Buried At Sea

by Paul Garrison

  He pointed at a jumbo screen.

  "We are storing the satellite data—downloading new data from every pass—with a view to building a model of the boat's characteristics."

  "You think you can identify a fifty-foot yacht from a satellite?"

  Lloyd McVay indicated another monitor. "This image is enhanced from an array of electro-optical and SAR radar data we received twelve hours ago. You're a sailor, Jeff.

  Look familiar?"

  The senator frowned at the fuzzy top view of a sailboat. The hull was remarkably broad for its length, particularly from midships aft. "Could be a Vendee Globe racer. But the Globe isn't running right now."

  "Good eyes, Senator. It's a French solo sailor attempting an around-the-world record."

  "Dangerous time of year down there."

  "No one ever said the French sailor wasn't bold." Val switched it off.

  Surprisingly, since she herself had created this system, she felt invaded. For the price he was paying to race there, the lone sailor deserved his privacy. She knew the reality that lay behind the detached and bloodless image: wintry night falling fast in the high latitudes; the ultralight racer bashing the tops of thirty-foot seas; the cold, wet, skipper constantly changing the sails for more speed, then ducking below to husband his strength where the din of the composite flat-bottom hull slamming the water was so loud he needed earplugs.

  "Show me another?'

  Another fuzzy yacht materialized on the screen. This purported to be a top view; two dots were centered on the hull. "That's a ketch or a schooner."

  "Actually, a yawl."

  "Come on, Lloyd. How can you be sure it's a yawl?" "Val can explain. Tell him, Val."

  If not quite civil, Val's answer was to the point. "Try to understand, Senator, you are looking at an 'impression' of a yacht 'seen' from various perspectives above the earth—a digital reconstruction of data acquired from numerous satellite passes."

  Her father interrupted her with a chuckle: "In this case we also know it's a yawl because we are monitoring its radios." "You can eavesdrop on them, too?"

  Enough, Val decided. She said, "Sonia, can you lead the senator toward a deeper understanding of what we're doing here?"

  The foundation's chief applications engineer rose from her workstation with a warm smile. Red piping on her form-fitted gray jumpsuit designated her high rank, and while she was uncommonly attractive, she was also age-appropriateexhaustive investigation into Weiner's habits having bared no unseemly interest in the young. "Mind the cable, Senator."

  Senator Weiner stepped under, careful not to stare at Sonia's breasts while under the patrician gaze of Lloyd McVay and his wintry daughter. In fact, the McVays had turned their attention to the Sarnoff the instant Sonia led him away.

  Val clicked her remote and, while the computers churned, she said coldly, "You take more interest in the process than the goal."

  "At my age you learn that process is life."

  "I intend to reach my goals before I reach your age."

  Up floated a computer-generated schematic of Hustle's hull, sails, and rigging. Another click and the image panned from a side view to an overhead perspective, as if a camera were floating. Another altered the silhouette to indicate various sail configurations.

  "Where did you get that model?" her father asked. "Andy Nickels found the boatyard that did Will's refit." "I wasn't aware that Andy was in Hong Kong."

  "I left him in Buenos Aires. He did it by phone and fax." "Why did you leave Andy in Buenos Aires?"

  "I'll tell you in a minute. First, look at this."

  She zoomed in on the southwestern quadrant of the South Atlantic Ocean, where a line zigzagged south from the Rio de la Plata. Up came a modified cruising hull, rigged in cutter mode with a second headsail on the jackstay.

  Lloyd McVay checked that the senator was engrossed in Sonia on the other side of the room and said quietly, "It matches. That's Will Spark."

  In answer, Val clicked again. Data appeared in the lower-left corner. Hustle? POS: 42°

  21 S, 61° 17 W. SPEED: 5.4 knots. COURSE: 190.

  "South?" said her father. "He's headed south?"

  "Straight at the Falkland Islands."

  "But winter is setting in down there."

  "He's got six hundred miles still to go, but it could be that he intends to provision in Stanley."

  Val imagined the conditions on Will Spark's boat butting into the Falkland Current: a slow passage, but fairly comfortable, still many miles from the brutal Southern Ocean, and with three people to share watches so everyone gets some sleep; Will in the comfortable owner's stateroom aft; the couple bunking in a small forward cabin or crashing singly on the pilot berths, conditions not being that conducive to sex; of course gear would be breaking down after two crossings; and, unless they provisioned in Argentina, they were probably running out of food.

  Her father studied the chart. "Why is he so far east? He should hug the coast to avoid the current."

  "He's avoiding our ships."

  The technician responsible for the military feed hurried to them with a phone. "The Pentagon, Mr. McVay. Some colonel with a poker up"—a flash of genteel fire in Lloyd McVay's eye stopped him cold—"bent out of shape."

  Lloyd McVay took the phone. "Yes, Colonel, may I suggest you patch me through to General Huchthausen. . . . I mean right now, Colonel. He's at his farm, we spoke not thirty minutes ago. . . . Peter! . . . Yes, yes, I heard, security. Peter, when you think about it, how am I to stay on top of your problems if the best you can send me are interrupted data streams? . . . Frankly, this has cost us time and money, and if it were up to me, that colonel would retire on half pay to a Florida trailer park . ."

  An MBA hurried up with an open dossier. "Give my regards to Samantha. Still hoping she'll send that book proposal. . . . Not to worry about the 'writing.' We have a man who takes care of that." He passed the phone to the MBA, checked again that Senator Weiner was distracted, and said to Val, "Who do you think is on the boat?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Who is on the boat?"

  "Will Spark. And I presume that Jim and Shannon joined up with him."

  "But you don't know for sure."

  "Andy was told that a sailboat outran a fishing boat, which had gone out for the reward?'

  "So Andy told me on the sat phone. Did they actually see the old man?"

  "I believe that the fishing boat sank in the pampem." "Andy told me that, too. Though he didn't explain how Spark's sailboat survived."

  "It was more up to the job... . Dad, I made a command decision—wait, we're about to receive the next live images."

  Val began clicking. Nothing changed on the monitors. "Standing by for the new data stream."

  Her father crossed his arms and waited. The computer continued mindlessly panning the model, giving the false illusion that old information was new. Images of images, Val reminded herself. She tapped some more. "Clouds. Dammit. We lost half the day's stream except for the radar and it's not enough on its own."

  "Twelve hours since anything new?"

  Val gestured at the bleak stats on the weather monitor. The low-orbit infrared scanners that measured the temperature of cloud tops showed thickening overcast that stretched from the fortieth parallel south to the Falklands.

  Her father said, "Twelve hours. They could have sunk to the bottom of the sea, for goodness' sake. Where are you going?"

  "Tierra del Fuego."

  "What for?" Her father loped after her, clearly caught off balance, a rare and deeply satisfying sight.

  "The Argentine air force has granted permission to land

  the Hawker at their Rio Grande base. Andy and his men are picking me up in a boat I bought in Buenos Aires." "Don't be ridiculous."

  Val McVay fixed her father with a cold eye and then, in a move more mocking than tender, straightened his bow tie. "What is ridiculous about tracking Will Spark by satellite and recapturing Sentinel with a faster boat?"

&nb
sp; "Well, look here, Val. I mean, for goodness' sake, the Tierra del Fuego Rio Grande base is a thousand miles from Buenos Aires. You'd best stay here until we positively ID Spark'

  s yacht."

  "It's all set up, Dad. Sonia will handle the tech side. All you have to do is relay their position."

  "Dammit, it will take Andy a week to sail there." "I bought a rocket ship. They tied up an hour ago."

  SLOW BOAT TO china," Jim said to Shannon.

  The knot meter read eight, a respectable speed close-hauled in the southwest wind. But the GPS told a different story. Over the bottom, they were barely making five knots against the powerful Falkland Current.

  "Peaceful boat to China." Stretched out on the cockpit bench, her head on Jim's lap, Shannon was watching an albatross. Most of those she had seen soared in enormous slow circles around the boat—five or ten minutes to a pass. But this huge bird was floating over the boat on motionless wings, a few feet above the mast. Only its head moved as it occasionally surveyed its domain. Otherwise it held itself so utterly still that it appeared to be suspended from the low, dark nimbostratus clouds that had blown in from the west at noon and now extended from horizon to horizon like a broad-brimmed hat.

  Peaceful it was. With Shannon to share watches, Jim had finally caught up with his sleep, napping in Will's hammock by the companionway. The weather fax showed no big depressions for a while. They had crossed the forty-third parallel. And Shannon was taking to the boat like she was born on

  it, poking into every nook and cranny, reading the manuals, and happily looting Will's winter wardrobe.

  "No stars tonight, Captain?"

  "Rain. Mucho rain." He could see it marching ponderously out of the west. It would reach them around dark, and by the look of the low, uniform cloud, it would probably pour all night. Fine with him. Steady rain beat by a long shot the squalls that had knocked them around the first two days out of Rio de la Plata.

  "Then let's eat in—Jim, the albatross winked at me." "He's Argentine. What do you expect?"

  "I'm going to name him Carlos. Hey, where are you go- ing?"

  "I'm going to get a clean sail and see if we can catch some rainwater."

  "I'll get the tools."

  With Jim's help she had rigged a line from a clamp on the backstay that she used to swing herself from the back of the cockpit to the companionway. There she fastened the line for when she came up and lowered herself down into the cabin. Handhold to handhold, she flew to the tool chests and fished out some shackles and twine while she caught her breath. She stuffed them in a canvas bag, slung it over her shoulder, paused at the nav station drawer that held wooden hull plugs and various keys, took the key to open the water tank intakes, and got back to the cockpit ahead of Jim.

  "At last!"

  Alone in the war room, Lloyd McVay exulted out loud.

  It had been two days since Will Spark's yacht had disappeared under cloud too thick for the space-borne sensors. Suddenly, the monitors were finally springing to life, suffused with color, as new data streamed in like fresh blood.

  "There we are!" He reached for a phone. "Sonia!" Where the schematic of Will Spark's yacht had been tumbling about the monitor was sudden evidence of a new data stream. Hustle? POS: 45 ° 18' S, 61 ° 11' W. SPEED: 5.0 knots. COURSE: 191.

  Sonia hurried in, hair askew, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "What happened?" McVay demanded. "There's still cloud."

  Sonia spent a full five minutes studying the displays. Finally, she nodded her head with the satisfaction of an engineer who had added to her knowledge. As one of Val's protégés she projected the same irritatingly cocksure confidence.

  "First, Mr. McVay, if you read the data you can see that the cloud has thinned by eighty percent. Second, you see the temperature. Air temperature has been dropping as they sail south. It's getting cold. You see these ships—here, here, here, and here?" Each ship icon she activated with her laser pointer spewed position, speed, course, and identification. A Taiwanese bulk carrier, two British, and a Russian—one of Admiral Rugoff's, a twenty-thousand-ton container ship WorldSpan Czar Peter

  "We 'see' them by high-resolution infrared because they are steamships. Their smokestacks expel sufficient heat to penetrate the thinning cloud."

  "I know that. But there is no smokestack on a sailboat. Even if they run their engine to charge their batteries and their refrigeration, the engine exhaust sits near the waterline, washed by the seas, thus creating a minor, intermittent heat source. What happened?"

  "It's getting cold. I would postulate that they have a heater venting through the top of the boat. As their speed and course and likely position match the boat we've been tracking, it is almost certainly them. They're holding their course for the Falkland Islands."

  "Fire?" Lloyd McVay peered intently at the monitor. "We see the heat of their fire?"

  "Yes, Mr. McVay. From their heater. Burning diesel or bottled gas. I don't know much about boats."

  "One recalls Melville."

  "Yes, Mr. McVay."

  " `The try-works.' The whale rendered in Pequod's fiery furnaces!" Lloyd McVay rubbed his hands together:

  "The burning ship drove on as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed."

  "Yes, Mr. McVay."

  McVay stared her down and said, "The last time one of Val's protégés attempted to patronize me, the woman found it impossible to land another job in our industry."

  He went to the privacy of his own office to call Val on the encrypted satellite phone.

  When she didn't pick up, he left Will Spark's course and position in her voice mail.

  "Obviously, they unshipped their heating stove, which burns diesel fuel and vents through a stack in the cabin roof. And just so you know, it appears that Admiral Rugoff has a freighter headed for Stanley Harbor. If you're not quick off the mark, he'll catch Spark first—in which case we will have to pay him an obscene amount of money. So, be

  'Winged Mercury,' Val, not 'some tardy cripple,' or Rugoff's fee will be assessed from your account."

  HELLO. STOVE. GOD bless you," said Shannon, swinging down through the hatch to the bottom step of the companionway, where she sat to remove her dripping foul-weather jacket. "Oh, it's so cozy down here. It is awful up there—what's this? Tea with honey! I love you, I love you, I love you."

  Shannon had found the owner's manual before they even knew they had a stove. As the wind grew colder they'd gone hunting. They discovered that Will had shipped the chimney and stowed it behind the same mahogany panels he had installed to hide the heating unit when it wasn't needed in the tropics.

  She took the mug and drank deep. "It's gorgeous up there."

  "I thought you said it was awful."

  "Well, it's cold and wet, but the rain stopped and it's so beautiful. The waves are like giant whales."

  Jim went back up with her. The wind was rising: time for another reef in the main.

  "Stars!" A pale sprinkle marked the Southern Cross, the first stars they'd seen in four days. The cloud scrim was finally breaking up. The barometer was rising. The wind was backing a little south of west and picking up, while the current they'd been butting into was definitely easing.

  Jim saw eight knots on the knot meter, and the GPS showed they were keeping most of it, traveling over the bottom at nearly seven and a half. At this rate they would clear the last hundred miles by midday tomorrow, and be off Stanley Harbor the following morning.

  He was not prepared for Shannon's reaction.

  "What's wrong?"

  "I don't want it to end."

  "Don't you think we should get home safe, as soon as we can?"

  "Yeah, but I don't want to."

  "Well, we need food and diesel."

  "We're okay on water."

  With four days of steady downpour to develop rain-catching skills, they had filled Hustle'

  s tanks to the brim, along with dozens of empty plastic bottles.

  "We've got two months of emergency rice
. And a ton of beans."

  "We'll get tired of rice and beans."

  "But we won't starve."

  "We could freeze if we run out of diesel."

  "I sounded the tank while you were sleeping. We've got about five gallons left."

  "We won't get very far on five gallons."

  "But if we just use the engine to charge the batteries, the heater doesn't burn much. And we don't have to run it all the time. And if we sail somewhere warm, we won't even need that."

  "Why don't we wait and see what we find in the Falklands? Maybe we'll find plenty of food and fuel. Then we can talk about maybe sailing home. If you really want to. Or maybe we can just fly home and come back in the future."

  "That will never happen. That's the kind of thing people talk about but don't do. Besides, what would we do with the boat? Just leave it?"

  "Store her in a yard?"

  "That sounds expensive."

  "Maybe we could anchor her at Will's friend's place."

  "Not to mention ten-thousand-mile airplane tickets back and forth. Money that could go into maintaining her instead of abandoning her."

  "You're talking about her like she's your cat."

  Shannon turned away and wrapped her arms around herself. "She has a soul. Maybe you don't feel it, but I do."

  If Jim had any doubts about the real subject of their talk, he got it later, belowdecks, when he saw Shannon seize the ceiling handholds, swing off the bed, and launch herself smoothly out of the cabin, along the corridor, and up the companionway.

  He lay there, reading descriptions of the approach to Stanley Harbor in the Sailing Directions and worrying about the inherent fragility of this rich man's toy they were sailing in: all the hundreds of parts that the sea seemed to take pleasure in wearing down.

  Just this afternoon the little foot pump that supplied seawater to the galley sink had stopped working. Maintaining the boat would be like getting nickel-and-dimed to death trying to keep an old car going—a hundred old cars. . . What if he replaced the saltwater foot pump with the freshwater foot pump? Or—better yet, much better—installed one of the extra valves in Will's plumbing box to act as a shunt between the two? Then they could use one pump to pump either fresh or salt.