Оуэн Локканен - Gale Force

We’ll see about that, Harrington said, checking his own hand, a pair of red sevens, and throwing it into the pile before stacking his chips. I just have to remember to stay out of your way when you actually get a hand.

BREAK TIME, TWENTY MINUTES; the last break of the day. Harrington followed the other hopefuls out into the casino hallway. Seven hundred gamblers descending on the restrooms, heading outside for a smoke, whatever. Harrington wandered out to the food tent and checked his phone idly as he waited in line. Saw he’d missed one call, from an out-of-state number. Harrington didn’t recognize the number, not at first.

Then he did, and it stopped him where he stood.

Harrington hit redial as he made the front of the food line. He ordered a cheeseburger and dug out his wallet to pay as the phone rang in his ear. Then the call went through, and there was McKenna Rhodes, exactly the same as she ever was.

“Court. Hey.”

“Hey, you,” Harrington answered, taking his cheeseburger and waving off his change. “Long time, no talk. How long’s it been, anyway?”

McKenna paused. “It’s been a few years, I guess.” There was something strange in her voice. “Listen, this is going to sound weird, but do you have a minute to talk?”

Harrington carried his burger to a table. Sat down, unwrapped it. “I have about five minutes,” he said. “But that’s literally it. I can call you in a couple hours, though, call you tomorrow?”

“No time,” McKenna answered. “Listen, do you want a job?”

A job.

At thirty-six years old, Court Harrington was still one of the youngest naval architects in the United States—and one of the most accomplished in the world. A graduate of the prestigious Webb Institute on Long Island—and, later, of MIT—he’d fallen into the salvage trade on the advice of an old professor, who’d referred him to Randall Rhodes for a one-off job down in Colombia, a container ship run aground on some undersea rock. The ship’s hull had been breached, and the ocean nearby was considered very environmentally sensitive. Rhodes had hired him to plot a strategy to get the ship off the reef without spilling any fuel oil—though he’d cautioned, when he met Harrington at the airport in Cali, that the local authorities already considered the project a lost cause.

“Nothing’s a lost cause,” Harrington had replied, shaking the captain’s hand and brandishing his laptop. “The models I make on here, we could refloat Atlantis.”

Admittedly, that was something of a stretch, but not by much. Harrington’s proprietary hydrostatics program had earned him his doctorate; with it, he could create accurate, highly detailed models of any vessel, afloat or sunk, in the world, and determine how any environmental change, man-made or natural, would affect the ship’s equilibrium. This was particularly useful when it came to raising wrecked ships for big paydays.

He’d helped Randall Rhodes save the ship in Colombia, and the master of the Gale Force had been so impressed that he’d offered to keep Court on full-time retainer. Harrington—once he’d established that he could still spend the off-time on his sailboat in Myrtle Beach, relaxing and playing video games and flirting with coeds on spring break—had hired on instantly.

It had been the beginning of a fruitful and lucrative partnership that lasted four years and had earned Court a fairly decent sum of money, and plenty of notoriety besides.

In the process, though, he’d screwed things up royally with the boss’s daughter. Who was now calling to offer him a job.

“IT’S A CAR CARRIER,” McKenna was saying. “Up in Alaska. The crew screwed up the ballast transfer coming into American waters, and she tipped over onto her side at about a sixty-degree angle.”

“Oh.” Harrington felt his stomach rumble. Figured he should scarf down the cheeseburger and stop by the restroom before poker started again. “Well, shoot, McKenna, I don’t know how much help I can be without knowing the specifics. Maybe if you want to, I dunno, fax the pertinent information to my hotel here in Vegas?”

McKenna hesitated. Then she laughed a little bit. “I guess I’m not really asking for your opinion so much as I’m hoping you’ll consider heading out with us.”

“Out… where? To the ship?”

“You’re the best in the business,” McKenna said. “Regardless of what happened between you and me…” She trailed off. Then came back, stronger. “Look, I could really use you, Court. The crew could really use you.”

Two minutes left of the break. No time for the restroom. Court realized he would have to eat at the table, kind of a faux pas. He hurried out of the food tent and back through the casino to the poker room, the last of the stragglers ahead of him.

“Gah,” he said. “Listen, McKenna, I’d really like to help you, but I’m in the middle of something here, something big, and I can’t leave just yet.”

“How big?” Rhodes replied. “This is a ten-million-dollar payday.”

“I get it,” Harrington said, “but this is the World Series of Poker. Eight thousand people, and I’m second in chips. First place is eight point six million.”

The line went silent. Harrington ducked through the swinging doors into the poker room. Started through the sea of tables toward his seat.

“How long do you need?” McKenna asked finally.

“To win this thing? Another week or so, maybe. Then another couple days to celebrate.”

“Too long. This ship could be at the bottom of the ocean in a week.”

Harrington reached his table. “It’s only half sunk?” he said finally. “I’ve never done that before. Hell, I don’t think anyone’s ever done it.”

“I know,” McKenna said. “It’s a pretty big deal, Court. For all of us.”

She let it hang there, and, despite himself, Harrington started mulling it over. Figured the notoriety for saving this wreck would just about make up for not winning the tournament. Figured the money would be nearly as good, too.

Nearly as good, but not quite.

The dealer was dealing the first hand. Seat eight was watching him, eyeing his stack. Harrington sighed. “I just can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t walk away now, not while I’m second in chips. I’m sorry.”

He ended the call. Sat down at the table just as the dealer was finishing the deal. Tucked his phone away, set his burger in his lap, and checked his cards: pocket queens.

Well, never mind that shipwreck , he said, reaching for a stack of chips. Let’s play some cards.

Ishimaru was gone.

Passage from the bridge to the storage locker near the stern of the ship had taken Hiroki Okura the better part of an hour. The Lion hadn’t capsized yet, but it hadn’t recovered, either; the interior of the ship remained skewed at a maddening sixty-degree list, the portside walls now effectively a floor. Okura had to leap across doorways, intersecting halls, and push open watertight bulkhead doors as he made his way down the ship’s longitudinal passages. Twice, the Lion had lurched against a particularly violent swell; both times, the sailor had imagined he was finished.

Fifty million dollars.

His career was over. Even if his arrangement with Ishimaru remained a secret, he’d been on duty when the Pacific Lion wrecked. He’d overseen the disastrous ballast transfer in rougher seas than were usual for the procedure. He would have to answer for the calamity that resulted.

He had planned for this eventuality. In his stateroom, he’d stashed twenty-five thousand American dollars in cash, the last of a large line of credit extended to him by a yakuza gambling parlor—at usurious rates of repayment. But twenty-five thousand dollars wouldn’t buy him much of a future. He would need to find the briefcase if he wanted to move the plan forward.