by Rob Sangster
He had a request to make of Harper, so as soon as he was no longer needed he stepped into an office with Harper’s name on the door. No Harper. He decided to wait. He’d gotten some strength back aboard Nikita Maru, but was nearly exhausted again. After he sagged into a cowhide chair, he picked up a remote control on the desk and clicked off the sound on the TV, muting the opinion of a CNN talking head.
His mind drifted back to the stricken platform as it loomed above them, to men slipping under the waves, and to the relief he’d felt when the survivors were dumped on the pier. He also remembered the captain of Nikita Maru looking coldly down at him. And those six men in white lab coats, ghostly figures watching as the ship turned away.
Something about those images snapped everything into context. He’d assumed that the captain had been reluctant to rescue the Chaos crew and refused to take them to any major port because he was an illegal whaler. And that he’d kept the Chaos crew locked in the cooler so they’d see no evidence. Now Jack realized he’d been wrong. That captain had been protecting a much bigger secret.
When Nikita Maru had attacked Aleutian, it had been in the vicinity of Chaos. It appeared she had stayed in the area for weeks after that. The captain wouldn’t have done that to catch whales. But he would have done exactly that if those men in white coats were scientists who, like Renatus, were collecting and analyzing data about methane hydrate. That would also explain the presence of the ROVs aboard Nikita Maru.
The captain hadn’t been motivated to rescue them by the fundamental law of the sea that required trying to rescue mariners in distress. He’d known that the presence of his ship near the platform was a matter of record—satellite, other ships, transmissions—and he’d be liable if he failed to attempt assistance after he and his crew knew there were survivors.
The whaling expedition was likely a front for a secret mission by some Japanese mega-corporation to exploit methane hydrate. Its drilling platform could already be on the way across the Pacific. But those scientists couldn’t be as brilliant as Renatus, and were much more likely to blow up that part of the world.
The people on the other side of the office door were dealing with an emergency that would subside within a few days, but the terrible threat of what he’d just figured out would get worse, much worse. He clasped his hands behind his head, leaned back, and willed himself into a semi-trance, letting the millions of synapses in his brain massage the problem. When it was time, he sat up straight.
A foreign company and maybe a foreign government were doing business in international waters where no U.S. laws could restrain them from taking Barbas’s place. Nothing could, except . . . the Law of the Sea Treaty. Ratification would put a sledgehammer in the hands of the U.S. government to prevent the destabilization catastrophe that Barbas had come within seconds of causing.
The vote on ratification in the Senate was scheduled to come up three days from now, but the Senate majority leader wouldn’t bring it to the floor unless he had the votes to pass it. Right now, he didn’t. The fastest way to change that was to persuade President Gorton to use the full force of his office. But Gorton was in bed with lobbyists who detested any regulation, certainly including that treaty. Gorton could have pushed ratification through before, but he hadn’t. He wouldn’t this time either. Barbas had been certain that Jack could get Gorton’s help just by asking for it. But on Challenger, when Jack had tried to get Gorton to prevent the tsunami that had just wiped out towns along the Alaskan coast, Gorton had refused to take his call and then turned him down cold. It was ironic that he never could have done what Barbas went to such extreme lengths to force him to do.
The chill of the Pacific Ocean had left him, and his mind was back in high gear. Even if he had enough time to get a few business moguls, editorial pundits, and four-star generals to blitz the Senate in support of ratification, he knew that would rile more senators than it would persuade. They were comfortable with lobbyists they knew, but resented pressure from the outside world.
He had weak contacts with three senators, but two would never vote to ratify the treaty. The third wouldn’t even help force the issue to the floor for a vote. There wasn’t enough time to walk the halls of the Senate office buildings trying to get cold-call appointments to make the case for ratification. But he had to get to DC and give it a try.
He noticed a woman on the TV screen being interviewed while standing in the midst of the ruins of a small seaport business district, obviously one of the places hit by the tsunami. The banner at the bottom identified her as Senator Susan Fisher from Alaska and the location as Sitka, Alaska. The banner also informed him that she currently served on the Senate Homeland Security and Foreign Relations committees. He clicked the sound on. She was being questioned with near-hysterical intensity by a young man whose microphone bore a KTNL-TV (CBS) logo.
She ended the interrogation with her assurance that federal bucks were on their way. She promised to listen to the needs of as many people as she could before she had to leave for DC later tonight. Jack was impressed by her calm and compassionate answers.
He thought how, when you throw a baseball over a fence and hear the sound of shattering glass, that’s abstract. When you climb the fence and see the damage, it becomes real. On Chaos, they hadn’t been able to see or feel the tsunami. For Sen. Fisher, surrounded by the wreckage, it had to feel absolutely real.
After walking away, Senator Fisher turned back to the microphone and said, “Two tsunamis within a few days. That’s very, very strange. I’m going to have people at DOE figure out what’s going on.”
Game on. She would hear from Jack Strider exactly what was going on and what she had to do about it. The treaty had never made it to the Senate floor for a vote during the senator’s tenure. If she had been counted as a likely “no,” he’d have to turn her around. If she was already a “yes” vote, he had to persuade her to find a “no” and convert him or her to a “yes.” She might not have much clout, but she had a lot of heart and would be fighting for her constituents. She was his best hope to stop whoever was behind Nikita Maru.
She would be in Sitka only until late tonight. Since she didn’t know him, he could never persuade her on the phone. He had to get there fast. But first he had an important call to make. He picked up the desk phone again.
“Oh my God,” Debra said. “I’ve been so worried. Are you all right? What happened on Chaos? Why does caller ID display ‘WCGH’? What does that mean?”
The sound of Debra’s voice was like a shot of adrenaline. It reminded him that after they hung up yesterday he hadn’t known whether he’d ever talk with her again.
“I’m mostly all right, but my head feels like this is the morning after a three-day drunk, so I’m only going to give you the short version right now.” He repeated what he’d told the docs and added, “Full disclosure: There’s a lot more, and I’ll tell you all about it when we’re together. By the way, WCGH stands for West Coast General Hospital in Port Alberni, British Columbia. That’s where we are.”
“It’s a miracle you’re alive. But wait a minute. If you’re all right, why are you in the hospital?”
“The Chaos crew is getting medical attention for hypothermia. I was shaky for a while, but I’m over it now.”
“Is Gano okay?”
“He was almost out for the count, but he’s on his feet again. Molly McCoy was pretty shut down, but she’s much better too. Drake is tough as an iguana. No problem there. All he cared about when he got here was finding out whether Challenger was still afloat after Barbas’s helo attacked it. He talked with his shore crew in Alameda and found out they’d gotten a call by satellite phone from his ship. Some shrapnel wounds but no fatalities. It’s badly damaged and is limping home to Alameda with a Coast Guard escort. Renatus is still in bad shape, but they say he’ll make it.”
“Since Renatus is there, does that mean Barbas is there too?”
“Barbas is dead.”
“My God, I’m sure he didn’t think he could die. I want to hear all about it, but are you telling me the truth? Are you really all right?”
“I swear it.” Later, face-to-face, he’d share exactly how close he’d come to death.
“I look forward to you proving to me that you’re all right.” She chuckled. “You probably don’t know that the TV news channels started screaming yesterday about a tsunami warning from an unidentified offshore source. Did that warning come from you?”
“It did.”
“They’re saying it saved a lot of people in BC and Alaska.”
Her words reminded him how close they’d come to not getting that warning out. “That’s great news.”
“You being safe is the best news there is,” she said, “but I have some other important new for you. It’s about the Armstrong case. Do you want bad news or good news first?”
“Bad news.” Seemed like he’d been dealing with bad news as long as he could remember.
“We won’t collect our fee for a while.”
His weary brain wasn’t tracking what she was talking about. Then he understood. “Did you say ‘fee’?”
“Yep. The Air Force caved and agreed to settle. They’ll start payments to our clients, and all others affected, immediately. They’ll also start a drastic reduction in their emissions of poisons.”
“That’s fantastic. Our clients will be overjoyed. It’s a stupendous win for you. But what’s the hang-up on the fee?”
“They insisted that I agree to delay getting it, but it will be huge. Petty payback on their part, but I had to give them that to close the deal.”
“You are a genius. If I weren’t already in love with someone, I would fall in love with you. Oh, yeah, it’s already you.”
She was quiet. That was good. She was hearing him.
“Thanks, partner.”
“I have to know, how did you do it?”
“When I couldn’t find a single legal decision on facts similar to ours to cite as precedent in our favor, I finally asked myself the right question. Why were there no legal precedents? One explanation was that the Air Force lawyers had made sure they kept out of court. Maybe they played hardball until plaintiffs gave up or died. And if that didn’t work, maybe they’d made out-of-court settlements that included a confidentiality provision. Since they were still playing hardball with us, I wondered what would motivate them to settle.” She paused. “What am I thinking? After what you’ve been through, you don’t need to hear about this right now.”
“Are you kidding? I’m hooked. You have to tell me what you did.”
“I invited one of their top lawyers to an off-the-record dinner at Boulevard Restaurant. I thought that would be good luck since it’s our favorite place. I talked about how important this case was to the public, and said I intended to ensure full media coverage. I reminded him that a trial would drag the Air Force’s dirty laundry into the glare of the media, and that I’d stretch it out day after day. He was looking for the server to order another martini when I asked him ‘How much do your generals want to bleed in public?’ I saw in his eyes that was the question they’d been asking themselves back in his office.
“He looked away and asked, ‘What would it take?’”
“I’ll be damned,” Jack said.
“I told him that if we reached a fair settlement immediately, none of this parade of horrors would happen, and the Air Force could claim credit for solving a serious problem—and for doing the right thing for everyone injured. He tried to push back, but his heart wasn’t in it. I was right. Bad publicity was their Achilles heel. I told him to take his phone to one of Boulevard’s private rooms and get agreement to a settlement. Otherwise, I’d go public in the morning.
“When he came back, he had their top gun on the phone. We negotiated terms on the spot. He said for me to write it up, and the Secretary of the Air Force and the Commanding Officer at Armstrong would sign. I went back to the office, called in our best people on the case, and we worked straight through into the next morning despite Simms causing a swarm of cockroaches to invade our offices. That led to a bit of a scuffle, but that really is a story for a different time. Anyway, it is a done deal as soon as our clients agree.”
“You know, I’ve been told quite a few times that I’m a pretty fair poker player. After what you just told me, I’m staying out of games with you.” He thought about how close his pursuit of Barbas had come to tanking whatever chance they had to win against Armstrong. If Debra hadn’t stepped in, the case might have been road kill. He’d make sure the plaintiffs and the media understood that she’d been the lead lawyer.
“By settling, we won’t have a precedent to use against them in other jurisdictions,” he said, “but we have all our research and witnesses. I think we’ll get the Air Force to clean up its act voluntarily.”
“I can’t wait until you get back here,” she said.
“I have to make one more stop before I come home.” Before she could protest, he said, “I need you to come here to supervise getting more than 150 people who worked on the platform out of Canada and into the U.S. or wherever they came from. Molly McCoy from Astoria knows a lot of these people, so she’ll oversee medical issues. Molly will tell you all she knows about what happened on Chaos. You okay with all that?”
“I’ll be there. Where are you going?”
“Sitka, Alaska. I’ll stay in touch and explain it all when we’re together.” That wasn’t enough, but he hoped she’d let it go. She did.
As soon as he hung up, Dr. Harper walked in. His face filled with storm clouds when he saw Jack in his chair.
“I have one small request to make before I leave,” Jack said, and reached for Renatus’s shoulder holster.
HE LEFT HARPER’S office and found Molly. Her face was drawn, but she managed a smile.
“You’re looking better,” he said. “Has a doctor checked you out?”
“They say I’m their star patient. They told me to eat plenty of their special nutrition bars and stay warm.” She looked around. “Speaking of staying warm, I haven’t seen Gano. How is he?”
“Last I saw, he was scrounging in a supply room for anything to help people get comfortable.” He explained what he wanted her to do and said Debra was coming to Port Alberni right away.
“I can do that,” she said, “and I’ll contact families in Astoria who don’t know that so many townies won’t be coming home.”
Her would-be boyfriend Randy was among the missing, but neither of them mentioned him. They shared a hug, and he left her to mourn the loss of her friends.
He corralled Gano and told him about Debra’s triumph in the Armstrong lawsuit. “Now we’re going to hitch a ride on the next vehicle taking people to Nanaimo. From there, we’ll fly to Sitka, more than six hundred miles northwest of here.”
“I’m having trouble following the bouncing ball again,” Gano said. “Debra pulled your hot dog out of the fire, so you don’t have to be in Sacramento for your big trial. But instead of going home, you’re going to some godforsaken place with a population smaller than Sausalito. That seems insanely illogical, which you aren’t, so you must have a reason I don’t know about.”
“I always have a reason, probably one of my least endearing traits.” That made Gano grin, a good sign. He told him that he had to persuade Senator Fisher to save the treaty. “Now, let’s find our transport.”
A few minutes into the drive from Port Alberni to Nanaimo in a Dodge medical van, Gano said, “Hey, I saw Steve Drake walking around a half hour ago. I’m surprised he’s not coming with us.”
“You remember that shoulder holster with Renatus’s research in it? I got the hospital administrator to lock it in his safe. As soon as Renatus is able to travel, Drake will make sure he and
the holster get to Ironbound safely and without leaving any tracks. Drake will leave here as a bodyguard, but I hope he’ll be Renatus’s partner by the time they get there.”
“You keep right on thinking, man,” Gano said. “I’m grabbing some Zs before we get to Nanaimo.”
He had the driver drop them at the Nanaimo airport. Before going inside, they looked around the small plane parking area that paralleled the single landing strip. Gano volunteered to steal one. “We might even get it back here before anyone notices,” he said.
“And if not, it would be grand theft. Let’s go inside and see if we can pay someone to fly us.”
“Bartenders always know that kind of stuff.” Gano’s wolfish smile made it clear that information wasn’t the only reason he wanted to visit the bar.
Jack stopped into a small souvenir shop, bought two cheap cell phones, and headed for the bar.
“Right now,” the bartender told them, “that old guy over there, the one with his head on the table, is your only chance. Name’s Buck. He’s got a sweet Beechcraft Bonanza. Won’t rent it, but he sometimes hires out.”
Jack’s glance warned Gano away from ordering rum. He roused the man, who looked to be on the dark side of eighty. As it turned out, Buck had flown to Sitka often and quickly agreed to a charter. He doubled the fee when Jack said they had to leave immediately.
When they got to his plane, Buck nearly lost his grip when he hauled himself into the pilot’s seat. As the engine warmed up, Gano said, “Bucko, you’re a damned good man to help us out on short notice. Since I’m checked out on this type of aircraft, I’ll take the controls and let you just kick back.”
“Nobody flies my baby but me. No worries.”
“Then I’ll just slide into a seat in back with my friend. Give me a shout if you want a break.” He got in, leaned close to Jack, and whispered, “If I see that old buzzard start to nod I’ll move up fast.”