He held her by the shoulders. “No. Listen. You’ll never find them just driving around the city looking. It’s hopeless. I’ll call Lonnie. He’ll have a better idea where to look for them. You stay here and be our call center.”
She hesitated. It felt like doing nothing, but she knew he was right. She had no hope of finding the girls by herself in a metropolitan area of almost half a million people.
“All right,” she said in a resigned voice.
Tom went to get the boats ready, while Sarah and Garrett went inside to call Lonnie. He was initially skeptical that he could find two girls he’d never seen before in a large city, but Garrett told him to start with Sweet Angels Escort Service and Big Margaret. Maybe Lila had some notion of going back to work. He couldn’t believe she was doing this. Perhaps Sheila was right. When girls were spoiled so young, there really was no hope for them.
He grabbed the slicker he’d left at Sarah’s and then wrote down his cell phone number for her. “I don’t think this will work once we get out of the bay. There isn’t complete coverage on this part of the coast. But I’ll check in when I can.”
He led Sarah out to the beach where Tom had positioned the two boats along with spray skirts, paddles, and life jackets. He stopped at his car long enough to pick up his Glock, stuffing the pistol into a waterproof sack.
Then they skirted up and stepped into the boats without saying much. Sarah looked worried standing on the little pebble beach. “Gar—be careful. Are you sure about this? Don’t you need more help?”
“Don’t worry,” he lied. “This is more by way of a trial run. We need to see if using the kayaks will really work as a way for us to get close. We’ll use caution if it looks like we’re dealing with too large a force. I promise.” He avoided looking at Tom and gave her a quick kiss. Then they were away into a rising mist off the bay.
Tom paddled in next to him. “Caution would be a good thing,” he said. “Too bad Lonnie’s in Halifax. We could use him. But, you know … if we get the chance to free some girls from these SOBs, we’re going to take it.”
“I know,” said Garrett. “And I think Sarah knows too. She was married to this, don’t forget.”
Tom just said, “Yep. I got it.”
It was three in the afternoon, a little more than five hours until sunset. It ought to be enough. Tom had GPS navigation equipment that should allow them to keep on course in darkness or heavy fog. And the Coast Guard officer was a good navigator. Garrett, on the other hand, was pretty rusty. It was twenty years since he’d done any serious kayaking. It wouldn’t be good to get separated from his companion.
The headland here was dotted with new German homes, most built in the last three years, their yards and boat launches still graveled scars on the landscape. It would be quite a few years before the thin maritime soil replaced the spruce that had been uprooted.
He stared at the houses grimly until he and Tom left the mainland and they fell behind. The change from the emptiness of this place when he was growing up was huge. Still, he knew a few houses didn’t change the fact that the North Atlantic could be an unforgiving place. The combination of wind, waves, and swell could quickly put a small boater at risk. Often, the three elements barreled in from completely different directions. A sudden gust could unbalance an unwary paddler. The fourth element of North Atlantic paddling was water temperature. Even in August, it hovered around fifty degrees. Twenty minutes in water that cold could incapacitate, with death close behind.
By any reasonable paradigm of caution, they ought to have backup, someone at least aware of where they were, preferably someone in Tom’s cutter, far enough behind not to scare off the smugglers, but close enough to be in radio contact. Trouble was, what they were doing was not reasonable and had not been approved by their superiors. If Tuttle had known what they were about, he would have quashed the idea. Taking on a boatload of desperate smugglers on the high seas in a couple of plastic kayaks was madness. But it was also the only way Garrett knew to get the job done.
Tom was the only Coast Guard officer for this section of coast. There would be no backup unless they got into trouble and called for it … assuming Garrett’s cell phone worked … and there was anyone close enough to be useful.
21
T
HEY SOON DEVELOPED A RHYTHM,
paddling steadily. A heavy mist hung in the air and coated their slickers, not quite rain and not quite fog. The essence of Nova Scotia weather.
Their world was gray, the sky low and filled with bulbous clouds that looked like damp, oversized cotton balls. The heavy light seemed to weigh them down, making every islet a fuzzy gray blob against a horizon line that was nearly imperceptible. Even the occasional squawking gulls seemed like gray phantoms swooping overhead. For the first hour it was quiet, almost deathly calm, with not a breath of moving air. Garrett thought they would make good time.
Then the mist turned to a light drizzle and the wind started to pick up. Soon, small whitecaps began to form, their tops whipped into little windblown waterspouts. Garrett had boated in worse conditions. Still, there was no telling how much things might deteriorate. The wind was coming at them straight on now, the rain stinging their faces. In the back of Garrett’s head a little mouse chewed away on the idea that this system could be the outskirts of the hurricane.
His breathing was becoming strained. He wasn’t in the same sort of condition Tom was for this. His lower leg ached as his prosthesis pressed against the rudder controls. There was now a sizable ocean swell. The boats rose high in the air and then descended, their noses momentarily underwater before rising again. The wind was against them, while the waves slapped at a forty-five-degree angle. He had to constantly adjust his weight and paddling force, always prepared for a sudden gust that might turn his nose sideways, exposing him to being upended in the frigid water. That was an outcome he didn’t want to contemplate. There would be little Tom could do. If he tried to come back and help, which Garrett knew he would, he risked turning over himself.
They stuck close to each island that hove into view, using them as shields against the wind. After what seemed an eternity but was probably a little over two hours, they edged into the protected shoals of Rupert’s Island, where they took their first real break. Garrett’s shoulders were on fire. There was no wind on the lee side of the island, and the rain let up. It seemed like the weather was coming in bands.
“How you doing?” Tom asked.
“Okay,” Garrett lied. “Well, a little sore. I haven’t done this in a while.”
“The best is yet to come. You sure you want to go through with this?”
He almost said no, but the image of a little girl, shot in the back and dying in his arms, stopped him. Maybe there was another girl like her out there somewhere—in the dark hold of a freighter or fishing boat, huddled, fearful, about to enter into the worst nightmare one could imagine. He and Tom were all she had between her and a living hell.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
“All right. Try not to fall too far behind me on this next section. This will be open water with no islands for protection until we reach Little Snow and Big Snow islands. There’s no turning back once we’re into it.”
Garrett just nodded, a queasy feeling in his stomach. He hadn’t eaten in a long time, and he thought of Sarah’s sandwiches, but knew he’d probably chuck anything that he ate right now.
He followed a few feet behind as they rounded Rupert’s Island and were met by the fiercest wind yet. There was at least a three-foot chop. Waves hit the rocks like artillery shells, huge plumes of spray whipping high and then disappearing into the grayness. Garrett tried to quarter into the wind. Every few minutes, the combination of a big wave striking at a strange angle and a gust of unexpected wind would send their tiny crafts reeling. Then it was only by paddling fiercely and throwing their body weight one way or the other that they managed to keep upright. Garrett could barely see Little Snow, floating in the mist, a seemingly impossible distance away.
“How far across?” he yelled to Tom.
“About four miles,” he cried back. “Little over an hour in calm water. But in this … no way to be sure. Twice as much anyway. There was some bad weather predicted but it was expected to stay far offshore. Maybe the wind will shift and help us out.”
Garrett doubted it. The law of the sea was immutable: the wind was never at your back.
There was no more talking, unless grunting was considered a form of speech. His mind went numb as he paddled with every fiber of strength he possessed. With no nearby shoreline, it was impossible to gauge if they were making any headway at all, as though they were paddling inside one of those clear plastic Santaballs, going round and round, nothing ever changing. Every now and then, another wave of weather would surge in and the rain would pelt them, as if someone had turned the Santa upside down in order to stir things up.
Though it was only six o’clock, it seemed later … and darker. Garrett couldn’t quite imagine being out here after dark. He’d often kayaked under a full moon, the islands casting strange shadows, the moon’s glow reflected beneath him. But with the sky overcast, the blackness would soon be complete. Then there’d be no forward or backward, no up or down. He wouldn’t be able to see his hand in front of his face. They’d be in limbo, like spirits floating in a world without boundaries, completely reliant on the GPS. The relentless waves would continue to blow in from every angle, but once darkness fell, he wouldn’t be able to see them, wouldn’t be able to anticipate their force or intent.
He was unable to keep up with Tom. Garrett saw him peek back once or twice to see how he was doing. But the simple act of turning to look back could unbalance even a skilled paddler. To cease paddling for even a moment risked the boat turning crosswise to the waves, a potentially disastrous outcome. Turning around to come back and help was out of the question.
Garrett fell farther and farther behind. The crossing seemed to be taking much longer than they had anticipated. His arms and shoulders had become one large aching mass, indistinguishable from each other.
Then, darkness fell. Not the gradual approach of evening one was used to; rather, it was as if someone turned out a light in a windowless room. Garrett managed to look at the luminous dial of his watch, which read only eight o’clock. The sun wouldn’t set for another thirty minutes. But he couldn’t see. The clouds must have thickened with the approaching storm to the point of allowing no light at all to penetrate.
Panic rose in his chest. What direction should he go? He could no longer see Tom or the waves and struggled desperately to keep the boat balanced against what were now a series of invisible forces, as if some demonic ogre kept pushing maliciously against his small craft. Only one constant remained. The wind. It had been directly in Garrett’s face when he last saw Tom and lined his boat up with the island. He’d have to trust it wouldn’t shift direction.
He paddled straight into the teeth of the growing gale, waves now four to seven feet, breaking across his bow and splashing against the boat skirt, sending salt spray into his face. His eyes stung from all the salt, so he had to wipe them against his sleeve constantly. Since he couldn’t see anyway, he tried keeping them shut, but that was worse, too abnormal.
His arms felt like two dead things. Blisters on both hands stung from the salt water and the constant rubbing with each turn of the paddle. God knew how much longer he could keep this up. Once his strength failed, he’d be able to do nothing but pray the boat wouldn’t flip when he turned and ran before the wind until he struck land. He knew, though, he’d be as likely to blow straight to Newfoundland as back to the coast.
Just when he decided he must have missed the island, conditions suddenly took a turn for the worse, if that were possible. The wind seemed to change direction and then ratchet up as though someone had turned on some mighty celestial wind tunnel. He was in a full-blown gale. He wondered if the hurricane had decided to swipe the province more directly than they’d anticipated. He had never experienced such wind before.
His arms were throbbing and he could do almost nothing. It was so black that paddling made little sense anyway so far as direction was concerned. He had no idea which way to go. He allowed the boat to turn till the wind was behind him, an effort that nearly swamped him. Then he ran before the blast.
At least it was less effort. He used his paddling skills now just to keep the boat straight and to balance against any rogue waves that decided to come in at an angle. He was skimming along, faster than he’d ever gone in a kayak. The little boat rose with the swell and crashed down, almost submerging into the water. It felt like the craft would come apart at the seams. Garrett prayed Tom had found safe haven somewhere. It had been madness to come out here with a storm approaching.
A wave hit him broadside and he threw himself against the side of the boat to counteract its thrust. His movement caused the spray skirt to come loose in the back. He struggled to reattach it as freezing water began to enter the boat with every wave that crested over the kayak. He needed both hands to get the spray skirt back on and was forced to stick his paddle inside the boat. This left him totally at the mercy of the wind, yet somehow he stayed afloat.
When he picked up his paddle again, the boat actually seemed steadier. The water that had gotten inside was stabilizing him, lowering the boat’s center of gravity. He didn’t want to think about what all that salt water was doing to his bionic equipment. His legs were so cold he couldn’t feel anything, not even his phantom foot.
He ran before the wind for a long time. It felt like hours, though he had no way of telling. His watch must have stopped from the salt spray, as the luminous dial no longer worked. Everything was blackness and stinging rain and cold. About the time he decided he must be halfway to Ireland and ought to be on the lookout for freighter traffic, he saw a sudden flash of light.