Part Eight
Worried, but not sure what else to do, Scott turned to the problems ahead of him instead of the one behind. The lifeboat was at one end of the beach, its pale hull vibrant against the dark grey of a weathered basalt cliff-face behind it. Scott frowned as he approached, bothered by something in the perspective of the scene that he couldn't quite pin down. The boat had well and truly beached itself, its shallow keel dragging a deep groove in the sand and stones behind it, but unable to prevent it tipping on its side. The deck had come to rest sixty degrees from horizontal. The hull, standing well proud of the water, showed signs of its difficult landing, the surface of half the rigid polymer panels splintered and abraded. That wasn't what made Scott let loose with a swear word that would have his father boxing his ears.
As he rounded the prow of the small boat, trying to figure out what was bothering him, he realised that the cliff-face wasn't, as he'd assumed, somewhere in the background. He'd subconsciously thought that the trees hanging over its edge must be a truly impressive size to cast their shadows across the boat. He hadn't realised that they could just be surprisingly close. Frozen to the spot, Scott followed the groove left by the keel with his eyes, tracing it back to where it vanished beneath the encroaching tide. Then he looked up at the cliff-face rising a mere two metres from the far side of the toppled boat, and the jagged rocks at its base. He shook a little, throwing a quick glance behind him towards where Gordy sat just out of sight around the curve of the beach. Just a few metres to one side, a couple of degrees askew in his blind run at the beach, and Scott would have driven them straight into the rock wall.
He could have killed them both.
His stomach twisted in dismay, and then rumbled, shaking Scott out of his panicky what-ifs. With one last, wide-eyed glance at their narrow escape, he shook his head. He took a deep breath, hands clenched at his sides. Concentrate on the here and now, his dad had always told him. And here and now, he was hungry. He was pretty sure Gordy was too, and wondered whether that might be contributing to his little brother's temper. Scott was inclined to linger over meals and when he got hungry, he was generally pretty definite about it. Gordon, by contrast, was one of those children who always protested when Mom called them to the dinner table, resenting the time taken from his fun-filled and active life. At the same time though, his family had learnt early on that whether Gordon himself realised it or not, the little boy tended to get cranky when his body was craving the sugar it needed to refuel his batteries.
Climbing cautiously into the boat, using his arms to balance him when it rocked a little under his feet, Scott made his way across the sloping deck to the emergency locker. He'd left it latched tight the night before, more concerned with getting onto dry land than what they were leaving on the boat. Now he flicked the catches open, pushing the lid wide. Pulling one of the thin blankets out, he threw it loosely around his shoulders, embarrassed despite himself to be wondering around even a deserted beach in nothing but his shorts while their clothes dried. Modesty satisfied, he reached in again, this time for the third of their pre-packed meals, hunger making his fingers over-eager and clumsy. Setting aside the self-heating main course – some kind of omelette if the wrapper were to be believed – for Gordon, he broke open a packet of crackers and the rubbery cheese-like sheets that accompanied them. They had the texture of old car tyres and tasted about as good, but Scott found he was eating faster and faster nonetheless. He forced himself to slow down, taking small bites and chewing well before each swallow. Even so, his stomach was still rumbling when he'd finished and he looked with hungry eyes at the rest of the pack. Feeling guilty, he allowed himself to snaffle the small packet of sweet biscuits as well, leaving the chocolate bar and the rest for Gordon. Sighing, he folded the outer foil wrapper closed, crossing the boat again to place the meal at the lowest point of the hull. Calling Gordon over now would probably get nothing more than defiance and another tirade, but at this angle, the starboard rail of the boat amidships dipped below chest height even for the younger boy. Gordon would find the food waiting there when he came looking, a silent apology from his eldest brother.
Turning back to the locker, Scott leaned in and began to pull out its contents, taking a mental inventory of their supplies. The boat had been designed to keep the Santa Anna's nominal three-man crew alive for twenty-four hours on open water, confident that with modern tracking systems and equipment they would be rescued long before that deadline. There had been three bottles of drinking water, each holding two litres. The first, Scott and Gordon had exhausted between them in the nearly thirty-six hours since they'd been set adrift. Worried, Scott broke the seal on the second bottle, taking a sip from it to moisten his mouth after the dry crackers before setting it down next to Gordon's food. He'd have to keep the bottled water for Gordon from now on, taking his chance with any reasonably clean water they could find as they went along.
More worrying still was that, of their original six food packs – two full meals a day for each of three adults – they were down to only three remaining. Scott had heard that it was possible to live from the natural products of a jungle, but he'd been raised deep in the heart of the United States. He was more accustomed to the arid isolation of military bases and their environs than this kind of alien abundance. Unless the jungle boasted a ready supply of easily identified fruit and vegetables, they were going to be in trouble in another day at most, and that was assuming Scott could cope that long on the meagre rations he was allowing himself. Scott laid the three packs side by side on the deck, considering the problem.
The best-case scenario was that they'd be rescued long before food became an issue. As they'd drifted the previous afternoon, he'd expected at any moment to hear the throbbing engines of an air-sea rescue helicopter, unable to imagine that it would take long for their beacon to be tracked and the boat to be found. It was only gradually that he'd thought it through. He could still taste the slightly metallic tang to the air and feel the hair on the back of his hands standing up when the breeze blew past them. He'd never felt a storm-induction charge, but like any kid he'd learnt about them at school. Unlike most kids, he'd also had a pretty thorough lecture, and heard dozens of stories, from his Uncle Jim, and he doubted many people in the world knew more about the weather control system.
Putting aside the fact that the storm should never have happened, and the grief-driven anger that thought carried, Scott tried to deal with the simple fact that it had. The radiation pumped into the atmosphere, controlled and manipulated by the weather satellites, had stopped Dad calling for help when things first got bad, and stopped anyone getting their GPS alert when the Santa Anna sank. Scott couldn't have said where he was to the nearest two hundred miles, and with neither the ship's locator signal nor the lifeboat's beacon, the folks on shore probably couldn't even come that close. There was another problem too. People would be searching for Scott and Gordon, Mom would have seen to that, but even if they knew where to look, Scott hadn't seen a single contrail in the sky. Scanning it now, there was still no vehicle, not even a hint of a high-altitude stratoliner, in sight. He tried to work out what effect this kind of static might have on a 'plane's engine, and couldn't get much further than 'not good'. Not good at all. Scott had no idea how long the effects of the storm were going to last, but he was pretty sure they were already standing between him and any chance of getting his little brother safely back to what was left of their family.
He remembered his initial, single-minded determination to keep Gordon alive at any cost. The jagged edges of grief and shock had been papered over by the practicalities of the moment, but that resolve still burgeoned inside him, driving him onwards. If Scott couldn't rely on other people to rescue Gordy, he had to do it himself. That meant they couldn't stay on the beach, with a ruined boat and its long-since exhausted emergency beacon, hoping for the best. They were going to have to brave the jungle.
The island had looked small in the fading light, and he'd certainly not seen any evidence of people, but Dad had said most of the Domingan chain was inhabited, if only by one or two people who wanted to be alone. Standing in the well of the boat, Scott stared up at the cliff, and beyond it, the volcanic peak that dominated the island. His eyes followed its black basalt slopes back down to the verdant vegetation at ground level. Searching the place would take days, even without an exhausted six-year-old in tow, but Scott had no choice but to believe that he'd find inhabitants sooner or later, and that they'd be able to help. Someone had a couple of unexpected guests. Scott and Gordon just had to find them and let them know.
Spreading out the small square of tarpaulin he'd used to work on the engine, with a blanket on top of it, Scott placed the food and the last bottle of water in the centre, before turning back to the emergency locker. The first aid kit was rudimentary but it contained insect-repellents, antiseptics and an assortment of bandages. It went on the blanket, followed a moment later by a wad of thin net-like material that might have been designed to keep the sun off or insects out, Scott couldn't be sure.
The pile of supplies already looked heavy, but there was no question of leaving the flare gun behind. The stubby pistol and its three charges had an ominous look, and Scott carefully checked the safety, handling it with the respect his father had taught him for any firearm. He wrapped it carefully in their last blanket, making sure it wasn't in plain sight for Gordon to find, before laying it down with the rest of their supplies.
Frowning, he shook his head. He simply wouldn't be able to carry much more. He just had to hope he'd picked out the important things. Leaning back over the emergency cabinet, he searched through what was left there. Reaching deep into the bottom of the locker, pushing aside an unwieldy coil of thick rope and a kit for patching a leaking hull, Scott's fingers brushed a metal object, pulling it out to find the welcome shape of a fairly-impressive Swiss army knife. He flicked out the longest blade, running his thumb cautiously over its edge and hissing with satisfaction. He almost sliced the digit open when the sound of his name being screamed in a panic split the air.
Gordy! The knife fell from suddenly nerveless fingers as Scott spun on the spot. His brain raced, trying to work out how long it had been since he'd last set eyes on his little brother. He should never have let Gordon out of his sight! What could have happened? Had Gordon fallen from the rocks he was sitting on? They hadn't looked high, but Scott knew from painful experience that his little brothers could find a way to fall off almost anything when left unwatched. Had he fallen into the water, been swept out by some unseen current or undertow? Had Scott remembered to tell Gordon not to go into the jungle? Or had he just thought about saying it?
Worst-case scenarios assaulted him as he scrambled from the lifeboat, desperate to see around the plastic hull and the curve of the beach to where he'd left his brother. Why couldn't Dad have been here? Or even Mom? Scott might have been the oldest, but he was only thirteen! He'd been left in charge of Virgil or even Johnny unsupervised before, sure, but Gordon and Alan were too little. Their parents kept their youngest children close. Dad should be here. He should have been the one to survive. Scott was just so not cut out for this. He'd let Virgil down, and now Gordon too.
Breathing hard, Scott sprinted down the beach, relief flooding him as he caught sight of his little brother. Confusion came hard on its heels as he registered that the child was standing in the middle of the beach, apparently intact and not in immediate danger, but with near-hysteria reddening his face, and Scott's T-shirt twisted in a tight knot between his hands. He shouted for Scott again and again, his eyes too tear-flooded to see his approaching brother.
Scott slid to Gordon's side on his knees, fighting back his own panic to deal instead with the younger boy's.
"Gordon? Gordy! I'm here. I've got you." Scott grabbed hold of Gordon's shoulders and pulled him tight, feeling the six-year-old shaking. "I'm here, Gordy! What's wrong?"
"Scotty?" Gordon's shouts cut off with a strangled sob and he threw his arms around Scott's neck, clinging like a limpet. "I couldn't find you," he sobbed into Scott's shoulder. "I looked and I called and then I looked some more, and you weren't by the stream or on the beach or at the tree where the leaves were or at the washing-line trees and you weren't here, and I called and you didn't answer and I don't hate you, Scotty, really I don't and I know that's a bad word and it hurts people to say it and you're angry with me 'cause I was a baby like Allie 'cause I didn't want a bath, but you said you wouldn't leave, and I was scared 'cause I said I hated you and I'm sorry, really sorry, and I don't want you to go away, and I thought you might have gone in the water and got eaten by sharks or monsters or drowned or something and I shouted and I tried to find you but you weren't there!"
Scott rocked his brother soothingly, stroking the soft copper hair with one hand, keeping a firm hold on his brother's back with the other.
"Oh, Gordy. I'm sorry." He laid a soft kiss on the top of his brother's head as he'd seen his mother do when his little brother was scared and upset. He wondered how long Gordon had been looking for him and cursed his own thoughtlessness. He'd never been the centre of a young child's world like this. It was a scary responsibility. "Gordy, I'm sorry, but I'm here now, just like I said I'd be. I was just in the boat, Gordon. I wouldn't leave you. Not ever. I just didn't hear you call me." Not until his brother's calls had worked their way up to a hysterical scream. "Everything's okay, Gordy, you hear me?"
"I don't hate you, Scotty!"
"It's okay, Gordon. I know. I don't mind. You were upset, that's all."
"I… I thought you'd got angry and gone away like I told you."
Scott sighed. Not letting go of his sniffling brother, he shifted his weight to get one foot flat on the ground, before standing with Gordon still held securely in his arms. "I just didn't hear you, Gordy. I was in the boat but I'm here now, and I won't leave you on your own again. Not even if you get really angry with me. I'm not going to let you go."
Gordon didn't lift his face from Scott's shoulder until Scott stopped by the stream, dropping back to his knees since letting go of his little brother to reach the ground wasn't an option. With one arm still firmly around his slowly-calming brother, Scott scooped up just a little cool water with the other, angling his body so Gordon didn't have to see the pool. Gently, Scott bathed his brother's flushed face, settling Gordon onto his lap, and then reached out for his brother's newly dry T-shirt, pulling it over the trembling and slightly sun-touched shoulders. He disentangled his own shirt from around Gordon's hands in the process, shaking out what he could of the wrinkles and pulling it awkwardly over his head, in a near-reversal of the procedure it had taken to get it off in the first place.
Gordon was calming a little as Scott picked him up again and carried him to the trees where they'd left the rest of their clothing, and even cooperated somewhat as Scott dressed him, still clinging to Scott's legs, but giving his brother enough freedom to pull his jeans back on over his briefs. Still murmuring soothingly to his brother, refusing Gordon's intermittent apologies and apologising in turn, Scott got them both back over to the boat, lifting Gordon to sit on the edge of it, and sitting beside him, helping him with the water bottle and then cutting up the rubbery omelette into bite sized pieces for him. By the time Gordon was prepared to let his brother stand up and move a few feet away into the boat, the sun was climbing rapidly towards noon. Scott rubbed a hand across his brow, aware of bright amber eyes watching his every move as he tried to work out a way to tie the tarpaulin and its contents into an easily-carried bundle.
Gordon had had a stressful morning and they were both tired still from everything that had gone before. Even so, they needed to get moving. It was a day and a half since the Santa Anna was wrecked in the storm. It could easily be that long again before anyone would be able to come looking for them, and by then they'd be starving as well as exhausted, sunburned during the days and freezing at nights. For his brother's sake, Scott didn't dare allow them to sit here any longer.
The jungle awaited them.
Dawn was still casting a rosy glow across the sky when Travis pulled his car up in front of Mike Kearney's house. He'd got maybe three hours sleep. At first, he'd simply been kicking himself for ending the conversation with Vaughan on such a sour note. When he had finally slept, he'd been disturbed by nightmares of children slipping between his fingers to vanish beneath the water, and haunted by the faces of Virgil's two brothers. Resting his arms on the steering wheel, he adjusted the driver's mirror to take a look at himself. He might be stubble-free, but his dark hair was tousled and the shadows under his eyes undermined his otherwise clean-cut appearance. Barely twelve hours since the Levans had brought their human cargo ashore, and already Travis was looking wrecked.
From the looks of his colleague, Mike hadn't got much more rest. The detective pulled a coat on, kissing his wife and adjusting the dressing robe around her shoulders with a tender touch. He whispered something to her and she gave a deep sigh before nodding and gesturing him towards the car. Impatient, Travis spared Mary Kearney a brief wave, both sympathising with and envying her as she vanished into the house and back towards her bed.
Kearney tumbled into the car's passenger sheet in a malcoordinated jumble of limbs, almost sitting on Virgil's drawings before Travis could snatch them to safety. Shaking his head, Travis shoved the paper back into his colleague's arms, freeing up his own hands to put the car in gear.
Eyes widening, Kearney studied the chart. "Chuck, where did you get this?"
Travis grunted, eyes on the road as he navigated the quiet streets towards headquarters. "Virgil Tracy. Turns out the kid's got a photographic memory. It might not be entirely accurate, but…"
"It's somewhere to start." Kearney finished for him, frowning thoughtfully at the sketched reference map and angling it into the rapidly-growing sunlight. "You've been to the hospital already this morning?"
"Last night. Well, about three AM, to be honest. The chief had sent you home and there wasn't much we could do with the information overnight in any case."
"True," Mike shook his head sadly. "Without air-sea rescue…"
"Any word on when it might be safe to fly?"
"Another twenty four hours. Minimum." Kearney drummed his fingers against the arm-rest on the passenger-side door. "We've got, what, two hours before the tide changes? We'll get the rescue boats out there this morning, but even if every yacht and fishing rig in the Confederation lends a hand, the wreckage is going to have spread out by now. Spotting anything without air cover or satellite imaging is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack." He paused, unstrapping his seatbelt as they pulled up in Travis's reserved spot at police headquarters. "Did Virgil tell you anything else?" He flipped the chart aside and froze, staring at the two faces on the second sheet of paper. After a few moments, Kearney swallowed hard, dragging his gaze away from Scott Tracy's challenging eyes. "Kid's got talent."
"Yeah." Travis threw his door open, heading up the steps to the main entrance without bothering to check his colleague was following. "The boys were in a lifeboat apparently. How'd you come on those wind measurements last night? If they did get through the storm…"
"Getting there." Kearney pushed ahead of him as they approached the squad room, bursting through its swing doors with Virgil's chart in hand and hurrying to his desk. "Where is it? Where is it?"
Leaning back against his desk, Travis watched Kearney riffle through a pile of poster-sized paper sheets, eventually pulling out a detailed navigation chart of the archipelago. The library stamp in the corner told Travis that Mike's attempts to gather information last night had ranged far and wide.
"You know you're going to get in trouble about that?" Travis commented, gesturing toward the ring-shaped coffee stain overlaying the 'Reference Only' mark. Whatever librarian Mike had dragged into work after-hours would be still less happy when he returned the loan.
Mike blinked at the stain, seeing it for the first time. He shook his head. "I'll live. Give me a hand here."
Travis shifted a pile of paperwork, tucked haphazardly into brown cardboard folders, onto his own desk, making room on Mike's to lay the full-size chart side by side with Virgil's sketch. He could tell at once that the match was good, not just the shapes of the main islands but also their relative size, orientation and separation impressively accurate. Whipping a plastic ruler from his desk draw, Mike transposed the markings from Virgil's chart onto his own, questions of ownership and condition irrelevant.
"Right, so one bearing west-south-west, passing between Santa Isobella and Horizon and angling up towards the Illian chain. One north-south, just west of San Fernando on one end and ending fifty miles due east of Dominga. And where they cross…" Mike held the point of his pencil pressing down on the chart, leaving a sharp indentation. He drew a circle around it. "About thirty-five or forty miles due north of 'Fernando."
"Damn it," Travis shook his head tiredly. "That's even further south than Cal Levan thought, right?"
"Yeah," Mike agreed absently. He was searching through the pile of papers again, eventually pulling out a satellite image of the entire archipelago, with a coordinate grid and a mosaic of large squares overlaying it. Travis traced the coordinates as Mike read them out, moving his fingers along the horizontal and vertical grid to settle just within the northernmost edge of one of the squares. He read the code marked in it back to Kearney. Kearney scowled, shaking his head with a sigh.
"I was looking in the wrong footprint."
"Uh huh?" Travis agreed, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. "And that means…?"
"I ran over to the met office last night. The last clear satellite imaging they'd downloaded was about three hours before the storm. I was looking for any sign of Tracy's yacht to give us an idea where to start. It wasn't where the Levans said it was at first: surprise, surprise. But I had another look when you'd got a statement off of Cal and tried to work out where they might actually have been."
"And they were further south?" Travis asked, sitting back with a sigh. "You know, I'm really going to knock that Villacana guy for six when I see him."
"He probably had no idea about the boat," Kearney reminded him, glancing sideways at his friend. "I'm not arguing that the guy's a bastard and I say we take him to the cleaners for interfering with an investigation, but taking this one personally… it's not going to help, Chuck."
Chuck Travis stared at the other man, torn between anger and offence. He stepped back from the table, about to object, and stopped when his eyes fell on Virgil's sketches, tossed carelessly onto a nearby chair. "I don't know, Mike. You've not seen this kid. He keeps his Dad afloat for a day in open water, and the first thing he asks about when he wakes up is how the man is and then where his brothers are. When they were just names, bad photos… Hell, it was sad, but that's life." He shook his head. "The kids in the photos could have been anyone." He indicated the sketches. "These boys? These are Virgil's brothers. You can see that fire in their eyes."
"Sounds like Tracy's going to have to fight to get his son back." Lex Coates' voice was amused and just a little sarcastic. The chief strode into the office looking none the worse for wear for their late night. His expression was calm but serious as he came to the Travis' side and gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. "Hold it together, Chuck. Kearney, what have you got?"
Mike Kearney had been leaning over the satellite imaging, peering closely at it. He felt blindly under the chart and photographs for something and pulled out a large, old-fashioned magnifying glass, staring down through it in a classic Sherlock Holmes pose. Travis couldn't help cracking a smile, exchanging a glance with his boss. They might make a detective of Kearney yet.
"I think… I think I've got the Santa Anna."
Travis stepped forward at once, aware of the chief by his side. He took the magnifying glass from Kearney, directing it towards the spot the other man indicated. The image on the picture was not much more than a millimetre in length, and a fraction of that wide. Despite that the shape was recognisably streamlined, even if the detail was blurred. Travis handed the magnifying glass on to Coates, looking at Kearney with a question in his eyes.
"She's the right size and shape, and there aren't many ships of that type in the area according to the harbour master. She's in the right place too. Forty miles west of Virgil's coordinates, which is about right for two hours sailing in the prevailing winds that evening. Looks like the kid was spot on. He was probably there to within a handful of miles either way."
Travis nodded eagerly. "So the two boys in the lifeboat – Scott and Gordon – if we know where they started from, where would they have ended up?"
Kearney's enthusiasm faded. His shoulders slumped and he folded his arms across his chest, shaking his head. "God knows. Chuck. If they'd been where we were originally thinking, or anywhere else, all this," he waved an arm to indicate the research he'd been doing, "would have given us a place to look. As it is the Santa Anna had to be within a few miles of ground zero for the induction pulse. That typhoon was churning the air and sea up like a whirlpool fifty miles across. The boat could have been flung out anywhere – if it was very, very lucky."
Travis felt his guts pull tight. "I need coffee," he muttered. More importantly, he needed to stop doing this: riding a rollercoaster between realism and wild hope.
He headed for the coffee machine, aware of his colleagues' eyes on his back as he went through the familiar ritual of cleaning, filling and restarting it. Behind him, Coates was giving Kearney orders, and then bringing the rest of the detective team up to speed as they trickled through the door. The Domingan Confederation had a population not much more than that of a small city, numbering in the high tens of thousands rather than millions, and scattered across almost forty inhabited islands. The remaining complement of the police force's detective branch constituted a handful of officers, all of them junior to Kearney and Travis himself. There had been no point in bringing them in the night before. Now though, organising and managing the search was going to take all hands.
Coates came up beside him, helping himself to the first mug of coffee before Travis could do so, and then watching as Travis filled his own mug. "I'm going to have to get down to the coast-guard's office. Their helicopters and helijet are grounded, but they're sending their hydrofoil out with ours and they've got the systems in place to coordinate any other boats that volunteer."
"What do you want me to do?" Travis asked in a low, tired voice.
"What you have been doing – figuring out what happened. We're sending the police launch down south, and I got through to the Santa Isobella station. They're sending their launch too, but our hydrofoil's going to beat anything else down there. You and Kearney have got half an hour to get yourselves down to the dock and get on it. It'll drop you at San Fernando. Villacana has a motor yacht we could use in the search, and a lot of questions to answer." One of the junior officers arrived with Virgil's sketched portraits in one hand and a pile of copies in the other. Coates took them, grunting slightly as he studied the picture, before handing the original back to Travis. "I'll make sure these get distributed. Search boats, media, and any islands I can get a strong enough signal through to. If anyone might have seen these boys, or they've washed up on a beach somewhere, I want these pictures out there tugging at heartstrings."
Nodding, Travis drained the last dregs of coffee, and picked up his leather jacket from the chair he'd discarded it across. Mike Kearney was already waiting by the door, his expression almost as impatient as Travis felt.
"Let's go."