18 The Long Journey Home
The air was blessedly quiet following the roar of the explosion and the screams of the ship; all other sounds carried through it. People yelling, both on the Lucella and on land. In the distance we could hear sirens beginning to wail. Every few seconds another piece of the deck broke and clattered down the inclined plane toward the gash in the middle.
My legs were shaking. I let go of the self-unloader’s side and massaged the aching muscles in my left shoulder. Bledsoe still stood next to me, his eyes glassy, his face gray. I wanted to say something to him, but no words came. An explosion. Someone blew up a sixty-thousand-ton ship. Sixty thousand tons. Sixty thousand tons. The words beat meaninglessly in my brain.
The deck swam up and down in front of me; I thought it was starting to rise again. My trembling legs buckled and I collapsed. I fainted for a few seconds only, but lay on the deck until the swimming in my head passed, then forced myself to my feet. Bledsoe was still standing near me.
to the port side of the ship. I could hear him retching behind me.
“Martin. Our ship. Our ship. What happened?” That was Bemis.
“Someone planted explosives on your hull, Captain.” The words came from far away. Bemis was looking at me strangely: I realized it was I who was talking.
He shook his head, a jack-in-the-box on a spring; he couldn’t stop shaking it. “No. Not my ship. It must have been in the lock.”
“Couldn’t have been.” I started to argue with him but my brain felt flaccid. I wanted to sleep. Disjointed images floated in the gray mist of my mind. The geysers of water towering over the ship. The water changing color as the Lucella cut through it. The troughs of water dug by the screws as we left Thunder Bay. A dark figure in a wet suit climbing out of the water.
The figure in the wet suit. That meant something. I forced myself to focus on it. That was the person who planted the charges. It was done yesterday. In Thunder Bay.
I opened my mouth to blurt it out, then swallowed the words. No one was in any state to deal with such news.
Keith Winstein made his way over to us. His face was streaked with tears and mud. “Karpansky and Bittenberg. They’re both-both dead, sir. They were down on the bank with the cables. They must’ve-must’ve been-smashed into the side.” He gulped and shuddered.
“Who else?” Bemis demanded.
“Anna. She fell over the side. She-she was crushed. She never had a chance. Vergil fell into the hold. Oh, Jesus! He fell into the hold and suffocated in the barley.” He started laughing and crying wildly. “Drowned in barley. Oh, Christ!” he screamed. “Drowned in barley.”
Focus and energy returned to the captain’s face. He straightened and took Winstein by the shoulders, shaking him hard. “Listen, Mate. The ones left are still your responsibility. Get them together. See who needs medical care. Radio the Coast Guard for a helicopter.”
The first mate nodded. He stopped sobbing, gave a few last shuddering breaths, and turned to the dazed crew.
“Martin needs some help, too,” I said. “Can you get him to sit down?” I needed to get away from the crowd on the deck. Somewhere, just out of reach in my mind, important information hovered. If I could just get away, stay awake, force myself into focus… I started back toward the pilothouse.
On my way I passed the chief engineer. He was covered with mud and oil. He looked like a miner emerging from three weeks in the pit. His blue eyes stared with horror through his mask of black.
“Where’s the captain?” he asked me hoarsely.
“On deck. How are things below?”
“We’ve got a man with a broken leg. That’s the only injury, thank God. But there’s water everywhere. Port engine is gone… It was a bomb, you know. Depth charges. Must have been planted right on the center beam. Set off by radio signal. But why?”
I shook my head, helplessly, but his words jarred my mind loose. If it was set off by remote signal, it was done by someone along the bank. In the observation deck. The man with bright red hair and a pair of binoculars. Howard Mattingly, the second-string hockey player had hair like that. Boom Boom saw him someplace he shouldn’t be three weeks ago. Now here he was at the observation deck with binoculars when the Lucella blew up.
I forgot the ache in my left shoulder. I needed to find Mattingly. Now. Before he got away. I turned abruptly in front of Sheridan and moved back out on deck. My gun. I wasn’t going to tackle Mattingly without the Smith & Wesson. I went back to where I’d left it, to where Bledsoe and the captain were standing.
The bag was gone. I hunted for a few minutes, but I knew it was useless. Two shirts, a sweater, a pair of jeans, and a three-hundred-dollar Smith & Wesson were all lying with Vergil in fifty thousand tons of barley.
“I’m going,” I said to the captain. “I’ve got an idea I need to follow up. Better get one of your junior cooks to get him some hot tea with lots of sugar. He’s not doing too well.” I cocked my thumb in Bledsoe’s direction. I didn’t wait for Bemis’s response but turned to go.
It wasn’t difficult getting off the Lucella. She was resting at the bottom of the lock, her deck even with the bank. Clinging to the cables around the side, I swung easily across the two feet between her upraised stern and the side of the lock. As I picked my way up the narrow strip of land separating me from the MacArthur Lock, I passed an emergency crew coming from the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. Men in green fatigues, medics, a stretcher crew-a solemn procession befitting a major disaster. Bringing up the rear, of course, was a television news team. They were the only ones who took any notice of me. One of them stuck a microphone under my nose and asked whether I was coming from the ship and what I knew about it.
I shrugged my shoulders in embarrassment and said in Italian that I didn’t know any English. Disappointed, the cameramen continued in the wake of the Coast Guard.
The crossway stretched on in front of me, two concrete strips sandwiching a wedge of grass. The wind chilled my sore shoulder. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. My legs were leaden posts and would not race for me. I staggered up to the gates closed in front of the MacArthur Lock and made my way across the narrow path on top of them. Beyond me lay the rocks lining the channel into Lake Huron. We were lucky the gates had held.
A tremendous crowd had gathered at the observation deck. It took time and energy to force my way through the crush of people. Mattingly was no longer there.
Before elbowing my way out again, I looked for a minute at the Lucella. She was an appalling sight. Bow and stern both stuck up from the lock at jagged angles. A number of cables had snapped from the self-unloader and swung meaninglessly above the remains of the deck. Wet barley oozed from the open cargo holds into a yellow smear across the visible parts of the gaping decks. I strained my eyes at the figures on board and decided that Bledsoe must finally have gone inside. A helicopter had landed near the bow, deploying men with stretchers.
The crowd was enjoying the show. Live disasters are wonderful attractions when you’re safe on the other side of them. As we watched, the Coast Guard fished the dead bodies out of the water and a delighted shudder fluttered throughout the observation deck. I turned and shouldered my way down the stairs and across the street to a little coffee shop.
I ordered a cup of hot chocolate. Like Bledsoe and the crew, I’d had a shock and I needed hot liquid and sugar. The chocolate was pretty dismal, made from a powdered mix and water, but it was sweet and the warmth gradually made itself felt inside my numbed fingers and frozen toes.