PULAU MATI (9 page)

A number of positive noises came from the group.  Gray said he was willing and
the others said they were also willing.  Even Paolo who had seemed aloof from the discussion stood and asked Shinobu what he could do.  The old man said he could go with Gray to find the bamboo grove and cut two twenty five foot lengths of the two inch diameter variety, fifteen twenty five foot lengths of one inch or less diameter and a dozen fifteen foot lengths also in the lesser diameter.  Gray was relieved the old man had not requested more than two of the two inch in diameter because they were a chore to cut down with the machete.  The saw might work better.

Shinobu
led the women to a specific type of palm tree with low lying, fan like fronds and instructed them to pull down at least a hundred of them if they could find that many.  When Gray and Paolo left for the bamboo, Shinobu was leading Lex up the slope with the long shovel in hand.

Paolo was strong and did his share of the arduous task of chopping the bamboo. 
When he and Gray returned with blistered hands and the bamboo, the women were hauling a final load of palm fronds up the slope to a cleared area with heavy brush on the uphill side.  Between two saplings that were a little over twenty feet apart, Shinobu had instructed Lex to level the deep accumulation of decomposed plant material that made up the forest floor and then dig a trench like an open box shape about twenty feet wide at the back with the side trenches sloping down toward the front.

Shinobu
asked Lex and Paolo to wire a twenty five foot pole about six feet off the ground between the trunks of the two saplings.  Parallel to the front pole they wired another pole to three foot high forks that had been pounded into the earth within the back boundary of the trench.  They then began wiring or tying with cord, the fifteen foot long cross pieces between the front and rear poles.  Everybody pitched in with the wiring or knotting as there were a lot of twists and knots to make.  When that was done, the smaller diameter twenty five foot poles were attached about one foot apart at right angles to the cross pieces.

Wh
ile the sturdy grid of bamboo was being completed, Shinobu explained how to notch the stalk of each palm frond with one of the heavy knives, then slide the knife out toward the end of the stalk to produce a two foot long tie for fastening the frond to the cross pieces.  They started the first layer across the bottom then came up one foot or about two thirds the width of the fronds and tied in another layer.  Keegan had been able to keep a dose of ibuprofen down and was asking to help.

The sun was
not far above the horizon when a rumbling came from the east and the wind picked up. It became a scramble to haul the blankets and other items they wanted to keep dry to the shelter.  While the others were finishing the roof, Gray put together a stretcher using two of the blankets and the two ten foot poles.  He and Melanie eased Lleyton onto the stretcher and carried him up to the shelter where they eased him onto a blanket and covered him since it was getting cooler.  They did the same with Malik.

Grey and
Anna with help from Keegan gathered driftwood for a fire and set up a frame of forked sticks to suspend a pot for boiling tea water.  Shinobu directed Lex and Melanie to build a wall with some remaining material on the south side of the shelter as it seemed the wind was going to be coming from east by south east.

The wind dropped to a cool breeze and the first drops of rain began spattering the roof of the shelter as a crimson sun
touched the horizon.  Anna and Paolo grabbed the firewood they were going to use to make tea and hauled it into the shelter.

Shinobu’s knowledge had paid off in more ways than just completing a shelter
in time.  He had known to build it big enough to provide ample room for the ten people and everything they wanted to keep dry.  He said if they had the time they would ordinarily have built a floor and four walls.  He received much thanks and he beamed and laughed with joy despite his recent tragedy.

The rain came in torrents that rushed off the roof and into the trench and then around the outside of the shelter and down the slope. 
Shinobu had Lex adjust the trenches, saying they would have normally dug them after the roof was constructed. For the most part they stayed very dry except for the occasional gust of wind from a westerly direction that lifted some of the palm fronds and a quick spray of rain found its way into the shelter. They pulled blankets around themselves and munched on crackers, nuts and cheese and were thinking they would have a completely cold supper when the rain stopped about an hour after it had begun.  Desiring to track as little dirt as possible into their dry shelter, a volunteer was asked to start the fire and tend the pot.  Shinobu said he would volunteer because he wanted to go down to the water and clean the crab before it went bad.  He took off his shoes and stepped out.  Gray handed him firewood and kindling.  When the old man had a fire going good, Gray handed him the pot of water.  He also offered Shinobu the LED flashlight he had found at the hut but the old man said he did not need it for cleaning but might for removing the meat.

Wh
en the water was on to boil, the old man headed down the slope with his crab, an aluminum plate and a hand size rock he had selected.  Gray wondered how he could see.  The moon, though about three quarters full, was far down on the eastern horizon.

The air temperature rose
to a comfortable level after the rain passed.  Gray and Anna moved to the edge of the dry floor and watched the stars come out.  She could not remember when she had been out at night away from light pollution.   The great mass of stars making up the Milky Way took her breath.  It seemed like only ten or so minutes passed before the old man appeared out of the dark, also commenting on the splendor of the Milky Way.

The water was hot and they threw in a blend of tea bags they thought would go
well together.  After a few minutes they handed out their cups and he filled them.  When his chores were done, he sat down on the dry floor, meticulously wiped his feet on a wet towel and crawled to the back of the shelter where it was more difficult for the others to sit up.  He set out an empty pot in front of him to hold pieces of shell.

“
This is far more than I can eat so if you wish to eat raw crab, please help or this will go to waste.  Gray, I will need the light now, please.”

Gray believed
Shinobu was just being polite and could easily eat the whole crab.  However if he told the old man to eat all he wanted and the others could eat the remainder, the old man would eat very little in order to leave some for everyone.   Gray turned to Lex and Melanie in the dark and asked, “You guys want to try it?”

They both answered in the negative.
Keegan declined also, saying he was happy to have kept down some of the cold rice. Paolo made a face and a motion with his hand like he was waving it away.  Dayah said she preferred hers cooked.  Anna wanted to try just a bite.

Gray said,
“I would like to try a bite too, Shinobu.  Sorry, but you will have to eat the rest or it will go to waste.”

Shinobu bobbed his head.  “If you wish I will remove the meat from the shell.  It is more difficult than removing the meat from a boiled crab.”

Gray handed him a plate and said, “Thank you.  Please remove the meat if you will.”  He turned on the flashlight and asked him where he wanted the beam.

“It is
very bright, shine it straight up and we will see if that is adequate.”

It was adequate and the old man worked his finger
s through the already cracked shell and produced a few bits of translucent, whitish meat which he dropped on the plate.

Gray and
Anna tried bites.  The flavor was good but it was chewier than cooked crab and the texture slimy and much moister.  When Shinobu had finished the crab he made an appreciative, “Mmmmm,” that was much like a growl.

Melanie
asked for light from Gray and she gently re-bandaged Lleyton with the rags she had laundered at the pool.  When finished with Lleyton she carefully repositioned Malik in an effort to relieve pressure from lying in the same position for so long.

“
I’ve been noticing that you are an accomplished care giver, Melanie,” Gray said.

“Thank you. 
After a TV series I was in folded I went to nursing school.  Actually I started the school before it ended.  I saw the writing on the wall.”

“
You made a good call.”

“That’s a shitty thing to say
!”  She sounded both angry and hurt.

“What do you think I
’m referring too?”

“My acting!”

“No, no, Melanie.  Acting was not the problem on that show.  I could not believe the dialog they gave you guys.  No one could have made that dreck fly.  I was referring to your recognizing that at your age.”

She bobbed her head and smiled.  “Okay, sorry.
  The scripting was awful.”

“Don’t be sorry, I could have made it
more clear.  May I make a comment and ask a question along these same lines?”

She gave him a long suffering look but nodded.

“I saw you in two movies with good scripts and I thought you could have gotten an Oscar nomination.  But I’ve seen you in some clunkers.  Is that your agent’s doing?”

Melanie
smiled and squeezed his hand.  “Thanks.  It’s a combination of a studio contract and my agent.  But that is going to change when I get back.”

“Good, I look forward to the result.”

“You sound like you have some experience with scripts.  Have you done some acting?” Melanie asked.

“No, I
’m coming at it from the opposite direction.  An Australian firm is making a movie of an aviation novel I wrote.  When I read the script they paid a contractor to write, I nearly blew a gasket.  When I told them where the script was bogus, they listened, which surprised me.  And then they surprised me again by asking me to act as a technical director.  I should be in Cairns by next week or that may not happen.”

Both wished each other well in their coming efforts and hoped to see the other’s work when it came out.  Gray
squeezed her hand and went back to Anna.

Gray and Anna lay and watched the sky a short while and then
he rolled to face her and she spooned into him.  She took his hand and kissed it and then pressed it to her breast.  The blankets were warm and he hugged Anna in tight against him and closed his eyes.  The night was so quiet that the sound of the gentle surf drifted up to the shelter. 

“Gute Nacht meine Liebe,” she whispered.

It was a moment before he whispered a reply.  “We will have to talk about this, but gute Nacht meine Liebe.”

She made a tiny giggle and pressed his hand tighter to her bosom.

Chapter V    A Day of Hope

The sky was light but it would be a while before the sun reached the shelter.  Gray checked his phone for the time.  He had adjusted it by an hour but he could not be
sure they were not two time zones from Kuala Lumpur.  The phone said 5:45 a.m. and about 25 percent battery life left.  He quickly turned off the phone to preserve the battery because he had not found a compass at the hut and he also thought they might need the GPS function.  Anna was already up and gone somewhere.  He rose and stretched and found himself not quite as sore as he had expected.

There was a s
mall fire going for tea water that Keegan was tending.  He smiled and said, “A grand mornin’ ter yer, Mister Fitzgeral.”

“An
d ter yer, Mister Muckgrey, me fine mucker,” Gray said in return.  Mucker meant friend in the county dialect and it brought a big smile to the young man’s face.

Gray assumed everybody
else was out taking care of their toilet functions as the two rolls of toilet paper and the small shovel were missing.  He strolled north up the beach and urinated in the surf.  He also wanted to take another look at the possible cave and the peak itself.  Just as he had remembered, the upper most part of the peak at this end of the island was exposed rock while the one at the south end was covered with jungle.  He walked back to the shelter pleased.

When
the water was hot they had a breakfast of cheese, fruit, crackers, nuts, chunks of coconut and hot sugared tea; quite a good breakfast considering their situation.  The gift baskets would not last indefinitely though, and eventually the rice from the hut and the easily caught seafood would run out, but food was not their most pressing problem.  They needed rescue in order to get medical help for Lleyton and Malik.  Keegan seemed much better today so Gray unofficially promoted him to ambulatory rank

Gray had a semblance of a
plan but first there was an unpleasant task they had to perform.  Anna, Lex and Melanie had asked him about it but were apparently leaving it up to him to decide when.

“Does everybody agree we should bury the bodies this morning?” he asked.

Everyone agreed, gloomily.  Without much discussion, Lex got the shovels, a small camp shovel and a full size one and asked, “Where?”

Gray turned to Shinobu and asked, “Do you have any preference?”

His shoulders slumped and with head bowed he seemed to consider the question in earnest.  “Where it is easy to dig,” he said dead pan.

That brought some giggles and chuckles.  “Thank you, Shinobu,” Gray said.  “
I’m sure they will be exhumed anyway when we are rescued so I think up north in the sand as far up the beach as possible.”

Gray did not know whether Paolo still thought they would be rescued soo
n or not but the man joined them for the solemn task.

On the way to
the proposed grave site, they unceremoniously dragged Sani and one of the fight attendants behind them.  About a hundred yards up the beach they came to a place where the sand went farther inland.

“As far as I am concerned a common grave is fine,” Shinobu volunteered.

They all participated in digging although Lex, Keegan, Paolo and Gray did most of it.  At first the sand kept falling back into the hole but eventually they reached a sandy soil that dug easily and sped up the process.

Taking a break, Gray gazed across the water to the west.  There was no sign of the debris from the wreck nor was there a visible oil slick.
  The thought came to him that they had missed an opportunity to give searchers a sign of their presence.

Consensus was reached that the hole was adequate without anyone verbalizing it.  They
dropped the bodies in two deep, side by side.  Gray asked if anyone wanted to say anything but nobody spoke up.  Keegan made the Catholic sign of the cross and began shoveling in the sand and soil.  Lex gathered rocks and was about to lay out the pattern of a cross until Gray told him there were likely two Muslims, a Hindi and a Buddhist in the grave.  Lex rearranged the rocks into an X.

When everyone was back at the shelter, Gray said, “I think we missed an opportunity to give searchers a clue to our location.  I’m sorry I did not think of it.”

Some raised their eyes to him and Lex asked, “How?”

“Yesterday morning, after we were sure no one else was left alive out there, we should have tried to set the oil slick on fire.  The timing would have been right for searchers looking for a sign of a crash.”

“I thought you said they would be looking two or three hundred miles from here,” Melanie said.

“You remember correctly.  The search probably began in some radius of maybe fifty or a hundred miles around where the plane was last seen on radar.  But with all the eyes that were out there scanning the horizon, someone might have spotted a big column of smoke.”

Lex laughed.  “Gray, you are beating yourself up for nothing.  We did not have any way to make fire until we found the hut.
”

Gray felt a tinge of embarrassment even though Lex was not correct. 
He could have made fire using a bow and a stick and suspected Shinobu could have started a fire also.  “I love you Lex for taking the heat off me.  We might have been able to make fire, though.”

“Can’t we still set it afire?” Lex asked.

“The oil slick is gone.  Evidently the safety valves and fuel tank technology are preventing any further significant volume from leaking out.”

That brought some groans of disappointment.  Gray said, “The slick and the debris are still out there drifting west.  As the search radius widens there’s a chance it will be seen and the
ocean currents are known so they could extrapolate where it came from.”

“So, we
h just wait?” Keegan asked.

“
Not just wait.  There are some things we can do,” Gray replied. “Has anyone seen any contrails?”

The others
began looking up and then most said they had not been paying attention.  “You have not been missing them,” Gray said.  “I started looking yesterday but have not seen any directly overhead.  We are just not near any major air routes.  But if we are where I think we are we might be near a major shipping lane.  I found an old pair of binoculars yesterday and I’m thinking we can climb this peak here and maybe spot a ship.”

That brought some cheerful comments but Lex asked, “But how can we signal them?”

“You always ask the good questions, Lex.  There are at least three ways we might signal them.  Did anyone see a mirror at the hut yesterday?”

The other four that were
at the hut shook their heads.  “I did not see one either but we should look for one today.  Or even a sheet of shiny metal.”

“The airplane had
bathroom mirrors… but no way can we get to them,” Anna said.

“But
, we might find a piece of metal in the water around the wreck.  Worth a look,” Gray said.  “We can light a fire and make smoke, but smoke of the scale we can make is alone probably not going to get a ship’s captain to thinking someone needs rescue.  But smoke in three big puffs might.  Three shots is an international signal of distress.  I’m thinking three puffs of smoke are also.  Can anyone confirm that?”

Shinobu grinned and slapped his leg.  “Every boy scout knows that.”

The others laughed.  “Okay, good,” Gray said.  ‘If we add three huge booms to the three puffs of smoke that should make it doubly good.”

“Three booms?” Anna asked.

“The mines.  A Claymore makes a pretty big boom.”

“Awesome, dude!” Lex said, raising both fists.

“The bad thing about signaling a ship is that if we are where I think we are, we are also in a prime ship hijacking area.  It is possible that a ship’s captain may think the signal is an attempt to lure him closer to pirates.”

That brought a variety of comments including one from Melanie of, “You and your pirates!”

Paolo did not comment but just looked at her and pointed his index finger at his forehead.

Gray said,
“Melanie, I can’t help it if you never read international news.  But pirates are a factor in this part of the world.”  Shinobu, Paolo and Dayah nodded agreement.

An angry expression came to Melanie’s face as it reddened.  Gray could not decide whether he owed the young woman an apology or not
, nor could he think of a way to do it without sounding patronizing so he went on.  “What I hope will happen is a ship’s captain will see the signal and at least pass the information along, hopefully to some nation’s naval vessel.”  When he received a positive reaction from that, he pointed to the peak and said, “I’m going to climb up there and see if I can find a place where we could plant three mines and not blow up the guy on lookout.”

With some of the survivors l
aughing at his comment about blowing up the lookout, they started planning out the day and their tasks.  Shinobu again volunteered to stay with the injured.  Lex, Melanie, Keegan, Dayah and Anna would first look for something reflective in the water around the wreck and then go to the other side of the island and search there.  On the way back they would bring the remaining mines.  Gray told them to be sure to bring the detonation caps, wires and the triggers.  He pulled out the ones he had carried over yesterday and showed them what they looked like.  He also asked them, jokingly, if they would look for a solar charger for his phone.

Paolo still appeared aloof from participating in any attempt at signaling a ship.
  When the others left, Gray asked him if he wanted to go for a hike.  It looked like there was some reluctance but he agreed.

Taking some water and food, the binoculars, a knife and the revolver
in one of the cloth sacks, Gray headed south with Paolo following.  He then cut east into the jungle so they could come at the peak from the south, which appeared to be the least steep approach.  He took his bearings from the sun rather than use the battery of his phone.  It was not bad going while under the taller trees but when they got higher the trees grew less dense and allowed underbrush to grow.  When they could not simply push through the brush, they went around.  Their trousers were soon soaked from the rain that had collected in the joints and hollows of the plants.  The sun had come out brilliantly but a steady breeze from the southeast kept them cool.

When
they pushed through the last of the brush and trees they were above 99 percent of the island and had a panoramic view of it and the breathtakingly gorgeous multi-shaded blue of the sea surrounding it.  They climbed the last 100 feet to the top most rocks, turned to face southeast and sat down on the porous surface.  The abrasive, reddish brown rock was of volcanic origin and devoid of plant life.  The hut, the bay and the dock were visible but no one appeared to be there yet.  Gray looked down to his right where the shelter should lay and eventually found it among the trees back from the beach.  When he let his eyes move out to the beach it was a shock when he saw the ghostly looking pieces of the Emirates airliner in the clear water.  The sun was behind him and made the conditions ideal to see the wreck.  A wing and what had been the longer economy class section lay in position with the nose section to the south as he had expected.  He could not find the other wing or the tail section.  He guessed they were in the deeper water that started about two hundred yards out from the beach.

He said, “Paolo, you have to have sharp eyes, can you find the rest of the aircraft?”

Paolo smiled.  “No better than you could.  You do not need to patronize me.”

Gray chuckled.  “You are right.  I am guilty of that.”

“So you are trying to
connect
with me?”

“Yeah, yeah. 
I was looking for some way to get beyond the asshole.”

Paolo chuckled.  “I’ll make a deal with you.  You don’t try to connect with me and I’ll not let the morons down there know what I think of them.”

“Not one of them is a moron.  I could ask you if you are autistic. Your behavior points to the possibility but you seem fully aware of yourself and how others perceive you.”

Paolo stood and took in the panorama around the island.  “I do thank you for inviting me to come along.  The view is extraordinary.  Maybe we
can talk again.”  Without another word he climbed down the side of the peak and disappeared into the jungle.

Unable to fathom
what made the man tick, Gray just sighed.  He gazed back at the wreck and let his mind imagine the last minutes on its flight deck. Whoever had been at the controls of the plane for the last few minutes of its flight had saved some lives.  Gray’s guess was that the wounded pilot had gained enough strength to overpower the co-pilot, but believing he had little time to live brought the plane down while he was conscious rather than attempt to fly the plane to an airport.

Gray did a 360 degree scan of
the horizon without the binoculars and found an island to the east at the very limits of his vision.  There was a long smudge on the horizon to the north, nothing to the west and to the south lay another smudge.  He carefully adjusted the binoculars to his eyes and slowly swept the same 360 degrees.  The island to the east appeared larger but flatter than this one; the smudge to the north took on a blue gray color as though looking at distant mountains so he guessed it was a much bigger island but perhaps forty to fifty miles away.  To the west he found a speck that he had not seen with his naked eye but he could not tell anything about it.  He would come back to it.  To the south the smudge now appeared as a long line of cloud.