Not Without Hope

by Nick Schuyler

  It was urgent for the Coast Guard to begin searching for Cooper and the other fishermen. “That was an awful long way to be out in that size boat with only a single engine,” Captain Close said. But where were the boaters exactly? Formulating a computerized search program was the equivalent of dropping ten thousand rubber ducks into the water and figuring out the probabilities of where they would most likely drift according to the effects of wind, waves, and currents, Captain Close said. Much was still unknown about the overdue Everglades boat. Was the boat upright or had it capsized? Were the fishermen still aboard? Had they gone into the water? If so, had they stayed with the boat? Drifting boats tended to be influenced more by wind than humans, who were more directly affected by current, Captain Close said. Sometimes the wind and current moved in the same direction. Sometimes they did not.

  If the boat was overturned and still afloat, much less of it would be visible to searchers than an upright boat. The Coast Guard would be looking for a fingernail of a white hull amid hundreds of thousands of whitecaps in heaving seas. The moon phase was between a new moon and the first quarter. What little light that existed was being smothered by the cloud cover of a storm-churning cold front. There was one other bit of troubling news. The boat had sent no distress signal. Apparently it was not equipped with an emergency position-indicating radio beacon, or EPIRB. The devices, which can be operated manually or can automatically activate when a boat overturns, were cylindrical or cube-shaped, and cost an average of about five hundred dollars. They sent out a unique signal to the international satellite system for search and rescue, providing an immediate location of the boat and identification of the craft and its user.

  “If they had had one, there wouldn’t have been search, there would have been rescue,” Captain Close said. “I’ll never say these guys were stupid. They were college-educated, intelligent guys. They were inexperienced boaters, and they were in an element they weren’t prepared for. They didn’t have a good sense, like very many boaters, how bad things can actually be and how isolated they can actually be when they’re that far from the shore. It’s the equivalent of taking your light jacket and saying, ‘I’m going to go climb Mount McKinley.’”

  At 2:38 Miller, the Cooper family friend, called the Coast Guard back. He said that a handheld GPS device had been located belonging to Marquis. The device should have the coordinates indicating the exact position where Cooper usually went to fish. The caller said he would instruct Cooper’s wife how to power up the GPS device and scroll to the relevant information.

  It was the Coast Guard’s sense, Captain Close said, that Miller had helped Cooper buy the boat, often accompanied him on the boat, and often operated the boat.

  The missing fishermen may have been in the water for hours already. That was hugely significant in terms of survivability. “If they had flipped and we had gotten immediate initial notification, we still would have had an hour or two of daylight,” Captain Close said. “It wouldn’t have taken us an hour to go from alert to distress. You’ve got to be able to help yourself. These guys were just unprepared. It’s not atypical for a lot of boaters out there. It’s ‘I’ve got the money, I’m buying a boat, I want to go fast, and I want to drink beer while I’m doing it.’”

  At 2:47 the Coast Guard issued an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast, informing other vessels that a search-and-rescue mission was under way and asking them to reply if they had heard a Mayday signal from a boat in distress.

  The Cooper family friend called the St. Petersburg Coast Guard station again at 2:53. He passed along a GPS position of 27°58'09" N and 083°42'01" W. This was about ten miles south of the plotted shipwreck site, Cooper’s supposed destination. The search area had now grown larger and thus less precise, more uncertain, more complicated.

  The adjusted coordinates were transmitted to the C-130 Hercules turboprop that was set to fly over the area. Some confusion followed about the Hercules, according to the official Coast Guard report. Two planes actually were available, but the first one developed engine problems and never got airborne. A second C-130 finally launched over the Gulf at three o’clock in the morning, flying at 1,000 feet at 140 miles an hour. The C-130 arrived on the scene shortly but began experiencing technical problems. It could not get its radar to operate in the eight-foot seas.

  “Radar doesn’t see through water,” Captain Close said. “When you have small waves, you can adjust the radar so sea clutter gets ignored. You can suppress everything that appears to be one-to two-foot waves. When you have eight-to ten-foot seas, if you suppress the radar to the point that you can’t see anything smaller than waves that high, what’s the use of having it on? You’re looking for a boat that’s really small to begin with, even if it’s floating.”

  At 4:40 A.M. the Coast Guard contacted AT&T and confirmed Corey Smith’s cell phone number. AT&T tried to get a GPS position from the iPhone but failed.

  At 5:50, the C-130 reported that stormy conditions allowed the plane to effectively search only 40 percent of its intended tracking area of 600 square miles. Sixteen minutes later, a request was made to launch an HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter.

  The C-130 Hercules still had its forward-looking infrared system available, which allowed pilots to distinguish a warm object, such as a boat engine or a human body, from the cold background of the water. But by six in the morning, as the cold front continued to move in, bad weather made the infrared system useless. The C-130 reduced the spacing between its parallel search tracks from eight miles to three miles. Still it was basically flying blind for about half of its intended search area.

  “They essentially searched nothing,” said the official Coast Guard report.

  Paula Oliveira kept sleeping fitfully, waking every thirty or forty minutes. She kept trying Nick’s cell phone, but the same thing happened each time: straight to voice mail. She got up and sat outside on the deck of their house in the Carrollwood section of Tampa. Nick had never wanted her to worry. If he was out with the guys and would be late, he would always call. This time he hadn’t. She tried to stay positive. Maybe they got in late from fishing and they were so tired that they grabbed something to eat at Marquis’s house and fell asleep. She kept praying for that scenario. She didn’t want to sound like a crazy girlfriend, so she tried not to appear upset in her phone messages to Nick: “Hey Babe, it’s late. I’m just seeing what you guys are doing and when you’ll be home. Call me as soon as you can.”

  She still didn’t think they were in big trouble. She knew they had taken beer. Maybe they had been cited for drinking or maybe they had caught an illegal fish. The more Paula thought about it, she knew that didn’t feel right. She kept trying Nick’s cell phone. By three thirty or four, she cried as she left her message, “Babe, please call.”

  Now I could see that Corey had developed some of the same symptoms as Marquis. It was about five on Sunday morning. He was floating in the water at the back of the boat. He started rambling a lot, making moaning sounds. Will and I would call his name, but he wouldn’t answer until we had yelled out four or five times.

  Then all of a sudden, Corey got this desperate energy. It was like he had awakened and realized he needed to get on the boat right away. I was still sitting on the hull, straddling the motor as Marquis lay across my lap. Corey pulled on Marquis’s legs, grabbing for whatever he could to get himself out of the water. He had this look on his face. He looked mad and mean. I knew something was going on. Maybe this was a last-ditch effort to save himself. I guess the cold was starting to take hold. We had been in the water twelve hours.

  Mentally, Corey wasn’t there. That was clear to me now. It wasn’t him, just like it wasn’t Marquis in my arms. Corey was the nicest guy—the easiest guy to get along with. Now he was getting nasty and physical and trying to get on the boat. He’d try for ten or fifteen seconds, go lifeless, and then try again to get out of the water.

  “No, no, stop, there’s no place to go!” Will and I began yelling at Corey. “Stop, stop!”

/>   It seemed like it went on for about a half hour. And it kept getting worse. “You can’t, there’s no room, stop,” we told Corey, but we weren’t getting through to him. He was pulling on Marquis, at first not really saying anything, then shouting, “Bitch, bitch!” He was really getting aggressive, just random actions. I had never seen Corey mad or heard him say anything mean about anybody. He was a jokester. This wasn’t him, not the real Corey.

  Around this time, we heard a noise, then saw a light. I thought it was a helicopter. Later, I would learn that the first Coast Guard helicopter did not reach the search area until after sunrise. And my sister would say I told her that I saw a light that turned away, as if it came from a boat. Could my timing be off? Could the Coast Guard report be wrong by an hour or so? Could a helicopter have come and not been included in the official report? Could it have been the forty-seven-foot motor lifeboat that I saw? A plane? Was I hallucinating? Did I imagine it after being in the water, freezing, for half a day? I don’t think so. I know I saw something.

  The helicopter or boat or plane—I’m certain it was a helicopter, it seemed so vivid, you could see the shape of it—probably got within five hundred yards of us. There was a spotlight, much bigger than what you’d see in a theater. It seemed so close. This was our shot to get out of this. There was definitely someone moving the light around. You could see the waves now, a lot of white crashing down—it seemed like waves came from every single angle possible. You would get pounded from the back, your body slamming against the motor, and then another wave would come and hurl you the other way.

  Will and I were telling Corey, “They’re here. Be quiet, they’re here!”

  Marquis was completely out of it. He was fighting a little bit, but not nearly like before.

  “They’re here!” I told him. “You’re going to see your family. The families are waiting at home. Your little girl is waiting for you.”

  I envisioned it the way you see it on TV, the helicopter dropping a basket and saving us on a stormy night. “Thank you, God, thank you!”

  The light got closer. The beam passed over us, a sliver of white boat in a sea of white. “Oh my God, oh my God!” we yelled. We screamed and waved, “Help, we’re down here! Help!”

  Will still had that cushion strapped to his back, the one he found under the boat. It was white and a faded brown. He took it off and waved it like a towel. You could hear the waves crashing so loud, the waves and the wind. Just to hear one another speak, we had to yell twice as loud. It was like the beach, one wave finishes and another comes crashing in—relentless, unending.

  Corey seemed to revive himself for a minute. “They see us?” he asked. He took his watch and tried to press the dial, hoping it would light up and someone could see the dim flash. But the battery must have been dying. The dial would flash for a millisecond and go dark.

  We had the two flares that Will had found under the boat in the canopy over the center console. The ones we stashed in Marquis’s swimsuit. They were like Roman candles. We had tried to read the directions earlier by the light of a cell phone. Will ripped the top off of them and pounded the bottom of the flares on his hand or on the hull. He couldn’t get them lit.

  “Are you doing it right?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they’re soaked,” he said.

  We thought the flares were supposed to be waterproof.

  Will screamed “Fuck!” as loud as he could.

  We watched the light as it moved away. At one point it seemed to be barely moving, just hovering, and then it started moving faster. We could see it, but it was not near us now. The light had come across the boat, then moved a few yards away from us; then it was a mile away, and then we couldn’t see it. And we couldn’t hear the sound of whatever brought the light.

  We let out a lot of F-bombs.

  “Are you kidding me? How can they not see us?!”

  SHORTLY AFTER WE saw the light, Marquis became lifeless. He had gone from being completely restless—fighting and squirming and wriggling and trying to turn, grabbing my head and my neck and trying to flip himself—to not resisting at all. He was completely slack.

  Will and I didn’t think much about it at first. We thought, okay, he’s calming down now. But he hadn’t fought at all for about ten minutes. Then I realized that he seemed unconscious. There was no final moan or scream, nothing.

  I called his name. “Coop? Coop? You there? Marquis?”

  I squeezed him with my arms, an even bigger bear hug than before. Nothing happened. No movement. I shook him, slapped his face.

  “You don’t want your daughter to grow up without a father,” I told him.

  Corey kept pulling and tugging on Marquis from the back of the boat. Sometimes he reached over and grabbed Will, who stood at the stern on the other side of the motor. Or Corey lifted his waist or his hips out of the water and seized my life jacket and try to pull at me. Then he would fall back in.

  Two of us were now in trouble. I said to Will, “Please tell me you’re all right.”

  I looked right at him.

  “I’m okay, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  There was no sarcasm in his voice. I would ask guys when we worked out at the gym if they were okay and they would give you that sarcastic, “Yeah, I’m great!” but through the whole night when I asked Will and Marquis and Corey the same thing, they were not cynical.

  I sat on the hull with my right hand on Corey’s jacket, trying to keep him tight against the boat so he wouldn’t tug at me and Will and Marquis. Working so hard seemed to make me forget about the cold. I had more clothes on than the other guys. Maybe all this work created more body heat and kept my blood flowing. There wasn’t time to sit and think about how cold I was and how my muscles were burning. My stomach hurt. I didn’t know if it was because I had been sick and was hungry or because I was so afraid.

  I told Will that we had to flip Marquis over, turn his face upward. Water might be getting in his mouth.

  “I’m not sure if he’s conscious,” I said. “He’s not fighting anymore.”

  Will and I managed to turn Marquis until he was laying flat on his back, facing the sky. Before, he was facing the front of the boat across my lap. I held Corey with my right hand and held Marquis like a baby now. There was no more need to bear hug him with the same strength. He wasn’t fighting me. My left hand was underneath him, kind of underneath his neck. He was sitting on my legs, his left hip against the motor, his right hip against my belly button. My right leg was up, and I folded his legs into my stomach. I was holding deadweight now. That’s a terrible thing to say.

  Marquis wasn’t there. His eyes were shut, he was foaming at the mouth. I slapped his face lightly, telling him, “Keep holding on—we’ll be home before you know it.”

  His neck would droop and his jaw would fall open. I noticed he was getting a little water in his mouth. I told Will, “We’ve got to shut it.” Bracing himself against the motor, his left hand holding Corey’s life jacket, Will used his right hand to keep Marquis’s head up and his mouth closed. I was holding him like an infant. Randomly, Corey would let go of the boat, and we yelled at him, “Chill, chill—relax—help’s here—just a little longer—relax—they’re here!”

  At one point I got his attention and told Corey to give me his watch so we could keep track of time. I latched it to my life jacket, at my sternum. He started putting his feet on the stern and pulling on my jacket and pushing off the back of the boat. He was showing his teeth now, angry. I could see the look in his eyes—there were like Marquis’s eyes. They were going every which way, rolling in the back of his head, like he had some kind of dementia. He was swearing random “Fuck yous!” I had never heard him swear in the couple of months that I had known him. Not angry cursing. Now he was being mean. It wasn’t Corey. It was like evil Corey, like Corey’s demon.

  Corey would bend his legs like a frog against the back of the boat, and then he would push away, jumping backward. He was tearing and yanking at
Marquis, grabbing and pulling on me, my jacket, and then he would let go completely.

  “Grab on!” I told him. “Hold on to the boat!”

  About ten minutes after we flipped Marquis over, I told Will to check his pulse. He was limp in my arms, and I feared the worst.

  Will leaned his ear down and tried to hear Marquis’s breathing. The water and the wind were so loud. It was a whistling wind, a consistent blow with random strong gusts. The water was flying in and smashing us. I wore a cross on a chain around my neck, and I put the cross in my mouth. I sat there and prayed. “Please God, please God.”

  Will said, “I can’t hear him breathing.”

  Marquis did seem to have a pulse, though. Will felt his neck. He must have checked him for a good minute. Waves were crashing, Marquis’s feet were sliding down. I was losing my grip on his head. We kept having to pull him up into my lap.

  Meanwhile, Corey continued yanking on me and Marquis. Eventually, he started pulling on Will. “You got him?” I asked Will.

  My left hand was still under Marquis’s neck. Will had Corey, so I took my right hand and pumped Marquis’s chest to make sure his heart was still beating. Corey really started fighting. He would struggle for about ten seconds, then he would go lifeless. Then he’d fight for a minute and go lifeless again. Then he would really fight—“Bitch, come on bitch!” Will was holding on to him, and he went at Will with both hands. He almost jumped on his neck, like a headlock, knocking Will off the boat. In the water, Will was able to get away from Corey for a minute.

  “Stop, no!” I yelled at Corey.