Diamond Head (20 page)

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Authors: Charles Knief

BOOK: Diamond Head
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I waved to him as
Duchess
headed toward the channel. He remained there, a lone figure on the end of the dock, until I passed the
Arizona
memorial and I couldn't see him any longer and he blended with the lines and shadows of the little marina that was my home.
 
 
I
navigated Pearl Harbor's narrow entrance channel, squeezing to get as much clearance as possible between
Duchess
and an attack submarine on its way home. A few years back I'd spent some time as cargo aboard a nuclear submarine. It took my team from point A to point B, never mind when and never mind where. I found it too small for my liking and the view terrible. Join the navy and see the bulkhead. I saluted the colors as the two boats passed. An officer on the sail returned my salute smartly, probably annoyed by the civilian sailboat coming so close to his precious sub. It wasn't supposed to happen, but you don't see many sailboats leaving Pearl Harbor at night, either.
Once out of the channel I adjusted
Duchess's
engine to give me the maximum speed for the stormy conditions. She was a sailboat, but tonight she would be nothing but a motor vessel. The sails would stay down. The seas were mountainous, topped with whitecaps, and we spent as much time ascending the rollers and descending into the valleys of the big swells as we did making forward speed. I found we could not make over six knots.
The ride was a tough one, but not impossible. If the hurricane moved north before this was done it would then be impossible.
Right now Oahu was protected from the full force of the storm by distance and the landmass of Hawaii. Once the hurricane cleared the Big Island, the full effect of a Pacific hurricane would be felt locally. If it weren't for Kate I'd have abandoned Thompson to his fate. I didn't know what kind of a sailor he was, but his boat was so small he'd have to be a better man than I to challenge these elements. A better man, or a more desperate one.
I set my course for Barber's Point Naval Air Station. There were beacons and a coast guard station on the beach at Barber's Point. That way
Duchess
could hug the coastline and we could stay clear of the shipping lanes. And the course had the advantage of being the shortest distance between the two points.
When I got a free moment I checked the radio direction finder. The little LED screen was blank. I hoped that meant only that Thompson's boat was still on the far side of the Waianae Mountains, whose southern slopes terminated only a mile or so from Barber's Point. If I continued heading west I figured to be nearly on top of Thompson when he cleared the headlands. That was the plan anyway, tenaciously retained because it was the only one I had.
There was no moon. Thick clouds obscured the sky from horizon to horizon. The lights of Oahu on my starboard were the only illumination, stretching in an unbroken line from Honolulu all the way to Barber's Point. Far out in the shipping lanes I could see running lights of merchant vessels. They all seemed to be trying to reach safe harbor while they could. Aside from the roller coaster effect of the giant swells, it was easy. The hard part, I knew, would come later.
Duchess
rolled and tossed for two hours without interruption, continuously rising and sliding through the black water, making slow, steady progress. It didn't take much skill to maintain my current course but it took a monumental effort to sit still at the wheel and wonder what was happening to Kate.
Thompson's boat was heading directly into the wind and the swells; that should keep him busy. I didn't want to think what he could be doing to her if he got bored.
In two hours
Duchess
was off the beach near the naval air station. Dawn was less than an hour away, but there was no hint of light as yet. The radio direction finder showed no reading. There was no sign of Thompson's boat. I continued west, hoping that once I cleared the headlands there would be something to guide me, and hoping Thompson hadn't sunk or met a freighter somewhere along the Waianae coast.
One of the hurricane's outer bands announced its presence with a sudden solid downpour accompanied by vicious shifting winds that shot the rain horizontally across the deck. I was instantly soaked to the skin and the rain cut the visibility to less than twenty-five yards.
Duchess'
s freeboard caught enough of the wind to heel her over toward starboard and push her bow around toward shore, where the backs of huge white breakers would break her hull as if it were eggshell. I fought the wheel, bringing her back on course.
The direction finder started beeping.
I glanced at the little screen, checked the compass mounted on the cabin's bulkhead, and then checked the screen again. If I believed the little gizmo Max provided, Thompson was dead ahead, somewhere in the gloom along my own course of travel. If he was moving, the LED would display a change in course. The rain continued, a silver curtain blown by the warm, humid winds of a tropical hurricane. The direction finder did not indicate how far off the transmitter was, that would take triangulation, but knowing which direction to go, just possessing the knowledge that the boat still existed was enough for me just then. That gave me enough to continue.
I checked the marine weather forecast. The hurricane watch had been discontinued and a hurricane warning was now in effect. All vessels, not just small craft, were advised to avoid the area and head to the nearest port. The storm was now classified
category four, one of the most powerful, and in the last hour, after taking a short tour of an empty corner of the Pacific Ocean, it had begun moving toward the west coast of the island of Hawaii. The eye was still three hundred miles south of Oahu, but its effects were now being felt along the Waianae and the southern coasts of the island. Maui and its neighbors were being thrashed by rain and high winds. And the hurricane wasn't even in the neighborhood yet.
The rain stopped as abruptly as it began, leaving a hot, humid atmosphere and an oppressive ambiance behind. Dawn broke at my back, a dirty, gray light diffused with residual moisture. Warm breezes blew from my port side, providing no relief from the humidity. Visibility improved to half a mile but I could only see that far in the brief moment when
Duchess
crested a roller. The rest of the time she was sliding down the back of one wave or climbing the next, bucking and shuddering, her rigging groaning with the strain.
Once a rogue wave came in perpendicular to the wave track and I barely had time to turn her bow to quarter the monster before
Duchess
buried her nose in green water. I held on to the wheel with a death grip as she submarined through the peak of the wave and leapt free on the other side. The vortex swept away the cushions and all the other loose gear in the cockpit.
The radio direction finder went with the rest of the jetsam. Without that electronic eye, I was blind. I had no choice but to continue the same course, and assume it was correct. Just in case there were other rogues like that I tied myself to the wheel.
At the crest of a wave, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I caught something off my starboard side. Before the brain could register the event,
Duchess
was tobogganing down the back of the wave and I was bracing for the impact and the climb up the slope of the next. I looked for whatever had caught my eye the next time and saw nothing. It took three more roller coaster rides before I caught sight of a sailboat, shredded sails flying horizontally with the direction of the wind. Guides and
sheets were flaying about and the mast looked cocked at an odd angle. The boat looked to be some two hundred yards away, just off my starboard quarter. I would not have seen it at all except for the coincidental cresting of both boats at the same instant. Had I not been looking in that exact direction at that exact moment it would have been missed.
I calculated an intercept and adjusted course. I wanted to come from behind. Heading into these monstrous waves would cause all of Thompson's attention to be directed forward. Given the dangers at his twelve o'clock, I hoped he wouldn't pay any attention to his six.
The sailboat was gone the next time Duchess crested, and also on the next two waves, but the fourth one gave me an unobstructed view of the little craft.
It was closer now, some seventy-five yards distant, and more detail was visible. As the stern disappeared over the side of its wave I saw that it was trailed by a track of cavitated water, evidence that the boat's engine was running. I also caught sight of a lone figure in the cockpit, although it was too far away to tell who it was.
The next time the boat came into view it was only twenty yards away. There was no doubt it was Thompson. In that brief glimpse his profile was unmistakable. No one else was visible. His sailboat was damaged, and it wallowed as it passed over the waves. I understood why
Duchess
had closed the gap so quickly. Thompson's boat appeared to be partially filled with water. There was little freeboard below the gunwales. It was barely making headway. Another rogue wave would sink it. Another hour of this would have the same effect.
A blast of rain swept across the ocean, blanking out visibility beyond ten yards. Thompson's boat disappeared behind a beaded curtain.
Duchess
had given me more than I could have expected, but now I asked for more. I gunned her engine and she shot forward, shuddering and popping from the strain, giving it all she had. Once, twice we rode up and over a rolling
black mountain of moving water. The third time
Duchess
came crashing down behind Thompson's sailboat in a course so close her wake lifted the smaller craft and shoved it aside.
As his boat was driven from its route Thompson saw me for the first time, his face registering a satisfying mask of surprise. It must have been a shock. He'd killed me twice and yet here I was, following him to the edge of a hurricane. I was ready to follow him to the edge of hell itself. We rose over the next wave together and
Duchess
passed him. I didn't get a chance to savor the moment. Thompson and his sailboat disappeared in our wake.
I cut the engine back to minimal revolutions but inertia continued driving
Duchess
ahead. My attempt at slowing her caused green water to break over the bow. Without sufficient forward momentum,
Duchess
became a toy of the ocean. Too much of this and she would be as waterlogged as Thompson's boat, but if I increased speed I'd never get back to him, or to Kate. They couldn't last much longer. But neither could
Duchess.
I didn't want to think about the return voyage with huge and erratic following seas. As far as I could tell we'd already reached the point of no return. In the last report I'd heard, the hurricane was moving north at better than thirty knots. In these seas
Duchess
could not make better than six. That presented a simple logistical problem that would not go away. But it wouldn't be a problem unless I could get Kate off Thompson's boat. I'd consider my mission accomplished if I could just leave him and his boat and all it contained out here. The storm would swallow him forever.
The next roller brought us nearly to a stop in the bottom of the trough. A wave crested above us, nearly as high as
Duchess‘
s mast. She started to slip sideways, a move that would capsize her. I gunned the engine, hoping to bring her bow into the wave. When it broke she was forty-five degrees to the wave's direction of travel and she capsized. White foaming pressure hit like a wall of concrete falling from the sky, then there was a
bottle green light, a painful pressure on the ears and a sense of disorientation, and then the battleship gray skies overhead once again as
Duchess'
s heavy keel did what it was designed to do. Gravity did not exist in those moments, replaced by a curious fatalism.
Duchess
would rise or she would not. Whatever happened, we would ride it out together.
When she righted herself I did a quick inventory of the damage. Her masts and rigging had vanished, swept away as neatly as if they'd been transported by a magician. All the rest of my topside gear was gone. Her engine had quit. But we were floating.
I tried starting the engine but it was dead. I grabbed the twoman inflatable life support raft from the cockpit storage locker. It was an improvement on the older life rafts because it had a complete watertight enclosure. It wouldn't swamp. It also had an automatic strobe light and transmitter with new batteries good for twenty hours of constant use. I didn't know if it would survive this kind of sea but there wasn't an alternative. It was all I had. I slipped the safety loop over my left shoulder.
Duchess
slid down the retreating side of another wave. Despite the damage she'd suffered, she met the next one head on, bursting through the crown like the thoroughbred she was. I looked back for Thompson's boat and found to my horror that he was coming on, less than five yards from my stern, about to crash into
Duchess.
I braced for the collision. The bow of Thompson's boat smashed through the railing of
Duchess'
s stern, burying itself into the wooden hull structure below the cockpit. Reacting, not thinking, I jumped for his bowsprit, rolled to the top and hung on. The two boats were like mating behemoths, hinged at the larger one's stern, the vicious wave action working them back and forth. I climbed aboard the smaller craft just before she slipped off my boat.
Duchess
was on her own. I never looked back, afraid of what I might see.

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