Storms of Passion (20 page)

Tears rolled down his face unashamed.

Physically exhausted from his recent missions of the last day, Tuck was mentally drained as well. The sea charts were rolled in his hands, held in a death grip as he fell into a fitful sleep on the bench, waiting for the next call to come through.

He pictured see her face. As soon as he closed his eyes, he could see her alight with the wonder of sailing his small sloop. Tuck marveled at the passion in her eyes, the expressions on her face clearly giving away her every emotion. She wore her heart on her sleeve as though she had never been schooled in the art of a poker face. Then his vision brought her to him and they were making love. Tuck smiled in his fitful sleep. As she drew him inside her, he gloried in being surrounded by her, and the fit of his body to hers. The seamless harmony of two bodies joined the way that they should.

He woke up with a start. “No!” Tuck scrubbed his hands over his face, the bristle of his unshaven face scratching across the palms of his hands. “You’re not gone.”

Tuck had never come this close to completeness before with a woman to lose it. One way or another he was heading back out there. He wouldn’t stop until he had found her. He had to know one way or another, for as long as there was no sign, there would still be hope that she was out there…somewhere.

Tuck went back to the charting table to roll out to his maps, studying the readings, making notes of where Vivian and Nate went overboard, and where the Navigator was when the Expedition arrived. Using the information provided on their last run, he drew concentric circles around both sets of coordinates, plotted the areas they already searched, and the buoy locations. He would check with the Expedition’s engineers to see what activity had been reported from the buoys within his search module to verify the storm’s progress to decide where they would next concentrate their search efforts.

Naval officer, Innis, provided the information Tuck required when he pointed to one of the buoys he charted on his map.

“Buoy four-four-zero-one-one located at forty-one, point one degrees north, sixty-six, point six degrees west has no readings, sir.” Innis pushed his glasses up his nose, his hand continuing to scratch his well messed hair.

“Nothing?” Tuck yawned, pulling his mind into full alert. Bending close to the screen to see better, he said. “What do you mean nothing?”

“Likely the storm caused some damage, sir. We’ll notify Marine after the storm abates. They’ll send a scientific crew out for repair.”

“When did it last send signal?” Tuck body grew tense.

Innis paused, reading the monitor. “That’s funny. This is unusual, sir.” Innis tapped his screen as though willing the machinery to cooperate. “Up until just about an hour ago. I see here, by its position and the information we have from Marine, that it should now be dead center of the eye. Just like that, it has stopped sending signals. The last reporting had a maximum sustained winds of forty-nine knots with gusts to sixty-five knots and a significant wave height of thirty-nine fee, but that was just as the storm was abating in that area according to the satellite.”

“You’re saying it’s not transmitting now?” Tuck ran both hands through his hair. “When it was in the eye? What would have thrown it out?”

“That’s what’s so weird, sir.” Innis shook his head, tapping on the keyboard. “Last report shows pressure, wave height and temperature, and then nothing.”

Freakish enough to mean something? That needle in the haystack to cause pause, and Tuck grabbed on for all it was worth. It was Vivian! She had told him that she loved to tinker with junk. She had to be responsible for this. It was worth investigating. She knows how things work, and she’d certainly know how to break something. What better signal than no signal at all?

“You’re out of your mind, Tuck,” said the CO. “You’re grasping at straws.”

“Be that as it may, it’s worth checking into.”

“That’s one-hundred nautical miles from the drop location. Too far.”

Tuck continued to argue. “Not too far given the size of those waves,” he said, showing the CO his charts highlighting where the Navigator reported their first SOS. Then where they lost Nate and Vivian in the water, where they picked Nate up, where the Navigator was intercepted, and how far off course it had travelled. “Combine that with the two storms merging from different directions and the combination of the gulf current, I think this little buoy may have been a bit of salvation.”

“Speaking of which, have you looked out the window? We’re fixing for act two. People will need us and we have to be at the ready!”

“Vivian needs us!” Tuck stared at the CO. “We don’t back down from a storm.”

In the end Tuck exhausted his CO’s patience, and got his way. One trip and one trip only.

****

Vivian was tossed here and there, her legs banging against hard metal, cutting and bruising to the point she was sure one or both of her legs would break, if not already broken. She couldn’t feel a thing.

She had her arms wrapped tight about the metal cage, locked at her wrists. Her face was pressed toward her chest, sheltering as much as she could from the frigid pellets of rain slashing her exposed skin. The lightning flashed around her, while the thunder screamed in her ears. Vivian could no longer watch the approach. It was like seeing the devil himself and she couldn’t do it. Being surrounded and more frightened than she ever imagined, she hid her face in her arms.
Pray that I’ll be found, that someone will notice the little buoy in the middle of nowhere suddenly not sending any signals.

****

The Hercules dipped in the wind currents, falling freely until the rudders caught again, pulling the machine forward and up between the striking lightning and booming thunder.

They were circling the coordinates Tuck indicated. He couldn’t see anything, including the buoy. The waves, like pockets of angry beasts, jumped clear of the ocean surface in an effort grab the craft and take it under.

His hands curled around the handles on either side of the door. “Lower,” Tuck commanded. “We have to get lower.”

Just then the helicopter took a sharp turn as they dropped in a cold air pocket, which threw them toward the sea. The pilot caught the gears and saved them, lifting them out from the drop. That’s what the chopper was made for. Tuck breathed a sigh, returning to his scouting post. He turned back to the open door to scan the boiling surface. “There!” He released his grip on the handle to point. “Once more around. I see the buoy. Once more around.”

“I can’t hold it steady!”

“Yes you can. Once more, man. Please, once more to make sure.”

Tuck focused through the driving rain to the bobbing and dipping buoy to see if anything was amiss. He jumped to his feet, arms braced to either side of the large chopper opening. “Ohmigod! It’s her. I see Vivian!”

The incredulous pilot shook his head.

“I see her!” Tuck shouted as loud as he could. “I’ve got to go in.” He rigged the harness before the pilot could disagree.

“On my mark,” shouted the pilot. “Now!”

Tuck launched into the water, driving toward the clanging of the buoy. Waves washed over him, sinking him in its depths, but he kept pushing forward, the helicopter’s searchlight illuminating his way.

He stopped to get his bearings. Bouncing with the waves, his breath literally left his body when he saw Vivian hanging on for dear life to the buoy as it dipped her in water. She appeared so small next to the buoy. She also seemed lifeless, but he didn’t want to consider that now.
I have to get her back to the chopper, back to safety
.

It took Tuck several attempts to grab hold of the bars to hoist his body level with Vivian. He admired the strength it must have taken her to grab hold of the ladder in her condition and do what she had to do to simply survive.

Tuck reached for her leg and shouted her name. “Vivian!”

No response.

A wave sprang up to grab and toss him back into the roiling mess. He was able to launch out of the depths and back toward the buoy. Tuck clutched the steps of the ladder and climbed higher, squirming beside her, the searchlight illuminating them.

“Vivian!” He shouted over the howling of the wind and driving rain. “Vivian! Answer me!”

Taking his glove off, Tuck checked for a pulse at her neck and could barely feel life under the severely cold, blue tinged skin. Shouting into his radio transmitter, Tuck relayed that he would need the harness. “She’s alive! Two souls coming aboard.”

The pilot shouted back. “Only you, Tuck, would have such luck.”

The helicopter dipped and strived to hold its course in the storm. Freeing Vivian’s hands from the buoy proved troublesome as she had her wrists locked in a death grip. Her fingers were fastened so tightly he was fearful of breaking her bones.

“Time to go,” Tuck whispered in her ear. “I’ve got you, Vivian. I’ve got you.”

Chapter Fourteen

Vivian was drowning. Water washed into her mouth and nose, and she didn’t bother to open her eyes any more. It was too much energy for her to care further. She had lost the battle, but didn’t go down without a fight.
I went down fighting.

Waves tossed her from side to side, and through the last midst of her struggle she thought she heard Tuck’s voice in her ear. She would miss him. He was so easy to like and even easier to love. Amazing that after all this time, she could fall in love so quickly. Vivian thought it would take a while to love someone deeply. With Tuck, that wasn’t true. She loved him from the moment he took hold of her shoulders. She had spent so much of her life searching for romance and love, only to find the right guy…and then lose him.

Cold, salty water ran down her throat and into her nose, choking her. She couldn’t breathe. Vaguely she recalled some documentary she watched at one time that seemed to indicate it took six minutes to drown.
Surly it had been six minutes by now
. Not knowing how much longer she could endure the agony of being pulled apart by the pressure of the sea as it continued to batter and bruise her body, she surrendered. She sent a silent plea to whoever would listen to her prayers.

Tuck’s voice was in her head again. She didn’t want to go, but didn’t have the strength to continue.
Let me go, Tuck. Let me go.

“I’ve got you. Stay strong, baby, please. I need you.” His voice was insistent in her ear, raspy as though fighting an emotional storm. “Stay with me! I’ve got you.”

Perhaps the six minutes was the point to which the body stopped functioning, except your brain which lingered on and played your regrets and losses in slow motion one last time
.

What would Saint Peter say when she met him at the gate? That she had given it her best shot, but between the cold and the water, no one was not strong enough to survive the storm.

She slipped. The water rushed over her head, swallowing her to the depths of the ocean as the strong currents took her. She was tossed like a rag doll. Vivian thought she was beyond feeling cold, but as the depths wrapped round her body, the ocean’s temperature became even more frigid than before.

Then there was a jerk, a kick, and a tugging on her hair.

Her eyes quickly open.

Tuck’s grey depths, housed in a clear plastic mask, greeted her under the water. His body tilted as he carried her out of the depths of the ocean and toward the surface.

****

He’d lost his grip.
Goddamnit
. Trying to stay in the troughs was hard enough in a boat, next to impossible as a swimmer, but he had to get there in order to get the harness attached. He grabbed the harness, but the helicopter jerked and a wave downed him, causing Vivian to slip from his grasp.

Damn!
Tuck dove to retrieve her and missed. She was sinking unbelievably fast, her life jacket having slipped over her head when he grabbed her. Shooting for the surface, he used the same momentum to dive again and managed to grab hold of her hair as it haloed around her head. She would give him hell for that, but he had no choice.

As he hauled her upwards, face to face, he was rewarded for an instant when her eyes opened. His heart surged, giving him renewed strength.

“Tuck, man.” The pilot’s voice filled his earpiece as he broke the water’s surface. “Okay, I see you. Get her in now. We’re almost out of fuel and I can’t hold steady. One shot. You’ve got one shot. Make it count!”

One shot.
Tuck grabbed the harness again.

Holding on tightly to Vivian’s unconscious form, he shouted. “I’ve got you, baby. Please stay with me!” Of all the thousand emotional currents running through him since spotting her holding on for her life, seeing her eyes open, if only for a second, put a lump in his throat. “Stay with me!”

****

Tuck couldn’t believe a woman who had been so vibrant just days earlier, would appear as fragile as she lay in the hospital bed.

Within another twenty-four hours, the storm had abated, finally. Another day had passed and Vivian still remained unconscious. The doctors were optimistic.

“Her body needs time.” The attending nurses told him.

“She’s been through a lot,” the doctor said as Tuck sat beside her bed.

Her family had been notified, but they couldn’t come. The storm had basically washed out the airport. It would be a few more days before flights were back on track. So here he sat, relived to have his family back in port, and waiting, as he was, for those beautiful sea foam eyes to open. He held her hand, lying limp in his.
If only I have this one chance, I won’t waste it.

****

Vivian didn’t want to open her eyes. She didn’t know what she would see and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see what lay in wait for her. Images of Tuck filter through her recovering mind. She wasn’t surprised the he was the last thing she saw.

“I should have told you, Tuck. I should have told you I loved you.” Regret colored Vivian’s words and a tear leaked out the corner of her eyes.

“I love you too.” When that easy going voice, deep with emotion answered her, Vivian’s eyes fluttered open. An image of Tuck swam unfocused before her.

“Oh, no…Tuck…the storm…got you too.” Her throat was raw and didn’t seem to want to work. She coughed uncontrollably.