Gale Force

26

McKenna sat in the skipper’s chair, staring out through the wheelhouse windows at the mountains surrounding Dutch Harbor. They were a luscious, verdant green, almost shockingly so, plain of trees or any significant foliage. To McKenna’s eyes, they looked as smooth as a painting, grassy carpet rising up from the water, interrupted here and there by jagged rock.

Weather was coming. The forecast predicted fog, and then increasing wind. Eventually, in a few days, a gale. McKenna had been on the phone through the morning, trying to scrounge a couple extra grand out of the day rate. The rate stayed firm, though. Ten thousand. Ten days. One hundred grand.

Then she’d called the airport. “Next flight’s at four thirty,” the PenAir guy told her. “Plenty of room for your crew. If you want off the island, I’d take it. Hard to say when we’ll get the next plane out, the weather forecast how it is.”

Four thirty. A few hours. It was time to make a decision, kiss the Lion good-bye. Anyway, a hundred thousand dollars wasn’t nothing. It was a job, a couple weeks on the water. Who could really complain?

McKenna called the airport back, booked tickets to Anchorage for Matt, Stacey, and Court. Matt and Stacey would fly back to Seattle, she imagined, to pick up Matt’s plane, and from there it was anyone’s guess. They might fly that bird down to Patagonia, or maybe leave the plane and fly commercial to Nepal. Whatever they did, it was bound to be more fun than this.

And Harrington? He’d fly back to Las Vegas, or maybe home to Carolina, ghost from her life yet again. This time, she wouldn’t be calling him back with any blockbuster jobs.

McKenna was about to call the guy in Kodiak, tell him she’d pick up that tow. She stopped when she saw Nelson Ridley steamrolling down the wharf toward the Gale Force, coming in hot.

McKenna watched her engineer climb aboard the tug. Heard him take the stairs so the wheelhouse double-time, burst in so fast he scared Spike off the dash.

“So, I’ve been asking around,” Ridley said, nearly breathless. “I figured it was kind of shady how we’d never heard of this Carew fella, thought I’d find out what he’s all about.”

Ridley had the ghost of a grin as he caught his breath.

“Yeah?” McKenna said. “And?”

“And, first of all, I hear it’s Christer Magnusson himself up here on that boat,” Ridley said. “But forget about that for a second, lass. Carew and his gang spend most of their time helping out the crab fleet, repairs and overhauls, that kind of thing. Sometimes they help out with the merchant ships, but not often.”

“Just our bad luck they decided to get frisky this time around, huh?”

“Maybe, or maybe not.” Ridley smiled now, full-on, wide. “See, the word is they went out on their biggest boat, the Salvation, a few days back. But skipper, that boat, it’s not the right equipment for the job.”

McKenna didn’t reply. The engineer’s smile was infectious, and so was his enthusiasm, but McKenna was still smarting from the big reveal at the fuel dock that morning. Whatever Ridley had to tell her, the skipper wasn’t about to fire up the mains and go roaring back out to sea just yet.

“The Salvation,” Ridley continued, “is an old navy ship—seventy years old, in fact. A hundred and twenty feet long, twin Cat 3508s for power.” He looked at McKenna. “That’s barely fifteen hundred horses.”

Now McKenna paid attention. The Gale Force’s twin EMDs put out 4,300 horsepower apiece, and though horsepower wasn’t the be-all and end-all in the towing business, it did tend to be pretty damn important if you were trying to haul a twenty-five-thousand-deadweight-ton cargo ship across the North Pacific. By McKenna’s calculations, anything above seven thousand horses should have handled the job easily, assuming the weather didn’t go hurricane. The Salvation and her engines would hardly be able to move the Pacific Lion, much less bring her to safe harbor, in anything less than dead calm and flat seas. And nowhere on the North Pacific was anything dead calm and flat for any length of time.

“Cripes,” McKenna said. “You sure they don’t have another tug on the way?”

“Not as far as I can figure,” Ridley replied. “Best I can tell, they’re going to hold the Lion for Commodore until they can get the Titan up here, the whole team, the works.” He exhaled. “I mean, heck, it’s almost criminal what they’re trying to pull off.”

Criminal might have been an overstatement. But if Magnusson and his crew were telling the Coast Guard that they could keep the Lion off the rocks, maybe not. The ship was drifting north, and the weather was rising. The whole thing was a disaster in waiting.

“Fire up the mains,” McKenna told her engineer. “Get the crew aboard, and tell Al and Jason to be ready to cut us loose as soon as possible. Sooner or later, Christer Magnusson is going to realize he’s bitten off more than that old tug can handle.” She gave Ridley half a smile. “And I’d kind of like to be there for the moment of epiphany.”

Ridley was already halfway out of the wheelhouse. “Aye-aye, captain,” he called over his shoulder.

McKenna watched him go, felt her adrenaline pump as her eyes fell on her dad’s picture in that old pewter frame.

We’re still in the game, Dad.