"Then Cecil could probably kiss his million-dollar boat goodbye."
"They'd confiscate it?"
"You bet your ass. And, more important, we wouldn't get paid."
"Three minutes to the opening."
"Cecil," Wy said, "stay on course for another minute. Alex, stand to and prepare to drop your skiff where you are. Mike, you've got company, coming up hard astern."
Liam saw two more boats approaching. The second of the smaller boats in Wolfe's miniflotilla broke off from the steadily increasing ball of herring and put itself in the way of the oncoming boats. Liam poked and pointed. "Goddammit," Wy swore as the Cessna 172 insinuated itself into their circle. "It's okay, we got 'em, we got 'em." Barely audible over the headphones, Liam heard her say, "Please let us have them, please let us have them."
"Two minutes to the opening."
The two new boats broke ranks, one circling around Wolfe's second gillnetter, or Mike, which Liam supposed was the skipper's name. "Mike, stay on the first boat," Wy ordered. "Cecil, you've got company."
The big boat was on the other side of the ball of herring. It looked twice as large and three times as powerful as the little gillnetter heading over to challenge it. Wolfe's voice was elaborately casual. "What company? Oh, you mean that little itty-bitty skiff over there? I can hardly make him out, the little peckerhead's so tiny."
"Cecil-"
"One minute to the opening."
Cecil-by now Liam, too, was calling the boats by the names of their skippers-made a course correction and found itself directly in the path of the oncoming vessel. "Goddammit, Cecil, you're on his portside, he has right-of-way!"
"Is that a fact?" Wolfe sounded mildly surprised.
Twenty minutes was going to be just long enough for a fisherman on his toes to scoop up as many herring as he could. "With a ball of herring this bunched together," Wy said, her voice taut with excitement and anticipation and, yes, unabashed greed, "we're going to beat the hell out of them!"
Liam took this to mean that they were going to catch a lot of fish, as long as they could beat the other fishermen to them, and as long as- "Watch out!" he yelled, slapping the side of Wy's head as the 172 nearly brushed their wing with a float-as long as they survived the experiment.
"Miller, watch your goddamn six!" Wy roared.
"Ten seconds to the opening," the expressionless voice droned. "Eight seconds, seven seconds, six seconds, five, four, three, two, one, open; the herring season for the Riggins Bay District is open."
Suddenly Liam was too busy to be scared.
Wy's voice, excited but controlled, sounded continually in his ears. "All boats, drop your skiffs, now! Cecil, hard left rudder, hard left rudder!"
"Wy, watch it, traffic, blue plane with floats ten o'clock descending!"
"Alex, steady as you go, you got 'em, you got 'em!"
"Wy, watch out, you're coming up too fast on that red plane, back off, back off, back off!"
"Mike, come left, come left, come left, don't let him get around you!"
"Wy, Cub at two o'clock, go left, go left, your other left, dammit!"
Suddenly it seemed that the sky was filled with planes and the water with boats. Liam didn't have time to wonder where they'd all come from; all he could do was point and poke and prod and slap and kick and yell, all as Wy watched the water and directed the boats.
A hundred feet beneath the tight circle Wy had locked the Cub into, the fishing boats launched their skiffs. These weren't dories with little 40-horsepower Evinrudes, but powerboats with 250- to 300-horsepower outboards that were on the step practically before their hulls hit the water.
The way it worked was this. One end of the purse seine was fastened to the skiff, the other end to the boat. The idea was for the skiff to make a large circle around as many herring as possible and head back for the mother boat, which would then draw the bottom of the seine together, making a bag of the net. From there, they would use the boom to lift the net into the boat, or brail the fish into the hold one large scoop at a time, or deliver the fish to a waiting tender -Liam caught distant glimpses of three larger boats hanging around the perimeter of the action, but they weren't about to run into him so he ignored them. "Watch it, that green plane-son of a bitch!"
The green plane's pilot misjudged his altitude and the 172's speed and his gear glanced off the left wing of the 172 as it was coming up from behind. The 172's wing dipped sharply waterward, started to spin, and recovered, pulling up and banking right, out of the circle.
Something wet running into his eyes blinded him for a moment. Liam wiped it away and discovered that sweat was pouring down his forehead in rivulets. In front of him Wy was oblivious, all her attention trained on the water below. "Yes! Okay, Cecil, close it up, close it up, close it up!"
The expressionless voice came over the headphones. "Ten minutes remaining in the opening; I say again, ten minutes remaining in the Riggins Bay herring opener."
"Mike, you've got ten minutes to lose that jerk and set your net! Alex, hard right rudder, you got nothing but net if you close it up now! Cecil, you still got company off your stern, watch out he doesn't foul your seine!"
One of the two poaching gillnetters was still being fended off by Mike's boat, every zig of the gillnetter being met by a zag from Mike's. The boat tagging Cecil had dropped his skiff and was preparing to make a run for the fish.
Liam saw water boil up from Wolfe's stern, and the big seiner surged forward and ran right over the top of the other boat's skiff. The man in it dove over the side at the last possible moment, the prop of the big seiner passing over the exact spot he'd been standing not three seconds before.
"Jesus Christ," Liam said in disbelief.
"Nine minutes to closing; I say again, nine minutes to closing."
"Watch the sky, Campbell!" Wy snapped. "Close it up, Cecil, close it up, you've got nine minutes!"
There were six or seven planes-or maybe twenty; Liam was never really sure-in the same tight circle, buzzing around the fishing scene like angry wasps, the 172 recovering enough to rejoin the group. It seemed as if every time he looked up he saw a pair of floats through the skylight. Every time he looked right, another plane filled up the window, someone in the backseat slapping the back of his pilot's head. There was never a moment when it seemed to him that they were not in imminent danger of a midair collision. Here a pair of floats passed so closely by he could see water dripping from the rudders; there the face of another observer was so near he could see the strain and fear on it as plainly as he could feel his own. The sharp blur of a propeller reminded him of what had happened to the last person to fly observer for Wy, not a comforting thought. Liam's poking and slapping became less tentative. Yelling and cursing seemed natural; in the space of twenty minutes, Liam was learning a whole new vocabulary.
There was as much or more chaos on the water below, where twenty-five boats battled for sea room and herring, with more competitors arriving every moment. In between his constant scanning of the sky and the equally constant poking and prodding of Wy he caught glimpses of a continual game of bump-and-run, of the gillnetter's swamped but not sunken skiff, of a bulging purse seine black with fish-he hoped theirs, but for the life of him he couldn't tell one boat from another-of a gillnetter with its prop fouled in its own seine, of another adrift with a dead engine, of a third-Liam blinked. If his eyes did not deceive him, there were three men on the deck beating the hell out of each other.
The man who had dived off the swamped skiff had bobbed up to the surface and one of his crewmates on the gillnetter ran a boat hook out for him to grab on to and hauled him on board. From the brief glimpse Liam caught of him, he didn't appear to be bleeding. Bleeding or not, Liam had personally witnessed a thirddegree assault, a class C felony at least. They came around again in their circle and Liam caught a glimpse of the big seiner getting its catch on board-lowering the boat considerably in the water-then running its net out again.