Voyage After the Collapse (The Pulse Series Book 3) Page 10

  But now the next band of rain was upon them and visibility was reduced to just a few yards in any direction from the boat. How would they ever reconnect with the other boat in this? But Artie knew he had to rely on Scully’s judgment. He was the only one aboard with any real sea time and experience, and Scully was saying that the best thing they could do was to maintain the course he and Larry had agreed upon in advance. He said that if they deviated off or turned back to look for the Sarah J., it would only make matters worse. It took Artie a few minutes to fully comprehend this, but it made sense in the end. Out here on the sea at night, spatial relationships were disorienting enough in good weather. The rain compounded that disorientation exponentially.

  “When de rain pass again, we lookin’ for dem light. Don’t see not’ing, den mehbe we see dem sail when dawn comin’ mon.”

  “But dawn is what, almost three hours away?”

  “Two an’ a half. But I an’ I t’ink we gonna see dem light soon. I t’ink it’s what Grant seh, Doc. Mehbe Larry he change a sail or have some little problem dat slow de boat. But he cotch up, mon. Dat Larry he know what he doin’. Not to worry ‘bout a t’ing yet. Don’t see dem by de mornin’, den we t’ink about what we doin’ in de mornin’.”

  Artie wanted to have the kind of faith in Larry that Scully obviously had. He wanted to be able to relax and just put his worries aside, believing like him that losing sight of the other boat was no big deal, and just the result of a short delay of some kind. He wanted to believe that they would soon see the other boat’s light again…. or see the sail first thing in the morning. It sounded logical and quite reasonable, but there was no way Artie could relax and trust that logic. He would be a nervous wreck until he actually laid eyes on the Sarah J.

  For now, all he could do was try to calm his nerves by staying busy. Despite the downpour, he and Grant set the smallest storm jib Larry had on board on the forestay and furled and bagged the working jib. With the main reduced to the second reef, the total sail area set on the Casey Nicole was just enough to keep her moving on the prearranged course. Artie knew that if they continued at this slow pace and Larry didn’t catch up soon, then something had to be seriously wrong.

  SIXTEEN

  LARRY DRAGER KNEW THAT the figure-eight cleat knot with which he’d secured the kayak towline did not come undone by itself. A cleat knot could be untied with one hand by feel alone if you understood how it worked, but such a knot simply did not untie itself. Larry already feared the worst but just to be sure he made his way forward with the flashlight on the rain-swept deck to look carefully under the dinghy that was lashed upside down in its chocks on the coach roof. Rebecca could have crawled under there and gotten out of sight, but when he confirmed she had not, he knew for a fact she was no longer on board the Sarah J. There was simply no place else to hide.

  Just as he stepped back down from the starboard side deck into the cockpit, Tara was coming up the steps, adjusting her hastily donned foul weather jacket as she did.

  “What’s going on? What were you looking for down below with that light?” Tara glanced at the rigging surrounding the wheel as she reached the top step. “Where’s Rebecca?”

  Larry was already slipping the knots holding the lines and shock cord to the helm as he answered. “She’s gone! Apparently, she untied the kayak and is in it somewhere back there in our wake.”

  “SHE WHAT? How could she have done that? You were right here with her? What are all those lines you had tied to the wheel for?”

  Larry was already bringing the yacht about as he answered, wrestling with the jib sheets to bring the flogging headsail under control as the bow came through the wind. Tara was frantic and by now was leaning over the stern rail, screaming Rebecca’s name into the darkness.

  “She was taking the watch. I dozed off right here on the seat beside her and then when I looked up, she wasn’t here.”

  Tara turned on him with rage burning in her eyes. She was upon him before Larry knew what was happening, slapping at his face and beating her fists against his chest and upper arms. “YOU SON OF A BITCH! How could you fall asleep and leave my daughter out here alone? She probably fell overboard!”

  Larry fought to keep the helm under control while dodging the worst of Tara’s attack. A fist that landed on the horrible wound on his forearm when he forgot and raised that arm to block her blow caused him to wince in pain. “She didn’t fall overboard!” he yelled back at her. “She untied the towline on the kayak. She couldn’t have done that if she’d fallen overboard first!”

  “She couldn’t have done that if you hadn’t fallen asleep on your watch, you worthless bastard! I thought you were supposed to be a professional captain!”

  “What’s going on out here?”

  Larry saw Casey appear in the companionway, no doubt awakened from sleep by all the screaming and yelling.

  “Your idiot uncle let my child fall overboard, that’s what!”

  “She didn’t fall overboard!” Larry yelled back as Casey joined them in the cockpit. “I told you, Tara. She untied that kayak! She must have pulled it up to the boat and gotten in it first!”

  “Why would she do that?” Casey asked.

  “Because all she talked about was wanting to die,” Tara snapped back her. “You saw how depressed she was! But she may not be in the kayak. She may have untied it and still jumped overboard to drown. This wouldn’t have happened if this son of a bitch hadn’t fallen asleep!”

  At least Tara had stopped hitting him due to Casey’s interruption of her attack. Larry managed to get the Sarah J. turned around and gaining way on a reciprocal compass course. “Whether she’s in the water or in the kayak, she can’t be far behind! I’m going to sail back over our exact course until we find her. Both of you need get up to the bow with flashlights and keep a sharp lookout for her. Pay extra attention to the starboard side of our course because that’s the way the wind is blowing and the direction she would have drifted if she’s not directly astern!”

  Tara snatched the flashlight Larry had been using without hesitation and rushed forward. Casey reached inside the cabin to the shelf over the chart table to find another one. “What about the Casey Nicole?” she asked before going to the bow to join Tara. “I can’t see their light in this rain. How are they going to know we turned back?”

  “They won’t; at least until the rain clears. But Scully knows to stay on the same course. He’ll figure out something delayed us and hopefully, he’ll slow down until we catch up.”

  “Do you really think she’s on the kayak, Uncle Larry? Do you think we can find her?”

  “I don’t know, Casey. This weather and nighttime makes it ten times harder. But we’ve got to try. You’d better get up there and help Tara keep a lookout. If you see anything out there that doesn’t look like another wave, yell at me as loud as you can.”

  Larry clinched his teeth as the pain in his forearm gradually subsided. The cut from the machete that had gone all the way to the bone was still not completely healed, but was well on its way, thanks to his brother’s efforts. He was past the danger of serious infection, Artie had said, but it was going to take time to get full use of the arm back and for all the pain to go away. Having it whacked on by a furious and distraught mother sure didn’t help it any.

  But Larry completely understood Tara’s reaction. It was what most mothers would probably do in the same situation, and he had been an ass to let himself fall asleep with this teenager he barely knew alone on watch. Beating himself up over it wouldn’t bring her back though. If Rebecca could be saved, he would have to do it quickly before she was swallowed up forever by the sea. He tried to see past the bow into the darkness as he steered the reciprocal by the compass, but from back in the cockpit it wasn’t likely he would be the one who spotted the girl, if any of them did. It was going to be up to Tara and Casey and it was going to take more than a small amount of luck. Going back to find someone who’d gone overboard even in the daylight in good weather was har
d enough. Larry sure hoped he was right in assuming the girl was on the kayak. If not, she was as good as lost because spotting nothing but her head above water in this was going to be impossible.

  Why in the hell had she done something like this? Was she seriously suicidal? Larry had thought her talk of wanting to die before leaving America and her friends there behind was a typical kid fit; an attempt at manipulation she hoped would help her get her way. He never would have thought she was serious, but then he didn’t know her and he didn’t have much experience with kids in general, not having any of his own. Going overboard in the middle of the night out here was certainly a surefire means of suicide, if that’s what she wanted, but if that was the case, why did she take the kayak? Bobbing around out there in the ocean on a 13-foot sit-on-top kayak was only going to prolong her misery. If she really wanted to die, she should have just jumped directly into the water. Or was she foolish enough to think she could actually go back to the mainland in the kayak? Larry didn’t know, because he had no idea how foolish a kid her age could be. But there was a double-ended kayak paddle lashed to the tie downs on the little plastic kayak’s deck. He hoped she wasn’t using it, because if she paddled just a short distance off the course he was sailing back on, they would likely never spot her. It would only take a few strokes of the paddle to disappear completely in these conditions, where visibility was less than 50 or 60 feet. Larry hoped the rain would let up again; that would improve their chances tremendously, but rain or not, time was not on their side. They had to find Rebecca and find her fast. He could not imagine what would become of Tara if they did not. Failure was simply not an option.

  Because he had slept much longer than he’d ever imagined he would, there was no way of knowing exactly how far back Rebecca could be, assuming she was merely drifting in the kayak, unassisted by the paddle. This was far worse than a regular man overboard situation, where the spot where the incident occurred could be marked and then the distance required to sail back easily calculated. In the worst case, if she’d gotten onto the kayak as soon as he’d drifted off, she could be several miles astern by now. He knew what time it was when he’d first stretched out on the seat, and by estimating the speed they had been making on their original course, he could work out how far they would need to sail back if they didn’t spot her sooner, rather than later. But knowing exactly how far back they were going was much more difficult without an electronic speed log and the aid of GPS tracks to make sure he didn’t deviate off the reciprocal course. Larry was going to have to rely every bit of seamanship knowledge and experience he’d acquired in a lifetime to pull this off—but more than anything, it was going to require an absurd amount of luck, bordering on a miracle, and he knew it.

  Though he downplayed the risk of getting seriously separated from the others aboard the catamaran when Casey asked, Larry did not at all like the idea of turning around and sailing in the opposite direction without their knowledge. Scully would figure out something was up eventually, but how far apart would they be by then? These rainsqualls in the Gulf this time of year were unpredictable and there was simply no way of knowing when the weather would clear. Even before the pulse, in the age of satellite weather imagery and detailed forecasting, small, fast-forming and fast-moving thunderstorms were hard to predict with real accuracy. If Rebecca had left the Sarah J. shortly after Larry closed his eyes, she could be several miles astern. By the time they sailed that far even at reduced speed, while the Casey Nicole was going the other way, they could easily be separated by more than ten miles before the other crew even realized it. It was a serious concern, but at least Larry and Scully had a couple of possible landfalls targeted. In the worst-case scenario, they would rendezvous at one of them, eventually.

  Larry carefully let enough wind spill by easing the sheets to keep their backtrack speed well under five knots. He wanted to reach Rebecca as fast as possible, but not run the risk of sailing by her with none of them seeing her in the dark. Tara and Casey were sweeping their flashlight beams over the waves in every direction, but especially dead ahead and to starboard, as Larry had advised. It was still raining, but had slacked up enough that Larry pushed the hood of his jacket back off of his head so he could both see and hear better. Every minute that went by increased his worry that the search would be futile. Tara had been screaming Rebecca’s name over and over so many times that her voice was failing her now, and her shouts were mostly reduced to sobs of despair. Casey was calling out along with her, and Larry joined in with his own shouts in between theirs. But it seemed there was nothing out there to hear them but the empty, dark ocean. The minutes passed like hours with only the sound of the water rushing past the hull, and the occasional wave crest breaking nearby.

  Despite the perception of time standing still, Larry was keeping track of it with his watch, as that was the only way to know when they had gone far enough to exhaust the possibility of finding Rebecca directly astern. He still had hope that she might not have disembarked until just before he awakened, which would mean she drifted little downwind. If they didn’t spot her on that track, his next plan was to come about and sail a parallel course even more to leeward of the original track in case he had not allowed enough for her drift. It was highly unlikely that she would make any headway in a direction other than downwind, even if she was using the paddle, so Larry felt confident that keeping his search pattern in that quadrant was the best plan of action. He would crisscross the area of greatest likelihood as many times as it took, and he was determined not to give up until he found her or the empty kayak.

  SEVENTEEN

  GRANT DYER COULDN’T STOP himself from constantly glancing astern, hoping to catch a glimpse of a light from the Sarah J. He kept telling himself it was just a brief loss of visual contact, mainly due to the rain. If the crew of the other boat had to slow down for some reason, then they would soon catch up now that the catamaran was sailing much slower as usual. With practically no experience at sea, Grant was unaware of all the dangers there were, and fortunately for him, Artie had not shared his fears that the other boat could have hit a floating container or met some similar disaster. Grant had every bit of confidence in Larry as a professional skipper, and he had no reason to doubt that he and the rest of the crew were fine. But still, not being able to see the other boat inevitably brought back a chill as he vividly remembered the days and nights of searching for Casey before, when he didn’t know if they would ever see her again or if she was even still alive.

  Grant never wanted to go through an experience like that again, and that was why even with his faith in Larry, he had misgivings about the crew splitting up yet again. The last time it had happened, when he and Scully left the rest of the group left to go upriver on the Bogue Chitto, the two of them ended up in a survival ordeal. They had just all reunited at Cat Island after days of separation and then Tara had to come along and mess it all up again.

  Grant understood Larry’s attraction to Tara, and beyond that, doing what they could to help this woman and her daughter was not unreasonable. She had proven she was a survivor by simply having the wisdom to get herself and her daughter away from the mainland on her parents’ boat. Grant had no particular objection to the two of them joining the group, but now the mere inconvenience of not being able to talk to Casey had turned into something far worse. Not being able to even see the light from the boat she was on was unnerving and he didn’t like it one bit. Casey insisted on going with her Uncle Larry when he suggested it, but Grant wished now he could have gone instead. If he was going to be separated from her, he’d feel better about her being aboard the Casey Nicole with her dad and Scully, just because he knew Larry had built it and it was a proven boat.

  Then there was the issue of Jessica. Grant had been quite surprised when she came down into the cabin expecting to share his bunk with him. He knew she wanted him ever since their time together alone in the swamp, but he had not expected her to try something like that with Casey’s dad right there on the same boa
t, and wide awake on his watch at that. In another circumstance and if not for Casey, Grant would have been all over her. Even now the temptation was strong. Jessica was flat-out fine and until now Grant had never had a woman as good-looking as she was show that kind of interest in him. Casey was beautiful too, in a more subtle way, but Jessica was one of those girls who practically every guy who saw her wanted. He had not failed to notice Larry’s mannerism around her either. If Tara Hancock hadn’t come along when she did, Grant wouldn’t have been surprised to see Larry go after her himself. And maybe Jessica would let him, if Grant didn’t give in to her flirtations. Grant noticed that Jessica didn’t seem all that happy about Tara’s arrival. Obviously, that was because Larry seemed to have forgotten about her upon meeting a sailing woman with a beautiful boat of her own who was also much closer to his age.