper torso, shoulders, arms, and heads. The captain and the helmsman had both been seated, the helmsman behind the captain and to his left. They were the only fatalities on the bridge.

  “Tommy?”

  Tommy had to shout to be heard. “XO!”

  “Does the pipe still work?”

  “I don’t know, XO!”

  “Try it! Pipe damage control to the bridge at once! And Doc!”

  Tommy was shaken but still capable of thought and action. “Doc and damage control, aye aye, XO!”

  “Sams! Laird!” Sara lurched across the bridge, staggering from one handhold to the next, slipping and sliding in blood and glass. “Sams!”

  “We’re here, XO!” Both had facial wounds from glass cuts but were otherwise unhurt.

  The pipe worked. Tommy must have cranked the volume knob all the way over to the right because her voice blasted out all over the ship, loud and high but amazingly calm. “Damage c
ontrol, Doc Jewell, report to the bridge immediately, damage control and Doc Jewell, to the bridge at once.”

  Sara continued to move around the bridge, trying to assess the damage. The Transas hanging from the bulkhead in front of the window before the captain’s chair was gone, nothing left but shreds of circuit board and wire, but the one over the plot table was still there, to all appearances intact and still working. The radar console was still blinking out contacts, too, but then it was located almost directly behind the captain’s chair, which had taken the brunt of the attack.

  People began to tumble onto the bridge. The captain’s and the helmsman’s bodies were removed. Doc Jewell bandaged everyone who didn’t move out of his way first. He winced when he came to Sara’s splinter, and it hurt like hell when he extracted it, but she refused anything stronger than aspirin. He looked as if he wanted to insist.

  Sara cut him off, curtly. “Not now, Doc.” She flexed her arm beneath the bandage. Everything still worked, even if it felt like she’d been seared with a red-hot branding iron. “Anyone hurt anywhere except on the bridge?”

  No, ma am.

  “Very well.” She pulled her fleece back on. Damage control had unearthed some Plexiglas from somewhere and cut rough squares to fit over the gaping holes where the windows had once been, riveting them in place with power drills. The ravenous howl of the wind was reduced to a distant snarl of disappointment at being balked of its prey. Hugh had found a broom and was sweeping debris into someone’s cap and chucking it out the port hatch, which was still latched open. Tommy was standing at the chart table, staring at the captain’s chair with a set face. She looked at Sara. “If he hadn’t been sitting there-”

  “Belay that, Tommy,” Sara said. “PO Barnette, you have the helm.”

  Tommy’s face stiffened. “PO Barnette has the helm, aye aye, XO,” she said, and there was a chorus of ayes.

  “Aye aye, XO.” Barnette took Razo’s place at the small brace wheel.

  “Tommy, you have the conn.”

  “BM2 Penn has the conn,” Barnette said. He had a deep voice and it seemed to boom off the Plexiglas.

  Tommy looked at him, swallowed, and pulled her way around the console to stand in an imitation of Barnette’s brace. “I have the conn, XO.”

  “Doc, canvass the ship for any casualties. I want a report ASAP. Chief?” This to Chief Lindsey Moran, the head of damage control on board, who stood waiting, power driver at the ready. “Report.”

  “They only hit the bridge, XO. There has been no other damage reported.”

  “Make sure of that yourself, Chief, and then report back to me.”

  “Aye aye, XO.”

  “Mr. Rincon, follow me. Chief Edelen, pipe all the officers to the wardroom, and then join us.”

  THEY STOOD INSTEAD OF sitting, mostly because Sara refused to take the captain’s chair and no one else would sit down while she was still standing. “Talk to me, Lieutenant.”

  “I was watching the roll indicator before we got hit,” Sams said. “It’s showing at least seven degrees, and sometimes more.”

  “Which means?”

  “We can do it, if we pick our moment.” Sams looked at Laird. “Maybe you should stay behind.”

  “What!”

  Sams looked at Sara. “Maybe you’ll need a spare pilot, if we don’t make it.”

  “It’s a moot point, since we only have one helo,” Sara said. She looked at Ryan. “Put together a team. I want them armed. Anything you can find on this ship that will shoot, stab, or explode on contact, you make sure every member of your team has two of each.”

  “Aye aye, XO.”

  She looked at Sams. “How many can you take?”

  “Well, maybe a few less than before you loaded them down with an armory,” Sams said.

  Several of them smiled, but Sara was too focused on the task at hand and too close to what had happened on the bridge for anything remotely resembling humor. “How many?”

  Sams’s shoulders straightened at the snap in her voice. “Six boarding team members total, XO.”

  Sara looked at Ryan. “Can you get the job done with six?”

  He started to go with bravado, saw her expression, and ratcheted it down. “Depends on how many people they’ve got on board and how well armed they are.”

  She looked at Hugh.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I know about the two brothers. Noortman told me that the brothers told Fang he couldn’t bring all of his usual crew, that they were hiring some help of their own. Could be ten. Could be twenty, could be fifty. I just don’t know.”

  She nodded and looked at Ryan. “Who is your best man on the can-non?

  “Sullivan,” he said without hesitation.

  “Have him report to me immediately. And then start putting your team together. Remember, the goal is to commandeer the ship, disable the launcher, and get her into the nearest port.”

  “Aye aye, XO.” Ryan vanished.

  “But if we have to, we sink the son of a bitch, and I’m not saying that’s a bad second-best.” She looked at Ostlund. “Ensign, start prepping for helo launch. I imagine you’ll have to do another traverse.”

  Ostlund shrugged. “Not like we haven’t had a lot of practice lately, XO. I think we’ve got it down.”

  “Good. Go.” She looked at Sams. “Anything?”

  He thought, and shook his head.

  “We won’t be able to bring you back on board the Sojourner Truth, not in this soup,” she said.

  “I know, XO.”

  “So once the boarding team is on board, you haul ass for Cape Navarin.”

  He gave a curt nod.

  “Good. Go.”

  The aviators left.

  “Chief,” Sara said to Edelen, “I want you on the conn.”

  “All due respect, XO, I want you on the conn.”

  She gave a half laugh. “Go on up to the bridge. I’m right behind you.”

  “Where’s Cape Navarin?” Hugh said.

  “About a hundred miles northwest of where we are now. It’s the nearest land.”

  He thought about it. “In Russia.”

  “Yes.”

  “That going to be a problem?”

  “The fact that they’ll be out of fuel before they get there is a bigger one.”

  BACK OH THE BRIDGE she looked at the radar screen. The Agafia was still there, still not making enough speed to pull out of range, but enough to keep her tantalizingly out of reach. It was almost as if she were playing tag with them, which made no sense to Sara. Perhaps all terrorists were by definition mad.

  The Sunrise Warrior was lagging about midway between the other two ships. Sara looked up and out the new Plexiglas windows. She thought she could make out lights off their port bow. She noticed something else, too. “Are we making ice?” she said.

  “We are, XO.”

  Sara swore, a round and mighty oath. “Assemble a crew to chip ice, Chief,” she said, snapping out the words.

  “Aye aye, XO,” Chief Edelen said, moving with alacrity.

  Sara told Tommy, “I need to be able to talk to the Sunrise Warrior.”

  “The VHF is down, XO, like almost everything else. Whatever they hit us with took out all our communications, except for handhelds.”

  “I know. How’s your Morse, Tommy?”

  “My Morse?” The bosun’s mate looked dubious. “It’s okay, XO. It’s not great, but I can make myself understood.”

  “Good.” To the chief, finishing up his pipe for the ice-chipping team, Sara said, “Get me in close enough for them to see our signal.” He hung up the mike. “Aye aye, XO.”

  ON BOARD THE SUNRISE WARRIOR

  “IS THAT MORSE CODE?” Vivienne said.

  “It is, Vivienne, now hush up so I can read it.”

  They all waited with varying degrees of impatience. No one had been very happy with pursuing the processor into the storm. For one thing, it made for horrible photography, and Greenpeace was all about film at eleve
n.

  Doyle lowered the binoculars.

  “Well?” Vivienne said. “What’d they say?”

  “They said those explosions we heard was the Agafia firing on them,” Doyle said.

  There were exclamations of disbelief all around.

  “Come on, Doyle,” Vivienne said. “A fishing vessel fired on a Coast Guard cutter?”

  “That’s what they’re saying,” Doyle said. “And that’s not all they’re saying, Vivienne. They want a favor.”

  Vivienne stared at him. “The U.S. Coast Guard wants a favor from Greenpeace?”

  “Not exactly,” Doyle said. “They want a favor from you.”

  THE FLIGHT CREW HAD finished their second heavy weather traverse in three days on the hangar deck, although this one had been a lot dicier due to the steadily increasing layer of ice that was forming on every surface above water. A crew had already been detailed to the bow with clubs, where the ice was accumulating faster than they could beat it off.

  Sams called the bridge. “We’re good to go, XO.”

  Sara was standing next to Seaman Royce Lee Cornell, North Carolina-born, a year out of boot camp and barely qualified on the helm.

  She could hardly see his black face in the dim light of the bridge. “Hold her steady, Seaman.”

  “Holding her steady, aye, XO.” Just turned twenty, Seaman Cornell had the maturity of a petty officer with twenty years in. Mark Edelen had recommended he replace Razo, and it spoke well for Cornell that he was on the bridge before he’d been called to duty.

  Sara looked at the indicators hanging from the overhead. Bubbles of air in twin curving plastic tubes full of water, the bubbles rolled back and forth and pitched backward and forward with the motion of the ship, indicating degrees of pitch and roll with a gauge printed beneath. As Sara watched, the roll went to seven, and the pitch went to nine. She swore under her breath. “Let her fall off the wind a little, Seaman.”

  “Aye aye, XO,” Cornell said. His hands moved on the small brass wheel. A minute passed, two, and then the Sojourner Truth hit a patch of what felt like relative calm.

  “Launch,” Sara said.