"Pilot, Evangeline, go ahead." The voice was a gravel-voiced Cajun, Judd Trahan, whom she had worked with a hundred times. She could hear the tug's engines straining in the background.
"Judd, I'm going to take her off. Go to the port bow, put your line up, and when you're fast, I want you pulling her head up into the wind, northwest, as hard as you can. Don't let her bow fall off toward Berth Five. Bayou Rose, go to the starboard quarter and push, hold her stern off the dock as the lines come free. We're letting everything go from the ship's end."
"Evangeline, copy, port bow, pulling into the wind."
"Bayou Rose, copy, starboard quarter, pushing."
Then she picked up the terminal handheld.
"Line Gang Four, pilot. Alcide, here's what's going to happen. I'm not putting any man on those bollards tonight. Nobody touches the eyes. The ship's crew is going to slack the remaining lines and let them run off the drums, all the way, the whole line, so they just fall in the water. You're going to hear them go. Keep everybody behind the shed until I tell you the ship is clear. Gulfline can bill the owner for the rope."
"Copy, Pilot." And then, in a different voice, quieter: "Ma'am. Thank you."
She turned to Bautista. "Tell your mates. Fore and aft. Slack everything and let it run."
He spoke into the ship's radio in rapid Tagalog. From somewhere far below them, at the stern and at the bow, she heard through the deck the clatter and roar of winch brakes being released, steel drums spinning free, and then a series of long, slithering, whipping sounds as the mooring lines ran out through the fairleads and fell, one after another, into the black water between the ship and the dock.
"All lines away aft," the seaman's voice crackled on Bautista's radio. "All lines away forward."