Now’s not the time, McKenna thought, fighting the tug’s wheel and throttles as she struggled to keep ahead of the tide. She glanced back at Matt and Stacey. “One of you want to take the wheel?”
Matt stood and hurried across, replaced McKenna at the controls.
“Keep her in the middle of the channel,” McKenna told him, already reaching for the intraship phone.
She dialed Ridley in the engine room. “You hear that?” she asked the engineer when he answered. “The bilge pumps are failing.”
“Pumps are working fine, skipper,” Ridley replied, not even a hint of panic in his voice. “But they’re overwhelmed. We’re taking on water somewhere.”
Shit.
This was the beginning of the worst-case scenario. If McKenna couldn’t find the source of the water rushing into the bilge, she stood to lose the tug, the tow, and possibly her life. The water would continue to rise, spilling out of the bilge and into the engine room, where it would drown the tug’s engines, rendering her powerless. From there, it was only a matter of time before the tug sank, capsized in the swell, or was driven onto the rocks on either side of the pass. Or it was crushed underfoot by the Lion.
McKenna picked up the hailer. “All hands,” she said. “We’re taking water. I need this whole tug inspected for leaks right away.”
Stacey was already headed down the wheelhouse stairs, and McKenna knew Al and Jason Parent were no doubt already springing to action as well. She hesitated, debated calling the Munro, filling them in. Before she could make up her mind, another alarm began to blare.
“ENGINE TEMPERATURE,” Ridley reported over the intraship phone. “Portside engine’s burning up.”
“On my way.” McKenna set down the phone. Picked up the hailer. “Al Parent, meet me in the engine room,” she ordered. Then she hurried to the stairs herself.
McKenna had a suspicion what was happening now, and it was both good and bad news. In order to cool the Gale Force’s twin diesel engines, the tug took in cold water from outside the tug, circulated it through the engine and expelled it back out to the sea. If the engines were overheating while the bilges were flooding, it probably meant a failure in that cooling system somewhere. Water was coming in, but it wasn’t making it to the engines. The trouble was locating the leak.
We can’t deal with this right now, McKenna thought as she raced down through the tug to the engine room. Not here, with this tide. Not in this pass. But she didn’t have a choice.
She met Al and Stacey in the engine room with Ridley. The engineer was covered with grease and sweat, bleeding from a cut on his forehead. He shook his head when he saw McKenna.
“We can’t keep the port engine online much longer, skipper,” he said, yelling to be heard over the noise of the diesels and through the industrial-strength ear protection they were all wearing. “We’ll lose her for good unless we shut her down.”
One engine against this tide. The starboard engine, to boot, with its faulty turbocharger. Shit, shit, shit.
“Wait as long as you can,” she told Ridley. “Then cut it. We have to fix that leak.”
A GOOD SKIPPER KNOWS her tug inside and out, McKenna. Randall Rhodes had insisted his daughter learn the engine room, every inch of it, even as she’d protested that that was what Ridley was for.
And if Ridley’s unconscious? You have fumes in the engine room and he’s incapacitated, what are you going to do then?
She hadn’t had an answer.
The skipper leads from the front, McKenna. You learn every inch of this boat, every job. And you make sure you can solve every problem.
She’d hated her dad for it, the long extra hours, the harbor days in the engine room instead of in town or on some paradise beach with the rest of the crew. Resented the work, the lack of free time, but hell was she grateful to the old man right now.
She’d never dealt with this problem before, not exactly, but she knew her engine room, all right. And she led Al and Stacey down the diamond-plate decking between the two engines, searching for the portside raw-water-intake pipe, where seawater entered the ship.
The alarms kept sounding. The engines roared. The engine room was a sauna. The tug swayed and bounced. McKenna pictured Matt at the wheel, hoped the diver had it under control. Knew the tug would get sluggish the more water she took on, knew as soon as Ridley cut that port engine, they’d risk handing control of the tug over to the racing tides.
Damn it.
McKenna knelt at the hull of the Gale Force, behind the portside engine. Lifted a piece of diamond plating and found the intake pipe, traced it away from the hull and toward the engine, until she found the problem.
A burst pipe, below the deck plating, spewing seawater everywhere at a dizzying volume. McKenna hurried back to the hull, found the seacock valve that closed and opened the pipe, turned it closed.
“Tell Ridley to cut the engine,” she told Al. “And bring me another length of pipe.”
While Al disappeared forward, McKenna led Stacey aft to Ridley’s workshop. As with the rest of the engine room, the engineer kept his shop tidy and organized, and McKenna muttered a silent prayer of gratitude as she searched through Ridley’s tools for the equipment she needed.
By the time she’d found her supplies, Al was back at the burst pipe, a length of replacement in his hands, the portside engine offline behind him. The engine room was marginally quieter, the motion of the tug in the current more pronounced. Now it was a race against time, against the tide, a desperate hope that Matt could keep the Gale Force in control of the Lion until McKenna could get both engines back online.
And if that damn starboard turbocharger goes, we’re all screwed.
She took the fresh pipe from Al’s hands. Knelt down and pulled up more of the diamond plate beneath them, slipped on a pair of safety glasses, and reached back to Stacey for Nelson Ridley’s reciprocating saw.
As her crew looked on, McKenna cut out the damaged piece of pipe. Measured the gap, and cut the replacement pipe to fit. Then she swapped in the replacement pipe, fastened it at both ends, and screwed the fasteners tight—she’d have preferred to weld it, but that would have to wait—and motioned to Al to open the seacock again, and to Ridley to fire up the intake pump.
Then all four of them held their breath and waited as the pump spooled up and sent cold water back through the replacement length of pipe, watching for any sign of a leak, a poor fastening, anything. But the replacement held, and McKenna stood, swapped a quick grin with Stacey, and then hurried back to the stairs with Nelson Ridley behind her.
“Best to leave that engine to cool for a while, skipper,” Ridley told her. “If we can afford it.”
“Stand by on that,” McKenna replied. Then she turned and hurried upstairs through the tug toward the wheelhouse, her heart pounding, her adrenaline through the roof.
Holy cow, she thought. I sure owe you for that one, Dad.
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