Оуэн Локканен - Gale Force

“Commodore’s at the Lion ,” McKenna told them. “According to the local gossip, they had a line on the wreck as of yesterday.”

From his corner of the galley, Al Parent muttered a curse. Matt and Stacey swapped pained looks. Jason Parent stared at the floor.

“Commodore?” Ridley scratched his head. “I thought the Titan was laid up in California.”

“It is,” McKenna replied. “That’s the funny thing. I thought we knew all the salvage outfits on the coast, but Commodore chartered a boat from in town. I guess the locals have a tug that can do the job.”

“Be kind of crazy to go all the way out there if they didn’t,” Ridley agreed.

“What does this mean for us?” Court Harrington asked. “They can’t really expect to right that list, can they?”

“What this means—” McKenna sighed. “What this means is that Commodore has a claim on the Lion . It means we’re too late.”

“So what are we going to do?”

McKenna looked around at her crew. The guy at the fuel dock had disappeared into his office about halfway through the Gale Force ’s refueling. Came back with a story about a processing ship needing a tow, Kodiak to Seattle, ten thousand dollars a day.

“Probably a ten-day trip,” the guy had said. “Hundred grand in your pocket, right there.”

A hundred grand. It would keep the lights on, anyway. Get the Gale Force back down to the lower forty-eight on a paying run. Maybe they could pick up another job, quick and easy, in Seattle.

Maybe.

“There’s a tow job available, Kodiak to Seattle,” McKenna told her crew. “I’ll need Al and Jason and Ridley aboard. Matt and Stacey and Court, I’ll pay you for your time, fly you anywhere you want to go.” She shrugged. “I wish I could do better, guys.”

“Kodiak to Seattle.” Ridley rubbed his chin. “How much are they paying?”

“Ten grand. Day rate.”

“Cripes. That barely covers our expenses. And what about the engine overhauls? We were counting on this score to fix up the tug.”

“I know, Nelson,” McKenna told him. “I wish I had better news. We’re just too late. That’s all there is to it.”

Ridley stared at her, his brow furrowed, his eyes dark, the rest of the crew’s expressions a match. McKenna figured she could read what they were thinking, every one of them.

This never would have happened if your dad was still around.

Okura followed Robbie off the flimsy skiff and back onto the wreck of the Lion . They climbed up through the bridge again, all the way to the top this time, and inched across the starboard deck as the wind roared in their ears and the wounded ship rolled in the swell.

It had not been a pleasant ride from the Salvation to the freighter, not in the tug’s tiny lifeboat. The weather was picking up; overnight, the swell had increased to approximately six feet, and the wind gusted strong enough to send an eerie howl through the stay wires on the Lion ’s foremast. According to Carew, the weather wouldn’t get really nasty for another few days, but Okura knew forecasts could be wrong. And in his experience, the North Pacific rarely stayed peaceful for long.

Carew and the Commodore men had motored the Salvation to the rear of the freighter, where they would attach a towing line to the stern and attempt to keep the wreck under control as the weather built up. Tethered to the Lion , they wouldn’t be able to retrieve Okura and Robbie, who would have to navigate two football fields’ worth of water to return to the safety of the tug. It wasn’t a comforting notion.

They reached a door in the accommodations house, a couple hundred feet from the bridge. “The crew quarters are down here,” Okura told Robbie. “We’ll search them next.”

Robbie tied off a length of rope to a railing inside the doorway. Beyond was a long, gloomy hallway. It looked like a garbage chute, or some sadist’s slide.

Okura took the rope in his hands and began the descent, walking his feet down the steep hallway floor as he held himself upright. The thin light from the doorway above was all but gone by the time he reached the central passage with the galley to one side, the crew berths on the other. Okura turned on his headlamp and peered into the first of the crew’s rooms, could see two rumpled beds and a flimsy table. He couldn’t see Ishimaru. Couldn’t see the briefcase.

“Tomio?” Okura whispered.

There was no response.

McKenna sat in the skipper’s chair, staring out through the wheelhouse windows at the mountains surrounding Dutch Harbor. They were a luscious, verdant green, almost shockingly so, plain of trees or any significant foliage. To McKenna’s eyes, they looked as smooth as a painting, grassy carpet rising up from the water, interrupted here and there by jagged rock.

Weather was coming. The forecast predicted fog, and then increasing wind. Eventually, in a few days, a gale. McKenna had been on the phone through the morning, trying to scrounge a couple extra grand out of the day rate. The rate stayed firm, though. Ten thousand. Ten days. One hundred grand.

Then she’d called the airport. “Next flight’s at four thirty,” the PenAir guy told her. “Plenty of room for your crew. If you want off the island, I’d take it. Hard to say when we’ll get the next plane out, the weather forecast how it is.”

Four thirty. A few hours. It was time to make a decision, kiss the Lion good-bye. Anyway, a hundred thousand dollars wasn’t nothing. It was a job, a couple weeks on the water. Who could really complain?

McKenna called the airport back, booked tickets to Anchorage for Matt, Stacey, and Court. Matt and Stacey would fly back to Seattle, she imagined, to pick up Matt’s plane, and from there it was anyone’s guess. They might fly that bird down to Patagonia, or maybe leave the plane and fly commercial to Nepal. Whatever they did, it was bound to be more fun than this.

And Harrington? He’d fly back to Las Vegas, or maybe home to Carolina, ghost from her life yet again. This time, she wouldn’t be calling him back with any blockbuster jobs.

McKenna was about to call the guy in Kodiak, tell him she’d pick up that tow. She stopped when she saw Nelson Ridley steamrolling down the wharf toward the Gale Force , coming in hot.

McKenna watched her engineer climb aboard the tug. Heard him take the stairs so the wheelhouse double-time, burst in so fast he scared Spike off the dash.

“So, I’ve been asking around,” Ridley said, nearly breathless. “I figured it was kind of shady how we’d never heard of this Carew fella, thought I’d find out what he’s all about.”

Ridley had the ghost of a grin as he caught his breath.

“Yeah?” McKenna said. “And?”

“And, first of all, I hear it’s Christer Magnusson himself up here on that boat,” Ridley said. “But forget about that for a second, lass. Carew and his gang spend most of their time helping out the crab fleet, repairs and overhauls, that kind of thing. Sometimes they help out with the merchant ships, but not often.”

“Just our bad luck they decided to get frisky this time around, huh?”

“Maybe, or maybe not.” Ridley smiled now, full-on, wide. “See, the word is they went out on their biggest boat, the Salvation , a few days back. But skipper, that boat, it’s not the right equipment for the job.”

McKenna didn’t reply. The engineer’s smile was infectious, and so was his enthusiasm, but McKenna was still smarting from the big reveal at the fuel dock that morning. Whatever Ridley had to tell her, the skipper wasn’t about to fire up the mains and go roaring back out to sea just yet.