Henry and Tom: Ocean Adventure Series Book 1: Rescue (Ocean Adventures Series)

by Michael Atkins

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  “You need to tell me that one more time, please. Slowly,” Syd said. She was talking with Lieutenant Watkins, who had woken her up at three in the morning.

  “A sailboat passing through the search area found some debris or possible debris. We don’t know if it’s from Mr. Campbell’s boat or not. There isn’t much; some rope, a bit of charred sail, a pair of shorts, one sock and a shirt.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Sydney asked.

  “It’s a longshot, but we need to ask you if you can identify any of this material as belonging to your husband…, ah... ex-husband.”

  “Do you have pictures?”

  “Yes, jpeg files. Can I send them to the email address you provided me with earlier?”

  “Yes, please send them now. I’ll look at them and call you back as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Campbell.”

  Sydney looked at the clock and reconfirmed that it was indeed the middle of the night. Harold was fast asleep. Poor man, Syd thought. He has been so supportive of me and the kids, doing his best to give comfort in what had to be the most awkward and uncomfortable situation imaginable. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Harold stirred, but did not wake up.

  After putting on her robe, Syd walked down the hall to her home office. She passed Jessica’s room and peeked inside. Her daughter was asleep, but her headphones were on and Syd could hear music still playing through them. Her first instinct was to turn off the music and remove her headphones, but Syd decided against that. If Jessica liked to sleep that way then Syd decided it would be a mistake to intervene, especially tonight.

  After turning on the light and sitting down at her desk, Syd switched on her laptop. Her heart was racing. Did she want to find that these objects belonged to Tom or not? Would that mean he was more likely to be dead or alive? More information is always better, Syd told herself in a clinical, positive self-talk tone. She wasn’t at all sure if she believed that…

  The first jpeg file was a photo of a short strand of rope and some sail. Nothing there, Syd said to herself. The next was a deck shoe. It was blue. A note on the file said the shoe was size eleven. That was Tom’s size, but there were maybe half a billion other males on the planet who also wore a size eleven shoes. She tried to recall if Tom ever wore blue deck shoes. Searching her memories she simply couldn’t recall the color of Tom’s deck shoes, so she moved on to the next file.

  Two pairs of shorts, one faded red the other khaki. Waist size thirty. Was Tom a thirty or a thirty two waist? Syd clearly remembered that he was a thirty two waist. However, since they split he had lost some weight. Enough to fit these shorts? Probably not, Syd concluded, but she could not be sure.

  The last jpeg file was the shirt. It was a faded Los Angeles Dodgers tee shirt, size large. Syd’s heart raced again. She zoomed in on the collar. There it was. The right side of the collar had been torn and re-sewn with black thread.

  Sydney put her hand over her mouth and muffled a scream. Her hands were shaking and she was crying. She had never felt so frightened in her entire life.

  Five years ago Syd had re-sewn that old tee shirt for Tom. He considered it to be his lucky charm. Whenever the Dodgers made the playoffs he wore the old rag, claiming they never lost a game when he wore it and sat a certain way in his favorite chair watching the ballgame.

  Closing her eyes Syd could see Tom sitting in his old Lazy Boy recliner, the chair she hated so much, cheering for the Boys in Blue, as he called his favorite team. Then she remembered getting upset with him because he had not done this or that household chore or something else trivial that day that she wanted him to do. This made her cry even more.

  Get it together, Syd, get it together. I’ve got to maintain here! I can’t lose it, the kids need me, Tom needs me, Harold needs… Then she broke down again. It was an hour and three cups of coffee later before Sydney was composed enough to call Lieutenant Watkins back.

  “Yes, Ms. Campbell,” Watkins said, picking up the line.

  “The Dodgers tee shirt belongs to Tom. I’m 100% sure of it. There is a black thread mend on the collar. I mended that shirt years ago.”

  “I need to ask you one more time. You’re sure, no doubts.”

  “No doubts,” Syd repeated. “What does this mean? Where is Tom?”

  “It means that almost certainly his sailboat sank. We analyzed the piece of sail. It had been burned.”

  “Meaning what?” Syd asked.

  “We can’t be sure of course, but the most logical interpretation of the evidence suggests an onboard fire – a catastrophic on board fire.”

  “My God,” Syd mumbled. All of the composure she had worked so hard to build now crumbled. Watkins could hear her crying and sniffling through the phone.

  “Don’t jump to the worst conclusions yet, Ms. Campbell. We reviewed the manifest provided by the boat’s outfitter in San Francisco. There was a state of the art emergency life raft on board. Mr. Campbell could survive in that raft for days, weeks even with a little luck.”

  “I’ve been reading about sailboats…Looking at nothing else really for the past few days. Tom had an EPIRB, I’m sure of it. You have not received any signal from an EPIRB that might be him?”

  “No, we haven’t. That’s not good news, but EPIRBs are powered by batteries. Batteries fail. Emergency radios fail. It would be wrong to conclude from your positive ID of this debris that Mr. Campbell is deceased. We don’t know that and, in fact, now that we are nearly certain that his boat went down we will intensify the search.”

  “I thought you were already doing everything you can,” Syd said.

  “Sorry, I used the wrong term. We are adjusting our search pattern now based on where this debris was found. We use the most comprehensive and effective computer system on the planet, SAROPS or Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System. It takes into account literally all the information we gather and plots an optimal search grid. Finding and identifying this debris will allow us to search more effectively for Mr. Campbell. That’s a positive development, Mrs. Campbell.”

  “You will call me the instant you learn anything new.”

  “Yes ma’am. I’ll call you at least once every 24 hours, but not again in the middle of the night unless that’s absolutely necessary.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Hang in there, Ms. Campbell. We’re really just getting started and we’re very good at what we do.”

  ^^^^^^

  Day three of Tom’s whale ride adventure began exactly the same way the first two days started with a blowhole alarm waking him up shortly after dawn. Tom was feeling better now, much better. He knew that, to some degree, this improvement was superficial. He could be bleeding internally and parts of his skin, especially a black colored patch on his right thigh, were severely burned.

  But he was riding on the back of a sperm whale. Because he had done this now for seventy two plus hours Tom was adjusting to the experience – what once seemed miraculous was now almost normal. He was ready, at least as ready as he could be, to respond to another dive by Henry. He worked it out in his mind and he was fairly certain that he could prop himself up above the water on his emergency packs. Sort of like a pool lounge chair, only I’m in the middle of the ocean! He laughed about it. I’ll just lay back and wait for the sushi to pop up!

  They were swimming along, still headed southeast. Tom’s most important observation so far was that some type of disturbance was moving in from the west. He wondered what it would be like to ride out a storm on the back of a sperm whale. He guessed that it would take a might frothy ocean to bounce around a creature of this size.

  Then he heard it. At first he couldn’t be sure, but then he was positive. Propellers! A plane was closing in on his position. Wishing that he had a pair of sunglasses, Tom tried his best to identify the position of the plane in the sky from the sound. The best he could tell the plane was approaching him from the northeast. This meant looking direc
tly into the morning sun.

  Henry was un-phased by the plane or Tom’s movements on his back. I wish I had some reins! Tom thought. Holding his hands over his eyes, Tom did his best to try and spot the plane. He knew that he could reach for and fire a flare in mere seconds, but if the plane was getting closer to him he wanted to wait. Seeing a flare in broad daylight from a few thousand feet in the air wasn’t an easy thing to do and Tom knew it.

  From the sound of the props, the plane was getting closer and closer to him. Tom still couldn’t spot it and he thought the reason was the plane was directly in line with the sun from his position. So he grabbed the flare gun and fired. Half a minute later after he reloaded he fired again.

  “Roger Hawaii. We are adjusting course,” the pilot said and clicked off his mic.

  “New orders?” the co-pilot of the C-130 asked his captain.

  “They’ve found some debris up north. SAROPS has adjusted the search grid. We’re way too south. Adjusting course.”

  “Roger that,” the co-pilot said. When the captain turned the plane the co-pilot just missed what would have been the discovery of a lifetime – a few thousand feet below him a man riding on the back of a sperm whale had just released two flares. When the captain made his turn, the co-pilot stopped scanning the ocean.

  If Tom had fired his flare even thirty seconds earlier the co-pilot would have surely seen it.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  It was raining now. Not heavy rain; more mist, a drizzle. On this fourth day of his great sperm whale adventure, Tom’s thoughts were on what might have been. When he fired the second flare he looked up in the sky and clearly saw the C-130. It could not have been more than five thousand feet above him. But the plane banked and turned due north the instant his flare exploded.

  The only thing Tom could figure is that the aircraft had reached the end of its search pattern or had been ordered to start a new pattern. What were the odds of this happening the moment he fired his flare? Then again, what were the odds of Sydney being blown to bits or him being out here on the back of giant whale that he’d helped rescue twenty years before?

  When he saw the plane, Tom’s thoughts immediately shifted from the amazing experience he was living to his children back home in San Francisco. The search plane verified something he had assumed to be true, he was now officially listed as missing. Syd, Jonas and Jess must be in a state of panic. Oh how he wished that they could see him! It would have been the best of all possible worlds being spotted by the plane. They would have taken pictures of him riding on Henry and his kids could have watched them on TV!

  But that was yesterday. Today the seas were up a bit, but not much. The swells weren’t large enough to create whitecaps, but it was close. An hour or so after he started swimming, Henry stopped. When Tom heard the clicks he knew what was up, it was dinner time. On cue, Henry slipped under the surface and Tom was left alone.

  “I wished you’d have picked a better day for this,” Tom grumbled. He implemented his plan immediately. The first time he tried balance himself on his packs he fell over, but his second attempt was a success. The key to riding this way, just as Tom had assumed, was to keep his arms and legs outstretched, like outriggers on a canoe.

  He lay there in the mist and gently rolling sea and opened a bottle of water. He took a small sip. His water supply was getting low, but if the last time Henry dove was any indicator soon fish would start popping up all around him. The liquid he consumed by eating the fish would be far more than a day’s supply of water.

  The sky was overcast, which was a blessing. Tom had to ration his aloe vera lotion and sunscreen. Because of the cloudy conditions he had chosen to forego any skin treatments today.

  An hour passed, then two. Henry had not sent him any fish, but Tom wasn’t worried. Perhaps today Henry will feed me when he’s done eating, Tom thought. The seas calmed a bit and the rain let up. Tom fell asleep.

  He woke up to the sound of a roar coming from the deep. Since he was not in the water he could not feel the pressure wave, but he knew what was happening. Henry was blasting fish for him again. How long have I been out of it? Tom asked himself. The sky was grey so getting an accurate position of the sun was impossible. He guessed he’d been asleep for two hours or maybe twice that long.

  The fish began to pop up moments later. It wasn’t flying fish this time, it was jack mackerel. Should I be in or out of the water now? Tom asked himself. In the water seemed the better bet because he could more easily maneuver his floating fish cleaning station around with his legs below the surface.

  For whatever reason, Tom had no clue, the mackerel were dead, not stunned. And there were dozens of them coming up all around him. He grabbed one, severed its head and cleaned it and put in the side pocket of one of his packs. He didn’t want to set the fish on top of the packs as he’d done previously – too many were lost using that strategy when Henry lifted him up out of the water.

  He was on his seventh fish when he noticed something stir in the water a few feet away from him. He couldn’t see anything so he assumed that one of the mackerel had survived and swam away to join what was left of the mackerel school.

  Reaching out for fish number eight, Tom nearly lost his hand. A blue shark snatched the fish from him in a flash. Then two or three more blues began to feed on the mackerel. Dorsal fins began to pop up all around him. Tom was smack dabbed in the middle of a feeding frenzy.

  Think Tom. Henry must be nearby. Would the whale be able to figure out that I’m in danger? Had Henry gone back down to the deep for a second helping of squid? Tom felt the rough skin of a blue shark brush up against his leg; it was like sandpaper being ground into his open wound. He screamed in agony. Tom knew that he had to get out of the water immediately.

  He pulled himself up on the packs, but like the first time he tried it he fell over the other side. When he did, he was staring right into the eyes of a blue! The shark was as startled as he was and darted off. Tom made it when he tried to mount the packs the second time. But his butt was still in the water.

  More sharks arrived and they were gorging themselves on the mackerel. Tom kept looking around, for some reason he thought counting the predators was important. He saw ten dorsal fins in the water, then twelve, then fifteen… then he stopped counting.

  The blues were getting very aggressive. They were circling around his packs. Then one of the sharks tried to bite his left leg; Tom avoided disaster at the last second when he jerked his foot back on the pack. When he did this he nearly toppled over, which he knew now was almost surely a death sentence.

  He loaded both flare guns and put one in each hand. The next shark that opened its mouth and tried to munch on one of his appendages was going to get a red ball of fire sandwich. They were swimming all around him now, the mackerel were nearly gone. All that was left on the menu was human flesh.

  Then Henry surfaced, but not directly under Tom. He was ten yards to Tom’s port. The sharks didn’t seem to notice the whale, or at least their behavior was unchanged. They were brushing up against the packs now, moving in for the kill.

  Tom’s eyes were on the whale. Henry moved abruptly in the water and while Tom could see his broad outline, he could not tell exactly what Henry was up to. Suddenly a large tail rose out of the ocean not five feet away from Tom. It tossed four sharks into the air and toppled Tom off of the packs.

  The sharks were stunned and confused. Henry wasted no time. He hit a second group of the sea wolves and tossed a few more in the air. Now all the blues scattered; no doubt shocked that a sperm whale was flailing at them with its tail. Henry surfaced underneath Tom and assumed his logging position.

  Looking to the side of Henry, Tom could see a couple of straggler blues darting back and forth no doubt completely befuddled. But after a few minutes the waters were clear of the predators. Tom had his packs properly positioned. Henry blew a short blast from his blowhole and they were off. There was still some time left before sunset and Henry was determined to ke
ep moving, to stick with whatever plan he was executing.

  Tom was shaking with fear. It wasn’t until Henry had taken them well away from where he encountered the sharks did Tom’s heart finally stop pounding through his chest.

  ^^^^^^

  “Jonas, we need to talk,” Gabriel said as he walked into Jonas’ room. Jonas was busy playing a video game when his uncle interrupted him.

  “Okay,” Jonas said with trepidation. He had been expecting bad news.

  “They found some of your father’s clothing and a couple of other items floating in the ocean,” Gabriel explained. “There is no sign of him or his sailboat.”

  “Dad’s dead, isn’t he. You can tell me, Uncle Gabe.”

  Gabriel grabbed Jonas’ arms with purpose and looked into his nephew’s eyes. “We don’t know that, son. The Coast Guard says your father had a great life raft. After his boat sunk he probably climbed in the raft and now he’s just waiting to be rescued. The experts think that most likely what’s happened. Let’s go with that for now.”

  “What am I gonna do… I mean without Dad. I was moving to Hawaii, ya know? I can’t be stuck here with Mom and Harold. I just can’t.”

  “Until they find my brother I’m staying here with you at your dad’s place. That’s a commitment, son. So let’s take things one day at a time.”

  “Alright,” Jonas said. “But Dad’s out there all alone. Who is helping him? He needs help.”

  “Your father and I learned to sail together when we were kids. He ever tell you that?”

  “I’ve heard a few stories,” Jonas said.

  “There was simply nobody better than your dad when it came to sailing. He won every contest we entered, finished first in almost every race. The man was born to be on the water. That’s what he should have been doing for the past twenty years, but that’s a whole other story.

  “What I’m trying to tell you son is that while I can’t sit here and promise you that your dad’s okay because I just don’t know, I do know that if there was ever anyone, and I mean anyone, who could get through something like this and live to tell about it its Thomas Campbell.”