The Last Run (30 page)

“I’ll bet, sir.”

“Okay, guys, listen up,” Adickes said. “Here are some possible scenarios we might encounter tonight. We might have people in the water and —”

“There’s no way in hell anybody’s out here,” Witherspoon said.

“Amen,” Sansone said.

“Bill,” Molthen said, “I hope there’s nobody out here. Not tonight.”

“I hope not,” Adickes said. “But you never know. We might have a vessel that’s sinking. We might have to pull people off the deck. We might have to do a rescue-swimmer deployment. Or a pump drop. I want you guys to be thinking about all these things as we get closer. And as we get closer, we will discuss each scenario before we go into it. Okay?”

“All right.”

“I want you all to talk to me. If I ever go too fast for you, I want you to just say stop. We have time. The five minutes we spend talking about it will save us fifteen or twenty minutes down the road trying to fix the cable we got wrapped around the mast, or God knows what. Let’s talk about things before we screw something up.”

They were hurtling farther out to sea all the time and the beating they were taking was only getting worse. There was the roar of the hail and sleet on the windscreen and every few moments a gust would cuff the helicopter to one side and then another would slap it back the other way. Everything not pinned down was rattling and jumping about—the Velcro straps and checklist binders and maps and cords —and Molthen was still arched against the strain, his arms and legs a blur, and yet fastened to the aircraft as if he had hooked a giant fish, unable to take even a moment’s break from the controls. He was holding the aircraft on course but it was draining his strength and drying his mouth out.

“Want some coffee?” Adickes asked him.

Molthen shook his head. “What do you think we’ll find out there?” he asked.

“No idea,” Adickes said.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we just saw something right away and solved this mystery?”

“Let’s just wait and see,” said Adickes.

Sansone checked his wristwatch. Another fifteen minutes had gone by. It was time for another radio guard. He turned up the volume on his headset.

“Comms Center, Juneau,” he said. “Comms Center, Juneau. This is Rescue 6018.”

No response.

“Comms Center, Juneau, this is Rescue 6018. Over.”

Static.

Sansone switched to his backup frequency, Channel 16, and tried again.

Nothing.

I’ll try Kodiak, he said to himself. It’s 750 miles away. But who knows, maybe it’ll work. “Comms stay, Kodiak… Comms stay, Kodiak… This is Rescue 6018. Do you hear me?”

Silence.

“Mr. Adickes,” he said. “I think I’ve lost my radio guard with the comms center in Juneau. Air station Kodiak does not respond either.”

“Keep trying, Rich.”

But it did no good. Sansone began making calls in the blind.

“Mr. Adickes,” he said. “I can’t get anybody.”

“Did you try the HF?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Adickes said, “forget it then. Don’t worry about talking to anybody anymore.”

As he turned down the radio volume, Sansone felt a swift tightness in his temples and a crawling of skin on the back of his neck. They were very much on their own.

D
own in the raging sea, five men were making their fight. It was hard to find dry air to breathe. The wind peeled their eyelids up and the salt water burned their eyes and seared the insides of their throats and nostrils. It was coming so hard at them that they could not keep the water out of their stomachs long, and every few minutes one or another of them would retch it back up. Their lips were cold to the point of painlessness; they would not feel a fist slam their mouths. With each wave, each gust of ice-laden wind, the water got through their shivering lips, stuffing their mouths and throats and stomachs with more of the tooth-chilling, tongue-burning seawater.

The five men were bobbing in a circle. A nylon rope still held them loosely together, but the lifeline was coming loose around their waists. When they came to within arm’s length of one another, each man reached for the other and clung fast, bowing their heads and praying and cursing the sea for all of her wickedness. When they came apart they thrashed madly, frantically, calling out to one another between gasps.

The combers came faster now, each no more than ten seconds apart. The bigger ones came with a whooshing, earsplitting roar. The men screamed but their screams were no match for the noise around them, one wave lifting them bodily up and up and up, feeling the water before them and behind them and inside of them. Then it was as if they were outside of themselves, floating, and then they were propelled down and down and down, the wave rolling them, their legs going over their heads, their lungs aching for true air, their bellies full of the salt water, the most primitive quadrant of their selves trying simply to stay alive, as they tumbled, hopelessly, through the universe.

And then they would feel themselves sliding into the belly of another wave.

From somewhere deep inside his head, Bob Doyle heard somebody weeping, crying out his name.

“Help me, Bob!”

Bob Doyle tried to tune in, to find focus.

“Bob!”

His throat raw from salt water, Bob Doyle answered weakly, “I’m here. I’m here.”

“I can’t keep my head up!” It was Mark Morley.

The lifeline was so loose it had gotten tangled around his knees. Bob Doyle kicked and twisted and maneuvered until he had it up around his waist again. He yanked on the rope, drawing the skipper to him.

“I got you,” he said.

“I can’t feel my legs,” Morley said. “I can’t feel my legs.”

“Don’t worry. I got you.”

“I can’t feel my legs.” He was shaking and sobbing. “Oh my God. I’m losing my legs.”

Hearing a deep, swishing gargle, Bob Doyle swung his head. Another curler, snarling and foaming at the lip, was rising over them.

“Deep breath—now!”

It was hard to know how long they were down. It seemed—forever. Bob Doyle was about to give in and breathe the ocean when he heard the wild shriek of the wind and saw the hood next to him.

He grabbed it.

“Mark!”

Morley’s response was faint: “Hold me, Bob.”

“I got you.”

Then he heard Gig Mork shout, “Where the hell are you guys?”

“I’m here!” Bob Doyle yelled back. “With Mark!”

“Fuck! I
lost
him!”

“Lost who?”

“He was on my chest. We went under. And now—“

“Who?”

“Hanlon, goddammit!”

“Dave?”

“Shit!”

“Where’s Mike?”

“MIIIIIIKE!”

A hard, hoarse voice came out of the blackness. “I’m here. I’m here.”

“Is that you, Mike?”

“This sucks!” Mike DeCapua yelled out. “Oh, fuck me. Fuck me. There’s something wrong with my legs.”

“Chrissake,” Mork said. “Get the hell over here!” Mork pulled DeCapua up on his chest and leaned back, floating. “You sniveling son of a bitch! Hold on to my arm!”

“Thanks, Giggy.”

“Keep your fucking yap shut.”

“Where’s Dave?” Bob Doyle asked. “Dave!”

They called out his name, but got no response.

“Dave?”

“Dave!
Quit fucking around!”

But there was no answer. They kept calling out but it was like trying to shout over a passing train during a downpour. Wave after wave drove them under, yet as soon as they surfaced they shouted their partner’s name.

“Where is he?”

“Dave!”

“He’s got to be here.”

“You think he’s underneath us?”

One of the buoy balls was missing. It was the buoy DeCapua had tied to Hanlon’s waist. Mork stuck his face beneath the water and tried to feel around for him. He even tried to dive underwater to look. But it was no use. His inflated collar held him to the surface.

“Hey!” Bob Doyle shouted. “The ball! There’s the buoy ball!”

“Where?”

“Right there!”

Five yards away off, glinting in the flash of the EPIRB, bobbed an orange buoy. It did not fly off with the lash of the wind. It simply bobbed on the surface, heavily. The guy has got to be attached to it, Bob Doyle thought. Otherwise that ball would take off like a shot.

“Dave!”

They watched the buoy come closer, then swing away, then come closer again.

“Dave! Is that you?”

“Giggy, swim to it!”

A wave avalanched over them. Then another, then several more. Each time they came up for air, the orange ball was a little farther away.

“Mark,” Bob Doyle said to Morley. “You gotta help me, buddy. We just gotta swim to get Dave. Come on. Move your arms a little. That’s it.”

The buoy was still in sight. But even as Bob Doyle kicked and thrashed with his one free arm, the buoy kept sliding farther and farther away.

“C’mon!” he barked at Morley. “Don’t stop! That’s Dave over there!”

He was hollow-sick in his chest and stomach from the effort and yet he fought and fought the current until he thought he would pass out. When the sick feeling lessened he started kicking and thrashing again but it did not bring the buoy ball any closer. It occurred to him suddenly how cold the water was. His legs were numb. Another wave pummeled them. The men popped up, blind and spitting, and Bob Doyle wiped his eyes with his mitten and floated in the icy water and let the current take him along. The buoy ball was out of sight now.

S
leet glazed the windscreen of the Jayhawk. Even when he put his night-vision goggles down, Dan Molthen could not make out the ragged ocean from three hundred feet.

“How much longer you think we are from scene?” he asked Bill Adickes.

“Anytime,” Adickes told him.

“We’ve already passed the fly-to coordinates,” Molthen said. “I don’t think anyone’s out here.”

“Well, if there is, they must be drifting fast,” Adickes said.

“I’m engaging the deicer.” The helicopter was going to burn more gas with the deicer on, but he had no choice. “And let’s get that direction finder on. See if we can pick up the EPIRB’s signal.”

“I’m working on it,” Adickes said.

He switched on the direction finder and typed the frequency of the distress beacon into the computer. If the finder detected a 406-megahertz signal it would emit a warbling sound. The needle on the dial would swing and point in the direction of the transmitting beacon. If they overflew the EPIRB, the needle would swing around to the six o’clock position.

“Finder is on,” Adickes said.

“Anything?”

The needle didn’t budge. It still pointed ahead, to twelve o’clock.

“No,” Adickes said. “Not yet.”

They had been airborne forty-one minutes and not for more than three seconds had Molthen taken his eyes off of his attitude indicator or the altimeter. I can’t let the nose jut up for even an instant, he said to himself. It would be nothing for a gust to catch us by the nose and flip us back into the water.

He was giving it gas only occasionally now to keep the aircraft slightly off trim with the wind. The tailwind was whisking them along, farther out to sea, but Molthen was still working the aircraft exactly as he should and delivering each time Adickes asked him to do something. As he saw it, there was no other thing to do. But he was growing weary from the constant pitching and slewing and the sweat had soaked his dry suit underneath his outer flight suit and the muscles in his hands were starting to cramp.

He was fighting to keep the aircraft level and on course and he was trusting the navigating and the fuel-burn calculations to his copilot. They had lost radio contact with the world. That was unnerving, but he was not yet worried. He had lost contact with the base in bad weather before. Still, it was not a good sign. I hope there is nobody out here, Molthen said to himself. It’s not scary flying this fast. What is scary is the wind. This wind is really pushing us. It is pushing us toward something that probably nobody is ever supposed to see. What happens once you get on scene and have to fly a hover pattern in this wind? And what do you do when it comes time to fly back against it? There can’t be anyone in the water on a night like tonight. But what if there are people in the water? Could they be alive? If they are, they’re probably half dead from hypothermia by now. They say people go insane from hypothermia. They say people kill themselves from the cold. Just pack it in and drown. Stop thinking like that. Stop it. Keep your mind on these instruments and locate the EPIRB and then take it from there. God, this is awful stuff to be flying in. I’ve never seen anything this bad.

“The way we’re moving,” Adickes said, “we’re probably going to go screaming over the top of this thing. Just be ready to turn on a dime.”

“Sure.”

“And eyes out for that EPIRB.”

“Right.”

“Also, Dan, I think we should probably do a Victor-Sierra search pattern once we get on scene,” Adickes said. Doing a Victor-Sierra meant flying in tight, diamond-shaped patterns until they had covered an enormous, circular area around the EPIRB’s last reported position.

“I’m fine with that.”

“Good. I’ll program it into the computer.”

The cockpit was jackhammering worse now, the shaking so violent it took Adickes several minutes to punch the search command into the computer. Normally, he would have entered it in less than ten seconds.

As he was struggling to make his fingers hit the buttons he was telling them to, a chortling sound came through his headset, faint at first, and then louder. The direction finder’s needle twitched and swung completely around.

“We got a hit!” Adickes nearly jumped out of his seat. “That was a hit!”

“Where?”

“We just passed it!”

Molthen threw the cyclic out and swung the helicopter hard left. But the aircraft kept zooming north and west, farther and farther away from the datum point.

“Hold on!”

“Gas! Gas! Gas!”

Molthen had the cyclic as far as it would go, but it was as if a giant hand were shoving the helicopter farther out to sea. It took him half a minute just to turn the helicopter; in that time, they had flown ten miles downwind of the EPIRB.