Blindfold Game

JANUARY

MOM!“GLORIA POINTED. NEXT to her Eli watched, his eyes wide, his hand clutching hers. ”I saw, honey,“ Lilah said, pale. They’d all seen, an almost front-row seat, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, apparently deliberately, ram a freighter in the middle of Resurrection Bay. The boat was listing to port as everyone on board leaned against the port rail and stared, most of them with their mouths open.

“There are people going into the water,” Lilah said, and turned to wave frantically at the bridge where the skipper stood with his mouth open. “There are people going into the water! We have to pick them up!”

“BULL’S-EYE, CAPTAIN,” OPS CALLED out, “dead amidships.”

There was no cheering on board the bridge of the Sojourner Truth.

They could clearly see the nose of the missile pointing skyward from the container. They could also see the smoke from the fuel pouring out of the opposite end of the container.

“We weren’t in time!” Mark Edelen shouted.

There was a groan. “No,” someone said. “This isn’t happening.”

All they could do now was watch.

The momentum of the freighter continued forward, dragging the cutter down the freighter’s starboard hull. The skin of the other ship punctured and peeled back.

“There goes another compartment,” someone said.

“And another.”

The force of the strike had pushed the freighter’s starboard side down. “She’s shipping water,” the chief said.

“That missile is launching!” Ops shouted.

Sara, hands clenched on the arms of her chair, watched with dread.

And then the weight of all the water that had been pouring into the gaping wound in the freighter’s side began to move. The Star of Bali began to roll to the left, slowly at first, through vertical and then heavily to port. The containers on deck began to break loose and fall off. The one with the missile in it clung stubbornly to its fastenings.

“Helm amidships, emergency full astern!” Sara shouted.

“Helm amidships, emergency full astern, aye,” Cornell said imperturbably. The engines of the Sojourner Truth paused for a moment and then started again, grumbling at first, then opening into a full-throttle roar.

Sara leaped from her chair and ran out onto the starboard wing. The freighter’s natural stability was trying to regain the vertical. The weight of the water she had shipped through the holes torn in her side wouldn’t allow it, pushing her over on her starboard side again. The weight of the steel in her hold increased the speed and violence of the roll.

The missile launched, with the Star of Bali starboard side down, the momentum of the roll giving impetus to the launch, like a kid throwing a rock with a sling.

“Come on,” the chief muttered behind her. “Come on.”

“Oh my God,” Tommy said steadily and clearly, “I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins-”

Sara rounded on Ops with such a ferocious expression that he backed up a step. “It’s got an internal gyroscope, right? It can correct its own course?”

Ops was pale. “If it gains enough height-”

The contrail of the exhaust seemed to twist and turn on itself.

“-because I dread the loss of heaven-”

Sara raised the binoculars she had thought to snatch on her way outside. The mountains behind the missile loomed large. Were they large enough? “Thumb Cove,” she said. “Thumb Cove, how high are the mountains in back of it?” Too late to go check, too late-

For agonizing seconds the missile looked as if it would clear the land-mass. Sara tried to think what it could hit, and how she could warn them. Valdez, and the oil terminal? Cordova? Would it go inland? Or could it still self-correct its course in midair? If it did, did it have enough fuel to still make Elmendorf and Anchorage? Would it fall short? If it did, where would it fall?

“-and the pains of hell-”

Then it hit, the very tip of the tallest mountain in its way. The jagged corner of the peak crumbled like a too-dry Christmas cookie. A huge fireball flared and vanished, followed by an even huger cloud of snow. Avalanche, Sara thought, and then realized she’d said the word out loud.

“Glacier,” Ops said, and backed up to lean against the bulkhead next to the hatch. “There’s a bunch of glaciers in back of Thumb Cove.”

“But most of all,” Tommy said, “because I thought you weren’t watching. I was wrong. Thanks, God.”

The sound of the impact reached them then, a thunderbolt that echoed across Resurrection Bay. Lilah and Gloria and Eli heard it on board the Kenai Fjords. A crew of fishermen heard it on board the Moira P., trolling for white kings off the Iron Door. The prisoners at Spring Creek Correctional Facility heard it, and in Seward it brought people out of their homes and offices to look south and wonder. The deafening blast rolled up Resurrection Bay in a mighty wave that crashed against the bowl of mountains and triggered massive avalanches of snow. Birds launched themselves into the air, crying in alarm, and every otter, seal, and sea lion sought shelter beneath the surface of the water.

“Captain!” Ops shouted, pointing. “The freighter!”

The bridge crew turned as one to look.

The thrust of the missile’s propulsion system had put the Star of Bali down by the stern, her taffrail awash.

“What’s happening, captain?” Tommy said, coming out on the wing to watch.

“She’s got two million gallons of water sloshing around inside her, pushing her back and forth,” Sara said quietly.

The chief looked almost sorrowful. “She’s got all that steel in her hold, too. And with all the boxes broken off she doesn’t have any weight left on deck, so no help there.”

Some of the containers that had broken off were floating away, some were crashing against the sides of the freighter. The Sojourner Truth was pulling away at her maximum speed in reverse, a lofty four knots.

Not quick enough not to watch the Star of Bali slide backward into the sea, though, her engine pushing the hull around in a semicircle. The bow slipped beneath the water with a resigned sigh.

They watched, mesmerized, as air bubbled up. The remaining containers broke off and bobbed up to the surface one and two and three at a time. Life rafts self-inflated and exploded twenty feet in the air, smacking down again.

“There are people in the water, XO,” Ops said, looking through binoculars.

“They’re alive?” Sara said. “How could they still be alive after this long in the water?”

The lieutenant looked at her. “It’s only been ninety seconds, Captain.”

Sara looked at the clock. He was right.

“Damage control, report,” she said into the handheld.

“Damage control reporting, Captain!” Chief Moran yelled over the handheld with the sound of rushing water in the background. “The bow’s all torn up! The portside bow is buckled all the way back to the collision bulkhead! We’ll shore it up, slow down the flooding, but she won’t last long, especially in heavy seas!”

“Understood,” Sara said. “Carry on.”

“Aye aye, Captain!”

She went back into the bridge and got on the pipe. “All hands, all hands, this is the XO. Brace for collision, I say again, brace for collision. We have sustained serious damage to the bow and we’re going to put her ashore so we can keep our feet dry. This is the last time, folks, I promise. Grab hold and hang on, it won’t be long.”

She went back out on the starboard bridge wing. They were proceeding in reverse back down Resurrection Bay and into the cove formed by the middle and northern peaks on Fox Island. There was a good beach there, made of nice, solid gravel with a steep incline that Sara hoped would serve to adequately ground the Sojourner Truth and keep her from sinking altogether.

The cutter was shuddering, as if with disbelief at this outrage perpetrated against her. Sara rested her hands lightly on the railing. It was folly to anthropomorphize wood and steel, but she heard herself whispering anyway, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She was facing aft, in the direction the ship was traveling. The northeastern point of the island began to curve around the ship in a granite embrace. The beach was rapidly approaching. “Tommy?”

Tommy’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “All hands, brace for impact, I say again, brace for-”

Sara grabbed the railing, braced her feet, and held on.

The propellers hit first. Sara was knocked off her feet by the vibration. The keel hit next in a grinding, shrieking protest of steel over rock.

In her mind’s eye Sara followed the action in the engine room as the EO pulled all the stops and ordered his crew out in case of fire or flood or both. She pulled herself upright. “Tommy, let go the anchors!”

There was no corresponding reply. “Tommy! Let go the anchors!”

Tommy’s head poked out of the hatch. “Uh, we can try, Captain. But…”

Sara met Tommy’s apologetic expression and realized that when she ordered the Sojourner Truth to ram the Star of Bali the anchors had probably been pushed into the emergency bulkhead along with the bow. She staggered forward and looked out over the bow to see the deck crew clinging to cleats and stanchions. The Sojourner Truth’s hull settled.

And then there was silence.

The chief picked himself up off the deck, looking white and shaken. “I don’t ever want to have to do that again, Captain.”

“Me, either,” Sara said, trying to smile, and then turned away quickly, before he could see the tears in her eyes.

MUSTANG SUIT OR NOT, Hugh was already numb with cold when the life raft exploded out of the water not a foot from his head. Floating on his back, he watched it shoot into the sky, where it seemed to hover for a moment or two. It fell back into the water with a mighty smack.

It took a moment to realize that salvation was at hand. When that moment came, he paddled clumsily over to the raft and began a laborious ascent over its side. Every muscle screamed as he hoisted himself up with the aid of the rope threaded around the raft’s gunnel. As he was somersaulting inside he saw with mild surprise that another man was climbing over the opposite side of the raft.

They tumbled in together and lay on their backs, staring at the sky and gasping like stranded fish. Hugh raised his head and looked at the other man. He looked familiar. It took a while-everything seemed to be moving in slow motion-but eventually he figured out why. “Why, hello there, Mr. Fang,” he said, and then had to repeat it in Mandarin.

Fang’s face twisted. Hugh tensed instinctively. If Fang had had a weapon, he would have killed Hugh on the spot. Instead, he doubled over and began coughing up seawater.

Hugh relaxed again and lay where he was, wondering somewhat dreamily if perhaps he should search the raft for some way to restrain the pirate. He didn’t want to move, though. He was just starting to warm up.

A shadow came up beside them and belatedly he became aware of the sound of an engine. Something hit the side of the raft.

“Hey,” someone shouted, “grab the line!”

He looked up to see a row of faces peering down at him from the side of a small cruise ship.

He blinked at one of them. “Lilah?”

A FISHING BOAT SKIPPERED by a crusty old fart was the first to arrive off the Sojourner Truth’s bow. He’d never seen anything like it in all his born days, nosireebob. Oh, it was a woman commander? That went a long way toward explaining things. Our tax dollars at work. Sure, he’d let someone board to use the radio. The deck crew jury-rigged a bosun’s chair and Ops slid down in it to the fishing boat and disappeared into the old fart’s cabin.

After the first flurry of orders, Sara subsided into her chair on the bridge and watched numbly as the crew went about the tasks of making the ship as secure as possible and to alert command to their present location. Any minute now she expected to see a fleet of aircraft coming over the horizon like the leading edge of an invading army. She ought to go below, inspect the damage, check on the injured.

Hugh was gone. No matter how many times she repeated the words she could not quite believe them. Hugh was gone, and she was alone. No more shared suffering through required parental visits home to Seldovia. No more fights over who had to move where when one of them got transferred. No more quickies in hotel rooms.

No more Hugh. How could she still be breathing? How could she still be here, when he was not?

She became aware of the tears running down her face and of Mark Edelen standing nearby, looking helpless and not a little frightened. “XO-”

“Let her alone.” Tommy’s voice was almost unrecognizable, rough and loud. “Just let her alone, Chief.”

So they did, leaving her bent over in the captain’s chair, tears dripping off her chin and into her lap. After a while she stopped seeing them as they moved around her, stopped hearing their voices when they spoke.

Sometime later she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up to see Ops standing in front of her with a concerned look on his face. His mouth moved, but she couldn’t make out the words. She shook her head tiredly and put up her palm to fend him off.

He wouldn’t go. She knew a tiny spark of anger, immediately quenched by grief.

“Come with me, ma’am,” he said, and put a hand beneath her elbow to assist her out of the chair.

“What-” she started to say.

“Please come with me, ma’am,” he said with unaccustomed firmness, and such was her state of mind that it was easier to follow him off the bridge and down the outside stairs to the main deck.

He led her to the bow. There were a half dozen small boats clustered around them by now, fishing boats and a couple of skiffs. A small cruise ship had a line to what was left of the cutter’s bow, its foredeck all but obscured by a crowd of paying passengers gaping at a sight that for sure hadn’t been on the itinerary.

Ops said something.

Sara could not make it out. “What?”

Ops took her firmly by the shoulders and turned her in the direction of the cruise ship. He pointed over her shoulder so that she had no choice but to follow the direction of his finger.

She couldn’t see what Ops thought was so important. There must have been fifty people on board the little cruise ship. Who went for a boat ride for fun in January?

And then she saw his face staring up at her, wet hair matted on his brow, eyes intent on hers, a smile of such joy breaking across his face.

The next thing she knew she was balanced on the gunnel and reaching for the rope mooring the cruise ship to the Sojourner Truth. She grabbed the line with both hands without a thought to seeing if it was on belay and launched herself from the cutter, swinging into space over the water.

There were alarmed shouts from both ships. She ignored them, wrapping her ankles around the line and going down hand over hand so fast that later she found rope burns on her palms.

She hit the deck of the little cruise ship and before she had regained her balance she was in his arms.