by Chris Thrall
He crawled into the doorway to inspect the repair, his body tingling with suspense.
Yes!
Not a single bubble.
- 80 -
Ahmed popped the ecstasy pill and washed it down with a gulp of whiskey.
“Right, I’ll put up the sail. Stow the money inside.”
Mohamed began gathering their windfall and shoving it into the nylon tube.
Ahmed cut the motor and went on deck to haul up the canvas. Doing exactly what the yacht crews had taught them in the harbor felt surreal. It was magical to see the rich-green sailcloth blossom in the breeze and feel the boat pick up speed.
He hopped down into the cockpit and adjusted the wheel, no need for a compass heading when the lights of Spain shimmered in the distance. With the ecstasy invoking a nostalgic caress, he reflected on the journey so far. The uric stench of the orphanage where he first met his beloved brother. The sewer where they overcame Rat Boy. The hut and the vicious beating Al Mohzerer gave Mohamed. The kind old man Saleem. The pirates. And their escape from the dock.
Never had Ahmed felt so happy and alive. Whatever challenges Europe conjured up, they would face them with pride. No one would mess with the boys, who intended to become the continent’s biggest drug barons. He knew it!
“Jiggy, jiggy, jiggy!”
An idiot emerged from the cabin to the blare of the Stoner Brothers’ ‘How Fast Can You Live?’ Wearing his luminous-orange parker – pockets crammed with Golden Monkey and bottles of Havana Club – a string vest, cowboy boots and fake Ray-Bans, he had wrapped himself in ammunition belts and held the shotgun and an AK-47 aloft. On his head was a black baseball cap with “BOY” emblazoned across it in pink letters. In his mouth the fattest joint ever rolled.
“Girls, girls, girls!” He grinned.
Ahmed looked to the sky and laughed until he could laugh no more.
- 81 -
Hans stared at his reflection in the signaling mirror, unable to recognize the alien looking back at him.
Is this me?
Fish scales and blood caked tanned, wizened skin stretched taut over the contours of his skull. One was eye bloodshot, wild pupiled and sunk in its socket, the other swollen shut by the festering wound eating up his face. His unkempt hair and beard had turned white, and his scalp had bald bleeding patches where the raft rubbed against it, pulling clumps of roots out. Ugly boils and lesions covered his body, and he had lost the cap from a front tooth. The Rolex hung loose on his wrist. In too much pain, he could not adjust the bracelet if he tried.
Hans forced a half grin, knowing he was dying.
He had given up recording their progress and writing entries in the log. They were in the hands of Mother Nature now. He hoped she would be merciful and blow them to the shipping lanes. They must be close. Surely someone would spot their plight.
The sea around them now teemed with life. Schools of bonito and tunny joined in the ever-evolving chaos, whipped into frenzy by an abundance of plankton blooms. Hans watched a dorado zip along the surface, sending a school of flying fish airborne, their tormentor then wrenched from the chase by the jaws of a huge shark. A mass of fins appeared in an instant, the sea wolves’ tails thrashing as they fought for a share of the prey, a crimson tinge infusing the boiling sea.
Erring on the side of caution, Hans retrieved the solar still. The last time he checked, there was a good pint in the collection bag, but he had decided to float the still a while longer to accumulate more of the priceless commodity. Now, as he pulled up the nylon tube, the bag felt a little light. In fact, there was no resistance at all.
Panic set in.
Something had gone wrong.
Hans inspected the empty bag, to see a minute bite mark in the plastic.
“Damn you, triggerfish!” He cursed the obvious culprits. “Why couldn’t you leave us alone?”
Fixing the hole with duct tape was easy, but the lifesaving liquid that took a day to collect had been lost. Now that evening drew in and the sun’s distilling rays took leave, it would be another twenty-four hours before they had anything to drink.
That night, consumed by pain, Hans slumped in the doorway watching an electric-blue light trail stream in their wake. In reality, the spectacular display was bioluminescence given off by single-cell organisms encountering the raft, a protective mechanism to ward off predators. This was of no concern to Hans, though. His vision blurred. Pain ricocheted around his skull whenever he moved his eyes, locking his jaw and making him nauseous. He was content simply to sit there, entranced by the beautiful phenomenon and absorbing its comforting aura.
A bulbous silhouette cut a swath through the light show. In his hallucinating state, Hans checked himself, but, sure enough, there it was again, something monstrous yet majestic rising from the depths to scope the tiny craft. Hans stared into the heavenly color storm but could see nothing until the surface erupted with a phhhhsssssskkkkk! and two enormous black heads emerged – a humpback whale and her calf.
At any other time in Hans’ life, the mammals’ impromptu appearance would have taken him by surprise, but so close to death and with no energy left to expend, he resigned to the moment and let the experience wash over him.
The mother’s eye stared at him knowingly, reassuringly.
“Hey Jessie! Come quick!”
She lay unstirring in the gloomy interior. Hans woke the little girl and, with his good arm, helped her into the doorway.
“Guess who’s come to see us.”
“Mommy and JJ, Papa?” she whispered, her eyes glinting in the dark.
“Yes, sweet pea. They’ve come to tell us everything’s gonna be all right. It’s gonna be okay.”
Hans held Jessica out so she could stroke the nearest whale’s rubbery skin.
“Don’t worry, Mommy. Don’t worry, JJ. Daddy will look after me. He promised.”
With that the creatures sunk below the waves and disappeared into the abyss.
After tucking Jessica into her sleeping bag, Hans dozed off, drifting between dreams of hope and hellish nightmares.
Something disturbed Hans’ slumber, a sound impossible to place at first. He awoke to the thunder of a powerful diesel engine. Through the doorway he saw a ship less than a hundred yards away, its lights blazing terror as it closed across the moonlit void.
Hans wrenched himself from torpor and lunged for the Poly Bottle containing the remaining handheld flares, but his efforts were in vain. Looking up, he could make out individual rivets on the ship’s iron prow as its bow wave slammed into them. Their humble home flipped upside down, catapulting Hans out of the doorway and into wet darkness. He kicked for the surface, horrified to see the raft cartwheeling in the white water along the ship’s rusty hull.
“Jessica!”
Hans could not believe what was happening, and as the unrelenting hulk ravaged the fragile pod, he prayed his baby girl was not still inside.
Using sidekick and his good arm to propel him through the water, Hans struck out for the raft, which lay on its roof, bobbing in the ship’s churning wake. The perpetrator had fled the scene, careening into the night like a hit-and-run drunk.
Nearing the raft, a frantic Hans scoured the choppy surface. He hoped to God that the equipment bags had not smashed Jessica to a pulp as they tumbled around inside the canopy like rocks in a washing machine. Worse, that the ship’s enormous screws hadn’t sucked his little girl under and shredded her to ribbons.
“Jessica!”
Still no sight or sound of her, Hans heaved on the man-overboard rope to right the raft. As it splashed down, he grabbed the handline and clawed his way around to the entrance.
“Swimming time, Papa?”
“Jessie!”
She floated on her back in the flooded cabin.
Fueled on adrenaline, Hans pulled himself aboard, tears pouring down his face as he gathered the first mate in his arms.
“I got all wet!”
“I know, honey. I know.”
&n
bsp; “And the bag hit me on the head!”
“Oh, sweetheart . . . sweetheart.”
- 82 -
In Cape Verde, Penny took up her usual spot in Salgadeiras, the café bar overlooking the marina, and in particular the berth Future should have occupied. She sat there every day, hoping the yacht would cruise into the harbor, Hans stoic at the helm while Jessica played with Bear in the cockpit, her nights tortured with visions of Future going up in flames.
As Penny cradled a coffee, a plethora of memories occupied her mind. She thought about the moment she first met Hans, so handsome, courteous and in control. It was a recollection she would treasure forever, knowing she fell in love with him the second he spoke. When tucking Jessica into bed that evening, she had to refrain from smothering the little girl in hugs and kisses. Her cuteness and intelligence made her instantly loveable and a joy to be around. Penny prayed for their safe return, willing to exchange a life at sea to be with them in Maine.
However, after three weeks the Concern had no choice but to scale down its expensive operation. If Future was adrift or her crew had taken to a life raft, they would be too far out into the Atlantic for rescue aircraft to continue flying an effective search pattern. No commercial flights or satellites had picked up an EPIRB signal, the coastguard concluding the device must have gone down with the yacht. At one point the crew of the Monaghan contacted the website to report sailing into a debris field, later adding, upon inspection, it was likely garbage cast overboard by a cargo ship en route from South Africa. Washington continued to block Muttley’s requests for military intervention, something he promised Penny she had not heard the last of.
Phipps, Hans’ former Navy SEAL buddy, would stay on Cape Verde another month and continue to liaise with commercial vessels and yacht crews, particularly those making the trip west to the Caribbean. “There are millions of miles of empty ocean out there, Penny, but there is still a chance if they can reach the shipping lanes.”
Each passing second Penny contemplated possible explanations – a rogue wave taking down Future’s rigging and ruining communications, Hans smashing his head in a fall and Jessica struggling to take charge of the boat – until the scenarios became so implausible that not even she could believe them.
Every few seconds her eyes flicked to the restaurant’s flat-screen TV. She hoped the looped CNN reports would be interrupted by a bulletin announcing that the occupants of a life raft had been picked up or that a ragtag pirate outfit had kidnapped an American and his daughter and were demanding a ransom.
Penny watched with dismay as Growing Old Disgracefully pulled into Future’s berth. Its crew, John and Margie Grenson, had pottered about the North African coast for years, John having retired from a successful dental practice in which Margie had been his assistant. A sprightly couple in their seventies, not an awful lot phased them – the open ocean or otherwise – but recently they had been forced to consider selling their cherished craft and moving back to Connecticut. Piracy was on the increase and proved a constant source of anxiety, and the ocean was full of all manner of floating foreign objects – or “space junk” as John referred to it – that could sink a yacht.
- 83 -
Morning broke, and Hans clutched Jessica as he surveyed the damage. Despite an ugly smearing of rust and algae following its slide along the ship’s hull, the raft had come through the ordeal relatively intact. The screw stayed in place, and the pressure valves did their job, but the tubes would need a good few pumps to get them into shape. The Larssons still had the equipment bag and the items stowed in the raft’s mesh pockets, but the ditch kit was missing, along with the fishing gear, bait net and water can. The solar still was punctured and flattened beyond repair.
As far as survival was concerned, the situation could not have been much worse, but Hans was just glad they were both still alive. He retrieved the collapsible basin and began bailing out, reflecting on the irony that with no prospect of food or water they had retained the item doubling as a potty. Only one sleeping bag was present. Hans hung it out to dry and began inflating the tubes, stopping to rest every twenty pumps due to utter exhaustion.
It must feel like this to climb Mount Everest, inching up through the Death Zone a step at a time.
In truth, what with the fatigue, heat and deprivation – not to mention loneliness, fear and paralysis from gangrene – climbing Everest would have been an easier option.
Hans set about making an improvised still, tearing a thin strip from one of the halves of T-shirt and taping it around the rim of the basin. Fortunately, he had stored the filleting knife in a mesh pocket prior to the collision. He used it to cut a square of black fabric from the equipment bag, placing it in the bottom of the basin to act as a heat sink and wick. He filled the contraption with a quarter of an inch of brine and sealed it in a plastic bag. Placing the still in the sun, he hoped the salt water would evaporate into fresh, condensing on the plastic bag to drip down and collect in the T-shirt material.
When darkness fell, Hans lay in the doorway, using the empty water can and attached sock to scoop up krill wriggling in the raft’s stunning blue halo. He was beyond exhausted and about to give up when a triggerfish shot from the deep and butted his wrist. Taken by surprise, Hans took a moment to realize the luminescent dial on his Rolex had acted as an attractor.
An idea formed . . .
He cut a two-foot length of webbing strap from the interior of the raft and tied one end to his watch – not an easy task with little feeling in his right-hand side. Then he taped the filleting knife to the wooden paddle to use as a spear. Hans jigged the world’s most expensive bait up and down until the fish struck again, but he was too slow. After several attempts, Hans managed to impale the triggerfish, gutted to see it wriggle off the blade as he drew it toward him. Although in desperate need of the juice the fish’s flesh contained, the American drifted into sleep.
Hans awoke to find the raft caught up in a mesh of sargassum rolling around in the swell like a sea monster. In amongst the weed was a heap of trash, testament to a world of ignorance and greed Hans and Jessica had long since ceased to be a part of.
Something caught his eye . . . He found himself shaking.
It was a plastic bottle – a mineral water bottle – floating at an angle that suggested it was not empty.
Hans pulled the vegetation toward him, and another bottle popped up and then another. If there was ever a gift from the gods, then this must be it. Plucking them from the sea, he could hardly believe they contained varying amounts of freshwater, almost a pint in all. He unscrewed the top of one of the bottles and guzzled its contents.
“Jessie.”
“Huh?”
“Drink, honey. Drink.”
“Mojito?” She looked up at him with glassy black eyes.
“No, princess. Better than mojito.”
He held the bottle to her mouth. There was no point rationing such a small amount, so they finished it off, though Jessica was uninterested and spilt a good deal.
With a newfound zest, Hans returned to spearfishing, but the revitalizing effect of the water did not last long, seeing him slump to the floor. He lay there with the stench of death invading his nostrils, tongue swollen beyond all proportion in his ulcerated mouth.
In the heat of the afternoon, he summoned up the energy to remove the T-shirt fabric from the improvised still and sucked out the few drops it held before collapsing in agony. He considered setting it up again but knew it was not worth the effort.
The next morning luck shone on them once more, for during the night two flying fish had landed on board, the moisture in their tissue enough to see them through another day. Hans reached for the spear and . . .
Hans had no idea how long he had slept for, only that a swell kicked up under them for the first time in weeks.
Could it be . . . ?
He peeled back the door to see building heads of dense, dark cloud towering into an overcast sky. The raft slid headlong down ever-highe
r breakers as the rumble of distant thunder signaled an approaching storm. His first thought was to stream the drogue, but he got all confused, taking an age to find it and misplacing it when he did. When at last he threw the device overboard, it immediately ripped into shreds.
Hans couldn’t miss this opportunity to collect water. He rummaged through the equipment bag and stuck all the empty cans to the outside of the canopy with duct tape. The raft looked like a woman’s hair in rollers. Kicking himself, Hans realized he had fixed them on upside down.
When the weather hit, Hans was past caring, whooping aloud as the tired orange pod rode the waves like a roller coaster. Fork lightning electrified the sky, the downpour rinsing salt from his matted hair and beard.
Hans held out the collapsible basin. It filled in seconds, and with no other vessel at hand in which to decant it, he tipped it over his shoulder into the cabin. The torrent was such that Hans was able to pour basin after basin into the floating tub until the sheer weight of water threatened to sink them.
“Drink, Jessie! Drink!”
As he spoke, the sound of rotor blades drowned out the tempest, and a chopper emerged from the gloom. Hans fought to remain upright in the doorway as its downwash flattened the canopy and he gagged on aviation fumes.
Hans thought it was a rescue bird at first, expecting a crew member to descend on a winch and whisk them to safety, but when he looked again he saw that it was a single-seater, the kind used by forest rangers to report on wildfires.
He spotted a compartment behind the chopper’s Perspex bubble.
We can squeeze in there!
He caught the pilot’s attention and gesticulated wildly. The pilot shook his head and, risking life and limb, leant out of the cockpit, opening the cowling to show Hans it housed avionics. The pilot made a chopping gesture with his bladed hand, indicating Hans should look to the distance.