February 3rd, 6:23 P.M.
Hecate Strait, British Columbia
The thick welded steel that made up the walls and floor of his stateroom shuddered heavily for a moment, dragging captain Taylor Burroughs from an evening snooze. He opened his eyes.
Another shudder, longer this time.
An irritated Burroughs rolled out of bed. More engine trouble no doubt, something ship engineers had been trying to correct for months. He groused. For an oil tanker only two years old and considered the pride of the Premier Petroleum fleet, couldn’t the Athabasca have a bug-free voyage for once?
He picked up the phone to contact the bridge, then hesitated. The tanker didn’t seem to be moving. Odd. He peered out a window. Indeed, the vessel had stopped. Why?
Burroughs ran his fingers through his hair. Not good. A stalled ship in these waters made him uneasy. Shoals and reefs littered the shallow waters of the Strait, a treacherous minefield to a loaded tanker vulnerable to changes in depth. Best to get moving again before drifting into some uncharted barrier—
Then he froze.
Oh no.
Abruptly in a panic, Burroughs threw on some clothes and hurried up the stairs to the navigation bridge, where he found the room in chaos. Alarms shrieked everywhere, accompanied by a virtual Christmas display of flashing lights. Officers dashed to and fro, eyeing the ship’s computers, shouting, cursing. Chief mate Peter Maris spied Burroughs.
“Sir! We’ve run aground! We’ve run aground!”
“What’d we hit?”
“A reef, sir!”
Burroughs swore. He took stock of the details. The culprit was an unnamed reef only 54 feet below the surface.
“Reverse thrust!” he ordered. “Full power!”
The superstructure groaned as all eight diesel engines poured nearly 43,000 horsepower into freeing the ship. Frothy water exploded around the screws, turning the sea aft of the vessel into foam. The tanker seemed to move perceptively, inch by inch…
Only to heave suddenly. More alarms blared.
“She’s stuck, sir!” Maris yelled. “We can’t move!”
Burroughs clenched.
“Turn on the outdoor lights! I’m going outside!”
He grabbed a coat and dashed into the chilly, foggy Canadian gloom. Using binoculars, Burroughs focused his attention on the waters below. Nothing. He scanned closer to the hull. Still nothing.
Wait.
There. A dark sheen, barely discernible, began to manifest itself on the port side. Rippling outward, the black pool soon enveloped the fore of the ship.
“No!” he screamed into the darkness. “No!”