The Jayhawk flew west for an hour or so. Then the pilot said something to the copilot, and one of the flight technicians smiled at Harrington and yelled something he couldn’t make out over the roar of the engine.
He could feel the helicopter slowing down, though, and beginning its descent, and then clouds were gone and the helicopter was dropping, down toward a cold-looking black sea surrounded by rocky cliffs and featureless, verdant green mountains, and in the middle of the water was the Pacific Lion, lying on her side just as Harrington remembered, the Coast Guard cutter on one side, and the Gale Force, looking impossibly small, on the other.
The pilot aimed for the tug, and as he descended, Harrington could see the cluster of crew waiting on the deck aft of the wheelhouse, watching the Jayhawk as it dropped to a hover forty feet above.
The flight technician slid open the side door while his partner readied the basket, and Harrington inched across to the open door and climbed into the basket, felt the sudden blast of wind, the chill air, the basket swaying with every movement, and every movement sending spasms of pain through his chest. Suddenly, the hospital didn’t seem so bad anymore.
The technicians worked the hoist, winching him down, and as the basket descended, Harrington could pick out the crew, Matt and Stacey, and Al and Jason, and Ridley, who caught the basket and helped Harrington to the deck, led him back to where McKenna stood, watching, looking him over.
“Welcome back, Court,” she said. “You look like shit.”
61
McKenna’s first thought, on seeing Court Harrington struggle out of the basket dangling from the Coast Guard helicopter, was to curse the whiz kid six ways from Sunday, and then start looking for a seventh.
Just fine, my ass, Court, she thought, watching him limp across toward her, nearly slipping on the seawater-slick deck. You don’t look much better than the last time I saw you.
Harrington still had that smile, though, that cocky grin, as if he knew a secret that no one else did, and McKenna figured it was a good sign, that his spirit hadn’t been broken, even if his body sure looked like it had been.
“I can’t believe you came back,” she told him, leading him into the tug and up to the wheelhouse. “I can’t believe I let you come back.”
“You know I wouldn’t miss this,” Harrington replied. “You guys keep my laptop handy?”
McKenna found Harrington’s laptop. “Kept all your data intact,” she said. “Just have the engine room and the stern ballast tanks to check.”
“We’re going to have to do a full check all over again,” Harrington replied. “It’s been a few days, right? Who knows what kind of leaks could have sprung?”
“Fine. Matt and Stacey can take the forward compartments. I’ll have Jason help me work the engine room.”
Harrington reached to take the laptop from her. “What about me?”
“You stay topside,” McKenna said. She held on to the computer. “Better yet, stay here. We’ll take the readings and feed the numbers back to you.”
Harrington shook his head. “I need to be on board.”
“Not an option. We can’t risk it. What if you have another accident?”
“So I won’t have another accident.” He made a grab for the laptop, an edge to his voice now. “You think your old man never worked hurt?”
McKenna hesitated. Wondered if she’d made a mistake even flying him out here. If she was setting Harrington up to kill himself trying to save the Lion. Finally, she handed over the computer. Watched Harrington set it down on the chart table, watched his face as the machine booted up.
He’d looked happy and relaxed a moment ago. Now his jaw was set, and any trace of that smile was gone.
Fifteen minutes from friendly to fuck off, McKenna thought, watching him. That has to be a record, even for me.
THEY FLEW BACK to the Lion that afternoon. Dropped down onto the starboard deck, where, despite Harrington’s protests, McKenna left the architect topside with Nelson Ridley and took Jason Parent into the engine room.
The engine room sat in the middle of the ship, width-wise, surrounded by cars on cargo decks on the port and starboard sides. McKenna led Jason down an aft access stairway into darkness, that same maddening repetitive descent: clip onto a loop, step down, unclip and reclip and step down again. No light but from their headlamps, no sound but their breathing.
They reached the bottom, deck one on the starboard side, and stopped to rest by a watertight door. McKenna pointed her headlamp in Jason’s direction. “You having fun?”
Jason was panting. “I went rock climbing once,” he said. “On a first date. It was nothing like this.”
“How’d you do?”
“Put it this way.” Jason smiled, a little. “There wasn’t a second date.”
McKenna laughed. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that today,” she said. She turned to the watertight door. “If I have this right, the engine room is right here.”
She unlatched the door and pushed it open. Beyond was more darkness, but the sensation, impossibly, was of open air and vast space. McKenna peered inside, scanned the room with her headlamp. She’d been correct; they’d reached the base of the ship’s massive power plant, a four-story behemoth surrounded on all sides by catwalks and piping, instrument gauges and ductwork, and the massive propeller crankshaft. Water dripped from somewhere out of sight. The air was colder here. Nothing moved.
“I guess I was right,” McKenna said. “Let’s get to work.”
THE WORK WAS SLOW-GOING.
Jason Parent was a game partner, but this wasn’t his job on the Gale Force, and it showed. He lagged back, cautious, hesitant, eating up time, and McKenna had to remind herself they had no hurry, not now.
You lose Court, it’s a sad story, she thought. Jason’s a new dad. Let’s make sure his little boy grows up with a father.
They started on the starboard side of the engine room and worked their way down. The room was huge, six stories tall, at least, and the catwalks and stairways that accessed the power plant’s nooks and crannies hung angled and unsteady, every one of them a death trap.
McKenna worked quickly, dangling in space to read off from the lubricating-oil tanks, the diesel fuel reserves. Parent went slower, copying the numbers into Harrington’s notebook, trying to keep up.
“Give me one second,” he called down to McKenna. “You’re throwing up a lot of numbers here, boss.”
“Take it easy,” she called back, hanging in space near a seawater-intake gauge. “We have nothing but time.”
They worked their way down the ship, from starboard side to port, high to low. Finally, they’d cleared the room. Just the ballast tanks to go.
The Lion had two ballast tanks at her stern, one on the portside and one on the starboard. There were also the bilges, the very bottom of the ship, where any wastewater or other leaked fluid would have accumulated. McKenna and Jason crawled and clambered their way to each of the final tanks, and McKenna waited while the deckhand copied the numbers by the light of his headlamp.
Finally, high on the starboard side again, atop the last ballast tank, Jason straightened. “Got it,” he said, peering down at the notebook. “What next?”
McKenna double-checked her own plans, Harrington’s map of the ship. “That’s everything,” she said. “Back to the surface.”