Gale Force

23

Christer Magnusson could tell this job wouldn’t be easy.

Rescuing a ship was never a simple task, but in Magnusson’s experience, some salvage jobs came easier than others. A bulk freighter dead in the water and adrift in the open ocean with calm weather? Fairly straightforward. An oil tanker aground on a shoal in a storm, one hundred thousand tons of crude in the balance? A little more complicated. And this job, the Pacific Lion, definitely ranged closer to the latter.

She wasn’t filled up with oil, thank god; just Nissans. But the freighter would still make a mess if it landed on the rocks, a hundred nautical miles now to the north. Its bunker fuel alone would have a devastating impact on the Aleutians’ marine environment, would kill fish, birds, and mammals alike, coat the shore with black tar. Magnusson wanted to avoid that, and the bad publicity that would accompany such a spill. Anyway, if the Lion wrecked, he wouldn’t get paid.

Saving her, though, would be a challenge. He would need to get aboard, make sure she wasn’t taking on more water. Then he would have to figure out a way to reverse that list. And it was here that Christer Magnusson knew he was at a disadvantage.

There was one man—one person—in the northern hemisphere who Magnusson knew could save the Pacific Lion, and he wasn’t answering his phone. Magnusson had a fair idea as to why: Court Harrington had hired on with another operation somewhere. He was trying to save the ship for himself.

But which operation? Waverly’s best tug was out of commission. There were no other outfits on the coast that could handle the Lion. Hell, even this tug, the Salvation, would barely be up to the task. There was only one other name, Magnusson figured, that even remotely made sense.

Rhodes.

Gale Force.

Court Harrington had been close with Randall Rhodes. He’d spurned Magnusson’s entreaties to come work for Commodore time and again, even at the promise of better pay, steady work. If Harrington was allied with any tug, it was Riptide’s Gale Force.

But Riptide Rhodes was dead. And his daughter was towing barges. Could she really be making a run at the Lion?

Magnusson supposed he would find out soon enough. Knew he had the edge on experience over McKenna Rhodes, even if she had Court Harrington. But he would need to work quickly, secure the Lion for Commodore. Arrest the wreck’s drift north toward landfall, secure it offshore, and set to work on that list, Harrington be damned. With any luck, the weather would hold long enough for Commodore HQ to find him another architect. And maybe a bigger boat.

Either way, it was time to get working.

Magnusson descended from the Salvation’s wheelhouse, found the Japanese sailor, Okura, making coffee in the galley. Magnusson gathered the man’s search yesterday had not gone to plan, but that was hardly his problem.

“This tug will not be your taxi today,” he told Okura. “We came here for the Lion, and today we put a line on her.”

He turned on his heel before the sailor could answer. Climbed back up to the wheelhouse, a full day’s work looming ahead.