Dana Stabenow - Blindfold Game

“Understood,” she said. “How long before someone comes looking for us?”

“In this weather?” He shook his head. “The Hercs will be patrolling, but we aren’t exactly keeping to the last route we filed with District before the e-mail went out, and right after that the comm got shot out. And we’re the only cutter in the Bering Sea at present. The Alex Hale/M be back in Kodiak by now. They’ll be looking for us, though.”

She nodded. “District hasn’t heard from us in a while, and they’ve probably got red flags up all over the place. Ops, you remember that freighter we saw up on the line? The one we all figured was lost?”

He blinked behind his glasses. “Yes,” he said, although it was obvious that he was remembering the incident as if it had happened years ago instead of days ago.

Sara didn’t blame him. If she’d had the luxury she would have felt like that herself. “What was its name, do you remember?”

He thought. “Star of Wonder? Star of Night?”

“That’s star of wonder, star of light, Ops,” Sparks said.

Ops snapped his fingers. “The Star of Bali. Sorry, XO, I must be a little out of it.”

“What was it’s last port of call?”

“Petropavlovsk.”

Sara looked at Hugh.

“Petropavlovsk,” he said, “was where Noortman’s partner, Fang, and his employers planned to board the ship Noortman found for them. It was also where the Agafia was sent for repairs and maintenance in November.”

The silence was heavy and long. At the end of it Sara said, “You think there were two ships.”

He nodded. “And one was a decoy.”

“The Agafia.”

“Yes, whose activities were designed to draw your attention away from the Star of Bali. Where was the Star of Bali headed?” he said to Ops.

“Seward.”

Hugh looked at Sara. “Seward’s only a hundred miles from Anchorage and that’s road miles, not as the crow flies. The range on the mobile missile launcher Peter sold them is-”

“Two hundred miles, I remember,” Sara said. “Which means they don’t have to get to the dock to launch.”

He hadn’t thought of that, but she was right. The terrorists could launch as soon as they were within range, which meant while they were still well out at sea.

“We’ve got to find them, Sara. Now.”

WHEN DID WE PASS her?“‘

“On the eighth, XO.”

“Six days. Damn, damn, damn.”

“What?” Hugh said.

“She’s slow but she’s not that slow,” Sara said.

Hugh and Sara and Ops and Tommy and the chief were hunched over the chart table, staring at the Transas screen as Sara right-clicked and dragged and dropped them all the way up the Aleutian Chain and back down again.

“You said they wouldn’t want to draw attention, right, Hugh?” Sara said. “My vote is for Unimak Pass. It’s like the intersection of Main Street and First Avenue for the North Pacific maritime freight fleet. All the freighters on the great circle route between Asia and North America run for the lee of the Aleutian Islands. Most of them transit Unimak Pass. If the Star of Bali is trying to maintain a low profile, that’s the way she’d go.”

Hugh looked for flaws in her argument and found none. “Then that’s the way we should go.”

“Yes, well, XO, there’s another problem.”

“Of course there is,” Sara said. “Serve it up, Ops.”

“We got weather coming straight at us.”

Sara sighed. “Ops, I though you said we had a problem.” The ship lurched but everyone was already hanging on to something. “It’s just another storm.”

Ops shook his head. “This one’s worse, XO. The last Bering Sea offshore forecast we got before our comm got shot to hell was for sixteen hundred yesterday. Today we’re looking at a thirty-knot wind, eighteen-foot seas, rain and snow and freezing spray.”

“And?”

“Tonight the wind will be south to southeast, forty to forty-five knots, seas eighteen to twenty-one feet. And did I mention the rain and snow and freezing spray?”

Sara looked at him.

He spread his hands. “Sorry, captain.”

There was a strained silence on the bridge, broken only by the faint whistling of wind as it forced its way between Plexiglas and bulkhead.

“The captain’s dead, Ops,” Sara said.

“Cap-XO-ma’am, I-”

“And I don’t accept your apology for the weather. There is absolutely no excuse for it, and I’ll expect you to do better in the future.”

There were a few smiles, lightening the tension. “Besides,” Sara said, “there’s no choice here. We’ve got to go after the Star of Bali, and we’ve got to go now.”

“Try out the old girl’s sea legs,” the chief said.

Sara gave him an approving smile, which brought an answering grin, both witnessed by Hugh. There was a degree of intimacy there that raised his hackles.

“Tommy,” Sara said, unheeding, “plot us a course for Unimak Pass, best speed.”

“Aye aye, XO.”

They stood away from the plot table to let Tommy crunch numbers on the computer.

“It’s almost six hundred miles and she’s got a six-day start on us, XO,” Chief Edelen said. He looked at Hugh. “And this gentleman has already proved to us that he’s just guessing here.”

Hugh met the chief’s eyes, saw how they shifted to Sara’s oblivious face, looked back at the chief, identified the expression there all too easily, and couldn’t find it in himself to kick a man while he was down. “That’s right, I am. But I’m thinking the Agafia offered herself up as bait for a reason. She fired on us, don’t forget.”

“Not likely,” the chief said with some sarcasm. “XO, why not just commandeer us the first freighter or tanker we see? They’ll have all the sat comm we need.”

Sara hooked a thumb at the storm. “Always supposing we find one in this slop, all we’ve got for ship-to-ship communications are the handhelds and the emergency radios from the life rafts. What’s the range, line of sight?”

He was silent.

“Right,” she said, “so we launch and row over. Probably won’t lose more than half the boarding team.”

“Then let’s make a run for Dutch Harbor and yell for help from there.”

“We could do that,” Sara said. “And the Star of Bali could get close enough to shore to launch her weapon.”

“If she has a weapon.”

“If she does,” Sara said.

There was a heavy silence. Hugh broke it. “I’m starving. When’s chow?”

She glanced up at the digital clock on the wall, forgetting that it had been shattered in the strafing. Ops followed her gaze and looked at his watch. “Lunch should be served in the wardroom shortly, XO.”

Sara felt suddenly and unutterably tired. “Can you find your own way there?” she said to Hugh.

“Sure, but what about you?”

“I’m not hungry.”

He followed her out the door and down the ladder. They both heard “Captain’s below” but neither chose to acknowledge it. “You should eat, Sara.”

When she didn’t answer, he said to her back, “They’re looking to you to lead them into battle and to get them home after. Hungry has never been your best mood. Eat.”

That expressive back stiffened, relaxed again, and her shoulders slumped a little. “All right.”

Again she deflected hints that she should sit at the head of the table, in the captain’s chair. Hugh sat next to her. Seaman Wooster began serving steak and potatoes. FSO Aman was pumping up everyone’s red blood cells. Sara was pretty sure the day’s menu had called for macaroni and cheese.