Blindfold Game

JANUARY

BY A MIRACLE THEY had picked up every single crew member of the Terra Dawn, close enough to St. George that the small boats were able to ferry them in and drop them off in St. George’s harbor. “It was one hell of a ride in, though,” Ryan told Sara.

It was the first time in the twelve months he’d been assigned to the Sojourner Truth that Sara had seen the young ensign look tired. “Hit the sack,” she told him. “You can write your report tomorrow. We’re underway for the line. Holiday routine until we get there.”

“Aye aye, XO.” He gave her a tired smile and stumbled below.

They plowed northwestward for the rest of the night. No aids-to-navigation malfunctions were reported, no fishermen fell overboard, and no skippers went apeshit, which marginally mollified the tone of the e-mails coming at them from District, and, more important, let the crew catch up on their sleep. FSO Kyla Aman worked a heroic fourteen-hour shift in the galley, producing, among other various and succulent things, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, Rice Krispy treats frosted with a melted mixture of chocolate and butterscotch chips, and strawberry shortcake, dedicating mess cooks to carry trays of said bounty up to the bridge, the wardroom, and the engine room as well as putting out loaded trays in the crew’s mess. It was amazing how the aroma of baked goods lightened the crew’s mood.

They were coming up fast on the line, the seas having smoothed out between the last outgoing storm and the next one incoming, which, Ops had assured her with far too much insouciance, was breathing right down their necks. She made the mistake of asking him what the next storm looked like, and he replied, one eye on the door, “Well, XO, the last one they called a hurricane.”

“And this one?”

“Well, actually, this one they’re calling a hurricane, too.”

“Get away from me, Ops.”

“Getting away from you immediately, ma’am.”

But for now the seas had smoothed out to a moderate six feet and the Sojourner Truth was taking the swells easily. The horizon was lightening, and if Sara was not delirious, she thought she might even have seen a patch of blue, high up and far away, true, but there nevertheless.

They arrived on station after lunch. “Captain on the bridge,” Tommy said.

“XO,” Lowe said, climbing into his chair. “What’s our status?”

“We’re on the MBL at fifty-nine lat, almost dead on a hundred eighty degrees long, sir. We have traffic on the radar, fifteen processors, cruising the Russian side. None on our side, and none on visual.”

“Sir?” Tommy said from the radar screen.

“Go ahead, Tommy,” the captain said.

“We’ve got someone over the line.”

The captain swiveled around in his chair. “Say again?”

“We’ve got a ship over the line, and I mean way over the line, sir.” She manipulated the cursor ball and read down the column of numbers on the lower-left-hand side of the screen. “About two and a half miles over, sir, and not looking like she’s going to turn around anytime soon.”

Lowe looked at Sara. “They have to know we’re here.”

She shook her head. “Just our turn in the barrel, sir, I guess.”

“XO?” Tommy said.

“What?”

“There’s another ship out there, too. It’s closing on the first one.”

Sara’s eyes met the captain’s for a pregnant moment.

“Plot us a course to intercept,” Lowe said, the words barked. “Give me an ETA. Ops, get on the sat phone to District.”

Ops took the sat phone and retired to the deck aft of the wheelhouse in good order.

“XO, when we come up on them, I want you on the conn.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Sara replied very correctly.

Ops came back into the bridge and presented himself to the captain, very nearly going into a brace. “I’m sorry, Captain, the sat phone is not connecting today.”

The captain vaulted out of his chair and said curtly, “I’ll try to raise District on e-mail.”

“Aye aye, sir.” She waited for the door to close behind him. “Captain’s below.” She pretended not to hear when someone gave a low whistle.

She walked over to stand behind Tommy at the radar. “Where are they, Tommy?” Tommy pointed. Sara looked up to the horizon. They were headed south by southwest, and they and the blips on the screen were now both well and truly inside the Doughnut Hole.

The Doughnut Hole was a roughly triangular area in the center of the Bering Sea, far enough away from the United States and Russian coastlines to form a no-man’s-ocean outside of any nation’s jurisdiction. It had been so overfished during the last century that it was now closed by international treaty to allow the native marine species, especially pollock, to repopulate. What the fishing vessel the Sojourner Truth was now in pursuit of thought they could pull out of the Doughnut Hole was a question only they could answer. Sara had a feeling that Captain Lowe, who had been tried pretty far on this patrol, was determined to have an answer.

An hour later one of the lookouts posted above called down a sighting. Out came the binoculars.

Sara braced her legs against the swell and peered forward. The rise and fall of the waves intermittently obscured the stern, but not for so long they couldn’t make out the name.

“I don’t fucking believe this,” Mark Edelen said.

“No gear in the water, though, ma’am,” Tommy said, eyes glued to binoculars.

“I’ll be with the captain, Chief,” Sara said.

The door to the captain’s cabin was closed. Sara rapped on it hard enough to make her knuckles sting. “It’s the XO, Captain.”

“Enter.” She opened the door and she stepped inside. “Close it, XO.”

She closed the door without comment. The captain was sitting at his desk, in front of his computer. He didn’t look happy, and Sara didn’t imagine that what she was about to tell him would make him any happier. “Captain-”

He jerked a thumb at the monitor. “Make ready to go to flight quarters, XO.”

“-the fishing vessel has been- What?”

“Go to flight quarters,” he said. “Make ready to bring our helo back on board.”

“Helo? I thought our helo was in St. Paul.”

“So did I.”

“Captain,” Sara said, and found herself momentarily and uncharacteristically at a loss for words. She tried again. “Captain, St. Paul is over three hundred nautical miles from here. They can’t make it that far on their fuel tanks.”

“Not without a good southeasterly,” he agreed. “They refueled midway.”

She thought quickly, and remembered the cutter they had passed the day before going in the opposite direction. “The Alex Haley?”

He nodded.

“They did, what, a hot refueling?”

“They did an in-flight refueling,” the captain said, “a little over the midway point.”

Sara wondered for how much longer Lieutenants Sams and Laird were going to be members in good standing of the United States Coast Guard. “Sir, far be it from me to leap to the defense of an aviator, but this just doesn’t sound like something either Lieutenant Sams or Lieutenant Laird would do. They’re both pretty cautious.”

“Not all that cautious, it would seem,” the captain said with dangerous calm.

“They’re going to be dragging by the time they get here,” Sara said, appalled at the notion of bringing the helo back on board with exhausted aviators at the controls.

“Yes,” the captain said, but he didn’t fool Sara. He was almost vibrating with worry. And rage.

All she could think to say was “Why?”

“Apparently they’ve got a VIP on board.”

She gave up trying to maintain any semblance of cool and said, “Who absolutely positively has to get here overnight.”

“That’s right.”

“Who? And for god’s sake, why?”

“They won’t say. They say the VIP will explain upon arrival.”

Sara tried to think of a reason so important to put a helo on the nose of forty-five-knot winds and fly three hundred miles, and failed. “Are they going to make it?”

“They’ve got something of a tailwind, so I’m told. That hurricane of NOAA’s is giving them a little push in our direction.”

“I just bet it is,” Sara said.

“And then the e-mail went out again before I could ask District what the-what they’re up to,” Captain Lowe said, gesturing toward the computer. “But not before I got us a letter of no objection.”

By which was meant, District was leaving the method of pursuit and interdiction of the fishing vessel they’d caught in the Doughnut Hole up to the discretion of the captain of the Sojourner Truth.

She opened her mouth and he waved her to silence. “I know, XO, we say we don’t shoot anybody over fish. But I’m tired of these guys stepping all over us. I want to throw a little scare into them. Let’s send them home with a story to tell about how crossing the line into U.S. territory is, to paraphrase that known felon, Martha Stewart, not a good thing.”

“You can shoot at these guys with my great good will, Captain,” she said cordially. “You can sink them and I might be so upset I’d have to make myself another cappuccino.”

He looked taken aback. “I beg your pardon, XO?”

She met his eyes. “It’s the Agafia, sir.”