Gale Force

45

McKenna climbed ten decks skyward, up to the starboard deck of the Lion. Ridley waited for her there, staring out at the low gray clouds. It was a quarter after nine in the evening, but there was plenty of light; the sun wouldn’t officially set until midnight at this edge of the world. And while there was still light, there was still time to work.

McKenna raised the Munro on her handheld radio. Outlined the situation. The vents, the water in the hold.

“My architect calculates that we can reverse the list about eight degrees if we pump out the floodwater,” she told the Munro. “Do you mind if we borrow your helicopter?”

The radio operator came back with a laugh in his voice. “No problem at all, Captain. We’re billing the shipping company for every minute we spend out here. I’ll have that Dolphin on scene in a half hour or so.”

McKenna thanked him. Ended the conversation and hailed Al Parent on the Gale Force, told him to ready the pumps for pickup.

“Roger,” Parent replied. “You planning to spend the night on the wreck?”

“Going to take nine or ten hours to get the hold pumped dry,” McKenna told him. “I might send a couple crew back, but I’ll stick around and keep an eye on things. We’re going to need hoses, too, Al. Miles of them.”

“I’ll send you every hose I can find. Anything else?”

McKenna surveyed the empty deck. Felt her stomach growl, and tried to remember the last time she’d eaten anything. “Send us some food, would you?” she said. “I’m starving over here.”

AL AND JASON PARENT had a care package ready within an hour. Nelson Ridley and Court Harrington helped McKenna wrangle the Dolphin’s steel basket into the stairway through an access hatch through the hull on deck seven. They unloaded a lunch bag filled with thick sandwiches and thermoses of coffee, a couple spare sleeping bags, and a flashlight apiece. They stashed the goodies in the corner of the stairs, unloaded a couple long coils of hose, and then set to work maneuvering the heavy pump out of the basket.

The pump was the size of a suitcase, the kind that just barely fits into the overhead bin. McKenna lashed it to a railing inside the stairs, holding the machinery secure as Harrington radioed the all-clear to the Coast Guard aircrew. The helicopter moved down the ship, a couple hundred feet astern, where Matt and Stacey Jonas had set up shop inside their own access hatch. Meanwhile, McKenna, Ridley, and Harrington began to wrestle their pump down three more decks to the water.

It was a long, arduous process. Ridley and Harrington steadied themselves by the access hatch and belayed the pump down the dark stairwell while McKenna descended beside it, guiding the pump through the angled stairs to keep it from bashing against the walls. The men lowered the pump slowly, took their time, the sea doing everything it could to knock them off balance. Finally, McKenna guided the machine to a resting position at the bulkhead on deck four, and let the rope go slack.

“Touchdown, fellas,” she called up. “Now send me some hose.”

The men lowered the hose down to McKenna. Then they grabbed the sleeping bags and the food and dropped down to deck four themselves, to maneuver the pump into the cargo hold and through the maze of hanging cars, to the water. They tied the pump to four eyebolts in the deck a few feet above the waterline, then rigged up the hoses, one end in the oily green water, the other all the way up at the access hatch on deck seven, pointing out over the hull and down to the ocean.

It was almost full dark when McKenna pushed the hose out of the access hatch. Nearly midnight, the gray clouds above gone black, the wind full of salt spray even this far from the waterline.

McKenna secured the hose. Then she hollered down the stairway to Ridley and Harrington. “Okay, boys. Fire her up!”

A pause. Then a rumble as the pump came to life. For a minute, nothing happened. Then the hose coughed and spasmed, and suddenly a gush of oily water spewed out and down the hull.

Two hundred feet away, Matt and Stacey had their own pump working. McKenna waved at Matt from her access hatch. Then she dropped into the ship again, and climbed down toward deck four to find Ridley and Harrington and settle in for the night.