This was normal. The water rushing out of the starboard tanks would create an imbalance that the engineers would rectify by refilling the tanks with new, American seawater. Okura had personally overseen the procedure more than fifteen times since he’d come aboard the Pacific Lion.
Still, he couldn’t remember ever feeling the Lion heel over this quickly.
Twenty degrees, twenty-five, thirty. The ship continued to list, slow and sickeningly steady, as the bow launched up and lurched down in the teeter-totter swell. Okura hurried back to the bridge telephone, nearly losing his balance on the slanted deck. “What is going on down there?” he asked the engineer. “This is far too much list.”
The engineer’s reply was panicked. “The tanks aren’t refilling. All the old water’s pumped out, but I can’t get any new water in to replace it. We’re high and dry down here!”
No. Okura stared out the window at a world gone cockeyed. In this awkward position, the ship was increasingly vulnerable.
“Maintain current heading,” Okura told the helmsman. “Keep our bow to the waves, whatever you do.”
This was bad. As the engineer pumped water from the Lion’s starboard ballast tanks, the ship had not only heeled over to port—as Okura could currently attest—it had been rendered lighter, displacing less water, sitting higher on the ocean’s surface.
The center of gravity, already above that of a normal ship, was now dangerously high. Any force exerted from the starboard side of the ship could send the Lion into a full capsize.
“Steady,” Okura told the helmsman. “Keep us steady.”
No sooner had he said this, though, did the ship lurch beneath him, and the bottom fell out of his stomach. A rogue wave from the starboard side, large and unpredictable, had pummeled the Lion’s exposed hull and keel with precisely enough force to ruin the big ship’s precarious equilibrium.
On the phone, the engineer swore. “I can’t fix this,” he said. “It’s no use! We’re going over!”
The Lion continued to tip, faster now. At the wheel, the helmsman stumbled, fell to the deck, slid down toward the port wall. The wheel stood unattended, the ship at the sea’s mercy, the swell helping her over now, books falling to the floor, paper charts and coffee cups, too.
Okura dropped the phone. Gripped a railing. “Brace yourself,” he told the helmsman as the whole world went sideways. “Sound the alarm.”
THE WAVE AWOKE ISHIMARU from dreams of a beach, sunshine, a pretty companion. He awoke in midair, then slammed into hard steel a split second later, landing in a heap, dazed, and unable to remember where he was.
He wasn’t on the beach, anyway. It was dark here, and cold, and the walls were all cockeyed. Somewhere in the darkness, an alarm began to blare.
Nante koto? What the hell?
Then he remembered. His little locker. The Pacific Lion. Hiroki Okura’s plan, and the promise of America. Only now something had gone terribly wrong.
Ishimaru tried to sit up, failed, the whole ship funhouse slanted. He fumbled in the dark for a handhold, found a shelving unit and pulled himself upright, the deck still listing, faster now.
This ship is capsizing.
The alarm continued to blare. Voices from outside the door. “All hands. Abandon ship!”
Ishimaru reached around for a sweater, a blanket—anything warm—but there was no time. It was too dark in the locker to see anything, and he knew if he didn’t move now, he might very well die.
He felt his way to the door. Wrenched it open and looked out into the hallway. The hall ran the beam of the ship. It was slanted like a children’s slide. The exit to the portside deck—and the door to Ishimaru’s locker—lay at the very bottom.
Get to higher ground.
Ishimaru gripped the railing on either side of the hall. Stepped through the bulkhead and began to climb toward the starboard weather deck. Made it halfway there when he remembered the briefcase. The bearer bonds.
Fifty million U.S. dollars.
He could picture the briefcase where he stored it, under the shelving unit. It wouldn’t take but five minutes to go back and retrieve it. And Okura would kill him if he left it behind.
The ship rocked as another wave hit. Somewhere in the cargo decks below, heavy objects creaked, shattered, fell. The ship groaned with the stress; a wounded animal in its death throes.
Fifty million dollars.
Slowly, his hands tight on the railings, Ishimaru turned himself around. Climbed back down the hallway to the locker door, released his grip on the railings and tumbled into the little room. Crawled across the floor to where he pictured the shelves.
He found the shelves, fumbled underneath them. Found the briefcase and pulled, but couldn’t coax it out. The ship groaned again.
“Chikusho,” Ishimaru swore, gritting his teeth. “Come on.”
Another heavy swell lifted the ship, rocking him across the little room. He clawed his way back. Gripped the briefcase, pulled, struggling for purchase. Dragged it out from underneath the shelves and held it tight as he staggered back to the door, kicked it open, and peered out into the hall.
The list had increased. The hallway was a mountain. At the bottom, just below Ishimaru’s locker door, was the doorway to the portside weather deck, and through the window, he could see green water and white roiling foam.
This ship is dying. Save yourself.
Every step took forever. Ishimaru hugged the briefcase to his body and pulled himself up the railings, inch by inch, gripping the briefcase with his left hand and reaching with his right, hanging on for his life. He made it to the middle of the ship, where a long hallway ran longitudinally. There was a gap here. Ishimaru leaped across, grabbed the railing with his right hand, and hung there, dangling in the air, holding on for dear life. He pulled himself across the gap and kept moving. Slowly, he climbed nearer to the starboard door.
Then another swell hit. It shuddered through the ship like the coup de grâce, shaking Ishimaru from the railing like fruit from a tree, and he fell, scrabbling at the walls for some kind of purchase and not finding it, gripping the briefcase to his chest as he hurtled down the slanted hallway and collided heavily with hard, unforgiving steel.
2
One thirty in the morning and McKenna Rhodes was still wide-awake as, two thousand miles to the northwest, the Pacific Lion foundered.
As Tomio Ishimaru fought to reach higher ground, McKenna stood in the engine room of the salvage tug Gale Force, staring at the boat’s twin Electro-Motive V20-710 diesel engines, and wondering where in hell she’d get the money for a new starboard turbocharger.
If she was smart, McKenna figured she’d have walked away from the boat, the whole outfit, just as soon as her boots hit the dock on the morning after her dad washed away. Anyone with a lick of sense, she knew, would have jumped in her truck and headed east. Back to Spokane and her mom’s place, and real life, leave the tug and the rest of her dad’s legacy—debt, mostly—for the banks to fight over.
For a spell, she’d done just about that. She’d left the Gale Force tied to the dock in Seattle, laid off the crew, and drifted, beat-up by guilt and unsure what to do with herself. The idea of going back on the water only reminded her of her father—specifically, how she’d killed him when she’d failed to make that turn the night they’d tried to save the Argyle Shore.