Ridley Pearson - The First Victim

Light rain struck the traffic helicopter’s plastic bubble sounding like pebbles on tin, heard even over the ferocious roar of the chopper’s blades. Stevie McNeal could not get used to the empty space of the clear plastic beneath her feet. She floated high above the white chop of the water and the wickedly fast gray wisps of cloud that raced past underfoot, half nauseous, half adrenaline rush.

Boldt stood over the Port Authority radar, its circular black scope fully refreshed every seventeen seconds, returning images of any vessel with a deck taller than six feet above the waterline or carrying a radar reflector, as most pleasure craft did. Radar installations rimmed Puget Sound’s coastline, all feeding data into this one facility, two miles south of downtown. There were four such scopes in all, covering every shipping lane from the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Elliott Bay waterfront. The six men and women in this darkened room tracked the movement of commercial ships into the Port of Seattle ‘‘twenty-four, seven.’’ Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

‘‘As they enter the system,’’ the man with the military haircut explained to Boldt, ‘‘they identify themselves and we tag them, much the same way air-traffic control would with an aircraft. The only difference here-these ships move a lot slower,’’ he said, trying but failing to evoke a response from the lieutenant. ‘‘But being as they’re tens of thousands of tons set in motion, tens of thousands of tons that take anywhere from one to three miles to come to a complete stop, they bear our attention. Most, if not all, have contracts with tugs to be picked up and moved into port. We track where and when that is to happen to remove any possibility of collision or bottle-necking. On top of the commercial shipping lanes we have over two dozen commercial ferries on regular schedules through these waters, an impossible number of cruise ships, military craft, Coast Guard and tens of thousands of registered pleasure craft. It keeps us busy.’’

‘‘The SS Hana, Zeffer and Danske ,’’ Boldt quoted, cocking his notepad to catch some of the limited light in the windowless and blackened room. ‘‘They’re all in the system. The reason I’m here-’’

The military cut nodded. ‘‘Yes. The SS Hana is reporting equipment failure and has requested to leave the lanes and hold closer to shore.’’

‘‘Is that common?’’

‘‘It happens, sure.’’

‘‘But it’s not common,’’ Boldt pressed.

‘‘Listen, with you guys breathing down our necks, we take everything just a little more seriously, okay? Anything you can name, it has happened out there: fires, explosions, collisions, you name it. If an equipment failure threatens to slow down traffic or bottle us up, we’re only too happy to get that ship out of traffic.’’

‘‘The Hana stopped in Hong Kong,’’ Boldt verified.

‘‘All three: Hana, Zeffer and Danske , just as we reported to you.’’ He pointed to a small blip on the screen, below which was a six-digit number. ‘‘ Hana was the first of the three into the system. She’s number six thousand, four hundred and twelve this year. She’s done everything by the book, and we’ve got no complaints against her. Some of these captains can be real assholes, believe me. Double-hulled egos, I’m telling you. She wants out of the lane, she’s got it.’’

‘‘She’s a container ship.’’

‘‘That’s correct.’’

‘‘And once she’s out, what then?’’ Boldt asked.

‘‘To be honest? Our concern is with the lanes: keep the traffic moving. On a typical night, we’d pay little or no attention to her once she’s down in speed and picked up by a tug and out of our way.’’

‘‘But she’s on your screen,’’ Boldt reminded.

‘‘Of course she’s on the screen! But all I’m saying is, out of sight out of mind. You know?’’

‘‘And if she made an unscheduled stop? Would you guys spot that?’’

‘‘Why the hell would she make an unscheduled stop?’’ the man asked.

‘‘I need an exact location. A GPS fix, if you’ve got it.’’

‘‘You learn quick,’’ the man said, clearly impressed. He grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled down a string of numbers. Like a bat, he was used to working in the dark. Boldt couldn’t see a thing.

When the dim but visible lights of SS Hana appeared off the chopper’s port side as a faint cluster of pale color in an otherwise blackened backdrop, the pilot banked the chopper left, rendering his passengers briefly weightless. ‘‘Contact,’’ he said with confidence. Channel Seven’s SkyCam, heard occasionally over the air-traffic control radio, became visible for the first time-a set of blinking lights pointed out by the pilot. He deftly brought the tail around to give him a better view and then sideslipped his craft through the rain, down and to the right, a kite lost to the wind, falling, falling, falling.

‘‘Will they see us?’’ she asked into her headset. ‘‘The freighter mustn’t see us! We mustn’t spook them.’’

The KSTV technician, who had crowded the chopper’s backseat with gear, reported, ‘‘I’ve got their feed.’’ He passed Stevie a small color screen the size of a paperback book, a single wire running from it. On the tiny monitor Stevie saw the ship’s shape as a collage of iridescent colors-a yellow-orange wake spilling away from the stern of the ship like a paper fan set afire. She couldn’t look at the screen very long without added nausea.

Below her the freighter grew in size from a child’s toy to something large and menacing as the rain fell harder and the collapsing ceiling of thick clouds swirled like water headed down a drain.

Fully loaded, the SS Hana carried twelve hundred containers the size of railroad boxcars. Stacked five high on deck, a few hundred of these were secured by chain with links as wide as a man’s leg and leveraged turnbuckles that required two strong men to set or remove them. With containers rising fifty feet from its deck, the ship looked ready to capsize.

The technician warned, ‘‘They’re getting ready to go live, or they wouldn’t be transmitting images.’’

Stevie asked the pilot, ‘‘Can we get between them and the ship, and still avoid being seen?’’

‘‘Not with our lights on,’’ he said, flipping a switch and making them dark. No strobes whatsoever.

‘‘Is this legal?’’ she asked.

‘‘Hell no.’’

‘‘Could you lose your license?’’

‘‘Hell yes.’’

‘‘Is it safe?’’

The helicopter dove so quickly that Stevie reached out for a grip.

‘‘Depends,’’ the pilot answered, talking loudly into the headset.

‘‘On what?’ she asked nervously.

‘‘On what they do,’’ he answered, indicating the neighboring helicopter as they passed below it.

‘‘Stand by,’’ the technician said, ‘‘I think they’re going to broadcast.’’

‘‘Get between them!’’ Stevie instructed. She could not have Seven revealing the ship and spoiling Boldt’s efforts. Melissa! she thought. ‘‘Oh my God!’’ she hollered. ‘‘Hurry!’’

The screen in her lap showed the water as a dark green, the ship’s outline boldly as black, its wake, a flaming orange roil, its onboard lights pale yellow and tiny.

She asked her technician, ‘‘What’s that red blob at the stern?’’

‘‘I’m thinking engine room,’’ he answered. ‘‘Those engines will be cooking. The bright yellow dots are probably some of the crew out on deck. Same with the darker yellow just forward of that-most likely the pilothouse.’’