by Rich Johnson
The next wave broke over the bow, sending a mad river of foam raging toward the bridge windows from more than 800 feet ahead. It smashed into the glass and the bridge shuddered under the impact. Captain Sleagle thumbed the joystick and adjusted the throttles to bring the ship into a quartering position that would save them from taking the waves directly on the nose.
“Sorry, men, but I don’t think we’re going to find a comfortable way to ride this one out.”
Through the thick glass of the bridge windows the scene was ghastly. As far as the eye could see, mountainous gray-green cresting waves, shredded by violent wind, fought their way toward the ship, each seeming to shove the other aside for the privilege of being first to punish the Desdemonda. Captain Sleagle exhaled deeply, wiped the sweat from his brow and turned his thoughts inward. He didn’t want to tell his men just how close they had come to disaster.
He never believed it was possible to suffer such a pounding in a ship this size, but now all doubts were gone. It was a freak of nature, this late-season hurricane, and he knew he was staring down the throat of a monster that can tear a container ship apart.
Chapter Twenty-one
October 29th – Panama
“I understand your request, but we’re not flying a chopper into that storm.” Captain Pfister’s graying flat top hair bristled, as the commanding officer of Coast Guard Sector Panama tightened his jaw, planted his palms firmly on the desk and glowered at Josh Adams.
“Do you understand that this is a matter of national security of the highest magnitude?”
Pfister leaned back, exhaled and tried again. ”Mr Adams, I hear what you’re saying. I’ve already been in contact with Mr Delamo. But it is a physical impossibility for us to put you on the deck of that container ship right now. The ship you’re chasing is caught in the middle of one of the worst hurricanes this sector has ever seen, and there’s not a thing in the world we can do about it until the storm moves out of the area. Then we can go in and see what’s left of the ship.”
Josh pushed back from the desk, straightened up and reached for his cell phone. “Thanks. I’ve got some calls to make. I’ll get back in touch with you later.”
“Just for the record,” – Pfister brushed back his bristled hair – “it wouldn’t matter if the president himself ordered us into that storm right now.”
“Are you saying you would disobey an order from the president?”
“Not saying that at all, sir,” the captain was quick with his reply. “But if we followed those orders, nobody on the mission would live to tell about it.”
“Well, I’m not calling the President. And I don’t expect you to put lives at unreasonable risk. Just keeping the chain of command informed. Unless they send me elsewhere, I’ll be around, and I’d appreciate it if you let me know the minute we can board that ship.”
“The captain stood and offered his hand. “Will do, sir.”
San Blas Islands
Sven and Dan stood on the beach staring with focused attention at a solid shield of grey sky to the northeast. “See, I told you so,” Sven said. “When will you learn to listen to the Danish genius?”
“Yeah, well I have to admit that you called it right this time. As far as genius goes, I’m not buying it. Just luck, I’d say. But I suppose it’s enough to fool the girls.”
Dan felt a pinch on his bottom and yelped.
Nicole retracted her hand and grinned. “You boys aren’t talking in disparaging terms about us girls again, are you?”
Dan spun around. “Geez, Nicole, where did you learn to sneak up on me like that?”
“Nice try, buddy.” She eyed him like a shopper checking for bad fruit. “Don’t go trying to change the subject. Were you, or were you not, saying bad things about us girls?”
“Not,” Dan tried.
“Strike one.” Nicole shook her head. “You know what happens after strike three? Wanna try again?”
Sven was enjoying his friend’s sudden trouble. “I think you’re busted. Might as well confess and throw yourself on the mercy of the court.” He turned to Nicole. “Your honor, if it please the court, this man is guilty as charged. And to add to his offense, he was also making disparaging remarks about my Danish genius when it comes to weather forecasting.”
“Genius, huh?” Grendel stepped out of the hut waving a sheet of paper. “Is that what they call a weather fax these days? Here’s the latest.” She read from the paper: ‘The eye of Hurricane Yolanda is at 15 degrees 4 minutes north latitude, 81 degrees 19 minutes west longitude. She’s gaining strength and is expected to generate wind speeds in excess of 155 miles per hour. Forecasters are warning of landfall somewhere along the coast of Guatemala, although she could turn north through the Yucatan Channel into the Gulf of Mexico.’
Dan lowered his eyebrows at Sven, “Weather fax, huh?”
Sven took a step back and stammered, “Well, uh …”
“Well, uh, indeed!” Grendel threw the paper at Sven. “So, mister Danish genius, can you tell us all what Hurricane Yolanda is going to do next? Maybe you can make it sound so convincing that you can even fool us girls.” She turned her icy glare at Dan.
Dan held up his right hand. “I solemnly swear that from this minute forward, I will never say another bad thing about you girls. You’re the greatest. After all, you defrocked this Danish fraud.” He turned an evil eye on Sven.
“Ah, come on,” Sven complained. “It was all in good fun.”
Dan put his hand on Sven’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. “There is a path to forgiveness, my friend, but it leads through your secret snorkeling hole so we can catch some dinner.”
“Agreed. Let’s go grab our gear.”
Grendel put her hands on her hips and stamped her foot as the boys walked away. “Nicole, have you ever noticed that whenever our men get in trouble, they seem to solve it all by going fishing?”
“I guess it could be worse. At least we’ll get another seafood dinner out of the deal.”
Aboard the Desdemonda
With her bow quartering into the raging seas, the Desdemonda pitched, rolled and yawed violently. Everyone on board was forced to live by the rule of ‘one hand for the ship and one hand for yourself’, maintaining a constant grip on some kind of handhold to keep from being thrown down and injured.
Peter Moyes steadied himself in the doorway leading to his office. “Sir, the latest report from Miami.” Moyes held out a computer printout for Sleagle, who was seated at the helm station.
Sleagle kept his eyes on the instruments. “Read the pertinent stuff to me from there, if you will. No need to risk crossing the bridge deck just to hand me the report.”
“Thank you, sir,” Moyes breathed. “The essence is that they’re predicting movement of the eye up into the Yucatan Channel by 0600 tomorrow. Finally, we’ll be on the backside of this hideous monster and it will be shifting away from us.”
“Hideous monster? Are those their words?”
“Uh, no, sir,” Moyes stammered. “Those are mine.”
“A pretty fair description, I’d say. Thank you for the report, Mr Moyes. I’m glad to see you’re feeling better. It’s nice to have you back with us on the bridge deck.”
Moyes flushed. “Sorry, sir, for leaving you without a weather officer for so long. Thanks for allowing me to use your cabin. Sir.” This time, there was no hint of resentment in the use of the word ‘sir’.
“Did you find the meds in the head cabinet?”
“I did, sir. But if you don’t mind my asking, why do you carry seasickness medication?”
Sleagle turned toward Moyes. “For seasickness, of course.” Then sensing the young officer’s reluctance to ask the next question, the captain went ahead and answered it. “Yes, even I suffer from mal de mer sometimes. All it takes is the wrong set of circumstances, and anybody, even an old salt, can get seasick. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“No, sir.”
“Hang on!” the first officer shouted,
“here we go again. Another big one.”
The ship plunged into a canyon that had opened a gaping maw in the sea. The bow fell for what seemed like forever, then slammed into the trough at the bottom. The weight of the bow in a freefall continued down, like a diver cutting a clean hole in the water. Moyes gasped and clung to the doorway, sliding to the floor as his legs gave way. To him, it felt as if the ship would just keep going down and never come up. But a long moment later, the ship came up slow at first, then faster and faster until it broke out over the crest of the next enormous wave. Then it plunged again and slammed with a shuddering violence into the bottom of the trough.
“I’d say some of these are above 70 feet, sir!” the first officer shouted above the noise of the storm.
A deep metallic groan sounded from the bowels of the hull, as if something big and important were giving up life, and a worried look crossed captain Sleagle’s face. “Damn,” was all he said. But it was enough to swing the eyes of the navigator and first officer toward their captain. They knew Sleagle was shaken.
Moyes began to whimper like a puppy that is suddenly lost and afraid.
Sleagle grabbed for the microphone, thumbed the button and shouted, “All hands. Secure yourselves, we’re in for a nasty stretch! Deck and cargo hold stewards, survey and report conditions in your areas!” He hung up the mic and turned to the officers on the bridge deck. “You guys okay?”
“Yes, sir,” the first officer and navigator said, almost in unison, but in spite of their words, they really thought the ship was in serious trouble.
“Moyes?”
“Sir?” the weather officer asked with a quiver in his voice.
“You okay?”
Peter Moyes cleared his throat, took a deep breath and tried to quiet the quaking he felt inside. “Yes, sir,” he lied, “I’ll be fine.”
“Good. I haven’t lost a ship or a weather officer to a storm yet, and I don’t intend to start now.”
Moyes closed his eyes, smiled weakly and exhaled, as if he had just been relieved of a terrible burden. “That is wonderful news, sir,”
****
Inside the topmost container on the Desdamonda, total blackness surrounded Husam al Din. His eyes were wide, but he intentionally kept the light turned off so he wouldn’t have to see the chaos that filled the trailer. Everything that was not part of the RV’s permanent structure was strewn about the floor. When the ship plunged and slammed into the trough, the refrigerator door flew open just long enough to eject everything, then on the next roll, it slammed shut again, extinguishing the dim, momentary light that glowed from inside. Cabinet doors and utensil drawers burst open and threw their contents out. Even in the darkness, though he couldn’t see it, Husam al Din knew the mess was there, and it troubled him deeply. To him, the piles of scattered refuse symbolized the wreckage of his life at this moment.
“Allaahu akbar,” he choked in a broken whisper, then redirected his prayer to ask a question that had been worming about in his mind. “Why will you not help me?”
Deep in his heart he felt abandoned, and as that reality rose to his conscious mind, he fought it with prayer. “Allaahu akbar,” he began again. Before another word could be whispered, his stomach leapt to his mouth as the ship fell into a deep wave trough and everything in the container and inside his trailer became nearly weightless. He clawed at the bedding, where he lay on the mattress, trying to hold on in a plunging pitch darkness that felt as if it would never find bottom. Then came the violent shudder, as the hull slammed into the next rising wave, and Husam al Din thought he heard a deep, metallic groan, as if the ship itself were calling out to Allah to save it from destruction.
The sensations of falling, then being thrust back up, then rolling and falling again were more than he could take. His head swirled, his throat and nostrils felt the burn and stench of acid and partially digested food rising from his stomach, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He vomited again. Where it went he could not tell in the utter blackness of this place that had become a prison to him.
Again, falling, rolling. This time, not quite so hard, but hard enough that he grabbed for the mattress and hung on to keep from being pitched to the floor. His hand found a slimy wet pool, and he knew what it was. The thought of it turned his stomach over again, and he wretched, ejecting the rest of his stomach contents into the mattress in front of his mouth. The ship hit the bottom of the trough and began the sudden rise, thrusting Husam al Din’s face into the fresh warm pool of stinking filth.
He came up sputtering and spitting, vomiting uncontrollably with dry heaves as his stomach was now empty. Then he stopped. In the darkness, the chaotic turmoil suddenly gave birth to a moment of fierce resolve.
“Allah,” – he wiped his face in an effort to be clean before presenting himself to God – “I am Husam al Din. Sword of the Faith. You may test me all you want, but I will not be broken. My life is for jihad, and I will carry out my mission if you will but let me live.”
The final words of his prayer were swallowed by the sound of wind screaming through the ranks of containers at the top of the stack on the bow of the mighty ship. Even inside the container and inside the trailer, the sound of the wind could not be stopped. A piercing shriek had for hours split the darkness with its desperate, warbling scream, fading only momentarily when the ship dropped into a hole between the waves.
Hour after hour, the constant thrumming of the hurricane drummed against the metal containers without letup. The noise and violent movement became a torture that Husam al Din accepted at the hands of Allah. If only he understood why … but then, he knew that it was an affront to challenge Allah’s wisdom. There must be a purpose in this, he thought. Perhaps it is only to make me stronger.
Something hard slammed against the side of the container, jarring him where he lay and sending the sharp noise of tearing metal through the trailer. Not knowing what to expect next, Husam al Din quickly turned himself around to face the other end of the mattress, away from the filth. Holding on as gravity once again failed and his stomach stampeded toward his throat, he strained against the sickening impulse and listened. Then a new sound surrounded him. It was the sound of water.
****
On the bridge deck, the intercom came alive. “Captain Sleagle,” a voice shouted above the background of howling wind.
Sleagle grabbed the mic, “Aye, this is the captain.”
“Sir, this is Yarmouth on forward deck watch. It appears we’ve lost a couple of boxes from the top of the forward stack, starboard corner.”
Sleagle steadied himself as the ship dove though the next trough and green water climbed over the bow and exploded in white foam, swallowing the forward third of the ship. He reached for his binocular and raised it to his eyes, straining to see through the glass in front of him that was streaming water in spite of the windshield wiper. His right index finger turned the focus wheel as he scanned the stack of containers nearly 800 feet ahead. The ship thundered again, as another mountainous wave boarded the bow, and Sleagle pulled the binocular down and massaged his eyes.
“Brock,” Sleagle called out to his first officer, “do you see what Yarmouth is talking about? Have we lost boxes off the starboard bow?”
The man at the far right side of the bridge deck took up his binocular and studied the cargo containers. “Hard to tell from here, sir. Could be, but the boarding seas are making it a tough call. Yarmouth is a lot closer than we are, so maybe he’s right. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I know, I know,” Sleagle mumbled. “But I hate losing people’s stuff.”
“Not your fault, sir,” Brock replied. “Some days old man Neptune just gets greedy.”
“Yeah, well,” the captain said, “just the same, I hate it.”
“Take it up with Neptune, next time you see him, sir.” Brock had crewed for Sleagle long enough that he felt comfortable as he chided the captain.
“Not today,” the captain retorted. “I don’t want to see
the old man in person today. Seems he’s in a bad mood.”
“Aye, sir,” Brock said. “Maybe a small offering will be enough to quench his appetite.”
Sleagle looked into his first officer’s eyes from across the long bridge deck and said earnestly, “The way this storm is shaping up, we’ll be lucky if we get out of here with just a small offering.”
Chapter Twenty-two
October 30 – Coast Guard Station Panama
“Have you heard anything yet?” Josh Adams wasn’t all the way through the door before he asked the question.
The Coast Guard officer looked up from his desk with a grim countenance and shook his head. “Nothing.”
“How does a ship the size of Desdemonda vanish?”
Pfister pushed aside his computer keyboard and leaned back in his chair. “In a storm the size and power of Yolanda, anything can happen. It’s a big ocean. Big and wide and deep.” He stood up and walked to the window, propped his arm against the frame and stared out into the glare of sunshine. “Who knows, maybe we’ll find her. I wouldn’t hold my breath, but like I said, anything can happen.”
Josh reached in his pocket and brought out a folding knife with a black four-inch blade. The tang on the blade allowed him to open and close the knife with one smooth movement of his thumb. It was an old habit, opening and closing the blade repeatedly, to burn off nervous tension.
“How many search planes are up?”
“Three.” Pfister pushed away from the window and returned to his chair. “They’ve been flying patterns since first light. I don’t have time to give you a whole course on search-and-rescue mission planning and conduct, but I’ll give you the one-minute version. Pull up a chair.” He swiveled his computer screen around so Josh could see it.
Josh settled into the seat and leaned forward toward the monitor.
Pfister pointed at a spot on the screen. “Radio communications were lost here.” Then he shifted his finger to another point. “But this is what we consider the LKP – the last known position of the ship. It was a full two hours after loss of radio contact. Coordinates at this position were derived from the GPS integral to the ship’s EPIRB – the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. The EPIRB can be activated manually, or it fires automatically if submerged. Calculating the time of eleven hours, eighteen minutes from the LKP, and factoring the prevailing sea current set and drift and the wind speed and direction, we extrapolated the predicted position of the ship at the time the search was initiated, which is where we began the search. There has been no radar contact.”