Landfall: Islands in the Aftermath (The Pulse Series Book 4) (27 page)

Thomas knew she was right as he grabbed for the end of the Dacron line that was tangled on the seat nearby. Scully looked weak and grimaced in pain when Thomas told him what he was doing.

“Just let me get a loop around your leg. You can let go with your hands as soon as I pull it tight. It should work better than trying to hold it.”

Scully nodded and the Thomas tightened the tourniquet, wrapping it several turns around his leg. His hands were slick with Scully’s blood by the time he was done, but the bleeding slowed to barely a trickle. The bullet from the rifle hitting his leg at such close range had done tremendous damage. It was impossible to tell just how much, but Thomas had no doubt that bones were shattered in addition to the torn veins or arteries that had caused him to lose so much blood.

“Help me for a second,” Mindy asked, and Thomas saw that she was struggling to push Russell over the side. More blood now covered the cockpit seat from the two wounds in Russell’s torso, and it was obvious he was dead or dying, but his eyes were still open and Thomas couldn’t be sure if he was already gone or not. Together the two of them lifted him up to the edge of the cockpit coaming and then rolled him off the edge of the narrow side deck. He hit the water with a big splash and slowly sank into the clear depths.
 

Thomas looked back at Scully, still slumped in the cockpit sole and then at the boat they had been sailing towards. He saw the girl standing at the stern rail waving her hands, and when he checked with the binoculars, he saw that she wasn’t holding the rifle any more. Reaching for a rigging knife he kept just inside the companionway, Russell cut off the excess end of the mainsheet so that sailing the boat wouldn’t interfere with Scully’s tourniquet, then he turned
Intrepida
off the wind to fill the sails. As he got back on course towards the
Sarah J.
, Mindy began dipping up bucketfuls of seawater to wash the blood off the decks and out of the cockpit scuppers.
 

“How many you see on de boat?” Scully asked Thomas, looking up from where he still lay slumped in the cockpit sole.

“I didn’t see anybody but the one girl. I think it’s the teenaged daughter you told us about.”

“Rebecca.”

“And that guy just completely lied to us, saying she was his daughter and her name was Rhonda,” Mindy said. “I wonder what happened here. How did he ever get on the boat in the first place, and did he really fall off like he said he did?”

“Maybe we’ll get the answers soon,” Thomas said. “I’m going to ease up to the stern end and hope we have enough water there to tie alongside without getting stuck on whatever she’s on.”
 

* * *

When Thomas and Mindy saw how firmly the keel of the
Sarah J.
was buried in the sandbar Rebecca had sailed into, they knew it was beyond their means to get the yacht afloat again. But fortunately, the water at the stern of the bigger boat was just deep enough for the little Montgomery 17 to raft alongside, and once they had their boat secured and exchanged their stories, the next question was what they were going to do for Scully.
 

“That would be great if we can find him,” Mindy said, when Rebecca told her that Captain Larry’s brother, Artie was a doctor. “He absolutely needs a doctor. That leg is awful and I’m afraid he’s going to lose it.”
 

Scully was weak from the blood loss and had been in and out of consciousness since he was shot. They had to get him out of the hot sun and keep him well hydrated and immobile. Then, they had to get him some help. He might not survive if they didn’t and Thomas knew he and Mindy owed him their lives, so he was determined to do everything in his power to save Scully’s.

“We need to get him aboard your boat, Rebecca.
Intrepida’s
cabin is so small there’s no way to make him comfortable in there and he wouldn’t be able to get any rest while we’re underway.”

“We can get him on board with the Lifesling,” Rebecca said, pointing to the rescue device mounted on the stern rail. “We’ve used it before and it works great. All you have to do is crank the halyard winch to hoist him up. We can get him down into the cabin and he can sleep on the starboard bunk. The way the boat’s leaning over, he’ll be on the low side and he can’t roll off.”
 

All this was easier said than done, but with the three of them working together they accomplished the task and Scully was safely aboard the larger yacht an hour later. There was a decent first aid kit on the
Sarah J.
, and with it Mindy did her best to bandage Scully’s shattered leg. There was nothing she could do about the damage to the bones, but when she was finished wrapping it the bleeding slowed enough to make it safe to remove the tourniquet. Maybe the leg could be saved or maybe not, but there was nothing else she knew to do for him other than try and find the doctor who was the brother of Scully’s best friend. When she was finished Rebecca showed her and Thomas where Green Cay was on the chart.
 

“Captain Larry had been talking about going to the Jumentos Cays in front of Russell, and I guess that’s where he got the idea to come here. But before that, he wouldn’t shut up about some friend’s house he wanted to go to on Staniel Cay. He tried to talk Captain Larry into taking him there, but that was out of the question with Scully missing in Florida. Russell refused to go there with Captain Larry to look for him, so that’s why he took our boat and me along with it. The catamaran was on the beach and the mast was down, so it was easy for him to get away. I think as soon as they got it ready to sail again, my mom and Captain Larry would go to that Staniel Cay place to look for me before they would come here. They would never think Russell would come here because he wanted to go there.”

“Wow, that’s a long way from here,” Mindy said, tracing her finger over the chart. “They could be almost anywhere in the Exumas.”

“Yeah, especially if they went to Staniel Cay and didn’t see the boat. There’s no telling what they would do then,” Thomas said.

“They would keep looking, that’s what. Captain Larry would never give up trying to help my mom find her boat. And after that, he could do what he planned to do and sail his boat to Florida to look for Scully. But now Scully is here and he has no way of knowing that.”
 

Thomas had never been to the Exumas, but in all their dreaming of sailing to the Bahamas before the collapse, he and Mindy had read and heard a lot about those islands, as they were so popular with cruising sailors. He had thought he would never get to see them, but now sailing there to look for Larry’s brother was the only hope of finding a doctor who would be willing to come here and help Scully. Rebecca’s mother and all the rest of the crew on the catamaran would be immensely relieved to know that Rebecca and the
Sarah J.
had been found and that she was safe. With the catamaran and all her crew, they might even have a chance of getting the
Sarah J.
off the ground. There was really no other choice they could make. An hour later, Thomas and Mindy were sailing north, bound for the southern Exumas. They would work their way along the chain, checking every anchorage between their landfall and Staniel Cay, and hopefully intercept the
Casey Nicole
in her search for the
Sarah J.
 

Tied to the stern of
Intrepida
was the two-seater kayak, just as it had been since Scully first joined them in Florida. They were bringing it for good reason. As they were discussing their plans in the cabin of the
Sarah J.
with Rebecca and Scully, Mindy had voiced her concern that Larry and the others on the catamaran would have no interest in a little 17-foot sailboat like
Intrepida
. What if they saw them somewhere in the Exumas and tried to flag them down? They could not possibly catch up to the much faster catamaran, and Larry and the crew would be wary of strangers and too busy looking for the
Sarah J.
to be inclined to stop for a smaller boat. Hearing this, Scully said the solution was to take the kayak in tow. He said Larry would recognize it anywhere because it was not a make and type that was commonly seen in the islands. If he saw it behind their boat, they wouldn’t have to try and flag down the
Casey Nicole
, because Larry would run them down to find out why they had it when Scully was last seen in it off the coast of Florida.
 

Thomas hated to leave Scully and Rebecca stranded on a grounded boat with no way off, but Scully insisted they take it, so they did. He said they would be fine. There was food and water and Rebecca had already proven she could use the SKS if Scully was unable to get to the deck in the event of an attack of some kind. But he wasn’t worried about that in such a remote place and he also insisted that Thomas take the AK and leave the old hunting rifle with him. This was a suggestion Thomas had no hesitation about. Sailing to the Exumas would put them in contact with a lot of other boaters, all of them on larger, faster vessels, and he felt much better having the firepower of the semi-automatic, even if the magazine was no longer full. He also had a newfound respect and admiration for Mindy, who had saved them all with her willingness to use the handgun despite her inexperience with firearms. There were eight rounds remaining for the pistol, so with it and the AK, he felt they were as prepared as they could be given the circumstances.

Thirty-four

“I
T
LOOKS
LIKE
YOU
got the bad end of the deal in your dinghy trade,” Artie said, as the
Casey Nicole
drifted alongside Larry and Jessica so they could catch hold and climb aboard. Artie was so happy to see him he couldn’t resist this little attempt at humor with his brother, but he made sure to keep his voice low enough that Tara didn’t overhear. He was absolutely thrilled to find Larry and Jessica alive and unhurt. Truthfully, it was not what he’d expected after seeing those two men sail away in the dinghy. But here they were, bobbing along in a tiny fiberglass boat that had certainly seen better days but was never much to begin with.

“We thought we were going to have to build another catamaran with driftwood on the beach after we got back to Bitter Guana Cay and found you guys already gone. What’s the deal? Did you see Russell go by in the
Sarah J.
or something?”

Artie told him they had not, but instead had seen the men who stole the dinghy and tried to catch them.
 

“I’m not surprised the bastards got away. We’ll never get it back, but hey, it could have been a lot worse. They got the drop on me and they didn’t have to leave us alive, but they did.”

“I take it you haven’t seen any sign of my boat or my daughter,” Tara said, as Larry climbed aboard the
Casey Nicole
behind Jessica.
 

“Unfortunately, no. And none of the folks we talked to in the anchorage have either. So either he hasn’t made it here yet because he stopped somewhere along the way, or he decided to go elsewhere.”
 

Tara sank back onto a seat in the cockpit, her face buried in her hands. “That’s just what I was afraid of. And just what I tried to tell all of you!”

“Well you didn’t have a better idea of where to look, did you? I don’t recall you telling us if you did, but I’m all ears if you do now. Look, I’m sorry, and I know this is rough on you. We’re going to do all that we can and my boat is at your disposal. So you tell me. Where do you want to look, because that’s where we’ll go.”

“I don’t know! I’ve never been to these islands before. I just have to find my daughter. I still can’t believe this has happened.”

The tears were streaming down Tara’s face now, and Artie sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders as Larry stood there not really knowing what else to say, other than to assure her that they would leave immediately to continue their search. Larry asked Grant to help him and the two of them pulled the junky little dinghy up onto the forward deck.

“I hate to put this thing on my boat, but unfortunately, it’s all we have now.”
 

As they were lashing it down, Artie heard Larry ask Grant where his primary anchor was, and why it was missing from the bow roller where it was always stored when the boat was underway. When Grant told him they had cut the rode in order to try and catch the men in the dinghy, Larry said they had to go back to Bitter Guana Cay and find it.

“That Rocna is worth its weight in gold, especially now. I don’t know where I’d ever get another one, and we’re sure to get in a situation where nothing else will do. I don’t suppose you put a float on the rode?”

“No,” Artie said with a bit of embarrassment for the oversight. “I didn’t even think about it, to tell you the truth. We were in such a hurry to try and catch those guys and I was so worried about you and Jessica. I wasn’t expecting to ever have to go back and look for it, really.”
 

“That’s all right. I’ll find it. I know about where I dropped it and the water is clear.”
 

Larry did find the anchor after just a few minutes of searching with mask and snorkel after they returned to Bitter Guana Cay. He brought up the severed end of the nylon rode and Grant hauled it aboard. When he was back in the cockpit, Larry spread out the chart for the Exumas and pointed out the likely spots he thought Russell might have gone since he did come to Staniel Cay. All of them were to the south.

“I just think it’s highly unlikely that he’s north of here. To go farther north from where he started, he would just about have to come here first to miss the banks that stretch out to Green Cay. He would have passed close enough to Staniel that someone on one of those boats would have seen him. I think the folks we spoke to would have told us if they had. They had no reason not to, because it was a strange boat passing through that none of them could have known anything about. He may have been trying to come here and failed to make landfall where he planned. I have no idea how much he knew about navigation, but since I know he was full of shit about most things, I doubt it was much.