Saving Cascadia

by John J. Nance

  Slowly, she walked the helicopter forward, watching Doug as best she could until he was right over the wall and just next to the stricken man. She gently lowered the collective until she glimpsed Doug steadying himself on his feet and gesturing a thumbs-up, then she dropped another couple of feet to give him slack and backed the Dauphin a few feet to one side, holding the machine into the wind as she watched him examining Brown and then trying to hook the man to the line. She could see him working at it diligently, but to no avail, and she realized with a sinking heart that the hook device on the end of the line was too small to take two rings at once.

  At last Doug reached the same conclusion, and, much to Jennifer’s relief, gestured to be lifted up.

  She pulled him carefully off the concrete and then triggered the winch until he was aboard and on headset once more.

  “I couldn’t get it hooked to both of us!”

  “I was afraid of that. How badly hurt is he?”

  “Cracked ribs I think. He was working on rigging a longer fuse.”

  Jennifer looked back, startled. “Fuse? I thought it was radio-controlled like the other side.”

  “He broke the receiver when he hit.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Stay in position and get as low as you did with me, Jen. I’m sending the hook back down to him.”

  She edged the Dauphin a bit more to the right and adjusted her hands on the controls again, fighting the wind which was gusting now even more, taking a deep breath as she brought them down to ten feet over the jetty while Doug winched the line down one more time, manually swinging it as close as he could until it literally brushed Lester Brown’s back. The sea spray was almost constant, splashing onto the canopy and temporarily fuzzing up her vision.

  In the helicopter’s searchlights, she saw Brown reach around and grab the line, pulling it toward his stomach and hooking it on before pushing the second knapsack over the front side of the wall, and rolling over with a coil of wire in his hand. His eyes were closed tight as he gestured to be raised up, and Jennifer began pulling the Dauphin back to a higher altitude as Doug started the winch once more.

  Lester Brown was grimacing from pain as he played out the coil of wire. Foot by foot the winch pulled him closer as Jennifer held them at twenty feet above, but Brown was gesturing for more altitude, and Doug could see the coil of wire was still less than half played out.

  “Jen, he wants more altitude, and I think he has enough wire.”

  “Okay, I’m coming up slowly. Is he almost in?”

  “Still five feet down. How high are we?”

  “Twenty five.”

  “Give me fifty feet and I’ll watch how much wire he has left.”

  “What the hell is he planning, to detonate it from fifty feet up?”

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid so.”

  “We can’t do that! Did you see the strength of that explosion?”

  “Just… keep coming up.”

  “Bring him aboard as quickly as possible.”

  Doug leaned over to the winch control and continued motoring it in as slowly as possible. He could see the wire uncoiling foot by foot and see Lester Brown looking down and trying to gauge how much was left.

  At last the injured man was at door level, swinging painfully by the harness as Doug reached for his hand to pull him in.

  “Up! Go up!” Lester yelled.

  Doug cupped his ears and leaned as close as he dared out of the door. “What?”

  “I said, go up! I have at least a hundred feet of wire.”

  Doug relayed the word to Jennifer, who climbed slowly to ninety feet.

  Lester was at the top of the winch now, his feet just shy of floor level. He shifted the remaining unwound coil of wire to his right hand as he reached with his left to catch Doug’s hand. They connected and Doug struggled to pull him in, both of them realizing the line to the winch was holding him tight.

  Doug reversed the winch and tried to motor some slack to the line, but it had jammed in the up position and refused to move.

  Lester saw the problem as well and placed his hand on the release for the hook holding his harness to the winch line. With one hand on the release and the other gesturing for Doug, he prepared to get a foot on the doorsill and use Doug’s help to pull himself in as he released the safety line.

  But the wire was getting in the way, and he stuffed it in his pocket quickly, caught the outstretched hand, and pulled the release just as a gigantic flash of light and a thunderous roar of impacting shock wave announced the fact that the wires and the battery terminals had met in the depths of his pocket.

  Doug was blown backward onto the rear seat of the Dauphin, his hand yanked away from Lester’s by the shock wave. He scrambled back to his feet instantly, but the doorway was empty.

  “Oh, God!”

  “What happened?” Jennifer yelled in his headset, her voice tense and shrill as she struggled to adjust her headset back on her head.

  “He… he accidentally triggered it, Jen, just as he was getting in, and—”

  “Is he okay? Is he in?”

  “No.”

  “What? What does that mean?”

  “He’s gone, Jen! He fell. He had pulled the release… and he’s gone.”

  “The harness release?”

  “Yes! It was stuck. He had to, to get back in.”

  He felt the Dauphin turn suddenly and drop in altitude as she adjusted the Night Sun and backed away downwind to turn and come back over the jetty in the slim hope Brown had survived the fall.

  “I can’t believe we’ve lost him,” she said, true alarm in her voice. “He’s got to be down there somewhere visible.”

  “Jen, he may not have survived the fall.”

  “A hundred feet into water can hurt, but it doesn’t have to be fatal.”

  Lester was nowhere to be seen, and after a few minutes of searching, she focused the light along the front of the concrete structure where they had intended to blow a huge hole. Between the impacts of the waves, they could see the huge gouge the explosion had made, but there was no hole, and no breach in the ability of the WaveRam’s northernmost wing to properly form each wave in accordance with Dr. Kopp’s ingenious design.

  “I just don’t believe this! I’m going to check the other side,” Jennifer said, flying them quickly across the expanse of angry, churning water and bringing the powerful spotlight to bear on the opposite explosion site. “We’ve got to find him!”

  She played the searchlight back and forth across the surface of the water behind the WaveRam, then played it momentarily on the back of the barrier itself. There was a slightly greater gouge on the south wing, but again no hole in either front or back.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “What do I think?” Doug repeated quietly, “I think Lester’s gone and we can’t disable that thing.”

  Her eyes were wide, her voice bordering on the frantic. “We can’t just leave him out here!”

  “What else can we do, except notify the Coast Guard?”

  She was silent for nearly a minute as she urged the Dauphin back to the front side of the structure, raking the water with the Night Sun until her shoulders fell.

  “Oh my God. We’ve really lost the man.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “And you’ve lost the battle with the explosives, too. Right? Are there more explosives? I don’t believe I’m asking that, but… this can’t be it.”

  Doug was shaking his head. “No. We’ve got nothing else. There’s no time.”

  Jennifer keyed her radio and relayed the sad news about Lester Brown along with his last known location to Cascadia Operations.

  “Please get that to the Coast Guard immediately.”

  “Roger.”

  “There aren’t any rescue boats on the island, are there?”

  “Not anymore,” was the singular response.

  A lengthy silence fell between Jennifer and Doug before she broke it. “If t
here’s nothing more to be done here, we’d better get back. Now more than ever we need to rush the evacuation.”

  He climbed back over the partition to the copilot’s seat and nodded. He snapped his seat belt on, his eyes falling idly on a ship passing a mile or so seaward. The forward section was brightly lit, and he wondered if any of the crew knew of the immense drama playing out so many kilometers beneath their feet. It could be a cruise ship, he thought, the idle curiosity a grab for anything to concentrate on other than the lost quest and the man they’d just left for dead.

  There were more of the ship’s lights showing at what had to be the stern, but as he watched, even more lights appeared to the south, which didn’t make any sense.

  “What kind of ship do you suppose that is?” he asked Jennifer.

  “Where?”

  “At your three o’clock. It looks incredibly long.”

  She looked as she turned them slowly back to the east.

  “Oh, that would be an oceangoing tug and a barge… or two barges, I guess.”

  “Barges?”

  “Yes. Dangerous work, but those tugs are huge and powerful.”

  The Dauphin took up a northeast heading as Doug came forward in the left seat.

  “You suppose they could come over and look for him?”

  She was shaking her head. “No way. Not with barges in tow.”

  “Wait! Could you fly me out there?”

  Jennifer looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

  “What? Even if you beg them in person they can’t do it without cutting their load loose, and I promise you that’s not going to happen.”

  “No, no. That’s not the reason,” he said, excitement creeping into his voice. “That tug and the barges. I need to see how big they are.”

  “Why, for God’s sake? We’ve got to evacuate an island.”

  “Jen… it’s a long shot, but… several days ago they activated this wave shaper by pulling the barges they had blocking it out of the way. That more or less turned it on.”

  “What are you thinking? Go hijack that crew’s barges?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Can you get close?”

  “Of course. I’m a helicopter. If you think it’s really necessary.”

  “I do, Honey.”

  She let the term of endearment hang in the air for a few seconds as she turned the Dauphin back to the west.

  “All right, Doug. I have to ask you. Did you tell Diane what to say to me?”

  “Diane Lacombe? What do you mean? Did she say something to you?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I didn’t ask her to say anything. Why?”

  “I’d like to believe her. I’d like to believe you. Is she really in trouble with her job?”

  “Yes. Big time.” Jennifer heard him take a deep breath. “Look, I don’t know what she said, but what I told you about her earlier was the gospel truth, and I assume she confirmed it. We weren’t fooling around.”

  “We need to talk about this on the ground.”

  “I agree. I love you, Jen.”

  There was no answer, but he could see her wince, and that, he figured, was progress.

  “Fly over the first barge there, okay?”

  “That’s not a barge.”

  “What is it then?”

  “It looks like… like one of the old floating bridge sections they just removed from Lake Washington. Same for the one behind.”

  She dropped them down to a hundred feet with the Night Sun on while they banked over the floating roadway, confirming its length to be at least two hundred feet, the old center line highway markings still visible.

  “I’ve driven over that very roadway. So have you.”

  “Now the one to the rear.”

  It, too, was two hundred feet long.

  “What now?”

  Doug was deep in thought as she headed toward the tug from astern.

  “We’ve undoubtedly attracted their attention by now. They probably think we’re the Coast Guard getting ready to warn them something’s wrong with their tow.”

  “You see anyone on deck?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Jen, can we call them on some radio?”

  She shook her head. “They monitor marine frequencies, and we’re too low to talk to Seattle Center and get their help in relaying. But I could try.”

  There was more silence between them as she flipped on the Night Sun again and caught several crewmembers on the aft railing of the massive tug, blinking against the bright lights. They had been watching and wondering what was going on.

  “Jen, can you lower me onto that tug?”

  “What? Good God, no! It’s far too dangerous! What we were doing back there was bad enough. I never authorized you to go down after him.”

  “Jennifer…”

  “I could have lost you back there!”

  “I didn’t have a choice, and I don’t now, either. I’ll admit I’m grasping at straws, but how can we not try? Can you do it, without endangering yourself?”

  There was a telling pause. “Maybe. Probably. But, Doug, what are you thinking? That they’ll let you seize those bridge sections? They’d be risking their jobs.”

  “Then get me down there and go back and get some authority.”

  “Authority? What authority?”

  “Jason Smith, the island security director, is a sheriff’s deputy, too. He can commandeer anything under the state’s police power.”

  “This tug may be outside the international limit.”

  “Jennifer, please! We’re desperate, remember? It’s the only chance we’ve got as far as I can see.”

  She passed over the tug and turned to the left slowly, the Night Sun still raking the waves ahead of them.

  “Oh, Lord,” she sighed, shaking her head in frustration, knowing he was right, but realizing at the same time he’d been lucky on the first trip down the winch. “Let me match speeds here and check the wind before I agree to this suicidal idea.”

  “How long?”

  “Two minutes, maybe three.”

  “Okay. Then while you’re flying, I need to tell you something.”

  “What is this, another defense? Can’t this wait, Doug?” she asked, shaking her head as she kept her eyes on the tug below and worked to match airspeed. “Let’s just shelve it for now.”

  “I was going to get into this at the Space Needle last night, but I shouldn’t have let it wait this long.”

  “All right. What? Quickly.”

  “Jen, Deborah is dying, and I can’t divorce her while she’s alive.”

  Jennifer looked at him in stunned silence, her attention suddenly ripped away from the tug several hundred feet below and the three crewmembers standing on the forward deck wondering why a helicopter was keeping pace.

  “Dying?”

  He nodded. “After we separated—three months, to be exact—she flew to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota out of frustration at some weakness in her right arm. It took them nearly a month, but they diagnosed ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as—”

  “Lou Gehrig’s disease. Oh, God, Doug! How long does she—I’m sorry! Don’t answer that.”

  “No, Jen. You have a right to know. They’ve tried all the new therapies and slowed it a bit, but she’s now in a wheelchair and they’re saying no more than eighteen months.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her voice low and nonaccusatory. “I would have understood.”

  “Deborah has always been a strong, controlling woman. Too controlling, which is where we clashed so often. But she was horribly embarrassed by a disease that would end up leaving her on a ventilator, unable to communicate or do anything for herself. The prospect of being imprisoned in a sharp mind with nothing to do but watch her body die was too much. She begged me not to tell anyone, and I felt I needed to honor her promise, even with you.”

  Jennifer turned her attention momentarily back to the tug, sliding the Dauphin a bit more to the lef
t.

  “The winds are not that bad out here. I think we can do it,” she said.

  “Jen, if I divorce her now, we lose the health insurance, among other problems.”

  She was shaking her head. “Don’t say anymore. If you divorced her now, you wouldn’t be a man I’d want to be with. Now or ever. I’m so sorry I pushed you.”

  “About the Alaska thing…”

  “It doesn’t matter, Doug. Say no more.”

  “No, I want you to know that I didn’t lie to you. I sent her on the cruise with two friends, but I had to fly to Seward from Menlo Park for a day and I came aboard to see the ship and talk to her. That’s it.”

  She looked over and smiled. “Let’s get this done, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Provided you still want to get down there.”

  “I do. I’ll have to get the winch unstuck first.”

  “Okay, climb to the back and get into the harness, and put on that life vest. You’re going to have to hit the winch pulley to unjam it. Use the crash axe—the blunt end.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll put you on their forward deck. Raise your feet and ground the hook before you touch their deck, like I told you before with the water.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll go get Smith, if he’ll come.”

  “Wish me luck.”

  “I do, but you know I think this is too dangerous.”

  He was already climbing over the center console between the cockpit and the cabin and grabbing the harness, fitting it over the life preserver she’d indicated and checking the crotch straps for a better fit.

  Jennifer noticed. “Tighten them to where you can barely stand. The straps need to clear your scrotum on each side so you can literally hang from those straps.”

  “Got it.”

  “And if it looks too dangerous, I’m going to winch you in and I don’t want any arguments, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Doug, this is very, very dangerous.”

  “Stop worrying and let’s do it.”

  “All right. Go ahead and swing out on the winch. Godspeed.”