Gale Force

9

McKenna spent the morning running errands around town. Came back to the docks with the bed of her old Ford full of food and assorted provisions. Nearly ten in the morning, and the first of the crew had arrived—Matt and Stacey Jonas, the divers.

They were an interesting couple. Matt was tall and lean, his skin tanned and leathery. Stacey was just as tanned, but nowhere near as weathered; she was three years Matt’s junior, but it could just as well have been a decade. The Jonases had been happily married for as long as McKenna had known them, so she tended to think of them as a unit, but despite their mutual love of all things adventuresome—hang gliding, cave diving, BASE jumping, and the like—the two shared markedly different pasts.

Matt was an Ohioan by birth, a rust belt refugee who’d always wanted to see the ocean, and who’d thus found himself migrating to San Diego after dropping out of college. There, he’d met Stacey, a California girl through and through, a surfer girl and all-around thrill seeker.

According to Gale Force lore, the Jonases’ first date had been a skydive—at Stacey’s suggestion.

“She got me up into that plane and opened the door,” Matt liked to say, “and then she winked at me and told me if I wanted a second date, I’d better jump fast. And then she was gone.”

He’d jumped, of course, and when he’d touched down, he found himself not only with a new girlfriend, but with a taste for adventure, to boot.

“And the rest,” Stacey would add, raising her glass for a toast, “is history.”

The Jonases had been running dive charters in Baja since the Gale Force quit the big salvage stuff after Randall Rhodes’s death, but they’d jumped at the Lion job, no questions asked, as soon as McKenna had called them.

“Love it,” Stacey told her when she’d explained the score. “We’re in.”

McKenna laughed a little. “You want to check with Matt before you sign on? This is a big change from sand and snorkels.”

“Matt’s down for whatever,” Stacey replied. “He’s as sick of babysitting rich guys as I am. This sounds like an adventure.” She went away, came back. “Matt’s already got the plane gassed. We’re wheels-up in a couple hours. See you on the dock!”

Now they’d arrived, and watching them cross the tug’s afterdeck to greet her, McKenna was struck by a sudden sense of sadness, an acute reminder of loss. Her dad had hooked up with Matt and Stacey early on. Found them in a dockside bar in Monterey, hired them, and leaned on them for years. They were competent and fearless, willing to dive anywhere, and when diving wasn’t on the menu, they’d do just about anything else Randall asked of them—from welding, to climbing, to heavy-equipment operation. Matt had even earned his pilot’s license, and the two traveled private, flying to gigs and new adventures in their personal Cirrus SR22 propeller plane.

Matt and Stacey had made plenty of money with Randall, but beyond that, they’d all bonded with one another, grown close as family—heck, they were family to McKenna, and she’d missed them nearly as much as she missed her own father.

Avoiding Matt and Stacey’s eyes, McKenna hugged them both, tried to push her dad from her mind. She caught Matt and Stacey swapping a glance behind her as she helped them stow their kit bags in their stateroom in the tug’s fo’c’sle, but ignored it. Sooner we’re at sea and working, the better.

By the time they’d returned to the deck, more of the crew had arrived.

AL PARENT, the first mate and relief skipper, was a big, barrel-chested man with two shocks of red hair on his temples and none in between. He was a longtime sailor and an experienced towboater, and he would run the Gale Force while McKenna oversaw the salvage operation.

Al had stuck around, too, after Randall Rhodes’s death. He was quieter than Nelson Ridley, and more laid-back than McKenna, but McKenna knew he was as fiercely loyal as she and her engineer were when it came to the Gale Force and maintaining her father’s good name. As he came down the dock, she could tell he was excited by the way he barely glanced back at his grandson, who was following in his daughter-in-law’s arms.

Al’s son, Jason, trailed his father, walking down the wharf with his young wife, Angel, and their infant son, Ben. Your typical wharf rat, Jason was twenty-five or so, slimmer than his father, with a little more hair. He’d been raised on the water, grew up around boats, and there’d never been any question he would wind up at sea, though he’d barely started with the Gale Force when Randall Rhodes died.

Jason hadn’t seen much of the salvage business, not yet, but he would soon enough, McKenna figured. He’d be the de facto deckhand on the tug; aside from tending to the lines and helping with the grunt work, he’d cook meals for the crew in the tugboat’s small galley.

McKenna shook hands with both men, waved hello to Angel and to Ben, who gave her a big smile and looked around at the boats, as if he were already planning his own trip to sea.

The kid was adorable, McKenna thought, with rosy cherub cheeks and a patch of blond hair, that big beaming smile.

“I don’t know how you’re going to say good-bye to him,” she told Jason. “He’s such a handsome devil.”

Jason looked back at his son and wife. He blushed a little bit, scuffed his boot on the wharf.

“Hoping we’ll hit a big score on this, skipper,” he said. “Set aside a little something for the kid’s education, his future, you know?”

“Looks like he’s pretty happy around boats,” she said, grinning. “We might have to save a job on this tug.”

She smiled at little Ben again, then looked past him just in time to see a black flash hurdle the bulwarks and careen across the deck. “Cat came back, huh?” she said, grimacing.

Al grinned. “Ship’s cat, skipper. Don’t leave port without him; you know that.”

The ship’s cat, Spike, was as grouchy as ever, and McKenna figured she wouldn’t mind so much if the Gale Force did leave him behind. Three years into her command of the tug and the cat still hadn’t warmed to the new regime; he barely paused to give McKenna a petulant once-over before darting over the bulkhead and into the tug—headed, no doubt, to stake a claim on the wheelhouse.

“I’ll know I’ve made it when that cat deigns to let me sit in my own captain’s chair,” McKenna told the crew. “That’s when I’ll know I’m a real tugboat skipper.”

Matt and Stacey laughed, and Jason smiled, too. But Al wasn’t paying attention. He was looking around the afterdeck and the dock, frowning. “I guess Ridley’s in the engine room,” he said. “But where’s the whiz kid?”

Court.

McKenna felt every one of her crew’s eyes turn toward her. Knew they were flashing back, too, to her dad’s sloppy memorial.

“The whiz kid’s not coming.” She sighed. “We’re going to have to make do without him.”

She watched Al Parent’s expression as she relayed the story of Court and the World Series of Poker, watched Matt and Stacey share another look and felt herself going red.

“Job needs an architect, doesn’t it?” Al asked.

“Definitely,” Stacey said. “I saw the pictures of that ship. We need to get her upright somehow.”

“Are you sure you can’t convince Court to come along?” Matt said. “Heck, I’ll chip in a part of my share, if it helps.”

McKenna closed her eyes. Tried to chase the feeling that she wasn’t cut out for this game, just an amateur, playing pretend.

“We’re going to have to do this without Court,” she told them. “I’ll get us another architect, don’t worry.”