Dead Reckoning (14 page)

Then I turned to Sonny. “You don’t really believe in gun control now. We’d be slaves on the Horatio right now if we didn’t have guns.”

Jeff and Sonny went angrily but silently back to what they had been doing before the argument. Neither said another word for over an hour, probably replaying the argument over and over in their minds to see where they could have won.

. . .

I sat in silence for two more hours thinking about liberals and conservatives, my family, the world. I sat until long after Sonny and Jeff retired to their bunks.

Through the moonless, pitch-black sky, I heard a dull thud followed by another a few seconds later. The flying fish are back. I began to smell something strange, offensive, like rotten oranges, but I dismissed it as a random vapor in a sea teaming, inevitably, with dead stuff. Then I heard several thuds in a row—too loud to be flying fish, maybe sharks.

The sound stopped, and my thoughts returned. A few minutes later another dull thud, and another, and two more. Ok, fine. I will catch some of you guys for dinner then. I fished around in the cabinet under the wheel for the flashlight. Once in hand, I grabbed the net behind the seat. Flying fish were so mesmerized by the flashlight that all I needed to do was hold it over the net, and they would swim or jump right in. I had done it before, and they were easy pickings. We had grown tired of eating them, but it was better than eating our portable rations.

Even though it wasn’t particularly rough, I put on my harness and clipped myself onto the safety line. We made this our rule when venturing away from the helm, especially when no one else was topside. Jeff and Sonny were both sleeping, and if I had gone over the side, they likely wouldn’t have heard my screams and probably wouldn’t even know I was gone for hours. I was also careful to walk on the high, upwind side, so that if I did slip, gravity would force me toward the boat and not toward the water.

I scanned the water with the flashlight as I walked along the rail. I saw no fish, but the water was strangely murky, and the smell choked me. It smelled like low tide but, of course, that made no sense out there in the middle of the ocean. Then I saw something round and dark, bobbing in the water a few yards away. I lowered the net, but the object swept around the stern and out of sight before I could get the net on it. Buoys adrift, I guessed. As the boat advanced, it came closer and I spotted another one, further away and lighter in color. I focused on the one that was in position to be netted, and I noticed a frothing of the water around it. “Fish, screwing with a buoy?” I wondered out loud.

One came close, and as I leaned over to net it, the flashlight slipped out of my hand and rolled around on the deck. I felt the net heave as the object entered and began to fight the force of the current. I lifted the net, and it was heavy. As I gained my balance, I retrieved the flashlight and trained it on the net to see what sort of thing I had snagged. I expected to see a buoy, and so my mind failed to register what I saw immediately. My emotion changed from curious to
shocked to horrified as my brain processed the image. The mass rolled over, and the empty eye sockets,
human
eye sockets, stared back at me like a ghost, the rest of the skin on its face either missing or riddled with small, toothy pockmarks.

I jumped back, shocked and terrified. I stumbled and fell against the cabin window. My safety line tightened, and I dropped the net. I quickly flipped the net over and emptied the human remains back into the sea. I swished the net around to rinse off the residue, but another mound tried to wiggle in and soiled the net with more slime.

I gathered myself and began scanning more of the ocean. There were a lot of them. My mind scrambled to make sense of what I saw. I went back to the helm and hit the floodlight switch. It illuminated a scene of horror: hundreds of round, fleshy mounds, some attached to the remnants of bodies, some not. Some being fed on and others ignored. A few of them seemed to catch the gentle swells and ride them, like little ghastly surfers, roiling over in the whitewash of the breaking wave. The soup of humanity stretched off toward the east—toward Hawaii—or perhaps more aptly stated:
from
Hawaii. Dozens—maybe hundreds or thousands—of heads and bodies dumped in the ocean, corralled in a current, and driven here like so many willing cattle—little varmints of the sea nipping at them the whole way.

I leaned over the rail and vomited.

Unable to stand another second of the scene, I went below hoping for it to pass quickly. Thud, thud, thud they marched on. Things that go bump in the night, only real this time. With each bump a shock of adrenaline surged through me, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood erect. I sat trembling wishing for the sound to stop.

I did not wake the others, but the bumping did, eventually. I warned them not to go up to look, but they did anyway. They returned white as sheets.

An hour and thousands of bumps later, the horror stopped and the smell dissipated. No one had said a word during the carnage.

I broke the silence: “What do you think happened.”

“I saw a life ring. Some cruise line,” Sonny said.

“Sunk?” I wondered aloud.

“Or they were all murdered and thrown over,” Jeff said, looking at Sonny. “Poor cruise passengers, all unarmed and defenseless. I wonder how it might have turned out if even one of them had been armed.”

Sonny stormed up the stairs and retook the helm.

“Was that really necessary?” I asked Jeff.

“Maybe not, but it’s true.”

. . .

At some point during the night,
I awakened to the sound of thunder and pelting rain on the deck. I noticed a drastic increase in the heave of the boat. I heard the mast come around and snap into position on the opposite side of the deck as Sonny tacked. I had noticed a falling pressure and an increase in the southeasterly winds on my previous shift and passed along my suspicion of an approaching cold front to Sonny. I rolled over, satisfied that my forecast had verified and that he had handled the change properly.

I had third shift at the helm again the following day. Third shift started in the late afternoon and continued until after midnight. I awakened in the early afternoon, grabbed some water and a couple of pieces of bread—I hadn’t eaten, or been able to, since before the previous night’s gruesome discovery—and headed topside. As I emerged, I noticed that the temperature and humidity were way down. It was not cold, but definitely cooler.

“Look at that,” Jeff said, beckoning to the sky.

The sky was the strangest, most beautiful color of orange I had ever seen. Red skies at night, sailor’s delight was my first thought, even though that adage failed in the tropics since, unlike the mid-latitudes, the weather moved from east to west. The orange sky was not a weather phenomenon because, save for
the high overcast and a few fair-weather cumulus on the horizon, nothing was going on—certainly not an advancing or departing storm that would normally be associated with such a sunset. Whatever the cause, it bathed us in an eerie orange glow, as if we were looking at everything through that transparent orange film we played with as children.

“What is it?” I questioned.

“I don’t know. I hoped you would,” Jeff said.

“I think I do,” Sonny said, walking back from the bow with one hand outstretched and the other cupped around it as if cradling something precious and fragile.

We looked into his hand and saw what looked like a tiny cast off from a cigarette. Jeff and I deliberated on the clue and its meaning. Sonny said nothing.

“Is that…ash?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sonny said. He smudged the particle against his palm with his index finger, creating a small black streak that followed the lifeline in his palm.

Jeff and I sat back and looked up toward the sky. Jeff snapped upright, put his hand to his face and leaned over, attempting to clear something from his eye. A piece of ash landed on my leg. It was not hot. In fact, it felt like nothing. I flicked it off as
all sorts of dreadful thoughts flashed through my mind.

. . .

Ash fell for two days and darkened the sky, air, and ocean. If not for the wind, it likely would have amounted to many inches on the deck. On the third day, the ash storm stopped. Visibility improved to the horizon, but the ocean was slate gray and choked with sludge. There were no low clouds, in fact, no discernible clouds at any level. Nevertheless, the sky was gray—the highest, most uniform gray overcast I had ever seen. The sun shone through as a mere silhouette. It was a bit colder, and I was terrified. We all were.

. . .

We stayed below decks just in case the ash was radioactive. Jeff passed out some potassium iodide (or KI) tablets he had. We didn’t ask where he got them. They were supposed to keep radioactive crap from accumulating in our thyroid glands, as Jeff explained. We were too numb to care. We just hoped the ash wasn’t radioactive since it was all around us, and while we had closed every hatch and vent on the boat, the hull provided no protection from the radiation itself.

             
“I can’t believe this!” exclaimed Sonny, holding up a cell phone as he emerged from his berth.

             
“There was just a nuclear war, and you are worried about your cell phone coverage?” I asked sarcastically.

             
“Not the coverage, the battery.”

             
“What about it?” Jeff asked.

             
“It’s dead.”

             
“So?” Jeff and I said in unison.

             
“So, it’s brand new, and I just charged it before the lightning strike. I haven’t turned it on since.              “

             
“Whatever,” I said.             

1
2

DAY 18 AT SEA, APPROXIMATELY 560 MILES NORTH-NORTHWEST OF HONOLULU, HAWAII (DEAD-RECKONED POSITION: 23.8°N, 166.2°W)

“The existence of the sea means the existence of pirates.” –Mayan Proverb

We had taken more of an easterly course over the last several days to try to stay out of the ash. We made an educated guess as to the best course based on weather and, well, guessing. We knew this course would bring us closer to Hawaii than we liked, but when the ash became more intermittent and then stopped, we decided it had been worth it. We continued to pop KI tablets just in case.

The weather became jacket cool—an encouraging sign that we could be getting into the Kona Low. Unfortunately, there wasn’t even a silhouette of the sun in the sky any longer. It was just gone—obscured behind a veil of debris from, we hoped, an isolated nuclear exchange, rather than an all-out nuclear war. Of course, we did not know. It could have been a volcano or other natural disaster blotting out the sun, but given the world situation last we heard, we feared the worst. I felt odd hoping that the Yellowstone Super Volcano had gone off, but it was better than the alternative. Whatever the cause, the day incorporated a lot more twilight than usual, and the nights were pitch-black.

I hadn’t seen shithead in several days. I wondered if he got off and hitched a ride on one of the heads. That was certainly more his style than hanging out with us. Then I saw him, dried and still, next to the head. I picked him up and studied his eyes and wings and little violin bows.

“Seventeen days at sea,” I said. “Pretty impressive.”

I went topside and buried him at sea. I hoped he was not simply preceding us in a soon to be realized fate. Maybe he had been a she and had laid some eggs somewhere. The thought sparked a brief twinge of hope, until I realized that it was probably too cold for any flies to live.

. . .

I awoke from an evening nap to the sound of Sonny yelling topside. I rolled over to go back to sleep, but a pot clanking ever so quietly in the sink ended my chance for more sleep for the time being. Sonny’s voice came down from above once more—something about a boat. I climbed up the stairs and out onto the deck. Sonny pointed to starboard and said: “Out there.”

             
I could barely make out a boat on the horizon. The land immediately behind the boat surprised me more.

             
“There’s land,” I said.

Jeff emerged from the helm with a small sailing telescope. He extended the scope and peered through the eyepiece. “I think
it’s FFS.”

I went to the helm and studied our nautical charts. French Frigate Shoals (FFS) was one of the tiny land masses of the Leeward Hawaiian Islands. Most people were aware of the main Hawaiian Islands between the Big Island and Kauai, but few knew that the Hawaiian archipelago extended northwestward for almost two thousand miles.

              We were several miles away but decided to lower the sails to avoid being seen. Darkness would overtake us in the next hour, and we could put the sails back up. As we puttered along, we took turns watching the activity near the atoll. We were able to see the U.S. Fish and Wildlife station signs on the island, which confirmed that it was indeed FFS. While we wanted to avoid land and other people, we were glad to be able to get a firm fix on our position. We observed no activity on the island itself which wasn’t really surprising—the federal workers had probably bugged out long ago.

There were two boats sheltered in the lee of the atoll, one motored yacht and another more dilapidated looking catamaran. There were at least a half dozen people moving back and forth between the vessels and taking turns at several bottles. I watched a large dark-skinned man emerge from below decks on the yacht. He grabbed a bottle from another smaller man and took a long pull. He held his arm up, and a small flame flickered in his hand. He blew out the contents of his mouth and it erupted into a giant fireball. The man laughed. It looked like a fun party. In any other situation, we might have gone over to join them. At the very least, it was a sign that not all was wrong in the world—some people were still having a good time.

              It was sort of weird watching people go about their daily lives without any idea that they were being watched. But it had been ten days since we’d seen another person and I enjoyed the company. The yacht shifted in the current and showed us its stern. Its name was Hawaii 5 Oh!, home port: Honolulu, Hawaii.

             
I suddenly wished we didn’t have to lower the sails since it was costing us time. I didn’t need anything to remind me of Kate—hardly a minute passed without me thinking of her and the children—but watching those people having such a good time reminded me of how much she loved boating and parties. She would have loved to be there at that moment.

             
I took a turn at the helm, and Sonny took up the telescope.

             
“Oh, baby!” Sonny exclaimed. “There’s a woman. She’s topless. Looks hot.”

             
“What? It’s a little cold for that,” I said, jumping up and grabbing for scope. “Give me that back.”

             
After some begging, Sonny gave me a turn. It was hard to make out detail at that range, but as I watched the woman on the deck of the boat, it became apparent she was not just topless, but naked. The titillation was only fleeting as I got a strange feeling from the scene. I gave the scope back to Sonny. “Have at it,” I said.

             
Sonny watched for a few minutes, and then his expression changed from one of lust to one of surprise. “What the hell are they doing?”

Sonny handed me the scope. The big, dark guy held the naked woman by the hair and appeared to be yelling at her. She slapped at him, but he dodged it. He threw her down to the deck, and she buried her face in her hands.

By this time, Sonny had emerged from below with binoculars and Jeff stared through the sextant. Two other men wrestled a fourth man onto the deck. The big man grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced him to watch as he fondled the woman’s breast. The man struggled, and the woman lunged toward him. The big man kicked her in the chest, and she fell back.

Sonny was the only one who spoke. “Oh God, no,” he said calmly.

Just then, the big man pulled a gun from his waistband. He held it to the woman’s head. The other men dragged the fourth man to the edge of the deck and released him. He stood up. The big man pointed the gun at him and then back at the woman. The man jumped into the water. The big man walked over to the edge, pointed the gun toward the water, but did not fire. Suddenly the man disappeared under the surface. The big man leaned back, laughing and slapping his thighs. The woman scrambled to the rail and collapsed on it, her hands outstretched toward the water.

The two men grabbed the woman, dragged her to the bow of the boat and held her. The big man began to undo his pants.

We all lowered our instruments and stood silently. I looked at Jeff and then Sonny. Sonny looked at me and then back to Jeff. Our minds reeled. An anger rose in my stomach. I rubbed my forehead, a migraine suddenly brewing. The idiots on Wake were bad, but we made it; the heads were gruesome but abstract; the ash could have been anything; but a man being murdered and a woman being raped in our very presence was too real.

“We can’t save the world,” Jeff said, stoically.

“But we can save her!” Sonny snapped.

They both looked to me to break the tie.

My anger melted into fear and then guilt. I thought that if there were a God, it would be a great time for it to say something. I looked out over the bow at the magnificent nothing beyond and waited a second for something to happen. As usual, nothing did. I raised the telescope and peered through for a moment and then quickly lowered it in disgust. I sighed and looked at Jeff. “Would you want someone to ignore this on your account?

Jeff lowered his head and answered immediately: “No.”

“Neither would our wives or children.”

. . .

Darkness settled in from the east over the next half hour. It would be pitch black at night, so we could probably get right up to them before they saw us. We knew for sure that there were three bad guys aboard and at least one gun. We knew of only one remaining victim, but we allowed for the possibility of more. We weren’t master tacticians, so we planned to get close enough to take a full survey of the situation, but without putting ourselves in too much danger.

             
The RY engine was very quiet and when in idle emitted almost no sound. We motored to within about a hundred yards downwind of the boats. We occasionally heard laughter but hadn’t seen any activity on deck since the rape. The light from within both boats illuminated a circle of at most twenty feet. Everything beyond was vague, so we quietly motored in to the edge of the light.

             
We heard the muffled scream from within the yacht which was followed by laughter. I felt a sudden burst of pride that we didn’t sail on. At the same time, anger seethed inside me.

             
“Now what are we going to do?” I whispered.

             
Just then three of the men emerged from below—the two smaller men from earlier (we could now see that they were oriental) and a gangly black man that we hadn’t seen before. Two of the men carried another man as he sang some terribly slurred song. He made the men stop and then threw up on the deck. They loaded the man onto the adjacent catamaran and took him below.

             
The big man stumbled out onto the deck and yelled: “Where the fuck did everyone go?” He slipped on the vomit and fell and then laughed at himself. He looked Hawaiian and had a goatee and Mohawk. He weighed at least three hundred pounds—mostly muscle. His tattooed arms bulged as he lifted himself up. I didn’t like our odds if one—or even all three of us—had to fight him. He went back inside.

             
“He’s drunk as a skunk. Maybe we can take him,” Sonny said.

             
“At least one of the others is out of commission, maybe both,” Jeff replied.

             
I motioned to the back of the yacht. “We could swim over and easily get up on the back there. Will the guns still work if they get wet?”

             
“I think so,” said Jeff.

             
We decided that Jeff would stay on the RY since we might need to make a quick getaway, and he was the best at maneuvering it in tight spaces. Sonny and I would go. We couldn’t be sure that there weren’t others on board, but the element of surprise was on our side.

             
Sonny and I checked that our guns were loaded and the safeties off. We took one extra clip each and stuck it all in our pockets. We removed our shoes and slipped silently into the water. As we neared the yacht, I started shaking violently, but not from the cold. The water was still much warmer than the air. No, I was scared shitless. I swam around to the stern and lifted myself carefully onto the dive platform. Then I helped Sonny aboard.

             
Sonny pointed to his eyes and then made some hand motions. Apparently thinking that I knew what he meant, Sonny took off around one side of the boat. I went around the other.

             
I peered in the first window I came to. It was the galley, and it had been ransacked. I tiptoed further along and came to another window. My heart jumped as I saw the woman, still naked, tied to a table. She was much worse than I imagined. She had been beaten, cut up, tortured. She bled from the nose and mouth and had bruises all over. The ropes that bound her were tainted with the rusty color of dried blood where she had struggled against them. As she lay motionless, part of me hoped she was still alive, but another part of me knew that she was probably better off dead.

             
I shifted my angle and noticed the Hawaiian passed out on the couch next to the table.

             
I tiptoed around to the front of the boat and met Sonny there.

             
“What did you see?”

             
“The woman.”

             
He paused for a moment and wiped his eyes. “I swear to God if I get the chance I’m going to gut that mother fucker.”

             
I agreed.

             
“He’s passed out,” I said. “Do you think they’d hear it over there if we just went in a shot him?”

             
“Probably. I wish I had a big knife. We could easily sneak up and put it through his heart.”

             
Just then, the black and the oriental came out of the catamaran and jumped over to the yacht. We ducked, but they had seen movement. The black man stood watching while the oriental yelled the name “Spike” and raced into the yacht. Within seconds, Spike popped out on the port side, and the oriental came out on starboard. They both walked forward guns drawn. We were trapped.