Оуэн Локканен - Gale Force

He moved in for a kiss that Stacey pretended to deny, and then she gave in, and it was gooey and romantic and awkward as all hell, given the conversation McKenna and Harrington had endured the night before. From the expression on Court’s face, he must have felt the same.

Stacey caught them looking. Caught on immediately. “Oh, geez,” she said, blushing. “I’m sorry, guys. We get carried away.”

Harrington made to answer. McKenna did, too. They talked over each other, and accomplished nothing but prolonging the agony.

“Forget about it,” McKenna said finally. “I’m going to take Court on a tour of the ballast tanks. See if we can fill in the blanks on that computer of his. You guys babysit this pump until we get back, or that hold empties, whichever comes first. By then, hopefully, Court will have a plan for us.”

Matt looked at Court. “I could go with Court,” he said quickly. “If you, you know, need a rest or something.”

Good god. This is why you never hook up with your coworkers.

“I’m going,” McKenna said firmly. “You guys stay here.”

“O-ka-ay.” Matt looked dubious. “You two be careful down there. It’s bound to be a death trap.”

“We’ll take it easy,” Court said. He’d lost that cocky smile of his, and McKenna wondered if the whiz kid was actually nervous, or just dreading the thought of spending more time with her.

He had a right to be nervous, if that’s what it was. The Pacific Lion ’s ballast and fuel tanks were located at the very bottom of the ship, close to the keel, to keep the center of gravity as low as possible. That meant venturing under the cargo decks, all the way down to deck one, which, on the portside, rested more than seventy feet under water. It would be pitch-dark and cramped and disorienting, and if anything went wrong, there wouldn’t be much hope of survival.

At this point, I’ll take my chances, McKenna thought. Anything’s better than staying up here and pretending not to talk about me and Court.

Matt and Stacey’s stairwell ended at deck four, but there was a watertight hatch at the base of the stairs, and beyond it another narrow passageway down to the bowels of the ship. McKenna and Court struggled to unlock and lift the hatch open, then tied off a single line and dropped it into the gloom.

McKenna met Stacey’s eyes as she lowered herself through the hatchway. “Be careful, you guys,” Stacey said. “I mean it.”

“Didn’t you hear what Court said?” McKenna replied. “We’ll be fine.”

She clipped her harness to the first loop in the line, and dropped herself through, searching with her feet for the slant of the wall. Slowly, she walked herself deeper.

The Lion ’s list was easing, she could tell. That meant the portside vents were higher above the water, but it also would complicate maneuvers inside the ship. As the angle of the list moved from sixty-three degrees to fifty-five, the walls would become just upright enough to be difficult to walk on, while the decks remained impossible to traverse. The closer the list got to forty-five degrees, the more difficulty McKenna and her crew would have traversing the interior of the ship.

Moreover, as the team righted the Lion , they would expose still more of the ship’s hull to the wind, making it difficult for Al and Jason Parent to exert any control over the wreck from on board the Gale Force , and with only forty or so nautical miles of open water between the Lion and the Aleutian Islands, no one had much room for error.

We need to get this ship upright so we can tow her somewhere safe, McKenna thought as the force of a heavy wave launched her toward the roof of the stairwell. She gripped the rope tight, hung on for her life. Clipped in with shaky hands, and kept her breathing steady.

Try not to fall, girl, she told herself. Do us all a favor.

McKENNA QUICKLY DISCOVERED the easiest way to traverse the long subterranean corridors under the cargo decks was by crawling. The steel was ice-cold on her hands, and the deck and the walls met at a frustrating angle beneath them, but it was quicker than trying to balance upright against the list and the ever-present swell.

Harrington led them through a maze of unmarked corridors, around blind corners to more of the same, relying on his memory of the ship’s design to lead them to the fuel and ballast tanks. He seemed to know where he was going.

“You really did your homework,” McKenna said, crawling after him.

Harrington glanced back over his shoulder. “Yeah, well,” he said. “I told you there was luck involved. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t take skill.”

The starboard ballast tanks were empty. Bone-dry. Harrington made a note in his notebook. “I guess that explains the whole tipping-over thing. Somehow, I don’t think they planned it that way.”

“Ballast swap,” McKenna said. “Except they screwed up and forgot to replace the Japanese water with the American stuff.”

“That should make it easy to reverse the procedure, then,” Harrington said. “Pump water from the portside tanks to the starboard and hope she levels out.”

Hope .

“When you say you’ll give me odds on our success,” McKenna said, “what exactly does that mean?”

“It means—” Harrington exhaled. “Listen, I’ve been experimenting with the models on my computer, trying to optimize my strategy, but like I told you last night, there’s luck involved, too. Every four or five simulations I’ve run, the ship tilts upright and keeps going over, until she’s all the way down on her starboard side.” He paused. “And then she sinks.”

“Once out of five?”

“Pocket aces.” Harrington twisted back again, grinned at her. “Best starting hand in poker, pocket aces. Gives you an eighty percent chance of winning against any random hand. That’s what we’re dealing with here, McKenna. Pocket aces.”

Pocket aces. “Remind me again how you busted out of that poker tournament?” McKenna said.

Harrington’s smile disappeared. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”

THEY WORKED ACROSS the starboard side of the ship, checking ballast tanks, fuel, and bilge water. The Lion had a waste-treatment tank and freshwater reserves, too, and Harrington checked every one, leading McKenna steadily toward the bow of the ship, writing down numbers in his little book every step of the way.

They reached the forward ballast tank, and it was time to descend again, rappelling down another long narrow hallway to the portside of the ship. The ship was dead quiet down here. Wet, too. Water dripped from the ceilings and puddled on the deck—floodwater from the cargo decks above. The Lion ’s watertight doors were holding, and Ridley and the Jonases should have nearly been done pumping out the hold, but that was all cold comfort to McKenna. There was water above her, water beside her, and water below.

Harrington shivered. “I guess this is what life on a submarine feels like.”

The portside ballast tanks were all full, which made Harrington even more optimistic. “We can just even them out,” he told McKenna. “This could be way worse. I mean, at least the hull isn’t breached, right?”

“Right,” McKenna agreed. She watched Harrington write something in his little book. “How did you get into this stuff, anyway?”

Harrington looked up. “Pumping ballast?”

“Ships,” McKenna said. “My dad always said you had a one-in-a-million mind. You could be, like, building rockets or something. Why naval architecture?”