Bunker 01 - Slipknot (21 page)

Fortunately, I had downloaded the photos into my laptop for the real job. So all was not lost.

I moved quickly through a short gangway and entered the galley. Dow had been the
Sea Hunter
’s cook, so this seemed the logical place to begin my search. Not quite daring to turn on the overhead lights, I used my penlight. Climbing onto the galley table and across a counter, I pushed ceiling tiles up and aside and back into place one at a time until I had disturbed years of accumulated dust and spiderwebs over the galley area. Next I opened, emptied, and refilled every cupboard. I disassembled and reassembled the stovetop and thoroughly scoured the oven, freezer, and refrigerator. The bench seats fore and aft of the galley table functioned as storage lockers where canned goods were stowed. Just as I removed the cushioned cover from the aft bench, I heard voices. Listening closely, I determined that they were adult and getting closer. In any other compartment of a boat, there

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would have been a number of places to hide. But in the galley, my choices were few.

Suddenly, the deck lights came on, sending a beam through the fo’c’sle doorway and directly at me. Someone was aboard!

Diving in with Dinty Moore and Campbell’s, I pulled the seat cushion over the top, leaving a small crack to peek through.

Two sets of legs entered the galley, walking along the ribbon of light streaming from outside. The overhead lights came on, fully illuminating George and Alex. George tossed a duffel bag into the bottom bunk. “Besides,” George said,

“it’ll only be two or three days. Stay home. I can handle the deck alone.” He sat on the bench opposite my cramped quarters.

“I need the cash for basketball camp next week,” Alex replied as he stuffed a canvas bag into a forepeak locker and kicked the door closed with what looked like a size-twelve Nike Air. George brushed some crumbs off the galley table and watched his disgruntled nephew stomp and slam in disgust from under his faded Red Sox cap. “Two or three days of gutting fish, eating out of a can, and sleeping in a dead man’s bunk.” With an attitude as black as his pin-straight hair, Alex unzipped a duffel bag with strength enough to have torn it open. He yanked a handle on a drawer beneath a bunk; it opened partway and caught. The drawer resisted a healthy shove and a sharp nudge with Alex’s knee. It refused to budge either in or out—it appeared the drawer was off its track. After struggling unsuccessfully, Alex finally gave up with a heartfelt “Fuck” and began stowing socks and underwear in another drawer.

s l i p k n o t

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George inhaled deeply and audibly. His bushy reddish eyebrows peaked into arches above large blue eyes. “Well, la-tee-da! Is that spring-fresh Tide with bleach alternative I smell?” he asked, playfully teasing Alex.

His nephew shot George a look of impatience and quickly covered a filthy mattress with a crisp white sheet. “Fuck you.”

“Hey! Watch your language. We don’t talk like that aboard the
Sea Hunter.
” George scowled. I was barely breathing with anticipation of a chance to be alone with the jammed drawer.

“Oh, yeah. I can see that. Only gentlemen aboard this fine craft,” Alex remarked snidely as he drew a bony index finger across a cupboard door over the stove, leaving a furrow in the grease. “This piece of shit ought to be burned.”

“Hey! Come on. Lighten up.” George removed his cap, exposing a totally bald head above his thick fringe of hair, which now looked like a blond wreath. “Where’s the happy-go-lucky kid I used to know?”

Alex smirked. “I’m seventeen. I’m
supposed
to be miserable.” Brushing by his uncle toward the fo’c’sle door, he stopped to slap the top of George’s head with two sharp smacks. “No wonder I’m depressed! I hope this isn’t what’s meant by a bright future.” Alex gave the shiny skull another tap. “Put your fuckin’ hat on. The glare is killing me!” He disappeared with another warning from George about his language.

The canned beef stew began to feel quite uncomfortable under the weight of my upper body. If I shifted at all, I stood the risk of being detected. So I waited patiently, curled on my right side and looking directly at George through the slit of

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light between the bench and the seat top. When he finally stood and put on his hat, I held my breath. He opened the top of the bench where he had been sitting and shuffled through the contents, which sounded to me like more cans.

As he replaced the cushion and turned toward my hiding spot, I imagined my predicament couldn’t get any worse. My stomach turned, and I broke into a sweat as he reached for the seat cushion above me. “Hey, George,” Alex called from the deck. “Dad wants you to start the generator.”

“Coming right up!” George replied and pulled his hand from the edge of the cushion. As soon as he was gone, I pushed the cover off the bench and climbed out. Ignoring the cramp in my calf, I hustled to work on the stubborn drawer.

This had to be it, I thought as I wiggled and jiggled the drawer back and forth, up and down, a fraction of an inch.

This was the logical place for Dow’s stash. Men, as a rule, don’t touch other men’s underwear.

The generator engine started, and the lights went out and then back on. I knew I was running out of time, but I couldn’t leave the boat without whatever was keeping this drawer from cooperating. Kneeling down, I forced my right hand into the narrow opening beneath the drawer. Yes! There was a bulge secured to the underside of the wooden panel. I picked at the edge of what felt like duct tape until I pulled a ten-inch strip from the opening. Reaching in again and feeling my way to another edge, I pulled and released a second strip. The bulge dropped, allowing me to remove the drawer completely.

There on the deck, within the cavity, was a package wrapped in plastic and sealed with clear tape. I thrust the package into s l i p k n o t

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my messenger bag and quickly replaced the drawer, making sure to jam it off its metal track. Now all I needed to do was escape before the lines were cast off the dock.

Poking my head around the corner, I saw Alex and George on deck. With all the engine noise, I couldn’t hear what they were talking about. As I contemplated my options, black boots appeared at the top of the wheelhouse ladder. Lincoln!

Without a second’s deliberation, I slid down the ladder to the engine room fireman-style. I needed time to think. As I ducked out of sight behind the massive diesel engine, a black boot stepped down onto the top rung of the ladder and was followed by another on the rung below it. Shit! I flipped an extremely heavy deck plate on edge, which gave me access to a bilge compartment. I stepped down into it, trying to disappear. I slipped on the greasy steel hull and fell into the hole, and the deck plate came crashing down onto my head. Out cold.

When I came to, it didn’t take me long to collect myself. I knew exactly where I was and how I had gotten there. The only thing I didn’t know was how long I had been unconscious. There was not a single ray of light to be seen through the gaps in the deck plates above me, so I assumed Lincoln had turned off the lights and returned to the wheelhouse. A slow, rolling motion confirmed that my situation had indeed gotten worse. I was now an unintentional stowaway aboard a vessel heading offshore that was captained by a man who might well be a murderer.

I fumbled through my bag for a light and realized that I must have left it in the galley. Of course, I owned the cheapest

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possible wristwatch on the market, so it did not have an illumination feature. I did recall from the galley conversation that the voyage would last only two or three days. Hell, that was nothing, I thought. I’d spent longer durations in worse places.

I had completed a two-month tour of duty in the Everglades, sleeping in a tent. Bugs, alligators . . . now, that was torture.

Then there was the failed drug bust when I barricaded myself inside a dog kennel to keep from being eaten by angry pit bulls. I was so hungry by the time my partner showed up, I was ready to eat the Purina.

But this wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind for my first all-nighter with Lincoln. I would have to be more careful about what I wished for. I had what I came for, so I could afford to be patient. The pounding in my head indicated a sure concussion. Stretching out along the turn of the bilge above the keel, I lay uncomfortably against the cold, damp steel hull and didn’t have to worry about falling asleep.

My resolve to remain entombed in this greasy steel box for what could be forty-eight hours was being steadily sapped by hunger, headache, and shivering muscle spasms. I measured the first six hours in two-hour intervals between routine checks by captain and crew. Like clockwork, the lights came on every two hours for approximately one minute, just time enough for me to stare at my wrist and for whoever was on watch to ensure that all was well in the engine compartment.

The next twelve hours crept along in three-hour epochs marked by a slowing of the main engine and growling of hydraulic power. I must have dozed a bit between tows.

I knew the drill. Although we’d never come far enough s l i p k n o t

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north to fish for cod, my mentor, father figure, and fishing captain had dragged me along on every boat he’d captained during my summer vacations for eight years. I had worked aboard a number of stern trawlers similar to the
Sea Hunter
.

So although I was in the bilge, I was acutely aware of all activity above. I imagined the routine, timed the engine room checks, and knew within minutes when the hydraulics would again engage. My desire to climb out of the bilge grew with my hunger and the onset of hypothermia. My best bet was to emerge at night, just prior to the hydraulics signaling time for the fishing net to be hauled aboard. It was risky, but I had to make my move while I still had some wits about me.

The thought of food bolstered my diminished strength and allowed me to push aside the deck plate. Stiff and sore, I struggled out and slid the steel plate back into position. As if I’d gone from refrigerator to oven, the temperature gradient between under and over the deck plate was extreme. The heat from the engines, even with the fumes of diesel and exhaust, was like a delightful injection.

Desperate for food and a new hiding spot, I hurried up the ladder and into the galley. I counted on my past experience to know the crew was sound asleep. The deck light through the fo’c’sle door was adequate for me to find half a sleeve of Ritz crackers on the table and a partially eaten breast of fried chicken in the trash can. I couldn’t open the refrigerator for a drink, for fear of the interior light waking George or Alex. So I drank from the kitchen faucet. Rusty and stagnant-tasting, it was all I had to hydrate. I forced several gulps.

Out through the fo’c’sle door with my stash, I scurried

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like a rat to find a dark hole. The engine slowed suddenly.

Opening a door ahead of the port winch, I stepped into a booth-shaped space and latched the door behind me just as the hydraulics engaged. Perfectly cozy, I thought, as I realized I had stumbled upon a storage locker through which ran the exhaust stack from the engine room. There was no room to lie down in my clandestine closet, but I could stand or sit, and ventilation grates in the door allowed a full view of the work deck. After my time in solitary confinement, this would be downright sociable. I was sure I could endure a day or two here until we were back ashore.

“Haul back! Let’s go, boys,” Lincoln called through the open fo’c’sle door as I gnawed cartilage from the chicken breast. The captain engaged the main winches, released their brakes—port, then starboard—and hurried back topside, where I knew he manned engine and hydraulic controls at an outdoor station aft of the wheelhouse.

The winches turned, winding two steel cables out of the ocean and onto their drums. As the wires rubbed against flanges, surface rust flaked and fell to the deck, forming small piles of brown scales and dust that lay under each winch, undisturbed in the absence of even the slightest sea breeze.

The groaning of the winches as they strained to pull the wire and accompanying trawl, consisting of net and doors off the ocean’s bottom, was like spurs prompting the crew of two to hustle into oilskins. Both men squinted in the bright deck lights following the nap they had just been awakened from. George was ready first. He grabbed the five-foot steel steering bar from its resting place against the port rail and took a position facing s l i p k n o t

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the port winch. The steering bar was to be used crowbar-fashion to help guide, or fairlead, the wire onto the winch evenly, keeping it from building up on one side or the other.

Alex was seconds behind, taking his position with an identical piece of steel to guide the starboard wire.

The lack of wind and apparent slack tide made the job of fairleading the cables nearly effortless. I watched as I ate crackers. The two men stood steadily on the deck, which moved predictably in the gentle swell. The men’s rapt attention moved back and forth from winches to the large single-sheaved bollards that hung high above each stern quarter and through which the cables traveled as they were slowly hauled from either side of the boat’s churning wake. Salt water trickled from the bollards back into the ocean in a steady stream. Bright orange spray-painted marks were loudly noted at twenty-five-fathom intervals by each man as the marks reached bollards.

Subtracting twenty-five from the total set overboard three hours ago, the men kept a running tally of the length of wire remaining to be hauled before the doors and net would break the surface.

The minute or so between sets of marks was filled with George’s words of caution to his nephew as the cables snapped with increasing tension on each rotation of the drums. They needed to watch themselves and each other, he warned. He told a gory tale of a crewman who had somehow been pulled into the winch while his shipmate was fetching coffee or using the head. By the time the horror was discovered, the body had been around the winch several times, each wrap of wire severing another piece of the man. Alex appeared to have