Bunker 01 - Slipknot (23 page)

The bag was strapped and pulled up the ramp. George wound the tail line around the cleat.
Pop!
Out onto the deck fell the usual handful of cod and one giant bluefin tuna. The tuna, seven feet long and as big around as a barrel, flopped around the deck frantically. Alex let out an excited whoop and mounted the magnificent fish, riding it like a bucking bronco. “Yee-ha!” Alex yelled, circling an imaginary lasso above his right shoulder. “This fucker’s got to go eight hundred pounds! What a beast! Twenty bucks a pound—yee-ha!

Pay dirt! Head her to the barn, old man. Alex honey is in the money!” He dismounted and bowed low, like a triumphant s l i p k n o t

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matador. His uncle laughed hysterically at the antics, and I fought the urge to let out a whoop myself.

“Okay, boys. Get that fish overboard before someone gets hurt,” Lincoln called from above.

“Right, boss,” responded George as he attempted to herd the silver and blue monster toward the stern.

Alex stood, dumbfounded. “What do you mean? What are you doing? This is a godsend! Let’s go home.” His voice cracked nearly to a whine.

“I’m sorry, Alex, but we don’t have a permit for tuna.

We’ll have to release it. Give your uncle a hand before someone gets hurt. Come on, boys. Two more tows.” Lincoln sounded less than enthusiastic.

In what appeared to be beyond mere immature frustra-tion, Alex picked the steering bar from the deck at his feet, raised it high in the air, and brought it down at full strength directly into the tuna’s skull. “Fuck!” he screamed. The fish quivered and then laid motionless, its head badly smashed.

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stunned, i remained as still as the dead tuna. A sickening take on catch and release, I thought. My appetite for Ritz crackers disappeared with the fish as George slid it easily out the stern ramp. Alex’s violence went beyond the throes of youthful impetuosity. It hadn’t taken much to detonate this savage display. Lincoln and George appeared to be unmoved by the violence. Were they used to this sort of behavior?

They didn’t scold Alex. Did homicidal rages run in the family? And if an eight-hundred-pound lifeless mass could be so easily disposed of, why not an average man? The unbridled tantrum scared me back to the bilge, where I would patiently wait out the
Sea Hunter
’s fuel supply, out of the Aldridge boy’s range with the deadly steering bar.

The icy condensation trickled down the side of the hull and wicked into my shorts and T-shirt. The cold kept me alert, while my inner furnace was fueled by a desire to expose Dow’s murderer, whom I believed, now more than ever, was a deck above me.

I toyed with the hopeful possibility that Lincoln had changed his mind about making any more tows. The engine’s s l i p k n o t

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steady speed indicated that we were steaming back toward Green Haven. Just as I considered climbing out of the bilge for a peek around, the main engine slowed to an idle, and the hydraulics jolted me back to the reality that the captain was indeed leaving no stone unturned in his attempt to put a prof-itable trip aboard. The weather had deteriorated to some degree. Even from the short end of the pendulum here in the lowest part of the bilge, I felt a steeper angle in the roll and an occasional jarring slat of sea increasing with wind velocity. I sensed a course change after what I guessed was approximately an hour after the seas had picked up. The
Sea Hunter
was being driven directly into the wind and ramrodding into seas that seemed to be growing taller and farther apart. The main engine growled louder with more throttle; I imagined Lincoln had increased the RPMs in order to maintain the net’s optimum speed over ground in the worsening conditions.

Three hours into the tow, I was again resisting the urge to climb aboveboard, since the motion of the boat was becoming unbearable. It was difficult to brace myself from sliding fore and aft on the slick steel as the hull pitched up and over waves that were hitting directly on the
Sea Hunter
’s nose. The only consolation I could take from the beating was my assumption that the nasty weather would necessitate that this be the last tow. The hull dropped into a trough, leaving me hanging for a fraction of a second before it surfed back up the next crest and hit me hard enough to punch the breath from my lungs.

God, I thought, this would be a slow, painful death. One more shot like that, and I would have to risk detection.

The final blow, delivered seconds later by the unforgiving

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L i n d a G r e e n l a w

steel tomb, may have broken ribs. As I gathered my strength to push aside the plate above me, the engine sang out in what I thought must be full speed ahead, and I felt the boat fall off to starboard—the waves were now pushing on the port bow.

Far from comfortable but no longer in a life-threatening position, I nestled back against a frigid longitudinal I-beam and prayed for the hydraulics to signal the final haul back.

I imagined that the weather had become too severe for Lincoln to continue towing the net into, or even quartering, the seas. I sensed the boat’s motion running fully in the trough and then before the wind. The main engine’s throttle had been pulled back a bit, and I enjoyed the slow, deep roll, knowing that the end of the trip was near. The gentle push was followed by the glide of seas on stern and accompanied by a gradual slowing of the engine. It picked up my spirits as I realized that I would endure the bilge for only a few more hours. I waited with acute anticipation for the welcome sound of hydraulics engaging. I squeezed my messenger bag to support my burning rib cage. I hoped its contents held the evidence to unravel the twisted snarl of all I had encountered since moving north. But I knew that no matter what, I would have some explaining to do to Alice and Henry regarding my absence. I hoped we would reach shore after dark so that I might immediately sneak home, and no one would be the wiser. I wouldn’t have been missed by anyone other than the Vickersons. Audrey might have wondered where I’d been, but not to the point of hysterical concern or suspicion. Cal would need an explanation of my long-term parking and the Duster’s broken window. I appreciated the advantage I had s l i p k n o t

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gained by not allowing close relations to form. I had learned and relearned this: Questions and answers must be vague among mere acquaintances. I had learned that Mainers were, above all, polite. I didn’t feel the need to be totally honest with anyone. Not yet, anyway.

An abrupt stern-down lurch of the
Sea Hunter
, followed by the wallop of a wave slamming her aft port quarter, was disconcerting. This was not the usual dip-and-launch move of a boat towing before the wind. The sharp strike with no reaction of caroming down sea was an unnatural halt of the perpetual motion one takes for granted after days offshore.

Another shove on the stern with no equal and opposite thrust forward confirmed what I’d suspected: We were hung down, or anchored by the stern as the net and/or accompanying ground gear had fetched up solid on some protrusion from the ocean floor. The main engine slowed to an idle, and the hydraulics clunked on.

The next slap on the stern was more severe and made me quite nervous. A stream of cold water blasted me in the face, awakening my worst nightmare. The ocean was surging over the stern and had forced its way into the engine room, flowing down through the spaces between the steel plates above me. The water must be rising quickly in the bilge below me, I thought. Although it was pitch dark, my sensation of partial submersion illuminated the horror. Pushing on the plate above me was useless. The weight of the water coming down was too great for me to overcome. Remain calm, remain calm, I thought as my steel casket continued to fill.

The
Sea Hunter
rolled to starboard. The volume of water

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L i n d a G r e e n l a w

yet to seep into the bilge sloshed and held the boat in an extreme starboard list, not allowing her to right herself. Bracing against the port side of the steel plate with the back of my neck and shoulders, I pushed hard with my legs from a deep squat to a low crouch and managed to move the plate aside, leaving an access just wide enough to squeeze through. A murky halo of light dawdling at the top of the ladder on the opposite end of the engine room was my catalyst for action. I needed to reach the doorway through which the rogue waves had flooded the engine compartment before the crew was able to latch it closed in a somewhat belated attempt to keep what remained of the airspace below them watertight.

Creeping along the low side of the engine room, I leaned against the port fuel tank, knowing that if the
Sea Hunter
suddenly listed the other way, I could be catapulted into one of the moving parts of the engine, which was, miraculously, still running. I waded through knee-deep water to the bottom of the ladder and held on tight as another wave broke over the stern and rushed the length of the deck. A mass of green water darkened the doorway above me. Gripping the sides of the steel ladder, I ducked my head and held my breath. A del-uge of salt water sluiced down through the open door and onto my back, buckling my legs. When the water stopped, I raised my head to a shower of sparks on my immediate right.

I scrambled up the ladder and onto the deck, where the water that hadn’t found the engine room door was rushing in retreat out the stern ramp. The noise from the engine room fell silent to the peal of raging wind and sea as both engines were snuffed out.

s l i p k n o t

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Three men in full foul-weather gear held on to winches, wire, and gunwales to keep from washing overboard with the escaping water. When the deck had cleared, all three men seemed to notice me at once. I had a real visual of someone looking like he had seen a ghost. We all understood that this was no time for questions. “Close the doors!” Lincoln yelled into the howling wind and creaking rigging.

I secured the engine room door while George did the same with the fo’c’sle. Since the wind seemed to be increasing exponentially, I assumed we were in the middle of a squall that would subside quickly as it blew by and off to the east. Until then we had nothing better to do but hold on and hope not to roll over. I had experienced storms at sea while fishing with my mentor, but nothing as perilous as our present situation—full of water, no engine, and hung down by the stern. We shipped another mountainous sea. This one ripped Alex from the winch he had been hugging, sending him hard into the forward bulkhead and then adrift in the rushing tide until he was able to grab the base of the net drum as he sailed toward the open ramp. As soon as the water cleared again, Lincoln bolted to help his son back to a safer spot ahead of the port winch.

Wedged between the winch and the bulkhead, Alex cow-ered limply as his father and uncle discussed a game plan. A short debate over the merits of turning off the twelve-volt bilge pump in order to save the battery power for restarting the main engine, versus leaving the pump running to dewater the engine room, ended when Lincoln gave the order to save the batteries.

Commanding his son to get up to the wheelhouse, where he

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L i n d a G r e e n l a w

might be safer from the next onslaught of salt water, and to shut off the pump was met with no response. Alex, whose face was the color of baby aspirin, was clearly in shock and would be of no help to us.

“Where’s the switch?” I asked, ready to climb the ladder to the bridge.

“Starboard console panel.”

“Mayday call?” I asked.

“No radio.”

With no time to question Lincoln’s reply, I flew up the ladder and turned off the bilge pump circuit breaker. I agreed with the captain, not that anyone had asked my opinion, that we seemed to have survived the amount of water already aboard and that the batteries would be imperative for our eventual return to the safety of Green Haven. A quick glance around the bridge on my way back to the deck blew my mind. “No radio” was meant quite literally. There was no VHF radio—not even a bracket for one—anywhere. In fact, there was a complete absence of electronics altogether. Filing this to contemplate after we’d dodged sure death at sea, I charged back below to assist the men in maximizing our chances.

The wind was lashing at about fifty knots and sending every fourth or fifth sea barreling up the deck to sweep us off our feet and out the ramp to a salty grave. The port list was enough to bury the stabilizing outrigger, which looked as though it might be snapped like a pencil or torn from the hull at any moment. A stay wire strung from the end of the boom to the top of the mast slackened slightly with every downward s l i p k n o t

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mushing into each trough, and it hummed with tension like a muted guitar string at the top of each crest. I wondered how many times this would happen before the turnbuckles exploded, leaving us in even greater danger.

“We need to get rid of the gear. Man the port winch, George,” Lincoln hollered over the whistling and creaking as he positioned himself at the manual brake of the starboard winch.

“Wait!” I yelled. “If we let the net go, we’ll end up drifting with the wind on our beam. There’s a lot of water in the engine room. We could roll over!”

“It’s possible. But if she rolls over, she’ll stay afloat for a while. If we keep taking shots on the stern, she may begin to break up. She’ll go down like a rock,” Lincoln said emotion-lessly.

“Why not let one winch off, take the slack wire to the bow, and secure it there?” I asked. “Then let the other side go, and at least we’d be anchored by the bow. Wouldn’t that be safer?”

Lincoln thought about my suggestion as another sea crashed and flooded the deck. When the port outrigger came out of the water, the top stay parted with a stomach-wrenching
bang!
Lincoln said, “Okay, let’s try it. I’ll ease this side off.

George, as soon as there’s enough slack on deck, you pull it up to the bow and take a wrap around the bit.” George nodded, seemingly eager to take action. Lincoln carefully timed the relaxing of the brake between slams and managed to run a large coil of wire onto the deck. Just as George summoned the courage to dash to the open deck, the port wire parted in the bollard with a
twang,
sending him skittering back