Blindfold Game

JANUARY

MOM!“GLORIA POINTED. NEXT to her Eli watched, his eyes wide, his hand clutching hers. ”I saw, honey,“ Lilah said, pale. They’d all seen, an almost front-row seat, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, apparently deliberately, ram a freighter in the middle of Resurrection Bay. The boat was listing to port as everyone on board leaned against the port rail and stared, most of them with their mouths open.

“There are people going into the water,” Lilah said, and turned to wave frantically at the bridge where the skipper stood with his mouth open. “There are people going into the water! We have to pick them up!”

“BULL’S-EYE, CAPTAIN,” OPS CALLED out, “dead amidships.”

There was no cheering on board the bridge of the Sojourner Truth.

They could clearly see the nose of the missile pointing skyward from the container. They could also see the smoke from the fuel pouring out of the opposite end of the container.

“We weren’t in time!” Mark Edelen shouted.

There was a groan. “No,” someone said. “This isn’t happening.”

All they could do now was watch.

The momentum of the freighter continued forward, dragging the cutter down the freighter’s starboard hull. The skin of the other ship punctured and peeled back.

“There goes another compartment,” someone said.

“And another.”

The force of the strike had pushed the freighter’s starboard side down. “She’s shipping water,” the chief said.

“That missile is launching!” Ops shouted.

Sara, hands clenched on the arms of her chair, watched with dread.

And then the weight of all the water that had been pouring into the gaping wound in the freighter’s side began to move. The Star of Bali began to roll to the left, slowly at first, through vertical and then heavily to port. The containers on deck began to break loose and fall off. The one with the missile in it clung stubbornly to its fastenings.

“Helm amidships, emergency full astern!” Sara shouted.

“Helm amidships, emergency full astern, aye,” Cornell said imperturbably. The engines of the Sojourner Truth paused for a moment and then started again, grumbling at first, then opening into a full-throttle roar.

Sara leaped from her chair and ran out onto the starboard wing. The freighter’s natural stability was trying to regain the vertical. The weight of the water she had shipped through the holes torn in her side wouldn’t allow it, pushing her over on her starboard side again. The weight of the steel in her hold increased the speed and violence of the roll.

The missile launched, with the Star of Bali starboard side down, the momentum of the roll giving impetus to the launch, like a kid throwing a rock with a sling.

“Come on,” the chief muttered behind her. “Come on.”

“Oh my God,” Tommy said steadily and clearly, “I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins-”

Sara rounded on Ops with such a ferocious expression that he backed up a step. “It’s got an internal gyroscope, right? It can correct its own course?”

Ops was pale. “If it gains enough height-”

The contrail of the exhaust seemed to twist and turn on itself.

“-because I dread the loss of heaven-”

Sara raised the binoculars she had thought to snatch on her way outside. The mountains behind the missile loomed large. Were they large enough? “Thumb Cove,” she said. “Thumb Cove, how high are the mountains in back of it?” Too late to go check, too late-

For agonizing seconds the missile looked as if it would clear the land-mass. Sara tried to think what it could hit, and how she could warn them. Valdez, and the oil terminal? Cordova? Would it go inland? Or could it still self-correct its course in midair? If it did, did it have enough fuel to still make Elmendorf and Anchorage? Would it fall short? If it did, where would it fall?

“-and the pains of hell-”

Then it hit, the very tip of the tallest mountain in its way. The jagged corner of the peak crumbled like a too-dry Christmas cookie. A huge fireball flared and vanished, followed by an even huger cloud of snow. Avalanche, Sara thought, and then realized she’d said the word out loud.

“Glacier,” Ops said, and backed up to lean against the bulkhead next to the hatch. “There’s a bunch of glaciers in back of Thumb Cove.”

“But most of all,” Tommy said, “because I thought you weren’t watching. I was wrong. Thanks, God.”

The sound of the impact reached them then, a thunderbolt that echoed across Resurrection Bay. Lilah and Gloria and Eli heard it on board the Kenai Fjords. A crew of fishermen heard it on board the Moira P., trolling for white kings off the Iron Door. The prisoners at Spring Creek Correctional Facility heard it, and in Seward it brought people out of their homes and offices to look south and wonder. The deafening blast rolled up Resurrection Bay in a mighty wave that crashed against the bowl of mountains and triggered massive avalanches of snow. Birds launched themselves into the air, crying in alarm, and every otter, seal, and sea lion sought shelter beneath the surface of the water.

“Captain!” Ops shouted, pointing. “The freighter!”

The bridge crew turned as one to look.

The thrust of the missile’s propulsion system had put the Star of Bali down by the stern, her taffrail awash.

“What’s happening, captain?” Tommy said, coming out on the wing to watch.

“She’s got two million gallons of water sloshing around inside her, pushing her back and forth,” Sara said quietly.

The chief looked almost sorrowful. “She’s got all that steel in her hold, too. And with all the boxes broken off she doesn’t have any weight left on deck, so no help there.”

Some of the containers that had broken off were floating away, some were crashing against the sides of the freighter. The Sojourner Truth was pulling away at her maximum speed in reverse, a lofty four knots.

Not quick enough not to watch the Star of Bali slide backward into the sea, though, her engine pushing the hull around in a semicircle. The bow slipped beneath the water with a resigned sigh.

They watched, mesmerized, as air bubbled up. The remaining containers broke off and bobbed up to the surface one and two and three at a time. Life rafts self-inflated and exploded twenty feet in the air, smacking down again.

“There are people in the water, XO,” Ops said, looking through binoculars.

“They’re alive?” Sara said. “How could they still be alive after this long in the water?”

The lieutenant looked at her. “It’s only been ninety seconds, Captain.”

Sara looked at the clock. He was right.

“Damage control, report,” she said into the handheld.

“Damage control reporting, Captain!” Chief Moran yelled over the handheld with the sound of rushing water in the background. “The bow’s all torn up! The portside bow is buckled all the way back to the collision bulkhead! We’ll shore it up, slow down the flooding, but she won’t last long, especially in heavy seas!”

“Understood,” Sara said. “Carry on.”

“Aye aye, Captain!”

She went back into the bridge and got on the pipe. “All hands, all hands, this is the XO. Brace for collision, I say again, brace for collision. We have sustained serious damage to the bow and we’re going to put her ashore so we can keep our feet dry. This is the last time, folks, I promise. Grab hold and hang on, it won’t be long.”

She went back out on the starboard bridge wing. They were proceeding in reverse back down Resurrection Bay and into the cove formed by the middle and northern peaks on Fox Island. There was a good beach there, made of nice, solid gravel with a steep incline that Sara hoped would serve to adequately ground the Sojourner Truth and keep her from sinking altogether.