Dana Stabenow - Blindfold Game

“Chugiak Rose, Coast Guard, give us your lat and long,” Ops said. He had to ask for them again when the skipper’s voice stumbled so badly over the numbers the first time no one could understand what he was saying.

“Find them for us, Tommy,” Sara said.

“Aye aye, XO,” Tommy said, and bent over the radar screen. As usual, Tommy was so calm Sara had to quell the impulse to take her pulse to see if she was still breathing.

“Here they are,” Tommy said, straightening up so everyone crowded around could see the screen. Everyone moved when the captain came to take a look. The Chugiak Rose was three boats away in the opposite direction.

Sara looked at the captain. “Flight ops, Captain?”

He pressed his lips together, looked out the windows at the seas, and gave a reluctant nod. The aviators faces lit up like it was Christmas, and they vacated the bridge at speed. The captain nodded at Ops.

“Chugiak Rose, Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth, we are preparing to launch our helicopter to come to your aid. We will lower a basket for you to load your crewman into. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Sojourner, you are sending your helicopter to hoist off my crewman. Please get here as quick as you can.”

“Understood, Chugiak Rose. Tell me about your ship, length, masts, wires.”

Ensign Bob Ostlund at Helo Control piped flight ops over the loudspeaker and everyone’s hats came off.

“Boarding team to Sojourner Truth.”

“Go ahead, boarding team,” Sara said into the handheld.

“Yeah, XO, we’ve got the situation here contained.”

“Good to know. Everybody okay?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Ryan sounded very casual, almost too much so, like he’d been smoking the same stuff the skipper of the Terra Dawn had. Sara looked at the captain and raised an eyebrow. He shook his head once, very slightly.

“Roger that, boarding team, we just got a SAR case off the third vessel northeast of you, personnel injury. How do you want to handle things there?”

“Sojourner Truth, boarding team, yeah, we noticed the change of course. The mate here is capable of taking the vessel back to Dutch. They say they’ll take the captain with them, under restraint.”

“Roger that, boarding team, stand by one.” Sara clicked off the mike and looked at the captain.

“We’ll launch the helo first, then pick up the boarding team,” Lowe said.

“Aye aye, sir,” Sara said, and relayed this information to Ryan.

“Aye aye, XO, standing by.”

“Stay sharp, we’ll be operating on the fly. A boat went down on the south side of St. George and their crew is in the water in life rafts.”

A burst of static was the answer. Sara thought it was probably just as well. She looked up at the video monitor and saw that the hangar had been rolled back and the deck crew was in the process of a heavy weather traverse. It was too rough to just roll it out. Every deck officer’s nightmare was that they’d lose the helo over the side, so they’d move the helo a foot, detach the forward two tie-downs, move it out another foot, reattach the forward tie-downs, detach the aft tie-downs, move it, reattach the aft tie-downs, and start the process all over again.

They were also taking spray over the starboard side. “Can you nose her a little more into the wind, Chief?”

“Can do, XO,” Mark said. “Helm, bring her around to one-two-five.”

“One-two-five, aye.”

The Sojourner Truth, great ride that she was, responded instantly to the new course, water from both propellers hitting the rudder full force, bow pulling to port, slicing neatly through the heavy seas. With the bow taking the brunt of the southeast gale, the deck immediately aft of the hangar had a little more shelter. It helped, but it was still going to take another thirty minutes to get the helo ready for launch.

There was another potential problem, Sara thought, watching the salt spray hit the foredeck. She turned her head to look at the status board, where Tommy was marking their new course and speed. Barometric pressure was 99.2 and falling. She looked out on deck.

The chief followed her gaze. “We making ice?”

“Not yet,” Sara said.

A half hour later the aviators were buttoned into the helo, the captain gave the go, and they were up and off a few minutes later. The Sojourner Truth resumed her former course, all ahead full for the south shore of St. George. “How long before we get there, Tommy? Sara said.

Tom’s eyes went out of focus as she calculated. “It’s about a hundred miles to the location of the sinking, we’re doing”-she glanced up at the Transas screen-“fifteen knots.” She looked at Sara. “A little under six hours, XO.”

“Thanks,” Sara said, and went to stand next to the captain’s chair, feet spread to ride out the plunging motion of the ship. No one was taking a step without holding on to or leaning up against something.

He looked at her. “All assholes and elbows today, eh, XO?”

She was slightly shocked at the use of profanity, but recovered enough to say reproachfully, “I thought that was an aviator’s expression, sir, unbecoming a sailor.”

The corners of his mouth quirked. She saw it, and dared to smile. “I just hope we don’t get something else thrown at us today, XO.”

Ostlund touched his headset, listened, and spoke into the mike around his neck. “Captain, the helo has their man and is on its way to the St. Paul clinic.”

Everyone raised binoculars. The hull of the Chugiak Rose was by now the barest line appearing and reappearing on a violent green horizon, but the bright orange of the helicopter showed briefly as it sped toward the island, which also kept appearing and reappearing in the mist and the sleet. It was getting dark, too.

“Lieutenant Sams says the guy’s in a bad way. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Best speed for the clinic,” the captain said, “all they’ve got.”

“Aye aye, sir. Lieutenant Sams wants to know if they should refuel when they get to the island and then go look for the Terra Dawns crew.”

The captain looked again at the southeastern horizon. It looked not just dark, Sara thought, but black with ill-tempered weather. “Tell them yes. Tell them to take a run right after they deliver the injured man to the clinic, see if they can get some idea of what direction the rafts are drifting.”

Probably onshore, Sara thought, as the wind was blowing from the southeast. It would depend on how far to the west off the coast of St. George they had foundered, though.

“After which they are to return to base, refuel again, and stand by. We’ll recover them when the weather eases up.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

They came abeam of the Lee Side, the inflatable bobbing between them, and pulled the bow around enough to give the small boat as much shelter as could be found in seas like these. Shortly afterward Hank Ryan was on the bridge, making his report to the captain. The ensign was not pleased. “They could have handled it themselves, sir. There were five of them and one of him.”

“He had a weapon, they said.”

“Yes, sir, but not a nine-millimeter automatic.”

“What was it, then?”

“A twenty-two pistol that hadn’t been cleaned in twenty years. If he’d tried to fire, it would have blown up in his hand. Always assuming he’d thought to load it first.”

“I thought that they said he was firing at them.”

Ryan shook his head. “They were mistaken, sir.”

“We sent ten men and a small boat in twelve-foot seas to go to the rescue of a ship’s crew held hostage at the point of an old, unloaded twenty-two pistol?”