by Dirk Patton
“That is encouraging!”
“Yes, sir, but most are only armed with knives and clubs. We’ve emptied our armories, but there just weren’t enough rifles to go around. The civilians were mostly unarmed because of local gun laws, but they’re still willing to face the Russian invaders with their bare hands if need be.”
“Understood, Commander. What’s the status of evacuating base personnel?”
“Ninety percent complete, sir. Only essential staff remain and we are beginning to move them in phases.”
“Any word from Captain West on the efforts to restore the Battlespace program?”
“I just came from there, sir. Seaman Simmons is still waiting for the latest version of her code to complete. She estimates four more hours at a minimum.”
Packard glanced up at a clock on the wall.
“What’s the latest ETA for the invasion fleet’s arrival?”
“We’ve already begun engaging Russian aircraft four hundred miles north, sir. Losses are heavy on both sides. Unless the mutiny spreads further, or we can find a way to stop them, the first ships will be in range of our land-based guns in twelve hours.”
Packard absorbed the information, slowly nodding his head.
“Anything else, Commander?”
“No, sir. And, sir? You’re scheduled for the next evacuation wave in twenty minutes.”
“Is that the last wave?” Packard asked in a low voice.
“No, sir. There will be four more after that.”
“Then I’ll be leaving after the last one,” the Admiral barked. “The goddamn Russians may have forced us to abandon Pearl, but I’ll be damned if I’m stepping foot off this base as long as there’s a single man or woman remaining.”
“But, sir…”
“I believe I was clear, Commander! Dismissed.”
Packard glared at the younger man as he snapped to attention before doing an abrupt about face and quickly departing.
“He has a point, sir,” the Doctor said once Detmer had left the room. “We all need you.”
“Pardon my language, Doctor, but that’s not fucking happening.”
“Aye, aye sir,” the man said as he began the first stitch to close Packard’s wound.
43
The mariachi music continued to bellow from a large boom box strapped to one of the tower’s struts. Not only was it annoying as hell, but it was also sending the females along the sand into a fever pitch of desire to reach me. Motoring along the channel, I finally had enough, drew my pistol and put the damn thing out of its misery. Sure, I could have just climbed up and turned it off, but where’s the fun in that?
Rounding the stone jetty, I spotted the small wooden boat, heaving a sigh of relief when I saw Rachel, Tiffany and Dog looking at me. I steered alongside them, cutting the engines to an idle as the two hulls gently bumped. Tiffany came first, then Rachel sent Dog, who scrambled on the smooth fiberglass deck. He would have slipped into the sea if Tiffany hadn’t grabbed his shoulders while Rachel shoved on his ass.
He made it aboard safely, then I had to maneuver again to pick up Rachel. When she gave Dog a push, the small boat had moved away, leaving a six-foot gap between us.
“Hold on,” I called down to her as I brought the sports fishing boat alongside again.
Leaving the engines idling, I scrambled down to the deck and found a coil of light, but strong, nylon line. Holding an end, I tossed it to Rachel, the rope uncoiling as it flew through the air.
“Tie an end to the handle on the bow,” I shouted.
Rachel nodded without asking questions, and while she did as I asked, I made the other end fast to a cleat on the stern of the larger boat. The smaller craft was perfectly good, and there wasn’t any reason not to take it along. I couldn’t think of a scenario where we’d have a need for it at the moment, but it’s always better to have something you don’t need than the other way around.
Line secured, I helped Rachel onto the boat. Turning, I wasn’t surprised to see Tiffany had already climbed to the top of the tower and had taken a seat on the narrow platform. Dog had claimed a spot on the bridge and sat watching her survey the surrounding sea.
“What was with the music?” Rachel asked, following me to the bridge.
“Crew left a boom box hooked up. It came on when I started the engines.”
“Any problems? I heard a gunshot. Did a female make it onboard?”
“No,” I said, grinning sheepishly and pointing at the shattered stereo.
Rachel looked at it and started laughing. I slipped into the captain’s chair and advanced the throttles, pointing us southeast. My plan was to start at the only point I had been told about. Between the current and winds, once at the location, I believed our best bet was to search along the eastern edge of the small sea.
I called Tiffany down to the bridge. After a brief discussion, she took Rachel’s night vision goggles and climbed back up. She understood that she was looking for anything floating on the surface of the water, but also knew to keep an eye out for an infrared strobe. Rachel would relieve her in half an hour, then it would be my turn.
We were all tired, and I didn’t want any of us to miss something because we were on lookout for too long and zoned out. Tiffany had protested that she was fine, but I overruled her. We had a man’s life as our responsibility, and there was no room for personal ego or pride.
“So how far do you think he may have drifted?” Rachel asked.
“That’s the problem,” I said. “He’s been in the water for more than 30 hours, or at least that’s the best information I have. We’ve got no way of knowing what the winds have been like, or how currents may have affected his drift. Our starting point is 40 miles southwest of Rocky Point. That’s all I got before the comms went down.”
I pushed the throttles farther forward. Our speed increased to 30 knots, and I did some mental math to figure out how long before we reached the pilot’s last known position. Never having been a sailor, calculating distances like this was foreign to me, but at least I understood the concept. If there’s a better way, without GPS, to navigate on water, I don’t know what it is.
After thirty minutes, Rachel took over as lookout. The sea was fairly calm, but at the top of the tower, every move of the boat was exaggerated. When Tiffany sank to the deck on the bridge, she looked a little green around the gills. I’d found a case of bottled water stored below, and she gratefully opened one and began sipping.
“You OK?”
“Don’t like boats,” she said in a weak voice, then took another sip. “Can’t do roller coasters or anything like that.”
I truly felt for her, as I had the same problem. The sickest I’d ever been was one time when Katie and I went salmon fishing in Alaska. We’d gone out on a 26-foot boat the morning after a storm had blown through. The sea had been rough with ten to twelve-foot waves, and by the time we were 12 miles out into the Bering Sea, I just wanted to curl into a ball and die. While Katie fished, I chummed the water with my breakfast and seriously considered just jumping overboard so it would end. We came back with two huge fish Katie had reeled in, and I had sworn never to go back to sea in a small boat.
As usual, when I say I’ll never do something again, I wind up doing it anyway. And I wasn’t feeling too hot at the moment. The swells were no more than three feet, but there’s just something about my innards that doesn’t like to be tossed around like a rubber ducky in a bathtub. I was dreading when it was my turn to climb the tower, knowing the motion would be dramatically worse, but I don’t like the idea of not pulling my weight.
A little more than half an hour later, if my math was correct, we were in the general area of where the Admiral had told me the pilot was drifting. I cut the engines to idle and shouted up to Rachel to do a slow, three-sixty scan.
She climbed higher until she was standing on the narrow platform intended to be a seat. Taking her time, she spun a very slow circle. Watching her, I debated the wisdom of doing this at night.
Sure, if my supposition was correct, and the raft was equipped with an IR strobe, we had a better chance of spotting it with night vision. But, if there wasn’t a strobe, or it was damaged, the limitations of the NVGs would hamper our efforts. Daylight and a good pair of binoculars would be much more effective in that case.
But, we were racing the clock. The pilot had already been adrift for a long time, with no shelter from the sun and wind. He would dehydrate quickly, floating on a sea of undrinkable water. Perhaps he had some emergency rations with him, but I had no way of knowing. If not, he had maybe another day, or day and a half at the most, before there was no point in us continuing to search.
“Nothing,” Rachel shouted after completing the circle.
“OK, let’s switch,” I yelled back.
She scampered down and noticed Tiffany sitting with her head hanging between her knees.
“She alright?”
“A little seasick,” I said, getting out of the captain’s chair so Rachel could take over. “You drive. Follow a zigzag pattern. I still think the wind is going to push him to the east. Right now, we should be at the western edge of any area he could be in. Start out going east/southeast at 20 knots for half an hour. We’ll turn west/southwest at that point after we change the watch. Got it?”
“I got it, but you don’t look so good.”
Rachel had pushed the NVGs off her eyes and was peering at me in the bridge lights.
“I’m fine,” I said, turning to climb the tower.
“Hold on,” she said, grabbing my arm to stop me. “If you’re feeling sick down here, it will kill you up there. We can’t afford to have you out of commission. I’ll go back up.”
I looked at her for a long pause, everything telling me just to suck it up and get my ass moving. But she had a point. If the extra motion at the top of the tower pushed me into full blown seasickness… Well, I remembered what that was like in Alaska, and Rachel was right. I’d be next to useless. With a sigh, I nodded and stepped aside so she could climb back up.
“Wow,” she said, pausing with her foot on the first rung. “You’re getting mellow. You never do what I suggest.”
“Go away,” I grumbled, giving her a smile, so she knew I was kidding.
She grinned and scampered back up to the top. I glanced at Tiffany, who hadn’t moved or even raised her head, and was glad there was one of us who wasn’t easily susceptible to motion sickness.
Sliding into the chair, I got us moving as I’d described to Rachel. I had considered trying to do a grid search, a much more effective method for finding someone or something that’s lost, but without charts and a GPS, it was essentially impossible. At least for me. There’s probably some old sailors out there who could have looked up at the stars and laid out a pattern in their minds, then followed it with uncanny precision. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one of those with us.
So, I did the next best thing and drove with one eye on the compass. Rachel stayed in the tower when I made the first turn. Tiffany had climbed to her feet, and offered to change places, but she was wobbly and looked like she’d been hit by a truck. That’s the thing about getting seasick, at least in my experience. Once it starts the only thing that will stop it is to get your feet on solid, dry land.
Rachel had looked down at her and told her just to sit and sip some more water. Tiffany didn’t argue, and I had to admit I admired the young lady’s grit. When I’d first come across her group, I’d expected a bunch of spoiled princess types. My preconception couldn’t have been more wrong, at least when it came to Tiffany. Now, we just needed to come up with a name for her that matched the iron in her backbone.
44
“Tell me about the girls that were taken by the militia,” I said to her after making the next turn.
I was tired and needed the distraction so I would stay alert. Hopefully, Rachel was doing OK. She seemed to be. Every time I looked up, she appeared focused on her task as she continually swept through a full circle.
“The popular girls,” Tiffany answered after a long pause.
“What does that mean these days? Well, what did it mean?” I asked, slowly turning my head to scan the horizon.
“We’ve all been together as a team since junior high. When we got into high school, there were four girls who were just a little prettier and a little perkier. They kind of made their own clique within the team. If not for softball, we wouldn’t have all stayed together after high school. Most of us went off to college, but they were too busy going to clubs and parties. A lot of us have rich parents, so…”
“Why aren’t you playing for your college team?”
“Cal Tech doesn’t have one,” she said. “And, I love playing the game, and we’re damn good. So there you have it.”
“Is your sister one of the popular girls?”
“Wants to be. She’s younger than me. Would have been a sophomore in high school this year. Tagged along on the trip with a friend who’s the little sister of one of the clique. They were all together when the militia took them.”
“I’m sorry we had to wait to go find her,” I said.
Tiffany raised her head and looked at me, stretching her legs out. Dog grunted his disapproval at her moving, then stood up, turned a circle and laid down with his head on her lap.
“I get it,” she said. “I really do. But, I’m responsible for her. I’m sure my parents are either dead or one of those things by now. That means I’m all she’s got left. And she’s all I’ve got.”
I nodded my understanding. I had the same feelings about Rachel, I just couldn’t talk to her about it. Every time I looked at her, or thought about touching her, guilt came crashing down. Maybe if I had just focused on getting to Arizona, I could have saved Katie. Instead, I got wrapped up with Rachel, then pulled back into the Army. If I had to do it over again…
I shut down those thoughts as my throat began to constrict. Logically, I knew that I couldn’t have done anything different. It was only dumb luck that had put me in the same place as Irina, giving me access to a vaccine. If not for that, I’d probably either be dead or one of the stumbling, shambling horde by now.
“You OK?”
Tiffany’s voice startled me, and I realized I’d stopped scanning the horizon and had been just staring at a point in space.
“Fine,” I said, reaching up and wiping a tear from my cheek.
I checked the compass and clock. It was time to turn back to the west. Gently moving the wheel, I steered for our new course.
“Wait!”
Rachel’s shout galvanized me. Sitting forward I slapped the throttles to idle, then stood and looked up at her. She was leaned into the wind, intently staring at a point to the southeast.
“What did you see?” I called out after nearly a minute.
“A single flash of light,” she answered. “Tell me again what the strobe will look like.”
“White flashes. You only saw a single flash?”
“Yes, and I caught it as I was turning my head, so I didn’t even see it straight on.”
“Hold your arm out in line with the direction you saw it,” I said.
She did, and I looked at the compass, noting the bearing. With a feeling of optimism, I got back in the seat, shoved the throttles forward and steered a course towards the point Rachel had indicated.
“If it’s a strobe, why would she only see one flash?” Tiffany asked, coming to stand next to me.
“Maybe both the raft and us happened to be on the crest of a swell at the same time,” I said, shrugging. “If he’s a long way off, maybe even over the horizon, we could catch a brief glimpse if there was the right combination of waves at the same time. It’s worth a few minutes to check out.”
I wanted speed. Wanted to get into the area as quickly as possible. But, we couldn’t count on that single glint of light. I shouted at Rachel to keep scanning as we progressed.
She could have seen some debris on the surface, something shiny catching the moon jus
t right. Or it could be a glitch within her night vision goggles. Or any of a dozen other things.
“Saw it again! A bunch of flashes before I lost it. That way!”
I looked up to see Rachel pointing ten degrees to starboard. Feeling better about what she was seeing, I pushed the throttles to their stops and steered to the new course. We were moving fast, and I realized that Rachel was probably getting more of a ride than she bargained for at the top of the tower.
Looking up, I saw her standing on the platform with a firm grip on the surrounding rails. Her long hair streamed behind her as she leaned into the wind.
“Definitely got it! I can tell it’s going up and down on the swells. I lose it for a few seconds, then see it again when it comes up!”
She was excited, and the surge of adrenaline had erased the lethargy that had begun to settle over me. Within a few minutes, I started catching glimpses of the strobe as it rode to the top of a wave. I made a slight adjustment to our course, heading directly for it.
In another few minutes, I pulled back on the throttles as we approached the strobe. With the boat at a more sedate speed, Rachel climbed down from the tower. The waves were slightly higher here, probably four or five feet, but we were now close enough only to lose sight of the strobe when it dropped into the very bottom of a trough.
Another minute and I could make out the tiny inflatable raft in my night vision. I thought I could see a form curled up in it, but was still too far away.
“You drive,” I said to Rachel, moving away from the wheel.
She took over as I grabbed a long pole with a hook on the end and moved to the pointed bow. Now I could tell there was definitely a human form, balled into the fetal position. He was unmoving, and I hoped that only indicated unconsciousness.
Rachel slowed more as we came within a few yards of the raft. It was no more than four feet across and looked like it was simply an inflated ring with a piece of material stretched across the inside. The pilot was curled up because that was the only way he could fit.