by Peter Tonkin
‘Long Beach.’
‘If I were you, I’d swing in here and see can you get a visual on highway one – the bridges might be at risk but there’s still traffic moving and lights along some lengths. You should be able to follow it easily enough up past San Quintin and Ensenada to Tijuana and San Diego. That way, if you have any trouble, at least you can put down on land.’ The radio operator gave a bark of laughter. ‘I almost said dry land. Not much chance of that tonight, Maxima One.’
‘Thanks for the advice, Cielito Lindo. We’ll give it a go.’
‘Good luck, Maxima One.’
‘And you, Cielito Lindo. Stay safe now.’
FIFTEEN
By the time Liberty and the crew of Katapult8 snuck out of Long Beach with the last of the incoming tide running against them, leaving Maxima lying snugly in dock waiting for the top of the water, as well as Richard and Robin, Pilar had been heading west out of Puerto Banderas for the best part of four hours. Her destination was the Pacific fishing grounds off the west of the Baja California. She had aboard the usual crew, together with the ship’s boy, Miguel-Angel Guerrero. She had passed south of the reef at Isla Santa Isabel, and Miguel-Angel had listened to the distant roaring. They had passed south of the smallest of the Tres Marias, Isla Maria Cleofas, and the boy, once again, had listened to her unique song, feeling that he was becoming a master of the seas like his capitan.
Carlos Santiago and Miguel-Angel had gone aboard together at four thirty local time and the others had joined them half an hour later, just before they eased out of harbour with a star-spangled sky ahead of them magnified by the hot and heavy humidity of the air – and the brightness of Dahlia Blanca high above the breakwater with its towering hotels, Los Muertos beach and the Malecón astern. The crew, below, had come aboard suspiciously heavy laden and, although Miguel-Angel had asked no questions, he assumed they were planning on a much longer voyage than usual. He stood beside his capitan on the bridge in the darkness of pre-dawn while the rest of the crew sleepily prepared for a long day’s fishing – maybe two or even three, thought the boy, with a prickle of excitement at the novelty, the adventure. However long they were coming out for, it would be their last trip if they came home empty once again.
Under the brightness of the dawn gathering behind them after the coast – and even the mountaintops of the Sierra Madre – had fallen below the horizon, the old man was unusually grim-faced, Miguel-Angel observed, though he made no remark. And taciturn. There was none of the wisdom, the inconsequential chat or the banter that usually enlivened their hours together. His lips and eyes were narrow; his nostrils flared in thought – something that he did unconsciously when his forehead was at its most creased. Miguel-Angel had known Capitan Carlos his whole life and understood his moods as well as he understood the moods of the sea and the sky. At first, the boy wondered whether Capitan Carlos was worried about the weather, for after four hours heading due west at full speed he had suddenly swung the helm round forty-five degrees to starboard and Pilar had turned on to a new course dead north, still with the throttles as wide as they would go.
It was clear that Pilar would be heading up towards a considerable tempest if she stayed on this course. The preparations in California for the threatened ARkStorm were a lead item in the news down here. But then, on closer inspection, Miguel-Angel had realized that the old man was not afraid of the sea. The capitan was wrestling with his conscience. And that explained why no one aboard seemed keen to tell Miguel-Angel anything. He was as much their good-luck mascot as he was a crewmember, and they would never willingly make him complicit in anything illegal. And they were clearly planning something desperately illegal, the boy thought grimly.
Miguel-Angel knew enough about fishing – and, indeed, about life – to understand that legality was hard. Illegality was too easy. Especially for desperate men staring ruin, destitution and starvation in the face. The commercial fishing licenses that lay folded into the log books on the chart table were specific about what types of fish Pilar, her master and his crew could take from the ocean. About the requirements – such as VMS transmitters – that the vessel should be carrying to give their location at all times when at sea. About the areas that were open to them – and those that were closed. About what methods of fishing they were allowed to use – and which were absolutely forbidden. As soon as Miguel-Angel saw the new course he realized that Carlos was heading north into the danger of inclement weather on purpose. Fishery protection vessels would not be likely to stay out if conditions got worse, as the Americans seemed certain they would do. And, under the quiet capitan’s steady hand, Pilar was heading not only into the possibility of foul weather but also into a closed area that stretched up the Pacific coast of the Baja California, where the great whales went to breed, where no one but whale-watchers and tourists were permitted. And where fish – especially skipjack, blue-fin and albacore – were consequently plentiful.
That explained why the VMS tracking equipment was turned off, observed Miguel-Angel, and also the limited clearance procedures that had been made with the harbourmaster at Puerto Banderas. A quick tour of inspection under cover of fetching a mug of coffee and a breakfast burrito for Carlos further revealed that the crew – as desperate as their capitan – had laid aside the long lines with which they could legally catch tuna and had instead brought up the last of the utterly illegal drift nets which they had hidden in a false bottom below the main freezer – and which now looked like their only chance of survival. They had found the nets floating at the end of last season while the boat that had deployed them was taken north to US waters by the coastguards and fisheries inspection officers, under close arrest. Drift nets made of the new polymers that had no smell or sonar signal, utterly invisible to every creature in the ocean. Drift nets so strong and yet so tightly woven that every marine life form from the greatest whales to the smallest tuna would get trapped within them.
Throughout the day, Pilar pushed north at her maximum speed of twelve knots – just under fifteen miles per hour. But that speed was on top of the north-running counter-current that ran up the coast inside the more powerful California current that was carrying Katapult8 and Maxima southward out in the deep Pacific. Twenty miles per hour might have flattered the old girl, but that was her effective speed all day. Or it was until she found herself vanishing into a blood-red sunset with a black wall of cloud along the far northern horizon fourteen hours – and nearly three hundred miles – out. Capitan Carlos gave the order to ready the nets and attach them to the big winch over the stern.
‘We will fish all night,’ he ordered, ‘as we run on north into the closed area off San Quintin. It will take many more hours to reach the San Quintin light, but when we do we will check the nets, begin to fill the freezers and ease out into the California current which will bring us home again – still with the nets out – and, through the grace of God, with the freezers full at last.’
As the night closed in and the wall of cloud in the north obscured more and more of the stars, Pilar sailed more slowly northward towards the restricted area south and west of San Quintin. Miguel-Angel went with the crew on to the aft deck to see how they jury-rigged the main winch there to ease out – and pull back – the long net. ‘It will be hard to bring that back aboard if you net a big haul,’ he observed. ‘Pilar is not designed for this sort of work.’
‘She is not,’ agreed the busy crewmen. ‘But we will find a way.’
‘Keeping control of the net will be a difficult task on its own,’ said the boy. ‘We will know where the near end is because it will be attached to the winch. But what about the far end? I could curl round on a rogue current and foul our propellers and we would never know until it was too late.’
‘The capitan has thought of that,’ said Hernan, one of the crewmen and ship’s cook. ‘Look. Here at the far end of the net, on the first float we will put into the water, we have secured a beacon. It will give a signal both by light and radio, telling us its location an
d the location of the end of the net.’
‘That is very clever,’ said the boy. ‘But still, if the catch is a large one you will have great difficulty in getting the net back in.’
‘We will bring it in a fish at a time if we have to,’ Hernan answered. ‘But things are not that bad. A section of the transom opens.’
No sooner had he said this than two of the crew did indeed unclip a section of the low transom. As they did so, the northern darkness flickered and the thick, hot wind brought a whisper of distant thunder. But the sound was almost immediately drowned in the wheezing rattle of the winch as the net went over the stern, feeding out through the open section with the beacon lashed tightly to its end.
The net was the better part of a kilometre in length, though it was only a part of the original. It was ten metres deep with its top attached to floats and its bottom tied to weights. It was designed to hang like an invisible wall across the upper reaches of the ocean where the great shoals of tuna ran, between the stern of Pilar and the little beacon flashing at the far end. As they eased it out, the crew debated whether it would be better to hang it parallel to the distant coast, along the north-flowing current in the hope of catching the tuna as they headed into the shallows to feed. Or whether it might be better to move Pilar out to the deeper water on the outer edge where the north-flowing current met its south-flowing parent, and hang the net from side to side across the northward current to catch the fish running up towards the US or down towards Puerto Banderas.
Miguel-Angel took this debate up to the wheelhouse and asked the capitan what he proposed to do. ‘I will hang it along the current to begin with, at least,’ decided Carlos. ‘I trust my instincts more than the fish-finder, which has never worked properly. And my instinct suggests that fish run towards their feeding grounds in the turbulent waters beneath the surf at the shore, then out into the depths to rest and play. It is not something I would normally discuss with the crew, but they would understand the logic in that. However, the decision is made simple for me in any case, Miguel-Angel, because of what I must do to keep control of the net. Pilar is not a proper trawler – as you have no doubt seen as the net went out through the transom. Even with the little beacon telling me where the far end of the net is – you see it flashing on the radar there? – in order to keep control of such a great length, which will act like a sea anchor, I must run fast enough to keep it streaming tightly out astern, a little like a kite in a strong wind. I can only do this if I run faster than the current. So we will ease out to sea a little until the California current is running southwards against us like a strong wind helping to keep my kite aloft, then we will sail north, and maintain the fastest speed the drag of the net will allow.’
‘But then we may miss the fish that are running with the current.’
‘True. Then let us pray that most of the fish in these waters are running across the current tonight. Now, I am hungry. Go below. When the men have finished putting the net out they will prepare food. Hernan has brought gorditas. Bring me two. One stuffed with egg and the other with fish. And coffee, though I will have to relieve myself soon if I drink too much. Then I will let you take the helm while I eat and work the stiffness from my bones.’
Miguel-Angel took the helm for the first hour of night while the old man ate his gorditas, drank his coffee and exercised in a series of squats and stretches. The wheelhouse became a place of low light and massive shadows, especially after Carlos decided that switching on the running lights would only invite trouble. Just as the disconnected VMS kept them invisible to the GPS tracking systems designed to alert the fisheries protection officers to the very thing they were in fact doing, remaining invisible to everything except the chance of radar or sonar contact seemed the best idea under the current circumstances, especially as someone official might yet pick up the signal from the little beacon behind them and grow suspicious enough to come looking.
Then Miguel-Angel went below and consumed his own gorditas – hungrily, for he was young, growing still, and had eaten little so far today. And in truth, Hernan made exceptionally good gorditas. Especially when he filled them with hard-boiled egg mashed through with finely chopped red jalapenos and served them with a salad of cilantro, spring onions and green peppers. The crew teased the boy over the matter of coffee when he requested a mug-full, asking whether he was old enough to drink such a powerful brew. But he did not mind. The teasing was good-natured, and was a sign that the crew were beginning to relax. Now, he thought sleepily, if he could get the capitan to relax as well …
Exhausted, the boy fell asleep at the table and Hernan carried him through into the tiny cabin and laid him on one of the two bunks there, tucking him in just like his mother used to before she went north across the border with his elder brother, Juan Jose. Then the ship’s cook went up on to the bridge to report, and relieved Capitan Carlos at the wheel while Pilar’s master went down on to the aft deck and relieved himself over the half-open transom, with the hot wind strong against his back, before checking the winch and the lines that stretched away into the darkness where the net flared like a banner just beneath the increasingly choppy waves of the wake.
Carlos Santiago went up to the forecastle before returning to the bridge. He stood on the forepeak, looking along the course Pilar was following, smelling the wind and straining to see into the sinister blackness ahead. The unseasonably oppressive heat, the presence of whales that ought to have been up in the Arctic feeding grounds, the constant flickering of light just below the far horizon – as though there was some unimaginable battle raging in the north with salvo after salvo of great guns spitting fire and explosive shells – all made him regret the position that fate had placed him in. And which he in consequence had placed his ship and crew in. And the boy. Most of all, he regretted the boy. Suddenly he looked away to starboard. There was nothing to see – they were far out on a benighted ocean now, in the grip of the south-flowing California current, and the land was below the horizon there. But he knew well enough where they were in relation to the Baja. If things became too dangerous, he decided, he would run for the safe haven of Puerto San Carlos. He half laughed, making a sound that was almost a cough. He’d likely end up saving them all – while ruining himself – just because he was worried about the boy.
Miguel-Angel was woken four hours later when his head hit the side of the bunk. He sat up, banging his head again with disorientating force. His whole world reeled and heaved so powerfully he thought he must be on the verge of passing out. Then the door of the cabin opened and he recognized the figure of Hernan hanging in the doorway, keeping himself erect by spread-eagling himself against the doorframe. ‘It’s getting rough out there,’ said the ship’s cook. ‘The capitan asked me to check on you.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Miguel-Angel. ‘Shall I come up on to the bridge?’
‘If you can. It’d give the old man something less to worry about.’
‘OK. Is there anything you want me to take up with me?’
‘Coffee. And try not to spill it.’
Five minutes later, Miguel-Angel was staggering up the bridge-house companionway, concentrating fiercely on the steaming black surface of a mug of coffee that was doing its best to emulate the steaming black water outside. At least the top few steps were illuminated slightly by the green glow of the instruments that filled the bridge house with eerie light.
‘I brought coffee, Capitan,’ he said.
Then he realized the capitan wasn’t going to be able to hear him, for they were seemingly in the middle of a storm. The heaving of the deck was matched by the roar of the wind, the battering blasts of rain and spray and the mercifully distant flashes of lightning and the rumbles of thunder they generated – sounds so deep and powerful that they made everything on the bridge seem to shake.
And there, unmoving in the midst of it, Capitan Carlos stood at the helm like an anthracite statue. Apparently unconcerned by what the night was throwing at him, holding Pilar on course, dead i
nto the very jaws of the thing. Miguel-Angel staggered over towards him, fiercely focused on the lurching, slopping coffee once again. This time he waited until he was almost at the capitan’s shoulder. ‘I brought coffee, Capitan!’ he shouted. The old man looked round and nodded, then gestured with his white-stubbled chin towards the cup-holder on the console.
The boy hesitated, frozen with surprise. He had seen his capitan under every circumstance he could readily imagine, but he had never seen him like this. The angular old face seemed to have lost ten years in age. The pale brown eyes burned with exhilaration as though there was some kind of a light behind them. The usually narrow mouth was wide in a grin of fierce elation. The big white teeth were clenched, squaring the stubbled jaw. And it was only this, thought Miguel-Angel, awed, that stopped him from laughing aloud with simple, fearsome joy.
‘Come here, boy,’ ordered this strange new creature in a deep, booming voice that rode over the thunder and the wind. He lifted his left hand from the helm and spread his arm wide in invitation, taking a firm half-step back to leave room for one slim boy to go in front of him. ‘Take the helm for a moment and feel her! Feel the life in old Pilar. She was born for this! We were born for this!’
With his heart suddenly pulsing at fever pitch, half with excitement and half with terror, Miguel-Angel stepped forward into the space between the capitan and the helm. As soon as he entered it, the arm came down again and he found his left hand folded in the capitan’s, wrapped around the curve of the wheel. The old man’s right hand grabbed his and for a moment both pairs of hands were on the wheel, with Miguel-Angel feeling the disorientating thrill of the life coursing through the battling boat. Then the capitan’s right hand was gone, reaching over to push the throttles further forward still. The boy at the helm blinked as a set of waves charged in at them, each one taller than the last. Pilar threw up her head and kicked up her heels, pitching and heaving through the water like the most powerful Azteca filly jumping over hedges and arroyos at the hunt.
