The Drift

by Chris Thrall

  All day and night Mother Nature ran her course, testing a resolve that waned by the second. Howling gusts slammed sheeting rain and spray against the irrelevant orange pod, as deafening as a fusillade of machine guns in the thirty-foot swell.

  Clinging to the webbing strap, Hans did not know what was worse – anticipating the thunder of the next roller to bury them, or the chaos ensuing when it did. He desperately worried the raft’s adhesive would split and its seams come apart. Should that happen they stood no chance without survival suits and life jackets. If the surface spray didn’t suffocate them, the resulting fatigue, combined with eventual hypothermia, would dull the will to live in no time at all, leaving apathy and indifference in its place.

  Often the sets hit in close succession, seeing Hans fight for their lives as he redistributed his weight, bailed out the raft and reassured Jessica. Other times minutes would pass, the action exchanged for growing dread as he contemplated the enormity of their situation. Never did he allow himself to consider the storm might be abating – it was too much of a blow to morale when the next monster reared its unwelcome head and attempted to devour them.

  A random wave broke under the raft, flipping it up on its edge and leaving them suspended in purgatory, until the drogue line tightened and yanked the inflatable back down. It seemed no matter what the conditions threw at the faithful craft, it buoyed triumphant every time. Only now did Hans yield to a glimmer of optimism, one burning brighter as dawn’s long-awaited fingers clawed across the saturnine sky. Truly biblical, a gemstone sparkled through the dissipating cloud bank, unfurling a citrine carpet across the ocean toward them. Tumult morphed into calm as hope replaced fear.

  - 61 -

  As the growing morning warmth massaged his exhausted soul, Hans resisted the urge to lie down on his sodden sleeping bag, a luxury that would come later. From here on in every second counted. He needed to make a plan and take action. He had to think laterally, maximizing the potential of their equipment and supplies and exploiting all the environment had to offer. That way they might just live through this nightmare. Soon Hans would start a log – dates, times, conditions, position and drift of the raft – something to at least give the illusion of control rather than relinquish all influence to the sea’s wet grip.

  He hung the bedding out to dry and began the monotonous chore of bailing out their waterlogged home. Each time he lifted an arm, a searing pain spread from his temple to his jaw. Jessica lay asleep on the equipment bag. Even considering the traumatic events, Hans could see she was not herself.

  He winced.

  Figuring they were thirty days from the shipping lines – perhaps twenty-five if the breeze kept up – he pulled in the drogue chute to hasten their progress, folding it neatly and stowing it in its designated mesh holder ready for immediate deployment. Beneath the raft were four ballast pockets that automatically filled with water to give the raft stability. They certainly served their purpose in last night’s storm, but now Hans wished there was some way to collapse them, reducing the drag and seeing them skim across the sea toward rescue.

  Taking a seventy-foot length of cord, he tied one end to Future’s horseshoe buoy, one of the items salvaged when the yacht went down, and the other to the external handline. It acted as a man-overboard measure should either of them become separated from the raft, and as the orange life preserver dragged across the sea’s surface, its bow wave created a disturbance, increasing their visibility to search-and-rescue aircraft. A ninetieth of a nautical mile between raft and buoy meant Hans was able to record the time it took for a piece of weed or other flotsam to travel the distance and work out their speed.

  Next he contemplated their rations, making rough mental calculations as he did. If he could get by on half a pint of water a day and Jessica a third, the eighteen pints on board would last them twenty-four days – not long enough to reach the shipping lanes. With luck they might be able to supplement their meager intake, even build up a reserve, using the solar still and any rain they could collect.

  Luck?

  Reflecting on events, Hans allowed himself a moment of self-pity.

  Food he was not too worried about, although kicking himself for assuming he would simply grab the emergency box should the yacht go down. Stocked with cans of meat, fish and soups, water and other vital supplies, it would have guaranteed their survival as long as the raft held out.

  Tinned fish?

  Although far from judging eyes, Hans felt foolish for packing the one fare that now swam beneath them in abundance.

  Something that did go in their favor was Hans’ knowledge of survival, as all SEALs passed through the navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school during training. One of his often-told anecdotes was of an exercise he underwent as a young frogman. In pairs, and wearing blindfolds, they had been bundled onto the back of a truck and dropped off a hundred miles from camp, their mission – with no money, map or food – to make it back in the fastest time possible. Standing there in the dark on a dirt track in the back of beyond, Hans looked at his buddy and knew immediately they had the same idea – scrambling up the vehicle’s tarpaulin to stow away on the roof. As the truck neared the camp on the return journey, they dived off and rolled into the bushes on the side of the road, spending the evening in their local bar, beer and food on the house, before strolling back into base, fighting the urge to smile, early the next morning.

  Hans’ love and thirst for adventure began at a young age. An introverted kid, he was never happier than having his nose in a book loaned from the town library, most often a Willard Price novel detailing the escapades of Long Island teenagers Hal and Roger, whose father, a respected animal collector, sent them on exciting missions around the world in search of exotic species for his zoo. Amazon Adventure, Africa Adventure, Underwater Adventure, South Sea Adventure – the list went on, and Hans could not soak up the storylines fast enough.

  For Hans’ tenth birthday his grandfather presented him with a book titled The Kon-Tiki Expedition, the story of how in 1947 five Scandinavians under the leadership of Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the Pacific Ocean on a balsawood raft to prove a theory that settlers drifting across the sea from South America inhabited Polynesia. Kon-Tiki, named after the Inca sun king, proved a resounding success, the men able to collect a plentiful supply of rainwater and catch enough fish to supplement their fresh provisions of coconuts, sweet potatoes and fruit and see their dried rations redundant. During the crossing an ecosystem flourished beneath the raft attracting larger marine life, the men feasting on all manner of sea fare, including sharks they hauled on board and flying fish that bombarded their bamboo cabin at night. After her hundred and one days at sea, having crossed four thousand miles of ocean, huge breakers smashed Kon-Tiki onto a reef surrounding the Raroia atoll in the Tuamotu Islands, the crew making it safely ashore.

  However, in Hans’ opinion the ultimate story of endurance adrift had to be that of Poon Lim, who in 1942 worked as a steward on the British merchant ship SS Ben Lomond. A German U-boat sunk the cargo carrier en route from Cape Town to Suriname, seven hundred miles east of the Amazon. Lim grabbed his life jacket and jumped overboard, just in time to hear the ship’s boilers explode. After several hours in the sea he located a wooden life raft, crawling aboard to find it stocked with the bare minimum of supplies – a few cans of crackers, a forty-liter jar of water, some flares and a flashlight. When food and water ran out, Lim took to catching raindrops in his life jacket, making fishing hooks out of the metal springs in the flashlight and nails from the raft’s wooden decking, and tying them to a line braided using fibers plucked from the raft’s hemp painter. With a knife fashioned from a sliver of can, he was able to slice up the fish he caught and hang the excess meat out to dry. When rain failed to materialize, he sucked blood from birds he snared and gorged on the juicy livers of hand-caught sharks. Finally, after Lim’s one hundred and thirty-three days at sea, Brazilian fishermen picked him up, forty pounds lighter, just a f
ew miles from land.

  If there was one lesson Hans learned from reading these accounts, it was that the will to live and human resourcefulness far supersede available equipment and supplies, and if he kept the faith, Mother Nature would provide – though none of his heroes had a three-inch gash in their head to contend with.

  Careful not to wake Jessica, Hans took the yellow Poly Bottle from the equipment bag and unscrewed its chunky red lid. Inside were six parachute flares, two handheld flares and a smoke flare. He added the signaling mirror and whistle and stored the container in a webbing pocket alongside the drogue chute and strobe light, ready to grab at a moment’s notice.

  The radar reflector consisted of flat-packed aluminum fins that slotted together to form an octahedron and sat on a mount that came in three interconnecting fiberglass sections like a fishing pole. When assembled, it looked like a prop from a Flash Gordon movie. With no practical way of securing the pole to the raft, Hans lashed the reflector itself to the outside of the canopy using a length of cord, which he looped through two of the utility ties stitched to the orange fabric. He did not hold out much hope. Future had a similar device at its masthead. Even at that height it proved ineffective more often than not.

  Taking up a pen and notepad, he began a log. On the cover he wrote the name of the yacht, their personal details and a contact number and email address for his brother in the States. Should the worst case unfold, at least their bodies would be identifiable . . . if the raft stayed afloat.

  Inside he recorded dates and a summary of events.

  Day 1. Collided with foreign object (cargo container, whale?) Time: 1831 hrs. Approximate position: 16° 18’ N, 25° 36’ W. Both crew evacuated to life raft. Captain sustained severe contusion to side of the face. EPIRB and radio not on board. 7 days’ food. 24 days’ water.

  Day 2. Battered by storm day and night. Raft flooded. Bailed and drogue streamed. Desperately need sleep. Captain’s facial contusion likely to become infected. Jessica appears healthy but withdrawn. No sign of rescue craft. Morale OK. 6 days’ food. 23 days’ water.

  Hans ripped a page from the rear of the notepad, screwed it into a ball and soaked it in seawater. On his wrist was a Rolex Oyster diving watch, a present to himself after his first combat mission in the military. Now he used it to time how long the paper took to travel the length of the man-overboard line and reach the horseshoe float seventy feet away – forty-five seconds to cover one-ninetieth of a nautical mile, which meant they were drifting at half a knot and had covered approximately twenty-four miles. He divided off the previous day’s tally and logged both distances accordingly.

  Only now did Hans feel he could rest. Pangs of hunger and thirst racked his overtired self, but he resisted the urge to eat and drink, figuring if they fasted for forty-eight hours their stomachs would shrink and their bodies get used to fluid deprivation. He knew Jessica would understand. She still lay motionless on the equipment bag.

  She’s a good kid.

  After making sure the sleeping bags were secure, Hans left them drying in the sun. Curled up against the tubes, he drifted into fractured sleep and a repeating nightmare. He dreamt he was clad in combat gear on a chopper with Jessica. They were heading to an island to rescue Penny, who lay sunbathing on the beach with his late wife. Every time they drew close to the shore, Jessica fell out of the door and plummeted into the ocean. He would jump to her rescue, the vision flicking to them being in a life raft and the helicopter returning but flying right past.

  Wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp . . .

  Hans awoke feeling confused. Having dreamt of a helicopter, he could now hear one. It took him a few seconds to put the pieces together. Search and rescue!

  Wrenching the Poly Bottle from the webbing pocket, hands shaking, Hans unscrewed the lid and took out a parachute flare. The noise of the chopper grew louder, until it passed directly overhead. As he struggled with the zippers, the infamous command wielded by military instructors the world over came into his head.

  Move your fingers!

  He fought to stay calm.

  “Are you going to leave me?”

  “No.”

  “You left them.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “And you left her.”

  Hans peeled back the door. His spirit plummeted.

  Dark-gray cloud blotted out the sky, the ceiling so low it would take a miracle for the aircraft to spot them. The sound of rotor blades drew nearer once more . . . and gradually faded away.

  - 62 -

  Ahmed sat upright, legs astride his mattress, staring at the lamplight dancing on the hessian and listening to the Grower and his piratical flunkies partying late into the night. He felt disenchanted and depressed but forced himself to contemplate their options, dismissing all but the most drastic one – entering the farmhouse while the men slept, shooting them dead with Naseem’s shotgun and likewise the guard on the boat.

  The guffaws quietened and grew further apart, eventually ceasing as the cocktail of booze and hashish induced slumber. Ahmed pumped up their small brass kerosene burner and made coffee. Sitting back down, he sipped his hot, sweet drink, willing the pick-me-up to give him the answer.

  There had to be a way.

  There was always a way.

  . . . and there it was!

  “Brother, get up!”

  By the time Mohamed woke, Ahmed had their savings out from under the floorboards. “We go!”

  “Wha—?”

  “Don’t ask. Just get yourself ready.”

  He lifted the door latch.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where do you think?”

  Mohamed recognized the look in Ahmed’s eyes. “Me too.”

  He whipped out his blade, and Ahmed knew it was pointless arguing.

  They left the hut and crossed the yard. Music played in the farmhouse, covering the sound of their footsteps. Light shone from the window, Ahmed figuring the men had been too drunk to extinguish the lamps. He peeked around the frame to see Al Mohzerer sprawled in a chair, his guests comatose on the floor amidst empty bottles and a hookah pipe.

  “Okay, wait here.”

  Ahmed eased open the solid wooden door and slipped inside, the stench of unwashed bodies and liquor fumes taking him back to the sewer. The bandits snored like swine, but Al Mohzerer looked as if he might wake at any moment, the wicked scar giving the impression he was grinning in his sleep. It was easy to see why he was so bitter. With yellowing paint peeling from the damp walls and the furniture sparse and shabby, it was not what you would expect of a man once revered as the biggest drug producer in the land.

  Worried the floorboards would creak, Ahmed stepped onto the rug, its weave, faded and threadbare, offering little cushioning for his carefully placed feet. He crouched at the burnt-out fireplace, grabbed a handful of charcoal and dropped it inside his T-shirt. The music came from a cheap cassette player sat on an oak dresser at the far end of the room. Ahmed stepped over the prone figures and began searching through the drawers for the keys to the pickup.

  Damn! They had to be somewhere.

  He looked at Naseem, wondering if they were in his djellaba. The thought of going near the man filled him with dread, but with a nervous check of his knife, he tiptoed over and dipped his fingers into the Grower’s chest pocket.

  “Urrh!” Naseem shifted position.

  Ahmed froze. Seconds passed, but when Naseem snoozed on, his facial expression unchanging, Ahmed threw caution to the wind and slipped his hand all the way in.

  Bingo!

  His fingers made contact with cold metal. Pinching it between thumb and forefinger, he withdrew his hand . . . to find a gold watch with “Cartier” printed on its face in tiny black letters. He shoved it in his jeans and went back to the search, breathing an inner sigh of relief when he pulled out the keys.

  His body trembling and mind on autopilot, Ahmed turned to creep out of the room, not realizing someone stood behind him with a shotgun.

&
nbsp; “Uh!”

  “Peeow-peeow!” Mohamed grinned.

  “Fool!” Ahmed whispered, his body returning to earth.

  - 63 -

  The patter of rain replaced the thump of the chopper, the sky growing darker still. Hans leaned out of the doorway, flare in hand, wired on adrenaline and denial. Anticipating the chopper’s return, he craned for an age, until the prospect of a wet sleeping bag forced him to accept the awful truth: it was not coming back.

  The canopy’s emergency light cast an ever more feeble glow around the miserable damp cave. Lying on his back, Hans stared up at the flickering bulb as it sapped the remaining life from the battery pack. It was tempting to wallow in despair. Often the occupants of life rafts died within a few days of abandoning ship, even before their supplies ran out, losing either their minds or the will to live.

  Shaking himself, Hans set about collecting rainwater, Jessica’s welfare foremost in his mind. Leaning over the canopy, he untied the cord securing the radar reflector and then removed its horizontal stabilizing plates. The remaining fins now formed an X-shape like the tail fin of a bomb.

  Hans rammed the device into the observation port to act as a gutter, channeling the lifesaving drops into its drooping neck. Inside the raft, he tucked the Disney mug into the webbing pocket below the opening and trailed the drawstring down into it. As Hans explained the process, Jessica watched, looking mesmerized.

  After a few minutes the drawstring started to glisten, and a puddle accumulated in the mug. Within half an hour droplets were spiraling down and the reservoir deepening. Hans giggled at first, until the stress of previous days evaporated into whoops of joy. “We’ve done it!”