Brothers in Arms

CHAPTER FIVE

Hell and high water besieged their every horizon.

First panic and then rage consumed Drake as he struggled to make any progress. Darkness pounded at him, rolled at him, and assaulted his consciousness with waves of disbelief and amazement. Every inch of his body cried out with pain. Water splashed and dragged at him until he learned to see through the salty sting. A continual swell sent him up and down like a nightmare elevator that never stops. His gaze swept the menacing seas.

Where were the others? Where are the Zodiacs?

Dark clouds obscured any faint light that might have shone down from the skies above. Lightning flickered in the distance, marching across the waves like old gods. Thunder rumbled threateningly. His heart sank as he studied the blackness, seeing nothing to raise his spirits.

Kept buoyant by his life jacket, Drake attempted to move. The Zodiacs wouldn’t come to him. He remembered to switch on the shoulder light, but it was like a pinprick trying to illuminate the solar system. With a huge effort, he surged forward, plowing through the gloomy waters. At first, he made progress, but each successive, mountainous wave dumped him back where he started. It was all he could do to keep his head above water.

Then, a shout came, “Move!” desperate and plaintive, barely heard above the sea’s menacing roar. Drake paddled around to see his salvation. A Zodiac, manned by Romero and Smyth, aiming straight for him. The Recon guys had come through. They reached him in seconds, skillfully guiding the light-framed boat through chop and wave crests and a hard, driving rain. The terrible sea clung to him as hard as it could, but Romero and Smyth, anchored by their guide ropes, hauled him out of the water.

Drake collapsed, breathing heavily, feeling utmost relief for about half a second. Then he sat up.

“Have you seen Mai?”

Romero shook his head. “Shit, man, do you know how lucky we were to find you?”

“We can’t leave her.” Drake secured himself through a set of guide ropes and rested his back against the side of the craft.

“We ain’t going anyplace, bro,” Romero told him. “That these goddamn waters don’t want us to. Since you don’t seem to get it, let me explain — this ain’t no rescue mission.”

Drake nodded. Spray showered over the sides of the boat, then a torrent of water poured over him. They crested another wave and plummeted off its back side into an abyss. Drake gripped the ropes until blood began to seep through his fingers, but he couldn’t relax his hold. A cold rain struck at their exposed faces so hard it constantly made them flinch.

Lightning struck the seas a hundred feet from their position, boiling along the waves, drenching the whole scene with an eerie glow. The roar of thunder and water made it impossible to even think clearly.

More peaks and more troughs as the waves rose even higher, five and then six meter summits. And even the wind lent the weight of its fury against them, caterwauling among the peaks and troughs, gusting hard when the boat dropped to its lowest, whipping at them when they topped out.

The Zodiac struggled resolutely onward. Its occupants never stopped twisting and turning in their harnesses, always vigilant, always searching for their lost companion. The minutes passed like hours, and the hours like days.

“Stupid question!” Drake yelled once. “Anyone still got comms? Did you manage to get a message out to Hayden?”

“Shit, just a snatch.” Romero shouted back. “After impact. Smyth?”

“Yeah. Just we’re ok and then the lights went out. Not sure it even transmitted.”

“Sounds about right,” Drake muttered in broad Yorkshire. “If summat can go wrong, summat will.”

As if to emphasize his point, a torrent of water deluged the boat. Drake stopped breathing as the inundation crashed into his face. A few seconds passed and then he lay there panting, exhausted.

It was good they were strapped in. As the onslaught continued, their muscles grew weary and their brains foggy. There were other dangers here, including hypothermia. When a surge of water flooded the boat, the colliding forces came together in a white fizzing froth, relentless and merciless. They braced themselves against each other, against the boat, and closed their eyes as the sky became the mountainous sea and the sea suddenly crashed away to reveal the turbulent sky.

Drake wished he knew what had happened to Mai. If this hell was to be his final resting place, he wanted to go down knowing the truth. But he had no intention of going down at all. He was stronger than that. With Mai fixed firmly at the forefront of his mind, he found the strength to ignore the peril by peering inward. Whilst not avoiding the Japanese agent recently, he had ensured that their relationship didn’t develop.

Might have been a mistake. The thought came a little grudgingly, but it came straight from his soul. If a man gave up the chances that came his way, he would regret it for the rest of his life.

Drake opened his eyes and watched the other two men in the boat. Romero sat easily, a reserved calm smoothing out his features. It took moments like this to find a man you could truly rely on in any given moment of danger, and the Force Recon team leader was one of them. Smyth looked a little scared, a little green, but gazed hard into the tumult as if trying to find the paths of his future.

They were good men. Hard men. And if they survived this battle, brothers for life.

At last the skies began to lighten to the east, easing their torment if only a little. The great seas quieted, the enormous waves gradually flattening out. An hour passed and the sun began to rise, an orange ball of fire that burned off any last vestiges of the storm. Overcome with exhaustion, the trio fell into a deep sleep, waking later as the sun blasted down from high overhead.

Without a word, Drake unhooked himself from the ropes, every muscle burning, and tried to crawl across the bottom of the boat. His tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth, his skin burning from exposure to the sun. Every nerve and every sinew screamed in protest, but he forced his body to inch its way to the sealed storage bag that nestled in the front of the boat. It would hold tools, an inflator and patches, and also water.

He lifted his head. Sunlight blasted off the sea, dazzling his eyes and setting off a pounding pain. The marines would have reflectors in their packs.

Later. For now, he unbuckled the storage bag and opened it. Then he took three bottles of water out and passed them around. Never had water tasted so good.

Romero fished out the anti-glare glasses, groaning as he moved. “Damnit, man, feel like I went nine rounds with the Hulk.”

He carefully fixed the glasses around his eyes and gazed out to sea for a while. Judging from the expression on his face, Drake guessed he didn’t see a whole lot.

“We don’t know where we landed, where we drifted, or where we are.” Smyth was also surveying the area.

“No, but we do know east and west,” Drake pointed out. “Maybe we didn’t drift so far. And, if we head due north we should hit land.” He didn’t add the requisite eventually.

“That’s the plan.” Romero said, staying upbeat. Drake thought that being stranded with the marine wasn’t half as stressful as it might have been with Alicia. He sat up, trying to avoid the raging sun and the glaring sea. Salt granules stuck to his skin. Scrapes and bruises stood out harshly on his arms.

“We need to cover up too,” Drake said. “You guys have anything we can use?” The question was rhetorical as Drake searched the storage bag and came up empty. “Guess it’ll have to be our vests.”

Slowly, Drake stripped out of his Kevlar jacket and shirt. He wrapped the vest tightly around his head and tied an end. Makeshift, but effective for now. “So,” he said, “we gonna start paddling?”

Romero sighed. “Fuck.”

The trio of battered men unstrapped the paddles and started to dig at the sea. As one they groaned. Due north looked no different than due south, but once they had it pinpointed, they kept the horizon in their sights and put their backs into it.

After a half hour, Romero spoke up. “You guys think we’ll be rescued?”

“Bugger all chance of that.” Drake snorted. “Hayden thinks we’re ok. No one else knows we’re here.”

“Rations are exactly that. Rations.” Smyth shook his webbing, letting the few packets of food rattle. “A day or two tops.”

The sun beat down. The men grew tired, and rested as the heat passed its midday peak and waned into late afternoon. They drank water and laid back to conserve energy. A couple of rogue waves sent them scaling liquid cliffs again only to plummet once more to impossible depths. Sea creatures bumped the boat, investigating, some just curious, others questing for food. When the dirty white fin of a shark broke the surface, Romero sat up angrily. “Now that’s an ice cold mother of a threat.”

Smyth stared at the fin as it cut its way back and forth. “We used to take bets back in training as to how we might die. Could’ve got a cool hundred to one on becoming shark food.”

“But who would’ve collected the winnings?” Drake smirked.

Smyth shrugged. “Didn’t think that far.”

They waited until the fin vanished and then started paddling again, but there wasn’t a single pair of eyes that didn’t constantly keep a lookout for that chilling, telltale sign.

But as night began to encroach, the men became quiet. The ocean grew still. A thin sliver of moon rose steadily, casting its stark glow across the undulating, mirror-like surface of the sea. Drake found himself dwelling on Mai, and the ordeals she might be enduring. He couldn’t bring himself to think she might already have died. Couldn’t even imagine it.

His heart froze when a shadow loomed ahead, gliding silently toward them across the gentle swells of the sea.