The Pulse

by Scott B. Williams

  Before she could even struggle, she felt herself pulled backward and off her feet by her unseen assailant. The next thing she knew she was on the ground and belly down in the sand, both arms pinned behind her by an immovable weight that she soon realized was her attacker’s knee as he forced some kind of fabric in her mouth and used both hands to tie it tightly behind her head. She tried desperately to spit it out and scream, but it was no use. She couldn’t even turn her head to see what he looked like before she felt yet another piece of cloth being wrapped and tied over her eyes and forehead. The weight shifted and she felt hands working at her wrists, tying something around them, securing them behind her back so that she was totally helpless, blindfolded and gagged. She tried to use her feet to flip herself over and kick at her attacker, but when he had finished securing her hands, she felt her ankles locked together in a vise-like grip and then the constricting force of something being wrapped and tied around them as well. The next thing she knew, she was lifted from the sand in strong arms, carried a short distance, and put down on the sand again. She heard movement that she realized was the sound of the canoe sliding in the water, and then felt herself lifted again. Twisting and squirming did nothing to prevent her from being picked up and set down again, this time on a hard surface, with softer objects under her feet and head. She heard a crackling sound as something was pulled over her, and then could feel it being tucked around her and pulled tight as the other objects in the canoe were shifted around and positioned so that her movements were even further restricted. She realized that she being covered by something, as it shut out what little light she had seen before through the blindfold. She felt the canoe slide some more until it was free of the bank, then she could feel it floating free and tipping sharply to one side as someone stepped into it and sat down. She heard a paddle dip into the water, then felt the canoe surge beneath her, then pick up speed to the sound of rhythmic stroking as it moved into the river current.

  Casey was terrified. She could not believe how suddenly and completely she had been subdued and abducted and was now being taken away. She was alone with this wordless stranger who had her in his canoe and had her completely and totally at his mercy. Grant and Jessica would have no way of knowing what had happened or where she was. How could anyone find her? She knew a canoe was silent, and, traveling the river, it would leave no tracks or trace of its passing. She would have to somehow get out of this fix on her own, but there was absolutely nothing she could do right now. She realized that, bound and gagged as she was, there was no way she could swim if the canoe tipped over, so it was best not to struggle at this point, because the idea of drowning with her hands tied behind her back was no more appealing than the thought of what this man might do to her. All she could do was lie there and think about how unfair it was that something like this could happen now, after they’d already been through so much in just three days.

  She knew Grant and Jessica wouldn’t know what to do when they came back and she was gone. This would put them in more danger and keep them from getting to the cabin, because she was sure they would spend a lot of time looking for her around the bridge without success. She thought about her dad as well, knowing he must be terribly worried about her and would be going crazy by now, because he most likely would have no way to even get back to the United States mainland, much less New Orleans. But even if by some miracle he had made it there and found her note, and then set out for Grant’s cabin to look for her based on the directions in the note, she would not be there. If that happened, he would be in constant danger traveling there to look for her in vain.

  The thought sickened her with worry and regret. Maybe she’d done the wrong thing after all to leave New Orleans with Grant. Now she’d gotten her best friend, Jessica, out here in the middle of nowhere too. Something bad could just as easily happen to them and she would be partially to blame. These dark thoughts filled her mind as she lay helpless in the canoe, like just another piece of baggage piled in the bottom as cargo to be taken wherever the owner intended to go.

  NINE

  WHEN ARTIE WOKE AGAIN it was because of the heat of the late-morning sun on his face. He had fallen asleep on one of the cockpit seats sometime before dawn while Scully was on watch. Sitting up, he saw that they were far out in the Gulf, surrounded by empty horizons in all directions. Scully was slumped against the starboard cabin side, dozing off as well, while the wind vane kept the Casey Nicole on course. Artie stood and looked around for any sign of ships or other dangers, but there was nothing. He knew they had a long way to go before they had to worry about hitting anything associated with land again, at least until they reached the offshore oil platforms of the northern Gulf. This would be his longest crossing yet beyond the sight of land, as the past few days they had sailed a course that frequently was close enough to the islands they passed to allow an occasional visual reference.

  Not wanting to disturb Scully, Artie peeked though the port companionway hatch to check on his brother. Larry was asleep as well, undoubtedly exhausted from yesterday’s tense encounter on the Cay Sal Bank and the tricky passage through the middle of the Keys the evening before. It had been a long day and night for all of them, but now they all could relax a bit and let the wind do the work as it bore them to the northwest for at least another three, and possibly four days.

  Artie looked at the fillets of fish spread out on the rear netting to dry and saw that they were still there. The swell was gentle and there was barely a chop and certainly no danger of any seas big enough to sweep them overboard, at least for now. After sailing this many miles on the Casey Nicole , learning from Larry and Scully, he could now estimate their speed based on how the wake behind the hulls looked, and he guessed they were still making about eight knots. It certainly wasn’t the best the catamaran could do, but considering the nice conditions and light but steady wind, it was not bad. His thoughts turned to Casey and he wondered what she might be doing at this moment. He knew she would be thinking of him too, and probably worrying about him a lot as well, but he doubted it would occur to her that he would try to reach New Orleans by sailboat. She would probably assume he would hunker down in the islands with Larry until some more conventional mode of transportation was available again. And he likewise hoped she was hunkered down as well. If she had tried to leave New Orleans, as he sometimes thought she might have, he didn’t know how he would ever find her. He knew they couldn’t get very close to the Tulane campus by boat unless they entered the mouth of the Mississippi River and followed it upstream to where it penetrated the heart of the city, but Larry had ruled that out because it would require lots of motoring. The outboard would work if they needed it, but they had a limited amount of fuel and Larry wanted to save that for emergency maneuvering. He said the only feasible way to approach the city was via Lake Pontchartrain, which they could enter under sail from the Mississippi Sound. From there, it would be possible to anchor off or beach somewhere on the lakeshore near Metairie and then hike to the campus on foot. Someone would have to stay with the boat, and that would be Larry, because of his injury.

  During that first full day and the following night on the open Gulf, little changed with the state of wind and sea, and the three of them slipped into an easy routine of alternating watches while the steering vane did all the work of keeping them on course. Their speed made good stayed about the same, averaging eight knots or so, which put them approximately 250 miles north of the Keys by their second morning waking up at sea. In such benign sailing conditions, they had been able to relax with the easy motion of the boat and enjoy better meals than they had eaten while on the passage through the Caribbean. The thin-cut fillets of grouper dried quickly on the netting, greatly increasing their stores of protein to go with the large amounts of stored staples such as rice, pasta, and corn meal that Larry already had aboard.

  Larry’s comments about the unstable nature of the Gulf from their earlier discussions of the voyage proved accurate by their third evening out. Dark clouds lo
omed on the horizon to the west before sundown and quickly overtook them, much to Artie’s consternation. They appeared as dark blue and almost gray-black walls hanging just over the horizon and ominously growing larger as they neared. Their most frightening aspect was the frequent flashes of lightning that streaked out of them in all directions, appearing to continuously strike the water directly below. The thunder that followed every strike was getting louder and sounding just seconds after each brilliant flash. Larry and Scully had obviously been through this before, and quickly had the jib furled and the main tied to the second row of reefs. Larry said they could expect some short but vicious wind squalls, and might have to take down all sails depending on the squalls’ severity.

  “I’m more worried about getting struck by lightning,” Artie said, looking up at the mast. “We’re the tallest thing out here.”

  “Yeah, but we’re properly grounded. The way that works, the lightning doesn’t see any difference between the top of our mast and the surface around us. We could get hit, but if we did, it would mainly just be bad luck.”

  “I’d say it would be worse than bad. I haven’t seen an electrical storm like this since we lived in Oklahoma, and out here, there’s nowhere to hide.”

  “Well, at least we don’t have to worry about the electronics, because they’re already fried!”

  Despite Larry’s reassurance, when the first of the seemingly endless line of thunderstorms swept over them after dark, Artie experienced terror such as he had never known from weather before. The storms brought torrential rain and winds that drove it sideways so that the drops stung their faces as if they were being pelted with BBs or pellets. At one point, the wind proved too much for heaving to with even a scrap of sail up, so Artie had to help Scully wrestle the sail down and secure it. This done, the Casey Nicole was lying ahull to the wind, pushed off course but safe from damage to the rig. Worse than the wind to Artie, though, were the horrific lightning strikes that tore across the sky seemingly right over the deck, so close that the deafening thunder was nearly simultaneous with each flash. He fully expected them all to die at any moment, lit up by hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity as they crouched in the wet cockpit in their drenched foul-weather gear. But despite hours and hours of opportunities that lasted until the following dawn, the lightning missed them every time, and somehow they came out of the storms unscathed. The feeling of relief Artie had at the sight of clearing skies the next morning exceeded even the feeling he had had when he’d first set foot on dry land in St. Thomas after that first offshore passage.

  “You freakin’ sailors are absolutely insane!” he said to Larry as his brother handed him his first cup of coffee of the day.

  “It’s all in a day’s work, Doc. You gotta weather a few storms if you want to drop anchor in paradise. Hell, if it weren’t for a good gale now and then, the sea would be crowded with landlubbers sailing all over the place.”

  “I’ve never been so scared in my entire life.”

  “A hot electrical storm like that can get pretty intense, but we really were in no danger. What’s bad is when you get caught in those kinds of squalls close to land. Then you’re in real danger of getting blown ashore or run down by a barge or any number of coastal vessels. Out here, there’s nothing to hit for a hell of a long way.”

  “So how far did we get blown off course, and how long will it take to make up for it?”

  “It’s not as much as you think. We might’ve got set about 10 miles east of our rhumb line, but I can’t be sure without the GPS. If I can get a clear shot of the sun at noon with the sextant, I can tell you to within a mile, anyway. Of course we lost a few hours of distance made good on our heading, but we’ll make it up as soon as the wind fills in. It looks like it’s picking up now, so we’d better take advantage of it and get up all the sail we can carry.”

  Once they were back on course, after Larry confirmed their position with a noon sight shot with the sextant, they were able to take advantage of a steady southwest wind that leveled out around 15 knots in the afternoon and lasted through the next night. Steady sailing on a beam reach in this wind put them within 110 miles of the northern Gulf coast by the next morning. In this area, near the edge of the continental shelf, they began encountering offshore oil platforms, and by noon had sailed past dozens of these huge structures standing on stilt-like legs above the Gulf. All of them were shut down, of course, and there was none of the heavy boat traffic among them that Larry said would be a hazard to navigation in typical conditions. Nevertheless, he insisted on steering well clear of them, so that they didn’t pass closer than a mile to any of them.

  “Do you think any of the crews are still out here, stranded?” Artie asked.

  “Probably not, after this much time. I mean, they certainly wouldn’t be able to go home by helicopter, like they usually do, but these rigs all have some top-notch diesel mechanics keeping everything running. I would imagine that by now they’ve managed to get enough of the crewboats started to get everyone to the mainland. They certainly have enough fuel on hand, as well as tools and spare parts.”

  “They must have gotten as good of a view of the flash as I did, that first night.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine. Anyway, I’m just glad our timing worked out to cross this oilfield in daylight. You can see what a nightmare it would be to try to sail through here in the dark with all these rigs unlit. If this wind holds, we’ll be past the danger zone before it gets dark again, but then we’ve got to worry about our speed, because we’ll be making landfall before daylight.”

  Larry got out his chartbook for the northern Gulf coast and showed Artie a chart called “Mississippi Sound and Approaches.” He pointed out the long chain of barrier islands that created the sound and paralleled the mainland from the Florida-Alabama state line to the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain.

  “I never knew all those islands existed,” Artie said.

  “Most of them are reachable only by boat, and are part of a national seashore preserve. There’s a lot of shoal water around them and inside the sound. This whole coast is hazardous to any deep-draft boat, in fact. We don’t have to worry as much as most, with the catamaran, but we’ve still got to stay on top of where we are. You could run a skiff aground on some of the sandbars around those islands. Look, here’s where we want to enter the sound.” Larry pointed at a marked channel leading in from the Gulf to the west side of a barrier island labeled West Ship Island. The channel continued north for miles across the sound to the city of Gulfport, Mississippi. “I’ve run that channel before, and we can do it at night, as long as there’s some moonlight, which we’ll have plenty of. We’ll drop anchor behind Ship Island and wait for dawn. From there, it’s less than a day’s sail to the west end of the sound and the entrance to Pontchartrain.”

  “I can’t believe we’re almost there. It seemed like we were a world away when we first talked about this voyage in St. Thomas.”

  “It’s a pretty good trip, no doubt. A couple more like that, and I’ll make a sailor out of you yet, Doc.”

  “One’s enough, thanks. Except I know you’re going to tell me we’ve got to sail away somewhere else once we pick up Casey.”

  “I don’t have a better answer, do you? I don’t know where we’d go or what we’d do on the mainland. You sure wouldn’t likely be able to get to your house right now. But we’ll figure all that out later. The main thing is to get to Casey first.”

  When the last of the oil platforms dropped astern, the sun was setting on the Gulf and they were once more in open water. Larry calculated it was less than 30 miles to West Ship Island, but said it was so low lying, they wouldn’t see it until they were within five miles of it. Once it was fully dark, Artie helped Scully put a reef in the main so they could maintain a slower approach while they waited for the moonrise. Two hours later, they were able to pick out the unlit markers indicating the Gulfport Ship Channel in the moonlight. On the horizon to the north, a faint line of white sand could be seen
, and soon they heard the distant sound of crashing surf as they sailed closer to the island. Artie was eager and elated at the prospect of the end of the voyage. But he was also disappointed to see that there were no lights or even a distant glow in the direction of the mainland, where he knew, from driving it, that there was almost a solid line of urban sprawl from New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama. From what they could tell so far, the entire coast was as dark as the uninhabited barrier island they were approaching.

  When they were closer to the island, Larry pointed out an odd, circular structure rising some 30 feet above the otherwise featureless dunes of the island. “In the daylight, we would have seen that before we could have seen the beaches. It’s Fort Massachusetts, built after the War of 1812. It’s a park now, and there is a dock near it on the north side of the island where excursion boats land to bring tourists out here. We can anchor around there on that side. It’s the best harbor at any of these islands, which is why they built the fort there in the first place, to guard the approach to New Orleans.”