Tomb of Atlantis (18 page)

“Damn, it feels like I'm wearing a pair of wet socks,” he commented.

Once again, he sat still and daydreamed, allowing his mind to move off on any tangent it desired. Staring at the duffel bag, he began to look through it as he thought about his adventure in Peru. As he relived the climb up the snowcapped mountain, his eyes became heavy and he had trouble staying awake.

He lay back for a moment and closed his eyes. Immediately, they popped back open.

“Let's not have a repeat of my last nap,” he said to himself.

He grabbed his wetsuit and moved it down along the float a couple of feet, then reposition
ed himself on it and laid back. Straightening out his legs, he moved them over so they just rested on the forward bar of the outrigger that extended from the float.

“Well, it's not very comfortable, but at least I'm a bit more stable. Should be able to nap without falling off, anyway,”
he said to himself.

With his calves resting on the bar, he folded his arms over his face to shield it from the sun and closed his eyes. Listening to the soothing waves lap the sides of the float, he nodded off as his boredom slowly drained his strength.

Suddenly,
he sprang to a seated position. He reached up to touch his face, but couldn't feel his hands. They felt like they were missing. Holding them out in front of him, he tried to move his fingers, but they were asleep. With his arms held over his head while he rested, the circulation slowed and he lost all feeling in both hands.

Still disoriented from his restless sleep,
he noticed something scary. The float no longer sat proud above the water. It was now very low and appeared to be sinking. Quickly, he shuffled forward and tried to open the duffel bag. With his hands still asleep and useless, he fumbled with the zipper only to realize he couldn't open it. 

Jack was scared. He needed to get his pump out of the duffel bag but with both hands having lost all feeling, he had no choice but to sit and wait for the feeling to return. As he sat and stared at the water slowly climbing the side of the float, he could see it was just inches from washing over the top of the platform. In desperation, he tried to wake his hands by slamming them on his legs. Over and over, he slapped them hard and as the feeling began to return, he heard something.

Cocking his head, he listened for a moment. Quickly he spun his head around and listened again.

“Damn, is that a plane?” he said out loud, unsure what he had just heard.

He frantically looked around him, his head darting from side to side. He stopped for moment and sat perfectly still. With all his focus trained on his sense of hearing, he cocked his head in the direction of anything he perceived to be sound. Aside from the wind, waves, and his own breathing, he heard nothing.

Suddenly, he heard it again—a low rumble that lasted only a second. He cocked his head once more in the sound’s direction. Softly, intermittently, he began to hear something.

Jack quickly turned, rotating his body one hundred eighty degrees around to the opposite side of the float. Scanning the horizon, he looked for any movement. As the sound grew louder, it changed from intermittent to a steady, low hum.

His
heart began to pound. This was it. This was his rescue. He focused on the sound, squinting into the sunlight. Shielding his vision with his still numb hands, he caught a distant speck out of the corner of his eye. Like radar, he zeroed in on the sight and sound.

"It’s a plane!"
he yelled out loud.

He spun back around and shuffled over to the duffel bag. Quickly, he tried to grasp the zipper on the bag, but it was no use...  his hands were now painful and tingly as the circulation began to return. With the sound growing louder and more distinct, Jack became desperate and more determined. As painful as they felt, he began to pound his hands into his legs once again.

He turned his head. He could now see the plane clearly. Low on the horizon, but growing larger by the second, he felt his chance slipping away from him. He bent forward and tried to grab the zipper with his teeth. Small and buried under the zipper flap, his teeth couldn’t find a purchase.

"Dammit!"
he yelled.

Running out of time and options, he turned and waved his painful hands in the air in one last desperate attempt to signal the plane. Horror swept over him as he watched the path of the plane travel far to the south of him. Quickly he turned back around and made one last attempt at the zipper.

Never before had any part of his body fallen that far asleep. His hands felt like he had just grabbed a thousand pins; the pain was excruciating. Trying to ignore the torturous pain, he was able to pry the zipper out from under the flap that protected it. Bending over once more, he clasped the zipper in his teeth and pulled hard while pushing the bag away with his hands. Now partially open, he reached in and worked the first aid kit out of the bag and onto his lap.

With the feeling returning, he opened the kit and found the mirror. His hands were still in agony but now functional. Pushing the mirror out from its compartment, he grabbed it, closed the kit, and stuffed it back into the duffel bag.

Turning toward the now departing plane, he angled the mirror directly at it and began to rock it in all directions, hoping the sun’s rays would reflect off it enough to catch the rescuer’s attention.

Jack's attempt failed. As quickly as the plane appeared, it disappeared from his field of vision, its sound quickly dissipating into deafening quiet. For that moment, all of
his hope vanished. He felt broken and defeated.

Instantly,
his sorrow turned to shock and fear. He felt water creeping up his legs as his only hope for survival was now slowly sinking. Quickly, he threw the mirror back into the duffel bag, pulled out the bilge pump and rolled off the float into the water.

Acting on pure instinct and adrenaline, he swam to the bilge cover, unscrewed the cap, and quickly shoved the pump into the hole. With one hand on the base of the pump to hold it in position and his feet kicking wildly to stay afloat, he began to actuate the lever, pumping out a quart of water from the float with each levered action.

Frantically, he pumped away, ensuring he got the maximum amount of travel out of the lever. Alternating between pump and float, he watched the water line for any reversal of the sinking. For only a moment, he watched as the top platform dip below the surface, then quickly spring back out as the water inside the float was now displaced by air.

Pumping life back into
his makeshift raft, he breathed a sigh of relief. He had caught the sinking in time, but now realized he would need to monitor the water at all times and that included the night time hours.

Jack's mind instantly snapped back to his failed rescue.

"Shit! They're gone!" he realized in despair. "I really
am
going to be here overnight. Oh, no!" he continued, his body now wracked with fear and anxiety.

As the float rose above the waterline,
he immediately hopped back up on top and continued pumping. He scanned the water for movement and felt a small sense of relief at seeing nothing but tiny particles.

"Well, maybe that barra
cuda really was just a fluke," he speculated.

As the float reached its maximum height above the water, Jack noted the time: five twenty.

"Ok, so the float fills up about every seven to eight hours or so. If I pump every six hours, I should be ok," he planned.

Stowing the pump, he took out his water bottle and drank a large slug of the warm, but refreshing liquid. He looked at the level left in the bottle and made a mental note to start conserving.

"Man, I'll be glad when this is all over," he said aloud, confident of his rescue.

Jack scanned the horizon in sadness. He began to think about his parents once more and what they would be feeling. With the ocean all around him, he thought about his youth and his family’s vacations at the beach. The more he stared and reminisced, the more he felt mentally drained. Soon,
his eyelids grew too heavy and overcame his strength. Positioning himself for a rest, he lay on his back and extended his legs over the pipe that created the outrigger. Unlike his previous nap, he laid his hands at his sides and tucked his thumbs into his swim trunks. He would not be losing his feeling in his hands this time.

With the evening sunshine far less intense, his unshielded eyes enjoyed the comforting warmth of the rays and sent him fast asleep. Far off on the horizon, while Jack's mind entered pleasant dreams, a small white ship sailed on by, quiet and undetected.

----- ----- ----- -----

From the bridge of the Coast Guard patrol cutter, USCGS
Fitzgerald
, the crew scanned their own horizon for a missing float plane. Far from the originally reported landing zone, they searched the far reaches of the ocean's current, calculating and predicting the extent of the plane’s possible drift. Donning their binoculars, the crew made large sweeps of the area, hoping to catch a glimpse of anything suspicious. With Jack creating such a low profile in the water, the crew simply could not see him as they sailed five miles away. Slipping detection, the crew continued their search for him as they headed back toward Turk's and Caicos Island.

----- ----- ----- -----

Jack's eyes popped open and he sat upright, stretching through his discomfort. Although he had the padding from his wet suit to help soften the hard aluminum platform, the thin neoprene rubber was barely effective.

He
looked at his watch and noticed the time: Eight forty.

Looking out over the distant horizon, he watched the brilliant orange sun cast its long reach across the water just before it turned in for the evening.

“Wow, this is probably the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen,” he said to himself.

He watched for a short time, admiring the array of colors that painted the sky as well as the sea. With the day’s light nearly gone, he decided to take advantage of what little light was left.

Sliding forward, he unzipped his duffel bag and pulled out the bilge pump. In less than five minutes time, he had pumped out all the water from the float and stowed it back in the bag.

After spending the entire day exposed to the sun,
his thirst was extreme. His mouth was dry and he felt somewhat weak. He desperately needed water, but knew his supply was limited. He reached into the bag and pulled out his water bottle. Unscrewing the top, he placed it to his lips and slowly took a small sip. So as not to succumb to temptation, he replaced the cap and returned the bottle to the duffel bag.

He sat for a moment and sloshed the water around in his mouth, savoring the feel of moisture.
He threw his head back and gargled. Satisfied he had pulled enough comfort from the small amount of water, he finally swallowed.

“Ahhh... Refreshing,” he said, facetiously to himself.

EARLIER
:

Moses checked the time: noon. Four hours before, he arrived at the airport for his daily routine of running the FBO. As the time approached ten, he began to look out the window for Jack’s plane. By noon, with Jack now two hours overdue, Moses stood outside the FBO and anxiously scanned the skies above. Every sound of a plane caught his attention. With binoculars in hand, he ruled out each plane that approached. By one
-o’clock, fearing the worst, he called the local authorities and reported Jack missing.

To Moses, the ten minutes on the phone with the Coast Guard felt like days. Relaying all the pertinent information seemed to take forever and Moses was getting visibly angry. Having collected the data, the Coast Guard dispatcher hung up the phone and within fifteen minutes, the USCGC
Fitzgerald
was underway from the southern tip of Key West, sailing southeast toward Jack's location. In addition to the patrol cutter, within a half hour after the initial report, an HC-130H Hercules reconnaissance and patrol aircraft departed Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater in Clearwater, Florida.

Moses sat in his chair and stared out the window. He began to feel the same feelings of desperation he experienced when he lost his son nearly thirty years before. With the authorities alerted, all he could think to do was wait. Time was his enemy as his mind visualized the worst.