Ghost Ship

FADE IN:

INT. BARGE - DAY

Crewman EPPS (29), wearing a life vest and tool belt, jumps

down into the darkness. She stands in a great hollow cavern,

oily, wet, resonant with the sound of creaking, rusty steel

and WATER MOVING OVER ITS HULL on the other side.

INT. BARGE - LATER - DAY

Epps comes to a low point in the darkness, shining her light

on a lake of salt water sloshing against the bulkhead. She

kneels. As the water sloshes back she sees that it is leaking

in through the seams in the steel plate of the hull.

EXT. BARGE - LATER - DAY

Epps pulls herself onto the deck from below. She stands on a

rusting 5000 ton tank barge being pulled in the open ocean

by a brawny marine tug at the end of a 150 foot tow cable.

It is a typical summer day in the southern Bering Sea, which

means a healthy chop and a stiff cold breeze out of the north-

west. She closes the hatch behind her and makes her way

forward.

EXT. BARGE - BOW - MOMENTS LATER - DAY

Up ahead, the tug pulls steadily, grey-black clouds of diesel

smoke rising from its massive turbine vents.

Epps cinches and checks her body harness, focused and

professional. The product of a rocky childhood in the Pacific

Northwest and a few years of hard living, she's found her

true calling now. And under some grime, several polypro shirts

and a pair of orange men's Insulite pants she might even be

considered pretty.

She clips her harness into the tow cable where it attaches

to a heavy pair of eye cleats at the bow. She climbs onto

the cable, hanging out over the water as it breaks on the

bow beneath her. She pulls herself forward on a roller bearing

that fits over the width of the cable and starts off toward

the tug at the other end.

EXT. ARCTIC WARRIOR - LATER - DAY

DODGE and GREER look on from the stern, where the boat's

name "Arctic Warrior" is emblazoned on the transom. Dodge

(37), scruffy chief engineer, wearing de rigueur greasy

coveralls and nicotine stained fingers, is an expatriate

Texan and former merchant marine. GREER (42), is the boat's

first mate, African American, originally from some sweltering

red-neck hellhole, now a tug pilot intentionally well to the

north.

They watch as Epps pulls herself toward them, the cable

occasionally dipping a few feet with a spray of water as a

passing swell slackens it. Epps pulls herself to the stern

where the cable winds into a tow anchor.

EPPS:

It's a slow leak.

She unclips and drops to the deck.

GREER:

What's slow?

EPPS:

Maybe twenty gallons an hour.

DODGE:

Where from?

EPPS:

Amidships starboard at the beam.

Just under the waterline. I don't

think it's a problem.

GREER:

Hear that, Dodge? Epps don't think

it's a problem.

DODGE:

I'll sleep good tonight knowing that.

INT. ARCTIC WARRIOR - PILOTHOUSE - CONTINUOUS - DAY

The view from the pilothouse commands 360 degrees as radar

and GPS navigation displays glow. MURPHY, the ship's master,

pilots the boat. He is 48, at sea all his adult life, and

most of the rest, a fact written on his face and one that

every crewman who's ever worked for him has been willing to

bet his life on. A walkie-talkie CRACKLES AWAKE.

GREER (V.O. RADIO)

Greer to Murphy.

MURPHY:

(lifting the radio)

Go.

Murphy turns back to see Greer, Epps, and Dodge looking up

at him from the stern.

GREER:

The number nine on the starboard

side's half flooded. Epps says it's

a slow leak just under the waterline,

about twenty gallons an hour. They

must've pumped it before we left

Sitka.

MURPHY:

Of course they did.

GREER:

Let the buyer beware.

MURPHY:

What do you say, Dodge?

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