Оуэн Локканен - Gale Force

“The Salvation ,” Ridley continued, “is an old navy ship—seventy years old, in fact. A hundred and twenty feet long, twin Cat 3508s for power.” He looked at McKenna. “That’s barely fifteen hundred horses.”

Now McKenna paid attention. The Gale Force ’s twin EMDs put out 4,300 horsepower apiece , and though horsepower wasn’t the be-all and end-all in the towing business, it did tend to be pretty damn important if you were trying to haul a twenty-five-thousand-deadweight-ton cargo ship across the North Pacific. By McKenna’s calculations, anything above seven thousand horses should have handled the job easily, assuming the weather didn’t go hurricane. The Salvation and her engines would hardly be able to move the Pacific Lion , much less bring her to safe harbor, in anything less than dead calm and flat seas. And nowhere on the North Pacific was anything dead calm and flat for any length of time.

“Cripes,” McKenna said. “You sure they don’t have another tug on the way?”

“Not as far as I can figure,” Ridley replied. “Best I can tell, they’re going to hold the Lion for Commodore until they can get the Titan up here, the whole team, the works.” He exhaled. “I mean, heck, it’s almost criminal what they’re trying to pull off.”

Criminal might have been an overstatement. But if Magnusson and his crew were telling the Coast Guard that they could keep the Lion off the rocks, maybe not. The ship was drifting north, and the weather was rising. The whole thing was a disaster in waiting.

“Fire up the mains,” McKenna told her engineer. “Get the crew aboard, and tell Al and Jason to be ready to cut us loose as soon as possible. Sooner or later, Christer Magnusson is going to realize he’s bitten off more than that old tug can handle.” She gave Ridley half a smile. “And I’d kind of like to be there for the moment of epiphany.”

Ridley was already halfway out of the wheelhouse. “Aye-aye, captain,” he called over his shoulder.

McKenna watched him go, felt her adrenaline pump as her eyes fell on her dad’s picture in that old pewter frame.

We’re still in the game, Dad.

There was a Coast Guard cutter off the Salvation ’s starboard quarter when Okura woke up the next morning. It was the same ship that had brought the Lion ’s crew to Dutch Harbor, long and sleek and white, a single-deck gun mounted ominously on the bow.

“The Munro ,” Christer Magnusson said. “They showed up last night. Hailed us while you were sleeping, asked if we’d seen any sign of a Japanese sailor. Seems one went missing back in Dutch Harbor.”

Okura sipped his coffee, tried to calm his nerves, though the Coast Guard cutter outside loomed large. “What did you tell them?”

Magnusson spat into an empty microwave noodles cup. “I told them no,” he said. “I told them I had a couple of salvage specialists going over to the ship, trying to work out the optimal towing strategy.”

“Did they believe that?”

“They seemed to.” Magnusson put down the noodle cup, looked him in the eye. “But my fee just went up, Mr. Okura.”

Okura said nothing.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I know it must be valuable,” Magnusson continued. “And I won’t lie to the Coast Guard forever, not for ten thousand dollars. So whatever you’re looking for, if you intend to use this ship as a base of operations, you’ll be handing twenty-five percent over to me.”

Twenty-five percent. More than twelve million dollars. The idea made Okura feel faintly sick. But what choice did he have?

He nodded.

“Good.”

The Salvation rolled into a swell with a sickening lurch. Magnusson checked the barometer at the back of the wheelhouse. “Weather’s going to kick up,” he said. “By tomorrow, the day after, you won’t want to go far in that skiff. Better get back to searching while you still have the chance.”

The salvage master throttled up the Salvation , glanced back through the aft windows at the Lion behind them. Overnight, the team had hooked up a towline to the stern of the freighter, managed to turn her into the wind. But the little tug’s engines were working hard, and as best as Okura could tell, the tug wasn’t doing much more than keeping the freighter in place.

Where are you, Tomio? he thought, studying the ship, contemplating the vast expanse of cargo area left to be searched, the rapidly building waves outside. Where have you taken that briefcase?

The seas were building.

McKenna lay awake in her bunk as the Gale Force plowed through the swell, the engines running full-out toward the Pacific Lion .

The good weather wasn’t going to last. McKenna had checked the long-range forecast before passing the watch over to Al Parent, and the forecast was grim: winds fifteen to twenty knots by the time they arrived at the Lion , growing to twenty-five to thirty within a couple of days. There was a gale coming, the growing seas the first indication of bad weather, the distant wind building the waves bigger and bigger, pushing them ahead of the storm.

As the weather got closer, the swell would keep rising, and the Lion would wallow and lose stability. It might take on more water and sink, or it might drift faster toward the rocky coast of the Aleutian chain. However you looked at it, the gale was bad news.

McKenna didn’t sleep much. She tossed and turned in her bunk, listening to the waves break over the bow, the pitch of the engines. The night passed slowly, the tug grinding along, and when the first light of dawn began to show through the portholes, the skipper forced herself to her feet, dressed and splashed water on her face, brewed a strong pot of coffee in the galley, and returned to the wheelhouse, where Al Parent sat in the skipper’s chair with the satellite phone to his ear, talking to home while he monitored the tug’s progress, the cat curled up asleep in his lap. It sounded like he was singing a lullaby.

Spike woke up as McKenna walked in. Stretched, yawned. Jumped down from Al’s lap and padded out of the wheelhouse, nary a look in the skipper’s direction.

Al watched the cat go, saw McKenna standing there. He stopped singing, and gave her a sheepish smile, quickly signed off the call.

“Little Ben isn’t sleeping too well,” he told her. “I thought if his mom put me on speaker…”

He trailed off, made a show of looking embarrassed, though McKenna suspected her first mate would be doting over his grandson until the day the kid drove off to college—and probably longer. She smiled and handed him a cup of coffee.

“Heck, we should put you on the hailer,” she told Al. “With that rock-a-bye baby, you’ll have us all zonked right out.”

Al laughed. “A little early, aren’t you?” he asked McKenna. “Still have a couple hours left on my watch.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.

Al glanced at the autopilot, punched in a slight course correction. “Weather’s building.”

“That’s what kept me from my beauty rest. Couple days, it’ll be howling out there.”

“Tough to tow a boat in that kind of wind. That Lion ’s big hull will turn into a sail, send her sliding all over on the end of our towline.”

“Assuming we can even right the thing. I don’t want to be clambering around inside that wreck, trying to get the pumps working in twenty-foot seas.”

Al nodded.

“ Assuming we can even get a line on the thing,” McKenna added. “Convince Christer Magnusson his tug isn’t cut out for this work.”