Blindfold Game

JANUARY

ON BOARD THE SUNRISE WARRIOR

ARE WE THERE YET?“ Vivie

“Do my ears deceive me? You’ve finally found a stretch of water that has the North Sea beat?”

Doyle gave a snort of laughter. “It might be that I’m wishing I was on my way to Foinaven.” The ship rolled over to starboard and skidded down the opposite side of the swell into the trough. Heaving green seas gave way only to dense ice fog in every direction. Vivie

“They’re icebergs,” a new voice said at her shoulder.

She looked around to see that Kevin had arrived on the bridge.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“It’s ice, and we’re drifting into it.”

“There are two echoes with the same course and doing the same eleven knots. Of course they are ships. Not to mention which, the last reports have the ice pack stuck at fifty-nine degrees.”

Kevin’s lips tightened. Doyle gri

Footsteps sounded and Ernie Hart and Darryl Hickey tumbled into the room. Jack Lestenkof, Concetta Dalilak, and Evelyn Caudle were right behind them. They were dressed in orange jumpsuits, hard hats, and their Deep Sea Defender vests. “We got ‘em?” Jack said. “Vivie

Vivie

Everyone whooped except Kevin, although he looked less sullen than he had a moment before. Doyle worked the controls, and the engines responded with an eager roar. They closed to within half a mile of the closest echo, and the outline of another ship materialized out of the fog.

“And what to our wondering eyes should appear,” Vivie

“Hello, Marinochka,” Doyle said.

“Oh, shit,” someone else said.

In one of those rapid Arctic shifts the weather had decided enough with the fog and the snow and the ceiling was rising rapidly, all the better to see the scene before them. Everything was still green and gray, sky, water, everything except for the rich red of the blood draining from the carcass of the little narwhal tangled in the long net the catcher-processor was at present winching in.

“Son of a bitch.”

Vivie

They got a lot of static in reply.

“Gee, maybe they don’t want to talk to us.”

“Ya think?”

Into the mike Vivie

They waited for a reply and didn’t get one.

“Vivie

“Launch,” Vivie

“Vivie

“Launch, launch, launch!” Vivie

Vivie

“Wait a minute, where are you going?” Kevin shouted.

Doyle laughed. Vivie

The dead whale was half up the chute, but Jack’s crew didn’t let that stop them. As they approached, the Marinochka’s crew opened up with water hoses. Concetta and Evelyn responded by holding up clear Plexiglas riot shields, one on either side of Jack. The force of the water from the hoses caused the shields to waver but Jack held grimly to his course.

“Those riot shields were a good idea!” Ernie shouted.

“Yeah!” Vivie

“Oh man oh man oh man,” Evelyn said, eye to the shutter of his camera. Evelyn was British and notoriously hard to impress, but not today. “This is beautiful,” he breathed as the shutter clicked rapidly through a roll of film.

Vivie

“Is your camera all right?” Vivie

He looked at her, dazed and still on his ass in the bottom of the boat. She hauled him up and grabbed the camera. The shutter didn’t respond when she pressed the button.

“It’s okay!” he shouted. “It’s waterproof!” He tucked it inside his coat and pulled out another. No wonder he looked so lumpy.

Ernie, in an attempt to avoid the water hoses, took the inflatable beneath the bow of the Marinochka with inches to spare, and an unexpectedly large swell raised it nose to nose with one of the men handling the hoses. He gaped at them. Vivie

He stared at the hand, openmouthed, and then the swell dropped them down again, and Ernie hit the throttles, laughing out loud.

Jack’s crew managed to hook his craft on the line that was pulling in the gear and his inflatable was hauled up the slipway right along with the net. They were hit with all four water hoses at once. Even the riot shields were no use, and Jack let go and they slid back into the water.

It went on like that for the next two and a half hours, until it started to get dark. “Let’s pack it in,” Vivie

A hot shower and dry clothes later, Vivie

“Thanks. We got some terrific film. Neil is editing it right now. We’ll upload it and get it out to you pronto.”

“Good. We’ve got an interview set up for you on CNN.”

“CNN? They’re actually paying attention?”

“Looks like.”

“Let’s hope no one takes a shot at the president today.”

“Yeah, that would cut into our airtime,” Ben said.

There was a knock at the door, and at her call Doyle stepped inside. “What’s up?”

Vivie

“He’ll be even happier when he sees the video.”

Vivie