Graham Brown - Ghost Ship

Satisfied with life, Zumbana closed his eyes and turned toward the sun, letting it bathe the weathered folds of his face. There was little he enjoyed more than that glorious feeling. Such peace it brought him that the excited shouts of his crew did not break him from it at first.

“Mashua,” one shouted.

Zumbana opened his eyes, squinting in the glare as the sunlight blazed off the sea like liquid fire. Blocking the light with his hand, he saw what the men were pointing at, a small wooden dinghy bobbing in the chop of the late afternoon. It seemed to be adrift, and there didn’t appear to be anyone on board.

“Take us to it,” he ordered. To find a small boat he could sell would only make the day better. He would even share some of the money with the crew.

The trawler changed course, and the old engine chugged a little harder. Soon, they were closing the gap.

Zumbana’s face wrinkled. The small boat was badly weathered and looked hastily patched. Even from fifty feet away he could see that much of it was rotted.

“Someone must have dumped it just to be rid of it,” one of his crewmen said.

“There might be something of value on board,” Zumbana said. “Take us alongside.”

The helmsman did as ordered, and the trawler eased to a stop beside the dilapidated craft. As they bumped it, another crewman hopped aboard. Zumbana threw him a rope, and the two boats were quickly tied off and drifting together.

From his position, Zumbana saw empty cooking pots and piles of rags, certainly nothing of value, but as the crewman pulled a moth-eaten blanket aside all thoughts of money were chased from his mind.

A young woman and two boys lay beneath the old blanket. They were clearly dead. Their faces were covered with sores from the sun and their bodies stiff. Their clothing was tattered, and a bloodstained rag was tied to the woman’s shoulder. A closer look revealed scabbed wrists and ankles as if the three of them had once been held in cuffs and restraints.

Zumbana crossed himself.

“We should leave it,” one of the crewmen said.

“It’s a bad omen,” another added.

“No. We must respect the dead,” Zumbana replied. “Especially those who have been taken so young.”

The men looked at him suspiciously but did as they were ordered. With a rope secured for towing, they turned once again for shore with the old double-ended boat trailing out behind them.

Zumbana moved to the stern, where he could keep an eye on the small craft. His gaze went from the boat to the horizon beyond. He wondered about the occupants of the small boat. Who were they? Where had they come from? What danger had they escaped only to die on the open sea? So young, he thought, considering the three bodies. So fragile.

The boat itself was another mystery. The top plank in the boat’s side seemed as if it might have once been painted with a name, but it was unreadable now. He worried if the boat would make it into port. Unlike its dead passengers, it seemed ancient. Certainly it was older than the three occupants. In fact, it looked to him like it might belong to another era all together.

A flash of blue lightning forked across the horizon. For a second or two it lit up the gray darkness where sea and storm met. Kurt Austin stared into that darkness from the rear section of a Sikorsky Jayhawk as the big helicopter shouldered its way through bands of pouring rain. Turbulence shook the craft, and thirty-foot swells rolled beneath them, their tops blown off by the howling wind.

As the lightning faded, Kurt saw his reflection on the glass. Roughly forty, with silver-gray hair, Kurt was handsome in the right kind of light. A strong jawline and piercing blue eyes saw to that. But like a truck that spent its days on the worksite instead of in the garage, his face carried the miles in plain view.

The lines around his eyes were etched a little deeper than most. A collection of faded scars from fistfights, car crashes, and other incidents marked his brow and jaw. It was the face of a man who seemed ready for anything, determined and unyielding, even as the helicopter neared the limits of its range.

He pressed the intercom switch and looked ahead to where his friend Joe Zavala sat in the copilot’s seat. “Anything?”

“Nothing,” Joe called back.

Kurt and Joe worked for NUMA, the National Underwater Marine Agency, a branch of the American government dedicated to the study and preservation of the sea. But, at the moment, they were part of a makeshift rescue team called on to assist a group of floundering vessels that had been caught in a debilitating storm.

As they flew on, the radio crackled with static and rapid-fire conversations between the South African Coast Guard and the small group of rescue craft.

“Sapphire Two, what’s your position?”

“Sapphire Two has contact with the Endless Road. She appears to be drifting but watertight. Four crew are visible. Maneuvering into position for basket rescue.”

“Roger that, Sapphire Two. Sapphire Three, what’s your status?”

“Inbound with rescues. Two appear to have hypothermia, third is stable.”

The storm had come barreling in from the southeast, gaining intensity as it approached the Cape of Good Hope. It swept up several freighters, including a thousand-foot containership, and then swung north and set its sights on a group of yachts and other pleasure craft involved in a friendly race from Durban to Australia.

The fury of the storm and its sudden arrival had taxed the South African Coast Guard to the limit. They’d called for any able assistance, enlisting the help of a Royal Navy frigate, two American supply ships, and the NUMA research vessel Condor .

Seventy miles east of the Condor , Kurt, Joe, and the pilot of the Jayhawk were nearing the GPS coordinates they’d been given. But they’d yet to spot a thing.

“We should be almost on top of her,” Kurt said.

“She might have gone down,” the pilot replied.

Kurt didn’t want to consider that. By a strange twist of fate, he knew the family on the yacht they were attempting to assist. At least he knew one of them.

“How much fuel?”

“We’re Bingo in ten minutes.”

At that point, they’d have only enough fuel to make it back to the Condor and would have to turn around or risk splashing down short of home and needing rescue themselves.

“Stretch it,” Kurt said.

“The headwinds are killing us.”

“There’ll be tailwinds on the way home,” Kurt insisted. “Keep going.”

The pilot clammed up, and Kurt turned his eyes back to the sea.

“I have something,” Joe shouted, holding a hand to his headset. “It’s weak, but I think it’s their emergency beacon. Turn right to zero seven zero.”

The helicopter banked into the turn, and several minutes later Kurt spied the hull of a hundred-sixty-foot yacht listing to one side. She was still afloat but down at the bow, and all but awash in the waves.

“Take us in,” Kurt ordered.

He yanked open the cargo door, sliding it back and locking it in place. Wind and rain whipped into the cabin.

A winch system and four hundred feet of cable would allow them to lift survivors on board, but they had no basket, so Kurt would have to go down and grab them himself. He clicked the cable to the harness he’d pulled on previously and slid himself to the edge, feet dangling over the side.

“I see no one,” the pilot said.

“They could be clinging to the side,” Kurt replied. “Take us around.”

Kurt could feel adrenaline surging through his body, much as it had been since the details of the damaged craft came in from the South African Coast Guard station.