There were a few smiles, lightening the tension. “Besides,” Sara said, “there’s no choice here. We’ve got to go after the Star of Bali, and we’ve got to go now.”
“Try out the old girl’s sea legs,” the chief said.
Sara gave him an approving smile, which brought an answering grin, both witnessed by Hugh. There was a degree of intimacy there that raised his hackles.
“Tommy,” Sara said, unheeding, “plot us a course for Unimak Pass, best speed.”
“Aye aye, XO.”
They stood away from the plot table to let Tommy crunch numbers on the computer.
“It’s almost six hundred miles and she’s got a six-day start on us, XO,” Chief Edelen said. He looked at Hugh. “And this gentleman has already proved to us that he’s just guessing here.”
Hugh met the chief’s eyes, saw how they shifted to Sara’s oblivious face, looked back at the chief, identified the expression there all too easily, and couldn’t find it in himself to kick a man while he was down. “That’s right, I am. But I’m thinking the Agafia offered herself up as bait for a reason. She fired on us, don’t forget.”
“Not likely,” the chief said with some sarcasm. “XO, why not just commandeer us the first freighter or tanker we see? They’ll have all the sat comm we need.”
Sara hooked a thumb at the storm. “Always supposing we find one in this slop, all we’ve got for ship-to-ship communications are the handhelds and the emergency radios from the life rafts. What’s the range, line of sight?”
He was silent.
“Right,” she said, “so we launch and row over. Probably won’t lose more than half the boarding team.”
“Then let’s make a run for Dutch Harbor and yell for help from there.”
“We could do that,” Sara said. “And the Star of Bali could get close enough to shore to launch her weapon.”
“If she has a weapon.”
“If she does,” Sara said.
There was a heavy silence. Hugh broke it. “I’m starving. When’s chow?”
She glanced up at the digital clock on the wall, forgetting that it had been shattered in the strafing. Ops followed her gaze and looked at his watch. “Lunch should be served in the wardroom shortly, XO.”
Sara felt suddenly and unutterably tired. “Can you find your own way there?” she said to Hugh.
“Sure, but what about you?”
“I’m not hungry.”
He followed her out the door and down the ladder. They both heard “Captain’s below” but neither chose to acknowledge it. “You should eat, Sara.”
When she didn’t answer, he said to her back, “They’re looking to you to lead them into battle and to get them home after. Hungry has never been your best mood. Eat.”
That expressive back stiffened, relaxed again, and her shoulders slumped a little. “All right.”
Again she deflected hints that she should sit at the head of the table, in the captain’s chair. Hugh sat next to her. Seaman Wooster began serving steak and potatoes. FSO Aman was pumping up everyone’s red blood cells. Sara was pretty sure the day’s menu had called for macaroni and cheese.
Hugh piled her plate high and she ate. She even thought it was pretty good, although later on she couldn’t for the life of her remember what she had put into her mouth. Hugh seemed pleased, and afterward he let her go to bed, which was all she wanted. She fell into her bunk fully clothed and sank into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep.
Hugh stood in the doorway and watched the face of his dream girl, the cap she hadn’t bothered to remove a little awry, mouth slightly open, maybe even drooling a little into her pillow. He stepped inside her stateroom long enough to ease her shoes from her feet and to cover her with her sleeping bag. Why the sleeping bag? he wondered, and then remembered how much she hated to make the bed.
It was a very utilitarian shoebox of a room, desk and shelves on one side, two bunks on the other, but he would have known it was Sara’s room on sight. She had always had the ability to transform any living space into something uniquely her own, from her room when she was a kid in Seldovia, to the tent on the hill in back of her house the three of them had shared as a secret hideaway, to her dorm room in college, to the skanky-Kyle was right about that-apartments that had been all they could afford when they were together, and now here. Her clothes were neatly folded, there was a poster of Jimmy Buffett on one wall, and her walkaround coffee mug was a giveaway from the Kodiak public radio station.
And the top bunk was, of course, filled with books. Books to do with the sea and sailors, naturally. Hugh was pretty certain that Sara owned a copy of every sea story ever written. She kept a fair representation on board, he saw now, one of the Hornblowers, one of the Aubrey-Maturins, a history of the Coast Guard, a biography of Frank Worsley, Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember, a book on knot tying, and a collection of sea shanties. Between How to Build a Wooden Boat and a one-volume collection of biographies of woman pirates he found Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz. He pulled it down and thumbed through it, to find that she had done her usual thorough job of reading, with massive amounts of underlining, highlighting, dog-earing, and marginal notations.
“XO? Oh. Excuse me, Mr. Rincon.”
Hugh replaced the book and stepped into the passageway, closing Sara’s door firmly behind him. “Yes?” he said to Ops.
Ops looked uncertain. “I need to speak to the XO about something.”
“Listen, Ops-What is your name anyway? No one has called you anything but Ops in my hearing since I came on board.”
Diverted, Ops smiled. “Yeah, Coastie custom. We call each other by our job title instead of our name. Ops. XO. Supply. EO. Like that. Probably due to the continuous rotation of crew. Easier than learning everyone’s names.”
“So what is your name?”
“Oh. Clifford Skulstad. Cliff.”
Hugh stuck out a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Cliff. I’m Hugh Rincon.”
Ops took Hugh’s hand and felt himself being steered firmly away from the XO’s cabin. He looked back over his shoulder at her door and said, “But I have to talk to the XO about-”
“Tell me something, Cliff,” Hugh said. “Who’s third in command on board the Sojourner Truth?”
Ops looked startled. “Uh, I am.”
“I thought so. Your commanding officer needs some sleep if she’s going to be worth a shit when we catch up to the Star of Bali. Why don’t you see if you can’t handle any problems that come up over the next six or eight hours?”
Ops looked horrified. “What if there is an emergency?”
“If there is an emergency,” Hugh said gravely, “I think she would expect you to wake her up. However,” he added, “just for today, why don’t you set the gold standard for emergencies a little higher than usual?”