by Chris Riley
Loni ignored me, pushing Danny on the back. “Lead the way, Danny-boy,” he said. “Head for the stairs.”
“Are the engines dead?” I continued. “Can you hear anything, Loni? Can you hear them down below?” During calm seas, not only could you hear the engines running, you could actually feel their vibrations with your feet. But this sudden storm was so rough and so loud that I could barely hear my own shouting voice.
“Let’s just get upstairs,” Loni replied. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
The three of us shuffled down the hall until we met the stairs leading up to the wheelhouse. Then we noticed water trailing down those steps from above.
“Holy shit!” I cried. Loni froze, staring, his body against the wall, while Danny stood next to me, his mouth open. It seemed the three of us were in shock.
Bracing a hand against the wall, I thought I heard a sudden, deep moaning sound and looked up. My heart sank. Was the captain injured? Was he dying, or even dead? I felt nauseous, realizing just how dependent we were on our captain.
“Get us up there, Danny!” This time, Loni’s voice screamed with urgency. We were almost at the top, but it seemed as if our own boat was fighting against us. It was painfully difficult climbing those stairs, our bodies smashing into the walls three, four times. Blood rushed down my face, distorting my vision, which revealed little more than a dark hallway, sporadically splashed in white from Loni’s searchlight.
But we finally made it. We made it to the top, Danny leading the way. He pushed open that door, and then the three of us stood, awestruck, as we witnessed the aftermath of a rogue wave crashing through the wheelhouse.
Chapter 20
The wheelhouse was absolute chaos.
“Captain!” Loni shouted.
The three of us, we were completely baffled.
“Hurry! Help him up!” cried Loni.
We were in total shock as we stepped into the center of a raging hollow—a dimly lit wheelhouse that mimicked the maw of a screaming leviathan, with shattered windows for teeth, a blackened night for its gullet, and the howling winds for its breath.
“Help him up, guys!” Loni screamed, running to the captain. “Help him up!”
Driven by the wind, the rain stung my eyes and face like angry hornets. I held my hands across my face for protection and followed Loni’s lead, staggering toward the captain, who lay face down behind his chair. Standing behind me, Danny grabbed my arm, holding me steady. Loni and I reached down for the captain. It was a tight squeeze, the three of us behind the captain’s chair, but we managed to roll Fred over.
“Pull him over here,” said Loni. Dragging Fred’s limp body to the center of the wheelhouse, Loni suddenly shoved the searchlight into Danny’s hands. “Hurry, Danny. Get the first-aid kit over there,” he said, pointing to a wooden cabinet on the opposite end of the wheelhouse.
The flashlight in Danny’s hand illuminated our surroundings with a vague, opaque light in the swelling darkness of the night. Even so, I could see enough to get a quick impression of the situation.
“It was a fucking wave,” I shouted, stating the obvious as I helped Loni check the captain for injuries. “A wave came through the windows—looks like it fried the electronics. Everything’s wet and dead!” I looked back down at Fred, who gave a weak groan.
“Well, he’s not dead,” replied Loni. He felt behind the captain’s neck, then shook his chest. “Captain! Can you hear me?”
More moaning from Fred, as Danny arrived, holding the first-aid kit. “Good job, Danny-boy,” said Loni. He looked up, glanced at Danny, then said, “Think you can find the others, Danny? Can you go find Dave and Salazar?”
I shuddered at the thought of Danny heading back down into the ship. For whatever reason, and however ridiculous it seems in retrospect, I felt somewhat “safe” in the wheelhouse. The prospect of heading back down into the darkness, perhaps even out on deck, set off an acute pulse of terror in my head.
“I can do it,” Danny replied. “I’ll go and find them.” Then he handed the searchlight to Loni, who just laughed in return and shook his head.
“You take it, Danny-boy. You gonna need it down there.”
Danny turned and stared at me. His face was flushed pink with fear and excitement as he asked, “Are you gonna come with me, Ed?”
I paused, thinking about the situation. I didn’t have an answer. Between my own terrors, the captain’s moaning body, the clamor from the storm and the waves ….
But then …. I choked on a breath of air as the Angie Piper started to fall once again.
“Oh shit!” Loni screamed. The boat swooped down another slide of water. “Everyone, hold on!” Loni sprawled his body over the captain’s, Danny dropped to the floor and I just stood, like an idiot, looking out the broken window.
“Get the fuck down, Ed!” Loni reached up, tugging on my pant legs. “We gonna roll again!”
I couldn’t see a damn thing. I looked into the raging sea, searching for that menacing wall of water, and saw nothing but darkness. Our boat rushed to the bottom of the trough, and I heard her hull creak as she came to an abrupt halt. Then came the momentum of her descent, the mounting pressure. It hit me square in the back of the knees like a baseball bat. I collapsed onto Loni, floundering with my hands to hold on to something, anything.
A brief pause in the movement of the sea preceded a silence so distinct, so gripping, I shut my eyes tight in anticipation. “We’re gonna die!” I hollered. “We’re gonna fucking die!” Then we waited—a few of the longest seconds in our lives. We waited for that wall of water to roll us, smash us, and send us straight to oblivion.
Our surprise came in a rush as the Angie Piper broke free from the hole and began a rapid climb up the invisible wave.
“Ahaaa!” Loni laughed, triumphantly. “We still holding together, boys! We gonna make it, you watch and see.” He lifted his head, and then pointed at Danny. “Go find them, Danny! Go find Dave and Salazar, and get them up here. Ed’s gotta stay with me.”
“Hooyah!” Danny replied, lurching toward the stairs. He gave me a brief glance, as if asking permission to leave, and then headed down into the ship. Fear sped through me at that moment, and I cringed, feeling that I would never see my friend again.
“Go get ’em, Danny!” I shouted. “Go find our crew! You can do it! You’re a Navy SEAL, dammit!”
Danny disappeared, and that’s when I realized just how cold it was. Everything inside the wheelhouse was soaking wet. Disheartened and miserable, I tried to still my body’s violent shivering. Nothing seemed as it should be. The floor was a sopping pad of salt water, inches deep, with rivers of foam floating over the ruined carpet. My chilled hands ached from the cold, and I had completely forgotten about the gash in my head as I surveyed my surroundings once again. Nobody was steering the fucking boat!
I cried out my sudden realization. “Loni! I gotta steer this thing!”
“The captain’s coming around,” he replied, ignoring my statement. “We gonna get out of this yet.”
I stood and lunged for the wheel, my hand stretching toward the jog stick, hesitating. I could see that the engines were left half-open, assuming that they were running at all. But I couldn’t see a damn thing out the window. The night was a snapshot of the abyss, and it was anyone’s guess as to how fast I should push the Angie Piper into the oncoming waves. Shit, it was anyone’s guess as to where those waves were even at. I had to rely solely on the sway of the ship to determine our position against the sea.
“Just keep her steady, Ed!” Loni shouted. “Keep her steady. Captain’s gonna wake soon, I know it!”
Holding the wheel firmly, I strained my eyes, looking into the darkness. If only I had some kind of light, any light. I guessed at our position. I tried to keep the Angie Piper quartering the waves so we wouldn’t get killed running sideways in the trough. But this was a powerful storm, mean and ferocious, bringing water from all directions. And I couldn’t see a damn thing.
“Come on, Fred!” Loni’s voice carried the same terror flushing through my veins as he tried desperately to wake the captain. He found a small flashlight in the first-aid kit and turned it on. “We gotta get you up, man. You gotta run this boat.” He lifted Fred against the wall, lightly smacking at his cheeks, to no avail. Loni then opened the first aid-kit and dug out a package of ammonia inhalants—smelling salts. I could see both men out of the corner of my eye, and I watched with an anxious mind as Loni cracked open a tube and waved it under the captain’s nose. My knuckles had long since faded white over the wheel, but now, the anticipation had me queasy with dread. I felt sick to my stomach, about to hurl, as I waited for a response from the captain, something that would indicate he’d pull through.
“What the hell happened?” Fred suddenly muttered.
“The captain … he’s awake!” shouted Loni.
I smiled with joy, yet was perplexed by my reaction, considering our current predicament. We were but a few men battling for our lives against the blows of Mother Nature, and there I stood, elated at the sound of Fred’s voice.
“Oh Lord,” Fred said, rising from the floor. Loni’s hands were under the captain’s armpits, helping him up, and I saw the captain stare at me, then past me, then all around. His eyes were stricken white, gaping at our surroundings, bulging with grave recollection. Then he blinked, and his face flushed with color as he lunged forward, pushing me away from the wheel.
“How long have I been out?” he asked, his hands dancing over controls, flipping switches. He did a double take at my forehead, and then said, “Christ, Ed! Loni …! Get a rag on this man. He’s bleeding everywhere.”
Fred’s words were like a fist punching through a thin sheet of ice. The cold terror that ran through my veins, causing my hands and legs to shake, was quickly being displaced with a gush of warm adrenaline. Our captain was alive. He was alive, barking orders, and because of this, we were going to survive.
Loni grabbed me by the arm, and we both staggered to the floor a few feet away. He squinted against the darkness and then tilted the small flashlight over my gashed forehead, checking my wound.
“Here!” the captain shouted, tossing a bright, SureFire flashlight over to Loni.
Of course, I remembered. In the maddening chaos that had brought us to this moment, I completely forgot about the captain’s flashlight he kept in the compartment near the wheel. Or the .38 Special he kept clamped under his chair. Or the flare gun on the wall behind us, the fire extinguisher near the door, the extra survival suits in the bench next to me, and then just outside, below, mounted on the fo’c’sle … the inflatable life raft. Would we need it soon? I choked on the thought, and then pushed it out of my head.
“Where are the others?” the captain asked.
“Danny-boy went looking for them,” Loni replied, dressing my wound with antiseptic wash and several gauze pads. “Just left a few minutes ago.”
The captain cringed, and then said, “Well, we need Dave up here as soon as possible. I also need a status report from below. The last thing I remember was that fucking wave hitting us. Could’ve cracked a weld or something—God forbid.”
Bilge alarms would help let us know if the Angie Piper was taking on water. But in our current situation, nothing could be counted on. We had taken a massive rogue wave, all the electronics were fried, and nobody knew what kind of shape the rest of the boat was in. All this, while we rode up and down fifty-foot swells and hundred-knot gusts of wind screamed through the wheelhouse.
“Cut’s not as bad as it looks,” Loni said, applying pressure to my head with the gauze. “Should stop bleeding soon. Don’t know if you’ll need stitches or not.” He took my hand and pressed it against the wound, which turned out to be an inch-long cut above my forehead. Head injuries are notorious for looking worse than they are. “Here now,” Loni said, “you hold it down. Keep it tight. You gonna be good soon.”
Loni stood and stepped behind the captain, looking over his shoulder, while I sat on the floor with my head against the wall. I felt a migraine coming on. Everything around me—the darkened wheelhouse, Loni and Fred, the dials, switches, and radios, the broken windows—everything spun uncontrollably. I closed my eyes, hoping to fight back the nausea welling inside my gut. But the heavy sway of the boat only made things worse. I felt I had to stand and get my eyes focused on something.
“We need to find Dave, Loni!” the captain shouted. “We need that man up here. Right now!”
I grabbed the back of the captain’s chair and pulled myself up.
“Might be that Danny-boy will find him!” Loni replied.
Stepping to my right, I wedged myself between the chair and the wheelhouse bridge. A violent wind rushed through the window and across my face, forcing me to shield my eyes in the crotch of my elbow.
“Or …. Might be that he ain’t even on the boat anymore,” Loni added grimly.
“Well, quit your damn speculating,” Fred commanded. “Get down there and find out.”
“Aye aye, captain.” Flashlight in hand, Loni made a move toward the wheelhouse door, and then stopped abruptly, pausing to look back, as if about to say something. A short stretch of silence passed between us then. A short and eerie stretch. I thought I was imagining it, but the captain seemed to sense it too, looking over his shoulder at Loni, then at me, standing to the right of him.
And then, suddenly ….
The tide of shadow that surrounded us, the ominous night that had chained our weary sight down onto the abyss, our blackened nightmares, our living nightmares, which undoubtedly captivated the whole of each of our minds …. In the blink of one solitary eye, our entire world erupted into a bloom of white light. Suddenly we knew what we were up against.
Chapter 21
“Mother of God!” The captain’s curse said it all. All eyes stared at the boiling sea beyond, illuminated now from the Angie Piper’s running lights, allowing us to see how things had changed. Since that first monstrous wave had hit us, the ocean had turned into a raging, screaming bitch, with the fury of a mother grizzly protecting her young. Fifty-foot waves roiled past us in cold anger, pitching our boat into stunning crests and bottomless troughs every other second. We were mere men sailing in a crippled vessel against a storm that cared nothing for our existence.
Losing the battle with my stomach, I turned and retched in a corner. Fear and the tumultuous sea had finally overtaken me. After throwing up, I hunched down behind the captain’s chair, frozen in place, unsure what to do. I worried about Danny, somewhere down below searching for Dave and Salazar. I wondered how badly our boat had been damaged. Apparently, all the electronics in the wheelhouse were ruined, which made it impossible to radio an SOS. The question was, did we need to?
“Now we know what we’re up against, boys!” the captain hollered, flinching against the rushing wind. “Ed! Get some wood over that!” He pointed to the starboard window. The window was shattered, allowing for a constant stream of wind and rain to badger the captain standing at the helm, steering the boat.
Fred’s command rattled me into moving once again. After Loni headed down below, I stood and staggered to the wheelhouse door, then looked down into the brightly lit hall. I remembered the plywood board stored behind my rack, likely for this very purpose but long forgotten, and then made my way down the stairs. Halfway to the bottom, I spotted Loni standing in the hall. Danny was stumbling toward him, Salazar hanging on his shoulder.
“What happened?” shouted Loni.
Salazar winced with each step—or hobble, for that matter—and said, “I think I busted my ankle.” His face was frozen in a pale, sour expression, showing his battle with the pain.
“Danny,” I said, stepping into a stateroom to let them pass, “what about Dave? Have you seen him?”
“No … I don’t know,” Danny replied.
“He might be down below in the engine room,” added Salazar. “Or,” and here, Salazar chuckled grimly, “he might be in the ocean.”<
br />
Either scenario was plausible. After the Angie Piper had taken a wave of that magnitude—straight through the wheelhouse—and the electricity was lost, Dave would have been anxious to check on things down below. But if he had been outside on deck ….
The fact that we now had partial lighting throughout the boat was a telling sign. Perhaps that was Dave’s doing. I wasn’t sure, but I suspected it to be the case. At the time, I had little understanding of how the boat worked in terms of mechanical and electrical functions. That was Dave’s job.
“Just put me down in there, Danny.” Salazar pointed to the rack in a stateroom. “Then go find Dave; hopefully he’s down below.”
I helped Danny get Salazar settled in a bunk, then reached back and retrieved the piece of plywood. With a nod, Loni disappeared down the hall and toward the engine room door. “We’re gonna find out soon enough,” I said, motioning to Danny. “Come help me with this. We gotta cover the window in the wheelhouse.”
Salazar stared at me from the bunk, then his face twisted in grim understanding. I didn’t have to tell him that the wheelhouse had taken a wave. All the same, he appeared lost and fearful. As Danny and I left once again for the bridge, I realized he had been silently questioning me, asking whether we were going to make it or not.
Danny and I struggled our way up to the wheelhouse and began fixing the board against the window. We used a concoction of tape and sheet-metal screws that we drilled in using a battery-powered drill gun, effectively sealing out the roaring wind. Only, I wasn’t sure how long the patch would hold.
“Thanks, guys,” said the captain. Immediately, the atmosphere inside the wheelhouse calmed down several notches. The wind only whistled through two windows now, portside. “Has anybody found Dave yet?” Fred added.
Just then the door leading downstairs pushed open, and Dave staggered in, suited up in his raingear. Grease was smeared across his hands and face. From his expression, one could only guess what his thoughts were. He appeared distant and remote, not the least bit alarmed. I couldn’t get how anyone could act so calm at a time like this. Shame burned inside me, such that I avoided eye contact with him. Wasting energy on shame was absurd, given our current predicament, but that was how I felt.
