Ward’s head spun with possibilities, probabilities and reality. How many ships did he have available to him? How many helos? The water was cold; anyone who jumped overboard would not live any longer than about an hour in the straits, even in the summer. That meant any rescue he attempted to mount had to be swift and orderly, and would require a lot of manpower, which was at a minimum today because it was a holiday.
The moment Ward entered the admin building, he began to issue orders. Chief McDonald’s bearded face was pale, his eyes large, as he waited for Ward’s assistance.
“Have you hit all SAR alarms, Chief?” That would bring all available air and ship crews back to their specific areas so that they could prepare for the SAR case.
“Yes, sir! The ready helo is preparing to launch right now. Lieutenant Logan is the air commander and Mr. Gunnison is his copilot.”
Good, Ward thought, I’ve got one of my best pilots here already. “Ready the 41-foot UTB and the patrolling 82-footer.”
“The Point Countess just came in from patrol, sir.”
“Excellent. Locate Commander Nelson, and have him hightail it over to the Countess. Then, send the cutter to the ferry immediately. Nelson will be the on-scene commander.”
“What if I can’t locate Commander Nelson, sir?”
“Then have Lieutenant Caldwell be the OSC. We can’t waste time waiting for Nelson if we can’t locate him fast enough.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you alerted every SAR facility in the entire area?” District Seattle’s SAR Coordination Center would take charge of the overall case and direct resources from the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy, and their Canadian counterparts. Ward saw the chief nod. His mind raced. Could he get civilian tugs and other vessels docked here in Port Angeles to help evacuate passengers under his direction?
“Link me to the Flyer, Chief. I want to talk with the captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
Noah Caldwell had been on the Point Countess’s bridge when the first of three distinct explosions had boomed, like heavy artillery being fired at a very close range, from the vicinity of the straits. His eardrums ached. Standing there, Noah felt a fist squeeze his heart. It was the Flyer that was in trouble. Yellow-and-black smoke spewed out of the bow area of the ferry. And then terror drenched his shock. Rook and Jim were aboard! He’d had dinner with them the night before over at Jim’s house and they’d tried to talk him into going to Victoria with them today. Noah had had to decline because he was on duty. And Harper, his first mate, was on board, too. It was Dave’s first date with Annie Locke, and they were going to spend the day over in the Canadian city.
Turning, Noah hit the intercom switch that would connect him to the engine room and his machinery technician, Mike Sitka.
“Crank up the engines, Mike,” he shouted, his voice terribly off-key. “The Flyer’s dead in the water. She’s on fire.” Luckily, the rest of his crew was on base, showing some visitors around the facility. He had them recalled to the Countess immediately. Without changing stride, Noah picked up the radio and called the communications center on base to apprise them that the Point Countess was prepared to cast off within the next ten minutes to help in the rescue of the ferry. Captain Stuart gave his approval. Commander Nelson couldn’t be located, so Noah became the OSC.
Rook! Noah screamed silently. Rook, are you all right? Tears wedged into his eyes. Dammit, I just found her! You can’t take her from me! You can’t…
Jim Barton smelled the chlorine first. He sat up in the booth, suddenly alert. Rook had been dozing, head resting against his shoulder. She roused herself.
“Jim, what’s the matter?” she asked sleepily.
He gripped Rook’s shoulder firmly, taking another sniff of the air. “I don’t know. Something’s wrong. That smell…I know it, but I can’t identify it….”
Alarm spread through Rook. She’d never seen Jim so worried. The planes of his face had grown tense, and his mouth had thinned. She sniffed the air. “Yes…I smell it, too.” She glanced around. Apparently no one else had, but she knew Jim had an incredibly sensitive nose. Everyone else was laughing or talking quietly; there was an air of anxious excitement in the upper deck of the ferry. A number of children raced between the clumps of booths and chairs, playing happily. A baby cried somewhere up front, near the bow.
He rose, pulling her up with him. “Come on, let’s go investigate.”
Rook tried to still her alarm. “What do you think is wrong?”
Jim led her toward the rear doors of the ferry. “This wouldn’t be the first time there’s been a car engine catch on fire. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it can throw one hell of a panic into the ferry. Come on.”
Rook stayed at his heels. Her eyes widened when she recognized Eve Logan and Julia Edwards. She opened her mouth to say something, but Jim tugged at her hand, pulling her outside with him.
The air was warm and salty as they exited from the air-conditioned upper deck. Passengers were standing at both rails, simply enjoying the balmy day. The water sparkled, a dark green, sun dappling the surface. Sea gulls cried and circled above them, begging for a few handouts, as they always did.
They were aft, starting to walk toward the open hatchway that led to the below-deck parking, when the first of the three explosions ripped through the ferry. The first sent clouds of chlorine gas through both ends of the lower deck. Jim was thrown off his feet. Rook screamed and was flung backward, into the steel bulkhead, knocked unconscious. The next explosion ignited the second row of chlorine containers positioned up against the brake fluid drums at the front of the truck. Thick, choking clouds of yellow-green gas tunneled out the bow entrance. The steel plating on the ferry was adequate, but the edges of the ramp openings to the car deck provided outward channels for the exploding force. Chlorine gas shot through them and into the air conditioning ducts. Instantly, the gas was funneled through the enclosed upper deck, where two hundred and fifty people were thrown into a panic by the first blast. The instant the gas filtered into the contained area, people began choking and dropping to the deck. Panic set in, and the rest of the survivors ran for the hatches at the bow and stern of the ferry, trying to escape the deadly gas.
Jim shook his head, blood running out of his nose and mouth. He crawled on his hands and knees toward Rook, who lay unconscious against the bulkhead. Just as he reached her, covering her with his own body, the third and worst detonation occurred. The temperature rose. Lids popped off more brake fluid drums. The resulting explosion ripped through the steel-plated decks. The engine room was destroyed, and the personnel on that deck were killed instantly. The air conditioning system failed. The water pumps, which might have been used to fight the fire by the surviving crew of the Flyer, were inactivated.
First Mate Tony Knox was the only officer to survive the series of blasts. Captain Roland York had been going down the ladder from the helm when the first explosion had occurred. The chlorine gas he’d inhaled had burned the lining of his throat so badly that the tissue swelled up and closed off his bronchial tubes. He fell to the deck, gasping for air and suffocated to death three minutes later.
Knox grabbed the radio microphone. “Port Angeles Coast Guard Base—Mayday! Mayday! This is the Flyer. We’ve been hit by two explosions, and our captain is dead. We need help immediately! Over!” Sweat dripped into Tony’s eyes as he crouched down, seeking protection behind the bulkhead in case another blast occurred.
“Flyer, this is Port Angeles Coast Guard. Give us a status report.”
Gasping for breath, Knox blurted out, “We’ve got chlorine gas filtering up from the car deck! People are dropping like flies. I gotta have help! That gas is poisonous. We need oxygen. The Flyer is dead in the water. We’re drifting.”
He gasped, hearing and feeling a third explosion, and hugged the bulkhead for protection. “We’re carrying five hundred canisters of HTH, along with forty 55-gallon drums of brake fluid on one vehicle, fuel oil for furnaces on another.”
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“Any other hazardous materials on board, Flyer?
Tony riffled shakily through the manifests. “Wait…just one more, but it shouldn’t be important. I had a scrap copper truck parked in between the fuel tanker and the HTH truck. Over.”
“Roger, Flyer. We’re dispensing all available units to your position immediately. Have your crew get the people into life rafts. Our on-scene officer, Lieutenant Caldwell, will be arriving shortly on a cutter, the Point Countess. He’ll start coordinating the rescue effort with you. Over.”
Getting to his knees, Tony nodded, daring to look out the shattered windows. In the distance, he saw a white cutter with an orange stripe across its bow hurrying toward them. “Roger, Coast Guard. God, get medical help! There are three hundred people on board, and at least half of them are injured! Hurry!”
The Flyer now drifted helplessly, at the whim of the straits’ changing mood, listing to starboard as seawater began to leak into the lower deck through cracks created by the third and worst explosion.
“Rook!” Jim shook her. He sobbed for breath, keeping his body as a shield against her in case there were any more explosions. Screams of terror, pain and anguish bombarded his ears. “Rook! Wake up!” Jim glanced around. Of the thirty people on deck, half of them were hurt. He felt pain drifting up his left arm but ignored it.
Rook’s lashes fluttered. She tasted the metallic flavor of blood in her mouth. Jim’s urgent voice cut through her semiconscious state. She tried to rise, but he kept her down. “W-what happened?” Her voice sounded so far away to her ears. She heard terrible cries of distress and the shrieks of children.
Gasping for breath, Jim glanced over his shoulder. Clouds of gas were pouring out of a side hatch that led down to the parking deck. “I don’t know,” he rasped. “Three explosions. That’s chlorine gas. It’s deadly. Jesus Christ….”
It took her long seconds to digest all of it. Chlorine? She saw the wind taking the billowing clouds that spewed out the bow, carrying them high above the crippled ferry.
“Help me up,” Rook croaked. Dizziness washed over her, and she felt her left temple. There was a cut there, and it was bleeding heavily.
Jim gathered her into his arms, helping her stand. He took Rook to the stern of the ferry, the farthest point from the fire and gas. As long as the wind didn’t shift direction, they would be safe there. He saw people staggering and stumbling blindly out of the upper deck; others were diving through the shattered windows, directly into the water.
“We’ve got to help,” Rook cried, gripping his arms. She pointed to where two struggling crewmen were trying to release the life rafts that were stored on the roof. The huge plastic cylinders sat on six different ramps, at various points, and each needed to be manually released. The rest of the Flyer crew jerked bin lids open along the bulkheads of the ferry and tossed out life preservers. “If we could get up there and help release those rafts, people could get off this ferry faster.”
With a nod, Jim said, “You stay here. I’ll help them.”
“But the gas! It’s poisonous!”
“I’ll be all right,” Jim said patiently. “Look, keep an eye on the wind direction and stay out of the gas. Try and get the survivors back here and into life jackets. As we release the barrels, have enough people to fill the capacity of one raft jump overboard.” Jim gripped her hard, looking anxiously down at her. “Do you understand?”
Rook blinked, her eyes watering. “Yes—yes….”
Jim smiled gamely and leaned down, kissing her hard. “I love the hell out of you, lady,” he said, and then he was gone, climbing up the stairs to tackle the release of the cylinders, along with two crewmen. The black clouds were rolling across the roof. Very quickly all three of them were swallowed up in the acrid smoke.
Fear rooted Rook to the spot for an instant. And then her training as a SAR pilot took over. Weaving drunkenly across the slanted deck, Rook began guiding the shocked, terrorized survivors to the safety of the stem. Once, she glanced toward Ediz Hook, some six miles away now. The air station had to know what happened! Hurry, oh, please, hurry with help, she prayed.
“Cast off!” Noah shouted to the man below. He went to the conn and took the helm himself. Placing one hand over the twin throttles, he eased the cutter forward, slow ahead. The huge, throaty roar of the diesels rumbled across the dock, and the ship quivered with barely leashed power.
Noah gripped the chrome wheel hard, his knuckles white. Urgency thrummed through the cutter crew. He saw the anguish on his men’s tension-lined faces. It hadn’t been lost on them that his sister and Dave Harper were on board that sinking ferry.
Noah wore the mandatory orange life vest over his one-piece, dark-blue uniform. Looking to port, Noah saw the 41-foot UTB roar full throttle out of its berth, creating huge wakes of white turbulence behind it. Captain Stuart had organized them quickly and efficiently. With Noah’s crew already at the air station, they’d gotten a jump on the plans set in motion.
As the Point Countess plowed through the straits, Noah saw that one helo was already airborne. He knew that the other three were being prepared for launch. The air crews were running around like ants over at the hangar bay. He clenched his fist, his eyes dark with anguish as he looked toward the Flyer. Was anyone left alive?
Rook and the four Flyer crewmen had gathered over 150 survivors on the stern. She had screamed orders for the panicked civilians to put on the life jackets until her voice was little more than a croak. Jim had crawled up on the roof of the ferry, and Rook anxiously tried to divide her attention between the passengers and his location. Sometimes, black clouds of smoke rolled across the roof, totally obliterating him and the other two men. If the wind changed, the deadly yellow-green clouds would roll across the roof, and she knew that it would kill all three of them.
The first cylinder rolled down off the ramp, dropping into the water with a terrific splash. Rook raced to the rail.
“All right, all right! I need a volunteer—a good, strong swimmer to jump in and grab that cylinder. Once you get to it, open the latches. The instant those latches are opened, the raft will inflate.”
Dave Harper, who had been struck by flying glass from the explosions, elbowed through the huddled, stunned crowd. “I’ll get it, Ms. Caldwell.”
Rook stared up at him in disbelief. “Dave…”
Annie squeezed through. Her face had been cut by flying glass, her trousers burned. “We’ll help you, Ms. Caldwell. Just tell us what to do.”
Tears blurred Rook’s eyes. She hadn’t realized they were on board until just now. Grateful, she gripped Dave’s arm.
“Okay…thanks. Dave, can you jump in and get that first raft out and righted?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He climbed up on the edge of the rail and then made a graceful dive into the straits. Surfacing, he swam strongly toward the cylinder and quickly opened the huge, hinged latches. The first raft popped out and began to fill with air.
Rook gave Dave a thumbs-up and then turned to Annie. “Can you see if any more people are unconscious on the upper deck?” Rook grabbed a crewman. “You two go together. Whatever you do, don’t get near that gas. Back off, understand? But, if you can reach any more victims and drag them back here to the stern, do it.”
Annie nodded and flashed the crewman a slight smile. “Let’s get to work,” she said to him.
“Stay out of the gas,” Rook warned her again. She was well aware of Annie’s unflagging courage in the face of a disaster. And Rook knew of the times that Annie had disregarded her own safety to save the life of another. This was one time that ignoring the threat could kill her almost instantly.
Annie threw Rook a thumbs-up. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
The second and third cylinders were released from the first ramp slide on the roof. Harper swam to both and released the rafts, then climbed in one and pulled the three close to the hull of the ferry, waiting for the passengers to begin leaping from the rail.
“Come on, co
me on,” Rook cried, waving her arm at the crowd. “I need fifty people to jump! One at a time. Hurry!”
Desperately, Rook looked back toward the air station. Her heart raced. She saw one helo lift off. Never had a ’60 looked so good to her. Now Rook understood what it meant to be rescued.
Chapter Twenty-one
“It’s imperative that all pilots stay upwind of the ferry to effect their rescues,” Ward told his people, who were gathered in the busy hangar. “Rotor wash could suck that chlorine gas back across the ferry, possibly killing more survivors. Thanks to several volunteer fire departments in the area, you’ve all been issued oxygen tanks and masks. Extra tanks are being put on board for yourselves and any survivors who’ll need them. Questions?” Ward looked hard at the strained faces of his pilots, rescue swimmers and flight mechs. The hangar crackled with tension. “All coordination efforts go through Lieutenant Caldwell. He’s the OSC. He’ll then call me for final permission. You want to do something different from the plan I’ve sketched out, call first for approval.” Grimly, Ward added, “There’s going to be a lot of panic and a lot of dying around you. Keep your heads. Dismissed.”
As Gil jogged toward CG 1300 with his copilot, Reno, on his heels, he thought again of Rook and Annie. Angelo Marchetti met them at the open fuselage door, already in his mask, the tank strapped on his back, the harness around his upper body. Getting settled into their seats, they also donned the new equipment.
“Christ,” Reno grumbled, moving rapidly through the preflight check, “I feel like a fighter pilot wearing one of these things.”
Gil nodded, throwing a thumbs-up to alert the mech he was ready to start the engine. “We’re going to war, all right. Okay, let’s roll.” The ’60’s engine whined to life and the rotor blades began to turn slowly. The sunlight was bright through the cockpit windshield, and Gil drew down the dark visor to protect his eyes. He tried to put himself in the right mind frame for this SAR case. It wasn’t going to be a one-shot deal—they would be making landing after landing on the water’s surface to pick up the survivors. It would strain their concentration and test their physical limits of endurance. Already, the wind was picking up, as it always did midmorning, and the waves were five to six feet high out in the straits. That meant water landings would be difficult.
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