Chapter Nineteen
BRENDAN’S YACHT MET the Greek Navy at a marine station on the island of Icaria. The navy had hauled the Romanian tugboat into the boatyard, and the commander of the unit called Brendan, Cal’s father, and the rest of their party to the station house and briefed them with gut-wrenching news. Cal had clearly been on board. Besides his wallet and his passport, they found the cargo shorts he’d been wearing on the morning he disappeared. The absence of Cal’s body had provided a sliver of hope until the commander explained some further findings of their investigation.
They had recovered the vessel’s lifeboat a few dozen nautical miles away from the wreck. All of its supplies had been used, and the passenger was gone. The only explanation was admirable, though ultimately bleak. Cal must have somehow broken free from his captors, locked them in the ship’s cargo hatch, and gotten away in the lifeboat. The facts pointed to a tragic conclusion. The boat’s motor had run out of fuel, leaving Cal stranded many miles from land. Excepting the unlikely event he had been rescued by a passing ship, which inexplicably had made no report, he must have gone overboard. The navy had surveillance aircraft searching the surrounding waters. The commander told Brendan recovering Cal’s body could take weeks.
Afterward, Brendan wandered out to the naval pier, stunned by the surreality of the situation. He should call people to let them know the news. That was what a person did when something like this happened, wasn’t it? In a flat and stunted voice, he phoned his grandad in Istanbul, Cal’s sister Genie in Bodrum, Betsy Schoonover in Kalamata, and his father in Crete. When his phone battery died, he walked out to the end of the pier, staring out at the enormous Aegean seascape. Pregnant storm clouds cast a dark shadow over everything.
He was stricken by a wave of agony, picturing Cal bound and gagged by criminals, frightened beyond belief, and then making a desperate attempt to gain his freedom, all alone, trapped on the open sea. How was it possible for the world to turn so cruel, so tragic, in the blink of an eye? Cal was such a good guy. He’d never done anything to deserve being hurt in the slightest way. Nothing would ever explain his life ending like this. No loving god would have let it happen.
Instead of a wedding and a honeymoon, Brendan would be overseeing his fiancé‘s funeral.
Two figures encroached in his peripheral vision. Louis and Derek. Brendan wiped his eyes and awakened to his surroundings. Drops of rain were falling. He was suddenly freezing cold.
“Come in out of the rain, buddy,” Louis said.
Brendan said nothing. Louis’s able arm surrounded him, and he kissed him on the side of the head.
“Everyone’s in the mess hall. They’ve got coffee. Some lousy food. What do you say? They say there’s a big storm coming ashore.”
Brendan shook his head and looked to the wave-capped horizon. “No. I want to go out there. I can’t leave him out there in a storm.”
Louis brought out carefully, “They called back the surveillance units. Soon as there’s a break in the weather, they’ll head out again.”
“I want to go out myself.” Brendan caught a glimmer of interest from Derek, who had drawn up beside him.
Louis gave him a squeeze. “Brendan, I can’t imagine what you’re feeling.” He looked out to the water. “You’re probably ready to dive in there yourself. I’d do it, too, if it would help. But you’ve got to listen to me, bud. Right now, we go inside, get a warm drink and warm food into your body, and wait it out for a bit. These navy guys told me there’s a nice hotel in town where we can stay overnight. The yacht crew is already heading over there.”
“Who told them to do that?”
Louis looked at him gently. “The boat’s been chained to a storm slip. There’s nothing for them to do. The search is in the navy’s hands now, Brendan.”
“No. Cal’s out there somewhere. I’ll talk to Captain Wes. I’m paying that motherfucker to help us.”
Derek broke in, “He’s waiting for a taxi to take him into town. We can catch him if we hurry.”
Louis glanced at both men. “Guys, the charter’s over. There’s no boats headed out to sea until the storm passes. There’s nothing they could do anyway.”
“That’s bullshit,” Brendan said. He brushed past his friend and charged down the pier. He wasn’t going to sit around any longer to wait for the navy to bring him information. He wasn’t going to believe Cal was dead until he saw his body himself. And if he wasn’t dead, he needed help. The storm wasn’t so bad. Just some wind and a trickle of rain.
Brendan reached the foot of the pier where he spotted Captain Wes and his crew standing under umbrellas. Derek and Louis hurried after him.
He called out to Wes, and the captain turned to him.
“I want to go out there. Where they found the lifeboat.”
The blond-bearded South African looked at his crew, and they stepped away to give them some privacy. Louis and Derek looked on from beneath the eave of the marine station house.
“I’m very sorry about your friend,” Wes said. “But I’m afraid the navy commander has grounded us until the weather clears.”
“He’s not my friend. He’s my husband,” Brendan corrected him.
“Of course. Your husband,” Wes said. “I wish there was better news.”
“The navy called off their search. That means no one is looking for Cal.” Brendan looked to the cloud-clogged sky. “The storm’s not so bad. They take these precautions to cover their asses on the one in a million chance some recreational vessel gets in trouble. I need to get out there. Even if it’s just to make a couple passes around the area.”
He could see he was straining the captain’s professional demeanor.
“I understand your concern,” Wes said. “But ships are ordered to harbor for a reason. The weather report is pretty serious.”
“What if it was your husband? Or wife?” Brendan said. “Would you give up now? Every minute we wait, the odds of finding Cal are turning to shit.”
Wes drew a breath. Brendan came at him again.
“You’ve traveled around the world. I’m not asking you to sail into the eye of a hurricane. Just motor me out there while it’s still pretty calm.”
“The conditions can change quickly,” Wes said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Thackeray-Prentiss, but I can’t do it. I would be putting my crew in danger. I would be putting my livelihood in danger if the boat is damaged.”
“I’ll double your pay,” Brendan said. “It’ll just be for a couple of hours.” Wes shook his head. Brendan didn’t break his gaze. “Name your price for the yacht. I’ll buy it off you and figure out how to work it myself. Wes, you’ve got to help me. I’ll die back here. I’d spend every cent to my name, steal my own motorboat to get out there if there’s even the tiniest chance it could help Cal.”
The captain shifted his weight. He glanced around. The boatyard was deserted except for the little congregation in front of the station house. Breaking the silence, a taxi whirred down the coastal roadway in their direction.
“All right, Mr. Thackeray-Prentiss,” Wes said. “I will take you out. But only you and my first officer, Ahmed. I will not put anyone else in danger.”
Brendan gave him a grim nod of appreciation. The captain called over his first officer, and after a brief discussion, the three men traveled briskly to the slip where the yacht was moored.
ONCE THEY WERE out on the open sea, Brendan began to appreciate the weather warning. Standing in the wheelhouse with Captain Wes and First Officer Ahmed, he had to hold onto the back of the captain’s chair to keep his balance while the yacht rocked back and forth. Rain pelted the windows, and a howling wind lashed at them. Though it was only six o’clock in the evening, they had every indoor and sidelight operating as well as a searchlight above the wheelhouse tower.
Ahmed was monitoring the navigational screens while Wes manned the engine and the wheel through increasingly taller swells. Brendan had grown to admire both of the guys. Wes was proudly and immaculately professional,
but Brendan could sense the spirit of a thrill-seeker in him as he helmed his vessel. He was the kind of guy who’d probably been to beaches around the world with his surfboard and went skydiving for fun. Ahmed was a more quiet type, locked into his job at the navigational controls with proficiency. Neither of them gave off a hint of wanting to turn back, and Brendan was grateful for it.
The navy commander had told them Cal’s dinghy had been recovered about ten nautical miles northwest of the island of Samos. At a moderate cruising speed, it would take a good hour and a half for them to reach that location from their departure point at the Icaria marine station. They had set out only forty-five minutes ago, and Captain Wes had the engine at low throttle.
Brendan hadn’t tried using his binoculars to look out on the water since it was hard enough to keep up with the motion of the boat with one hand free, let alone two. Besides, they probably hadn’t ventured far enough for it to be worth a look. He checked out the nautical atlas on the side of the console. The notations and the map of curvy, ring-shaped lines were inscrutable to him, but he was able to locate the islands of Icaria and nearby Samos by name. They were two of the biggest islands in the Northeastern Aegean, not far from the coast of Turkey.
He fixed in on Ahmed and raised his voice to be heard above the wind whipping against their cabin. “Let’s say he fell out of the lifeboat with a life preserver. Can you project which way he’d drift based on the currents?”
“Hard to say,” Ahmed said. “Current is based on many factors. Tides, winds, air temperature, and water temperature. Generally, the North Aegean has a tendency to flow toward the Cyclades.” He pointed out on the map a scattering of islands between Icaria and the coast of Greece.
“That means we’re best off searching westward from where they recovered the lifeboat?” Brendan asked.
“Normally, yes,” Ahmed said. “But the storm is another factor.” He pointed out a weather map on one of the console’s monitors. “You see this area of low barometric pressure to the north, near Lesbos. It’s making its way along the coast of Turkey and drawing up a fierce northwesterly wind. You can feel it on the port.”
Brendan noticed the surge of wind battering the left side of the ship. Waves were also spraying up onto the deck from that direction.
Brendan glanced at the map. “It would push him toward Samos, then?”
Ahmed nodded. “It’s possible. The north-central coast of Samos would be your husband’s best chance to reach land. I’m monitoring police channels from there. The navy has notified them. They haven’t turned up anything, but it’s possible a recreational boat picked up your husband, and they have yet to report it. Otherwise, I don’t see why he’d abandon the lifeboat. Unless he was injured and disoriented, it doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have encountered any weather. The seas have been calm all this week. Besides, he was in good enough shape to motor a distance away from the tugboat. He couldn’t have been out on the water for more than twelve hours, based on the time the tugboat collided with the beacon tower, and most of that time was overnight. Sun exposure should not have been a problem for him.”
This was a much more encouraging attitude than Brendan had gotten from the navy commander. Their next trip should be to Samos to turn over the island themselves. Brendan gazed out of the starboard windows, squinting through a blur of rain. The searchlight oscillated, throwing light on the surrounding gray waves for brief moments, but it was hard to make out anything.
The ship shuddered, taking a high wave head-on. The interior and exterior lights flickered, and when Brendan could see out of the window again, he saw the lower deck had been doused by seawater. He looked to Captain Wes to get a read on his thoughts.
“This is starting to feel like an Atlantic event more than an inland sea event,” the captain said. “I can take us another few knots eastward. Then I’m afraid we have to turn back, Mr. Thackeray-Prentiss. Otherwise, our return trip is going to be difficult.”
Brendan nodded. The yacht, which was a solid, double-deck craft of 117 feet, felt unstable. Not a good thing. As they veered starboard, another big swell battered the vessel from the portside. This time, Brendan lost his footing and swung into the wall of the wheelhouse.
After rubbing off the hard hit to his shoulder, he carefully stepped back to the dashboard windows to gaze out at the violent sea. God help Cal if he was out there. Brendan tried looking out with his binoculars. It was impossible to penetrate the many troughs of the sea. He wished they had a better way to illuminate the water.
Ahmed put on his radio headset, drawn to something on his radar screen. Brendan listened to him talking to Captain Wes.
“This ship I picked up a little while ago has crossed into a mile radius.”
Wes glanced at the radar screen with some alarm.
“Looks like a fishing pontoon,” Ahmed said. “It’s moving erratically and pretty fast. We better alter course a few degrees. Looks like they haven’t picked us up.”
“What’s a fishing boat doing out in these conditions?” Wes said.
“I’ll try radioing them.”
Brendan edged closer to the men. He didn’t need to know much about fishing boats or sea travel to understand it was an odd situation. Their deck heaved up and down from the storm. Unless the other vessel was taping an episode for some extreme fishing show, they couldn’t have ventured out for everyday business. Maybe they’d been caught off guard by the storm.
Ahmed tried a series of channels, trying to gain the ship’s attention with dispatches in English, Greek, and Turkish. Nothing but static returned to him. Meanwhile, though Captain Wes had steered them southward, the outlined vessel on the green radar screen appeared to be following their trajectory. Brendan was startled by how quickly the strange ship had gained on their position.
“I don’t like this,” Wes said. “Radio Icaria, and let’s fire up the wakeboard tower lights.”
Ahmed flipped some switches, and lights flooded out from above the wheelhouse. That had to make their yacht starkly visible, even in the storm. Ahmed radioed in a choppy dispatch to the navy base, hampered by the rail of the wind and surf. He read off their coordinates and tried to ascertain if they had any report of a naval vessel making a crossing in the vicinity. Before he could get an answer, all three men stared in awe at the sight of a gray, rusted long-liner emerging from the misty squall of rain on the port side of the yacht.
It was no more than a boat’s length away. No flag. No signal lights. As the yacht’s tower lights beamed onto its jutting bow, Brendan thought he glimpsed a team of men on its deck.
“What the hell are they doing?” Wes cursed. He reached to the console and activated the yacht’s siren. That did nothing to deter the boat’s approach. Wes steered hard to starboard. The sea swells tossed the hull, and the yacht careened in helter-skelter waves.
The long-liner rumbled toward them, and all three men braced themselves. The foreign ship’s bow plowed into the side of the yacht with a violent clatter that threw the hull to one side at an extreme angle. The impact rattled Brendan’s insides and sent him into a bracing squat while he clung to the captain’s chair. The lights flickered again. Ahmed managed to recover his headset and call out Mayday to Icaria. Captain Wes brought out a pistol from a compartment beneath the console.
Men’s voices shouted from the ship that had rammed them. Brendan stumbled to the port windows and looked out at an inconceivable scene. The long-liner’s crew was tossing grappling lines onto the deck to catch its rails. Wes tried to maneuver with the wheel but didn’t make much progress. The attack ship, which was no larger than the yacht, wallowed about and then pulled fast to their vessel, hull to hull.
Wes and Ahmed drew up at the port window. “Fucking pirates in the Aegean?” Wes said. Brendan stared at the men on the attack ship reining in their grappling lines. They wore headscarves and armbands. An Arab militia? One of them held what looked like a machine gun.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“North
African pirates?” Ahmed guessed. “Awfully far from their usual territory. I can’t see any flag or markings on their ship.”
Wes cocked his handgun and looked to the door to the upper deck. He turned to Brendan. “Stay here.” He glanced at Ahmed. “Both of you.”
Brendan had no problem doing that. But where would they go if the militants came aboard? What would they do if they intended to sabotage their ship?
Wes pushed open the wheelhouse door and stepped out into the storm. Brendan and Ahmed watched in tense silence. The captain called out to the ship’s crew, asking them what they wanted, promising no reprisal, though he had his gun tucked into the back of his belt. Brendan counted a dozen men holding the grappling lines, and several others were on the deck behind those men. Squinting through the blur of rain, he guessed there were other members of the crew he couldn’t see. One of the pirates shouted at Wes, an indistinct dialect, maybe Arabic. Two of the guys managed to climb over the rails of their vessel and onto the yacht’s deck.
Wes whipped out his pistol, braced it on his forearm, and fired at the guys who had come aboard. Brendan’s heart caught in his throat. It looked like the shots had missed. With all the wind and surf, the vessel was unsteady. Then: machine-gun fire. Brendan ducked from a terrifying sound. He heard a gasp from Captain Wes, and shrapnel riveted the cabin, shattering glass. A soaking wind wailed into the wheelhouse. Brendan looked to Ahmed, who had taken cover beside him. The young Turk’s eyes were wide with terror.
Neither man moved. More angry shouts traveled from the pirate ship, and Brendan listened to the horrifying sound of men clopping onto the lower deck, cries piercing the storm, movement on the cabin below them.
He stuttered to Ahmed, “What do we do?”
Ahmed shook his head. He had to be thinking the same thing as Brendan. Wes had been shot. Did they go out into the crossfire to bring him into the cabin? They had no weapons to defend themselves, and neither of them was much of a fighter. Particularly against a squad of men who rammed boats and came armed with machine guns.
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