Stabenow, Dana - Blindfold Game (v1 Page 11

  She had reveled in it. Shed never understood other people talking about how the sex had become routine in their marriages. There couldnt be anything better than married sex, with each knowing exactly what button to push when, that one move that would

  “XO?

  Her eyes snapped open to see Ensign Hank Ryan looking in her open door with a quizzical expression on his face. By sheer willpower she forced the color from her face. “Whats up, Hank? she said.

  “You look tired, XO, he said. “The capn still pissed?

  She sat up and said briskly, “Captain Lowe doesnt dwell, Ensign. Its done, its over, and were moving on. Whats up?

  A member of that generation raised by baby boomers, he had no problem serving under a woman and moreover thought Sara was a damn fine officer, and if he also thought she was hotter than a stick of dynamite he was able to hide his admiration beneath a suitably professional veneer. He accepted the implied rebuke without flinching. He had some crew requests for training to discuss, and when he left she turned to her computer to check her e-mail. Hughs name in the in-box was like a siren going off. She swore out loud, earning a quizzical look from BMOW Meridian, passing by on the bosuns mate of the watchs duty round.

  She swore again, silently this time, resisting the urge to close the door to her cabin, and turned away from the computer and her in-box and the e-mail that seemed to glow in the dark.

  That night in October was the first time theyd seen each other in over a year, since the big fight when she was offered the XO position on “I thought you wanted to join the Peace Corps!

  He looked at her, still with that saintly patience that made her want to rip his head from his shoulders and hand it to him, and said, “Sure. Someday. When Im older. When were both older.

  “When were retired and too old to be of any use elsewhere, she freely translated.

  Theyd managed to battle their way back from that precipice to maintain an uneasy peace in a marriage that was conducted in at best rare and admittedly joyous fragments of time when they were both in the same town at the same time and at worst with long stretches of separation endured with at least the appearance of compliance.

  Until shed been offered the XO position on the Sojourner Truth, when it had been Hughs turn to stage a meltdown. “We dont spend enough time apart already, now youve got to go to sea again?

  “You could move to Kodiak, she said, her turn to be patient, if not precisely saintlike.

  “And what the hell am I supposed to do in goddamn Kodiak, Alaska, while Im waiting for you to get back into port? Learn to speak grizzly?

  This time, the fight had ended with her packing her bags and moving into bachelor quarters on base until her orders came through. She hadnt called him before she left, either, maybe the one thing she felt guilty about.

  Well. She shied away from thinking about how shed crept out of that hotel room in Anchorage while Hugh was still asleep. Make that two things.

  But still, it wasnt like Hugh didnt know whom he had married. Theyd been friends since birth, coconspirators since they were five, and lovers since they were seventeen. During all that time she had never made a secret of her intention to follow a life at sea.

  She tried to imagine that life without Hugh and couldnt, but truth be told, that was essentially the life she was living.

  There were other maritime jobs, even other Coastie jobs she could have taken and been home for dinner every night, but none of them had either the sense of mission or the freedom of action she craved. With the advent of satellite communications it was true that much of the autonomy of a ship at sea had leached back to the District HQs, but she still dreamed of the day when she would command her own two-sixty-four. It was a dream she had had since her father sat her on his lap in the wheelhouse of the Melanie L, and placed her five-year-old hands on the wheel. Sara could have paid her way to the college of her choice with ease, but nothing but the Coast Guard Academy would do. She wanted ships, and in some atavistic throwback to a more barbaric time, she wanted an armed ship. She had been raised by a commercial fisherman in a commercial fishing town and there had never been any question what service she wanted.

  Shed been lucky in being born American. Shed been lucky in that her father had had friends in the Coast Guard. Shed been even luckier to have been born smart enough and competitive enough and right-brained enough to merit a place in the academy.

  She only wished she could apply those same qualities to her personal life.

  For the first time she allowed herself to say the word out loud: “Divorce.

  She hated the sound of it. For one thing, it signified failure. For Sara Lange, failure was not an option in any endeavor.

  Even more important was the sense of being not quite complete without him in her life. With Hugh, she never had to explain herself. He always understood what she meant rather than what she said. He was the only person, come to think of it, who understood her relationship with her mother. She wasnt sure she understood it herself, but somehow Hugh got it.

  Was it only geography that kept them from making it work? No. He worked for a government agency she despised in principle and in practice. She worked for a government service that replaced its personnel around the country and around the world in two- and three-year rotations.

  She said the word out loud again. “Divorce.

  It sounded just as bad as it had the first time, and she was therefore relieved when the quick rap sounded at her door. “XO?

  “Yes? she said.

  The phone rang at the same time Cliff Skulstad stuck his head in with something perilously close to a grin on his face. “Weve got an incursion.

  She unhooked the bungee cord that kept her chair from sliding away from her desk with the roll of the ship and was on her way to the bridge before the last word was out of his mouth, with not even a backward look at the screen of her computer and the unopened letter in her in-box.

  THE BRIDGE WAS SILENT but for the whisper of static coming out of the radio and the sound of two hundred and eighty-four feet of metal hull slicing through a two-foot chop. There was a very slight long swell beneath the chop, not enough to slow them down and certainly not enough to cause more than the most imperceptible roll in a vessel with a fifty-foot beam and a three-thousand-ton displacement. The Sojourner Truth was a great ride, even in the Bering Sea, also known as the Birthplace of Winds, where boxcar lows beginning in Kamchatka regularly turned it into a roller coaster for every ship within five hundred miles.

  A swift glance at the captains expression told Sara that this was one of the times when he was going to compensate for his lack of height with a serious display of attitude. The helmsman, who looked as if hed lied about his age to get into the Coast Guard, and not that long ago, either, appeared to be oblivious to the scowling visage glowering out of the captains chair, but Sara noticed that his knuckles were white on the small brass wheel. She met his eyes briefly, and winked.

  Seaman Eugene Razo eased off on his grip. He felt better with the XO on the bridge. They all did. It reflected no doubts about their commanding officers abilities, it was just that Captain Lowe had a very low tolerance for ineptitude and while Seaman Razo was among the fortunate who had escaped the recent conflagration in Dutch Harbor, he had a lively sense of self-preservation and serious plans for his future that didnt include official reprimands in his personnel file. He had selected the Attu loran station as his first duty station so hed have top priority for his next assignment, which meant he could select a ship out of his hometown of Kodiak with a fair chance of getting it. It was his firm intention to run through every black, orange, and white hull in the Kodiak fleet for the next sixteen years, until he retired at full pay to take over his fathers halibut charter business in Larsen Bay. He was engaged to his high school sweetheart, at present studying for her teaching degree at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She would graduate this year and they would be married out of her fathers house in Chiniak in June.

  He stole a side
ways glance at Lieutenant Commander Lange, standing with her shoulders squared, her hands clasped lightly in the small of her back, swaying slightly with the roll of the ship. She was taller than he was, he guessed right around five eight, with a lush figure that the baggy fleece uniform did absolutely nothing to hide. It was generally agreed among the enlisted men that Lange was the officer theyd most like to be marooned on a loran station with, but mostly they thought of her as a good officer, smart without being arrogant, friendly without playing favorites, and a good leader without descending into tyranny. She was also, they all knew, targeted for promotion. Shed have her own two-eighty sooner or later. Razo wouldnt mind serving under her when that happened, so long as her ship was stationed in Kodiak.

  Sara, unaware of the Eugene Razo Seal of Approval shed just been awarded, saw Razos hands relax and faced forward again to watch the bow cleave white water against a gray sky. The old man was a good sailor, but he lacked anything approaching a recognizable social skill. Of course, that was why God made executive officers. She grinned to herself and bent a weather eye forward.

  There was a ten-knot wind blowing out of the southeast, whipping the surface of the water into a froth of stiff white peaks. She raised binoculars to search the horizon. Still nothing. She consulted the display hanging from the overhead, with the Sojourner Truth in the middle of the screen and a series of dots in the upper-left-hand section of the screen moving in an elongated circular route the eastern edge of which defined the Maritime Boundary Line.

  There were a lot of dots. She counted eleven, each of them representing a Russian seafood processor with one- and two-mile-long nets dragging the bottom of the ocean trailing behind, some of which played mother ship to smaller vessels with their own nets out.

  One of the dots was way over the line, with another dot coming up fast behind her from the south.

  “Wheres our target, Tommy? the captain said.

  “They should be in sight at any moment, Captain, Tommy Penn replied.

  “Good. The heavy beat of all four Caterpillar generators and both propellers pushed the Sojourner Truth along at fifteen-point-two knots, better than anything any of the rust buckets ahead of them could do. Sara had cause to know. It had become almost a habit to head out on patrol and arrive just in time to see the Russian fish processor Pheodora slide over the line from American waters to Russian.

  It happened once and if you were charitable you might think it was a mistake, that the man on watch wasnt paying attention to his GPS, and okay, youd let the incursion ride this time. It was not the Coast Guards job to interfere with fishers going about the lawful business of making a living.

  A second incursion, you could allow for wind and tide and swell and chop to shove the boat off course. Even a third time, you could make allowances for equipment breaking down. But crew carelessness, bad weather, and instrument failure did not explain five incursions. There wasnt any excuse, really; the Russians had established a 1.5-mile buffer zone on their side of the line in which no vessels were supposed to fish, specifically to limit the incursions that precipitated incidents like this one.

  All five times the Pheodora s skipper had been cagey enough to keep the ship within three hundred yards of the line, so that if a Coast Guard C-130 Hercules on patrol or a helo launched from a cutter appeared on the horizon, one kick to the rudder put the vessels bow back over. Given the conservative nature of American interdiction on the MBL, that was enough to cause the Coast Guard to back off.

  This, however, was the Pheodora s sixth incursion in two patrols in one calendar year, and this time shed been caught two miles into American territorial waters. Her gear was out, although the pilot of the Coast Guard Here who had first spotted her had informed them that she was pulling it in fast. The Sojourner Truth had launched her helo immediately and the Here had handed off hot pursuit and continued on its patrol.

  Captain Lowe was a prudent man nearing retirement, not known as a cowboy, but it was obvious to all of them that he had had just about enough. The last time theyd threatened a boarding. This time, Sara was pretty sure, they would be boarding the Theodora, arresting the crew, confiscating the catch, and taking command of the vessel to bring it into Dutch Harbor and turn it over to the federal authorities. Where, Sara very much hoped, it would be sold at auction to the highest bidder and the resulting monies invested in some worthy government agency, like, say, the U.S. Coast Guard.

  “What the The captain was training a pair of binoculars on the horizon. “Whats that?

  It was, of all things, a freighter.

  The entire bridge crew stared. The chief put what they were all thinking into words. “What is she doing way the hell and gone up here? Especially at this time of year?

  She wouldnt have been such an odd sight if theyd spotted her four degrees south, where freighters and containerships hid from weather north of the Aleutians year round on the great circle route between Asia and North America, but here, crossing the Doughnut Hole, she was as exotic as a scarlet macaw in Kaktovik. She rode low in the water, indicating a full load. She had cargo containers strapped three high to her foredeck. Everything looked well secured, which made Sara think well of her master. The weather was clear enough to read the name lettered on her bow.

  “Ops, the captain said.

  “On it, Captain, Ops said, busy on the computer. A moment later he said, “Their IRCS checks out, captain. Its the Star of Bali, a tramp freighter. Panamanian-owned.

  “Give them a call.

  Ops reached for the mike. “U.S. Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth to freighter the Star of Bali.

  There was a momentary silence, then response. The voice was male, with an Indian accent that stumbled badly over the cutters name. “Cutter Sojourner Truth, freighter the Star of Bali. We read you loud and clear, over.

  “Yeah, Ops said into the mike, “freighter the Star of Bali, cutter Sojourner Truth, no problems here. Just wondering what youre doing so far north.

  “Coast guard, Star of Bali, we running from weather, over.

  “Any farther north and you wont have to worry about the weather, youll have to worry about the ice, Ops said. He keyed the mike. “Yeah, Star of Bali, cutter Sojourner Truth, understood. What was your last port of call, whats your next port of call, and what cargo are you carrying?

  “Coast guard, Star of Bali, our last port of call was Petropavlovsk, our next port Seward is. Our cargo is steel and drilling equipment.

  Ops looked at the captain, who looked at Sara, who shrugged. “No reason to stop them, sir.

  “No. The captain nodded at Ops.

  u Star of Bali, cutter Sojourner Truth, good copy. Be advised, there is another storm headed out of the southeast, rated hurricane force.“

  “Cutter Sojourner Truth, Star of Bali, many thanks for the advisory. Star of Bali out.

  “Safe journey, Star of Bali, Sojourner Truth out. Ops looked at Sara. “It takes all kinds.

  “That it does, the captain said. “Back to business, people.

  “Aye, Captain.

  The radio erupted with an excited call from the lookout on watch above at the same time Chief Edelen said in a voice that was not quite a shout, u Pheodora in sight, sir!“

  Everyone who had them raised binoculars.

  The Pheodoras rust-streaked hull was plowing along at full throttle, as evidenced by the wake boiling up from the stern, but the Russian processors single-screw diesel was no match for the Sojourner Truths two, and they were closing fast. The helo, an orange flea to the Pheodoras large bulk, was hovering on the starboard side of their bridge fifty feet off the water.

  “Tell the helo, the captain said.

  Ops reached for the mike on the radio with the secure operations channel. “Coast Guard helo six five two seven, Ops said, “this is the cutter Sojourner Truth. We have the target in sight, I say again, we have the Pheodora in sight.

  “Two seven, Sojourner Truth, roger that. We have hailed them and requested that they heave to. They have not
responded.

  “Roger that, Ops said, and looked at the captain.

  District, as fed up as the captain at the repeated incursions, had already given Truth the go-ahead. Captain Lowe nodded. Ops nodded back and said into the microphone, “Russian fishing vessel Pheodora, this is the United States Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth. You have intruded into American territorial waters and are in violation of the Maritime Boundary Line. Reduce speed and prepare to be boarded.

  They waited. There was no noticeable reduction in the Pheodoras speed. The captains mouth thinned. Sara saw it and rejoiced inwardly. Ops was grinning openly, and the bridge exuded an air of taut expectation. Partly it was a desire to do good to wipe out the Dutch Harbor debacle, and partly it was delight at the unexpected gift handed to them by this patrol that none of them had wanted to go on.

  It was also the John Wayne reflex, that intrinsically American instinct to chase after the bad guy, the chance to wear the white hat, the unmistakable thrill of the cops-and-robbers chase that came so seldom into the daily routine of their patrols. Sara bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning back at Ops.

  Ops keyed the mike to repeat the message and at the same moment the secure channel erupted into life again. “Sojourner Truth, Sojourner Truth, this is Coast Guard Hercules aircraft one seven five two, come in.

  Ops raised an eyebrow at Sara and said into the mike, “Go ahead, five two.

  The Heres aviators voice was terse. “Truth, weve got another incursion about five miles south of your location.

  The captain swung around in his chair and stared at Ops. “Here five two, how far inside the line?

  “Sojourner Truth, five two, this ones a little over two miles inside.

  “Son of a bitch, the captain said, frightening everyone within earshot. Captain David Josephus Lowe, officer, family man, and deacon of the Kodiak First Baptist Church, never, ever swore.