Times like these were meant to be savored. Hunter slowed his pace to a jog for a few seconds. A warm breeze came up from the valley below, heavy with the scent of plumeria and bougainvillea. A couple of rain clouds skirted around Koko Head, watering the gardens over at Hawaii Kai. He could just make out a large white cruise ship heading toward the passenger terminal on Sand Island with another load of tourists to fill the coffers down on Waikiki.
Hunter ran down the road as it circled the slope. Punch Bowl came into view. The bright green lawn divided by row upon row of crosses. On down the slope he ran until he was back on city streets. Traffic was starting to pick up, it was time to be a little more careful.
What to do about the boat? The crew couldn’t take much more of the constant criticism from the Commodore before it seriously affected their morale. He had to get them away from Pearl and Calucci before the man did real damage. But how? He had volunteered for every mission that came up, no matter how boring and trivial. Calucci’s answer was always the same. SAN FRANCISCO’s crew wasn’t ready yet. They had to get past the next in a never-ending series of inspections.
Hunter turned the last corner. He could see the car, just where he had parked it an hour ago, a couple of blocks up the street.
He would try again Monday. He would plead for a chance to go up to the Northwest and trail one of the boomers coming out of Bangor. It wasn’t much, but at least it would get his team to sea.
Hunter stopped by the car, his lungs heaving as he pulled in great gasps of air. He bent over to unlock the car door.
Something was terribly wrong. The world was spinning at a tremendous rate. His vision closed in to narrow dark tunnel. It felt like he was on a carousel at Mach 3. The ground rushed up to meet him just before everything went black.
Hunter didn’t know how long he lay there. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes. He clung to the car, slowly pulled himself upright. What had happened? What was wrong with him?
He carefully opened the car door and plopped into the driver’s seat. He held the steering wheel in an iron grip as he fought to control his racing heart. The dizziness slowly ebbed away until he felt almost normal. His hands shook so bad that it took both hands to insert the key in the ignition. The drive home would be difficult. Thank God the roads would be almost empty.
Hunter had no idea what he would do next, but he knew that he wasn’t going to go to the Navy doctors until he found out what the problem was. No one, not a power hungry Commodore nor a well-meaning Navy doctor, was going to take him off his beloved boat. The crew needed him and he was going to make sure he was there.
Maybe the civilian doctors up at Kaiser Permanente could take a look and give him a pill or something.
5
15 May 2000, 1321LT (2121Z)
“We’re saved!” Nan Badgett yelled out.
The pert redhead jumped to her feet and pointed out across the mirror flat water toward the yellow, hazy horizon. The sun, sitting high in the Western sky, burned down unmercifully, turning the old tramp steamer into an oven. The missionaries had long since learned that the wheezy old air conditioner did nothing more than stir the torpid air. A ragged tarp hanging across the fantail afforded some meager shade, and the futile hope of catching any possible whiff of breeze.
Tommy Clark slowly pulled himself up and stared in the direction that Nan pointed. The forbidding bulk of the island, Nusa Funata the captain had called it, loomed closer each hour. Close enough to plainly see the sharply jagged rocks jutting out into the water from the nearly vertical volcanic mountain. Tommy was entertaining visions of being shipwrecked on a desert island, a modern day Robison Crusoe, when Nan shouted out and pointed in the opposite direction.
Sure enough, there, just rising above the horizon, he could make out a warship steaming straight toward them. At first Tommy could only see the high masts and antennas; then the bridge and superstructure. More and more of the gray ship became visible as it raced toward them. Ominously, the big cannon mounted on the middle part of the ship swung around until it was aimed directly at them. Surely the warship wasn’t going to shoot. Why would anyone waste time shooting at this old helpless rust bucket. They weren’t a threat to anyone.
As the warship charged toward them, Tommy Clark could make out the Indonesian flag hanging listlessly from the mainmast. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
“Relax, Nan,” he whispered. “The Indonesian Navy is here to rescue us.”
Still, the big cannon swung slowly, always aimed directly at them. Tommy could almost feel a bull’s-eye painted on his chest.
Finally the great gray warship pulled alongside and slid to a halt only 100 meters from where they bobbed helplessly. A man standing bridge wing raised a loud-hailer to his lips and called out, “Ahoy there. This is the Indonesian warship Jalawal. You are in restricted waters. You are forbidden to be here. You are under arrest and your ship is impounded. Stand by while we take you in tow. We will open fire if any attempt is made to escape.”
Tommy looked up at his boat’s pilot house just in time to
