It was distant and disappeared at once. But he stared at where it had been until he saw it again. There was a quick flash and movement and then it was gone again. He knew at once what it was. Lighthouse Point. He was far out to sea, then, blowing away from the mainland. He strained to see the light again. It was his one chance. If he missed the little island that held the lighthouse, he knew there was nothing but open ocean until the British Isles.
He began to focus on the light, learning its rhythm, adjusting his course each time it appeared. It was difficult to keep on the trajectory he wanted. Even though the light gave a sure beacon, the wind was pushing him away from it. At some point he would have to paddle against the wind in order to hit his objective. For now, he continued to try to quarter his boat against the wind behind him.
For every hundred yards he flew before the blast, he inched his craft a few yards nearer to the light. It was going to be close.
Then he could see the lighthouse itself, almost a hundred feet tall, surrounded by a rocky shore. Waves smashed against the rocks, causing huge sprays of white foam that reflected the light momentarily, then disappeared until the revolving pulse returned. The island loomed suddenly closer. He was moving so quickly before the wind that it was going to be on him faster than he expected.
There was no more time to go with the wind. Now, he had to fight directly into the teeth of the gale. He paddled till his shoulders felt like they were ripping apart, the sinews of muscle ready to leap out of his skin. Still, he was losing the battle. He could see he wouldn’t come closer than a hundred yards from the end of the island before the wind carried him off into the night. No matter how hard he paddled, it was fruitless against the fierce blow.
He stopped paddling when he saw he wouldn’t make it, his arms and shoulders quivering from the effort. He had a decision to make, and only seconds to make it. Should he leave the boat and try to swim to the island? He was a strong swimmer, though the pain in his shoulders suggested his swimming would be severely handicapped. In the water, he wouldn’t be subject to the forces of wind that blew against the kayak. He might make it. Of course, if he didn’t, then he’d be floating in the frigid water and his life could be measured in minutes.
In the end, he stayed with the boat. He watched the lighthouse fall away behind him. Now he truly was in the cruel, open North Atlantic, nothing but thousands of square miles of ocean surrounding him. He replayed his decision not to swim for it over and over. At least it would have settled things quickly, one way or the other. Now he would be forced to spend more hours and even days fighting the storm. But he had no illusions as to the inevitable outcome. Either exhaustion or hypothermia would take him eventually.
22
T
OM HUDDLED IN THE LEE
of Big Snow Island. He couldn’t see much of anything in the dark, but had been able to check his GPS thanks to its illuminated screen. It was the only reason he’d made it to land. He had no idea where Garrett was. He knew his friend had been falling behind and even attempted to slow his rate of paddling so Garrett might catch up, though it endangered his own boat. Turning around was impossible, and in the blackness and noise of the storm, he’d probably have missed Garrett anyway.
He called himself hoarse but the wind swallowed his cry. Garrett was out there somewhere, alone, with nothing to guide him. The possibility he would hit the Snow Islands by chance was slim to none.
He considered his options. He could stay here, try to wait out the storm, then look for Garrett. But the wind showed every intention of blowing all night. If Garrett had overturned and was in the cold water, he was as good as dead, no matter that he had a life jacket on. The frigid water would snuff out his life in an hour at the outside. If he managed to keep the boat afloat, he’d be blown out to sea. Tom tried his cell phone again.There was no service.
There really was only one choice. He had to go back. With the GPS, finding his way in the dark wouldn’t be a problem. It was set to guide him straight back to the wharf. It would be an intimidating struggle against the ache that already invaded his shoulders. But if Garrett was on his way to Ireland, Tom needed to contact the Coast Guard and air/sea rescue to try to find him. He realized that being in a kayak without GPS in such seas was worse than being helpless.
It was past midnight when he finally sighted the light of the wharf. Inside the inner islands, the wind lessened but still whipped up whitecaps with grim determination.
As he pulled onto the little beach by the wharf, he was surprised to see half a dozen vehicles and the Coast Guard cutter from the next station down the shore. Men were milling about and then he saw Sarah. She wore a yellow slicker and gum boots and ran to him as soon as she saw him.
“Tom! Thank God you’re okay.” She scanned the darkness behind him. “Where’s Garrett?”
Tom tried to get out of the boat and nearly fell into the water, he was so sore and stiff. “I don’t know where he is. When the weather deteriorated, we got separated in the dark. He’s got to be way out to sea by now, if he hasn’t turned over.”
The color drained out of Sarah’s face. “That … that’s why I called in the authorities. I thought you’d be in trouble once the wind picked up. The hurricane has moved closer to shore than anyone expected.”
Tom weaved a little as he tried to get his land legs. Arthur Parmenter, his counterpart on the Eastern shore, came over and pulled the boat up for him. “I’m ready to go out, Tom,” he said. “Though I’m not happy about it. Air/sea has also been notified and will send out a plane.” He looked quickly at Sarah and said softly, “Be a miracle if we find him.”
“I’m going with you,” Tom said.
Arthur looked at him. “You sure? You look all in …” But he could read the determination in the man’s eyes. “All right, Tom. We can use your GPS coordinates to give us a direction.”
“I can get us to the last point when he was with me,” said Tom. “Then it will be guesswork, but he was already pretty tired. He would have soon had to turn and let the wind take him, so we can follow the wind out to sea. I hope to God he remembers he has an emergency flash beacon in the boat. If he sets it, we should be able to see him.”
He looked at Sarah. “Any word on the girls?”
She shook her head. “It’s a night for disasters,” she said. “But if they’re in the city they should be all right for a while. Certainly in less danger then Garrett is. I’m going with you on the boat.”
Arthur started to say something, then thought better of it. He’d known Sarah for a long time. There was no way she was going to be put off.
23
G
ARRETT SHIVERED SO FIERCELY, HIS
titanium foot rattled against the side of the kayak. His slicker leaked water down his back and into his clothes. The lower half of his body rested in frigid water taken in during his struggles with the sprayskirt. He knew he was dangerously close to hypothermia.
Damned ignominious way for a Mountie to die. He could imagine Tuttle using him as an example to recruits for the rest of his career.
Always prepared
was Tuttle’s Mountie mantra. Garrett could hear the lecture: no backup, no communications, no detailed weather reports, out in the North Atlantic in a twelve-foot plastic boat in a hurricane. This man deserved to die, Tuttle would expound.
And Garrett would have to agree with him. It
was
a stupid way to die.
He kept his paddle balanced on the gunnels, dipping the blades as needed to keep the wind at his back, the boat running straight. He wiped his soaking sleeve against his eyes to counteract the stinging salt. When he looked up again, he saw lights on the horizon.
“Can’t be Ireland already,” he said out loud. “What the hell is that?”
The wind was blowing him straight down on the lights. There was something strange about them. Several appeared to be right at water level, while others floated high in the sky. Was it a ship? Some kind of optical illusion? Whatever it was, it was massive, a huge freighter or oil tanker maybe. He couldn’t tell which direction it was moving, and he sure as hell didn’t want to be run down by whatever it was. Another nice chapter for Tuttle’s lecture: no lights.
Well, he could do something about that. He fiddled inside the cockpit and managed to mount and turn on his emergency beacon. Maybe the skipper of the ship would see him. He almost laughed out loud. The ship captain would be riding a hundred feet above him, looking straight ahead. He’d never see a small light bobbing in the waves at sea level.
He continued to be blown toward the lights and began to paddle to try to get out of the ship’s path. But she didn’t seem to be moving at all. It was almost as though the ship was at anchor. How could that be possible out in the middle of the North Atlantic?
Then he got close enough to see what the lights were illuminating. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It wasn’t a ship at all. It was an oil platform, one of the ones Tom had told him had been put close to the mainland against fierce environmental opposition. At that moment, he was ready to shake the hand of the chairman of Exxon or whoever had won that argument.
The wind blew him straight toward the base of the thing, where he could see lights delineating some sort of platform at water level. A landing platform, he assumed. His little craft banged against the steel frame and the boat rose and fell a dozen feet with every swell. Each time he crashed against the structure, he came close to turning over. He tried to time the swells and finally managed to ride one right over the top of the platform. As the water retreated, the kayak sat firmly on the heavy-gauge grating.
Aching from every pore, he pulled himself out of the boat and stood, wobbly, for the first time in many hours. He tied the boat off fore and aft to the platform and looked up. A steel ladder rose fifty feet above him. Damn! More stairs. Worse. A ladder.
His titanium foot seemed stiff and unresponsive. The brains in his foot had been seriously compromised by the cold salt water. Slowly, he began to climb. When he finally pulled himself onto another platform, he collapsed from the effort and looked up to see two men staring at him like he was a ghost from Davey Jones’s locker.
“Hey there, mate. Where the bloody hell did you come from?”
“I’m glad to see you too,” Garrett said, his voice shaking from the cold. “I was blown out to sea by the storm. Thought I was done for till I saw this place.”
“Blooming miracle you washed up here. You look exhausted, all right. And cold. Don’t worry. You’re in good hands now.” They helped him to his feet. Garrett tottered on his bad foot. One man started to put an arm around him, but Garrett motioned he could walk on his own.
The other man said, “Take him to one of the bunks near the workmen’s galley. Looks like he could use some food and shuteye. I better tell Craig what’s happened.” He met the other man’s eyes. “Good thing it’s a slow night.”
“I wasn’t sure anyone would be here at all,” said Garrett. “Don’t they usually close you guys down when a hurricane’s approaching?”
Again, the men exchanged looks. “Just a skeleton crew here, mate,” said one. “To make sure things stay buttoned up and to pull wayward kayakers out of the drink. We’ve had one blow after another this year. Busiest hurricane season in decades. This storm wasn’t expected to come so close to shore, or there would have been no one here at all.”
The first man led Garrett to a small bunkroom. “Take a load off,” he said. “You look like you could use some sleep.”
“Any chance I could make a phone call? There are probably some pretty worried people wondering what happened to me, and I was with another man who might still be out there somewhere.”
“If he’s still out there, I don’t like his chances,” said the man. “Two miracles in one night would be pretty unlikely. Anyway, our phones and radio have been knocked out by the storm. We’re on our own, I’m afraid.”
It struck Garrett as odd, both that there would still be men on the rig and that they had no working communications, but though the thought nagged at him, he was too exhausted to think straight. The man left and Garrett tiredly removed his prosthesis. He placed it near a heater to dry out the electronics. Ever hopeful. Then he fell into bed and was asleep in a moment.
When he woke, the fury of the storm seemed not to have abated. He lay in the bunk listening. It felt like it was still the middle of the night. There was a throbbing in his phantom foot, which was probably what woke him.
He decided to get up and see if he could find some painkillers. He strapped on his foot and wandered down what seemed like innumerable corridors, up ladders and through various work areas lined with equipment. Apparently he’d been put at a far end of the rig from where others stayed. He found no other bunkrooms, kitchens, lounge areas or even bathrooms.
The rig was huge and an utter maze of pipelines, cranes and steel catwalks. At one point, he found himself outside on a platform that must have been a helicopter landing pad.
Then he was back inside again, in an obviously more luxurious living space. Floors were carpeted, which seemed a bit bizarre in a place where men had to walk around filthy and covered with grease and oil virtually all the time. He tried a door off the carpeted corridor, found a light switch, and then stood, stunned at what lay before him.
Spread out in front of him was a private living space that could have been something straight out of Club Med. The room was large and had a sliding glass door that led to a balcony and a bar recessed into one wall. There was a king-sized bed facing floor-to-ceiling mirrors, leather chairs, and a couch. Maybe he’d stumbled upon the boss’s private digs, though it was hard to imagine even Bill Gates requiring accommodations like these on a working oil rig.
“You lost?” asked a voice immediately behind him.
Garrett turned. “Couldn’t sleep,” he said. He pulled up his pants leg and showed the man his titanium foot. “I was looking for some Tylenol. I get phantom pain in my leg sometimes.” He waved a hand at the room. “Pretty posh accommodations. I guess they really take care of you guys out here.”