Very hard, as it turned out.
“Clearly, there’s a technique to this we just aren’t getting,” Ridley told McKenna after they’d sunk the virtual Pacific Lion nine or ten times. “No wonder the other outfits all wanted Court on their team. This is like building a spaceship.”
“We still have the stern tanks to measure,” McKenna said. “Maybe once we get the fluid levels locked in, we’ll be able to make sense of this thing.”
“You want to take a gamble on that? You and me, with thirty million dollars riding on it?”
The answer was no. McKenna imagined towing the Lion to a sheltered harbor somewhere, imagined the days of pumping and clambering around the ship. Imagined watching the damn thing roll over and capsize because she’d messed up the pumping algorithm, watching the whole operation sink to the bottom of the Bering Sea, taking the Gale Force’s big payday—and a few more of her crew—down with her.
“We can’t do this ourselves, McKenna,” Ridley said. “We need to assume Court isn’t coming back and prepare accordingly.”
McKenna didn’t answer. Reached out, petted Spike. The cat purred, arched into her touch, spent about a minute in total bliss. Then he opened his eyes, saw McKenna, stiffened, stood, and leaped from the mantel.
McKenna watched him pad out of the wheelhouse. Looked back through the rear windows at the twin towlines stretching back off the stern, toward the lights of the Lion. With any luck, the Lion’s watertight doors were holding, keeping her afloat. God willing, they would make it through the pass.
And then?
McKenna straightened. “I know, Nelson,” she said. “I’m working on it.”
AT A QUARTER AFTER TEN the next morning, McKenna found herself staring out from the wheelhouse as the Gale Force approached the mouth of the Samalga Pass, waiting on the tide to turn.
The pass was a desolate, primeval place: to the east lay Umnak Island, seventy miles long and mountainous, shrouded in fog. To the west were the volcanic Islands of Four Mountains, an uninhabited cluster of barren, forbidding rock. The nearest island, Chuginadak, climbed a mile into the fog. Its volcano lay quiet today, but according to Tom Geoffries on the Munro, it was named after an Aleut fire goddess and known to be restless.
It wasn’t the volcano that had McKenna preoccupied this morning, but the pass at its base. Fifteen miles wide, Samalga cut through the Aleutian Islands from the North Pacific to the Bering Sea, and the tides could be wicked. The ocean floor climbed from six hundred fathoms at the mouth of the pass to eighty in the middle, and there were shallow patches and seamounts where it reached as high as thirteen fathoms, less than eighty feet below the surface. As the tug and her tow arrived, with a gale force wind and the tide running opposite, the mouth of the pass was a turbulent mess, a standing swell with steep, twenty-foot waves; a chaotic, boat-swallowing pit.
The Munro joined the Gale Force outside the pass. McKenna could see that Captain Geoffries was taking care to steer well clear of the shallow water, keeping alongside the Gale Force and the Lion in seven hundred fathoms of water, more than three-quarters of a mile. The gale continued to blow, and the seas were agitated, but the deep water was peace compared to the hell at the mouth of the pass.
McKenna surveyed the roiling water through her field glasses. Then she picked up the intraship telephone and called Ridley down in the engine room. The engineer answered. “Coney Island Pizza.”
“How’s it looking down there?” McKenna asked him. “We going to have enough oomph to make it through this thing?”
“We’re gravy, skipper,” Ridley replied. “I’ve been watching the engines all night. No problems whatsoever.”
“How’s that turbocharger on the starboard main? Not going to crap out again, right?”
“Compression is fine. These engines are rock solid. Nothing to worry about.”
“If you could see what I’m seeing,” McKenna said, “you’d be worried, too.”
“Nah. We’re going to drag this thing through, easy-peasy. You find us a new whiz kid, yet?”
“Not yet. I’ll keep trying once we’re through that pass.” She ended the call. Put down the phone and looked out through the windows at the volcano in the distance, the churning water, the long, dark mass of Umnak Island to the east. Had no idea how she was going to scare up a replacement for Court Harrington, but this wasn’t the time or the place to be trying, anyway.
Once the Gale Force entered the pass, McKenna would have to maintain enough speed to keep water past her rudders or she would lose her ability to steer the tug, and the Lion behind her. The tide would take hold and propel them forward like an amusement park ride, and the Gale Force would need every ounce of power she could muster. If the turbos crapped out, or the engines gave way, the tug and the massive freighter behind her would be driven straight onto the rocks.
The radio came to life. “Gale Force, this is Captain Geoffries. This tide is about to turn. How are things looking on your end?”
McKenna glanced back through the aft windows to the stern, and close behind, the listing hulk of the Lion. Al and Jason Parent had shortened the towline in preparation for the pass, closing the gap behind tug and tow. It would increase McKenna’s ability to control the freighter, but would also give her less time to react in case something went wrong. Still, it was the only way to maneuver the Lion in such close quarters.
“We’re ready to rock and roll here,” McKenna told Geoffries.
“Excellent. We’ll let you lead and tuck in behind your tow, keep an eye on things from the rear. That work for you?”
“Sounds perfect to me, Captain.”
“Just make sure you give a wide berth to that fire goddess on your portside. There are shoals south of the island where the tide rips something fierce. It’ll drag that ship away from you if you don’t watch it.”
“I saw that on the charts,” McKenna said, “and I can sure see it now out my wheelhouse windows. We’ll stick to the middle of the channel.”
She signed off and hung up the handset. The tide was slackening outside, and the standing waves at the entrance to the pass were diminishing. Soon after the slack, the tide would reverse, and the North Pacific would rush north between the islands into the Bering Sea, carrying the Gale Force and her tow along like a piece of driftwood in the current.
A piece of driftwood with nearly ten thousand horses under the hood, McKenna thought. Assuming those engines hold.
McKenna surveyed the pass one more time. The grim, unforgiving shores on either side of the water. The Lion would wreck if the tug’s engines failed. She would wreck if the towlines parted. But she would also wreck if she stayed out here; it was only a matter of time. The only way to save that ship was through the pass, so, damn it, it was time to get moving.
55
Hiroki Okura ventured forward to the bridge of the Pacific Lion and found himself in Armageddon.
The ocean around the freighter was a savage. It leaped at the ship, clawed at the hull, dropped away and reared back to leap again. A following sea, monster rollers lurking behind the Lion, catching up, overtaking, lifting the freighter high and then plunging her down again, daylight all but gone in the bottom of the troughs, the view panoramic from the wave tops. And everything tilted, twisted sideways, dark and cold.