The helicopter pilots took crew members for rides in port, racking up hours in the air and making friends with the crew as a bonus. “Nah,” Mark said, with the disdain only a career sailor could display toward an aviator. “I’ve been. Figured I’d let some of the newbies have a shot. You?”
“District is flying in for a briefing.”
Mark’s teeth flashed. “Oh yeah, I remember you and the captain talking about that the other day. What was it Winston Churchill said? Some thing about democracy being the worst system of government ever invented, except for all the others? Didn’t mention bureaucracy, did he.”
And he could read. Sara hardened her heart to this suddenly even more attractive man and did not reply. Instead, she thought about what she always thought about, her next duty assignment, and if she could finagle another tour in Alaska, or at the very least on the West Coast. She was terrified that she would be assigned to command in D.C. again, and was equally determined to foil, thwart, or otherwise avert that misguided effort on the part of her commanding officers if at all possible.
She’d been amazing lucky so far. The Sojourner Truth was her fifth boat in ten years, if you counted her summer on the Eagle, the Coast Guard’s tall ship, and she did. She would have her cutterman’s pin before the year was out, denoting seven years’ sea duty, which included two years’ command of a one-ten white hull out of Eureka, California. The time in D.C. had probably been essential in getting her the one-ten, she admitted, if only reluctantly and if only to herself, but shore duty was not what she had signed on for with the U.S. Coast Guard, and she made sure that every commanding officer she served under knew it. She’d been lucky in them, too, but then she worked hard at fostering the good opinion of her COs. When she had gotten the Sojourner Truth, she had showed up for duty a week early and spent that time learning every nook and cranny of the ex-navy salvage tug from bilge to crow’s nest and pestering the then first officer for every detail of his two years on board. When she had drained him dry, she started in on the engineer officer.
Blond hair, blue eyes, and long legs tended to engender thoughts other than her competency as a serving officer in the “always ready” service, but it helped that she deliberately desexed herself for each patrol, wearing her uniform a size too large, with a T-shirt and leggings beneath, no makeup, no jewelry, no perfume, no scented soaps or body lotions. Her hair she kept just long enough to wear in a ponytail, drawn through the band of the uniform baseball cap, which never left her head except at flight quarters, meals, and asleep in her bunk. She showered, she washed her clothes regularly, she was clean and neat-if only to keep herself from the unfortunate Seaman Rosenberg’s fate-but that was the most effort she made for her personal appearance under way.
“For crissake, Sara,” Hugh had said the first time he’d seen her in what she called her underway ensemble, “where are your breasts?” He’d pulled out the neck of the dark blue polar fleece jacket to check that they were still there, and that had been the end of that conversation.
She drew in a sharp breath. It had been a while since Hugh Rincon had managed to creep into her thoughts unawares, and now there he was again, the second time in five minutes. She wondered how he was, what he was doing, whether he was still in Anchorage or back at his desk in Langley, gathering gossip in the service of his country.
It was with heartfelt relief that she heard the marine band crackle into life. The voice was male and on the ragged edge of panic. “Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is the fishing vessel Arctic Wind, emergency, emergency, Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is the fishing vessel Arctic Wind, over.”
In a photo finish Sara beat both Mark and Tommy to the microphone mounted over the plot table. “Fishing vessel Arctic Wind, this is the Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth, go up to two-two-alpha.”
“Up to two-two-alpha, roger.”
She reached up and clicked the frequency knob on the radio to twenty-two-alpha, aware of an attentiveness on the bridge that had not been there a moment before. “Arctic Wind, this is cutter Sojourner Truth, how copy?”
The voice came back with distinct relief. “Five-by, Sojourner, good to know you guys are out there.”
“Good to hear, Arctic Wind, what’s the problem?”
“Sojourner, I’ve got a deckhand with three-inch J-hook in his eye.”
“Chief, call the captain,” Sara said to Mark. “Tommy, pipe Doc and the aviators to the bridge.” She keyed the mike. “Arctic Wind, roger that, you’ve got a deckhand with a three-inch J-hook in his eye. Is he conscious?”
“He’s conscious and he’s mobile, Sojourner. It’s still got the bale attached. I’ve got the hook stabilized with a bunch of tape and gauze, but I don’t know where the barb is. I don’t want to mess with it any more than that.”
“Don’t touch it!” Tommy said involuntarily. Sara keyed the mike and said, “Roger that, Arctic Wind, what’s your lat and long?”
She turned to watch Tommy punch the numbers into the radar as the longliner skipper read them off. The screen readjusted itself and the bosun’s mate ran the cursor over a small glowing green X on the screen. “A little over forty miles north-northeast of our present position, XO.”
“Come about to zero-three-zero, all ahead full,” she told the helmsman.
“Zero-three-zero all ahead full, aye,” Seaman Eugene Razo replied. A moment later she felt the vibration in the deck increase as the cutter leaped forward in pursuit of her top speed, fifteen-point-four knots.
“Arctic Wind, this is the Sojourner Truth. We’re on our way. We’ll either be sending a boat over or doing a hoist with our helicopter. We’ll let you know which so you can make ready.”
She waited. They all waited. At last the Arctic Wind came back on, her skipper sounding very tightly wound. “Sojourner, I’m not set up for a hoist by helicopter. I’ve got wires and crap all over the deck.”
She heard the door open behind her and heard Mark say, “Captain on the bridge.”
“Understood, Arctic Wind, stand by,” Sara said, and turned.
USCG Captain David Josephus Lowe was a short, stern-faced man who made up for his lack of height with a determinedly erect carriage. A strict, by-the-book disciplinarian redeemed by an equally rigid sense of fairness and an elusive sense of humor, his command was nothing if not restful. So long as the crew did their jobs when and where he told them to and did them well while they were at it he had no complaint. If they didn’t, he had no difficulty in saying so and, if the problem proved to be repetitive, in meting out swift and sure punishment at mast. There was comfort in knowing always exactly and precisely what was expected of you, and security in knowing the rest of the crew knew it, too. Sara had served in far worse commands.
“XO,” Captain Lowe said, settling into the armchair bolted to a metal pole to the right of the bridge console. He always sat a little forward, the crew speculated, so his legs wouldn’t stick straight out like a little kid’s in a high chair.