The Passage (49 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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“We done it six times so far, sir. Seems to work.”
“Okay, how about the standard equipage—anchor, grapnel, fire extinguisher, line—”
“Yes, sir. I sighted all that.”
“Any other problems?”
“The motor cut out a couple of times. It always started again, but Reska just swapped out the filters. He thinks that'll take care of it.”
Dan nodded. He couldn't think of anything else they might need. He moved forward into the rain but stopped at the gunwale just before he stepped into the boat, looking into it, the men waiting, the gear and supplies that covered the floorboards.
He hesitated there, struck by a suspicion he'd done this before. Then he realized he had. Only the chiefs name then had been Bloch, and the coxswain's, Popeye Rambaugh. The crew Rocky, Brute Boy, Ali X, Slick Lassard. A black night with the wind coming off the Pole. And beneath the swaying keel of
Reynolds Ryan's
whaleboat, a sea black as used motor oil, its surface dull and somehow viscid, gruel-like, as if it were kept from solidifying into black ice only by unending motion. And beyond it, a swell and another swell, and after that, utter dark and a thousand miles of dark till the coast of Norway.
Casworth must have thought he was scared, because he muttered, “It's like they say in the Coast Guard, sir. You got to go out. You don't got to come back.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. It was true. Looking down at the seas sweeping away from the ship, he really didn't want to go down there. Then he thought of the refugees, without motors, without sails, some without even boards to paddle with. While he had a stout boat with a good diesel, a good crew, and a ship within call if they got in a jam.
He made himself step over the coaming, grab the monkey line, and nod to the boatswain at the lowering gear. “Lower away,” he yelled.
S
WAYING out over the murky, storm-lashed green, the men on deck shouting and tending steadying lines as the whaleboat pendulumed, Dan thought with resigned dread that he'd never seen a boat launched in heavy seas without confusion, screaming, and near disaster. This time was no exception. As soon as they hoisted away,
Barrett
began a series of vicious rolls. The boat swung, slowly at first, but rapidly increasing its arc. The crew flinched and crouched as it came within inches of slamming into the hull.
He clung grimly to the rough knotted line as the winch drums turned, reeling them slowly downward. If anything let go, it would be all that would save him. The sea looked more terrifying the closer they got, foaming and seething. The frightening thing was that they were still in the lee. As the keel took the water, a wave charged in on the bow. It sucked the boat down, then thrust it up again. The heavy releasing hook clacked open suddenly, jerked free of McMannes's hand, and darted aft, straight for Dan's skull. He ducked as the crewman jerked it back by the safety lanyard. Beside them,
Barrett'
s sides heaved and sucked as the ship rolled. He blinked, unwilling to credit that he'd just caught a glimpse of the bilge keel.
“Cast off,
you stupid asshole!” Casworth screamed, bent to the throttle. The bow hook, face crimped in sudden fear, jerked the sea painter free. The boat plunged and he staggered, almost dived overboard as the line flew upward.
The motor roared, and the boat heaved, yawed, and toppled, brushing paint and fiberglass and a strip of trim off against
Barrett'
s side as the hulls kissed. Then, gradually, it drew away. The coxswain increased the rudder as they turned, glancing back to check the position of the stern. The wind and rain and spray hit them as they emerged from the shelter of the gray steel walls,
drawing a translucent curtain over the fading outline of the destroyer as it increased speed again, moving off, leaving them behind.
Crouched to keep his balance in the bucking, reeling boat, Dan aped his way toward the stern. He had to brace himself with both hands to keep from being slammed into the molded-in thwarts and seats. Casworth gripped the big chromed wheel like a wrestler locked with his opponent. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, gauging a whitecap as it took shape out of the gray. Suddenly he whipped the wheel hard left. The stern dug and the boat spun just in time to catch the sea dead aft. Dan clutched the gunwale as she rushed forward, rising, then swallowed his lunch again as she dropped out from under his feet. Didomenico, McMannes, Bacallao, and Reska huddled on the thwarts, looking like fat, wet ducks in the shiny green hooded ponchos pulled on over their life preservers.
When he looked back again, the ship was just a shadow in the storm. Then she was gone. Christ, he thought angrily. They couldn't even see the ship, let alone another small boat. He tried the radio and got a loud-and-clear. “How are you doing?” Chief Kennedy's voice asked him. “Over.”
“It's rough out here. Over.”
“If it gets too hairy, sir, let us know and we'll come over and pick you up. That's from Mr. Quintanilla.”
“Uh,
Barrett One
. That's good to know, Chief, but I think we can take this as long as it doesn't get any worse. Where you want us? Over.”
“Head out around two-two-zero magnetic. We got a couple of pips out there, we think. We don't have a real good radar picture in all this spray and seas, sir. Just try not to run into anybody. Over.”
“Roger,
Barrett One
, out. Casworth! Two-two-zero magnetic.”
“Two-two-zero, aye.”
They made their way through a heaving, roaring dimness like early dusk. A sea came over the gunwale and soaked them all in warm brine, floating the ration packs into a tilted shoal against the port side. The murky water sloshed over the floorboards, then disappeared, sucked down into the bilge pumps as the motor hammered steadily. Dan hunched his shoulders against the rain and spray, wishing he'd put on a poncho before he was soaked through.
 
 
THEY ran out along 220 till Kennedy advised them they were a mile or so out from the ship, right about where the captain wanted them.
On the way, he had time to think about what they were supposed
to be doing. He'd reported to the whaleboat without really thinking it through. Now he was having doubts. Too late, as usual, he thought. They were running downwind now, the easiest reach. It'd be a lot rougher trying to maintain position. If Casworth screwed up and broached, it would be touch-and-go if the whaleboat would stay upright. The water was warm, but he didn't relish the thought of going into it in these seas with only a kapok life preserver.
In the second place, he wasn't sure they were going to be able to find anybody, much less help them. The whaleboat didn't have radar, and in this rain and spray, they couldn't see more than a hundred yards. A whole flotilla could drift past, and they wouldn't have a clue.
Finally, he told Casworth to start sounding the horn. If anybody was out here, maybe they'd call out, and then they could find them by steering for the sound.
After an hour, though the seas stayed high, the squalls seemed to slack off. Gradually, the mist thinned. He could see the sky again, low, tarnished, swollen-looking clouds that raced by about two hundred yards above the crests, it looked like. Horizontally, he could see maybe half a mile, but the waste of gray-green sea was empty now. He wondered where the regatta had gone.
Around 1500, a craft appeared to the west, rolling hard in the swells. Casworth spotted it first and spun the wheel to make for it. Dan clung to the gunwale, trying to keep from barfing but realizing it was a battle he was going to lose.
It was about forty feet long, an old-fashioned wooden fisherman with a scabby white hull and faded pink upperworks and a juryrigged mast lashed upright on the foredeck with yellow plastic rope. It bucked wildly as the waves creamed by beneath it. A streamer of cloth fluttered at its head, almost like a burgee, but actually tatters of blown-out sail. As Casworth maneuvered them alongside, five men came out of the cabin, waving and gesturing them in. Dan told Casworth to hold off while Bacallao checked things out with the loud-hailer. After a spirited conversation, he reported that the boat was out of Neuvitas, that they'd been under way for a day and a half, that they knew approximately where they were, had a working compass and a chart, and knew how to dead reckon. They needed food, water, and fuel. “Gasoline or diesel?” Reska said, rubbing his hands.
They said
gasolina,
and got twenty gallons of it in jerricans and five ration-and-water packs. Dan made sure they knew about the reefs to the north and Cuban waters to the south. Finally, he waved and Casworth pulled away. “
Buena suerte
,” Bacallao called. “
Vaya con Dios.
”
“Those guys don't seem to be in such bad shape,” McMannes yelled as the old-fashioned vertical stack puffed smoke and the boat
turned its head slowly westward. “Yeah,” Dan yelled over the steady roar of the wind. “They look like they just might dock in Biscayne Bay.”
 
 
THE afternoon stretched on. The wind gusted and dropped, gradually hauling around, but the waves kept rolling in. Didomenico lost his balance and fell against the lashed-in drums, gashing his forehead, but insisted that they stay out. Dan gradually went through the seasickness and got his small-boat legs. They encountered and succored two more boats. One had ten refugees aboard, the other fifteen. He judged they could ride out the night, so he let them go on without taking anyone aboard. Watching them draw away, he wondered what had happend to the rafts. The answer that seemed most likely—that they'd broken apart—he didn't like to think about. He concentrated instead on keeping alert. Each time the whaleboat rose in the gradually waning light, his horizon expanded dramatically to a mile-wide circle of wild green sea. He remembered how cramped the straits had seemed from
Barrett'
s chartroom. Now they seemed immense.
“Whatcha think, sir?”
“It shouldn't get any rougher than this, BM One.”
“That's about what I think, sir. It's bad in those squalls, though.”
“You're doing a good job, Casworth.”
Watching the clouds scud overhead, he remembered that when you faced the wind in the northern hemisphere, the center of a rotating disturbance lay behind your right shoulder. He swiveled in the blowing rain and figured that the storm lay to the northeast. A stroke of luck it hadn't come through here. None of these people would be alive now.
“
Barrett One
,
Barrett,
” the walkie-talkie crackled, startling him. Good thing it was waterproof, since it was resting in an inch of water in the bottom of his pocket.
“
Barrett One
, over.”
“This is the
XO
, Dan. Captain wants the whaleboat back aboard. We hold you out at two-three-seven true, eighteen hundred yards. Over.”
“Roger, sir, we're heading back. Over.”
Vysotsky signed off, and Dan lurched upright, got a hand on Casworth's shoulder. He shouted into his ear, “Just got the word to recall. Make it about zero-five-seven. We'll call them after we figure we've gone a mile if we don't see 'em by then.”
As they turned into the seas, the ride got rougher—a lot rougher as their forward speed added to the impact of the wind and sea. The boat hammered its way up each comber like a bulldozer climbing
a hill, then toppled over, hitting with a crash that whipped the hull and threw curving sheets of clear water to either side. Dan's crotch chafed with salt water. His head felt light from the continuous motion. Yeah, it was getting dark. This was the right decision, getting them back aboard. As to the refugees … it would be a long, rough night.
He was thinking ahead to hot strong coffee, a hot meal, sleep when McMannes yelled, “Something ahead.”
He shielded his eyes. The spray lashed them and he gasped, then squinted again where the crewman pointed. A shape loomed mistily from a wave, then sank from sight.
“Head over there, sir?”
“Yeah,” he yelled back. “Didn't look very big, though. Might just be wreckage.”
Didomenico bent and plugged in the searchlight. McMannes crouched in the bow with the boat hook, grapnel and heaving line ready by his boots. Casworth flicked a switch and the running lights came on, startlingly bright. Dan realized only then how dark it had gotten. The boat climbed a long swell, dropped with a shudder that made the running lights flicker, then started climbing the next one. The stinging rain started again, whipping out of the gray murk like
.22 bullets. The shadow didn't show for a while, then it did, closer. Dan saw that it was smaller than the others they'd seen that afternoon, lower, too. In fact, when he glimpsed it again, it looked awash, barely afloat. He was leaning forward to shout this to Casworth when the coxswain leaned on the horn. It droned out over the heaving sea, ludicrously faint in the roar of the wind. Nothing moved.
“Abandoned,” McMannes yelled back. Casworth hesitated, then spun the wheel away.
At the same instant, Dan saw what he'd taken for debris along the gunwale stirring. A moment later, a head came up.
“No! There's somebody there.” When he looked back, there were two heads, hands waving weakly.
Casworth was spinning the wheel back, bringing the bow around. “I see 'em, sir. Stand by, Manny.”
“Bow hook?”
“Better go with the grapnel. Try not to hit any of 'em with it.”
The searchlight came on, and the engineman swept it along the boat as they made up on it.
Dan swallowed, staring down as the whaleboat rose dizzily and the other craft sank, as if they were on opposite ends of a seesaw. These people were in trouble. The boat was wallowing, barely a hand's breadth of freeboard amidships. It rolled slowly as the waves lifted it. No mast that he could see. There was no motor, nor
even oarlocks. Ragged dark outlines resolved into ravaged faces as the beam found them.
“We'll take these guys aboard,” he shouted to Casworth. The coxswain nodded tightly, squinting as he eyed the narrowing barrier of heaving darkening sea.
 
 
SHE hadn't heard the drone of the horn, hadn't heard anything, so deeply was she concentrating on the other waves, the ones passing through her body. They gathered somewhere below her chest, then squeezed downward with relentless and incredible force, a giant's fist pounding the floor of her pelvis. They were too powerful to fight. She could only wait, taking gasping breaths, and endure, praying in the intervals.
So when Gustavo shook her and Miguel, she didn't even open her eyes. She was concentrating on the next wave, which was gathering now, throwing its shadow ahead of it.
“A boat,” Gustavo said. “You see it, too. Is it coming toward us?”

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