Gale Force

43

McKenna maneuvered the Gale Force to the stern of the Pacific Lion. Dropped Al and Jason Parent on the big freighter’s slanted afterdeck to wrestle the Salvation’s towing gear off of the bollards. The line still dangled in the water, and McKenna was leery of fouling the Gale Force’s twin propellers. She idled away from the Lion as the Parents struggled with the gear.

As McKenna watched, Al climbed up the listing deck to the Salvation’s towing bridle and, using an acetylene torch, cut through the heavy chain and shoved it free of the bollard. The gear hit the water with a splash and disappeared instantly, sinking toward the sea floor some three thousand fathoms below.

Then Al Parent’s voice came over the radio. “Clear, skipper. We’re good to go.”

With Al and Jason on the radios, and Nelson Ridley at the winch, McKenna backed the Gale Force to the stern of the Lion again, guiding her tug with the rear-mounted controls at the back of her wheelhouse. Spike hopped up on the mantle beside her to assess the tug’s progress, the self-fashioned master and commander of the ship.

“Keep an eye on things, cat,” McKenna told him. “It’s all hands now.”

She petted the cat absently, and for once Spike tolerated the intrusion. McKenna reversed the tug to within a boat length of the Lion, watched as Ridley fired a messenger line across to Al and Jason. The two men were practically standing on the bollards to keep upright, the deck like a high, slippery wall, and they fought to maintain their balance as they hauled in the messenger line.

For an instant, McKenna thought of Al Parent singing songs to his grandson on the satellite phone, Jason Parent kissing Angel and little Ben good-bye on the dock. She watched her crew work, and thought of the body bag the Coast Guard had just pulled from the wreck. Then she pushed the thoughts from her mind. They would do her no good here, not now.

McKenna backed the tug as close as she could to the freighter, conscious of the tug’s proximity to the massive, multibladed propeller jutting out of the water just yards away. Al and Jason wrestled the messenger line around the bollards, and Jason heaved the line back to Nelson Ridley, who used the Gale Force’s own winch to haul the towing gear from the tug’s stern and across to the Lion.

It was a slow, painstaking job. Al and Jason kept the line as secure as they could as the heavy towing bridle fell off the stern of the Gale Force and was pulled across to the Lion. The bridle itself was heavy chain, designed to prevent the towing wire from chafing against the bollards during an open-ocean operation, and Jason and Al labored to maneuver it around the bollards and shackle it back to the line between the ship and the tug.

The seas continued to batter the Lion. The men fought the towing gear, and fought to remain upright, and even McKenna, in the wheelhouse, was exhausted by the time the bridle was secured and the towline in place.

This ain’t your everyday barge tow, girl.

She crossed back to the front of the wheelhouse, checked her GPS. Waited on Al and Jason to return to the tug, and began to swing both the Gale Force and the Lion into the wind again, to steady things out a little bit. According to her GPS, the Lion was now less than forty nautical miles from the Fox Islands in the Aleutian chain, drifting steadily. Job one was complete; the Gale Force had the Lion. Job two involved getting the ship upright again, and that came with a ticking clock.

Behind McKenna, Spike leaped down from the mantle. Padded across to the stairs, and paused to look back at the skipper. The cat yowled once, his pessimism obvious, before disappearing down the stairway and out of sight.

Show a little team spirit, cat, McKenna thought, watching him go. We could use it.

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, McKenna stood on the afterdeck of the Gale Force as the Coast Guard’s HH-65 Dolphin hovered above, lowering down a steel basket to the waiting crew. Nelson Ridley captured the basket and held it steady as Stacey Jonas, outfitted in full climbing gear, stepped aboard, grinning like a kid at the front gates of Disney World. This was what she’d been waiting for, the adrenaline bit, the whole appeal of the job. McKenna figured even the payoff was just a bonus to her diver.

The Dolphin winched Stacey up, then Matt, then Nelson Ridley. McKenna stepped forward, only to be beaten to the basket by Court Harrington, laptop in tow.

McKenna grabbed him by the shoulder. “No way,” she told him. “You’re too valuable to risk on that ship.”

“Bull,” Harrington replied. “You need me on board. You’re not going to get radio reception inside the hull of that ship. I need to be with you when you take the fluid measurements.”

“And what if you get hurt?”

“What if you get hurt? Or Matt or Stacey?”

“Difference is, I can find another diver,” McKenna replied. “Or Al can run the boat. Nobody can work that computer like you.”

Harrington grinned. “Then listen to me,” he said. “I need to be on board to do my job, McKenna. Are you going to let me do it, or what?”

She looked up at the helicopter. “Damn it, Court. Fine.”

He smiled wider. “Knew you’d see it my way,” he said, and climbed in.

As the basket inched skyward, Harrington kept his computer open in his lap, checking numbers, seemingly unconcerned by the heavy gusts of wind that buffeted him, thirty feet above the tug. McKenna watched, wondered why she’d capitulated—if she’d capitulated. Wondered if Court even knew she was captain.

She shook the thought away. Focus on the job.

“Keep an eye on things while we’re gone,” she told Al Parent as the basket descended again. “We could be gone for a while.”

“Fair enough.” Parent grinned. “I won’t have the boy cook you dinner, then.”

“Better wait for my word on that. But I might call you up for a lullaby.” McKenna climbed into the basket and flashed the thumbs-up to the flight mechanic, who started the winch and began to lift the basket from the deck.

McKenna gripped the side of the basket as it rose. She’d never been very good with heights, and dangling in a flimsy shopping cart in a gale wasn’t exactly going to help with that. The tug grew smaller and smaller beneath her. Al Parent returned to the wheelhouse, and McKenna almost envied the relief skipper, who would spend the next day or two in the captain’s chair, feet up, the ship’s cat in his lap and a paperback novel in his hands, his only worry being to keep the tug’s bow to the sea and the Lion’s drift arrested.

You wanted to chase the big scores. It’s going to get much harder yet.

SAFELY ABOARD THE DOLPHIN, Harrington nudged McKenna as the helicopter climbed. Pointed out the window at the Pacific Lion, the freighter’s portside weather deck only a few feet above the water. Every time the swell hit, the ship dipped and rolled, and the portside railings dropped toward the sea.

Harrington pointed at a series of vents just below the railing. “I’ve been looking over the design of the ship,” he told McKenna, hollering over the roar of the helicopter. “Those vents are for the cargo hold, to keep car exhaust from building while they’re loading. They go all the way down to deck four, the first cargo hold.”

McKenna followed his eyes. Got the point quickly. The way the seas rocked the freighter, those vents were dipping into the water, allowing more leakage into the holds. If the seas got any bigger, those waves could flood the vents, starting a chain reaction that could sink the Lion within hours. And the seas were forecast to get bigger, much bigger.

“Not good,” McKenna told Harrington. “How do we fix that?”

Court studied his laptop. “Depends on how much water’s already on board. I might be able to lessen the list a little bit just by pumping out some of the cargo hold. But we’re going to have to hurry.”

“Yeah,” McKenna hollered back. “No shit.”