Dana Stabenow - Blindfold Game

“Roger that,” Sara said, and Ops went to the nav station to coax the sat phone into operation, which he alone on board seemed to be able to do.

“Flight quarters,” the captain said, and everyone on what was now a very crowded bridge pulled off their caps and stuffed them into their belts or hung them on bulkheads or wedged them behind handrails. Ensign Hank Ryan, the helo communications officer, donned mike and earphones and started turning things on. As the closed-circuit television overhead warmed up, they saw the hangar telescoping back and the helmeted and vested hangar deck crew scurrying around. On the sat phone Ops called Anchorage to arrange a Life Flight to meet the helo in Dutch Harbor, and then got the name of the ship’s agent and called her, too.

“I relieve you, Chief,” Sara told Mark.

“XO’s got the conn,” he said, followed by a chorus of ayes acknowledging the handover.

“Helm, steer three-four-zero, all ahead full,” Sara said.

“Three-four-zero, all ahead, aye,” Charlie said.

Sara took up station in front of the control console and watched the bow pull to port. The Sojourner Truth was a joy to handle, quick to respond, a Cadillac of a ride. There wasn’t five knots of a prevailing breeze, and most of the wind now coming across the port bow was created by their own forward motion. There was no pitch and no roll to speak of. Conditions could not be better for a helo launch. If it was daylight, they would, in Coastie vernacular, be riding the seagull’s ass. “Maintain course and speed,” she said.

“Maintaining course and speed, aye,” the helm responded, and everyone turned to watch the television screen as the helo was rolled out onto the hangar deck, its rotors unfolded, and the flight crew climbed in. The rotors began to turn, slowly at first, accelerating into a blur.

“Black out the ship,” the captain said, and everything except for the nav screens was turned off, including the running lights, because any light no matter how small could white out the night vision goggles. It wasn’t exactly legal but it was an acceptable alternative to crashing the helo.

“Go for launch, Captain?” Ryan said.

“Go,” the captain said. Ryan spoke into the microphone and almost instantaneously the whine of the helo ratcheted up to where it drowned out the Sojourner’s engines. A dark shape rose into the air off their stern, nosed into the wind, and roared past their port bow.

“Secure from flight quarters,” the captain said, and everyone put their caps back on.

“Resume course zero-three-zero, all ahead full,” Sara said.

“Zero-three-zero, all ahead full,” the helm replied.

Everyone strained their eyes at the distant masthead light on the northeastern horizon. Sara couldn’t get the image of the fisherman with the three-inch J-hook in his eye out of her mind, and she knew she wasn’t alone.

Five minutes later Laird’s voice crackled over the radio. “Longliner Arctic Wind, this is Coast Guard Rescue six five two seven.”

“Coast Guard, Arctic Wind, go ahead.” The skipper sounded unenthusiastic but resigned.

“Yeah, Arctic Wind, Coast Guard, could we get you to turn out some of your lights? We’re operating with night vision goggles and light kinda gets in the way.”

“Roger that, Coast Guard.” There was about five more very long minutes’ worth of conversation as the helo and the longliner identified which lights should be turned out.

“Yeah, Arctic Wind, Coast Guard, that’ll do it. We’d like to hoist from the portside stern area, I say again, portside stern. Can you get your guy out there?”

“Roger that, Coast Guard.”

Sara peered through the forward windows, trying by divine telepathy to follow what was going on on board the longliner. After a moment a smaller light came on next to the brighter masthead light off their starboard bow and lifted up and away. “They’re off,” she said.

Laird’s voice came over the radio. “Cutter Sojourner Truth, Coast Guard helo six five two seven, we’re off and en route for St. Paul. Our compliments to the deck crew, they were flawless.”

“Roger that, six five two seven,” Ops said. “Cutter out.”

“Helo out. See you tomorrow morning.”

No one cheered out loud but there was a communal exhalation of breath. Ensign Robert Ostlund, the landing signals officer, entered the bridge. “Everything by the book and then some, Captain. The deck crew performed just about perfect.”

“Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth, longliner Arctic Wind.” If the guy had been anything but a Bering Sea fisherman he might have been crying, he sounded so relieved. “Thank you. That was amazing, I didn’t know you guys could do that.”

“All part of the service, Arctic Wind,” Ops said. “Cutter Sojourner Truth out.” He clicked the marine radio back up to channel 16 and said over his shoulder, “Let’s see if he remembers that the next time we board him.”

“Well done, all,” the captain said. “XO, pipe the news to the crew. Wait, belay that last,” he added. “Let them sleep. And holiday routine tomorrow until noon.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Sara said. She’d have to revise the plan of the day, but the flight deck crew, some of whom were also boarding team and fire team members, would work better with the extra rest.

Within sixty seconds the bridge was empty of everyone except Sara, Chief Edelen, PO Barnette, Tommy Penn, and Seaman Razo. In all, the SAR case had taken about ninety minutes from the time the first call came in from the Arctic Wind to the last communication from the helo.

Mark grinned at Sara. “Coast Guard,” he said.

NOORTMAN CHOSE HONG KONGas his base of operations for the new commission, partly for its location and partly because anything could be had there for a price. Also, he was a little lazy and he liked the idea of working from home.

Maritime freight was his specialty: his vocation and his avocation. He’d spent much of his childhood on the docks and the marinas of Singapore, watching as the cargoes of the world’s nations were off-loaded from the gigantic maw of one ship’s hold to be freighted to another dock and deposited in the hold of a different ship bound for another port. Fruit from New Zealand. Vegetables from Chile. Beef from Argentina and lamb from Australia. Computer chips from Japan, waybills beautifully inscribed with Japanese characters that looked more like art than a cargo manifest. From Thailand, beds and dressers and tables and chairs made of teak, from the United States entire ships full of Ford Escorts, from Canada wood products from raw timber to wood pulp to newsprint. From China textiles and toys, from Jamaica sugar, from Sierra Leone cocoa.

He would scribble down the cargoes he saw each day on a notepad and at home look up the countries of origin and destination in his father’s atlas, a tome so large that as a boy he was barely able to lift it down from its shelf. Its pages were filled with colorful illustrations of the world’s great mountains and canyons and rivers and deserts, and maps topographical, agricultural, and political. He mooned over the oceans and the coastlines of continents and fell headlong in love with the perfect natural harbors created by islets and inlets and peninsulas, places like Sydney and San Francisco and Seattle.

Not so surprising, certainly not from a boy born to a nation made up of fifty-nine islands, with only two percent of its land arable and a less than amicable neighbor across its only border. It followed that the lifeblood of that nation would be carried by ships, and that much of that nation’s industry would be concerned with ships and the sea.