It circled low and slow, just above mast height, maybe a hundred meters away and closing — a sliding side door was open and a soldier took aim. “It’s a camera! Shit, it’s only a camera. We’re okay! Is the radio on? Are we monitoring channel sixteen?” We were, but it was silent. They could have made contact if they’d wanted. The chopper circled a couple more times. Then the soldier withdrew, the door slid shut, the tail lifted, and the aircraft sped off. “I figure it’ll be a navy cutter next. Keep her steady and on course.”
Anna tried to straighten up behind the wheel, but I could see the stress was taking its toll. I hoped her cheeks were wind burned and wet with spray and not the alternative. I needed her more than ever.
Under the cockpit with renewed vigor, I peeled more skin from my knuckles pulling cotter keys to drop a hydraulic cylinder from the steering quadrant into the compartment. Having some idea how they’d sabotaged it, I cut the wires from the hydraulic pump motor. Even with most of the system disconnected and dangling harmlessly away from the rest of the steering gear, I wasn’t taking any chances. “How could I have been so stupid?” I fumed while tying down the parts I’d removed. Of course the bastards counted on my checking the steering with the electrics off, power-on, and the autopilot was rigged to jam the steering solid.
The chart plotter confirmed we were in international waters and probably had been when the military chopper visited. The wind now came from behind and had decreased, but the waves were huge. Our brand new radar started hooting a proximity warning; a target appearing for a couple of seconds and vanishing — each appearance bringing it a little closer. A bit more of that and the dotted line on the radar was heading straight for us with significant speed.
Anna finally spotted it when both we and the target ascended simultaneously on waves. “Little boat. Looks like it’s for fishing.” She pointed off our port bow.
It didn’t change direction and continued heading straight for us. Through binoculars, I saw what looked like an open wooden rowboat, driven by an outboard, bucking through the waves. It veered at the last second, passing just meters from us and slowing. Huddled below the gunwales, hanging onto ropes to prevent being tossed overboard, were maybe two dozen African men. At the bow sat a nearly naked man cradling a sawed off shotgun. At the stern stood two others, one with a machine gun and the other manning the outboard.
I grabbed for the radio, but stopped at the sound of a couple rounds from the machine gun. The wooden boat circled behind us, dozens of dark eyes staring. The guy with the machine gun was grinning, waving a finger back and forth when a C-130 Hercules roared over the horizon barely above the wave crests. Everyone crouched as the heavy aircraft thundered over, rising to just clear the mast then pulling into a tight steeply banked circle around our boats. The people smugglers raised their guns skyward and shouted as they peeled away from Shadow and turned back on course for Gran Canaria. “So this is what they meant back there by problems with people smugglers.” I said. The radio broke its silence with a heavily accented voice asking if we needed assistance. I declined, and the Hercules continued to circle over the wooden boat, the two of them retreating behind us in a plume of exhaust reeking of jet fuel.
THIRTY-FIVE
After the encounter with the people smugglers, we saw no one. Sailing endlessly south southwest, the weather improved with each passing day. Other than a warning from Tom that we were crossing the tropical North Atlantic at the height of hurricane season, we were entirely out of touch with humanity. The radio went silent, the radar showed no targets, we saw no boats, planes, or even jet contrails. We had become entirely alone on an ocean planet.
Early on, I rigged the wind vane self-steering contraption and Shadow required attention only occasionally for minor adjustments. The heat had become stifling, the routine stultifying, and days passed into weeks as we tracked west toward the Caribbean. Nearing the end of a night shift, I watched the sun leap straight up from the horizon. I dreaded the blast of heat it would bring. Anna called up from below. “Hey choomeechka, we’ve got a message on the satellite modem!”
I’d set the system up to send automatic position reports to Tom and kind of forgotten about it. Things had been so perfectly routine that communication between us became pointless. Tom, however, noticed something about our track across the Atlantic and the weather in Africa he’d been watching. Something about it had made him uneasy and he wanted to warn us. His messages tended to be sparse, devoid of emotion and yet somehow led me to believe he worried like heck and cared deeply about us. The gist of his latest was something about waves of low pressure, depressions, thunderstorms in Cape Verdi, and sea-surface temperatures he thought were way above what was safe. I concurred on the water temperature, finding no relief from buckets of seawater we poured over ourselves in an attempt to keep heatstroke at bay.
A few days later, he sent another message. Way more urgent, saying that we’d better batten down and hang on tight. A tropical wave had become a depression, which had spawned a storm that he warned was bearing down on us. The swells coming from behind had grown dramatically but nothing we or even the wind-vane self-steering contraption couldn’t handle. Heavy black clouds scudded low overhead, and distant lightning flashed. Personally, I was thrilled at the prospect of rain and a break from the pizza-oven like temperatures.
Anna wasn’t buying my enthusiasm. “You’re sure we shouldn’t be battening down, like Tom says, instead of washing our hair?”
I’d seen the curtains of rain catching up from behind. We were in for a downpour. I was going to make the most of the free fresh water by having shampoo and conditioner ready in the cockpit.
By mid-morning, the increasing wind had exceeded the safe operations envelope for full sail. We bent our backs to the wind and, swearing and complaining, we managed to get the mainsail down. The large forward sail jammed in the furling gear. With the bow bucking and plunging, there was no hope of unjamming it. It had mostly retracted, leaving about thirty percent flying. Even so, we skimmed along at over ten knots.
Anna, frantically securing things below, retrieved Tom’s latest missive from the satellite modem and shouted. “Tom — says — her-ray-cane!”
The wind vane, its ropes and pulleys creaking and popping under the stress, was somehow still functioning. “This is a hurricane?” I shouted back, looking at the indicators and seeing the water speed an impossible fifteen knots. The wind was gusting over fifty. Shy of a hurricane, but way too much for the wind vane steering.
I disengaged the wind vane. The force almost dislocated my shoulder. “This is really not good!” What I saw around me was startling; wave tops were torn off by the wind and sent flying in streamers of foam and spray. Anna was below. I could hear her calling out but couldn’t leave the wheel. It had become frighteningly heavy. Trapped at the helm, it took all my strength to engage in a crucial tug of war with the wheel. I was learning to anticipate the waves that were accelerating the stern, plunging the bow, and trying to push Shadow broadside to the wind.
I managed a glance at the instruments. “It’s official!” I shouted, though I knew Anna couldn’t hear me. The wind speed indicator had crept up over sixty-five knots. “It’s a hurricane!” The rain had become a downpour so heavy that it was actually flattening the waves. Combined with the wind, it gave the sea a shag carpet look. Anna crawled from the companionway keeping herself tethered to some part of the boat. She knew it was serious. The shampoo and conditioner were long gone. Seeing her dragging the jacket from my offshore gear made me suddenly aware of the needles of pain the rain and spray were inflicting on my back.