Bunker 01 - Slipknot (24 page)

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to safety. The loop of slack wire sprang from the deck before Lincoln could tighten the brake. The result was a bird-nested mess of backlashed steel cable jamming the starboard winch.

“Now we’re fucked!” Alex yelled. “What’s the insurance chick’s next plan?” He put his head between his knees and began to vomit.

“Back to plan A,” said Lincoln calmly and loudly. “We’ll get rid of the gear. That’ll buy us some time. Get the hacksaw, George.”

“Roger.” George opened the closet door behind the winch. A gust of wind blew half a sleeve of Ritz crackers out and overboard, where they immediately disappeared in the white shock of a breaking wave. The wind was relentless and showed no sign of flunking out. The seas were building, and daylight was diminishing. At this point, our chances were better adrift, even if upside down. We were running out of time.

“What about cutting torches?” I asked. “That would be a lot faster than a hacksaw.”

“I lent them to a friend,” Lincoln replied.

“Some friend,” George added as he stumbled out of the locker, hacksaw in hand. The blade was rusty and apparently not very sharp; he spent several painful minutes giving short strokes back and forth across the cable, which refused even the slight scar for the effort exerted. Lincoln took a turn with the saw as George rested, Alex vomited, and I wondered how much longer it would be before a plate dropped from the hull as waves continued to hammer the
Sea Hunter
.

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“Where’s my cell phone?” I asked George, who was now standing beside me.

“In the cubby above my bunk. The battery is dead.”

I began to tremble with cold and offered to take a turn with the hacksaw, thinking the work would warm me up. The men refused my help, but each insisted I take their foul-weather clothes. I reluctantly took a jacket from George and pants from Lincoln and struggled into them between blasts.

George then directed me to his sock drawer and a dry pair of boots in the fo’c’sle. Lincoln instructed me to grab the life vests above the galley table. Their concern for me seemed to disgust Alex, who mumbled something derogatory about

“the insurance chick” between bouts of dry heaves and rants about our plight.

I timed the opening of the fo’c’sle door carefully and managed to secure it behind me without allowing any water to enter. I hurried into dry socks and boots twice the size of my feet, the fear of being trapped inside pushing me to hustle back to the cold, wet deck. I took a few seconds to retrieve my cell phone, on the outside chance that the battery had one more call in it. Dropping the phone into my soggy messenger bag, I grabbed the only two life preservers above the table and scrambled back to the deck, where Lincoln was working intensely with the saw. “Put one of those on and give the other to Alex,” he commanded.

As I handed the orange flotation vest to Alex, he ripped it from my grasp and threatened, “If my father drowns because you’re wearing his life vest, you’re dead meat.” I knew he meant it, but I also knew not to argue with the captain. If we

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spent any time in the frigid water, the vests would only ensure that the buoyed bodies were found first. Snapping closed the two plastic buckles and tightening the vest’s straps around my torso until my ribs screamed in pain, I gazed over the stern, wondering what else I could do to help with the battle.

Something caught my eye. The weather conditions limited visibility, and the seventy-knot salt spray felt like torture and made focusing nearly impossible. Squinting and blinking, I searched the horizon and thought I saw a boat, but before I could be sure, it dropped out of sight in a deep valley among the mountain range of waves marching toward us.

When it rode up on the next cresting peak, it was close enough for me to read the name on the bow. “Look! It’s the
Fearless
!” I shouted, and pointed to where the boat quickly settled back out of view.

“It’s about time,” George said.

“Wait up here until they get close enough to throw a life ring over,” Lincoln ordered. “Alex will go first, then Jane, then George, then me. No one jumps without the ring.” He was calm and seemingly relieved. At that moment I knew his plan had been premeditated. Of course, I thought, they had planned to scuttle the
Sea Hunter
. That explained the absence of so many essentials, such as a life raft, acetylene torches, or electronics. The boat had been stripped of most anything of value. That also explained why George had tried to talk his nephew out of making this trip, and why there were only two life preservers. Lucky for me, I thought, Quin had finally come to our rescue, living up to what I suspected was his part in an insurance scam.

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It would not be an easy transfer. Getting and maintaining a position close enough to reach us with a hand-thrown life ring in this violent wind would require exceptional boat-handling skills. In all of the scheming they had done to pull off an intentional sinking, they surely hadn’t planned for the weather to be this bad. But the convenient storm would leave less room for suspicion and accusations.

As the
Fearless
approached our stern, she veered right and passed close to our starboard side. “What’s he doing?” asked Alex.

“He has to turn around and come alongside with his bow into the wind to keep control,” Lincoln answered confidently.

As
Fearless
surfed by on top of a wave that nearly capsized us, I saw Quin’s son, Eddie, looking at us through binoculars from the open wheelhouse door. When the waist-deep water drained to below my knees, I dared to release one hand from the security of the winch and waved. Eddie returned a tentative raising of an arm. Then a hand—I assumed his father’s—

reached out, grabbed his shoulder, and yanked him into the wheelhouse. The door closed. We watched
Fearless
shrink in the distance.

14

“he doesn’t see us,” cried Alex. “Dad! Do something!”

We watched the stern of our savior fade into the distance and gathering dusk until a cable supporting the main boom parted, sending the end to crash down onto the net drum.

With it plummeted my optimism that the
Sea Hunter
would withstand whatever remained of the beating Mother Nature was dishing out. In complete desperation, I tried my cell phone, but no go. George held his transistor radio at arm’s length and twisted it at different angles to the sky to catch a weather report. When a voice promised more of the same, George quickly stifled it. Three heads hung in moods of sheer doom and helplessness. The fourth, belonging to the captain, was busy working with the few teeth that remained of the hacksaw.

“Don’t worry, Alex, dear. The wind is coming around. It won’t blow much longer,” Lincoln vowed. He shared a look with his brother that I was sure was meant to keep George quiet; then Lincoln added, “We’ll be fine.” Back and forth he swept the saw blade tirelessly. Just as I’d dragged my psyche out of the doldrums to think again about what I could possi-s l i p k n o t

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bly do to help, Lincoln said, “Alex, you and Jane go find some buckets. We’ll need to bail the engine room as soon as we’re free of this gear.”

“Buckets? You’re fucking kidding!” Alex replied. He wedged himself back behind the winch and began to sob un-controllably. “We’re going to die aboard this fuckin’ wreck!”

Lincoln’s resolve spurred me to action. “This chick ain’t going down!” I defied the sullen brat. “Come on, pull yourself together! Let’s find something to bail with.” Fully aware of the volume of water in the engine room, I was skeptical about bailing by hand, but I kept that to myself as I entered the fo’c’sle in search of anything that might be useful in dewatering. Ahead of the bunk area was a door that led to a small storage room in the boat’s forepeak. I shuffled through boxes and shelves of years of accumulated boat junk and didn’t find anything I considered handy for ridding the engine room of water—no hand pumps, no lengths of hose.

Stacked on the deck were three clean white five-gallon buckets rigged with tiny aeration pumps and tubes. I figured this must be how Nick Dow had transported the crabs to his aquarium. Leaving the aeration equipment in the forepeak, I grabbed the buckets and hurried back to the main deck to await Lincoln’s next order.

The men’s determination with the saw finally paid off: The wire was parted with help from a wall of green water that exploded on the stern. We all waited, silent with our own prayers, to see how the
Sea Hunter
would react to being set free from her shackles to the bottom. She wallowed up and down a couple of times, then was spun around ninety degrees

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so that the wind and sea were now on her port beam. The night was pitch dark but for a bit of hazy moonlight sifting down through the wind-driven spray, so it was difficult to decipher whether our new predicament was more or less dire.

A wave waltzed effortlessly aboard over the port rail, totally swamping the deck. When the water receded over the rail, I thought we might roll bottom up. But we didn’t. I felt the port side lifted on the back of the next wave, tipping the contents of the bilge and pouring it to the leeward side.

“Hold on!” yelled George and Lincoln in unison as the
Sea
Hunter
lurched to an even keel, then landed heavily on her starboard rail, sending the end of the boom skittering to the other side of the net drum with a gut-pulling slat. Again I thought we might roll completely over. Again we did not.

What remained of the broken port outrigger dangled in the water off the
Sea Hunter
’s bow by one skinny guy wire that had yet to give up. Fascinating, I thought briefly, that the cable of the smallest diameter had outlasted those of greater girth and breaking strength. With that tenacious wire in mind, I became the top link in the chain of three that com-prised a bucket brigade working doggedly through the night to reduce the water in the engine room to a level that would enable us to attempt to restart the main engine.

Lincoln stood in seawater up to his midthigh and scooped with five-gallon buckets, handing them full over his head to George, who was positioned halfway up the ladder. George then passed the buckets up to me on deck, where I dumped closer to four gallons after all the sloshing and spilling along the way. After I’d emptied the buckets, I had to get them back s l i p k n o t

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down the chain to be filled again. Lincoln and George changed positions every fifty buckets or so, as being the middle man necessitated working with one hand while holding on to the ladder with the other. The engine room door was secured open in a way that did not allow enough reaction time when a deck swamping was imminent. I couldn’t close it fast enough to prohibit part of what washed aboard in our deep-est rolls from seeping down and refilling what we were determined to empty. In true “two steps forward, one step back”

mode, we were an obstinate team. Alex emerged from the fo’c’sle once to take a leak and quickly slunk back to where I imagined he sat and waited to die.

By the time daylight trickled over the eastern horizon, George and Lincoln were exhausted and switching bailing stations at ten-bucket intervals. A somewhat triumphant report from the bottom of the chain described the depth of water there as ankle-deep. The stubborn stay wire holding the port outrigger at last gave way as the relentless sea succeeded in pulling the cable’s grip from the bow one finger at a time. The loss of weight with the release of the wire pinned the
Sea Hunter
in her starboard list even with the reduction of what the bilge once held in water. There had been little conversation among the three links during the all-night bucket brigade. I supposed talk was unnecessary and kept dumping buckets as they appeared at my feet. My mind wandered briefly to my favorite daydream as I dumped buckets. If, by some miracle, I survived this, I swore I’d play golf in Scotland someday.

Numbed to the biting wind and seas that threatened our

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tenuous stability, I had stopped warning Lincoln and George to hold on with every rogue wave hours ago, as even shouting was getting difficult. The wind continued from the same direction, and the seas grew to new heights. Occasional waves crested and broke so high in the
Sea Hunter
’s rigging that no antenna had been spared by midmorning. When the radar dome was ripped from the top of an A-frame bracket, it swung in the wind by its thick cord, smashing against the steel bracket until its entire housing had been shattered to bits that flew downwind like potato chips.

Though I was on the verge of physical collapse, unwaver-ing determination kept me in pace with the men until they ascended from the dark and joined me on deck. George and I stared at the captain, waiting for orders. Lincoln scanned the horizon thoughtfully. “Still southeast,” he said with a hint of discouragement. He took a deep breath that appeared to bolster his courage and continued, “Well, the weather hasn’t improved, but I’d say our situation has. George, see if you can get an update on the storm while I gather flashlights and tools.” George did as he was told, this time being careful to keep the radio close to his ear, I supposed for my own protection if the truth was that we had not seen the worst of this system. Lincoln soon returned with a canvas bag that held an assortment of rusty tools and a single functioning flashlight.

“Any good news?” he asked his brother.

Speaking directly to Lincoln and over me, as if I were a small child who couldn’t possibly understand, George replied, “An intensifying low is moving
slowly
to the east.” He looked as though he’d like to cover my ears before finishing.

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“They’re calling for storm-force winds out of the northwest on the backside until midnight.”