To Sail a Darkling Sea

This is part of the job, not just tooling around on boats. Now, do you want to pass the course? Cause we haven’t got all day.”

* * *

Getting the pump up onto the deck of the freighter wasn’t just a matter of pulling it up. If they just pulled it up it would bang like hell on the hull and probably break it. The team on the yacht, therefore, had to pull it out from the freighter’s hull while the team on top pulled it up. There were problems. There was a bit of shouting. But they finally got it over the side and got fuel flowing.

“Stop the pump,” Paxton yelled. “Okay, this time, Bradford, you’re the captain… After you get it onto the deck without breaking anything.”

* * *

“How many pumps do you go through?” Walker asked, looking into the water. The pump had disappeared from sight in an instant.

“That makes five,” Paxton said, leaning over to look as well. “The mechanics on the Grace are getting pissy about it. But at least this time it didn’t hit the deck, break through, damage the hull which then cracks on the freighter’s hull and sinks the boat. Okay, Killian, what did you do wrong?”

* * *

O’Toole was sitting at the bar in the main civilian saloon on the Boadicea, holding a scotch in mid air with his head slowly drifting down then bobbing back up.

“I feel as if I should celebrate,” the former businessman said, then snorted a snore.

“Rob,” Walker said. “Go get some rest. We’re getting assigned in the morning and for all we know, we’ll be gone by afternoon.”

“I’m too old for this,” O’Toole said, downing his drink. “But at least we didn’t get zodiacs. Good night, Tom.”

“Good night, Rob.”

CHAPTER 29

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.

Charles M. Schulz

“The South Flotilla is already asking for more prize crews,” Isham said, looking at his notes. “They’re sending the boats they found back up here with all the refugees. The boats coming in are short on fuel. They haven’t found much. But that’s about it for prize crews and they’re short handed.”

“Not surprising,” Steve said. “They didn’t have many to begin with. Lieutenant Kuzma, status on the training program?”

“The first group is trained,” Kuzma said. “As best you can train people to be skippers and engineers in three days. We’re starting another class. But, again, sir… ”

“Ask me for anything but time, Lieutenant,” Steve said. “When the boats get here, detail them out to them. As crew not captains til they’ve had some time to adjust. Then pack what you’ve got left and send them down to the Flotilla as prize crews. As for tanking… Have the new skippers tank from the supermax. If they can’t tank from one in harbor, they’re not going to be able to unrep. Call it a final exam. Mister Zumwald. You wanted to talk about the outline of the crossing plan.”

“Since everybody is busy as a one armed paperhanger, I’ve been chatting up the sub skippers for pointers,” Zumwald said. “We’ve got nine subs hanging around the area. What we’re looking at is this. One Wing, and that’s a term of art, will consist of the small boat flotillas. It will also be, well, one wing of the sweep. The subs will take the other wing with one back to handle any security issues.

The boat wing will center two flotillas, each with its own mega-yacht and supply ship. The boats will tank from the megayacht and or the supply ship. They’ll rotate inwards as time goes by, hopefully filling up with survivors but whatever. When they get to the supply ship, they’ll crossload survivors and spare supplies, tank up if necessary then probably do fish ops for a day before going back out on the end of the flotilla.

“The megayacht and supply ship will, if necessary, tank from the tanker. We’ll need to fill that puppy slap up before we leave.

“Each of the boats will need one, at least, Navy clearance guy for clearing yachts. We’ll have a different group doing the picking them up and getting them running.

“The divisions will each have a specialist clearance boat. That will be a fairly fast yacht or one of the fast supply boats with a Zodiac and some Marines onboard. The flotilla will have the Marine boss with the flotilla boss on the flotilla boss’s boat and they’ll have another one of those zodiacs. That will be for clearing large vessels such as tankers and freighters. They’ll generally run back from the main wing about thirty, forty miles.

“The boat will be accompanied by another yacht which will have survey and salvage people on it. That’s the ‘prize crews.’ If there’s a good find, we’ll send them out in zodiacs to pick it up. The sub wing will have a similar group but there will need to be, probably, four to six yachts in that one and most of the zodiacs. When a sub spots a prospect, they call it a sierra for some reason, the security guys or Marines in a zodiac head out to it and check it out. If it’s worth picking up, then they pick it up or recover survivors, whatever, usual deal. We’ll send Kuzma’s regular joes to pick it up if it’s a yacht. If it’s something big we want to keep, we’ll send a pro crew from the command ship.

“The command ship is the Boadicea. It will handle overflow from the megayachts if they get too crowded. The command group will hang back, probably about sixty miles, from the main line. We can use the rotating yachts to bring back refugees. That’s also where the Grace will be and the tanker unless it needs to head forward to resupply the other ships.

“God help us if we find a fricking liner; the plan goes out the window then. That’s the outline. The devil’s going to be in the details and keeping it all going at sea.”

“May I interject, sir?” Lieutenant Kuzma said.

“Go,” Steve said.

“Unrep at sea is not… the easiest thing in the world, sir,” Kuzma said, frowning.

“Unrep at sea is bloody dangerous and without an experienced crew, right on the edge of insane,” Steve said. “The only alternative, Lieutenant, is forming up in a group and driving straight to Gitmo. All of the boats we’re getting can, I’ll admit, make that crossing without tanking. However, I have no idea if there are people between here and there still alive in lifeboats. The likelihood gets lower every passing second. But I’m also not going to do my best to find them. And taking the time to find them means using up more stores. Which means, in turn, the boats will have to unrep. At least once, possibly more often.

“So, Lieutenant, the choice is between unrep or not doing search and rescue. I’m not going to ask you which you would prefer, undergoing a dangerous evolution at sea with inexperienced crews or ignoring a prime imperative of your service. That would be cruel and the decision is made. I’ll add, however, that four people, two of them teenage girls, with no experience prior to boarding a sailboat in Virginia managed to not only unrep from a freighter, at sea, but figure out how to convert some pumps so that they could suck out the water and fuel tanks.

“Lieutenant, if Sophia, Faith, Stacey and myself could do it, so can they. Is it going to be easy? No. Are there going to be mistakes? Often. Are we going to lose a boat? Almost assuredly and probably more than one. I’d suggest that in your spare time from honing your class you put your mind to how to do it as safely as possible. If I might make one suggestion for your class, it be that no-one passes if they cannot figure out what ‘to lee’ means.”

“Okay, what’s it mean?” Zumwald said.

“It’s the downwind side of the boat,” Steve said. “In general, if you’ve got a smaller boat snuggling up to a bigger boat, you want to be to lee. The water’s smoother. On the other hand, if it’s really windy, the bigger boat