Оуэн Локканен - Gale Force

“What I’d like to tell you?” Harrington went to scratch his forehead, remembered he was holding a gun. Nixed that idea. “I’m telling you, I’m in charge. I got your buddy’s phone, and I got his weapon, too. So that means, whatever you were planning to do with me, you can’t. Understand?”

More silence.

“Understand?”

The man actually chuckled . “Yes, I understand. Go on.”

“You come after me again,” Harrington said, “I call my buddies, and they dump that case of yours over the rail, never to be seen again. Get it? And that goes for my parents, too. Whoever you have watching them, call them off now.”

Another pause. Then, before Harrington could prompt him, the man sighed. “We won’t harm you,” he said. “You, or your family.”

“Swear it.”

“I give you my word.” He said it as though Harrington should know his word meant something. Harrington figured that was as good as he was going to get. He tossed the phone back to Tanaka.

“Talk to your boss,” he said.

The hotel phone began to ring again. Harrington nearly shot the thing. Instead, he kept the gun trained on Tanaka. Crossed to the phone, picked it up. “What?”

“Court?”

McKenna. Harrington blew out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “McKenna—Captain Rhodes—you guys all okay over there?”

“We’re fine, Court,” the captain said. “Are you okay?”

Tanaka was ending the call with the big boss. Harrington kept the gun where the hit man could see it.

“I’m fine,” he told McKenna. “All good. Never better. Just in the middle of something here, you know? I’ll call you back in a bit.”

The captain started to protest. Harrington hung up on her. Felt bad about it briefly, but he had other things to worry about. “We square?” he asked Tanaka.

Tanaka frowned.

“Are we okay?” Harrington clarified. “Like, you’re not going to try to kill me again?”

“I will not,” Tanaka said. “Katsuo Nakadate gave you his word.”

“Perfect.” Harrington kept the gun on Tanaka. “Then I’m leaving. Follow me, and I’ll call my friends on the tug and get you in deep shit with your boss, get it?”

Tanaka was smiling again. “Get it,” he said. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Harrington backed to the door. Tanaka hadn’t moved, so Harrington lowered the gun, tucked it under his shirt. Felt around for the door handle and let himself out of the room.

Katsuo Nakadate stared at his phone and couldn’t help but laugh.

Anything that could possibly go wrong, he thought, will . I will have to do this myself.

He placed another call, to his secretary this time. “Book me a flight,” he told her. “I’m going to America.”

Harrington walked quickly down the hall away from his suite. Made the elevators and pressed the call button about fifteen times before the car showed up, rode it down to the lobby and walked straight to the concierge.

“There’s a strange guy on my floor impersonating security,” Harrington told him. “Slim, short guy in a black suit. He’s giving me a really bad vibe.”

The concierge colored. Reached for the phone. “I’m very sorry, sir,” he said. “I’ll have our actual security investigate.”

Harrington thanked the man. Hurried out of the hotel, made a right turn, and started up the hill toward anywhere but where he was. Stopped in an alley a couple blocks away, turned his back to the street, took out the pistol, and fumbled to release the magazine. Figured it out and dropped the pistol in a dumpster. Was walking to the next block, the next dumpster, with the loose magazine, when he stopped.

Whoever the heck Katsuo Nakadate is, he thought, his word ain’t worth spit to me.

He turned on his heel. Walked back to the dumpster, climbed up the side, and nearly fell in trying to retrieve the pistol. But he got it. Slid the magazine back in, a far more satisfying feeling than the opposite. Then he started up the hill again, away from the hotel. Figured he would call his parents, tell them it was high time they took a vacation.

And then, damn it, he was eating a steak.

“Well, we have to open it now, don’t we?”

Another storm was brewing. McKenna and the crew of the Gale Force had lingered off the coast of Tofino long enough to reel in the Pacific Lion again and clean up the tow. They waited as more Coast Guard and Canadian military arrived on scene, as the weather picked up, and the ocean swell increased, as the wind began to hum through the Gale Force ’s rigging.

By morning, the weather service was predicting a gale. McKenna consulted with the Coast Guard, the Canadian Navy, the crew of the Sea King helicopter that circled above them. The Sea King lowered a man to the tug’s deck to have a look around. He surveyed the pitted steel on the rear of the wheelhouse, took McKenna’s shotgun as evidence, and returned to the afterdeck to winch back up to the helicopter.

“Too rough to do the investigation out here,” he told McKenna. “We’ll escort you into the Strait, get you to Seattle. Send our guys to take a look at the freighter once you’re in calmer waters.”

“Sounds good to me,” McKenna replied. “I’d like to get some ground covered before this weather kicks up.”

“Happy sailing,” the Navy airman said, and he gave the thumbs-up to his winch man and ascended back to the Sea King.

NOW McKENNA AND NELSON RIDLEY stood with Jason and Al Parent in the wheelhouse, studying the briefcase on the chart table in front of them, trying to figure out what to do.

Outside, the Sea King was gone, headed back to Victoria to refuel, replaced by a bright yellow Royal Canadian Air Force Cormorant search-and-rescue helicopter, which had followed the Gale Force and her tow down the coast of Vancouver Island and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where the Royal Canadian Navy’s HMCS Nanaimo picked up the escort.

The Nanaimo was a short, kind of stubby vessel. Painted a flat naval gray, she lingered off of the Lion ’s portside quarter, blending in with the dull sky and slate ocean. Apart from a perfunctory introduction by her radio operator, the Nanaimo stayed quiet, a constant, silent presence, always visible through the aft windows of the Gale Force ’s wheelhouse.

McKenna didn’t mind. She was still rattled. Thirty-plus years around the water and she’d never been fired on before, didn’t think her dad had been, either. The rest of the crew felt it, too, she could tell; they lingered in the wheelhouse, Nelson and Jason and Al, eating snacks and not saying much, everyone jumpy, everyone wired. Jason had called home, Nelson, too, and McKenna listened as both men assured their wives they were okay, nothing serious, that the news reports they’d been watching were way overblown.

“Just Hollywood stuff,” Nelson told Carly. “These American news guys always have to make it sensational, you know?”

But he didn’t sound quite nearly as unflappable as normal, and he listened more than he talked, reassured Carly he’d be home soon, safe and sound. When he’d ended the call, he’d mopped sweat from his brow.

Even the ship’s cat could tell something was up. Spike had climbed into McKenna’s lap in the skipper’s chair, purred once, turned around twice, then sat and quickly fell asleep. McKenna knew she should have been flattered by the cat’s attention, but instead she was worried. If the cat was willing to forgive such a well-established grudge, well, something must really be wrong. And it gnawed at her, as the Gale Force beat eastward, between the remote Vancouver Island shore and the high peaks of the Olympic Peninsula. She wondered what would be waiting for her crew when the tug arrived in Seattle.