PROLOGUE
Port Angeles, Washington,
6:35 a.m. PDT
When day broke gray and chilly over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Chugash brothers were already fishing two miles off Ediz Hook, the long, narrow spit of land that guarded Port Angeles Bay. Their fifteen-foot open boat drifted with the current, rising and falling on the widely spaced swells. To the south, the mill town of Port Angeles was backdropped by the dark, heavily forested flanks of the Olympic Mountains. The snow-capped peaks were hidden in a ceiling of low clouds.
Stan Chugash sat on a seam-split life preserver cushion next to the forty-horsepower Evinrude’s tiller; brother Bob sat amidships, facing him. They were “mooching” for spring chinook salmon. As the dead boat rode the incoming floodtide, they carefully reeled up and then lowered spinning, plug-cut herring. A salmon’s take on the fall of the bait was often almost imperceptible and required concentration and practice to recognize. The Chugash brothers had been mooching these waters for more than fifty years.
Stan flipped the dregs of cold, bitter black coffee from his insulated cup and transferred the sticky white crust of glazed doughnut from his fingertips to a knee of his green vinyl pants. Under the windproof rainsuit, he wore three layers of clothes. “Would you look at that yuppie asshole,” he remarked. “Miles of water to drive through, no other boats in sight, and he’s got to crowd us.”
The twenty-six-foot Alumaweld approached steadily from the west at four knots, dragging double downriggers behind. To Stan, it looked brand-new. A Furuno radar beacon swiveled endlessly on the enclosed cabin’s roof. In the hull’s forest-green side paint the name Fisher King was emblazoned in two-foot-high, silver-flecked, cursive letters. Mounted on the stern were twin, four-stroke Yamaha engines: more combined horsepower than Bob’s full-sized V-8 pickup truck. There was only one person in the boat.
“Think he’s drinking a gran-day lah-tay in there?” Bob asked as he glanced over his shoulder.
“Yeah, while he’s surfin’ the Web.”
Both in their late sixties, the Chugash brothers had retired from the Port Angeles paper mill. They had been salmon-fishing junkies since they were old enough to pull-start an outboard.
The bow of the Alumaweld turned slightly, aiming right for them. It wasn’t slowing down.
“You want to reel up and move, Stan? Fish the other end of the bank?”
“We got a dead boat. We got the right of way. Besides, if we move to another spot, that twerp will just follow us.”
The Alumaweld bore down on the Chugash brothers.
“Shit, we’re gonna have to pull up, Stan. He’s gonna snag our lines on a downrigger ball.”
“If he don’t ram us first.” With an effort, Stan stood up in the narrow boat. “Get out the way!” he hollered, waving an arm over his head.
The man piloting the Alumaweld cruiser stared at him through the tinted windshield and kept on coming, same course and speed.
“He can’t hear ya, Stan. Let’s just move.”
“He can see me, though, the son of a bitch,” Stan growled. He locked his rod in the gunwale holder and held out his hand. “Give me a goddamn sinker, Bob.”
Under the visor of his brother’s parka hood, Bob saw a puffy, weather-seamed face flushed with fury. “Stan, that’s not a good idea,” he said, then quickly added, “Remember your blood pressure….”
Stan reached down snatched an eight-ounce slip sinker from the thwart. The star varsity pitcher of the Port Angeles High School Rough Riders circa 1955 cocked back his arm and took aim at the approaching windshield. “I’m gonna knock out every one of those bleached fucking teeth.”
“Stan, for pete’s sake…”
Then both of the Alumaweld’s downrigger rods bucked hard in their holders. The reels screamed like banshees.
“Well, I’ll be gone to hell!” Stan snarled. “The bastard snagged a pair of fish right out from under us!”
As the man in the Alumaweld shifted his engines out of gear, Stan yanked the battered Evinrude to life. Gunning it, he circled wide, away from the certain collision, while Bob reeled in both of their lines.
The Alumaweld pilot, in a longbilled cap and hot-orange down vest, exited the cabin, beelining for the pair of bent rods as his boat coasted to a stop. Before he could reach the stern, the Alumaweld lurched violently backward, forcing him to grab for a handhold. In the same instant, a rip current appeared on the surface; the Alumaweld was caught in a swirling seam one hundred yards long. Guitar-string-taut downrigger cables sang and hissed as they sliced through the water.
As the Alumaweld rapidly reversed toward the Chugash brothers, waves of water cascaded over the boat’s splash well and onto the deck. The pilot dashed back to the cabin, dropped the engines in gear and pounded down the throttles. The twin Yamahas roared, their props sent up a plume of spray. The bow lifted, but the boat continued to move backward.
“That ain’t bottom he’s snagged on,” Bob said with delight. “Something’s dragging him. He hook himself a gray whale?”
The pilot stuck his head out the cabin window and yelled for help as he rushed past them. He sounded like a cat with its tail caught in a screen door.
“Hang on!” Stan shouted to his brother as he opened up the Evinrude’s throttle, trying to catch up and at the same time steer clear of whatever was going on.
Two hundred feet ahead of the Alumaweld, the rip current suddenly parted. Black columns thicker than a man’s body slid up through the surface, draped with the downrigger flashers, cables and cannonballs. The split in the rip current opened wider, and the huge black sail of a submarine emerged.
“Hoo-hah!” Stan hollered at his brother. “Yuppie snagged a Trident!”
As the submarine surfaced, the angle of the trapped downrigger cables grew steeper and steeper, lifting the Alumaweld’s stern from the water and driving down the bow. The Yamahas’ propellers bit into air, their three-hundred-horsepower roar became a shrill, frantic whine. The motors’ water intakes sucked air, too. Red-lined, overheating, the four-strokes belched white smoke.
From the way they were losing ground on the flat-black painted ship, Bob guessed its speed at close to forty knots, this while dragging the Alumaweld behind. He had seen The Hunt For Red October seven times. And Tridents from the Bangor sub base were always passing through the strait on their way in or out of the Pacific. This sail was low in profile and sloped in the rear.
“Stan, that ain’t a Trident!” he shouted through a cupped hand.
Stan couldn’t hear him over the sustained shriek of the wide-open Evinrude.
“That’s a goddamn Russian sub!” Bob screamed at his brother. “And it’s headed for the Hook!” Then their boat bottomed out, full length, in a wave trough. The sickening impact slammed Bob’s jaws shut, and he nearly bit off the tip of his tongue.
Ahead, the Yamaha four-strokes sounded like lawn-mowers hitting rocks.
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