His Last Defense. Karen Rock
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the wheelhouse, brightly clad deckhands scrambled for cover as gale-force winds whipped the Bering Sea, hurtling waves at the Pacific Sun. “Move it!” she yelled over the PA system.
The last man’s yellow slicker disappeared under the overhang just as another wave smashed the rail. It pummeled the wooden deck and metal gear, sweeping high across Nolee’s windows, obliterating her view of the black day.
Come on. Come on...
Her fingers tightened on the throttle as the vessel pitched in twenty-foot swells, buffeted by forty-five-knot winds. She peered through the streaming water. Despite the frigid late December temperature, the air inside the wheelhouse pressed, warm and humid. A trickle of sweat wound down her cheek. The weather maps hadn’t predicted the massive winter storm would jog this far west.
Focus.
Grab crab. Get your men home safe.
If the tempest dragged the deckhands overboard, she wouldn’t be able to locate them fast enough. Paralyzing hypothermia would take hold within minutes, death in five to ten.
“Everybody okay out there?” she called to the crew. One, two, three...four and five...six...she counted then recounted as they emerged, her nerves jangling.
“Rock and roll!” her barrel-chested deck boss, Everett, shouted, giving her a thumbs-up. After nine years of toiling alongside him, first as a deckhand and then as relief captain before her recent promotion, Nolee knew he never backed down from extreme weather challenges.
And neither did she.
Despite everything, she couldn’t help but smile a bit at the amount of testosterone being thrown around—almost as much as the crab they’d caught. The undaunted gang took advantage of the momentary lull in the gale to bait another pot then drop it into the roiling sea. In a flash, the cage disappeared beneath the chop and its red marker and buoy grew indistinct as she steamed northwest on the edge of the unpredictable storm.
She slugged hot black coffee, burning her tongue, then jotted down the coordinates for this latest set on the string of pots and squinted into the gale. The tattered edges of her mast’s American flag whipped in the air.
The hairs on her arms rose. Pricked. Sometimes, she swore she could smell the ocean coming at her, a briny, deep-water scent that floated into her nose, her lungs, her blood. Sure enough, another wave rose; a roaring filled her ears.
“Off the rails,” she ordered. “That means you, blue,” she added to a staring, slack-jawed Tyler. She recalled her own growing pains as a teenage deckhand, how the numbing work back then had helped her heal her broken heart. Or form a scab over it, anyway. With relief, she watched Tyler stumble after the older men who’d been grinding all morning since dawn.
More water crested the port side, sweeping beneath the sixty crab pots left onboard. It lifted the sorting table in the middle of the boat and then slammed it down with a loud bang.
She winced. Was it damaged? Anxiety coiled inside her. She couldn’t afford the time to do a major repair. As a twenty-eight-year-old female rookie captain, she had a lot to prove.
She’d worked her tail off on fishing vessels ever since she was old enough to know she wasn’t cut out for the traditional lifestyle of her Inuit ancestors, and realize that if she wanted to help her single mom make ends meet, fishing the Bering Strait was the Alaskan version of the lottery. The stakes were high as hell, but the potential for payoff kicked butt. Most days, Nolee understood the sea, and the mentality it took to work it. Today? She and the sea were not on the same page. At all. Making her wonder what she’d been thinking to talk her commercial fishing company, Dunham Seafoods, into letting her captain a ship of her own.
A picture of her large Alutiiq family, taped beside her radar, caught her eye. Her aunts, uncles and cousins goofed around for the camera, while her mother stood slightly apart, frowning.
Would her critical parent be proud of her?
“What’s going on, Pete?” she called to her engineer.
The men had heaved the metal sorting table upright and Pete squatted beside it. “Wheel’s broken.”
Suddenly the bow dipped, and her eyes widened as a three-story wall of water rose and rose and rose in front of them.
“Take cover!” she screamed into the mic.
In an instant, the Pacific Sun bashed through a rogue, tsunami-sized wave, cleaving forward, plowing just below the surface, the world water. A deep shudder rattled through her and her breath was knocked clean out of her.
Reacting on instinct, she advanced the throttle, giving the ship more horsepower. They needed to bust through the wave. Not dive. She kept her hand steady on the controls, pleading with the sea to release her and her crew, and then they broke the surface, the gear scattered, her men gone.
“I need to hear from everyone, now!” she thundered, barely able to hear over the blood pounding against her eardrums.
Tyler crawled from between a couple of pot stacks waving an arm overhead, while the rest of the men staggered from their positions, clapping each other on the back, punching the air.
“It’s getting squirrelly out there,” she announced when she trusted her voice not to betray her concern. Crab fishing and coddling didn’t mix. “Inside, guys.”
Her men shook their heads and disappeared from view into the galley below. Just then a piercing alarm shrilled. She shot to her feet. The high water sensor!
Pete appeared on deck and sloshed through the rolling water to throw open the hatch down to the keel, Everett fast on his heels. A sickening bile rose in her throat.
Stu, her relief captain, raced up the wheelhouse stairs. “Leak?” he asked, his voice a gravelly smoker’s rasp.
She nodded, then flipped on the speaker to the engine room. “Pete. Tell me what’s going on.”
The sound of rushing water crashed through the speaker.
There was static, and then Pete’s faint voice emerged. “We’ve cracked the cooling pipe. Nine to ten inches.”
“How much pressure is coming through there?” A rush of air escaped from between her clenched teeth.
“It’s gushing.” His gruff words were like hands on both her arms, giving her a shake.
She cleared her clogged throat, twice, then asked, “Can we replace it?”
“Yeah. But not out here. We don’t have that piece.”
The boat dropped several feet, rolled. “Rubber wrap won’t hold it,” she mused out loud, her pulse skyrocketing. Clamping down her panic, she turned the boat slightly to keep it from pitching so much.
“It’s our only shot,” came Pete’s grim voice.
“All right. Use baling and wire it up good. Stop that leak.”
“Roger.”
After several minutes of battling growing swells, more alarms blared on-screen. Failed bilge pumps. Engine power loss.
No.
She blinked at the words and a dark shadow pressed at the base of her skull, rising. The possibility of the ship sinking seeped into her consciousness. Squeezed. Nearly drew blood.
She pressed her eyes shut for a moment. Gathered herself. “Stu, I’m heading out. Keep us afloat.”
“Roger. Will do.”
Grabbing her gloves, she clattered downstairs and donned waterproof gear. She blasted by the remaining hard-faced crew and scowled when they rose to follow her. “Stay put,” she ordered, then listed, side to side, down the short hall to the portal and shoved down the latch.
Instantly, the wind snatched the door, swinging it wide and making her stumble, frigid spray buffeting her, knocking her sideways. Her boots skidded, and she crashed to one knee. Warm, iron-tasting