Far From The Sea We Know (16 page)

The force in Ripler’s voice hit him like an
electric shock, and he didn’t glance back until he had reached the
boats. Penny was on her way to the bridge. Mary had taken Becka’s
place at the console, but was ignoring the instruments. Her hand
was on Ripler’s shoulder but, helpless in her own torment, she
could only gaze at him in silence. Ripler, still glaring at
Matthew, wore a mixture of anger and fear on his face as if branded
by a curse.

Becka and Emory were winching the first
Zodiac down over the stern.

“Dirk,” Becka ordered, “Stay on the port
side, we’ll follow starboard. Move!”

Matthew scrambled down the ladder ahead of
Dirk. The setup was almost exactly like a rig he had used before.
At least they didn’t have to worry about causing more injuries: the
Zodiac’s engine used a jet instead of a prop. He hesitated only a
second and started it.

Dirk hopped in and said, “Better if I take
that.” Matthew scurried to the bow and twisted around to give Dirk
the go-ahead sign. He felt the gears shift and they backed off.

“Put the damn life vest on!” Becka
yelled.

Matthew looked up to see her, one hand still
cupped to her mouth. Emory was lowering the other boat.

“Hang on!” Dirk yelled as he wheeled the
Zodiac around the stern of the
Valentina
. He zipped up his
life vest, threw another to Matthew, and gunned the engine as their
heading came around to the whales and the downed chopper.

They quickly increased speed, and Matthew
somehow managed to get his life vest on with one hand as he held
tightly with the other to a rope laced around the rubber gunwales.
They were bouncing over the wave crests, flying completely out of
the water at one point. He leaned as far forward as possible to
help them plane over the waves.

As they approached the whales, he looked
back and saw the other Zodiac heading from the inland side. The
chopper, a light duty model common to local TV news stations, was
still floating on its pontoons. One door hung askew, swinging
crazily back and forth just above the churning foam. The people
inside appeared unharmed, but Matthew’s gaze was drawn away to the
color of the water.

Ripler was right.

Blood swirled and frothed in the wake of the
raging whales like some sickening milkshake. Nearby, a young whale
languished with a gash in his flank almost a meter long. He was
still breathing, and two other whales had nudged up on either side
to support him. As they slowly moved away, it was hard to tell how
deep the gash was or how badly the calf was injured. A rotor from
the helicopter had completely broken off, and it must have hit the
calf before it stopped turning.

The other whales, still agitated, lunged
back and forth until one suddenly bumped up hard against the
helicopter tumbling the passengers inside about like so much loose
change.

Dirk cut the throttle as low as he could and
shouted, “We need to get them now!”

Another bump by a whale smashed one of the
pontoons and the helicopter lurched over so far that water rushed
in through the doorway. The cameraman managed to get his gear off
just before another bump caused him to fall half-out. The only
handhold he could get was the broken door. A woman, who had been
sitting next to him, grabbed on to his other arm.

The Zodiac was now only fifteen meters away.
Matthew leaned over the bow, preparing to grab them, but another
whale struck the helicopter, and the door fell off taking the
cameraman and the woman with it. Matthew reached for a flotation
cushion and managed to throw it directly in front of the man’s
spluttering face, and he grabbed it instinctively, clutching it to
his chest as if he wanted to make it part of his body forever.
Matthew tossed the only other one he could find to the woman, but
it landed short and the man, with the terror of the doomed in his
eyes, grabbed that one as well. The woman splashed over and was
smart enough to come up behind the panicked man and hold on to his
back.

“Heads up!” Dirk yelled. Another whale was
heading straight for them. Matthew braced himself, but at the last
instant, the whale plunged under them all. His relief was short
lived, however, as the whale came up under the helicopter, lifted
its flukes, gave an extra push and flipped the broken machine
upside down. Soon only the bottom of the pontoons remained
visible.

The two in the water were still floundering
but the pilot, who had remained in the helicopter, was nowhere in
sight.

“Closer!” Matthew shouted to Dirk, but two
whales crossed slowly in front of them, blocking their way. Becka,
in the other Zodiac, came around and toward the capsized
helicopter. She took off her life vest, threw it in the water and
plunged in after it, head first. Matthew hoped that from her angle
she had somehow seen the pilot.

Dirk moved the Zodiac closer, and Matthew
stretched out to the cameraman and the woman but still could not
quite reach them.

“A little more,” he yelled to Dirk, and then
to the woman, “Let go of him. I can’t pull you both in at once.”
The cameraman was obviously in complete shock. The woman gave
Matthew a look as if her life were over but let go and even gave
the cameraman a final push toward the Zodiac. Matthew caught the
man’s flailing hand and with difficulty dragged him into the boat,
where he curled up like a snail around the life cushions he still
held.

“Quick! She’s going down!” Dirk shouted.

Matthew was about to jump in the water to
grab the struggling woman when a large gray came up from nowhere
and lifted her completely clear of the water. The whale stayed on
the surface almost motionless. The woman looked like a baby as she
lifted herself up onto her arms, and the fear had disappeared from
her face. Matthew waved Dirk to go closer. He reached out and she
started to extend her arm toward him, but hesitated.

“Come on!” he urged.

She slowly extended her arm again and was
finally close enough to clasp his hand. With all his strength
Matthew heaved her into the boat with one pull. She did not even
touch the water, and barely hit the edge of the inflatable boat
before bouncing in a somersault to land next to the cameraman.

“Becka has the pilot!” Dirk said, pointing.
The other Zodiac was already heading back to the ship, a pair of
unfamiliar feet hanging over the side. Dirk eased their boat around
to follow. Matthew put his hand on the cameraman’s shoulder, but
this only caused him to hunch into an even tighter ball. There was
not much to be done for him until they got back. The woman rose
slowly on one elbow and looked his way as if she had no idea where
she was. Matthew pulled off his sweatshirt and handed it to
her.

“Here, put this over him, he’s in shock.
Take it.”

The woman absently took the sweatshirt, but
as she wrapped it around the quivering form of the cameraman, she
slowly came out of her daze. She leaned over and spoke into the
cameraman’s ear, her hand rubbing his back.

As they pulled up even with the other
Zodiac, Emory yelled, “We’ll go in first! Our guy’s not coming
around.”

Becka was giving the pilot mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation. He wasn’t moving and she looked exhausted. Dirk
approached the
Valentina
’s starboard side and maneuvered
around to where Penny and some of the crew were waiting for them on
the scaffold. They let the first Zodiac dock, and watched as Penny
stepped in and took over for Becka. After catching her breath,
Becka started rubbing the pilot’s hands. He suddenly gave a violent
kick and convulsed in a coughing fit. They quickly turned him on
his side and half-smiled in triumph as, retching and panting, he
spewed out the seawater that had almost claimed his life.

After the crew got him on the scaffold and
winched him up on a stretcher frame, Emory eased his Zodiac back
from the scaffold and Dirk brought theirs in.

As Matthew cleated the line, he felt a hand
on his shoulder.

“Thanks,” the newswoman said.

She was in her late twenties, with wavy red
hair, and blue eyes so dark they almost seemed purple. She suddenly
looked so oddly innocent that his anger at their stupidity for
harassing the whales began to dissolve.

“Sure, well, the shock will hit you later.
You’d better go up and get dry.”

“I should stay with him,” she said, looking
at the cameraman, but she seemed puzzled to be saying the words. He
was still curled up as tight as a fist.

Before Matthew could say anything else,
Chiffrey hopped into the Zodiac and knelt by the cameraman, now
rocking back and forth, mumbling and drooling. “I worked in a
psycho ward for six months. Yep, I figured if you can take that,
you can take anything. Best to get him into a dimly lit place with
some familiar people.” He said to the woman, “You know him
long?”

“No,” she said. “He’s new.”

Chiffrey shook his head. “Not any more.”

She took a breath. “His name’s Daryl.”

Chiffrey nodded, knelt down, and put a hand
on the cameraman’s shoulder. “Daryl, we’re going to move you now,
to a nice warm place.”

Chiffrey turned toward the newswoman. “You
can be the familiar face he needs, if you wouldn’t mind going with
him.” In a low voice he said to Matthew, “The stretcher’s coming
down. Need to do it clean and quick.”

Matthew got both hands under the cameraman
opposite Chiffrey, they counted to three under their breath and
lifted. Daryl was so rigid that they were able to get him onto the
stretcher with little trouble. From above, someone carefully
hoisted him to the deck with the power winch. The woman climbed the
ladder and disappeared after him.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” Matthew said.

He nodded and said, “Got a feeling that
action news coverage is not going to be Daryl’s true calling after
all. He’s done.”

Chiffrey stepped onto the ladder. Turning
around before he went up, he said, “You did fine out there.” He was
up and over before Matthew could respond.

Dirk had been speaking on a walkie-talkie.
He punched it off and said to Matthew, “The Captain wants us out
again to check on the injuries to the calf. I guess he liked our
teamwork. You ready?”

“Let’s go.”

They approached slower this time. The grays
no longer showed any interest in the helicopter, or at least what
little of it remained above the surface. In the center of the
group, the injured calf was moving, but slowly. Matthew looked for
the lead whale and could not see her anywhere, but there were
plenty of others.

“We’ll circle around first,” Dirk said.
“Wouldn’t usually be so concerned, but you saw the way they flipped
that chopper.”

They took a slow swing across the ocean side
again, until they were behind the whales. Matthew scanned back and
forth and still could not find the leader. As they approached, Dirk
cut the engine to the slowest idle. The other whales were still
near the injured juvenile but not as close as they were before. The
calf was breathing, the vapor coming out of his blowhole at regular
intervals, but not swimming. Matthew pulled open the snap closure
of his pocket, slipped out his sunglasses and put them on against
the glare on the water’s surface.

“She’s underneath the calf!”

The stricken juvenile was large, but dwarfed
by a dark mass barely moving and directly below him. Matthew was
certain the whale supporting the calf was the leader, partly
because of the size, but mostly because he could not find her
anywhere else.

Dirk shaded his eyes and peered over the
side to see. “She can’t stay down for long. Twenty minutes at the
most. Let’s wait. I’m going to try to get some shots of this.”

Dirk sat down again and was getting a small
camera ready when Thorssen’s voice came over the walkie-talkie.
Dirk said, “Could you take that? The green button.”

Matthew picked it up and clicked to send.
“Matthew here, Captain, over.”

“How’s the calf, over.”

“He’s on the surface and still breathing and
doesn’t seem to be bleeding much anymore. You’re not going to
believe this, but the leader is underneath keeping him up,
over.”

“How long’s she been down, over.”

Matthew looked at his watch. “We’re not
sure. This must have happened between our coming and going. At
least ten minutes, perhaps longer. I think we should stand by,
over.”

“Do that. Getting my dive kit ready, over
and out.”

Matthew put the walkie-talkie down and
glanced at Dirk. “You get all that?”

“Yeah, but diving right now? They used to
call these ‘Devil Fish,’ you know.”

“When whalers were harpooning calves to draw
the mothers in for slaughter.”

“Which for them might as well be what just
happened,” Dirk said. “I doubt if they will make allowances because
it was a helicopter blade instead of a harpoon.”

“You may be right, but look at them
now.”

All around him the grays swam in a vague
circle, like goldfish in a bowl. There was nothing to suggest the
violent turmoil of only minutes before, yet the huge form of the
lead whale underneath the injured juvenile put a lie to any idea
that all was back to normal. Only the languid swaying of its flukes
showed that it was alive.

Matthew spotted a diving mask amongst the
gear and pulled it out. He spit on the inside glass, swished it
around with some seawater, and slipped it over his head.

“Can you move in a little closer?”

Dirk cut the engine, grabbed two oars and
slipped them into their locks, then slowly rowed forward.

Matthew leaned out over the bow and plunged
his head into the water. The sudden cold was paralyzing—no wonder
the helicopter crew had been in such bad shape. The large gray
floated silently underneath the wounded calf, her body dappled by
bouncing rays of sunlight like a sunken hull. He came back up to
breathe. The other Zodiac approached with Thorssen half-kneeling in
the bow, holding onto an upright oar. With his yellow diving suit
and salty hair, he looked like Poseidon about to intercede in some
mortal drama.