Dana Stabenow - Blindfold Game

She turned to see what he was looking at, and found that while they’d been talking the three other Russian vessels had arrived on scene and were now circling the Sojourner Truth and the Pheodora about three hundred yards off.

“One boat it’s a Sunday sail, two boats it’s a race, three boats it’s a bloody regatta,” Ryan said.

Nobody laughed. Protopopov looked back at Sara with an expression that couldn’t be called anything other than triumphant. “Maybe you leave now.”

“I don’t think so, sir,” Sara said, who had been monitoring the activities on the deck of the Sojourner Truth out of the corner of her eye.

“Oh, yeah,” Katelnikof said approvingly, following her gaze, and Protopopov turned to look as one of his men let out a warning shout.

Lowe had closed to within a hundred yards of the Pheodora’s port bow without slowing down. The.50-caliber gun now mounted to starboard was manned, with a belt of ammunition already threaded into the magazine. In addition, Lowe had manned the starboardside 25-millimeter cannon, which Sara happened to know was the one that worked. The portside cannon had been waiting on parts for months. They were U.S. Navy guns, and the navy had never liked the idea of giving weaponry they’d bought and paid for to another service.

Lowe gave the Russians a good long look as the Truth flashed by, to cut neatly across the Pheodora’s bow with what felt like inches to spare.

Somebody screamed. Sara hoped it wasn’t one of hers. Captain Lowe was doing the thing in style, and she had to repress a chuckle.

Ryan didn’t bother repressing anything. “Flame on, Captain Lowe!”

They all staggered as the Pheodora’s helmsman panicked and spun the wheel and the processor lurched abruptly to starboard. Protopopov let out a stream of Russian, face going from red to white to purple. He could have been yelling at his helmsman, but then he turned on Sara and pushed right up into her face, still shouting.

“I’m so sorry, Captain,” she said blandly, ignoring the spray of spittle, “I’m afraid I don’t speak Russian.”

“But I do,” Katelnikof said to Protopopov, or so he translated for Sara when they were back on board the Sojourner Truth. “Don’t let this broad’s lack of balls fool you, Captain. Given half a chance she’ll order our ship to run right over the top of this paddle wheeler of yours.”

Aghast and agape, Protopopov stared at Katelnikof, whose grin was wide and not at all friendly. The Russian captain rounded on Sara again. “Your captain crazy! What you do, ram us, sink us! Russian government will not stand for this! I lodge complaint!”

The combination of speed and the show of weapons, in addition, Sara believed, to the display of extremely able seamanship, was enough to cause the other vessels to veer off and make best speed for the horizon.

Besides, they all had catch quotas, which if not met might relieve the skippers of their commands.

And it wasn’t like there wouldn’t be another opportunity to yank the Coast Guard’s tail on the Maritime Boundary Line. Job security, she thought, for all of us, and turned to Protopopov, whose face had yet to regain any semblance of normal color.

“Captain Protopopov, I relieve you of command of the Pheodora. Chief,” she said to Katelnikof, “have Captain Protopopov identify the rest of his crew and place them under guard. Ensign,” she said to Ryan, “go below and tell the working folks that they’ve got an all-expenses-paid trip to beautiful downtown Dutch Harbor.”

An hour later they were under way, following the wake of the Sojourner Truth as she headed south-southwest in pursuit of the Agafia.

The Pheodora’s bridge was in a little better shape than the rest of her, but not much. A large spoked wooden wheel reinforced with tarnished brass stood at the center, ranged about with a fathometer and radar and radios and a GPS. The GPS had been trashed, but that was to be expected, the crew covering their asses. All Sara really cared about was that at an ambient temperature right around fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, it was warmer than the bridge of the last foreign vessel she’d had to board.

Ryan entered the bridge through the port wing hatch. “Ship’s crew all secure in the galley, XO, and the workers are getting out their party clothes. I put Katelnikof on watch in the engine room. Not that the Russian engineers want to miss out on a shopping trip in Dutch Harbor, either.”

Everyone laughed, a little giddy at the success of their mission. Their mood was hardly dampened when they saw the helo return and land on the Truth, which meant that the Agafia had slipped back over the line before they could arrive on the scene. Bagging the Pheodora was enough of a prize, and besides, they were headed back for Dutch Harbor riding on a white horse, in distinct contrast to their recent exit.

Sara couldn’t keep the smile from tugging at the corners of her mouth. Looking around, she saw that same suspicion of a smile on the faces of the rest of the other two boarding teams.

It was hard sometimes for her to believe her luck, that she got to whup bad guy ass on her nation’s territorial frontier. “Just another day at the office,” she told Ryan, a big fat lie if there ever was one.

“We are the defenders of the homeland,” Ryan said, dropping his voice to his best basso profundo.

“We are the shield of freedom!” Sara said, and the bridge exploded into laughter, in part triumphant because they were the prize crew of a seized vessel and because at heart every Coastie was part pirate, and in part relieved because no shots had been fired and everyone was going home alive.

HUGH COULD BARELY WALKwhen the Federal Express DC-10 rolled to a stop at Stevens International in Anchorage. It had taken eight hours and change en route from Tokyo, crammed into the cargo net seat the crew had hung from the fuselage. The ambience of the airplane, one enormous cavern crammed with pallets and igloos lashed down with a spaghetti-like construction of webbing and belts, was not enhanced by what seemed a preponderance of crates of chickens. Every time the airplane hit an air pocket the chickens clucked and shrieked and little feathers floated out through the cracks of the crates. Hugh would inhale one of the feathers and wake up in the middle of a sneezing fit. Why the hell anyone would air-freight chickens to America was beyond him. He would have thought there were already plenty in residence.

He was cold, too, having only the lightweight jacket he started out with in Washington three days before. Four days? Or was it five, with the delay in finding a plane going in the right direction? He’d lost track, and besides he was going back over the date line again. Even if he was right about how long he’d been on the road, he was going to be wrong about what day it was when he got there.

This wasn’t what he’d signed up for. He’d signed up for a silver Aston Martin, a Walther PPK and a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred. Not to mention Halle Berry in a bikini. Not barely endurable trips in flying warehouses. Not making end runs around a boss too motivated by politics and patronage to be effective. And most especially not duct-taping people to chairs and beating on them with claw hammers.

He stumbled down the stairs the ground crew brought to the forward door and almost ran into Frank Clifton, captain of the aircraft.

“Whoa there,” Frank said, steadying him.

“Sorry, Frank,” Hugh said. Frank looked cheerful and well rested. Hugh hated him. He mustered up what shreds of civility he had left and managed a smile. “I appreciate the ride.”