Gale Force

by Owen Laukkanen

  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.

  6

  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.

  * * *

  • • •

  BUT ISHIMARU WASN’T IN his hiding space.

  The storage locker where Okura had left him was empty, its door hanging open, Ishimaru’s bedding a tangle, and detritus strewn everywhere.

  “Tomio!” Okura called. He heard nothing but the accountant’s name reverberating through the ship’s empty halls. The locker was dark. From the portside door below came the sound of water crashing against the hull. The ship might flood. The cargo doors might fail. The Lion might sink, taking Okura with it.

  Okura searched the locker for the briefcase. Couldn’t imagine Ishimaru leaving without it, but he looked anyway. Tried to imagine how the accountant had reacted when the alarm sounded, what he’d done, where he’d gone.

  He would have been terrified. Survival would have been his first instinct. He would have grabbed the briefcase and made for the weather deck outside. He would have been panicked, but he’d know to go up.

  The Lion’s crew had launched a lifeboat from the portside, nearest the water. Could Ishimaru be waiting on the starboard deck, wondering where everybody had gone?

  Only one way to find out.

  Okura abandoned the locker. Gripped the railings in the hall and began pulling himself skyward. He would check the starboard deck for his old classmate. That was the likeliest place he could be.

  * * *

  • • •

  HIGH ABOVE THE DARK OCEAN and the Pacific Lion’s tiny lifeboat, United States Coast Guard pilot Sean McCloud glanced across the cockpit of his Sikorsky MH-60T Jayhawk rescue helicopter. “Another man,” he repeated. “So where is he?”

  In the copilot’s seat, Jim Bute shrugged. “Captain has no idea. According to his third officer, the guy watched his buddies all pile into the lifeboat, then turned tail on them. They thought the ship was sinking, so they cut loose and left him there.”

  It was 0345 hours. Ninety minutes prior, the Jayhawk and its Kodiak-based flight crew had scrambled into the air from its forward deployment station in Dutch Harbor. McCloud and Bute had easily located the Pacific Lion’s lifeboat, dropped flares in the water, and conferred with the freighter’s captain over the radio, telling him that they didn’t have room in the chopper for all twenty-five men, but the cutter Munro was en route and would be on the scene in approximately four hours. Fine, the captain had replied. No injuries on board, plenty of food and water. And then he’d dropped the bomb.

  One man missing. Somewhere on the ship.

  Now McCloud looked out through his windshield at the night beyond. “Dang.”

  “That lifeboat has GPS and a distress beacon,” Bute said. “We’re not going to lose them.”

  “And meanwhile, this crazy SOB is somewhere else entirely.” McCloud squared his shoulders. “Guess we’ve gotta go look for him.”

  He radioed back to the two crew members in the flight bay. “Drop a couple more flares by that lifeboat. Apparently, these guys forgot someone.”

  In the back of the Jayhawk, flight technician David Denman slid open the helicopter’s side door while aviation survival tech Tyson Jones readied a couple more flares. The chance that the chopper would lose the life raft on GPS was minimal, but McCloud didn’t want to take any chances. There was no sense trading twenty-six lives just to take a shot at
saving one more.

  When Jones and Denman had dropped the flares, McCloud pulled up on the Jayhawk’s collective, lifting the helicopter up and away from the sea.

  “Find me that ship’s last reported position,” he told Bute. “Let’s see if there’s anything left.”

  * * *

  • • •

  RESCUE SWIMMER TYSON JONES clipped his harness to the winch above the Jayhawk’s rear door. Flashed David Denman a thumbs-up, and stepped out of the cabin and into thin air.

  The wind was moderate outside the helicopter as Jones descended to the Pacific Lion’s starboard weather deck, looking for a decent place to land. The ship hadn’t sunk, not yet. It sat low in the water, listing heavily to port and rocking in the swell, but it was still floating, and its three remaining lifeboats remained on board and intact—the survivor hadn’t launched his own boat.

  Doesn’t look so bad down there, Jones thought. Hundred bucks says we find this maniac in the galley, eating all the cake.

  Denman and McCloud put him down aft of the bridge, high above the water. The ship was listing so much that Jones landed on the side of the accommodations superstructure, the wall more like a deck now. He braced himself as he touched down, keeping hold of the safety wire, as if his sudden added weight could be the final push that sent the ship over.

  The ship swayed beneath his feet—a sluggish roll, heavy. The ship was partially filled with water, Jones realized, and there was probably more water flooding in. He unclipped his safety wire and muttered a prayer. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Then, carefully, he inched his way down the wall of the house to the bridge.

  Through a doorway, Jones studied the bridge. Long and dark, no movement anywhere. No sign of the missing sailor.

  “Entering the ship,” he radioed up to the Jayhawk. “I’ll let you know when I find this guy.”

  “Copy,” McCloud replied. “No hero business, Tyson.”

  “Who, me?” Jones stepped through the doorway, found a railing on the wall, gripped it tight, and began to edge his way deeper into the ship. “Hello?” he called. “Konnichiwa, man. I’m here to take you home.”

  He unclipped a flashlight from his shoulder strap and surveyed the bridge. The whole place was a mess—paper everywhere, spilled coffee, ruined electronics. No maniac sailor. No one at all.

  “No dice,” he told McCloud over the radio. “Guess this guy’s somewhere else.”

  He reclipped his flashlight. Looked around the bridge again, saw a bulkhead at the rear—a door to the rest of the ship.

  “Going to check out the crew quarters,” he radioed.

  “If he’s not on the bridge, he’s probably overboard,” McCloud replied. “We’re getting low on fuel and that ship is unstable in those seas. Come on back.”

  “Two minutes.” Jones dropped himself down the slanting deck, using chart tables and the wall for support. He made the bulkhead and pulled open the door. Flipping his light on again, he found himself staring down a long hallway, the spine of the ship. Nobody there. Nothing moving. No sounds.

  “Jones.” McCloud on the radio. “Topside. Now.”

  “Dang it.” Jones closed the bulkhead door. Climbed his way up to the starboard side of the bridge, and stepped back out onto the wall of the accommodations superstructure. Looked up into the night sky, the lights of the Jayhawk, motioned to Denman to send the safety wire down. Steadied himself on the deck, ready to receive the wire, and that’s when he saw the guy, climbing out of a starboard doorway a hundred feet down, this Japanese sailor half-drenched with sweat, staring back at Jones with a look on his face like the kid who got caught breaking curfew.

  Got him. Jones waved to the guy. “Hey, man,” he said. “Come on over here a minute.”

  The sailor stared at him. Looked up at the helicopter. Looked ready to run.

  “Don’t you do it,” Jones said, wishing he spoke Japanese. “The game’s over. It’s time to go home.”

  The sailor still didn’t move. He looked down through the doorway. Then he sighed, and Jones took it as a good sign, a gesture of surrender. The sailor straightened up. He didn’t move for a beat.

  Then, as Jones watched, he dropped back down through the doorway, and disappeared out of sight.

  * * *

  • • •

  OKURA COULDN’T LEAVE THE SHIP. Not now. Not without the briefcase.

  He dropped down the transverse passage, sliding on his ass, grabbing at the railings on either side of the hall to slow him down. He was sliding too fast; he would be injured when he landed. He reached out as he fell and clutched on to an open bulkhead, wrenching his arms and holding tight, fighting gravity and his momentum as it pulled his body down.

  He clawed his way through the bulkhead and out of the hallway. Found himself in the crew lounge, a couple of sofas bolted to the floor, a library of paperback novels spilled over onto the carpet. There was a movie playing on the TV, something American, a cowboy kissing a pretty woman against a spectacular sunset backdrop.

  The light from the TV flickered on the walls. The soundtrack swelled, a tinny, disorienting accompaniment. Okura pulled himself to his feet and knew he couldn’t stay here. He would have to keep going, deeper into the ship; hide out and hope the Coast Guard abandoned the search.

  This was bad.

  He staggered to the open doorway, preparing himself mentally for another long drop. Made the hallway and peered out. Just as he did, the American Coast Guard airman dropped down in front of him, hooked into a safety wire and smiling a wide, toothy smile.

  “Hey, man,” the American said, breathing heavily. “That was fun. How about I take you on a chopper ride next?”

  There was no way past this man. There was nowhere to go. Behind Okura, the movie music died away. The ship rocked in the swell.

  The Coast Guard man put his hand out. Okura hesitated, but it was no use. He was finished.

  “Kutabare,” he swore, but he took the man’s hand.

  7

  Ridley had the turbocharger torn apart when McKenna poked her head into the engine room. The engineer was covered in grease, and he might have been bleeding. But he was grinning at McKenna, and he sure didn’t look tired.

  “Figured it out,” he told the skipper. “Just have to pick up a couple parts when the stores open and we’re good to go.”

  McKenna surveyed the engine room. Like any self-respecting towboater, Ridley kept the place spotless. It was a good-looking engine room—the twin twenty-cylinder diesels, the shiny diamond-plate flooring, every pipe and wire color-coded and labeled. Ridley was proud of these engines, and McKenna’s dad had been, too. She couldn’t come down here without seeing the old man.

  Her mom had split after her dad bought the Gale Force, the purchase the final blow to the Rhodes’s long-suffering marriage. She’d moved inland, Spokane, and dragged McKenna with her. There was a lot of bitterness, resentment, a lot of awkward, stilted phone calls, and months-late birthday cards, postmarked places like Hawaii, Panama, Vladivostok, Hong Kong. And McKenna marooned and landlocked, waiting tables and growing old fast, missing the water something terrible.

  That was years ago. She’d ditched Spokane as soon as her mom remarried. Split for the coast and caught up with the Gale Force on a turnaround, the crew licking its wounds from a busted run to California, an oil tanker, eight figures easy, another soul-crushing loss to Christer Magnusson’s Titan. Found her dad here, in this engine room, grease stains and coveralls. She’d picked up a wrench and tied her hair back and been crew on the tug ever since.

  She’d upgraded the auxiliary with the last of her dad’s insurance payout. Swapped in a brand-new 450-horse Caterpillar to keep the lights on, and the cranes, winch, and firefighting equipment working whenever she wasn’t using the main engines. There wasn’t quite enough money to cover the cost of new mains, though, and for all of Ridley’s late nights a
nd sweat equity, they’d put in their time.

  Ridley caught her eyeing the mains and read her expression. “Don’t stress the motors, skipper. They’ll get us there.”

  “Yeah,” McKenna replied. “But will they get us home?”

  “They’ll get us to eight figures, and that’s all that matters. We get up to Alaska, put a line on that Lion, tow her to the first port that’ll fit her. After that, who cares? We’ll overhaul this old girl the minute the check clears.”

  McKenna rubbed her chin. “Just keep her running, Nelson.”

  “She’ll run, skipper. Right as rain.” Ridley turned back to the disassembled turbocharger. “Give me to lunchtime, we’ll be ready to go. You get a hold of the whiz kid?”

  McKenna didn’t answer. Waited until Ridley turned back around to study her face. He nodded. “I guess that means you did,” he said. “And I guess that means he’s not coming.”

  “Poker,” she replied. “He said he’s playing poker.”

  Ridley wiped his brow with the back of his hand, said nothing, and McKenna wondered if he was thinking about the last time they’d all seen one another at her dad’s memorial in Ridley’s living room, McKenna drunk on wine and shots of somebody’s whiskey, trying for a eulogy and missing the mark something awful.

  She’d wound up telling Harrington, in front of the whole room, that she guessed he had no reason to be there anymore, now that the old man was dead and she wasn’t worth settling down for. Told him maybe it was good that things had ended this way. The whole spiel had culminated with McKenna in tears and Ridley spiriting her away from the party. The next thing she remembered, she was in the engineer’s upstairs bathroom, puking up the whiskey and trying not to ruin the one good dress she owned. By the time she’d regained control and come back downstairs, Court Harrington was gone, and none of the rest of the crew wanted to look her in the eye.