Оуэн Локканен - Gale Force

Footsteps on the stairs. McKenna looked back, saw Al and Jason come up, brows furrowed, questions on their faces. On the radar, the blip continued to close distance. It looked small enough to be hampered somewhat by the heavy swell, but not nearly enough. They were coming, McKenna knew. That swell wouldn’t stall them for long.

The Coast Guard operator came back. “ Gale Force , I’ve passed your information on to the Royal Canadian Navy. They have the coastal defense vessel HMCS Nanaimo outbound in the Juan de Fuca Strait. Estimate arrival on scene in approximately six hours.”

McKenna crossed the wheelhouse, took the radio from Ridley. “Tofino, Gale Force . Six hours doesn’t do us a lick of good out here.”

“I have an RCAF Sea King helicopter ready to fly from the 443 Maritime Helicopter Squadron in Victoria as well, Captain,” the operator said. “Again, they estimate two hours to get to your location.”

“Two hours. And what do you suggest we do until then?”

Another pause. “ Gale Force , we recommend you, ah, initiate antipiracy measures and do what you can to keep them off of your ship. However you can protect your crew, Captain, we suggest you do it.”

McKenna looked at Ridley again. Ridley rolled his eyes. For the short term, anyway, the Gale Force was alone in the water.

“Antipiracy measures,” Al Parent said. “Do we have any of those?”

“We have firefighting equipment,” McKenna replied. “Water cannons, fore and aft. I want Jason on the forward cannon, Al on the aft. Try and blast them as best you can if they try to board us.”

“That’s it?” Jason said. “We’re going to spray them with water?”

“They’re here for the briefcase,” McKenna said. “If we give it back to them, they’ll leave us alone.”

“And if they don’t?”

McKenna looked at him. At the rest of her crew. “If that doesn’t stop them?” She crossed the wheelhouse to a locker on the starboard side, secured with a combination lock. Spun the dial, opened the locker. Pulled out a Remington pump-action shotgun.

“If that doesn’t stop them,” she said, “we use this. But let’s pray it doesn’t come to that.”

She looked around at her crew. The crew stared back, their eyes wide. Ridley met her gaze, frowning, and McKenna knew what he was thinking.

One shotgun and two water cannons. It was hardly an arsenal.

Sato stood in the cockpit of the lifeboat, listening to the little engine whine as it closed the distance between his men and the target.

The master of the tug had turned on her spotlights, and they crisscrossed the water, searching the dark. The tug was quite large up close, its red-and-white superstructure rising tall and proud over its rugged black hull. The tug was still plowing through the water as though nothing at all was the matter, as though they hadn’t noticed the lifeboat’s approach.

But Sato knew that wasn’t true. He’d heard the woman on the freighter calling for help, had monitored the captain of the Gale Force talking to the Coast Guard on the lifeboat’s radio. He knew the Coast Guard had informed the military, and that the quickest response was still two hours away.

In two hours, Sato thought, we’ll have made landfall. And we will have that briefcase with us.

All the same, they would have to work quickly. There would be no time for creativity, just simple brute force. The captain would produce the briefcase. Sato would ensure it. It was only a matter of time.

The heavy ocean was slowing the lifeboat’s progress. The engine punched and struggled, and the little boat climbed up and crashed down on the large waves. The tugboat ground on ahead. Sato could see action in the wheelhouse, two figures silhouetted in the windows. A third man appeared on the afterdeck, fiddling with something that looked like a deck gun. Sato stared at the man. For a moment, he even felt concerned. Then the deck gun began to spout water.

A firefighting tool. A giant water gun. The crew of the tug intended to use it for defense.

The tug’s spotlights crossed the water. Landed on the lifeboat, momentarily blinding Sato. He ducked away, called ahead to Fuchida, who stood at the lifeboat’s bow door with a rifle. “Send them our regards.”

Fuchida shouldered his rifle, took aim. Fired three shots across the water, sending the man at the water gun down to the deck.

There, Sato thought. What do you think about that?

“DOWN!”

McKenna and Ridley hit the floor as the attackers opened fire. Bullets struck the wheelhouse walls, a hail of sparks along the tug’s superstructure.

At the after water cannon, Al Parent fell. McKenna staggered to her feet, half crawled to the starboard door, away from the attackers in their little lifeboat. Opened the door and looked out onto the deck, expecting to see her first mate cut to pieces. “Al!”

But Al wasn’t dead. He’d ducked behind his cannon, hiding for his life. “Get the hell off that deck,” McKenna told him. “Get in here, now.”

Al pushed himself to his feet and made a dash for the doorway just as the attackers fired again. More sparks, everywhere. The tug plunged and rolled in the swell, and Al slipped, lost his balance. Picked himself up as the bullets whizzed past.

McKenna leaned out the doorway, grabbed the first mate, and pulled with all of her strength until the man was safe inside. Then she hurried to the forward starboard window and called down to Jason Parent on the bow.

“Get your ass inside,” she hollered. “Never mind the cannon!”

Jason peered around the portside of the tug. Ducked back again quickly as more shots sounded out. He hurried around the starboard side of the tug and into the house.

“Take Al and Jason and lock yourselves in the engine room,” McKenna told Ridley. “Stay there and don’t move until I come and get you, okay?”

Ridley’s brow furrowed. “What are you going to do?”

McKenna checked the autopilot. Checked back at the attackers, now about fifteen yards out, and closing. A lifeboat. They’d taken a damn lifeboat. But where the hell had they come from in the first place?

“I’m going to give them what they came for,” McKenna said, reaching for the radio. “Now take the others and lock this tug down.”

SATO WATCHED AS THE TUG’S crew scrambled to hide from Fuchida and Tsunoda’s barrage of fire. The lifeboat pushed through the waves, approached the tug’s stern. Five minutes, maybe less, and Sato and his colleagues would be able to board.

The people in the tug’s wheelhouse disappeared. Sato could only see one of them left. He wondered what the rest of the crew was doing. Hiding, probably.

Then the radio came to life.

“We have what you came for.” A woman’s voice, the captain. “If you’d stop shooting at us, I could hand it over.”

Fuchida and Tsunoda looked back at Sato. He lifted a hand. Cease fire. Then he picked up the radio. “Show me.”

A pause. Then: “Yeah, okay. Just give me a second.”

McKenna edged out onto the Gale Force ’s afterdeck, keeping the tug’s big winch between her body and the attackers’ guns, holding the briefcase aloft so they could see it.

“This is what you want, right?” she yelled, though she knew they couldn’t hear her over the roar of the engines, hers and their own.

She peered around the winch. Saw the lifeboat lit bright as day in the Gale Force ’s spotlight, ten yards off the port quarter. The little boat wallowed in the swell, one man on the bow, and one perched above the stern, both armed with rifles. They’d stopped shooting, anyway. That was a plus.