Chapter 31:  It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got that Swing

“What’s going on?” Frank said as the Sea Fighter swung away. “Are they leaving us?”

“No,” his father said. “Like us, he was heading into the wind, so the combined force of the wind and his speed would be over sixty knots – way too much to get a helicopter safely away. When he settles on his new course, I bet it will be dead downwind.”

On the decks below, hope among the guests turned to despair as they watched the Sea Fighter veer away.

But Frank’s father was right. Soon everyone could see a large helicopter lift off, pick up speed downwind, and then, like the Sea Fighter, begin to make a long, swinging arc back towards the Argosy.

Captain Antonio called up his coxswain and ordered him to take several crewmen to make the catch.

“Do you mind if I watch?” Frank asked.

“Suit yourself,” Antonio said, “but stay out of the way.”

Frank and his father made their way hand over hand along the deck railings and then up the stairs until they were on the sun deck. From there they could see a replay of the evacuation maneuvers they’d witnessed during a calm, smooth, moonlit evening that now seemed like months ago.

On the helicopter, Peters was making preparations, sorting through the rescue gear available. He’d need a bucket or crate with enough mass not to flail wildly in the wind but not so heavy it might seriously injure one of the catch team. He selected an ammunition box, dropped his delivery items inside, and clipped it to the hoist cable.

The helicopter was closing on the Argosy now, but the variable, heavy winds shifted and blew it off to starboard. It started over, making a long circle and approaching again from astern.

In the din of the engine noise, the pilot miced his intercom. “Better start your drop,” he said to Peters, “I’m not going to be able to hold a position for long.”

“Roger that,” Peters replied into his headset.

The two enlisted airmen on the helo slid open the side door of the aircraft and swung out the rescue crane as Peters tended the cable. Now the tricky part would begin.

“Ready to drop,” Peters said.

The pilot was having better luck on this approach. He was on station now, making his best guess where on the Argosy the payload would land in the wild wind. “Drop,” he said, turning on a video camera on the bottom of the helicopter. From this point forward, his focus would be on watching the drop, trying to maneuver the payload at the bottom of the cable by manipulating the aircraft at the top, all without radio contact with anyone on the deck to tell him how close the box was to the deck.

Down on the Argosy, the coxswain and his assistants were hanging onto the railing that surrounded the pool area, wondering how they would manage to stay on their feet on a wet deck that was level for only a minute or so between extremes of forty-five degrees to either side.

Frank and his father were sheltered forth yards away at the pool bar. The helicopter was a hundred feet overhead, fighting to maintain position over the ship.

Which Turing began to turn.

“Damn!” the pilot said, struggling to stay on the shifting target. “Hurry up,” he barked into the microphone.

Frank could see a box dangling from the helicopter now. As the cable lengthened, the box swung ever more widely from side to side. By the time it neared the deck it looked more like the head of a golf club in the process of teeing off.

The payload was within a dozen feet of the deck. “Now,” the coxswain said, and his two crewmembers made their dash. But an updraft nudged the helicopter a few feet higher in the air, lifting the box swinging from side to side just beyond their grasp. Like an outfielder trying to spot a flyball crossing the sun, they moved from side to side, trying to guess where they needed to be at the precise point in time that mattered.

But the ship had passed the midpoint of its roll now. Battered by gusts of wind, the two men lost their footing, crashed to the deck and slid down the steepening decline until they smashed into the bulwark forty feet away. One managed to get back to his feet; the other curled up, clutching the shin of one leg.

Peters watched the scene below with increasing concern. “Up hoist,” he said to the crew members. And then to the pilot, “I’m going to ride it down.”

“You sure you want to do that?”

“I think it’s the only way. If we use a heavier container, we might kill somebody down there. And either way, you can’t tell from up here how high the box is off the deck. If I’m at the bottom I can radio the guys to raise or lower exactly the right amount to play the gusts.”

The Argosy was forty-five degrees off the wind now. Turing had already given the ship full rudder to starboard, and with the extra wind force it gathered speed. Once again, the helicopter lost the ship.

“Okay,” the pilot said. “This better be our last try. The wind’s up to fifty knots steady now.”

It took another fifteen minutes for the pilot to circle and make a new approach. Turing used that time to up its game. It couldn’t be certain what the crew of the helicopter might have in mind, but whatever that might be, there was a way to make it harder to succeed. By the time the helicopter was making its new approach it saw that Turing had readjusted the trim of the Argosy, presumably by trapping all of the ballast water on one side of the ship, angling the stabilizers down on that side, and up on the other. Between those changes and the force of the wind on the high side, the ship was heeling farther and farther to one side, finally stabilizing at about forty degrees to starboard. It was impossible now for anyone to stand upright without hanging on to the ship.

But there was no time left to make new plans. Peters clipped on to the cable and stepped out into the void. Immediately the wind seized control of him, buffeting and turning him as he made his descent. The Argosy was turning back in the opposite direction now, and the pilot strained to maintain station. As Peters lowered away, he tried to adjust to meet this new situation, wishing he had the means to contact the two people clutching the railing below.

His original hope was that when he reached the deck, both the men would rush forward, one grabbing his legs to hold him still while the other got a firm grip on the ammunition case. Easy enough to let go then and radio to be winched back to safety. Now, the best he could hope was that the men would let loose of the railing and try and keep their feet as they ran past him, or more likely, lose their footing and slide past him on their way down the steeply tilted deck, grabbing the ammunition box from him as they passed. He’d have to keep tension on the cable to keep himself vertical.

But would the men do as he hoped? If they fumbled the ball the phone and laptop might end up smashed and worthless when the box crashed into the bulwark. He wished he’d thought to stuff something soft in the box along with the laptop and phone to cushion them.

He was hovering ten feet above the deck now, swinging fifteen feet from side to side in the wind. He caught the eye of the coxswain and the remaining uninjured crewman, and then yelled at the top of his lungs.

“When I start my drop, let go of the railing and grab this box on your way by,” he held it out to the side. They probably hadn’t heard a word he’d said over the thunder of the rotors overhead, but at least they’d seen the box. Then he held up one hand and slowly closed it, one finger at a time: five, four, three, two, one. At one he made a fist, pumped it, and radioed upstairs to lower him the rest of the way, fast.

The men, twenty feet away and now ten feet higher in elevation than Peters, let go and headed towards him, dancing their way down the deck with flailing arms like people losing their balance on an icy sidewalk, struggling to stay vertical instead of crashing to the ground.

At the last instant, two things happened. The first was that a bigger gust of wind than usual hit Peters, swinging him to the side and his feet back off the deck. Unable to check their momentum or change their direction, the two men shot past, unable to reach the ammunition box Peters was fruitlessly thrusting in their direction.

The second thing that occurred was that Peters made a decision. As soon as the gust passed and his feet touched the deck again, he unclipped the carabiner attaching him to the cable. Seconds later, he was in a heap with the other two men, fetched up against the starboard bulwark. But the ammunition box, clutched and cushioned against his chest since the moment he detached, was safe.

“What the heck happened?” the pilot’s voice crackled in Peters’ ear. “Did your clip snap?”

“No. I had to make a choice between disengaging or giving up.”

“What do you want me to do?” the pilot asked.

Peters looked up at the helo, still hovering a hundred feet overhead, the cable snapping around in the air like a bull whip.

“You better get back to the ship while you still can.”

The sound of the props beating overhead continued to thunder, their downdraft adding to the chaos of winds sweeping the deck.

“Roger that,” the pilot said. “Stay safe.”

With that, the engines overhead revved up a notch as the helicopter leaned into the air to make its turn back towards the Sea Fighter. A few minutes later, it had vanished into the gathering storm.

*  *  *

Chapter 32

Drop Box

 

The coxswain and his assistant led Peters back along the bulwark to where Frank and his father were sheltering by the deserted bar. “That was great work,” Frank said, taking the ammunition box from him, “were you able to get everything I asked for?”

“Thanks, and yes,” Peter said. “What do you plan to do with this stuff? I get the satellite telephone, but why the laptop and cable?”

“We desperately need to reestablish shoreside communications and be sure the AI on board can’t tap into the conversation when we do. We’ve all been using Wi-Fi since we came on board, so we have to assume every device on board has been infected with keystroke loggers and who knows what else. The first thing I’m going to do when we get inside is open up that laptop and remove the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radio chips – that’s where the manual comes in.

“If you’re wondering,” Frank added, “the second thing I’m going to do is try and find a safe place on the Argosy where we can talk besides an open deck in the middle of a hurricane.”

Soon they were on the bridge. To the good, Turing was allowing the Argosy to right itself, making it easier for the AI to retain control and drive on towards its destination. To the bad, the AI had reestablished enough of a roll to ensure that on short notice it could block any new attempt to evacuate.

Frank opened the ammunition box, spread the contents on a desk and got to work. Twenty minutes later, the laptop was reassembled and linked to the satellite phone. Half an hour after that, he shut the computer. “Gentlemen,” he said, “let’s make one last trip to our outdoor conference room.”

The usual suspects regrouped in the comparative calm behind the bridge. “And what have you accomplished thus far?” Antonio asked.

“I was able to get through to my contact at the CIA and let him know our initial goals: establish the most secure, encrypted links possible with a central controller on shore and also with the Sea Fighter for as long as she can stay as an escort. I also told him we have an urgent need for detailed specifications for every aspect of the Argosy, so we know what we have to work with.

“And now we just wait.”

*  *  *

The arrival of Tom Peters on the Argosy with a secure means of contact was not the only bad news Turing received that day. Hurricane Eloise had changed course away from the Argosy. Worse, it had turned north, with the result that it would surely begin to lose strength as it traveled over cooler waters.

Turing had estimated that sustained winds of at least one hundred miles an hour would be needed to generate waves powerful enough to roll the Argosy, even after the AI had once more heeled ship and turned it broadside to wind and wave. Turing was now not only in a race to destroy the vessel before those on board devised a plan to retake it, but to reach the hurricane before it grew too weak to deliver the final blow.

Now that the passengers knew that Turing was on board the AI had no Plan B short of sinking the ship, and no other way to accomplish that goal, because, among all of the Argosy’s other up to date features, every one of the ship’s through-hull fittings had a fail-safe mechanical valve designed to automatically shut if the ship settled more than a few feet below the waterline range it was designed to operate within.

The way then was clear. Turing poured on all possible speed, chasing a hurricane that had suddenly turned uncooperative.

*  *  *

The next hand in the game also went to the passengers. True to his word, George Marchand, Frank’s long-term handler at the CIA, had sent Frank’s urgent plea up the chain of command. Within hours, a decision had been made to task the Navy with establishing a control point to communicate with the Argosy and to function as the exchange between the beleaguered ship and any sources of information or assistance it needed to call upon. Including the designer of the Argosy.

The immediate result was a far more dry and comfortable meeting of the Argosy response team in the ship’s central linen supply room. Those in attendance now perched far more comfortably on bales of towels while Turing cycled helplessly on its servers, unable to hear what might be said.

Taking no chances, only the core response team was participating in this first indoor meeting – Captain Antonio, Frank, the ship’s CIO, and, as naval liaison, Tom Peters. The purpose of the meeting was to determine how to best exploit the reestablishment of shoreside communications.

“Let me take a stab at summarizing where we are,” Frank said. “It’s tempting to say that our urgent goal is to retake control of the ship. But I think that’s the wrong starting point, because Turing is smart enough that it may be able to come up with a work around that leaves us back where we started.”

“Granted,” Antonio said, “but if not to retake control of the ship, what then?”

“Don’t take me the wrong way – we will almost certainly need to try to retake control. But the real goal is to get everyone safely back on shore.”

Antonio snorted. “That goes without stating. If there is a practical difference between the two from an action perspective, I fail to see it.”

“I grant you,” Frank said, “the difference is not immediately obvious. But besides trying to come up with a plan to retake the ship, I’ve been considering what we would do if we did – especially if we were successful in regaining navigational control but not actually destroying Turing. One thing that kept occurring to me was that we’re a lot closer now to the hurricane than we are to shore and getting closer by the hour.”

“Your logic still escapes me,” the captain said.

“Imagine this,” Frank said. “Let’s say the best we can do is temporarily distract Turing. Or maybe to temporarily fool it – perhaps the same way it fooled us. If we could feed it misleading information, perhaps we could trick it into sailing right into the eye of the hurricane without realizing it until we’re inside – it’s supposed to be a really abrupt change. Now that we have the ship’s plans, we could figure out which computers to smash or which hydraulic lines to cut to immobilize the stabilizers. Then we could launch the lifeboats in the calm in the center of the storm.”

“Are you insane?” Antonio said? “What then?”

“That’s always where I hit a dead end before. But now we’re in touch with shore, it could make sense. The lifeboats have engines, and hurricanes don’t move very fast. Each lifeboat could tow a raft or two. As long as the lifeboats didn’t run out of gas, we’d be perfectly safe.

“Meanwhile, there’s the Sea Fighter – that could take maybe half of us off. And the navy could be sending submarines to ferry people back ashore, from the life rafts first, and then from the lifeboats. If the US navy – and hopefully other navies as well – bought in and started making preparations now, we could all be safe on shore by the end of the week.” Frank turned hopefully to Peters. “Could that work?”

Peters frowned and cleared his throat. “Well,” he began, “first off, I’m not sure you can count on the Sea Fighter. It’s built for heavy weather, but not hurricane force winds. I do grant you we have lots of subs on station in the Atlantic all the time – nuclear missile subs, cruise missile boats, and attack subs. The French and the Brits have an order of magnitude fewer boats than we do, but I expect they would have a few within range. Then, there’s the Swedes, the Germans and so on. They don’t have a lot, but they’re all in the Atlantic when they’re not in the Baltic or refitting. But every submarine is a sardine can. There’s barely enough room to move around in them. Not a lot of extra oxygen capacity, either.”

Frank looked crestfallen, and Peters continued. “But, sure, if we could get enough of a fleet together, it would be possible. The top speed of our boats is classified, but you can assume it’s over thirty knots. A couple days from now the hurricane is supposed to be only a couple hundred miles from shore. Depending on how close a suitable harbor is, that could be as little as a twenty-four hour round trip round trip. And meanwhile, you’re right, everyone should be perfectly safe in the eye of the storm – provided the hurricane doesn’t start breaking up.”

None of the other faces in the circle looked very encouraging, perhaps because they were envisioning themselves in small boats surrounded by hurricane-force winds for days on end.

“Alright, so that’s not Plan A,” Frank said. “But I think Tom should brief those on shore so they can evaluate it. If two days from now we’re still trapped inside this fort with destruction right around the corner, I’d like to know the cavalry is already on its way.”

Author Notes:  Unlike the first 26 chapters, which I wrote and then revised from the beginning before posting, I’ve now been posting in real time, posting new chapters the same weekend I right them. As a result, what I right one week will often require changes in earlier chapters to be consistent with what follows. Careful readers will have noticed, for example, that the gift box that Frank receives includes a few additional items beyond what he initially asked for last week. I haven’t been updating posted copy when such changes occur, but they do occur in my working draft and will appear in the final book – assuming I don’t write them over once again.

Another draft related note focuses on Frank’s Big Reveal about a possible sprint into the eye of the hurricane. Originally I thought that perhaps this might come at the last minute as a last minute insight when something else fails. But then I wondered whether it would be credible for a thousand people to hope into lifeboats in the middle of a hurricane unless they already had been assured that help was on the way. And don’t be surprised to learn that the number of passengers and crew on the Argosy decline as well, now that I’ve given more thought to how many submarines you’d need to scramble to evacuate them.

In any event, these are the types of tradeoffs and adjustments I constantly find myself having to make as the plot evolves in my head from a general story line to a scene by scene progression with dependencies, finicky reality to deal with, and new ideas that seem worth weaving into the story line.

Next week: you know, I’m really not sure yet. Stand by. Continue reading here