The onboard radar was helpful, at least for picking out the largest structures above the surface with a good signature, but it wasn’t enough when a band of heavy thunderstorms rolled in from the west. Bart said it wasn’t worth the risk to keep sailing until the weather passed.
“Anywhere in the vicinity of these rigs there’s no telling what kind of obstructions we’re liable to run into. There’s pipe and all kinds of stuff just under the surface, waiting to ruin our day. I say we ought to do our best to just hold position right here where we have a point of reference until it clears up enough to move on.”
Bart pointed to the two drilling platforms less than a mile apart that they were approximately half way between. The one to the west quickly disappeared in sheets of rain as the storm swept towards them, but with the engine running just fast enough to maintain steerage, Bart kept Dreamtime in position by making slow circles until the storm passed and they could see both derricks again. More heavy rain greeted them several times as the stormy afternoon wore on, and each time they had to reduce speed or stop to avoid the risk of blindly pushing on in such a dangerous area. When the skies finally cleared well after dark, they were able to sail again, but only with at least two of the crew on deck at all times, keeping a sharp watch. Eric and Jonathan were sharing this duty at the bow, while Daniel took a turn at the helm, allowing Bart to get some sleep.
“I had no idea there were so many of these rigs out here,” Jonathan said. “This must have been like sailing through a city back when they were all working and lit up at night.”
“I imagine it would have been. I’ve had friends over the years that worked the rigs out here. The oil field here is vast. All you have to do is look at the charts to see it; and there’s no telling how many new ones there are since those were printed.”
“And now they’ve all been abandoned. I wonder how long it’s going to be until all the oil in the country runs out? It’s already impossible for most people to get any gas. What’s going to happen when it’s all gone?”
“It’ll take some time to use up all the reserves, and there may be a limited amount coming in from overseas, but it probably won’t make a difference in the availability of gasoline and diesel for the general public. Whoever is in control of the oil now will do their best to keep it that way. They’ll control it so they can control people’s movements, as well as the price, which will be through the roof for the foreseeable future. If things ever stabilize later, they’ll make a killing.”
“I’ll bet. And I’ll bet there’ll be plenty of actual killings over it too. I’m sure there already has been.”
“No doubt about it. Moving fuel has got to be one of the most dangerous jobs there is by now. That’s why they’re moving it by riverboat, if they’re still moving it at all. I imagine my Dad is right about the opportunities for my kind of work on those boats.”
“Man, I wish I could qualify for a job like that!”
“Are you sure about that, Jonathan? Did you really enjoy getting shot at on board a boat with nowhere to go the other day? It was bad enough that Shauna got hit. It could have been any of us though. It’s a good way to end up dead, I’ll tell you that.”
“Well, you’ve been doing that shit for years, and you’re not dead yet. What kept you going back to it, even though you had a wife and daughter at home?”
“Stupidity!” Eric said. “Look at me and learn from my mistakes. You don’t want to do what I did, that’s for sure. Find yourself a nice place to hole up in the swamp when we get there and stick to fishing. You don’t need to try and earn money anyway because it’s pretty much worthless right now.”
“I can live off of my fishing, that’s a fact, and probably catch enough to trade for any other goods I need if that Atchafalaya River is like you and your old man say it is. I’m damned good at it; you know that. But still, I think it’ll get boring after while. I’d like to do what I can to fight back against all those idiots trying to tear our country apart. It’s not any different than when you enlisted to go fight the terrorists overseas. You felt a calling to do it, didn’t you, a sense of duty to your country? I can’t see where you totally regret it, even if you say you do. If you did, you could have quit a long time ago, but you didn’t.”
“It was a different world then. I believed in what I was doing. I still don’t know the full extent of what’s happened here until I see more of it for myself, but I’ve got a feeling it can never go back to the way it was. Like I told you the first day we met, I’m here to find my daughter and get her and the rest of my family out. That other stuff is no longer my problem.”
Eight
AFTER A NIGHT OF intense and exhausting watch keeping, traversing the offshore oil fields without a working GPS and electronic charts, the final day of Dreamtime’s Gulf voyage dawned fair and clear. Based on their dead reckoning calculations and confirmed by a U.S. Coast Guard tower marker they identified on the paper charts, Eric and Bart estimated they were within 30 miles of the Louisiana coast near the mouth of the Atchafalaya River.
Neither of them had ever been to this coast, though they had both visited Keith and Lynn at their bayou-front home some 50 miles upriver. That part of the Atchafalaya to the north was a different world—a watery wilderness of classic Louisiana cypress swamp and bottomland hardwood forest. The coast, however, was flat and utterly featureless, even more devoid of natural landmarks than most of south Florida and barely above sea level. Most of it consisted of open expanses of salt marsh, broken only by drilling platforms and related oil field infrastructure. Knowing this, Eric didn’t expect to be able to pick out the details of the river entrance until they were within a couple of miles. That was just the nature of approaching this type of low-lying coast by boat. By the time they were that close, the tall masts of Dreamtime would also be visible to anyone who happened to be ashore there, although it seemed doubtful anyone would be since the passage of the hurricane. Even a modest storm surge would have put the entire area underwater, and exposure to such events was the main reason there was so little development along this coast in the first place. Only a few hardy communities like Grande Isle to the east managed to persist here long-term, rebuilding each time a major storm left them in ruin. It was doubtful any of those places would make a comeback from this one though; not without the outside help that was as unlikely to arrive here as it was in south Florida. Survivors in such places, if there were any, had surely moved on to more habitable environments; at least that’s what Eric and Bart assumed. They would know for sure soon enough.
Approaching any coast in the aftermath of a hurricane was dangerous from a navigational standpoint, regardless of the presence or lack thereof of survivors. Channel markers would likely be destroyed or moved out of their correct positions. Sunken vessels and structural debris swept offshore by the storm surge would be everywhere, hidden beneath the murky brown waters near shore and impossible to detect until it was too late. They would have to have to navigate by visual cues alone, keeping a sharp lookout and reading the surface of the water to try and pick up the signs of such hazards in time to avoid them. It would require all hands on deck—with only Shauna getting a pass, but after they were in the river, the days and nights of alternating watches and around the clock sailing were over. There would be no nighttime navigation there. They would be forced to find a place to anchor before it got dark, as it would be far too risky to run the confined and winding river channel at night. Bart suggested that they anchor as soon as they were within the mouth anyway, so that they could go ahead and lower the masts. They couldn’t get under the bridges at Morgan City with them up, and that was only some twenty miles upriver. The highway bridge there had a vertical clearance of just 30 feet according to the charts, and they had to assume that it would be permanently closed. There was also a railroad bridge with an even lower clearance. Beyond that, they had no idea, because that was where the marine charts ended, with everything upstream covered on inland navigation charts, of which they had none. B
art said that some of the inland railroad swing bridges could be even lower, with barely enough clearance to get under even with the spars down.
“Since they built them to swing open, they didn’t bother making them high enough for much else besides small fishing boats to go under. In a lot of places they tend to keep them open all the time except when a train is scheduled to arrive. But they could all be locked down now and left that way. Or they could be using them again by now, who knows? I think we ought to expect them to be closed though, and have the boat ready to go under beforehand. I’d rather not be sitting within sight of a bridge while we’re busy getting the masts down. It would leave us too vulnerable to an attack.”
“I agree,” Eric said. “Let’s find a place to anchor when we reach the coast and get it done. It looks like there are several small islands around the mouth of the river.” Eric pointed as he and Bart studied the chart. “They’re probably not much of anything but marsh, but they might provide us enough shelter to stop and get things sorted for the trip upriver.”
“I imagine so,” Bart said. “All we need is enough of a lee that she won’t be rolling. Then we can drop those spars and get a good night’s rest while we’re there.”
When they were finally close enough to see the coast first-hand, picking out the river mouth was just as difficult as Eric had deduced it would be from the chart. The outlying marsh islands were so low against the backdrop of the equally low mainland that they were practically indistinguishable. With no GPS waypoints to guide them in, it would be nearly impossible to find the river without running aground, unless they could find some channel markers.
With Bart steering, Eric and Jonathan moved to the bow, each of them carrying a pair of binoculars with which to scan the horizon ahead. The first markers they spotted that correlated to the chart were a pair of pilings standing in a gap amidst a cluster of the small, grassy islands. There was a red triangle on the one to starboard and a green square on the one to port, just as it should be to mark a channel entrance from sea. Eric waved Bart forward until he could read the numbers: “30” for the red one and “29” for the green. Calling them back to his father, he waited for Bart to confirm by the chart that yes; these were indeed part of the line of markers leading into the Atchafalaya. There should have been more of them offshore, but apparently they had been swept away by the hurricane storm surge. Looking to the north, Eric could see more of them that way, though some were missing their red or green signs and many were leaning over at an angle. Regardless, they provided enough clues to guide them into the river, and that was a good thing, because without them the marsh islands and channels intercepting them would have been an impossibly confusing maze.
As Bart guided Dreamtime straight ahead through the transition from open water to the calm of the river mouth, evidence of the storm’s passing became apparent everywhere. There was so much debris washed up at the water’s edge in great drifts that it looked like the work of bulldozers rearranging trash at a landfill.
“The storm surge must have carried all this stuff out here when it receded,” Bart said. “It didn’t come from here, because there wasn’t much here to begin with. I suppose it could have washed down from Morgan City or even from over at Grand Isle or somewhere.”
“Wherever it came from, it confirms what Jonathan and I heard from that fellow we passed off the Everglades. He said the worst of the damage was west of New Orleans. It looks like he was right. I have no doubt now that Keith and Lynn got hit pretty hard, considering they’re not all that far north of here.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. We’ll have a pretty good idea how bad it was when we get to Morgan City. I don’t think there’s anything between here and there that would do much to weaken a hurricane. After seeing this, I imagine that place got clobbered.”
The stuff littering the riverbanks included every imaginable artifact of modern life, from pieces of roofing and siding to doors and large appliances like refrigerators and dryers, now half-buried in the muddy banks. Lighter items, such as couch cushions, mattresses and articles of clothing were scattered farther from the water throughout the tall marsh grass, mixed in with plastic toys, bottles and everything else that would float on a storm surge. Eric could only imagine the fury of the waves here at the time of the hurricane’s peak intensity. Everything in sight would have been completely submerged, with breaking seas from the open Gulf rolling in unimpeded. Unless they had adequate warning and the means to evacuate, the death toll among residents in this entire region probably exceeded any storm in recent history and conditions for the survivors would be miserable. There was little reason for anyone to remain here along the lower reaches of the river after that, so Eric doubted they would encounter survivors until they went farther upstream. When they came to a small opening off the main channel that was big enough for the schooner, he suggested they drop anchor there to prepare the boat for the next leg.
“I’d like to do it right here where we have good visibility upriver and out to sea. If anyone comes along, we’ll have plenty of warning. We’ll still keep a watch posted after dark tonight, but everyone should be able to get some solid rest before we head upriver tomorrow.”
“It feels weird all of a sudden, now that the boat’s not rolling constantly,” Jonathan said.
“Yeah, you had just enough time to get your sea legs, and now we’ve made landfall. I’ll bet Daniel won’t be complaining though,” Eric said. “He was looking pretty green that first day out, until the excitement of all that gunfire cured him of it!”
“Works every time, doesn’t it, son?” Bart said.
“Yeah, getting shot at certainly changes a man’s perspective on things. I think he’s finally starting to wake up to how things are now. He certainly hasn’t been complaining as much after what happened to Shauna.” Daniel and Andrew were both off watch and sleeping down below at the moment, so Eric could speak freely.
“Learning how to shoot probably has a lot to do with it too. He’s bound to feel a little better about himself now. I reckon it took seeing his wife get hit to make him realize he can’t sit out the next fight.”
Daniel and Andrew couldn’t sit out the work that had to be done next either. As soon as the anchor was set, Eric went below to wake them. It would take all hands to remove the sails and running rigging and stow everything away in preparation for dropping the spars. Eric wanted to get it done today so they could get an early start the next morning as soon as it was light enough to safely navigate.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you guys,” Shauna said, when Eric headed back up the ladder.
“You’ve got a good excuse Shauna, so you get a pass. How are you feeling?” Eric didn’t really have to ask, because he knew she was still in a lot of pain, made bearable only by medication. Her right hand was completely unusable and would be for no telling how long. For now, it was immobilized in a bandage and splint combination to keep her from bumping it and making it worse, something that was hard to avoid when the boat was offshore, the motion sometimes slamming her into the sides of her bunk. Eric had changed the bandages on the hand and upper arm often, adjusting for the swelling and checking for infection. So far, the wounds looked as good as could be expected, and she wasn’t complaining, but healing was going to take time.
“I’m looking forward to a calm night. It’ll be nice to sleep without having to hold on for a change.”
“Yes it will. If you need something to knock you out, just let me know. I’ve got the good stuff in my kit. We’ll get started early tomorrow. The rest of the way to Keith’s should be smooth going, at least as far as the sailing is concerned.”
“I hope you’re right, Eric.”
Eric didn’t want Shauna to worry, but after all they’d been though, they both knew they could run into almost anything upriver. She would no more turn back than he would though, no matter what they were facing, because getting to Keith’s was the necessary next step in the main objective, which was to find Megan and get her o
ut of danger. If Keith and Lynn were not there for some reason, then they would formulate a plan B, but that wasn’t something to worry about now.
Before they lowered the mainmast, which was the one upon which the marine radio antenna was mounted, Bart said he wanted to see if they could possibly raise Keith on the VHF band. “I know it’s a long shot he’ll be listening, but if he happens to be out patrolling the river in his boat, there’s a chance he may be monitoring Channel 16.”
“Can you really reach out that far on VHF?” Eric knew that Bart had added a power output booster to Dreamtime’s radio that was supposed to greatly increase the normal 25-watt transmitter signal. He’d taken it off of another vessel in the boatyard, saying it wasn’t normally legal anywhere but in international waters, but that it might come in handy now.
“I’ve never tried it, but they say you can. With that extra-tall antenna at the top of the mast and nothing much in the way, it ought to reach him. We won’t know for sure, of course, because he won’t be able to call us back, but it’s worth a shot.”
“Just as long as it doesn’t get picked up by somebody we’d rather not give our location to.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m not going to be too specific, but I’ll make sure Keith knows it’s me calling, even if he doesn’t recognize my voice.” Bart keyed the mic and began speaking:
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