Ghosting Home (Strong Winds Trilogy)

by Julia Jones

  Gold Dragon let off another of her rockets. He knew what they were. They were distress flares. This one was red and went up high, exactly as it should have done. Telling a lifeboat where to find them.

  “Engine, Sinbad. We’ll take him to port. DON’T bear away until I give the word. Full throttle then and let the sheets fly.”

  She shot an orange smoke, which landed in the water between the two vessels and began to fizzle.

  The gunboat didn’t slow. Nothing, it seemed, would stop the Pride of Macao lining up on her helpless target. Three women and a boy. Behaving crazy. Too terrified to think, maybe?

  “Okay,” Gold Dragon sounded as if she might be finding it difficult to breathe. “Full throttle and bear away. Hard-astarboard and let those sheets fly.”

  She’d grabbed a couple more flares from the barrel and was scuttling up the junk’s port deck, crouched low. Her hook hand was clutched to the centre of her chest and her pallor was alarming.

  Strong Winds spun like a war-horse. All three sails swung out, spilling their wind, as Donny engaged the engine and shoved the throttle forward as far as it would go.

  As soon as she was round, Skye began trimming the sheets again. The junk was sailing, sailing beautifully. She skimmed the length of the gunboat’s hull without a touch. You couldn’t have fitted a fender between the vessels without it rolling up again, squeezed by Strong Winds’ velocity.

  Donny forced himself to watch his steering. This was the biggest thing he’d ever done. He had to keep her steady.

  Then, as the junk’s cabin top slid past the enemy’s wheelhouse, he couldn’t resist a glance at Great Aunt Ellen. He saw her twisting another flare between her teeth to disengage the safety mechanism. He saw the Tiger running from the far side of his wheelhouse. He was fast. With a single supple movement, he threw.

  Gold Dragon banged the rocket’s base and fired. Then she was falling backwards onto the deck and the Tiger was doubled up and screaming.

  Donny couldn’t leave the helm. Mustn’t let the boats’ sterns touch. Not now. But June was there, up from the cabin and scrambling towards Gold Dragon.

  The ships had passed.

  Donny eased back the throttle and let the sails take charge. Strong Winds could look after herself now. He and Skye hurried to the side deck as the Pride of Macao careered wildly away. The Tiger was down, injured. Someone else was at her wheel and they weren’t coming back. They knew the distress flares would have been spotted and if they’d had a radio on they’d have heard June sending out the Mayday.

  Gold Dragon was unconscious. The pack-ice of her face had congealed to a single stark white sheet, glazed with a film of sweat. There was a knife embedded deep in the solid teak of the junk’s port bulwark. Not a sailor’s knife: a killer’s knife, sharp both sides.

  “Chrissakes!” said June. “I can’t feel a pulse. Help me move her to the cockpit then get back on that VHF. Tell them we need a defibrillator and immediate transport to the nearest hospital. You say ‘Pan-Pan Medico’. Very clearly. Three times.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Winch-Man

  Off the coast of Belgium, Monday 16 April 2007

  When a Mayday message has been broadcast, all vessels in the area are required to keep silence and a listening watch until they are sure that the message has been received by the rescue services. They should write down the distressed ship’s name and position and, if they hear no official response, they should retransmit the Mayday as if they were part of a relay system. The emergency may be so desperate that the distressed ship cannot continue to transmit for herself or her radio may be damaged and not functioning at full power.

  If other vessels are near enough to lend a hand, they are legally obliged to do so. A ship can sink very fast and not everyone has a fully equipped life-raft or can manage to launch it in time. At the very least, vessels within a few miles of the Mayday should alter course in that direction and stand by in case they are needed to pick up survivors. The law of the sea demands cooperation when lives are at risk.

  This applies to countries too. Nations may try to insist that their territories extend a certain number of miles beyond their coasts but the swirling salt-water is shared. People cannot breathe in it or stand its cold for very long, wherever they were born.

  Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the UK all co-operate with search and rescue operations in the Southern North Sea and the entrance to the Dover Straits. These are usually co-ordinated by one or other national coastguard service who may request help from a navy or an air force – as well as from voluntary organisations such as the British RNLI or the Dutch KNRM – or from anyone in the area at the time of need.

  So, when the Belgian duty coastguard received Strong Winds’ Pan-Pan medical distress call so soon after the Mayday, it seemed an almost everyday piece of good fortune that a helicopter from the Dutch Ministry of Public Works and Water Management should have been flying only minutes from the area. The casualty’s only chance of survival lay in immediate evacuation to hospital and there was the helicopter, already airborne and with paramedic equipment on board as standard.

  The duty coastguard sighed with relief. She didn’t care what it was doing there. She was just glad she wouldn’t have to call up one of her own machines all the way from their base at Koksijde on the French border.

  Strong Winds’ Mayday had given the coastguard a headache. Pirate attack, the caller had claimed! This wasn’t the coast of Somalia or the South China Sea. Smugglers, yes, and maybe terrorists – but not pirates. She was experiencing some difficulty persuading the Defence Ministry to take her seriously.

  The Oostende lifeboat had been launched as soon as the first red flare had been sighted and had radioed back from alongside the distressed vessel. The lifeboat crew reported an elderly lady undergoing cardiac resuscitation and a nasty looking knife in the ship’s side. They didn’t want to touch either of them. They’d ascertained that the person giving the cardiac massage was a qualified First Aider and there was no other damage to the vessel. From what they’d learned it was the alleged attacker rather than the victim who might require assistance.

  The duty coastguard located MV Pride of Macao on her radar screen. She had left the coast and was travelling north at speed. Her course was certainly erratic but she hadn’t asked for help and she wasn’t responding to her radio. The duty coastguard tried to make contact but soon gave up. If neither the police nor the navy could be bothered to give chase it wasn’t a job for the rescue service either. She’d concentrate on the obvious emergency.

  Three women and a boy on an antique junk. Sailing for Vlissingen.

  Pirates indeed! It had probably been a near miss in the fading light or some other close-quarters situation that had caused the first caller to over-react. If she had ten Euros for every time some yachtie shouted “Mayday” because of something stupid like running out of fuel ... well, she’d be going somewhere a good deal more exotic than Blankenberge for her summer holiday.

  The boy was her contact now. His first Pan-Pan transmission had been a bit panicky and she’d had to ask him to repeat. Then he had calmed down. She could hear an English-speaking member of the lifeboat crew joking with him, calling him “Capten” and “Mijn Heer”.

  He sounded quite a sensible boy. She advised him that the adults on board should report the alleged incident to the police when they reached their destination port and she instructed one of the lifeboat crew to take a photo of the alleged knife. The helicopter was almost in position.

  Then she ordered the lifeboat to stand off and return to station once they were satisfied that the medical rescue was completed. They had assured her that the area was already correctly marked by an orange smoke flare.

  Skye and Donny had helped June to lift Great Aunt Ellen off the narrow side deck and into the cockpit.

  “Is it okay to move her?”

  Nothing felt okay while Gold Dragon lay unconscious on her own ship. One moment she’d been fighting off the T
iger and now ... she wasn’t there.

  “Technically she’s damn near dead so I don’t see there’s much more harm to be done. I can’t work on her where she is so we haven’t any choice. Just get that Pan-Pan message sent.”

  Dead?

  Delta Echo Alpha Delta?

  Donny’s hands were shaking and there was some huge lump in his throat and his brain was jumbled. The first time he tried giving the Pan-Pan message it came out completely wrong.

  He’d sort of expected that the coastguard would be a man but she wasn’t. She was a woman who sounded a bit like a teacher at the end of the day, with a really dumb class and inspectors watching at the door.

  He took a deep breath, shoved his thumb on the press-to-transmit button and tried again. Then he spotted that the basic distress message had been typed out and stuck on the bulkhead in front of him. All he had to do was read it and include details of their position, which June had already noted in the log.

  Then he needed to explain about Great Aunt Ellen having no pulse.

  Not ... dead. But ... no pulse. I spell. November oscar. Papa Uniform Lima Sierra Echo.

  The teacher turned into a receptionist, putting him on hold. Then he had to tell a doctor. All the details: the unconsciousness, the pallor and the sweat.

  The no ... pulse.

  “Do you have First Aid personnel?”

  “No. Yes. She says we need a defibrillator.”

  He didn’t even have to spell it. The doctor’s English was amazing for the words that mattered.

  “Ja so,” said the doctor and handed him back to the receptionist again. She must have been listening all the time because she said she had a helicopter already on stand-by.

  She was brilliant really.

  Then he needed to work with the lifeboat crew. It got busy and, in some strange way, almost jolly.

  That was as long as he only looked at Skye or the rescue team.

  June was kneeling over Gold Dragon, her arms straight, pressing rhythmically down on the breastbone and then stooping to blow air in, mouth to mouth. Her mobile, sympathetic face was set in a frowning mask of concentration: five compressions – one breath – five compressions – one breath. She was giving it everything. So far she’d achieved nothing.

  Donny couldn’t look at the limp figure on the folded blanket. He’d seen Granny Edith dead: that was enough.

  All this while Strong Winds had been sailing herself, sheets perfectly adjusted, rising and dipping in the light evening swell as if she were on auto-pilot.

  One of the lifeboat crew had climbed on board and began giving Skye detailed instructions. Donny intervened and found himself turning the engine on, altering course, listening to the handheld VHF and signing to his mum to get the sails down and clear everything possible off the decks.

  “You must make ready quick now,” the lifeboat man explained. “When the helicopter is here it will be very noisy. And the downwards wind very strong. You must do exactly as they say.”

  Obviously. But what if it wasn’t in English? Steering Strong Winds and signing to Skye whilst holding the radio set was going to be hard enough: if the crackly voice from the set started speaking in Dutch he wouldn’t have a hope.

  “It’s okay. The Hollanders can speak English. Almost as in Belgium. You must not touch the line until it is plunged into the sea. Don’t worry, Capten, you do well.”

  So many jobs to be done. And Strong Winds to steer! She must stay completely steady, the man told him.

  Donny didn’t think he could cope. The lifeboat man was almost grotesquely jolly. But he was about to leave. He climbed nimbly back into his own vessel and saluted – or that’s what it looked like.

  “Goodbye, Mijn Heer, goodbye.”

  Maybe Donny’d dreamed that bit. It was in his favourite book. The one where John Walker crossed the North Sea in a storm, in the dark, in a much smaller boat, the Goblin, with no engine and no adults until the end. Cop on, Donny-man! If John can do that: you can do this.

  The helicopter was close by. The air was starting to shudder and the radio set to crackle.

  Donny almost dropped the set as he struggled to throttle back and hold his course and wave for Skye to come into the cockpit where she would be safer.

  Then he realised he was being stupid. He’d noticed the mistake John-in-the-book had made. John assumed that, because he was the eldest and a boy, he had to do everything. He hadn’t organised a watch system when they were crossing the North Sea. He’d gone on steering through the night until he’d fallen asleep at the helm. That was dangerous.

  Gold Dragon hadn’t organised a watch system either. Everyone else on Strong Winds had had some sleep, except her. She was too used to being on her own. They should have forced her to rest.

  When she was lying on the deck, before they moved her into the cockpit, June had lifted up her eyelids and the pupils were completely dilated. That meant the heart had stopped.

  The helicopter was almost directly above them now. Its downdraft was flattening the sea and its noise was unbelievable. He had to get this right.

  His mum could take the tiller. She’d do it better than him. Noise didn’t bother Skye at all and she would be rock steady as long as she knew what to do. Then he’d have his hands free for everything else.

  The lifeboat man had set their course. Wind 30 degrees on the port bow. Thank heavens it was calmer now. He hoped Skye wouldn’t be frightened when the winch-man came down.

  He glanced at June. Her frown had eased. Was there maybe a little colour around the edges of Gold Dragon’s face? Her eyes were still closed, her lips were blue and shrivelled and all the skin seemed to have fallen away from her cheeks so her nose jutted outwards like the peak of Darien.

  Donny wanted to smack himself around the head. Peak of Darien indeed!

  A weighted line was coming from the helicopter. He knew it had to touch the water well away from the junk in order to earth the static charge from those whirling rotor blades. A powerful searchlight beamed downwards. Strong Winds was an island of light in the darkening sea.

  He checked Skye. Would she panic?

  “Great wind bird,” she signed, mainly using her shoulders and elbows, without taking a hand from the tiller or her eyes from the illuminated compass.

  Go, Mum!

  He made a sign of power and listened to the VHF. He was being instructed to gather in the slack. No sooner had he hooked the hiline into the cockpit than the wire began pouring down and he saw the dark shape of a man sitting astride a folded stretcher.

  These people weren’t wasting any time. And they expected him to be pretty sharp.

  Donny realised, at the last moment, that if he didn’t leave go of the hi-line and shove the radio set in his pocket and grab hold of the stretcher as it swung in, it was going to get caught or bash someone.

  The noise was like a madman’s metal factory, clattering invisible hammers all round them, trying to bash the air flat. The helicopter downdraft was shoving the wind straight onto the decks as if it was wanted to shove Strong Winds under.

  She wasn’t going. Every single thing that wasn’t firmly secured was trying to fly off sideways but the boat herself was solid and buoyant.

  A moment later the winch-man landed. Donny had expected him to be wearing some sort of helmet but he wasn’t. The brilliant light showed that he had long black hair tied in a ponytail; his skin was copper-coloured and his broad strong cheekbones and a beaked nose were extraordinarily familiar.

  The winch-man took two quick steps towards Skye and put both his hands on her shoulders.

  “I have dreamed you all my life,” he said.

  Was that really what he’d said? If Donny wasn’t majorly good at lip-reading, he wouldn’t have believed it. It was so crazy.

  Skye, of course, said nothing. She stepped back, staring at him. Then she took one of her own brown hands from the tiller and laid it against his brown cheek. Their skins matched.

  But she needed to keep the boat stea
dy. Wind 30 degrees on the port bow.

  A crackle from the radio on the winch-man’s jacket coincided with a furious exclamation from June.

  The winch-man smiled at Donny – a totally untranslatable smile – then shifted the stretcher into position and knelt beside Gold Dragon. June had moved her into the recovery position and pulled a corner of the blanket over her.

  “I have to take you to hospital,” he said.

  There was no recognition in the Gold Dragon’s bleached face but her eyes had opened slightly and June was rubbing her outstretched hand. The winch-man grasped the blanket on both sides and began to slide it across onto the stretcher. June tucked the hand away and tried to help.

  Suddenly Gold Dragon began to struggle: her eyes flashed open, she fought to roll away.

  “She’s the Captain,” Donny cupped his hands either side of his mouth and shouted. “This is her ship. She doesn’t want to leave. She’d rather die.”

  “Ask her,” the winch-man shouted back, June heard him too, “if she owns the swallow flag or the campfire kettle? Tell her that I am the child of the Houdalinqua. She should trust me.”

  “He’s from the Houdalinqua!” Donny leaned forward and yelled. “He knows about the swallow flag!”

  Gold Dragon’s eyes blinked briefly in the fierce light. Then she gave another of those awful groans and clutched her hands to her chest. Terrible pain carved up her face.

  “What the hell are you trying to do?” June was incandescent. “Finish her off?”

  “We have a defibrillator in the helicopter. And oxygen. I want her to come with me. We will take her to the port hospital in Rotterdam. If she comes she may live. If she stays she will die. It is her choice.”

  Donny didn’t think that helicopter rescue men did choices.

  “The rest,” added the man, more quietly, “I don’t understand so much more than you do.”

  Donny stared at Skye. Who was this man? It couldn’t be ... Hermann?