We rise and fall, tilt this way and that, veer into and out of wave after high-cresting wave. Time and again there’s a moment of near certainty that we’re about to overturn as another hard wave bursts against our starboard side. But each time we stay upright and only get wetter, and I thank the gods for the self-bailing system as water sloshes around our shins. The boat at times goes airborne and then smacks down into the trough with such force that one or another of us is nearly bounced from the cockpit, and we clutch to each other more tightly. It’s amazing that Disco can hold our present speed in such a sea. Raul is monitoring the radar screen, which shows nothing within its fifteen-mile range of us in any direction.
It’s like we’re the only people in the whole world! Kitty says, looking about at the encompassing blackness of heaving sea and raging wind, Rayo hugging her close.
How deep is it out here? Rayo asks.
That depends! Raul says. The Gulf isn’t so very wide but it has many deep basins! We’re going to cross over one that goes down a mile and a half!
Is that the truth?
That’s what all the charts say! And you wouldn’t believe the size of some of the things that live down there! There are fishermen who swear they’ve seen whales in this sea bigger than submarines! I’ve seen sharks the length of this boat and half its width!
Damn good thing it’s so deep! Rayo says. Or it could get pretty crowded down there!
An hour and a half out of Loreto, we’re seventy-five miles into the Gulf, well more than halfway to our landing point. The wind’s at eighty even, and the waves are raising us higher and tilting us more steeply.
Somebody coming up from behind! Raul says.
We all lean in to look at the screen. There’s a blip near the bottom of it, a bit less than fifteen miles away and perceptibly gaining.
Who the hell’s that? Disco asks. The dudes Mateo told us you might piss off?
Who else? Frank says. I doubt it’s the Coast Guard coming to help!
That’s some boat! Raul says. Moving that fast through these waves! I thought we were zooming! We have to speed up!
Any faster on this sea, Disco says, we’ll be badly risking a rollover! Whatever kind of boat that is, it’s bigger than this one and better built for running in a storm!
They’ll catch up before we make land! Rayo says.
They get close enough we’ll get out the M16s and start shooting! says Disco.
They’ll start shooting, too! Frank says. Not that anybody in either boat would hit anything except by wild chance, bouncing around like this!
Forty-five minutes later we’re holding as tightly to the boat as to each other. The wind’s notched down to seventy-eight, but the waves don’t seem any smaller. Disco’s cursing as he grapples with the wheel. We’re less than seven miles from our landing point, and the pursuit boat has closed to within two miles of us.
Oh, dear mother of God! Raul says, staring at the radar screen.
What? says Disco.
Raul looks off to the darkness on our right and says, A wave’s coming! Then looks back at the screen.
Been nothing but waves coming! says Frank. Waves and that bastard chaser behind us! What’s the big deal?
I mean a big bitch of a wave! Coming fast! And long! Coupla miles at least!
Frank and I regard the screen. It’s a big one, all right. A rogue wave rising out of a collision of currents God knows how deep. It’s advancing very swiftly and growing taller as it closes on our starboard side. And now the boat starts rising precipitously. Raul orders us all closer to the port side and yells that if we start to capsize we shouldn’t jump away from the boat but just drop out of it as it starts to roll over, so it’ll be more likely to fall ahead of us rather than on top of us. Frank pulls Kitty up against him, and Rayo draws closer to me and we get a grip on each other’s life vest.
We’re rising higher and higher, slowly tipping to port, then suddenly go up on beam-ends—the deck perpendicular to the sky for a trembling moment—and we all tumble out as the boat is carried forward on the crest of the wave that crashes over us.
And then I’m in wild underwater blackness, whirling in all directions, not knowing up from down. My eyes and nose and throat are burning and I’ve never before felt such panic. I’m certain I’m about to drown. And then suddenly I’m moving sideways and my held breath gives out just as my head breaches the surface and I suck a gasping mouthful of seawater and have a hacking fit so harsh it feels like my Adam’s apple might rip loose and my eyes pop from their sockets. My vest keeps me afloat. And now I realize I’m being tugged by the safety line clipped to it.
“I got you, baby! I got you!”
Rayo. The champion swimmer, pulling me to her. She gets her arms around me and holds me close and my coughing eases.
Dark hours pass and the storm begins to abate. The wind slackens to sporadic gusts of reduced force. The rain quits. The waves lessen. Bobbing like corks, we take turns hollering for the others as loud as we can. The more we call without response, the greater our fear we may be the only ones left. I’m hoarse by the time we hear faint cries of “Over here! Over here!”
Frank! It’s hard to get a fix on the direction of his voice as we twirl this way and that, rising and falling on the swells, calling to him, though our cries are so weakened it’s doubtful he can hear us.
Then we don’t hear him anymore.
Small gray breaks are showing in the black cloud cover and there’s no telling how much time has passed when we make out the sound of an approaching helicopter. We laugh and Rayo hugs my neck. Then she quits laughing and says, “Wait! Whose is it, you think?”
“I don’t know!”
“Could be the guys chasing us!”
Now a searchlight is playing over the water, and at times we see the dark form of the aircraft as it passes below some gray portion of sky. It’s flying a meandering pattern, the light sweeping in all directions.
The helicopter suddenly veers out of its pattern and circles around and descends to about fifty feet above the water and holds that altitude in a wavering hover. It’s maybe fifty lateral yards from us, its light fixed on something or somebody that’s blocked from our view by the swells. A moment later we make out the vague form of someone on a rescue line being lowered from the chopper through the searchlight beam and swaying in the wind until he’s out of sight behind the waves. A minute passes and we see two forms clutching each other being raised to the aircraft. The procedure then repeats and another person is hauled up to the chopper. Then a third.
“If they’re not our guys they wouldn’t be picking us up, would they?” Rayo says.
“Unless they want to interrogate us! Give us a ration of pain!”
The chopper moves off to our right and for a moment I think it might be leaving. But then it pauses and hovers again. And once again the guy goes down on the safety line and retrieves somebody. Whoever’s chopper it is, if it’s picked up only our people it’s picked up everybody but Rayo and me.
The helicopter starts coming our way, now flying in tight circles and working the searchlight with wide sweeps. Whoever they are, we have to chance them. Out here on our own we’re dead for sure. We wave our arms and yell as if it were even remotely possible to be heard above the engine and the wailing of the wind. The light is flashing everywhere except on us as the chopper passes overhead.
“God damn it!” I say.
“Stupid blind asshole dipshit motherfuckers!” Rayo bellows—and the beam swings back and flicks past us and then whips back again and holds on us.
We bust out laughing. “Oh, man,” she says, “is that what it takes? Give the bastards a good cussing?”
The chopper comes around to hover directly above us, pinning us in the glaring shaft of light, its downdraft agitating the water all the more. And now here comes the guy on the rescue line. As I help hook Rayo to him and work the rescue harness under her arms, I ask him who they are and he says, The best friends you got in the world right now! He waves up at the chopper and the line hoists them away.
The chopper keeps its light on me and moves along with my drift. Then down comes the guy on the line again. He hooks me to him and I put on the harness. He waves up at somebody, and the line reels us up.
At the cabin door another crewman pulls us in and yells, That’s it! The chopper swings around and off we go.
The cabin has no seats. Frank’s sitting with his back against the wall, Kitty and Rayo are on one side of him, Raul and Disco on the other. Everybody’s grinning at everybody else, including Mateo, who’s hunkered near the cockpit.
“As I’ve informed the others,” he says to me, “I would never have put you guys on a boat that wasn’t equipped with a location sender.”