Deadliest Sea (25 page)

Weiss ordered the crew to grab the thermal recovery capsule, a sleeping bag–like sack designed for rewarming hypothermia victims. The bag is made of a thick, fuzzy wool covered with heavy nylon. Back in Kodiak, just over a week earlier, one of the techs at the medical clinic had offered the rewarming bag to Weiss. It was an extra that had been carried on board one of the helicopters for a while. It had cost close to $3,000.

“Sure, I’ll take it,” Weiss had said. He didn’t imagine he’d ever need it. Now the
Munro
’s Doc wished he had several more of the specialized sacks.

The medical crew was constantly monitoring Kenny’s temperature. By the time they had him zipped into the rewarming bag with a dozen of the warmed, rolled towels nestled around his body, the young man’s temperature was 91°F. Only his face was exposed and the ice was finally melting from his orange-
brown mustache and goatee. The
Munro
’s crew was talking to him, but Kenny didn’t seem to be responding. Weiss was worried. The fisherman had a look that the medic thought of as the thousand-yard stare. Occasionally, when they called his name, Kenny would glance over, but mostly his eyes were just wandering. He seemed like he was in a fog, slipping back and forth over the line of consciousness.

D
OLPHIN COPILOT
G
REG
G
EDEMER
was keeping an eye on the fuel. When Abe Heller had been inside the cabin with their four survivors, the helo had exceeded its maximum gross weight: 9,200 pounds. The good news was that the more fuel they burned, the quicker they’d get back within limits. The bad news was that the fuel situation was already tight.

Luckily, the wind had been to their advantage. They’d had a tailwind on the flight to the scene and they’d had 30 knots off the nose for most of the hoists. The wind made it easier to hold a hover at a higher weight. Without it, the tiny aircraft may have had to jettison fuel to keep picking up fishermen. Now it was looking like they’d need every drop available.

Right before takeoff, the pilots had programmed the aircraft’s computer to calculate a return trip to the same position. It had seemed like a conservative approach at the time. Once they were up, the
Munro
would continue toward the sinking site, perhaps again at close to 30 knots. The Dolphin crew was under the impression that the 60 Jayhawk was dropping their survivors onto the
Alaska Warrior
—or maybe bringing them to Dutch Harbor. Long before they’d reached the rescue scene, the crew of the smaller helo knew the Jayhawk crew had changed their plans and were intending to lower their survivors to the
Munro
. Still, the Dolphin rescuers thought, that course of action wouldn’t
take anything close to the amount of time their own crew would be away from the ship.

As Heller worked with the four fishermen below in the waves, Gedemer got the Hercules C-130 on comms. The Herc had taken the 65’s guard when they first arrived on scene and now the 65 would rely on the C-130 crew to help them double-check the details of their return flight to the
Munro
.

“Where is the ship right now?” Gedemer asked Herc pilot Matt Duben.

Duben fed Gedemer the numbers. It was just after 7:00
A.M
. and the
Munro
was still conducting hoisting operations with the 60 Jayhawk in nearly the same position the Dolphin launched from about seventy miles to the northwest. If the larger helicopter also needed to refuel, the
Munro
would continue moving steadily away from the Dolphin’s position.

Helicopter pilots generally fly with a set turnaround in mind. They call it their “bingo”—the point at which they have to head back if they want to arrive with enough fuel for a safe landing. A missed bingo can lead to “splash,” a crash of the helo into water. When Gedemer programmed the aircraft’s computer at takeoff, he’d calculated a bingo with 400 pounds (59 gallons) of fuel remaining, a fairly typical load that meant they’d land with about forty minutes of flying time left. When the Dolphin got on scene, though, Gedemer bet the
Munro
would be closing some of the distance between their launch point and the disaster site, and he reset the computer back to a bingo of 200 pounds. There were so many people in the water that cutting it closer seemed warranted.

Up in the C-130, the crew went over Gedemer’s calculations. There was no question that given the
Munro
’s current location, it was past time for the Dolphin to head back to the ship—the only possible landing point in the middle of the Bering Sea.

“Coast Guard 6566, this is rescue 1705,” Duben’s cooing
Southern accent broke in over the radio. “You should depart scene as soon as possible, over.” Duben was alarmed at how little fuel the helo had, but he didn’t show it.

The Alabaman’s calm, pillow-talk voice was a comfort to the 65 pilots. Still, they knew the situation was growing serious. They’d pushed the limits and now they had to do every single thing right if they wanted to get their survivors—and themselves—safely back to that tiny patch of blacktop on the stern of the
Munro
.

“Roger, 1705,” Gedemer answered. “This is our last guy.”

Gedemer was relieved when the basket reached the cabin door and Musgrave quickly pulled it in and unloaded the man inside. With six people in the back, the flight mechanic couldn’t fit the metal compartment in sideways and still close the aircraft door. Instead, he propped the basket upright in the space that—until a few minutes before—had held the crew’s emergency raft. Then he closed up the cabin as Schmitz began to orbit the tiny, six-man raft below.

The pilot wanted to be sure the fishermen and his swimmer were safe. He asked Musgrave to pull the Dolphin’s bright orange data marker buoy from the aircraft wall. The buoyant, arrow-shaped device sends a satellite signal that allows rescuers to relocate a point in the ocean and track the drifting of debris in the water.

Musgrave dropped the marker out the door. The Jayhawk would get back to the scene first. When they did, they would be able to pinpoint the buoy and hopefully find the raft—with four men safe inside—nearby.

B
ACK UP ABOVE THE
M
UNRO
’
S FLIGHT DECK
, Brian McLaughlin was also updating his fuel calculations. If they didn’t refuel now, the aircraft commander realized, they’d have only ten min
utes on-scene before they had to turn around again. By the time the last couple of men were being lowered to the ship, the crew knew they’d need to HIFR—now.

Helicopter In-Flight Refueling is a maneuver that all Coast Guard helicopter pilots are well aware of. McLaughlin knew the procedures—even though his training with the
Munro
a couple of days before was the only time in his career he’d actually practiced the refueling technique.

It was 7:10
A.M
. when the last hoist to the flight deck was complete. DeBolt pulled the basket back up, and the Jayhawk moved off to the side of the ship. The
Munro
kept heading north into the swells. It was dangerous to be up on turbines during the refueling sequence because the turbines’ exhaust could create a “burble,” a pocket of hot air that might jostle the helicopter out of the sky. The ship would have to continue at the slow, stable speed they’d used during the hoist—plowing into the waves and moving away from the rescue site.

Down on the flight deck, the LSO signaled to the pilots to keep off to the side of the ship while the HIFR rig was prepared. Like the flight crews, the LSO wore night vision goggles, which lit up the deck in a neon green light.

Meanwhile, the blue-clad tie-downs began to lay out the fuel hose in a big
S
pattern. They called it “faking out” the hose. One of the crew attached a special nozzle that weighed nearly 100 pounds to the hose’s end. At the LSO’s signal, the 60 moved back over the flight deck and lowered its hoist line with the talon hook on the end, and the “blueberries” attached the nozzle on the fuel hose to the hook.

Mechanic Rob DeBolt had removed a couple of panels to access the interior fuel port, used exclusively for in-flight refueling. The Jayhawk was about thirty feet above the level of the flight deck as DeBolt hoisted the nozzle, with hose attached,
all the way up. The hose hung from the hook outside the cabin door as Bonn slid the helo off the side of the ship. Keeping clear of the deck would allow the pilot a better view of what was going on below. The position would also be safer if the fueling hose fell from the aircraft in an emergency. Any spilled gas would fall straight into the ocean rather than onto the deck of the moving ship.

The higher the Jayhawk hovered, the harder the
Munro
’s pumps had to work against gravity to get the fuel up into the aircraft. Forty feet above the surface, though, was about as low as they could be and still stay safely clear of the breaking waves. DeBolt pulled the hose inside the cabin and inserted the heavy metal nozzle into the fuel port.

Like the pilots, DeBolt had limited experience with the HIFR maneuver, and all the experience he did have was in daylight. It was a tricky operation no matter what; attempting it in the dark made it orders of magnitude more difficult. The procedure was sort of like trying to gas up a car with both the vehicle and the gas station moving—along a rutted dirt road. The flight mech kept an eye on the moving ship as he inserted the nozzle into the side of the helicopter. The numbers on the Jayhawk’s fuel gauge began to rise steadily. The crew wanted a full tank: 5,500 pounds of fuel.

Meanwhile, Bonn was piloting by the commands of the LSO officer below on the
Munro
’s deck, which was lined with little light-reflecting chiplets that helped Bonn identify the contours of the ship’s platform. Every so often, staticky chatter from the 65 Dolphin was audible over the radio.

At 7:28
A.M
., just a few minutes after the 60 Jayhawk began in-flight refueling, the crew of the smaller 65 Dolphin reported to the Herc that they had recovered five survivors and left their rescue swimmer—along with their crew life raft—on scene with
three more fishermen. A few minutes later, the 65 crew relayed the same message to the
Munro
.

“We have five survivors on board. We left our rescue swimmer on scene,” the 60 crew overheard 65 pilot Gedemer report. “We are twenty minutes out and have thirty-six minutes to splash.”

Moments later, the
Munro
’s fuel pumps shut down. The 60 was still more than 1,000 pounds shy of a full tank, but there was no time to keep going. Flight mechanic DeBolt removed the nozzle and hooked it back onto the hoist. They repositioned over the deck and lowered the hose back to the ship.

With enough fuel for another three to four hours of flight, the Jayhawk sped south while the massive ship swung back around in the same direction. Down in the engine room, the crew fired up the
Munro
’s turbines once again, hoping to close the gap between their location and the fuel-critical Dolphin.

T
HROUGH THE SMALL PORTHOLES
on the mess deck, some of the crew assigned to medical duty noticed the ship changing its course, turning to the south, the same direction as the crashing waves. A couple minutes later, the massive cutter jolted forward as the engineers brought her up on the birds one more time.

Processor Kenny Smith was in the rewarming capsule and laid out on top of one of the mess deck’s tables, which was covered with the heated, wool blankets. The Munro’s EMTs were constantly monitoring him. Some of the other
Alaska Ranger
crew members started wandering over as well.

“Hey, bro,” one guy said.

“Come on, Kenny, you’re gonna be okay, man.”

Doc Weiss encouraged the fishermen to keep talking to their friend. The worst thing would be for Kenny to fall asleep and slip away.

Almost all of the rescued men were able to sit up now. Once they had dried off, they had been given “dummy suits,” lightweight Tyvek coveralls that are most often used to clothe illegal migrants intercepted in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Despite their improved appearances, Weiss noticed that most of the fisherman still looked a little stunned. A few were complaining about sore throats. They’d sucked in a lot of salt water, and some of the
Ranger
’s diesel fuel along with it. Some men could still taste it. A few complained of nausea, headaches, or congestion. There had been a few cuts to treat, minor scrapes and abrasions. Overall, though, Weiss thought the men seemed to be doing remarkably well.

Even Kenny—the worst off of all of them—had improved. After ten minutes in the rewarming bag, his core body temperature had risen almost five degrees. He was responding to his friends, smiling, and talking a little. He was going to be okay, Weiss realized with relief. If he had come in even one or two degrees colder, he probably wouldn’t have made it.

Within an hour or so, some of the rescued fishermen started leaving the mess deck. The
Munro
’s crew had set up a couple of the ship’s TV rooms, the “rec decks” they called them, for the survivors. The fishermen could relax in there, watch a movie, and get their minds off of things.

Meanwhile, Weiss and his team started preparing for the next delivery.

E
ric Haynes had been in the
Ranger
’s number three life raft for close to three hours when a bright light illuminated his raft. It was a ship. The
Warrior
.

The trawler drew nearer and within a minute the raft was right up against its starboard side. The
Warrior
was even bigger than the
Ranger,
the black metal hull towering almost two stories up from the water’s surface. Eric was on the far side of the raft, watching through the open door on the opposite side. The situation didn’t look good. How were they going to get Joshua—the processor whom Eric had found facedown in the water—off the raft? Never mind anybody else.

As the
Warrior
nudged up next to the raft, Eric watched a big hook approach them over the side of the rail. A line was attached and a couple of guys tied it to the raft.

It only took a few seconds before all hell broke loose. The length of line was too short and every time the raft sank into
a trough between waves, it was yanked out of the water by the line. Eric could hear the plastic tearing with each jolt.

Also terrifying were several protruding pipes along the side of the ship, the sea side of the discard chutes from the
Warrior
’s factory. Normally, the chutes should be closed when the boat was transiting or at port—but for some reason they were open now. Even when the ship was tied securely at the pier, the sharp protrusions could pop the sturdy buoys that were wedged between the ships to prevent them from banging against one another at dock. They could easily do just as much damage to a life raft, Eric thought. Or to a man.

The
Ranger
crew inside the life raft could see how bad the situation was and began screaming up to the
Warrior
’s rail. “Cut us loose,” they yelled. “Cut us loose!”

Eric thought that waiting for the Coast Guard chopper was a better option than trying to board the
Warrior
in these conditions. One of the pipes was big and came to a point just a few feet above the water’s surface. He knew that if the raft slammed straight into the pipe, the shelter would deflate and leave ten men in the water, some of them already in a severe state of hypothermia.

Within a couple of minutes, Eric’s side of the raft came around against the hull of the ship. The
Warrior
’s crew had hung two Jacob’s Ladders over the rail and Eric could see that they were trying to manipulate a life sling up on deck. But the wind made it difficult for the crew on the
Warrior
to get the sling into a controlled position and to lower it to the men in the raft.

One of the Jacob’s Ladders kept lurching in front of Eric. One second it was close and the next it jerked ten feet up the side of the boat and landed twenty or thirty feet away. Pretty soon the ladder was in front of Eric again. He could hear the guys up on deck yelling for him to grab it. He reached out and wrapped his
neoprene-covered fingers around the rope ladder just in time for it to spring up again with the boat—and slam Eric hard against the rusty hull of the ship.

Eric struggled to secure his feet in the ladder. The crew above was yelling down at him.

“Climb up! Climb up, man!”

He made it only two rungs before the
Warrior
lurched out of the water once again, snapping the ladder hard against the frigid metal. Eric’s hands were numb. The ladder slipped from his grip and he hit the water hard. I’m gone, he thought. Even if he avoided being crushed to death by the ship, the
Warrior
probably wouldn’t have been able to turn around to get him—not with another nine people off the side of the boat.

But with the next big swell, Eric was thrown back up against the ladder. He wrapped his arms around the rope and hung on with everything he had.

“Pull me up!” he screamed at the rail.

From below, he saw one of the
Warrior
’s crew reach over and hook a line from the ship’s small crane onto one of the ladder’s orange plastic rungs. Still, the seas kept pounding against the side of the boat. Every time the ship slapped back down into a trough, Eric felt like he was on the verge of being shaken off the ladder. He held on with all his strength as the crane slowly lifted the ladder from the side of the ship a couple of feet at a time.

Finally, Eric was pulled over the rail. The crew tried to help him to his feet, but he couldn’t stand on his own. He was lifted up and brought down to the galley, riding piggyback on one of the
Warrior
’s stronger crew members.

The crew helped Eric strip off his survival suit. He was surprised at how wet he was underneath. The
Warrior
’s female observers, Beth and Melissa, helped him into some dry clothes and
wrapped him in a blanket. Eric was handed a cup of coffee, but his hands were shaking so badly, he couldn’t even lift the mug to his mouth without the hot liquid spilling everywhere.

A couple of minutes later Eric heard a commotion outside. Captain Scott had seen Eric fall in the water. He knew that the
Ranger
’s cook was an exceptionally strong guy; if he couldn’t get up that way, it wasn’t going to work for anybody else, either. Scott pulled the boat around to try to get the raft in the lee, to protect it from the weather as best he could. He felt like he had a crate of eggs alongside him. If he muscled the boat over too hard, he might easily capsize the raft. Soon, he had the boat at a better angle to the swells and the
Ranger
crewmen were being pulled up out of the raft one after the other. Each man clung to the Jacob’s Ladder as the
Warrior
crew used the ship’s crane to lift it to deck and then lower it down again.

“One guy is really bad off,” Eric warned the observers.

They spread some blankets on a table.

Soon, Joshua Esa was carried into the galley on the ship’s metal rescue litter. He looked blue—and just barely conscious. Eric helped Beth and Melissa strip off his suit and cover him up in blankets. The women wrapped their hot potatoes in towels and tucked them around Joshua.

Ed Cook came into the galley as more of the
Ranger
’s crewmen were brought down. Among them was fisheries observer Jay Vallee.

Melissa and Beth embraced Jay.

“Ha! Isn’t that wonderful! Oh my God. Get out of those wet clothes,” Ed said. “Get out of them!”

“You all right?” Ed asked Jay.

“I’m all right.”

“Here’s your observer,” Ed said to the girls.

E
RIC
H
AYNES WAS FEELING BETTER, WARMER
. He left the galley and headed up to the wheelhouse. The
Ranger
’s cook had known Scott Krey for a couple years. When the ships were tied up in Dutch between trips, Eric sometimes cooked for the
Warrior
’s crew as well. Captain Scott had a surfer-boy appearance that normally fit his laid-back personality. But now he was scanning the seas, his face tense. The captain was intently searching for someone—anyone—else his ship could help. Meanwhile, a few of the
Ranger
crew started crowding into the wheelhouse. “Something happened to the fucking engines and threw everything in reverse,” one of them told the
Warrior
’s officers. “The rafts shot way past the bow. Everybody had to fucking bail.”

“Once the water hit the generators, the power went out,” Eric broke in. He was talking fast. “Then the engines started fluttering, then for some reason it actually went in reverse. You couldn’t pull the rafts, they were so tight…. We’re going over, we’re going over, and then two of the rafts, they swung around and came right by the side of the boat.”

“I don’t know if anybody made it into the other raft,” Eric told Captain Scott. “I got to the first one. There were a lot of people in the water. We were trying to get people to swim to us.”

Everyone was scanning the waves. The captain had posted some lookouts on the wheelhouse deck and up on the bow.

Finally Scott saw something. “That looks like a raft.” He focused the
Warrior
’s spotlight on a yellow disk several hundred yards off in the water.

J
EREMY
F
REITAG, THE
R
ANGER
’
S STEWARD
, was slouched down against the rubber wall. There were twelve of them in the raft. Jeremy felt like they were lost. They hadn’t heard anything in a long time. Gwen Rains, the female observer, was extremely
upset. Jeremy didn’t know her very well; she’d been on the boat for only a few days. He felt bad for her, though. She had some type of beeper, an emergency device that she couldn’t get to work. She kept asking the guy next to her if it was broken, but he didn’t know, either. Jeremy just bowed his head and tried to block out what was happening. He’d been in the same position for a while when the side of the raft suddenly lit up and a warm, red glow flooded the compartment.

One of the guys on the other side of the raft unzipped the door to the shelter, and there she was—the
Alaska Warrior,
just feet away.

A
IRCRAFT
C
OMMANDER
TJ S
CHMITZ
was concerned that he’d overcommitted himself—and his crew. If the
Munro
didn’t make up some significant distance, they’d have just minutes to spare before the helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed in the ocean. The last thing Schmitz wanted to do was to ditch in the Bering. In the dark. With five survivors on board.

Normally, an air crew would want 400 pounds of fuel remaining when they landed on a cutter in the middle of the ocean. Maybe 300 would cut it. The absolute minimum—for landing at an airport, in good weather—was 200 pounds of fuel still on board. That was twenty minutes of flying time. At this point, they’d be lucky if they landed with 150 pounds, and there were so many variables between here and there: the weather, the sea state, how quickly the
Munro
could break free of the 60 and get turned around and back on course. It was impossible to predict what could happen with a ship. It could lose radio communications or steering. It could get turned into a big snow squall. On the other hand, an airport runway would always be there.

As they left the rescue scene, Schmitz transferred the controls
over to Greg Gedemer. The younger pilot would fly the helo while Schmitz kept an eye on all the gauges. Schmitz decided to slow back. Returning to the
Munro
at a lower speed would decrease the aircraft’s burn rate. It would also give the cutter more time to make up the distance between them.

Shortly after 8:00
A.M
. Schmitz spotted the
Munro
in the distance. He and Gedemer were still flying with their night vision goggles on, struggling to see as they passed in and out of snow squalls. At first, the ship was just a dot in the green haze of the NVGs.

“Okay, there it is! There it is!” Schmitz announced.

A moment later, a snow squall moved through. The pilot got a sinking feeling.

“Oh, man, we’re farther away than I thought.”

When they were about five miles out Schmitz called, “Tallyho!”

A few seconds later, Schmitz, Gedemer, and Musgrave all heard the reply: “Tallyho!”

Schmitz looked into the distance and watched as the
Munro
slowed and then turned into the seas.

From the bridge to Combat to the open hangar of the flight deck, the atmosphere on the ship was tense. Much of the crew had heard the exchange between the 65 pilots and Combat; they knew that the small helo was dangerously close to “splash.” As the 65 approached the
Munro
’s stern, Schmitz took back the controls from Gedemer. It was a straight shot in.

Schmitz might have only one chance to approach the ship and get the aircraft safely down on the flight deck. There’d be no room for error.

He could overhear the orders urging the tie-down crew back out on deck to await the helicopter. Then SAR Operations Specialist Erin Lopez’s voice came over the helicopter’s radio:

“Rescue 6566, you’re out of limits, but you’re clear to land,” she said.

Schmitz approached the side of the ship.

Slowly, steadily, he slid the red capsule over the flight deck and planted it right down onto the talon grid. He deployed the talon hook to the honeycombed surface, and the squad of four blue-suited tie-downs scurried out to secure the helicopter to the deck.

Schmitz was out of the helo even before the rotors stopped spinning. He handed control of the shutdown to Gedemer and headed straight to Combat. The dark room smelled like stale coffee. Crowded around a glowing computer bank were Erin Lopez, Chief Luke Cutburth, and Ops Boss Jimmy Terrell. Soon Captain Lloyd came down from the bridge.

“Hell of a job, Lopez!” Schmitz said to the OS.

“You too,” Lopez replied. “Thanks for not dying!”

“You scared the shit out of me,” Schmitz said. “I think I’ll have to check my drawers.”

The SAR officer laughed. “Me, too.”

“Has anyone heard from Abe yet?” Schmitz asked the assembled crew. They hadn’t. Schmitz was concerned. He knew the Hercules C-130 was out over the rescue scene and his rescue swimmer, Abe Heller, should be able to communicate with the plane from his handheld radio. The Herc crew could then pass on the message to the
Munro
’s Combat room.

Erin Lopez had passed on the location of the Coast Guard life raft to the Jayhawk. The larger aircraft, she told Schmitz, was on its way to the coordinates that the 65 had recorded.

“Got a minute, Captain?” Schmitz asked Craig Lloyd. The two men moved over to a back corner.

“We lost one of the survivors,” the pilot told the captain. “One guy fell out of the basket, from near the rail.”

The captain was silent for a couple moments. He looked at Schmitz. “Okay,” he said. “You did the best you could. You had to keep going.”

Abe Heller was the only rescue swimmer deployed on the
Munro,
but Schmitz wanted to go back out, even without a swimmer. The
Munro
’s crew would be refueling the helo right now.