Gale Force

96

The weather began to turn again as the Gale Force reached the top of Vancouver Island. The wind picked up to about fifteen knots, and the swell built to six feet. The tug led the Pacific Lion down the west side of the island, dodging the treacherous Brooks Peninsula, which jutted out ten miles from shore like a hitchhiker’s thumb, a nest of hairy weather and unpredictable seas.

By the time the tug and tow reached Estevan Point, just north of the little surfing town of Tofino, the radio was broadcasting a wind warning and a small-craft advisory, and McKenna was checking the barometer and hardly daring to sleep. The Gale Force could handle a little rough weather out in the open ocean, but tomorrow would see the tug enter the Strait of Juan de Fuca, that narrow, busy channel to Vancouver and Seattle, and she hoped the weather would cooperate for that tricky stretch.

Right now, there was nothing to do but wait and watch and worry, though at least it took her mind off of the briefcase. McKenna caught a few hours of sleep around Estevan Point, woke up and relieved Al Parent at the wheel as night fell, and the tug and tow approached Tofino. Their course kept them offshore by about twenty miles, the rocky Vancouver Island invisible off the portside, but McKenna looked out at the heavy rolling swell scudding in toward land, and imagined the surfers on Tofino’s Long Beach would have a field day in the morning.

Nelson Ridley was in the wheelhouse with McKenna when the radio squawked. Just brief, mostly static, probably a stray pickup from somewhere long-range.

But then it happened again. And this time, both McKenna and Ridley could hear Stacey Jonas’s voice, clear, and clearly panicked.

“There’s someone on the freighter, McKenna. We’re under attack! They—”

Stacey’s words were drowned out by something in the background that sounded a heck of a lot like gunshots. Then there was static, and then silence.

IF CIRCUMSTANCES HAD BROKEN just a little differently, Stacey Jonas wouldn’t have survived long enough to make that panicked call.

It had happened so fast. She’d set out for a walk, a little fresh air before bed, knew the weather was turning and it might be her last chance, the rest of the trip probably booked solid keeping watch on the bilge water and ballast tanks, looking for flooding. Matt was in the officers’ lounge, lazing about, reading another one of Al Parent’s paperback romances. He’d yawned, waved her off, said it looked cold out, and she’d called him a baby and bundled up tight.

The wind was blowing hard, and the swell had picked up, but the air was refreshing anyway, and Stacey turned up her iPod and jogged in place a bit, got the blood pumping, was thinking about sprinting down to the exhaust funnel and back—and then she saw them.

Men, three of them, by the aft portside lifeboat. They were dressed in black and fiddling with the davits, almost blending into the shadows around them. Stacey watched, frozen in place a hundred feet away, couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

Where did they come from?

What are they doing here?

And, scariest of all: Have they been here the whole time?

And then it didn’t matter, none of it did, because one of the men had looked up and seen her, said something to his friends. And then one of those friends pulled out a gun.

NELSON RIDLEY WAS FIRST to spot the blip on the radar screen. McKenna was at the radio, trying to raise Stacey again, heart pounding, when Ridley called her over.

“C’mere, skipper,” the engineer said. “I think you want to have a look at this.”

McKenna joined him at the dash. Studied the radar screen. Then looked back through the aft windows at the lights of the Pacific Lion, fifty yards behind.

“Okay,” she said. “What the heck are we seeing?”

The Gale Force’s radar had a minor blind spot directly aft. It wasn’t configured to pick up small, fast-moving objects, particularly in heavy seas. If McKenna hadn’t known what to look for, she never would have seen it.

But it was there, an intermittent blip on the screen. It was tiny, moving distinctly from the Lion on the freighter’s portside. Moving faster, too, closing the distance between the freighter and the Gale Force.

“Whatever it is, it’s coming in hot,” Ridley said. “I’m going to try Stacey again.”

McKenna took her field glasses to the aft windows. Searched the gloom behind the tug’s stern as Ridley tried Stacey, got only static. McKenna kept looking. Couldn’t see a thing but the Lion and the black, empty ocean.

“Nelson, raise the Coast Guard,” she said. “I think we’re going to need some help out here, fast.”