by Peter Tonkin
TWENTY-NINE
With increasing desperation, Miguel-Angel searched the northern mist astern of Pilar. He didn’t really know what he was looking for. And when he saw the danger approaching, he didn’t recognize it for what it was or understand the menace that it represented. For it seemed simply to be a bigger wave than most. It was approaching from the same direction as the other waves. It might have just been a seventh wave – traditionally taller than the rest. But it kept growing until it threatened to touch the top of the circles of clarity that the binoculars presented. Miguel-Angel lowered them, looking back at the approaching wall of water, frowning. The leading edge was steep. The top few metres were capped with foam, though the wave itself was nowhere near breaking into surf. But it had brought a wind with it, the boy realized suddenly. A steady wind that was building with astonishing rapidity. The wave and the wind seemed somehow very dangerous. But the boy who had faced down a shark laughed at his fears. Pilar was a boat, and boats rode over waves. Even waves such as this one.
But then the crew on the deck saw it. They started shouting and milling around. The winch sprang into life and it seemed as though the men who had pulled the nets aboard were suddenly pushing them overboard again. One of them grabbed the section of the transom that would close off the open section, but he could not put it in place until the nets were out of the way. Someone reached over and grabbed the hatch cover, fighting to pull it shut, but it was old and stiff. Then the wind snatched the mist away and Miguel-Angel was distracted by the sight of the boat he had been sent up here to look for. She was too expensive-looking to be a fisheries protection vessel. But she was dark, dead. She seemed battered. Damaged. In danger. Especially as she was tipping helplessly backwards over the crest of the wave that was just about to hit Pilar.
This thought, in turn, was overwhelmed by more immediate concerns as Pilar’s stern slid back and down into the trough immediately before the big wave – a trough which the inexperienced young seaman had entirely failed to notice in his fascination with the white-topped wall that followed it. He staggered forward and, had he not been hanging on to the radio mast, he would have fallen. He found himself looking down on to the deck once more. Both of the boathook men were trying to get the transom section in place now, in spite of the fact that the net was still in the way. Two more were fighting to get the hatch cover closed, but the harder they tugged, the more firmly it seemed to be stuck. It was only when Hernan joined them and glanced up so that Miguel-Angel could see the expression on his face that some idea of the true danger registered with the boy.
With a sick fascination that mounted second by second, and held him statue-still, the youngster watched events unfold. Pilar settled into the bottom of the trough. The wind that had been blowing so powerfully in Miguel-Angel’s face faltered. It occurred to him that this was because he was in the wind shadow of the wave. The roaring of the waters seemed to stop as well, replaced by a sinister, all-pervasive hissing. Pilar’s stern bit into the face of the oncoming wave and she began to rise like the thoroughly seaworthy vessel she was. But the nets did not want to rise as fast as she did, for they were heavy, laden and caught in the undertow. Still Pilar struggled gamely up the watery slope of the huge roller, pulling the protesting weight of the drift net with her. It seemed to Miguel-Angel for a moment of dizzying hope that Pilar, like the strange vessel half a kilometre north, would ride sedately over the wave.
But even as he thought this, green water slid over the bundle of net and flooded sinisterly across the deck. The water level rose and rose until Hernan’s boots were filled once more. And still the boy did not quite comprehend the danger. For the deck had been awash before. The scuppers he had kept so clear would surely let even this amount of water wash away.
Suddenly the wind hit him in the face again and he staggered back, still hanging on to the radio mast. He found himself looking over the top of the white wall of surf that crested the wave. He saw the other boat in the near distance, settling into the trough in front of the next great wave, bleeding smoke from her stern up into the torrent of air. Beyond her, the ocean was grey and ridged with more waves that looked even bigger than this, each one part of a much more powerful movement of water that the boy did not recognize as a rogue wave. Above the grey of the surge there was a low, grey sky and, as Miguel-Angel watched, the two were joined by a massive bolt of lightning.
Then Pilar gave a kind of lurch. Miguel-Angel looked down and understood at last. As though she had used up all her strength, Pilar stopped rising and was slowed to a stop by the drag of the nets. So the crest of the wave had killed her. Miguel-Angel understood that even had the transom been closed, the nets would still have pulled her down. Had the hatch closed beneath the desperate hands of Hernan and the others she might have stood a chance. But the hold was stuck open wide to receive the catch from the nets. And that was the end of it all.
The last two metres of the wave came straight aboard, topped with another metre of foam. The weight of the water washed the men with the boathooks helplessly back and drowned them. Then it reached the open deck hatch. Not only was the top of the wave two metres high, it was twenty metres wide. And, for the time it took those twenty metres to wash over Pilar, untold tons of water thundered down into the hold, so that the catch, like the net, was suddenly pulling her down. The water exploded out of the freezer hold into the lower decks and killed the engine – as well as those men tending it. The crest of the wave smashed through the bridge house immediately below Miguel-Angel and burst out of the front, taking the windscreen with it while flooding down the forward companionways into the crews’ quarters. As well as the windscreen and much of the bridge equipment, it vomited out Capitan Carlos Santiago, dead already, his body as broken as that of the shark as he was forced through the narrow metal frame of Pilar’s windscreen.
One moment Miguel-Angel was standing on the top of the bridge, elevated high above the surface. The next, a wash of foam exploded over his boots with such force that he lost his footing and fell. He fell forward off the bridge house into water that was already knee-deep. It was only at this instant that he realized that not only had the wave been rising but that Pilar had been sinking too. The roiling surface closed over his head and icy brine filled his eyes. He floundered helplessly for a moment. The too-big gloves and boots slid off his hands and feet. The too-big jacket, full of air, buoyed him up until his head broke the surface and he found himself in the middle of a vicious squall, surrounded by steep grey rollers that seemed enormous in size and force. And he was alone. Absolutely and utterly alone.
Stunned, he trod water, looking around for Pilar, still unable to comprehend that she and all aboard her were gone. ‘Capitan?’ he called. ‘Hernan? Hernan?’ But there was no reply. As he fought to keep his head above water, the air began to leak out of his oilskin and he was jerked beneath the surface once again. The shock kicked his mind alive and he remembered that Hernan had given him a lifejacket to help keep his face out of the water and away from jellyfish. His fingers scrabbled at the front of it. Found a handle. Pulled. The jacket sprang to life, inflating with incredible rapidity. His head and shoulders exploded out of the water once more and he twisted round, looking for the other boat. She hadn’t looked much like a safe haven, but if Pilar and her crew were really gone, she was the only hope there was.
But although she had looked to be nearby from the top of Pilar’s bridge house, from down here she was invisible. And probably unreachable. Certainly, he thought, he would never be able to swim to her through the storm that seemed to have sprung, like the wave, out of nowhere. But if he could attract her attention, he thought, then she might come to him.
The lifebelt had a whistle attached to it, but that would never sound loud enough in this. It had a grab handle that would let someone pull him aboard, but only if someone came close enough to reach it. And it had a light that flashed like a beacon, activated automatically by the water. If he turned his head, he could see the light flashing red. B
ut it was tiny. A pinprick in the massive storm that was relentlessly overwhelming him. And what use was a single light in the middle of the vast ocean? He needed something that would broadcast more than a simple flash of light. And then he realized that he had just such a thing. With some difficulty, Miguel-Angel reached in past the inflated lifebelt and through the front of the oilskin. In the inner pocket there was the beacon that Capitan Carlos had put on the end of the float line and which Hernan had told him to stow safely away. Thanks to both San Andreas and San Telmo he had not obeyed that one fatal order. Its signal on Pilar’s electrical equipment had guided Capitan Carlos unerringly to the net. Perhaps it would guide the other boat to him.
He took it out, switched it on and started praying.
THIRTY
‘Hello, Maxima? This is Sulu Queen. You are very faint. No, I am very sorry. Captain Mariner is not aboard. I repeat, not aboard this afternoon. He has visited Captain Sin in hospital and should currently be at the port authority office with Major Guerrero and Mr Prudhomme. They are due back at the beginning of the first dog watch. May I take a message? Please speak slowly and clearly. I am afraid we have a very weak signal here and you keep breaking up. Hello?… Hello, Maxima? Are you there, Maxima? Sulu Queen calling Maxima. Hello, Maxima, can you hear me?’
Sulu Queen’s radio officer turned to face First Officer Cheng, who was in command of the bridge. ‘It was a very weak signal,’ he said. ‘I have recorded it, of course. I will play it back to the captain as soon as he returns at sixteen hundred hours. It is mostly static and the message seems very garbled to me. But he may be able to make out more than I could. And he may recognize the voice of the woman. Do you want me to try again?’
‘Yes,’ said Cheng. ‘The captain’s wife is aboard Maxima. It must have been her. The vessel is en route to Puerto Banderas on the Pacific coast of Mexico and may well be in the path of the ARkStorm that the USGS and NOAA have been warning California about ever since we berthed here – the storm which is apparently heading south at speed. There have been reports of a storm surge and rapidly worsening conditions all along the coast of Baja California Norte, beyond even the report that Captain Mariner brought back himself after the helicopter flight. Did you get the impression that this was a courtesy call, a domestic matter, or something more serious? The weather down there is likely to be deteriorating quite rapidly according to the weather predictors. There are danger signals out all the way down the coast as far as Acapulco.’
‘I have no idea,’ answered the radio operator. ‘But it seems to me that matters may be getting serious. There was something in the background – someone she may have been talking to. I could make no sense of it. Also something in her tone before we lost contact, especially as she was coming and going. It is worrying. From what I understand of Maxima, everything aboard is state of the art. Mrs Mariner should be able to communicate with Shanghai or Beijing, yet she cannot get a signal across a thousand miles of empty ocean.’
‘If the weather is bad, could that interfere with the signal?’ asked Cheng. ‘The captain reported that his helicopter flight up was a very rough one.’
‘Unlikely. I know we have been dealing with peculiarly powerful electrics in this storm, but even so …’
‘Then it is probable that the equipment on Maxima is malfunctioning,’ concluded Cheng. ‘Did your contact give any hint of damage or danger?’
The radio operator shrugged. ‘Who can tell?’
‘Captain Mariner will want to know as soon as he returns, which, with luck will be at any minute now at change of watch. Try and contact Maxima again.’
Cheng was waiting at the top of the companionway ten minutes later at four p.m. when Richard, punctual to a fault, led Guerrero and Antoine back aboard. The solicitous first officer had brought an umbrella as well as hard hats and hi-viz jackets, but the rain had eased about five minutes before their taxi drew up and the four of them were able to walk the length of the deck in the dry. ‘I have some news which might concern you, Captain,’ said Cheng as he almost jogged to keep up with his Richard’s long strides.
‘Yes? What is that?’
‘A radio message from Maxima, sir. It was incomplete and garbled. The contact was very bad and comprised mostly of static. But it was almost certainly from Captain Mrs Mariner. The radio operator and I are concerned that the vessel may be in some kind of trouble, sir. We have recorded the contact of course. You may want to listen to it as a matter of some urgency.’
‘I do indeed, Mr Cheng. You and the radio operator have done well.’ Richard stepped through the bulkhead door into the A-deck corridor, shrugging off his vest and hanging it with his hard hat on the wall hook labelled ‘Captain’ without a second thought, already very much in charge.
Ten minutes later, Richard was seated in the radio officer’s chair with a pair of headphones clapped to his ears. His eyes were closed as he concentrated absolutely on the recording the usual occupant of the chair had made. Richard was not only listening to the words; he was listening for the tone. He was trying to make out from the background noise what was static and what was actual sound broadcast from Maxima herself as Robin vainly attempted to make contact with him. His normally open, cheerful face was closed and grim. His lips, which normally turned up at their ends, were turned down. The knuckles of the hands that controlled volume, pitch and tone were white.
‘Hello, Sulu Queen, this is Robin Mariner aboard Maxima,’ the recording began. ‘Is Captain Mariner available? Hello, Sulu Queen?’ There was a hissing whisper in reply. Richard strove to hear what was going on in the background. Was there wind? There was nothing that sounded like the torrential downpour she had reported on their last contact. But the timbre was strange. Flat, lacking in echo. And there was that whisper of wind or waves. Was she outside? What on earth was she doing radioing from outside on the deck?
‘Hello, Sulu Queen, this is Robin Mariner aboard Maxima,’ she repeated. ‘Is Captain Mariner available? Hello, Sulu Queen?’ Richard skipped through the radio officer’s recording of his own lengthy reply and focused once again on the incoming signal, such as it was. And his frown deepened at once. The downturned lips thinned. The nostrils on that aquiline nose flared. The blue eyes flashed open for a moment then closed again as Richard leaned forward, his concentration redoubled. For everything had changed abruptly. Robin had stopped talking to Sulu Queen, but she had not stopped talking. ‘Manuel!’ she shouted. He could tell she was shouting from the tenor of the voice but not the volume – her words were scarcely more than a scratchy whisper. ‘Get down here now!’ The voice suddenly became even more distant. A hissing roar filled the airwaves. No wonder the radio officer had given up on it, he thought. Nothing he did with the sound controls shifted it. Was it static or was it real? he wondered. The agitated voice continued distantly, only just audible above the mounting noise. ‘Captain Toro! There’s a series of large waves approaching. The biggest rogue waves I’ve ever seen. You’d better tell your men to brace. And pray. There’s nothing else to do.’ The roaring gathered. Then there was a sudden silence, broken only by a gentler, less natural, hiss. That would be the static, he thought grimly. And if that was static, then the other sound was real. And it did, in truth, sound like a huge sea approaching with a pretty stiff wind behind it. Suddenly her voice was back; the clear, crisp and decisive tone she reserved exclusively for the most dire of emergencies reduced to a whisper that echoed as though she was speaking from the bottom of a well somewhere on Mars. ‘Get down,’ Robin advised whoever she had been talking to. Captain Toro, perhaps, or this chap Manuel – whoever he was. ‘Get down and lie flat. This is going to be a rollercoaster ride.’ And after that, there was only the gathering roar which Sulu Queen’s radio officer had mistaken for static, the terminal click that broke the contact – and silence.
Richard threw himself back in the chair. His eyes opened beneath frowning brows and gleamed blue in the dull afternoon light. His mind raced. He had no doubt that Robin – and, indeed, Max
ima – was in trouble. His first instinct was to go back and help her, in spite of the fact that there had been no distress call. But he knew that would not be possible unless he made certain of several other factors. First, he had to establish where she was – and whether she was still going to be there when he arrived, which in turn would depend on how he travelled and when he left. And he needed to know, at the outset if possible, precisely what the trouble was. Though, of course, he could guess. Or he thought he could, but he still had no idea of the fates of Katapult8 and Maxima in Pilar’s rogue drift net. And he had no knowledge at all of Pilar herself. His main temptation was simply to pull his mooring lines back aboard, call for the engine to be powered up and go down there in Sulu Queen to help her out. But then, he would have to establish that she wanted help, and whether a bloody great container ship could offer the help she needed. And whether he could find her – wherever in the east Pacific she was likely to be in the forty-eight hours it would take him to get down there. Not to mention the fact that he would probably find the National Guard coming after him mob-handed, demanding their containers back.
But he knew how to take care of at least one problem: that of finding her. Especially as he would be trying to find Nic and Liberty into the bargain. He pulled out his cell phone and hit predial. As the signal went through he took off the headset and put the cool crystal surface to his ear.
‘Greenbaum International, Glendale offices,’ came the reply. ‘My name is Martha. How may I help you this afternoon?’
‘This is Richard Mariner. I need to talk to Biddy McKinney.’
‘Just a moment, Captain Mariner. I’ll put you straight through to her.’