Оуэн Локканен - Gale Force

As long as the Pacific Lion stays afloat, we just might have a chance.

The community center was dark. The rest of the crew slept on cots and blankets provided by the people of the community. But Hiroki Okura lay awake. He couldn’t sleep.

The fog that had descended over Unalaska Island had granted him a reprieve, however brief. The jet the company had chartered had flown on to Kodiak, and would try again to land tomorrow. Sooner or later, it would succeed, and the crew would be taken home to Japan.

Okura knew he should be preparing to face his fate with honor. An honorable man would return to Japan and face the consequences of his actions. But however appealing honor may have seemed in the abstract, in practical terms, Okura found the concept lacking.

He sat up from his cot and surveyed the gymnasium. The American customs officers had posted a guard at the front of the community center, more symbolic than anything. There was a police officer, also, patrolling the grounds. Okura could see the intermittent flash of his light through the windows of the gymnasium. Outside, the night was foggy. A plan slowly formed in his mind.

Quiet as he could, Okura stood and dressed. He rolled up his bedclothes on his cot, fashioned them into the form of a sleeping man. Then he crept down the row of cots to the rear of the gymnasium, where there was a fire door.

Someone whispered his name. “Okura-sama.” It was the alcoholic deckhand. “Where are you going?”

Okura hesitated. “Cigarette,” he said.

It was the wrong answer. The deckhand propped himself up on his elbow. “Lend me one?”

“Last one,” Okura told him. “Sorry. Go to sleep.”

“Damn it.” The deckhand sighed. Looked around the gymnasium and finally lay his head down again. Okura waited in the shadows until the man was breathing heavily, and the police officer’s flashlight had passed outside the window. Then he pushed open the fire door and slipped out into the night.

Christer Magnusson stood on a Bering Marine barge and watched his men load gear aboard the Salvation in the first light of day. It wasn’t especially early—dawn came to Dutch Harbor around six thirty this time of year—but the men had worked all night to prepare, and Magnusson was eager to set sail. The Lion was drifting toward land, and the weather wouldn’t hold forever. And who knew if Waverly was planning an attempt of their own?

One of Bill Carew’s men coiled lines on the stern while Carew himself watched from the wheelhouse, hand on the throttle. He gave Magnusson a nod. Ready to go? Magnusson nodded back and bent down to release the spring line, preparing to step aboard.

There was a noise behind him, and Magnusson turned to see a small Japanese man step onto the barge. He wore the uniform of an officer aboard a Japanese Overseas ship.

“Good morning,” he said in accented English. “I’ve heard you are going to salvage the Lion .”

Magnusson said nothing. He would let the man reveal his angle before he made any response.

“My name is Okura,” the man continued. “I need to get back to that ship.”

Magnusson glanced back at Carew in the wheelhouse. “What’s your business with the Pacific Lion ?” he asked.

“I was second officer,” Okura replied. “There’s something on board that I would like to retrieve. If you could take me with you, I would gladly pay.”

“We intend to bring this ship to harbor,” Magnusson said. “Why not wait?”

“If I stay on this island, the authorities will send me home. I cannot allow that to happen.”

“This thing you lost is valuable?”

“It is to me.”

Magnusson studied the man. After a moment, he spit. This was unusual, to say the least. The man, Okura, was clearly into something unsavory, something that would no doubt bring trouble on land. Were he approached in the supermarket with a request like this, Magnusson knew he would turn Okura down without a second thought.

But the high seas weren’t bound by the same laws as land. If you sailed far enough, you could outrun any law—and anyone who wished to enforce it. Magnusson had built his career in that wild, anarchic space. He wasn’t the type to shy away from opportunity.

And there was opportunity here; that was plain.

“Ten thousand dollars,” he said. “Plus expenses. And you stay out of our way.”

Okura nodded. “Fine.”

“Each,” Carew called from the wheelhouse.

“I have twenty-five thousand dollars in American cash in my stateroom,” Okura told them. “If you bring me to the Lion , you can have it.”

He held Magnusson’s gaze. Waited.

“You stay out of our way,” Magnusson said again, turning back to the Salvation . “Hurry up and climb aboard.”

By morning, the Gale Force was tied to the dock in Ketchikan. McKenna topped up the tug’s fuel tanks with diesel while Jason Parent and the Jonases headed into town for groceries. In the engine room, Nelson Ridley gave the twin EMDs a look over.

“Everything seems solid,” he told McKenna, wiping sweat from his brow with a greasy hand as he stepped out onto the afterdeck. “That turbo’s holding up nicely.”

“Haven’t really tested it yet,” McKenna replied. “The real question is, can she hold up when we have that freighter in tow?”

“She’ll hold up, skipper. You just worry about getting us to the job site.”

“I’m working on it.” McKenna watched the fuel gauge. Handed over the company credit card when the tanks were filled. The bank had come through with the hundred-thousand-dollar loan, and she’d paid down Gale Force Marine’s overdrawn credit card, clearing enough breathing room to get up to the Pacific Lion . It was a slim margin, though.

Ten million dollars, easy . Just get up to that ship and put a line on her.

They’d arrived a little early. Court Harrington’s plane hadn’t arrived by the time the tug was refueled, and McKenna paced the dock, impatient. Time was a-wasting.

She was still worried about Harrington. They hadn’t exactly ended things on the most amicable of terms, Randall Rhodes’s untimely demise pretty well killing any spark that had existed between them. Not that they’d been headed for any great romance. Though the whiz kid was older than her, barely, he was still a boy at heart, and she’d been the fool who’d tried to make him grow up.

They’d been drunk the first time it happened, at some fisherman’s bar in Busan, high on salvage success and an exotic locale. She’d kissed him, spontaneously, shocking the hell out of them both, but he’d taken that first kiss and run with it. They’d spent the rest of that voyage sneaking between each other’s staterooms, hooking up between wheel watches, and trying to keep the old man from catching on.

Randall hadn’t caught on, and they’d kept hooking up, though there’d been warning signs from the very beginning. Court wasn’t much for hanging out between jobs, preferring to fly home to Carolina and his sailboat, to spring break and poker, no matter how many times she’d tried to pitch him on, say, sticking around Seattle for an actual date . He’d give her that big cocky grin and flash those green eyes, change the subject or move in and kiss her. And, damn it, she’d let him off easy, deluded herself, figured it was only a matter of time.

To his credit, Court had acted surprised when she’d spilled her heart to him. And maybe he was. The guy was a drifter—he didn’t want a real job, so why had she ever thought he’d want a real relationship?