by Peter Tonkin
‘I’ll have a word with the lading officer and see what we can do to help,’ promised Richard. ‘We’ll leave it till morning and hope the weather stays fair.’
‘Lading officer?’ snarled Guerrero. ‘What good will he be? I mean, have you seen the size of these things? Have you calculated the weight? We don’t have the muscle power to move even one of them.’
‘Oh, yes, we do,’ said Richard gently. ‘Look.’ And he gestured to the big square gantry sitting hard up against the front of the bridge house. ‘All we have to do is decide where we want them and how we want them – especially as we’ll have to secure them as tightly as we secured the Bell on the poop deck – and that gantry will place them absolutely precisely.’
Part of Guerrero’s problem was that he, like Richard, had had nothing to eat in a long while. As soon as Richard discovered this, he persuaded the major to leave the foredeck under the control of his new second in command, a regular army first lieutenant called James Harding who seemed to be competence personified. The pair of them walked back to the ladder leading up to the level of the train-track runners that the gantry moved along, then went side by side into the A-deck corridor and down to the canteen. They were lucky. Cook was just getting ready to clear away, but there was deep-fried Kung Po chicken, stir-fried rice, spring rolls and wontons. And toffee bananas to follow. As the two commanders ate, so their energy levels began rising. After a while, Biddy joined them, and that geed them up even more. ‘I know what the immediate priorities are,’ said Guerrero. ‘But what’s the long-term plan here?’
‘To go south as fast as we can,’ said Richard. ‘With the current behind us – and the wind – soon enough we’ll be making more than twenty-five knots or thirty miles an hour. That’ll put us off Cabo San Luca at the southern end of the Baja just after midnight tomorrow night and get us to Puerto Banderas by six or so the next morning. Unless we get sidetracked or held up at all.’
‘Sidetracked,’ said Guerrero. ‘Held up. By what?’
‘There are pretty bad conditions down there,’ explained Richard. ‘Not just on land but at sea as well. If we get a distress call we’ll have to answer it.’
‘You expecting any distress calls?’ asked Guerrero, his eyes narrowing.
‘Maybe one,’ inserted Biddy as she arrived carrying a plate piled high with toffee bananas. ‘That’s what I’m here for. With the Bell. Search and rescue.’
‘Search and rescue?’ wondered Guerrera. ‘What are you up to, Captain?’
‘Call me Richard,’ said Richard blandly. ‘And your first name is?’
‘Juan Jose,’ answered the major, suddenly very much on his guard. ‘But I must ask again: what are you up to, Richard?’
‘You know there are several people and two vessels I care about somewhere down there,’ answered Richard. ‘I’m proposing to check on them as I run south. Shouldn’t hold us up or slow down your mission, Juan Jose.’
‘Especially as the plan is that I take the Bell out and scout around their last known location as Sulu Queen here steams on past it,’ said Biddy, her mouth full of banana, toffee and sesame seeds. ‘Weather permitting and all.’
‘That’s a big piece of ocean down there,’ said the major.
Something in his tone made Richard ask, ‘Do you know it, Juan Jose?’
‘Born and raised in Puerto Banderas. Fished it till my teens when I came north with my mom,’ he explained.
‘Sill got family down there?’ asked Biddy.
‘Father and baby brother,’ he answered shortly. ‘Miguel-Angel. We haven’t visited, Skyped or even called in years. I guess the break-up of the marriage was pretty acrimonious. I just know my father runs the ship chandlery on the Malecón down by the docks in Puerto Banderas and my little brother helps him, I guess. He must be about the age I was when Mom and I came north.’
‘Well,’ said Richard. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get there as quickly as possible.’
Juan Jose Guerrero was still nodding thoughtfully when the ship’s tannoy broke the silence. ‘Captain to the bridge, please. Captain to the bridge.’
‘No rest for the wicked,’ said Richard, rising. He hesitated for a second, then picked up his half-finished plate. On his way to the door he passed it in to the cook. ‘Fill that up, please. Put it on a tray with some of that coffee from the filter there and send it up to the bridge.’
Richard stepped into the lift and pressed the button for bridge deck, but before the doors could close Guerrero pushed in. ‘Mind if I come up?’
‘So long as you keep your hands off my Kung Po chicken.’
‘I give you my word. As an officer and a gentleman.’
This conversation was enough to take them up on to the bridge. The deck lights were off, Lieutenant Harding having closed everything down and sent the major’s command to bed. The bridge lighting itself was on night setting, all reds and shadows, except for the banks of screens showing the course and disposition of the ship. Richard planned on assuming the watch. It was a good way for him to get to know the vessel he was commanding – even though he had already done a first inspection of the new guests and planned on a full Captain’s Inspection before breakfast. Given the weather they were heading into, it was vital that he knew the ship and the crew as well as possible in the time he had available. When he took over on the bridge, he would check all of the screens and go out on to the bridge wing and use his human senses to augment the electrical information as he made up the logs. First, however, Richard walked to the third officer’s side. ‘Captain on the bridge,’ he said quietly. ‘And happy to take the rest of this watch. What did you want me for?’
‘This, Captain.’ The third officer crossed to the screen that showed the collision alarm radar settings. He punched a sequence of buttons and the range of the radar leaped out to its widest setting, where electronic information about what lay ahead was largely supplied by satellites rather than by the ship’s own equipment. ‘There,’ said the third officer, quietly. ‘You see it, Captain?’
‘I see it,’ said Richard. ‘Even going all out, that’ll take almost a day. I’ll check with the coastguards nearer and see what other vessels are in the area.’
‘I have done, Captain. There are none. None willing to go there, at any rate – they’re all heading for safe haven.’
‘I’m not surprised. So, set a course and we’ll at least supply back-up.’
‘What is it?’ asked Guerrero. ‘What does the machine show?’
‘It’s an emergency beacon,’ said Richard. ‘There’s somebody in bad trouble in the middle of the ocean seven hundred miles dead ahead of us.’
THIRTY-TWO
Robin stood on the exposed aft end of Maxima’s middle deck. Above her was the bridge deck where Biddy’s Bell 429 sat when she was aboard. Below her was the half-empty swimming pool and the lowered bathing section that was beginning to look as though it had seen better days, which was stuck until power was restored. Inboard of this, on either side of the heaving, slopping pool, harnessed to safety lines, stood groups of crewmen. Robin would have gone down to be with them but both Toro and Nic roundly refused to let her take such risks. So this was as close as she could get to the action. All around her was the vast storm of the late afternoon, which seemed set on destroying the battered but still beautiful vessel. Despite her almost limitless experience in nautical matters, Robin was only partially aware of the physical forces that held Maxima in their grip. Physical forces that reached far beyond the meteorological turmoil they were battling. The wind gusted again, making her stagger, even in the wind shadow of the bridge, and she mentally thanked heaven that she was secured to the lifeline and wearing a full safely harness. Except for the fact that she was wearing Aquascutum rainwear rather than neoprene wetsuit, she was as well secured as the divers whose work she was watching.
Two of the crew, Raoul and Emilio, had worked in the past as rescue swimmers. They had jumped from helicopters into the middle of tempestuous oceans to check the hulls
of upturned vessels for signs of life. They had taken panicking men and women in hand, given them reassurance in the midst of great storms in huge seas and helped them put on the harnesses that allowed the winchmen above to lift them to safety. Swimming in near hurricane conditions had been their bread and butter. Even so, they had baulked at going in the water under these conditions. But the facts were simple: if they didn’t get the screws fixed they were all dead anyway. And Nic, open-hearted and open-handed, had made them a financial incentive that they simply could not refuse. So they had agreed to do it one more time, to try to cut the nets free and, if possible, get the Spurs line-and-net-cutting equipment back online in preparation for the moment that the engineers got the Caterpillars running and the propellers turning. It was becoming increasingly vital that these things should happen soon, for Maxima, which had ridden over the first series of waves at the front of the storm through a combination of good luck and the fact that the water missing from the pool kept her stern buoyant enough to counter-balance the downward drag of the nets. But now, for reasons Robin could not fathom, Maxima was moving slowly south and beginning to turn beam-on to the big seas. Once she was positioned so that her side rather than her bow or stern met the great wave-sets, she would simply roll over and die. Hence the desperate lengths Toro was reduced to now.
The wind gusted once again, driving a combination of rain and spray into Robin’s face like a handful of sharp gravel. There was an explosion of sound above her, and one of the communications golf balls sailed away down the wind, looking ridiculously like a big white balloon. It was well clear of Maxima’s stern before it hit the water, bouncing off into the driving spray and vanishing. With any luck, that was the one Manuel had been working on, she thought. And it seemed likely – she hadn’t seen the electrician secure the cover when they’d come back inside. If it was the twin to the one Manuel had been working on, then its departure meant the end of all of their electrical navigation and communications equipment. She was thinking of staggering up to the bridge and asking what equipment had just gone west when Maxima swooped down the back of the next wave and buried her poop in green water. The men on the lower deck ran back, trying to keep their feet as the water boiled up past the base of the pool. Maxima heaved. Then she began to rise again. There was a sharp crack from below and astern, louder than the noise that had signalled the departure of the golf ball. When Maxima finally shrugged off the green water and began to sail steadily up the face of the oncoming wave, Robin saw that the lowered bathing section had been bodily torn away. The teams ran back to the stern and began to pull the divers aboard, clearly fearing that the missing section might have hurt them as it tore free. But no. Both men came back aboard unharmed. And Robin could have sworn that one of them gave a weary thumbs up.
As the teams on the lower deck were heading in, Robin decided she no longer had any business being out here. She turned and walked forward, following the hand rail to which her safety line was attached. In the shadow of the bridge house, she paused to unclip. As she did so, Maxima reached the crest of the wave that had torn her bathing section off her. She hesitated, see-sawing there. A flaw in the storm wind cleared away the rain for an instant, and there, surprisingly close, a couple of hundred metres to the south and on the crest of the third wave further on, Robin saw the unmistakable ruby gleam of an emergency beacon.
‘I cannot help,’ said Toro a couple of minutes later. ‘Raoul has chopped away most of the net and Emilio believes he has fixed the Spurs cutters, but we are not yet entirely free. And I am reluctant to take the chance of starting the motors quite yet, although the engineer says he believes the repairs will hold. You know it would be foolish of us to try a rescue before we ourselves are safe. You know how many people drown each year during heroic attempts to save children and pets who survive anyway after their would-be rescuers are dead.’
‘That’s true. But you’ll have to risk it soon, because for some reason I still don’t quite understand, we’re drifting round to beam-on to the wind and waves. The seas will kill us pretty quickly if we don’t do something.’
But in fact, as they were talking, a chain of circumstance that neither was really aware of came to its culmination far below them. Ever since the waves pooped Pilar, she had been sinking deeper and deeper into the Pacific. As they talked, she was half a kilometre below them and still heading rapidly for the distant ocean floor. The nets were still attached to her winch, and the dead weight of the wreck was more than enough to overcome what little buoyancy was left in the floats on the float line. The pull of the sinking vessel on the nets still attached to Maxima was the force that was dragging her southwards and swinging her round, pulling her towards Miguel-Angel, who was bobbing in the water precisely above the point at which Pilar had sunk.
And as Robin and Captain Toro discussed what to do next, the simple physical laws that had governed the relationship between the two vessels came to their inevitable end. Pilar, precisely below Maxima, completed Raul’s work for him. The tension she exerted on the nets peaked at the very moment the extra-lightened stern – with half of the pool water missing and the bathing platform gone – was thrust upwards by the face of the next wave. The strain between the sinking vessel and the floating one reached its peak. The last section of net between them, hooked round Maxima’s propeller, snapped. The whole tangle jerked free to plunge on downward with Pilar, taking the fish and the fishermen, all tangled in the billowing mesh, to their final resting place at the bottom of the ocean.
Everyone on board Maxima felt the jerk of freedom. Her stern jumped up by a metre and more, easily overcoming the downward pressure of the wave. ‘That’s it!’ said Robin. ‘We’re free!’
Toro nodded and put his walkie-talkie to his mouth. ‘OK, engine room,’ he said. ‘Let’s try for slow ahead. And once the motors are running I’d like power and heating restored. But one thing at a time.’
‘When we get power back we should get communications,’ said Robin. ‘Unless it was the communications gear that went west with the golf ball just now.’
‘I don’t know what it was,’ said Toro.
‘You want Manuel and me to go up and see?’ asked Robin.
‘Maybe later. Right now, I want you here. Your experience may prove useful.’ Maxima used her new freedom to start a series of increasingly wild corkscrew movements that amply emphasised what Toro was saying.
‘I’d have said may prove vital,’ said Nic as he staggered through the door. ‘What’s going on? Even my intrepid yachtswomen are feeling seasick.’
‘We are trying for steerage way,’ said Toro. ‘We should have full control in a few minutes. Then, I believe, Captain Mariner wants us to investigate an emergency beacon she believes she saw nearby.’
‘That I do,’ she said. ‘In fact, I think, if you’ll lend me the walkie-talkie there, I’ll ask Raul and Emilio to stay in their wet suits for a little longer.’ As Robin spoke, the heaving deck beneath her feet began to throb. Everyone fell silent, as though their group focus on the vibrations would help the engines start up successfully and keep running. And perhaps they did, for, little by little, the rhythm of the Caterpillars quickened like the beating of a wakening heart. The propellers span, beginning to bite into the water. The vessel’s motion steadied and she began to move forward more purposefully. Robin and Toro both went to stand at the shoulders of the helmsman. Still three-quarters on to the sea, with the waves coming in on her port quarter, Maxima began to get properly underway, answering to the dictates of the helm as well as to those of the wind and the waves.
‘We have a problem, Captain Mariner,’ said Toro, the first to speak.
‘I know,’ Robin answered. ‘Our best and safest course will take us away from the distress beacon.’
‘As soon as we start running with the sea behind us,’ Toro agreed. ‘And I dare not try and turn around in this. If we get caught beam-on to these seas …’
‘I know,’ said Robin. ‘But there must be a way …’
As she broke off, the power came back on. The lights blazed and the bridge equipment sprang to life. Robin was at the radar screen before it had even finished loading and updating. ‘There!’ she said as it cleared. ‘The radar set has the beacon placed at one hundred and twenty metres off our starboard forequarter. I can give you a precise bearing in a minute. I think the sea will push us in that direction anyway, but the chances are we’ll sail straight past … Look, Captain, I know we’d be foolish to risk so many lives trying to save one, but that beacon is so close. The Cats seem to be purring …’
‘And pushing us well clear of him,’ warned Toro.
‘Yes, but … Wait! You have the top-of-the-range propulsion system down there. Variable pitch, the works.’
Yes, but …’
‘It’s a hundred metres, Captain. You could swing us into position, surely. Go to full power.’
Toro frowned as he assessed the implications of Robin’s idea. ‘Mr Greenbaum? It’s your call in the final analysis.’
‘Ask the engineer, Captain. If he says he can do it without any more damage to the motor, and if you’re satisfied it won’t add significantly to the hazards of an already dangerous situation, then I think we should go for it.’
‘Swing? And at full power?’ The engineer’s answer came over Toro’s walkie-talkie so loudly that they all heard it. ‘We’ve only just got the motor going!’
‘There could be someone in the water a hundred metres or so off our aft starboard quarter. Would it be possible to get back close enough to be certain without damaging the motor?’
