Sail (11 page)
LIEUTENANT ANDREW TATEM stood on the edge of the giant indoor simulation pool at the U.S. Coast Guard base in Miami. With a slow, emotionless stare he surveyed the six rescue swimmers in training as they treaded water in their wetsuits.
They were a young, strong, and pretty bright bunch of kids who were also green as a plate of snow peas.
That would soon change, though. It was Tatem’s job to make it change.
These days, at least.
Two years ago he had been one of the guard’s best rescue men. He still would be if he hadn’t shattered his right leg during a mission off the Grenadan coast. Thanks to a dozen metal screws, the leg had healed. He could walk fine, in fact. Running, however, was a different story. And as for jumping out of helicopters in the middle of the ocean, those days were definitely over for him.
Now he was spending half his days behind a desk; the other half he was trying to clone himself at the Guard’s rescue-swimmer training school. He wasn’t bitter. He just really, really missed the action.
“Anytime you’re ready, sir!” joked one of the trainees in the pool. He and the rest of the group had been treading water for over twenty minutes.
Tatem checked his watch: twenty-three minutes, to be exact.
They were good and tired, which was exactly the point of this grueling exercise.
Because now they were good and ready as well.
“Let ’er rip!” he called to the control booth.
His top lieutenant, Stan Millcrest, gave a thumbs-up to Tatem. Then, with a flip of a switch, he turned on the world’s largest ceiling fan. The twenty-foot blades began circling above the pool. Within seconds they had reached their top speed, 3,000 rpm. Or, as Tatem affectionately called it, “Apocalypse Now.”
“I love the smell of chlorine in the morning!” he yelled to the trainees. “Don’t you all agree?”
The purpose of the exercise was to simulate the gale-force winds of a storm out at sea so the trainees would know what to expect once they were in the water trying to save lives. Safe to say, this exercise was no day at the beach.
Tatem looked on as the young men and two women struggled to stay afloat, their arms and legs shifting from tiredness to utter exhaustion. At the first sign that any trainee couldn’t hack it he would signal to Millcrest to cut the rotor engine on the blades, and the trainee might be excused from the program.
Tatem glanced at his watch again. “Two more minutes!” he yelled.
While keeping a close eye on the fake storm in the pool, he couldn’t help thinking about the real storm that had raged during the night a few hundred miles offshore. All in all, the base’s search-and-rescue teams (SARs) had been fortunate—which was to say that almost every vessel in the area had been lucky enough to steer clear of the storm’s hull-battering grip.
The one exception was a sailboat called
The Family Dunne.
That one was still missing.
But there was every reason to be somewhat optimistic. The boat’s EPIRB had signaled its coordinates, and his very best SAR team was already on its way. In fact, Tatem was scheduled to get an update from the team at the top of the hour. By then they should just be arriving on the scene. They would know what had happened.
Suddenly the rotor engine stopped.
Shit!
Had his lieutenant seen something he hadn’t? Had one of the trainees gone under?
Tatem did a quick head count. No, they were all there. And according to his watch there were still thirty-five seconds left in the exercise.
What gives?
He looked up at Millcrest in the control booth for an answer. Only he wasn’t there. Instead he was walking straight toward Tatem on the pool deck with a look on his face that Tatem had seen before.
Something was wrong in paradise.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, it just disappeared?” asked Tatem. “I’m not following you.”
He and Stan Millcrest had stepped into the pool’s locker room after telling the class to take five. The trainees were more than happy to oblige.
“All I know is that the radio room just buzzed me to say they lost the EPIRB on the Dunne boat,” said Millcrest. “One minute it was loud and clear, the next it was gone.”
“Are they sure?”
“Positive.”
“It’s not equipment failure on our part? Wouldn’t be the first time. One of our dishes malfunctioning?”
“That’s the first thing I asked,” said Millcrest. “They told me they checked everything on our end twice. No glitches, no anything.”
Tatem lit up a Camel. Smoking and poker were his only vices, and he usually didn’t do one without the other. The only exception was when things went wrong at work. Like right now.
“I’m thinking it’s one of two scenarios,” continued Millcrest, displaying the trait that Tatem liked about him: he wasn’t afraid to give his opinion to his commanding officer. “Either the battery went dead on the
Dunne
’s EPIRB, or they turned it off for some reason.”
Tatem took a long drag and let it out slowly as he thought. Both scenarios were plausible—more than plausible, in truth.
But were they probable?
That was the thing. In all his years with the Coast Guard, he’d never encountered an EPIRB that had stopped working once it had been activated. Of course, there was always a first time for everything.
“Either way,” said Tatem, “it’s not as if the initial coordinates changed. We’ll just have to expand the search area a bit to allow for the prevailing currents.”
“That shouldn’t be much,” said Millcrest. “The storm’s past now. It’s pretty calm.”
“Exactly. But do me a favor, will you? Get on the radio with the SAR team and tell them to kick it into high gear. Call it a hunch, but the faster they can get to that boat, the better.”
Millcrest nodded before spinning on his heels. “I’ll keep you posted,” he said, walking away.
Tatem hung in the locker room for another minute, guiltily finishing his smoke. For some odd reason the voice of Peter Carlyle, the lawyer from New York who had called earlier that morning, was still lodged in his head. Something about the call was troubling him.
Over the past ten years Tatem had dealt with countless people who were anxiously waiting to hear something—
anything
—about their loved ones stranded out at sea. On the surface, Carlyle seemed no different. He was impatient, somewhat emotional, and most definitely concerned. So what was the problem?
Again, Tatem wasn’t sure.
Maybe he just didn’t trust lawyers.
“I’M FR-FR-FREEZING,” says Ernie, his teeth chattering behind puffy purplish-blue lips.
We’re all freezing. We’ve been waiting like this for hours, our life jackets truly saving our lives this time. There’s no more dog paddle in any of us. We’re on empty, physically exhausted.
Emotionally, too. A creeping horrible feeling is beginning to take hold of me. Then Carrie puts it into words that none of us want to hear.
“They’re not coming for us, are they?”
“Of course they are,” I assure everybody. There’s obviously been a delay. “The Coast Guard probably had lots of boats to rescue because of the storm. We just have to wait our turn.”
I only half believe that myself. But to say anything less hopeful to the kids would only scare them, especially Ernie.
“Come here,” I say, pulling him tight against my chest. This is a good idea for all of us, to form a tight circle holding each other and Jake, trying to prevent hypothermia. That’s what we’ll do next.
“How’s your leg?” Ernie whispers in my ear.
“Fine,” I whisper back. “No problem, bud.”
I know it’s not, though. I’m just not up to dealing with it right now. It’s numb as rubber and I’m trying not to think about it.
Classic case of denial,
says the doctor in me. Now I know what so many of my patients must be thinking when I bust their humps about taking better care of their hearts.
Can it, Doc!
Amen.
Besides, I’m far more concerned about Jake.
Although his breathing is holding steady, he’s barely conscious. Worse, his burns need to be dressed—I’m afraid he’s losing too much blood. And plasma. And he is dehydrating fast, too. If that happens, Jake will go into shock and we’ll lose him. Ironically, being submersed in the cold water helps with the plasma.
One way or another we’ve got to get out of this water, though. Even in the heat of the afternoon sun the temperature’s too low. Come sunset, I’m afraid it won’t matter how tightly we’re hugging each other—we’ll suffer hypothermia.
“Maybe we can string together a makeshift raft,” says Ernie, looking around us. There are still bits and pieces of the boat floating within sight. Not for long, though, given the wind and strong currents.
“Maybe,” I say.
Mark chimes in, his voice so raspy I can barely hear him. He echoes me. “Maybe.”
Wait a minute! That wasn’t Mark talking!
All at once we turn to Jake, whose head is barely clearing the surface of the water.
“He’s awake!” says Carrie.
She’s right—and he didn’t say
maybe.
It sounded more like
Mary.
“Jake, it’s me, Katherine,” I say. “Can you hear me? Jake?”
His lips tremble, struggling to form words. All he can manage is the same one.
“Mary,” he says again.
“No, Jake, it’s me . . . Katherine.”
His eyes are closed, his face lifeless. Still, the lips are moving. He struggles with a second word.
“Hail,” he mumbles. “Hail . . . Mary.”
It suddenly clicks and I turn to Mark. “The Hail Mary box!” I say.
It’s got things we need. The answers to at least some of our prayers.
So long as it survived the blast.
“What color is it?” asks Carrie.
“Red,” I answer.
“Oh, I think I remember seeing it on the boat,” says Ernie.
Mark and Carrie immediately decide to go looking for it. They break away in opposite directions, agreeing to swim clockwise.
Mark spins his finger. “We’ll cover the area in circles, okay?”
“Got it,” says Carrie.
“Stay close to each other. Please,” I call to them.
Meanwhile, I try to keep Jake talking. Maybe there’s something I can do to ease the pain. It’s no use. His lips fall still again.
“It’s okay,” I tell him.
He’s barely conscious, and yet all he needed to help us was two words.
Hail Mary.
He’s still our captain.
TEN OR SO MINUTES LATER, Carrie’s voice cuts through the air. Her jubilation is tempered by sheer exhaustion.
“I found it!” she yells.
I can hardly believe it. Hell, I can hardly see Carrie. She’s got to be over two hundred yards away, and she looks like a black dot out there.
“I found it!” she yells again. “The Hail Mary box!”
Hallelujah! It’s a miracle!
I call out to Mark, who’s about as far away from us as Carrie, only in the opposite direction. He’s still searching for the box.
“Come back,” I say. “Carrie found it!”
He hears me and begins swimming back, taking his time. Who can blame him? I’m amazed he and his sister can swim even a single stroke at this point. They’re both in better physical shape than I’d have thought.
“Do you think there’s any food in that box?” asks Ernie. “Because I’m starving.”
I think back to when I was searching through it for that mask and snorkel Jake needed. I can’t remember seeing anything edible.
“Let’s hope so,” I tell him. “We’ll be okay, Ernie.”
We watch as Carrie slowly gets closer.
Very
slowly. She’s dragging the box as best she can, and it can’t be easy. As she gets closer, I can see the fatigue etched all over her face. The poor girl, she’s absolutely pooped!
“Carrie, take a break,” I yell.
Of course she doesn’t.
I turn to Ernie, kidding. “Typical Carrie. I say one thing, she does the other.”
Only Ernie’s not listening to me either. He’s not even looking in my direction. I can’t see what he’s staring at, but my ears immediately tell me there’s a problem.
When he was a toddler he used to make this strange clicking noise from the side of his mouth whenever he was scared, only it wasn’t loud. The only way anyone else could hear it was if they were really close to him.
As I am now.
“What is it, Ernie? What do you see?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he answers. “It’s something, though.”
He points and I squint. I still can’t see it. If Mark is at three o’clock and Carrie at nine, whatever it is—or isn’t—is directly at six.
“Ernie, I don’t —”
My mouth suddenly freezes. I
do
see it now. “
Omigod.
Is that what I think it is?”
Ernie’s clicking faster and louder than he ever has.
“Yes,” he says. “Carrie, look out!
Carrie! CARRIE!
”
IT’S NOT THE COAST GUARD here to rescue us, that’s for sure.
It’s a shape, a triangle. Two feet high, darkish gray, and slicing through the water.
One terrible word is on my tongue.
Shark!
“It’s coming right for us,” says Ernie. “What do we do?”
Every muscle in my body, every bone—broken or otherwise—is screaming panic. Panic like there’s no tomorrow!
But I don’t allow this to happen. I have my operating room calm on now.
“Mom,” repeats Ernie.
“What do we do?”
“It’s what we don’t do,” I say. “We don’t move. Maybe it won’t find us.”
“I think it already has. I’m pretty sure. Look.”
I glance at Ernie, who’s staring down at the water. It’s red. Between the blood from my leg and Jake’s seeping burns, we’ve all but set the table for this creature.
Great.
We both look out again at the fin coming toward us. Actually, make that two fins! There’s a smaller one directly behind it, about fifteen feet back. Immediately I think it’s a second shark, maybe a baby. But then I realize something worse, even more terrifying. That’s no baby—
that’s the tail fin of the same shark.
This mother’s a monster!
“Mark? Carrie?” I call out.
Mark answers first, and there’s no need for me to bring him up to speed. He sees exactly what we see. “Holy shit!” he yells. “I’m coming back!”
“NO!” I yell back. “Stay right there!”
“But —”
“No buts! You don’t move, do you hear me? You stay where you are.”
If we’re about to be shark lunch, Mark doesn’t need to be the dessert.
“That goes for you too,” I yell to Carrie.
She’s close enough that I can see the fear in her eyes as she stares at the fin. I’m sure her eyes look like mine right now. Small, dark pinpoints.
I grab Ernie by his life jacket and pull him so close we’re practically touching noses. My broken leg is pulsing with pain, but I don’t care. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I say. “You’re going to take Uncle Jake and get behind me.”
I have to stop talking for a second. Tears are pouring down Ernie’s chubby little cheeks.
“Mom . . .” is all he can say.
“Mom . . .”
“Shhhh, it’s going to be okay,” I whisper. “You have to listen to me now—this is important.” I take a breath, and then I go on. “If that shark attacks me, you don’t try to help. Do you understand?”
I know he doesn’t. How could a child comprehend that? He stares at me blankly.
“Listen to me, Ernie.
You don’t try to help.
You swim away to your brother as fast as you can. All right?”
“What about Uncle Jake?” he asks, his voice a shiver.
I was afraid of that question.
“You leave him here with me,” I answer. “You just focus on swimming away as fast as you can. Now tell me you understand.”
He doesn’t want to answer.
“TELL ME!” I finally have to yell. I can’t help it, I love him too much. I can’t let him die with me—no way.
He finally nods and I help him grab Jake so they both can get behind me. Ernie’s too scared even to cry anymore. He falls silent. We all do. All I can hear is the slap of the water around us.
Slish-slosh, ripple-ripple.
Slish-slosh, ripple-ripple.
I stare at the large fin slicing toward me and I take the deepest breath of my life.
I’m hoping against hope it won’t be my last.
