Gale Force

55

Hiroki Okura ventured forward to the bridge of the Pacific Lion and found himself in Armageddon.

The ocean around the freighter was a savage. It leaped at the ship, clawed at the hull, dropped away and reared back to leap again. A following sea, monster rollers lurking behind the Lion, catching up, overtaking, lifting the freighter high and then plunging her down again, daylight all but gone in the bottom of the troughs, the view panoramic from the wave tops. And everything tilted, twisted sideways, dark and cold.

The view was unsettling. Now and then a wave broke, sending white water over the portside railing and toward the bridge windows. A rogue wave could do worse, Okura knew; smash open the windows and knock him from his chart-table perch, even flood the vents that led down to the cargo hold. There was nothing to do but hope that didn’t happen. No way to react until the sea threw the first punch.

The salvage crew was moving the ship. Okura had pieced together the rest of their plan as soon as he’d seen the islands off to starboard. Those would be the Aleutian Islands, the only landmasses for hundreds, even thousands, of miles. And with the wind and the waves coming from astern, there’d be no reason to drag the ship closer to landfall, unless…

The salvage crew intended to drag the stricken freighter through the island chain and out to the other side, use the land as a wind block to continue their work. Okura couldn’t see anything dead ahead of the Lion, with the towlines being rigged to the stern, but he hoped the pass was large and the tug was stout. This was no weather, no place, to be fooling around.

Since he’d spied on the salvage crew, he’d been hiding out in the crew quarters, sleeping in his makeshift bunk, venturing down into the galley to raid more of the stores when he could stomach the nauseating smell, and fiddling with the lock on the briefcase, trying to crack the combination.

But he had made this excursion to the bridge as the salvage crew tugged the Lion north. He’d determined to rest up on the ship, regain his strength, wait for the salvage crew to reduce the ship’s list and bring her closer to land before he attempted to make his escape. The salvage crew had no idea he was on board. They didn’t know about the briefcase, the stolen bonds. Okura was confident he could elude them and make his retreat from the Lion in secret.

But it never hurt to have a little insurance.

So Okura had braved the maddening, bucking-wave action and the narrow skewed hallways, and he’d ventured forward to the bridge, where he stood, transfixed by the storm, until he remembered why he’d come.

He turned his back on the storm. Found the locker at the rear of the bridge, the small safe inside. A couple of feet in length, the same in width and depth, a combination dial on the door.

Okura hadn’t been given the combination. Captain Ise guarded that information jealously. But Ise was getting old, and his memory was fading. Okura had found the combination stored in the captain’s stateroom, a Post-it note stuck to the desk.

Now Okura held himself steady with one hand as he worked the dial with the other, the crash of the sea and the ship’s maddening list making even this simple task difficult. It took time, maybe ten minutes, but finally Okura dialed to the last number, tried the handle, heard the lock disengage. He swung the safe open and peered inside.

The Pacific Lion carried cash, thirty thousand dollars in American currency—petty cash for port fees and pilotage, the occasional bribe to a corrupt harbormaster. The cash was the captain’s to dispense, and the captain’s alone. But Captain Ise was gone now, back to Japan. Okura filled his pockets with three neat stacks of banded hundreds.

It wasn’t the money, though, that had prompted this visit. Behind the cash lay a pistol, a Beretta M9, and a handful of magazines. Captain Ise’s last-ditch protection against piracy or mutiny.

Okura took the pistol and the spare magazines. Left the safe open and climbed back to the chart table, where he studied the gun. It was sleek, matte-black, deadly, and it sent a jolt of satisfaction through Okura just to look at it.

He’d never shot anyone before. He didn’t plan to shoot anyone now. But as another wave caught the Lion and lifted her high, Okura gazed out from the bridge and saw the cutter Munro in the distance, an ever-present white knight, and decided he liked his chances just a little bit better, now that he’d picked up some firepower.