Dana Stabenow - Blindfold Game

“Enter.” She opened the door and she stepped inside. “Close it, XO.”

She closed the door without comment. The captain was sitting at his desk, in front of his computer. He didn’t look happy, and Sara didn’t imagine that what she was about to tell him would make him any happier. “Captain-”

He jerked a thumb at the monitor. “Make ready to go to flight quarters, XO.”

“-the fishing vessel has been- What?”

“Go to flight quarters,” he said. “Make ready to bring our helo back on board.”

“Helo? I thought our helo was in St. Paul.”

“So did I.”

“Captain,” Sara said, and found herself momentarily and uncharacteristically at a loss for words. She tried again. “Captain, St. Paul is over three hundred nautical miles from here. They can’t make it that far on their fuel tanks.”

“Not without a good southeasterly,” he agreed. “They refueled midway.”

She thought quickly, and remembered the cutter they had passed the day before going in the opposite direction. “The Alex Haley?”

He nodded.

“They did, what, a hot refueling?”

“They did an in-flight refueling,” the captain said, “a little over the midway point.”

Sara wondered for how much longer Lieutenants Sams and Laird were going to be members in good standing of the United States Coast Guard. “Sir, far be it from me to leap to the defense of an aviator, but this just doesn’t sound like something either Lieutenant Sams or Lieutenant Laird would do. They’re both pretty cautious.”

“Not all that cautious, it would seem,” the captain said with dangerous calm.

“They’re going to be dragging by the time they get here,” Sara said, appalled at the notion of bringing the helo back on board with exhausted aviators at the controls.

“Yes,” the captain said, but he didn’t fool Sara. He was almost vibrating with worry. And rage.

All she could think to say was “Why?”

“Apparently they’ve got a VIP on board.”

She gave up trying to maintain any semblance of cool and said, “Who absolutely positively has to get here overnight.”

“That’s right.”

“Who? And for god’s sake, why?”

“They won’t say. They say the VIP will explain upon arrival.”

Sara tried to think of a reason so important to put a helo on the nose of forty-five-knot winds and fly three hundred miles, and failed. “Are they going to make it?”

“They’ve got something of a tailwind, so I’m told. That hurricane of NOAA’s is giving them a little push in our direction.”

“I just bet it is,” Sara said.

“And then the e-mail went out again before I could ask District what the-what they’re up to,” Captain Lowe said, gesturing toward the computer. “But not before I got us a letter of no objection.”

By which was meant, District was leaving the method of pursuit and interdiction of the fishing vessel they’d caught in the Doughnut Hole up to the discretion of the captain of the Sojourner Truth.

She opened her mouth and he waved her to silence. “I know, XO, we say we don’t shoot anybody over fish. But I’m tired of these guys stepping all over us. I want to throw a little scare into them. Let’s send them home with a story to tell about how crossing the line into U.S. territory is, to paraphrase that known felon, Martha Stewart, not a good thing.”

“You can shoot at these guys with my great good will, Captain,” she said cordially. “You can sink them and I might be so upset I’d have to make myself another cappuccino.”

He looked taken aback. “I beg your pardon, XO?”

She met his eyes. “It’s the Agafia, sir.”

ON BOARD THE USGG CUTTER SOJOURNER TRUTH

CAPTAIN LOWE RETURNED TO the bridge, Sara on his heels. “Flight quarters,” he said. Everyone stared.

“Flight quarters,” he repeated.

“We’re bringing our helo back on board,” Sara said when nobody moved.

Everyone stopped staring at the captain and started staring at her.

“Flight quarters,” she said patiently.

“But, XO, the Agafia,” Ops said. He even pointed at the outline of the ship nearing a threateningly black horizon that also seemed to be moving, only toward them instead of away. “We’re half a mile off and they’re still way inside the exclusion zone.”

“Flight quarters, Ops,” the captain said in a deceptively gentle voice. He even smiled.

“Aye aye, sir,” Ops said.

Hats were whipped off smartly and the news was piped to the crew. Shortly thereafter phones began to ring as various members of the deck crew called the bridge to see if they were serious. Assured that the bridge was, they began to assemble aft, not without a lot of nonverbal communication that indicated a certain lack of faith in the sanity of the entire command structure of the U.S. Coast Guard. Shortly thereafter the hangar was retracted, and as if that was the signal, the radio sparked into life, signaling the approach of the helo.

“Tallyho!” Mark Edelen said, pointing, and they all looked east to see a bright orange speck against the now black clouds boiling up out of the south.

“Put our nose on the seagull’s ass, Chief,” Sara said.

“Aye aye, XO,” Chief Edelen said. “Helm, zero-seven-zero, all ahead full.”

“Zero-seven-zero, all ahead, aye, Chief.”

“XO,” the captain said.

“Sir?”

“Get aft. I want that VIP standing in my cabin talking fast thirty seconds after they hit the deck.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Sara said.

She hit the portside hatch at not quite a run, registering by the wind on her cheek that the temperature had risen a couple of degrees since she’d last taken the air on deck, and slid down the ladder with her elbows on the railings.

“Hey, XO, you’re out on deck without your float coat,” said Seaman Rosenberg as she trotted past. She wanted to flip him off but it didn’t suit either her rank or his.

She hit the main deck and fetched up behind a cowling. The helo was running up on the stern about a hundred feet up. They throttled it way back and approached the hangar deck on tiptoe, nose down, tail up. The closer they got, the smaller the deck looked to Sara. The swell was increasing in height, pushed up by the approaching storm, and the stern bobbed and weaved like Muhammad Ali. Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

The helo made it over the taffrail and hovered over the hangar deck.

It was ten feet from touchdown when the ship slammed down into the sea and the deck slid out from beneath it. The superstructure of the ship stopped shielding the helo from the wind and a good forty-knotter caught her upside the head. Whoever was driving wisely decided that discretion was the better part of valor and hit the throttle, roaring off to port, circling around, and coming up again on the stern.

Sara crouched down behind the cowling, the force of the wind threatening to pull her hair out by the roots, and worked at reswallowing her heart. The LSO was crouched against the exterior of the hangar. “You okay?” he yelled, or she supposed he did. She saw his lips moving, but she couldn’t hear him over the wind, the all ahead full the Sojourner Truth had going on. She gave him a thumbs-up, and then they both heard the second approach of the helo and he duck-walked forward to stand in front of the hangar and guide them in.

She could hardly bear to watch, but this time they plunked her down right in the gold, in the exact center of the circle painted on the hangar deck. Sara scuttled around the hangar, dragging her knuckles like an ape, and yelled in Ostlund’s ear, “They’ve got a passenger the captain wants to see pronto.”