“Mr. Purdue! Mr. Purdue, there’s something wrong. Look!” Peter shouted with great urgency, trying not to present the panic he truly experienced. Purdue’s tall, lean body hurried closer, shading his eyes from the sunrays to better evaluate the emergency. Screams came from the women on deck and faintly Purdue heard Amelie reiterate, “I can’t swim! Oh God, what if they fly into us?”
“The boat will explode with the helicopter, woman,” the mechanic growled as he scuttled with Jeff to gather the life jackets and retrieved the Panic Bag. “So either you suck it up and put this on, or you die in a blazing propane inferno. You choose.”
“Hey, go easy,” Jeff told him as he went to help Amelie get her lifejacket on.
Out of the beautiful blue sky, the approaching helicopter careened madly, diving at an alarming speed.
“Collision is inevitable,” Purdue said loudly as he kept his eyes on the tumbling aircraft. “Sam, you have to jump. Sam, I hope you have the good sense to jump.”
“Mr. Purdue, I hate to throw orders at you,” Captain Solis said, clasping his hand firmly on Purdue’s shoulder, “but you have to come with us now! Now!”
Lamenting his friend’s fate, Purdue reluctantly ran to the back of the yacht with the others to get his life jacket on. He fumbled through his hard cases and grabbed a plastic, waterproof trunk he could not leave without.
“Launch the raft! Launch the raft!” the skipper commanded, keeping his voice stern and devoid of the fear he felt. He pushed everyone ahead of himself before boarding. “Alright, cut the painters!”
They took too long to manage viable distance between the doomed vessel and their escape raft. Suddenly, the clap of a furious rotor blade connected with the boom first, and moments later obliterated the stern hull panels. The nose of the helicopter penetrated the starboard cabin and hull, driving through the obscenely expensive vessel like a scalpel. A hellish scream ensued from the seizing engine as the collision ripped it free of the assemblage. It was a death rattle, the prelude to an unholy charge of fire that instantly ruptured the entire vessel and sent its innards hurling.
The mechanic didn’t see the shrapnel of steel and bolts speeding towards him. On impact of the two crafts he was already dead. A split second passed between the explosion and the flying steel, giving him no time to avert catastrophe. Amelie screamed as the man’s blood drenched her and Peter, but they didn’t count on the aftermath of the tragedy. From the combustion of the engines, the fire and debris ripped through the rescue raft, leaving them all to the mercy of the water.
Amelie shrieked madly, against the advice of the others.
“Keep still, Amelie!” Hannah cried. “You’re going to drown if you don’t calm down.”
“Amelie, hang on,” Jeff said. “I’m coming to get you, alright? But you have to relax!”
He paddled toward her, his own face scarred by second-degree burns from the explosion. Purdue watched in disbelief as his crew wept and wailed from the accident, all injured. Most of all he was deeply devastated by Sam’s lot, and in such a brutal manner as well. He didn’t want to cry. It was the farthest thing from who he was, but he could not help it. Purdue could not help but feel responsible for the lives of the people who had already perished for his endeavors.
The raft was askew in the frail support of the water’s surface. Hannah looked at Purdue from where she was treading water. “He’s dead too, Mr. Purdue.”
“W-w-ho?” Purdue forced.
“Captain Solis. That piston went right through his chest plate,” she reported coldly, too shocked to emote. “He just made a hiccup next to me and then sank away with a hole in his chest.”
The hysterical stewardess tempted her own fate, clawing at Jeff with such fury that she came out of her life jacket. He tried to hold her up, while attempting desperately to retrieve her vest. Every time Jeff’s fingertips touched the bobbing jacket, the current would spirit it away in a spiteful waltz. Determined as he was, he couldn’t sustain the flailing Amelie much longer, not with her frantic movements, cries, and weight bearing on him. Instead of chasing the floating vest, he elected to pursue a fragment of the helicopter that had drifted nearer to them. This he managed to get hold of with a weary arm, and with much labor he brought it closer for Amelie to use as a buoyant haven. “Hold on to this, okay? You’ll be fine.” But she was hysterical, repetitively screaming that she could not swim.
An alien sensation took hold of Purdue, one he had not felt more than three times during his entire life. Hopelessness. Looking at the shattered machinery, the black smoke, and the strewn debris splattered with blood, he was witnessing a disaster he had no control over, a catastrophe he could not reverse. His eyes were lined red, wet for his sorrow where he dangled from a chunk of fiberglass that used to be part of his brand new yacht. As he surveyed the disaster, money was the last concern he felt for the destruction of his latest purchase.
Hannah had been about to tell him all the grand old tales of secret battles before it all went to shit, and Amelie had been flirting with him before she became a heap of shrieking panic. Peter was silent. He was looking past Purdue, remaining still as best he could. Maybe he dealt with shock in a different way. They were all hurt, some worse than others. Besides the mechanic’s unfortunate departure and the skipper suffering a similar fate, Peter had a few broken ribs and a broken nose. Jeff’s face was burned badly and his bald head had been left a molten mess. Purdue himself had a dislocated shoulder and whiplash from the leap to the rescue raft just before the explosion.
Jeff was losing his fight against the downward current coupled with Amelie’s fearful grasps. He was holding on to the orange sheet of helicopter debris he’d acquired for both of them to stay afloat, but Purdue could see the diver’s arms were numb. Slowly but surely he began to dip beneath the lapping swells in his failure to paddle. The intense effort he’d been putting into saving the stewardess had taken its toll, rendering his muscular arms leaden and powerless.
“Wait, Jeff, I’m coming to you,” Purdue said suddenly as he noticed the rapid decline of the diver’s abilities.
“No, I’m okay, sir,” Jeff assured through gulps of water.
“Nonsense,” Purdue replied, trying to sound hopeful. His long body slipped into the water to come to Jeff’s aid, but swimming with one functional arm was proving to be too much. “I’m coming, Jeff. Just give me some time to get there,” he persisted as he figured out a way to bind his injured arm in order to swim. But when he looked up Jeff was gone.
“Jeff?” Amelie called. “Oh my God, Jeff!”
Peter looked upset, but he remained quiet. The wreckage was still burning in full force behind them, but Peter could see past the flames and billows of black rising from it.
“Mr. Purdue,” he said, but his voice was weak in the hiss of the waves and the Amelie’s cries and Purdue could not hear him at first. “Mr. Purdue!” he attempted a second time, this time getting his employer’s attention.
“Yes, Peter,” Purdue called back at him over the mounting swells that became colder and darker as the sun neglected the sky, which was quickly falling under the blanket of dusk. The crewman pointed to a point beyond the wall of fire. While they observed the large dark shadow approaching on the other side of the fire, another dark shadow meandered toward them from under the water. Covered in the mechanic’s blood, Amelie’s wild thrusting and kicking was luring the inevitable into their midst. Hannah saw it briefly from her vigil on top of the damages raft, but it was too late.