by Justin Scott
The helicopter hung at mast height, fifty feet to starboard. The pilot, vaguely visible behind the Plexiglas bubble, raised a glinting object in both hands and Hardin, panicked by the suddenness with which it had appeared, braced for the shock of a bullet.
Forcing his mind to action, he leaped to his feet and waved as if asking for help. Then he saw the binoculars in the pilot’s hand and realized that the helicopter was a private aircraft, not military. His relief was short-lived. The craft circled the Swan for a closer look and he saw the company name—Aramco—on the tail. The oil companies were hunting, too.
Sickened by his helplessness, Hardin watched the pilot draw a radio mike to his mouth. Unbidden, an angry yell, a wordless no, leaped from his throat. The buzz of the hovering aircraft smothered it. Aramco would receive the message in minutes and pass it on to the Iranian Navy. How long before their high-speed attack boats were racing over the Gulf?
The water bubbled and boiled beneath the helicopter’s whirling blades. The pitch of the rotor sounds lowered abruptly. The airship tilted its transparent nose and shot away to the south. It dwindled to a small black dot and Hardin stared until it disappeared. Warm air brushed his back. He turned around and saw the reason the pilot hadn’t lingered.
A dark shadow with teeth of snowy white. The squall filled the sky from horizon to horizon; black clouds rode a milling, frothy, leaping sea. The air pressed upon his body. The heat was abruptly searing. He gasped for breath, his heart pounding. Dark streamers and ragged masses of cloud shot ahead of the squall line like thrusting lances. Vivid lightning played over its face. The next wind blast was cold. The heat dissipated magically, replaced by a gravelike chill. Overhead, the Swan’s rigging began to hum.
Hardin raced to close the main and mid hatches, dropped down the bow hatch and brought up a storm jib, which he hanked to the forestay and raised seconds ahead of the raging white line. He was halfway to the wheel when a massive gust screamed through the rigging and bellied the stormsail like a balloon. The Swan tried to turn before the wind, but the full force of the squall hit before she was about and heeled her sharply.
Hardin tumbled off the coach roof, smashed into a lifeline stanchion, and fell between the stainless steel cables. His head ringing from the impact, he wrapped his arms around the stanchion and kicked the water, seeking purchase where there was none. The mast spreaders dipped toward the lacerated swells. The wheel spun wildly, a flicker of spokes inside a blurry chrome circle.
Hardin pulled himself back through the lifelines and scrambled into the cockpit. He rescued the wheel and secured the jib sheet. The Swan righted and raced downwind, crashing from wave to trough in choppy ten-foot seas, smashing southward like a roller coaster where moments before there had been calm.
A burst of hailstones raked the deck like machine-gun fire. He bowed his head to protect his face and tried to steer a course, and he prayed that the squall would last long enough to put distance between himself and the place where the helicopter had seen him.
He had read and reread the Sailing Directions this morning. A half dozen times since dawn, trying, in the absence of charts, to make pictures from the carefully worded descriptions and warnings.
Ahead, south, was the Great Pearl Bank, a region of shoals, islands, rocks, strong tidal currents, and coral reefs. It extended over most of the great bight in the southern part of the Persian Gulf that was bordered by the Trucial Coast in the east and the Qatar Peninsula in the west.
Jazirat Hll, LEVIATHAN’s destination, lay fifty miles from Qatar on the northwestern rim of the Great Pearl Bank. The oil-loading island was almost due west of him, but the squall was driving him south.
He waited for a relatively smooth spot between the choppy seas and tried to jibe about and head west, but the waves pushed the Swan toward her lee side. Her bow swung south again and the jib slammed back with a vehemence that threatened to shred the Dacron. He tried several more times to jibe about and point west, but the seas, piling high before the northern squall winds, kept beating him south— away from Hll and toward the Pearl Bank.
“I told you he’d be in the Gulf,” Ogilvy crowed. He barked a harsh laugh and a broad smile creased his pink face. “Did they catch him?”
“I don’t know,” said the Iranian, preparing to leave. “The report was sketchy. Our ships are proceeding there. We should have him within hours.”
“Of course,” Ogilvy said sarcastically.
The Iranian commander started toward the chart room door and the elevator beyond. He paused as if to say something, then seemed to change his mind. Ogilvy watched him go. He was tempted to needle him about their argument, but he felt expansive because he had been proved so dramatically correct. On impulse, he followed the Iranian and caught up at the elevator.
“I’ll walk you to your helicopter.”
“No need,” the Iranian said stiffly.
“My pleasure. I could use a breath of fresh air.”
“It’s hot. You’ll be sorry you left your air conditioning.”
The heat hit like an open furnace as they stepped onto deck. For a moment Ogilvy reconsidered the long walk out and back, but he could hardly withdraw the courtesy, so he kept the pace slow and chatted him up, confirming, as he had suspected, that he was one of those American-trained sorts who’d been in the States for university and military training, served aboard their fleet, and now shuttled back and forth every time the Yanks invented a new weapon to sell the Shah. The Iranian fell silent as they trudged toward the helipad. Ogilvy gazed ahead, admiring the length of his great ship, thinking about Hardin. Would he be relieved, when he was captured, that it was over?
The sky ahead looked slightly clearer than it had earlier. That meant a shamal was building in the northwest. Storms today, and tomorrow the Gulf would be crystal clear. And much less humid. Thank Allah for small favors, what?
He couldn’t remember how he had stood the pre-War Gulf patrols without air conditioning. His shirt was wet and beads of perspiration streamed down his cheeks like tears. He’d bathe and get back in bed as soon as the wog was gone.
They exchanged polite good-byes and Ogilvy glanced astern while the Iranian climbed the big aircraft’s boarding stairs. The walk out was always worth the inspiring view back. LEVIATHAN’s mighty bridge structure was an awesome sight, its twin funnels marking the sky like the towers of a giant suspension bridge.
“Captain?”
“Yes?”
He looked up. The Iranian had slid open a window and thrust his head out. “The copter that spotted Hardin lost him in a squall.”
“Can I presume that you’ll catch him before we arrive tomorrow night?”
Unexpectedly, the Iranian grinned. “To be sure. You may proceed as you are.”
Ogilvy said nothing, refusing to rise to the suggestion that LEVIATHAN moved at Iranian will. The rotors began to whine into motion. Ogilvy pounded the side of the airship with his open palm. The Iranian opened the window and looked down. The blades ceased.
“What is it, Captain?”
“Tell your people to look on the Great Pearl Bank. He’ll hide among the reefs.”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Captain. It’s a good point.”
“Tell me something,” said Ogilvy, ignoring the Iranian’s anxious-to-be-off expression. “Will you hand him over to the Americans or try him yourself?” He saw himself mirrored in the Iranian’s sunglasses; the reply was chillingly oblique.
“I suppose if we knew for sure he was American, we might. Of course, we wouldn’t know if his passport were lost in the struggle, in which case we would hand him over to SAVAK.”
“SAVAK?” said Ogilvy. “It’s hardly a matter for the secret police.”
“We will take care of the problem,” replied the Iranian. “The oil producers have nothing to worry about. Nor do the shippers.”
26
The compass card skittered crazily, spinning like the dial on a fat man’s scale, but turning inexorably southward as once again
the Swan fell off the wind. The squall had driven her south for hours. South, when Hll was west. South, toward the Great Pearl Bank. South, until Hardin was lost.
Finally, regardless of the hammering seas, he tried again to come about and beat into the shrieking, howling, northwest wind. The steep-sided waves attacked her bow, staggering her, driving her back. He trimmed the storm jib and the abbreviated mainsail— reefed to the extra storm slabs sown by the Fowey sailmaker—and searched for a workable mean, a compromise between the thrust the wind gave the boat and the choppy seas it heaped in her way.
Clouds of spray lashed over the bow. Green seas broke on it, burying it to the mast. The water sizzled under a new fusillade of hail that drummed across the cabin and dropped an inch of stinging ice beads into the cockpit. Hardin’s face was slashed raw where his ragged beard didn’t protect.
Then a sharp wave slapped the starboard bow and the Swan was around, clinging to a starboard tack. For a long moment the pummeling seas held her dead still. Her stiff storm sails crackled uselessly. Hardin sheeted them out, inch by inch, until she began to gain headway.
Then he yanked her back.
The compass hung at 285—fifteen degrees north of west—and at last the Swan moved slowly forward, forward toward Hll, farther and farther from where the helicopter had found him.
He maintained the 285 course for an hour. Then the wind shifted to the northeast and he was able to steer even closer to the north. The Swan tore swiftly through a roiled cross sea, gaining the distance lost. Hardin ran up a bigger jib.
He was elated. After endless, numbing days of light airs and oppressive heat, the sloop was flying like a bird on cool winds. Setting the self-steering, he went below to check the bilges. An acceptable amount of water sloshed about. The patch was holding.
The sky seemed brighter. The Sailing Directions had noted that most Gulf storms were of short duration and this one looked as if it might be dying; the wind had eased slightly, even though the seas seemed as roiled.
A strange sound layered over the howl of the wind and the slush of breaking wave tops. It was coming from dead ahead, a soft, muttering thunder unlike a boat or a plane; it sounded like breakers, but he was at least sixty miles from the coast of Qatar and probably thirty from Jazirat Hll.
Concerned, he went forward and stood on the plunging bow, one hand wrapped around the forestay, the other shielding his eyes, from the rain and spray. He scanned the stormy murk, then belatedly snapped his safety line to the stay, angry for letting himself be so distracted. Something white showed in the gloom. His scalp prickled.
He ran for the wheel.
Two hundred yards ahead, a glistening white line split the gray water like a leer on a dirty face. The seas were breaking on a reef. He had blundered into the Great Pearl Bank.
The Swan bore down swiftly on the lethal outcropping.
His hands on the wheel, Hardin hesitated. The part he could see was the least dangerous; the rock and coral could extend underwater in any direction. He turned upwind to take way off the Swan.
If she hit at the five and a half knots the speedometer indicated, she’d rip her bottom out.
Close enough to see cracks in the coral where the water sluiced back to the sea, Hardin steered into the biggest waves to stop the Swan faster; then he lowered the main and stood on the bow, which rolled and plunged like a speared shark, and tried to fathom the extent of the reef.
On a clear day, according to the Sailing Directions, the reefs were easily discernible, but at this moment neither the dark sky nor the riled water let him see the underwater portions of the jagged rock and coral in his path.
The Swan held her head to the waves and drifted slowly astern. Hardin shivered, remembering a typically understated caution in the Sailing Directions: “It is not safe to be underway after dark when near or within the reefs.” It would be night in two hours.
He cursed himself for failing to see what the exceedingly choppy seas had meant; the steepness of the waves had shown him he had entered shoal water, but he had been blind. He shivered again. He had been on the Banks some time; he had actually come upon the reef from the south. How close had he come to grounding already?
Coral to port!
In his mind, Hardin heard a thin wail from aloft—the lookout’s alarm his father mimicked in a tale of running a square rigger through the treacherous reefs of the Tuamotu Archipelago in a South Pacific typhoon. Puckering his eyes, he could just make out, to the left, another long, low-lying shadow. As the wind blew him nearer, he scanned its contours, searching a way around.
The one ahead was disappearing as he drifted astern. He heard a new growl of breaking water, steadied himself on the pitching fore-deck, and searched for the reef. He had coral ahead and coral aport. It was either turn tail or try to claw to starboard on a close-hauled tack.
Coral astern! Again he heard his father’s reedy cry.
A small piece showed, a single wicked prong, surrounded by what looked like a gigantic rolling comber but was actually the storm seas breaking on a submerged reef that extended hundreds of feet to either side. He had sailed into a three-sided box, a coral canyon. It was a miracle he hadn’t struck bottom on the way in. And it would take a miracle to beat out against the northeast wind.
He hoisted the main again to its stormsail height and put the Swan on a port tack. The sails filled. She stopped pounding as the wind steadied her against the chaotic shallow-water chop, and began to run east out of the box.
Coral to starboard! She was yawing south. The waves were driving her to the right, shoving her toward the underwater reef. He brought her about, put her on her starboard tack, and tried to steer for open water. The wind drove him west.
Coral dead ahead! He came about again. Would the engine help? He was loath to risk the pounding the propeller shaft would give the patched crack. The wind pushed him back.
Coral astern! He changed course and tried again and again to beat against the wind, but as earlier, the seas kept driving her back. Coral to starboard! Coral to port! Coral dead ahead!
He had thought he had made it that time, when a fourth reef suddenly grinned ahead. The hell with it. He put the helm over, jibed about, and ran for the deeper water inside the coral box. Then he put her head to the wind, and tossed his heavy plow; the anchor line dropped thirty feet before it began to lie diagonally. Plenty of water here, but what was a hundred yards away?
The Swan tugged the anchor, pulling it, and the line reverberated as the steel bill bounced along the coral. He played it out farther until it gripped something and stayed put. When he was sure it would hold, he readied a spare, then noted the bearings of the reefs head and to port.
The anchor kept her bow to the waves and stabilized the plunging, pitching hull. Hardin opened some cans of fruit and fish and ate them in the cockpit, ignoring the pelting rain, one eye fixed on the reefs, waiting for the first hint that she was dragging.
The sky was brightening and the wind began to drop. The rain tapered off to a drizzle. The light got better and the waves began to subside to a post-storm swell.
With luck, the coral he had encountered was a far northerly out-cropping on the edge of the Great Pearl Bank. With luck, few shoals and patches lay between him and the deeper waters to the north. With luck.
The drizzle stopped abruptly. He went below and checked the chronometer. Less than an hour to sundown. He shouldn’t have eaten. It made him tired. He felt his weariness undermine his ability to make decisions. He saw himself too willing to ride at anchor and wait for something to happen.
It wouldn’t work that way. He’d never get out if he waited till dark. He was too close to LEVIATHAN now to blow it with a cautious move. He had to take a chance.
Locking the rudder dead center, he rerigged the jib sheets so he could control them from the foredeck. He lowered the main and hauled up the anchor. Then, bracing his legs against the pulpit rails and standing on the tip of the bow, he looked down into the water and steered the boat
with the jib.
He headed between the big northern reef he had first seen and the scattered outcroppings to the east, seeking the outlines of their underwater prongs. The water seemed opaque, then the bow would rise or a swell would flatten and he could see into it. A dark shape loomed ahead. He tightened the jib sheet. The Swan sailed around it. A shoal patch showed light sand. He guessed it was ten feet under, and sailed over it. The water deepened and he saw nothing.
Then a ridge of stone peaked almost to the surface, just below the level where the diminishing seas could break on it. He slacked the sail and the Swan wallowed to port. He guided her along the ridge, looking for an opening. It ran for three hundred yards, then vanished abruptly into the belly of the sea. He sailed over the cut and headed north.
The air was turning humid again, and the wind and waves continued to ease. But while the clouds were sifting apart, thinning, making it easier to see the reefs, a sunset glow in the haze to the west told Hardin that night was only minutes away.
A jagged barb of broken coral appeared four feet under the surface. He saw it too late, heaved on the jib sheet with aching hands, and held his breath. The Swan glided toward it, over it, frighteningly close. Her fin keel touched. Hardin gripped the stay, waiting for her to pivot on the reef and smash hard. She trembled free.
He spotted no coral for ten minutes. Was he out of the reefs? Or was he grazing over them, blind in the thickening dusk? He strained to penetrate the water. Suddenly the horizons lifted like a curtain and he could see for miles ahead.
Lights glittered in the north on oil derricks, drilling rigs, and steaming tankers beneath a canopy of clouds and gas-flare smoke. The butt of a pale, weak sun slid into the Gulf and the leaping flames of the burning gas flares cast a ruddy glow over the darkening sky.
Awed by the brilliant electric array that stretched from east to west as far as he could see, Hardin let the Swan stand into the wind, and got his binoculars from the cockpit. The lights squiggled white and yellow; his hands were shaking with exhaustion. He steadied the glasses against the forestay and focused to infinity.
