The Passage

by David Poyer

  “Abandoned,” McMannes yelled back. Casworth hesitated, then spun the wheel away.

  At the same instant, Dan saw what he’d taken for debris along the gunwale stirring. A moment later, a head came up.

  “No! There’s somebody there.” When he looked back, there were two heads, hands waving weakly.

  Casworth was spinning the wheel back, bringing the bow around. “I see ’em, sir. Stand by, Manny.”

  “Bow hook?”

  “Better go with the grapnel. Try not to hit any of ’em with it.”

  The searchlight came on, and the engineman swept it along the boat as they made up on it.

  Dan swallowed, staring down as the whaleboat rose dizzily and the other craft sank, as if they were on opposite ends of a seesaw. These people were in trouble. The boat was wallowing, barely a hand’s breadth of freeboard amidships. It rolled slowly as the waves lifted it. No mast that he could see. There was no motor, nor even oarlocks. Ragged dark outlines resolved into ravaged faces as the beam found them.

  “We’ll take these guys aboard,” he shouted to Casworth. The coxswain nodded tightly, squinting as he eyed the narrowing barrier of heaving darkening sea.

  SHE hadn’t heard the drone of the horn, hadn’t heard anything, so deeply was she concentrating on the other waves, the ones passing through her body. They gathered somewhere below her chest, then squeezed downward with relentless and incredible force, a giant’s fist pounding the floor of her pelvis. They were too powerful to fight. She could only wait, taking gasping breaths, and endure, praying in the intervals.

  So when Gustavo shook her and Miguel, she didn’t even open her eyes. She was concentrating on the next wave, which was gathering now, throwing its shadow ahead of it.

  “A boat,” Gustavo said. “You see it, too. Is it coming toward us?”

  “Yes. Yes!”

  “I can’t tell if they see us.”

  “They see us all right. There, they are turning on a light. Wave at them! ¡Hey! ¡Aqui, aqui!”

  The wave rose higher, sending the shadow of fear racing ahead of it. She panted, snatching breath as she lay in the warm water, as if being born herself. Sometimes she couldn’t tell where the water ended and she began. Maybe the sea and her waves were the same and she was giving birth to some sea creature.

  Virgencita, quitame este dolor por favor. Mother of God, take this next pain away. I offer it to you.

  She bit down on the twisted rag, moaning as the wave broke over her, submerging her deep beneath a red-lighted tide.

  DAN stood as the whaleboat towered above the wreck, then dropped below it as the crest passed. This would be tricky. They hadn’t had to lay alongside the other boats and he wasn’t sure, considering the violence of the sea, that it was smart to try. Spray ripped free in slow motion from a breaking, shattering sea, fluttered out and suddenly slashed his face, cold-warm, salty, stinging. He squeegeed it off his eyes as the other boat rose again, seesawing with a slow, dangerous, logy rhythm. He really didn’t see why it was still afloat. The free surface of the water inside destroyed all its stability. It was pocked with roughly patched holes.

  On the bow, McMannes got up as Didomenico crouched, holding to his belt under the poncho. They glanced back and Casworth nodded.

  McMannes swung the grapnel in a short arc. It bulleted out, plunged downward, and disappeared into the boat. The two men—one old, one young, Dan saw by the light Reska tried to hold steady despite the crazy bucking—grabbed the line and hauled it in, shouting in weak, croaking voices. “What are they saying?” he shouted to Bacallao.

  “Can’t make it out, sir.”

  “We’re taking them aboard. The way that thing looks, we may stove it in when we come alongside. Tell them to be ready to jump.”

  The translator yelled it across, but the words met head shaking, violent motions of negation. “What the hell’s their problem?” Casworth yelled. “Tell ‘em to get the fuck ready to come over here; we ain’t going to save their fuckin’ boat. It’s fixing to sink.”

  “He says there’s someone else—a woman.”

  “A woman,” Dan repeated. “Great. Okay, where is she? You see anybody else, McMannes?”

  “Just those two guys, sir.”

  “Tell them to get over here. Casworth, try to put the bow right down on their stern.”

  The older man waved, with a toothless grimace. A cheery, grateful motion of a bony long hand. Then he was slipping over the counter, cautiously but swiftly lowering himself into the water. He grabbed the line as it came taut.

  Hand over hand, underwater more than above it, he pulled himself through the wind-ruffled sea. The whaleboat surged and plunged, spray broke over them, and a hand appeared suddenly over the gunwale. McMannes and Reska grabbed it and hauled him in. He sprawled on the floorboards, a bony old guy in torn shorts, one sandal hanging off a swollen-looking dark-skinned foot.

  “Okay, the other guy,” Dan said to Bacallao.

  But somebody was shouting. It was the Cuban they’d just rescued. He fought Didomenico’s hand off, jerked his way up, and crawled over the thwarts toward Dan, pleading in loud Spanish. “What’s he want?” Lenson asked the translator.

  “He insists there’s a woman aboard, sir.”

  Dan looked around at the darkness. It wasn’t going to be easy, finding the ship in this. He wasn’t looking forward to hoisting back aboard, either. He didn’t see any woman. Had the old guy gone off his rocker out here in the storm? But if it was true, they couldn’t leave her; she might be hurt or too sick to move.

  He knew then, accepting it, that he was going to have to check it out.

  “Okay, I’m going over there, see what he’s trying to tell us,” he said. “If there’s anybody else, or if it’s all in his head. I’ll get the kid, too. Take her in close as you can, Casworth.”

  “Be careful, sir. Take the forty-five.”

  “I don’t need the goddamn forty-five. Just get me as close as you can without smashing in the side. Here’s the radio. Take it; I don’t want to drop it when I jump.”

  While they’d been discussing it, the whaleboat had drifted back, away from the wreck. McMannes had let the grapnel line go when he was helping the old guy aboard. Casworth spun the wheel, tucking the radio into his belt, and kicked the throttle lever forward with his knee. The motor hammered and the bow crashed down. A blast of spray like a car wash sanded their faces. Dan kept his down, shielding it with his hands as much as he could.

  There, the wreckage again—you couldn’t really call it a boat—a mad bouncing shadow in the rain and spray. Reska’s light strobed across the kid, all the way aft. In the instantaneous brilliance, Dan could see everything. Hell, he thought, there’s nobody else in there. But maybe the kid was too scared to jump. If he had to, he’d just push him overboard; the guys could pick him up from the water. There was no more time to dick around.

  He crouched on the gunwale, one hand down like a sprinter bracing for the start. Then, as the half-submerged hulk passed him going upward, he launched himself heavily and gracelessly out and across.

  The gunwale hit him in the stomach, so hard that he couldn’t breathe for a few seconds, just hung there with his legs dragging in the sea. The kid had hold of his arms, but either he was too weak or Dan was too heavy, in sodden clothes, life preserver and foul-weather gear and boots, to move. Then with an enormous effort, he levered one boot over the gunwale. The other followed, and he rolled over into a shallow pool of warm water.

  The beam of Reska’s light flashed in his eyes and lighted the interior for a tenth of a second before it leapt away, the boat dropping like a stone.

  The woman was curled up in a little cuddy, all the way forward. The wooden overhang sheltered her. She had a narrow catlike face and dark hair stuffed under some sort of cloth. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was set like a jammed square knot. There was something wrong with her, but he couldn’t see what.

  Then suddenly, he did: the way her taut fingers dug into th
e edge of the cuddy, the awkward, tumbled sprawl, the upthrust knees folded against the wet bulge of stomach.

  The hulk rolled sluggishly as he crawled toward her, sending a wave traveling from thwart to thwart. He shifted to balance it, and the boat lurched the other way. He turned his head and yelled to Casworth with all of his strength, howling madly into the wind.

  “It’s a woman. She’s pregnant.”

  The coxswain’s voice, miles distant: “Can you get her over here?”

  He crouched in front of her, studying her face. The darkness gave him nothing. Then a knife edge of Reska’s light caught her squeezed eyelids. He felt her hand where it gripped wood like a C-clamp. A plastic bottle was wedged behind her. Her eyes snapped open for a fraction of a second, seeing him, yet somehow not. Then they rolled back and sank closed again.

  He said awkwardly, “Excuse me,” and put a hand on her belly. Under the wet rough cloth, it was rock-hard.

  “Sir?”

  He turned and yelled, “She’s having it. Jesus, shit, and this thing’s sinking. Throw me something to bail with.”

  He regretted asking as the whaleboat closed in. Casworth was a good coxswain, but no one could predict these seas, this wind. The reinforced bow loomed above him, then crashed down only feet away, sending a torrent of water over the boat. He screamed and waved them away at the same moment that two hard hats came flying in.

  A helmetful of sea was heavy. The water didn’t pour out when he upended the helmet. It just blew away. The boat rolled again, almost dumping him out. The motion made him sick, it was so close to going over. But he kept bailing, grimly, till his arms were aching.

  Another wave came aboard, wiping out all his work in a second. The woman moaned again. He glanced at her swiftly. Not more than three, four minutes apart. But they had to move her. The waterlogged, weakened shell beneath them could break apart or turn over at any second. He didn’t see how they’d come this far in it. Maybe they’d capsized already. There wasn’t a thing in it, no oars, no mast—just the boy with the huge eyes, and the woman.

  He looked over his shoulder, to see the older Cuban standing in the whaleboat, shouting. Then McMannes was dragging him down. He popped up again and waved. Dan half-rose, then grabbed the thwart as the boat started to go over. Splinters lanced his hand, but he barely felt it. “What?” he screamed.

  “Sir, you better get back aboard.”

  “Shit! Come on over here and get us! Get over here now; pick us up!”

  What the hell was his problem? The whaleboat seemed to be farther away. McMannes was still waving, but he was looking behind him now—at Casworth, who was bent over the console.

  Then he heard it. The whaleboat’s engine was growling, roaring, and then, making his heart stall—nothing. Then he heard the grind of the starter and a renewed burst of sound.

  The engine was missing, cutting out. Casworth was gunning the throttle each time he restarted it, trying to keep it running. But as Dan looked across the raging sea, he shook his head helplessly. He let go of the wheel with one hand, made a quick beckoning motion, then grabbed it again as the boat’s head fell off, across an oncoming sea.

  The engine stalled and died, and a moment later the lights of the boat died, too, dimming and then going out in falling, fading sparks. The roar of the wind filled his ears. Faint shouts came from where the lights had disappeared. He could distinguish Casworth’s roar, McMannes’s voice. A feeble yellow beam flicked on and wove around: one of the battle lanterns, but in the immense dark that surrounded them, it looked like a dying firefly.

  Dan stared. The next minute, he was tearing at his pockets. His desperate fingers found the narrow cylinder of his bridge penlight. He pulled it free and thumbed the button. The next minute, he cursed. The little lifer lights weren’t waterproof. He yelled, but his voice was too puny and faint to carry over the bellow of the wind.

  The dim searching beam faded slowly, then winked out. A moment later, it bobbed into view again. Each time it reappeared, it was fainter, and farther away.

  Then it vanished.

  They were alone, he and the boy and the woman—alone under the sealed-down darkness of the racing clouds, in a heaving, waterfilled boat. He stared into the dark, unable to move. The sense of abandonment was too great to grasp. Ten minutes before, he’d been looking forward to a meal, dry clothes, his bunk. Now they were as distant as the stars. He was adrift, abandoned, at the mercy of the hungry sea.

  A moment later, he was scooping and throwing water as fast as he could make his arms work. If they went over before Casworth got the engine restarted, he had a life vest, but the others didn’t. The Cubans didn’t have anything—which meant he’d have to try to hold them up. In these seas … He bent and felt with his hand across the bottom of the boat, hoping for line or cord, but found nothing. The wood felt spongy and bits came off and stuck under his fingernails. Shit, no wonder it was full of water! The bottom was as rotten as an old stump.

  A wave came out of the dark, hit them broadside, like a huge black bull goring its horns beneath them, then tossing them toward the sky. They rushed upward, the motion and the speed sickening and terrifying with nothing visual to match it against. The wind blasted them with spray at the crest.

  The grapnel, he thought. That has line on it. He scrambled aft, pushing the boy aside roughly in his haste to get by.

  The rough iron claw was jammed into the stern board, points dug deep. He hauled line in rapidly, measuring fathoms with outstretched arms: five, six, seven … eight fathoms. He hoped it was enough. He stripped off his life vest, snapped the straps into D-rings, then half-hitched the end of the line fast to the straps.

  He had it lifted, ready to throw it overboard, when he saw the wave coming in from astern: a huge one, towering above the rest. Green-glowing, it grew so slowly, it hardly seemed to move.

  He threw the bundled vest into the wind as hard as he could, then threw the loose line over after it. The boat hesitated, then started to rise, but too slowly.

  The wave bulged up dark on both sides, then broke apart with an avalanche roar over them, hammering him into the bottom like a nail under a sledgehammer. He clutched and scrabbled mindlessly to keep from being sucked out of the boat. He closed his eyes under black water, thinking, This is it; it’s going over.

  But it didn’t.

  Slowly, the hulk pushed itself to the surface again. The wind caught it as it rolled his gasping face reluctantly back to the air. He gasped for breath as his heart throbbed in his throat, waiting to see if they were going to live a few more minutes.

  Pushed downwind, yet held back by the floating scoop of the life vest, the hulk swung slowly to present its back to the wind. Now when the waves hit, the stern split them like a blunt ax. The water still rolled over them, but at least it didn’t feel like it was going to capsize.

  Reprieve, he thought. He dragged a sodden arm across his eyes and blinked around, hoping for a glimpse of the whaleboat’s lights. But his eyes found no color, no light, only the cold phosphorescent sparkle of the breaking waves. Either the motor was still dead, the whaleboat drifting downwind without power, or else Casworth had lost them in the storm.

  A moan from forward jerked his thoughts from his own problems. A long, animal whimpering, building to a scream that made his scalp prickle.

  Yeah, he thought when he reached her. Her arms were rigid, and when his hand found hers, the cold fingers clamped on with inhuman strength. Her nails dug into his flesh like the points of a grapnel.

  She was due, and it was coming—now. Another glance at the huddled boy told him there’d be no help from that quarter.

  Staring into her face in the dark, he muttered, “I’m here. I’m going to help. Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.”

  He hoped desperately that he was telling her the truth.

  35

  AS he stared into her pain-twisted face, he slowly became conscious of a faint light vibrating at the edge of his vision. He couldn’t tell if it was co
ming up out of the sea, or falling from the sky, or generated somehow by the wind, like static electricity. Darkness surrounded them, yet he could make out outlines and shapes. Strangely grainy, as if he was seeing by the individual particles of light itself, it was just enough to make out the huddled body under the cuddy, the crouching boy aft; enough to sense a wave as it bulged above the stern.

  Okay, he thought. First inventory what you have, then you’ll know what you can do. It wasn’t a long list. They had two hard hats, a flashlight that didn’t work, and the clothes he, the kid, and the woman were wearing. They had a grapnel, line, and life jacket, now deployed as a sea anchor. And that was all. Oh, and whatever was in the woman’s bottle—water, probably.

  It didn’t sound like much. But the coolness licking his legs told him what he’d better deal with first.

  He groped in the bilges, found the second hard hat, and thrust it at the boy. “Bail,” he snarled. The kid took it but didn’t move. Dan picked up his own again and began scooping and throwing. After a moment, the kid slid down and started bailing, too.

  Next: the woman. Thank God this wasn’t the first time he’d been around for a birth. He tried to remember the classes he and Susan had gone to before Nan was born. He just hadn’t thought about it for so long, years, and when you piled on the Navy schools and all the stuff you had to memorize … Don’t think about that now. Remember Lamaze classes in the Navy hospital: lying on the prickly thin carpet, adjusting the pillow behind Susan’s back; slides of a baby angled in the womb; a room full of panting women, husbands eyeing wristwatches. Crouched in the heaving, pitching boat, he tried to summon the green-tiled room where they’d awaited the obstetrician.

  Only here there was no room, no doctor, no pillow, nothing to work with. He crawled forward on his knees to slump next to her.