Twelve Mile Limit

13

Stars, planets, streaking satellites fell toward her, propelled by the buoyancy of each cresting wave, then stars were yanked skyward again as the wave collapsed, dropping her body into a black valley.. .

Floating on her back, eyes focused overhead and clinging to a universe of blazing starlight, Janet Mueller used her left hand to grip a section of anchor line hitched to the bow of the Seminole Wind while the fingers of her right hand touched the thin gold crucifix she was never without. It was a gift from her late husband, Roger, who’d been killed in a car accident years ago, only three months before their first baby was to be born.

They were to have a boy. They knew it from the first ultrasound-an infant so obviously a boy that it was the subject of many whispered bedtime jokes. Thomas Roger Mueller.

Janet barely survived the shock of her husband’s death. Their child did not. She went into labor prematurely, and the doctors could not save the boy, though young Thomas fought valiantly to live for three nights and four days, rabbit-sized, tiny fists clenched, lying inside the oxygen spherical in the preemie ward, Toledo General Hospital.

Her husband was killed the day after Thanksgiving. Thomas Roger died one week later, the first day of December. That was seven years and a different lifetime ago, it had come to seem. Almost as if it had happened to another person, a person with her name and face who’d dreamed all those peaceful times with Roger, and then, still sleeping, slipped into a nightmare that was the deepest of horrors.

That was Ohio. This was Florida. Her new life. The elementary school teacher who, to save her own sanity, traded in expectations of a suburban house and conventional family for a quirky little houseboat at a quirky little marina. Her new life in the tropics with parties, devoted friends, great sunsets, and, finally, a second good man-though she and Jeth had had their problems. Everyone did.

Once browsing through the library of her friend, Marion Ford, she’d found a chapter in a book about certain lizards, members of the Iguanid family, that could change colors as required, even grow new tails if they’d been injured-chromatic transformation and cellular regeneration. Janet felt an unexpected kinship with those creatures because she had learned that, if sufficiently traumatized, a woman must employ chameleon capabilities to endure.

Janet Mueller had lost her heart but was slowly growing a new one in this, the life of her own invention. A good life, too. Until this day. Until this dive trip.

She would survive it. She had to. She’d survived worse.

Now, holding on to the rope, frightened to the point of emotional exhaustion, Janet repeated the prayer that had become her bedtime mantra, her savior during those worst of times: I am strong. My faith is stronger. I am strong. My faith is stronger. Over and over in her mind, she spoke the words by rote. There was another mantra that she’d sometimes used during the day when the pain threatened to overwhelm her. It was one of her favorites because it was both reassuring and assertive: This evil stands no chance against my prayers.

She switched to that mantra now, finding comfort in the old, familiar rhythm of the words, repeating the phrase silently as all four of them clung to the rope in single file.

This evil stands no chance against my prayers!

She’d been in the water now for nearly four hours, and her body was beginning to complain, give her little signals that it was time to step back on to the dock, get into a hot freshwater shower, then change into clean clothes, something dry and warm.

If only she could!

Janet wore a pink neoprene shorty wet suit. Beneath that, she wore what divers call a “body skin,” a one-piece undergarment made of nylon and lycra that’s soft and stretchable. Even so, the wet suit was beginning to chafe at the ridged areas where the seams were glued, under her arms and on the inside of her thighs. The nylon was also beginning to chafe around, her nipples, which were naturally supersensitive, anyway.

Salt water made the chafed areas burn. Janet’s neck-length, chestnut hair was caked with salt, too, and salt was so heavy on her tongue that her breath now had a metallic odor, which she could taste when she swallowed.

Still, she repeated her strong assertion: This evil stands no chance against my prayers!

Janet was closest to the bow of the boat. Holding on to the line behind her were Grace, then Michael, then Amelia. Amelia had volunteered to take the end of the rope because she said she’d been a competitive swimmer in high school, and so was probably the best swimmer of the group. Plus she, like Janet, still had her fins. If a wave knocked her away from the rope, she’d have the best chance of making it back without requiring someone else to release the rope to help her.

For Amelia to volunteer to do such a thing, when they were all so frightened and in such danger, impressed Janet tremendously. She’d known Amelia for only a few days but liked her, trusted her on a level of perception that was qualitative, and now her trust was confirmed. Amelia was a strong woman who felt an obligation to the welfare of others. Someone who could be relied on to act and who wasn’t afraid to take charge.

When Amelia made the offer to take the last space, Michael protested, but in a way that said he was actually grateful. He still seemed to be in shock. It was his boat that had sunk; his responsibility, not to mention what had to be a terrible financial loss. Janet had known Michael for more than a year. They’d had a brief sexual fling-which was very unlike her, but Michael was gorgeous; no one could argue that-and she still enjoyed his company because he was sociable, quick to laugh, and thoughtful in ways that she sometimes found touching. Plus, remaining friends mitigated the probable remorse of a one-night stand-something she’d never done before and would never risk again.

Janet had never seen Michael like this, though. In the nearly three hours of daylight after the Seminole Wind first swamped, the fear in the man’s face was unmistakable in the mottled skin, the glazed eyes. Every few minutes, it seemed, he’d mutter, “I can’t believe this is happening. This can’t really be happening, can it?” When he did try to make conversation, his voice was strained. He couldn’t seem to concentrate or complete a sentence.

None of them, however, was more frightened than Grace. Janet had known Grace for nearly as long as she’d known Michael. He always introduced her as “my closest lady friend” and she almost certainly was. The only thing they didn’t do together was dating and sex-or so they joked-and they were hilarious when they’d get into one of their black woman versus white male mock bickering matches, which had become a kind of shtick, they were so good at it. It was like a comedy routine, they were so darn funny, him the big jock football coach-teacher and not the smartest guy in the world, Grace the successful realtor and black community activist.

It was a friendship that seemed unlikely but really wasn’t. Five years earlier, only a month or so apart, they’d coincidentally bought adjoining duplexes on Avenida del Mare, just across the canal from Palm Island and only a couple of blocks from Siesta Key Beach. Both were trying to restart their lives after ending ugly, destructive marriages. Both were wary of beginning new relationships, both loved cooking, fitness training, lived far from their own families, and each owned a dog-Grace, a miniature Doberman; Michael, a yellow lab named Coach.

After a wary few months, they entered into a mutually beneficial acquaintanceship that began with dog-sitting and gradually became a more dependent and far more complex friendship. By the time Janet met them, Michael and Grace had become indispensable, each to the other, as confidant, advisor, protector, and as the quick and dependable judge of potential lovers who circulated in and out of their own small, stable orbit. They were workout partners, swing dance partners, and safe, steadfast escorts in those social situations when an escort was needed but a decent date couldn’t be found.

The two were so clearly at home with each other that they quickly put people around them at ease. Almost everyone they allowed to be a part of their friendship said variations of the same: You two should form a comedy team. You two should have your own television show, because you’re such a riot!

Grace and Michael hadn’t made any jokes in the last few hours, though. Soon after leaving to make the dive, Janet knew it had been a mistake to bring Grace. A mistake for any of them to come so far offshore, probably. Especially, though, for the Sarasota realtor.

What was immediately evident as they headed out Marco Island Pass, into the rolling seas, was that Grace was nervous and uncomfortable in a boat. It was plainly seen in the way she hung next to Michael Sanford, often grabbing his arm when jolted by an unusually big wave, and in her repeated questions: “Are you sure it’s okay for us to be out here, Sandman? You sure it’s safe? You get the Princess Grace hurt, Sandman, the Princess is going to open up a can of whoop-ass on you, my friend.”

Despite Grace’s use of the pet names reserved for their private use, as if making light of their situation she was scared, no disguising that. A couple of times, Janet and Amelia made eye contact, eyebrows raised, both acknowledging that Grace was frightened, didn’t like boats, didn’t like water. She wouldn’t be here at all if Michael hadn’t made it his special project to teach her to SCUBA dive. He’d taken her through the PADI classes, then on a couple of dives to the Dry Tortugas, and recently a weeklong trip to Key West and the reefs of American Shoals.

That had been her favorite dive trip, American Shoals. All the great coral heads and big fish at Looe Key and Western Sambo, then eating and drinking at the Green Parrot in Key West, that old pirate town, with its shipwright houses and widows’ walks. On the charter boat to Looe Key, they’d met Amelia and formed a diving friendship. American Shoals was where their little group started. That kind of diving, she liked: glassy, flat seas, and water so clear it was like looking down into outer space, a whole aqua-bright universe of color and light.

This, though, Grace hated. Big waves, gray water. Too much wind and salt. This wasn’t like the Keys where there were lots of boats, lots of fun. This water was wilderness, alone and open to the sky. It terrified her.

Her discomfort was even more obvious when she got into her dive gear and jumped off the boat. Grace not only wasn’t a good swimmer, she didn’t enjoy being in the water, all those waves lifting and rolling, spraying salt water into her face, beading in her African hair, causing her to squinch her eyes tight, this tall, muscular woman making faces like a little girl.

Once again, Amelia had demonstrated her strength by risking offense when she tapped Michael on the shoulder and said, “Are you sure Grace is up to this? Maybe she should stay on the boat and just the three of us dive.” But Grace interceded immediately, saying, “I’m not staying up here on the boat alone. No way, sister! Big wave could come along and suck me right outta there!” And Michael had agreed, laughing, saying, “You think I’m going to let anything happen to the Princess? Where I go, she goes.” Waiting while Grace rinsed her face mask and pulled it on, Michael had shouted, “We’re a team, right, Gracie?”

Once again, Janet and Amelia communicated via eye contact only: No way was Grace going to complete this dive.

They were right. Pulling themselves in single file down the anchor line, into the green dusk below, Grace had stopped at about thirty feet. She knew the hand signs from her classes: Her ears wouldn’t clear. She’d have to go back up. She wanted to go back up.

Michael returned to the boat with her, of course. On the buddy system, buddies stick together.

The two of them were still together when Amelia and Janet surfaced nineteen minutes later to find the Seminole Wind upside-down, floating bow-high on its taut anchor line, wind sharpening out of an afternoon sky with a horizon the color of winter clouds, like moonlight on ice.

During hurricane season in that year, July through November, there was less activity than usual in the southern meridians. There were seven tropical storms but only two became hurricanes, which is significantly below the average of ten tropical storms and six hurricanes during that five-month window. Also, there were no major hurricanes (category three or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale, meaning winds greater than 110 mph), which is also unusual-though one storm did approach that strength, Hurricane Gordon.

On an average, there are two major hurricanes in a season that make hard landfall somewhere in the tropics. There are death tolls. There are estimates of property damage. There are coordinated relief efforts that include many agencies, sometimes many countries. The year that Janet and her friends disappeared was an exception.

As far as tropical weather, it was a rare, peaceful season-with the exclusion of one short period, the first week of November, the week that the Seminole Wind sank. It was during the last week of October and the first seven days of November that the season’s only two hurricanes formed, and they formed almost simultaneously.

Hurricane Florence began to take shape on November 2 as a subtropical depression at latitude 23.20 and longitude 47.70, which is on a line with Cuba and west of Florida Channel, that tight water exit between Key West and Havana.

At the same time, above the Isthmus of Panama and east of the Miskito Reefs of Nicaragua, Hurricane Gordon began to gather heat and convective energy, the slow formation of its tropospheric circulation visible to Tropical Satellite Analysis and Forecast (TSAF) weather monitors along its track. Gordon followed an unusual, erratic path over Nicaragua, the western Caribbean Sea, then drifted toward the Gulf of Mexico’s second constricted water space, the Yucatan Channel.

By November 4, the day that Janet, Michael, and Grace were set adrift, both narrow entrances into the Gulf of Mexico were dominated by these two massive and conflicting low-pressure systems, though the effects on the Gulf were not obvious in terms of wind and rain. Between November 1 and 3, Florida residents from Sarasota to Marco Island awoke to read similar, repetitive weather forecasts in their daily papers: partly cloudy, chance of showers. Highs in the upper eighties, lows in the upper sixties. Winds east to southeast, fifteen knots, seas one to two feet, bay and inland waters a moderate chop.

It was good boating weather, nothing obvious out there to fear.

On Friday, November 4, the weather grew more brisk, although newspapers still predicted winds only to fifteen knots. The forecast that Michael Sanford and the others heard that morning on the VHF radio as they left Marco Island was slightly more severe, and more accurate. A recorded voice for NOAA Weather Radio repeated several times each hour: “From Cape Sable to Tarpon Springs, and fifty miles offshore, small craft should exercise caution. Winds will be out of the east fifteen to twenty knots, seas four to six feet, with bay and inland waters choppy.”

It wasn’t ideal weather, but it wasn’t terrible, either. In his custom twenty-five-foot boat powered with twin 225-horse-power Evinrudes, Sanford could still blast through waves at thirty-five miles per hour or faster, which put the wreck of the Baja California less than two hours or so from the light buoy off Big Marco Pass.

Something else that Sanford may have considered is that weather forecasts for the Gulf Coast of Florida are notoriously unreliable. Fishing guides often joke about them with a bitterness born from losing family income because, each season, clients cancel trips after listening to erroneous forecasts predicting foul weather. It’s not because the Gulf region lacks excellent meteorologists. Weather here is difficult to predict because the Gulf of Mexico is a complicated body of water, sensitive as a barometer, and influenced by changes in global weather, both subtle and strong.

The influence of the two gathering hurricanes on the Gulf was invisible but indisputable. The erratic, swirling currents and gyres of the Gulf are driven by diverse factors that include wind, heat, and oceanic currents. During a normal week, the great trade wind currents of the Caribbean push through the Yucatan Channel, into the Gulf, rivering along at speeds that can exceed three nautical miles per hour during the fall and winter. When Hurricane Gordon began its slow counterclockwise lumbering, however, the trade wind streams began to pile water massively off Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula, pressuring it through the Yucatan Straits at more than twice the speed of normal flow-in excess of six knots, or more than seven miles an hour, which is twice as fast as an Olympian can swim.

Off the Florida Straits, the effect of soon-to-be Hurricane Florence was proportional, but in reverse. As the Gulf of Mexico’s great loop current flows eastward along the Florida panhandle, then southward along the Florida peninsula, it rejoins a smaller but more powerful current loop off the northern coast of Cuba. These two saltwater rivers combine to form an inexorable surging of water called the Florida Current. This is the beginning of the Gulf Stream, which Juan Ponce de Leon described in his ship’s log as “the current more powerful than the wind.” The Gulf Stream transports 80 million tons of water per second along the coast of the United States, then east toward Europe, its warm waters profoundly affecting the weather of the British Isles and Europe.

Because the Florida Current is severely constricted by the Florida Keys and Cuba as it exits the Gulf, it flows hard even in normal weather, sometimes nearly four nautical miles per hour. However, with Florence hanging off the stricture, sucking in heat, wind, and water, both the velocity and mass of the Florida Current were amplified.

Hurricane Gordon was pushing water from the west; Tropical Storm Florence was pulling water from the east. The swirling, mobile, and complicate gyres whirlpooling within the Gulf were energized proportionally, gathering speeds of up to five, six, perhaps even seven knots, though no one knows for certain.

As the velocity of the currents and gyres increased and conflicted with wind flow, seas became heavier, more volatile, with occasional rogue waves large and out of keeping with normal seas abraded by twenty-knot winds. Even during calm weather, boat traffic is never heavy offshore of Florida’s Gulf barrier islands. There are more fish and more fun to be had gunk-holing around the bays. When the weather turns sloppy, though, boat traffic is almost nonexistent, and the Gulf becomes an uninhabited desert of gray.

There is an additional factor to be considered when contemplating the fate of three lone souls adrift in rivers that have no horizons. Oceanographers have determined that wind blowing across open water can sometimes alter the direction of the fluid’s movement-a phenomenon known as “wind drag,” the effects of which are defined as “geotropic flow.”

Wind moving over water creates friction, and the influence of that applied friction can cause objects on the water’s surface to drift at a 45-degree angle to the wind. Thus, wind blowing from the northeast will gradually create its own northwesterly water current. If the water is already flowing north, the velocity of that current will be increased and its direction altered only slightly.

Under such rare conditions, wing drag might have more influence on an inflated buoyancy compensator vest, which floats mostly atop the water, than on a data-marking buoy, which floats mostly beneath it.

Hurricane Florence formed quickly, swirled out to sea and vanished. Gordon had an impact on the Atlantic coast, though it was a hurricane for only about a day while southeast of the North Carolina Outer Banks. Most of its havoc was wrought as a tropical storm, its driving rains producing flooding and mud slides, which were particularly deadly in Haiti. Estimates of the death toll ranged up to two thousand. In Florida, seven deaths were attributed to Gordon, and there was significant agricultural damage.

If judged by similar elements, factors that can be consistently measured and recorded, the effect of the two hurricanes on the Gulf of Mexico, however, was negligible-unless you were one of three people out there in a gyre, floating and alone, being swept away.

At 7 P.M. on that moonless, windy night, Michael Sanford heard Janet make an abrupt mewing sound, then heard her scream, “Hey! My God, where’d the boat go?”

Moments later, the anchor line he and the others were holding was ripped away.

The anchor line had been in his left hand. In his right, he’d been holding Grace Walker, had her spooned against his body, trying to comfort her. Was trying to find some comfort himself, too-there was reassurance in the act of reassuring. When the boat went down, the anchor line snatched him under, vibrating with the intensity of a piano wire. He let go instinctively and stroked his way toward the surface, up through the blackness… and felt Grace sliding down his body, clawing at his abdomen, then legs, her fingernails gouging into the flesh of his feet as the boat dragged her toward the bottom, 110 feet below, while he ascended.

Gracie!

Even before he reached the surface, he understood what had happened. To make Grace feel more secure, he’d tied a conventional life jacket to her BCD, and then he’d looped a bight of the anchor line into the life jacket. She been terrified of losing her grip on the rope and drifting away. What would happen if he fell asleep? Who’d come get her? Being tied to the life jacket and the anchor line seemed to calm her.

But now the Seminole Wind, the boat he’d help design, the boat that was a favorite symbol of the lifestyle he embraced, had belched the last of the air pockets floating its fiberglass hull and was finally sinking, pulling the anchor line and Grace down with it.

Still underwater, Sanford deflated his BCD by yanking the dump valve cord at his right shoulder, then jackknifed downward, eyes open in the black water, seeing only the iridescent streaks and swirls of phosphorescence. A couple of yards below him was a strumming, greenish light that he hoped was the anchor line, and now he swam wildly toward it.

With his fingers outstretched, he found the line and clamped his left fist tight around the rope, while, with his right hand, he fumbled for the stainless-steel dive knife in the plastic scabbard strapped to his ankle. Ironically, the knife was a birthday gift from Grace, an expensive blue tang made by Underwater Kinetics.

He drew the knife-nearly dropped it-then severed the anchor line with three fast sawing strokes and was instantly catapulted to the surface by the buoyancy of Grace’s inflated vest. Came up right beside her, the two of them already wrapped tight in the other’s arms, both of them coughing water and vomiting, each calling the other’s name, while Janet and Amelia, from out of the darkness, shouted, “Michael? Grace? Michael? Gracie? Where are you?!”

Sanford yelled, “Here! We’re over here!” then began to inflate his BCD again, holding the valve open with his trembling fingers, blowing into the valve, seeing nothing but black waves, canyon-sized, and Grace’s silhouette floating beside him, his heart panicking inside his ribs, as he heard her scream, “I’m scared, Mikey! I’m so scared, and I don’t want to be here anymore. Please take me home. Please!” The childlike quality of her voice was so touching and painful that he groaned, groaned again, then began to shake uncontrollably between breaths.

When his vest was inflated and he could speak, he hugged Grace tight to him, as she whispered over and over into his ear, “You saved me, Sandman, you saved me!” and him not hearing because he was speaking into her ear, whispering: “I’m so sorry about this, Gracie. I’m so goddamn sorry about this I could cry.”

Then he did.

Amelia had left them. Intentionally or accidentally, they didn’t know. For the last half hour, she’d been right there at their side, one of four gray shapes in the darkness, a hand to grasp as, together, they battled their way toward the flashing light that fired on the horizon.

If they were riding a cresting wave, they could see the light clearly: a detonation of white, every four seconds. The light was about three miles away-Michael told them that. Not such a far swim, Amelia kept telling them that, too. Told them that when she was in high school, their swim team workouts had sometimes been five, even six miles. “Three miles,” she said. “That’s nothing. We’ll just take it steady and easy.”

They talked back and forth that way, shouting over the whistle of wind and keening waves, trying to bolster themselves with lies no one really believed: The swim would be easy. There was no danger. Sooner or later, a boat would come along and pluck them out. Michael kept saying the Baja California was a popular wreck. It attracted a lot of fishing and diving traffic. This would be a funny adventure story to tell their grandchildren. Some day, they’d all look back and laugh-no one really believed that, either.

Only Janet seemed to have any real confidence as she said over and over: “We’re going to make it. They’re going to find us. If we stick together, we’ll all make it.” Once she told them oddly and without explanation, “This evil doesn’t stand a chance against my prayers. Trust me. It doesn’t stand a chance.”

It was very slow going. They were southwest of the light tower. The wind was blowing even harder now, whistling into their faces out of the northeast. Waves rolled toward them from that direction, so it came to seem as if each wave was a purposeful attack, one after another, intentionally blocking them from their destination.

At first, they tried to swim individually, but that didn’t work. Janet and Amelia still wore fins, but Michael and Grace had lost theirs when the boat swamped. There was no way that the barefooted swimmers could keep up. It was Amelia who suggested that she and Janet each give the other two a fin to wear. “We’ve got to share!” she yelled. “None of us are going to make it at this rate!”

But that wouldn’t work, either. Both women wore full-footed fins, Amelia’s fins expensive and made by Force, Janet’s a much cheaper set made by U.S. Divers. Janet was a size 6, Amelia a size 7. Grace was a big woman, and Michael was a very big man. The fins wouldn’t fit them.

They juggled the order, getting mauled by waves, and finally settled on a method that was at least better than what they’d tried before. Michael and Grace, arms locked, floated on their backs, kicking, while Amelia at one end and Janet at the other used their fins to paddle their tiny human raft along.

The four of them would battle their way several yards up a wave, only to be smashed back that distance or more by the wave’s crest. Worse, their inflated vests, while keeping them afloat, were also acting as effective sea anchors, slowing their progress. Wearing an inflated BCD in those conditions was like being strapped to a small parachute in a wind tunnel. It was maddening. It was exhausting. In time, as they one by one realized how unlikely it was that they were going to make it to that far tower, the situation became terrifying.

The psychology of group hysteria is well documented, its roots predictable- la participation mystique, Carl Jung termed it. Hysteria can begin when one member of a group is overwhelmed by a fear or an illusion so powerful that all rational thought processes cease, sparking brain activity in the frontal lobe and the primitive limbic system. All primates are deeply coded with the instinctive fight-or-flight response. When one group member displays that limbic response, other members react immediately, and for good reason-survival is the only inviolable mandate of our species. Panic is contagious because it effectively speeds reaction time.

None of the four could ever be certain who panicked first, nor would they have reason to wonder. There was a big wave, then a second big wave that covered them like a waterfall and separated them, then a third, mountain-sized wave that sucked them down, down into blackness, tumbling them, contorting their bodies and nearly drowning one of the swimmers, so it was possible that they all panicked independently as they surfaced, one of them surfacing slightly later than the other three.

There were screams and swearing. A mouth opened skyway, begging for deliverance: Dear God! Please help us, God! Two of the swimmers vomited salt water. One independently reached out, seeking elbows and bodies, and drew a person toward her.

That’s when Amelia disappeared. One moment she was bobbing with the group. Then she was a wave ahead of them, and soon, two waves ahead. Then she was gone, like a small mist that had dissipated in blackness, leaving the shouted pleas of her companions to feather away in the wind: Don’t leave us, Amelia! Amelia, come back!

Now, it was just the three of them…

The panic had passed, replaced by a resolve that was part numbness, part survival instinct. The flashing light was their only hope. On that wide dark ocean, beneath its black rolling sky, the explosion of light was their only link to civilization, to the safety of their homes, to the reality that had abandoned them, the security of their daily lives.

Each time one or two of them faltered and began to panic again, or to lose confidence, another became assertive, assumed the leader’s role, and rallied the group’s spirits. There was no choice. They knew independently and as a group that, if they lost control again, stopped fighting and gave in to their fear, they were dead.

Endure. They had to keep struggling. They had to continue kicking, kicking, using their hands to pull them into wave after wave after wave as the sea rolled toward them. There were no other options.

It was Janet who most consistently provided encouragement and comfort. Each time they stopped to catch their breaths, or after they’d been washed by an unusually large wave, she’d remind them: “We’re going to make it. We’ll all make it. We’ve just got to stay together and keep swimming.”

Michael had regained his self-control. As an assistant junior varsity football coach of a Sarasota high school, he was accustomed to motivating people as part of his job. So was being tough and showing a tough face. He reverted to that mind-set and those skills now, and the results were unexpected: By assuming that old and familiar role, he actually did begin to feel stronger and more confident.

He would yell comments such as “Teamwork, ladies! Harder we work together, the faster we get to the tower” or “Last one to the light has to buy breakfast!”

Most heartening, though, in those first four hours adrift was that Grace Walker reassumed the personality of the woman she’d been back on land: fiercely goal-oriented and fearless. The terror and the panic she’d experienced after being dragged underwater and almost drowned by the sinking Seminole Wind had done something to her. In some inexplicable way, being so abruptly confronted with her own death had exhausted her flight response, leaving only her determination to fight. The woman was a survivor-no one who knew her ever doubted that.

With Amelia gone, they’d abandoned the human-raft technique. Janet simply wasn’t strong enough to push all three of them along with her fins. Now they swam side by side with Grace in the middle, everyone doing a slow breaststroke, riding up the front side of waves, swimming harder down the backside. They tried to keep enough distance between themselves not to bang arms but still remain close enough to be heard over the noise of the wind. For the first hour, Grace said nothing, used what energy she had left to try to keep up with the other two. But when she finally did speak, it was with the same self-assured voice people had come to expect from her: “Call me crazy, Sandman, but I think we’re getting closer to that light. I really do, man. We’re covering some ground, brother. I believe we’re gonna make it!”

Michael was so grateful to hear the confident, familiar tone, he actually shouted as he replied. “Damn right we are, Gracie! We’re kicking ass, baby, and I feel great!”

“Yeah? Well, that’s something funny ’cause I’m feeling pretty good, too. Strong, that’s the way I feel. Maybe getting stronger.”

“All of us! Lady, we’re all getting stronger. Know what? When we get back, I’ll do your laundry for a month to make this up to you. You can lay out by the pool, I’ll bring you drinks, whatever you want. We’re going to make it, sister!”

For the first time that day, Janet smiled as Grace replied, “Sandman, when we get back, the only water I want to see is in a whiskey glass. Or a fucking shower. Don’t you be mentioning water to the Princess ’till we get this shit way behind us!”

That rallied them. Kept them swimming hard for the next hour without a pause. The light was getting closer. Grace had said so. Little by little, stroke by stroke, they were fighting their way back to civilization, back into their understandable, orderly lives.

Attached to his BCD vest, Michael Sanford had a small plastic board called a navigation slate. Built into the slate was an illuminated compass. When they finally did stop to rest, Michael lifted the little board in front of his face and sighted it like a rifle toward the flashing light. Twice before that evening, he’d checked their course heading using the same simple technique. On the first sighting, the light had been at 64 degrees, which was slightly east of north. On his second sighting, the light was at 62 degrees, which meant they had drifted slightly to the south but were still making progress. Now, as he sighted the compass, he looked, then paused. He tapped the compass with his fingers as if it were not working, then took another sighting.

Janet was watching him and sensed that he was puzzled by something. She called over, “What’s wrong, Mikey?”

Sanford said, “I think this compass has gone crazy,” and aimed the slate at the light tower a third time, studied it again before he adding, “We were drifting slightly south-the current, I’m talking about. Out here there’s always some kind of ocean current. But in the last hour or so, we’re suddenly way north. The tower’s almost due east, 45 degrees. I mean we are flying. ”

“The tidal current is taking us, that’s what you’re saying?”

“An ocean current, yeah. That’s what it’s gotta be. A really strong current.”

Grace said, “Is that good? Sandman, you better be telling me that’s a good thing.”

Michael paused too long, thinking about whether he should tell the truth, wondering if he even knew the truth, before he spoke. “It doesn’t matter either way. We still have to swim to the tower. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

That was at a little after 10 P.M. For two more hours, they battered their way eastward, and each time Michael stopped to check his compass, the tower was farther to the south. Their rest stops became longer, the time they spent swimming became shorter and shorter. Hobbyist runners train for months to do a first 26.2-mile marathon, and many run the distance in between four to five hours. The three of them had now been swimming for more than five hours, their own terrible marathon of survival, and one by one, their bodies began to fail them.

They were dehydrated, though did not yet feel the terrible thirst, and their muscles began to cramp. Because Janet was wearing fins, her calves and thighs began to cramp first. For Michael, it was his jaw and neck if he yawned with fatigue or nervousness, and then his legs began to cramp, too.

It was Grace who finally said what they had all come to realize but not yet admitted. “Know what I think, ladies and gentleman? I think we’re better off saving our energy and just drifting ’til morning. Planes, boats, there’s gonna be all kinds of stuff out here tomorrow morning looking for us. Probably helicopters, too.” There was still strength in her voice, some confidence, as well, when she added, “Let the bastards come to us. What do we care if they find us in the water or on that damn light tower?”

They were all chilled, and the black wind felt colder now, after midnight. Once again, they locked their bodies together to form a tiny human raft. Floating on his back, Michael spooned Grace into his arms, as Janet slid in behind Michael and held them both close to her breast.

The three of them drifted. They dozed. Once, they even laughed when Grace told them, “I just peed in my own wet suit, and man, it feels warm. ” Their teeth started to chatter, and, finally, the slowest sunrise of their lives began to form on the eastern horizon: a radiant blackness over the Everglades, then a smear of gray, of white, of tangerine.

They stared at the horizon, anticipating the gaseous bloom of light, anticipating its heat, when Michael jerked his head around abruptly to the south. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled. “Do you see it? My God, it’s a boat! You see the boat?”

It was almost upon them, a ghostly figure of rust and steel, net booms swung high, rolling out of the morning sea spume, the heavy wind shielding the noise of its engines. Janet had spent enough time around marinas to recognize it as some kind of trawler-maybe a steel shrimper, but it had a foreign look and she wasn’t certain. Its hull was black, wrinkled with blistered paint, rust, grease. Some kind of workboat, filthy.

The boat was already so close they could see that its high, beige wheelhouse was covered with people, that there were men and women, children, too, jammed tight and standing on the vessel’s long stern deck. Dozens of people, maybe a hundred, their faces sickly, African faces, brown faces, a confederation of misery bound by something terrible: seasickness, exhaustion, fear, or some other dark, nameless thing. Then the vessel was close enough that air molecules from the boat began to mix heavily with the wind, and the stench of the boat drifted down on them, a terrible odor, so inhuman that it could only be human, the stink of feces and vomit, of disease and dying, diesel fumes mixed in, the density of oil floating it all, causing it to linger above the sea.

Janet whispered, “Am I dreaming this? Please don’t let me be dreaming this.”

It was a bizarre vision: three desperate people now looking into a herd of desperate faces; faces that created a hundred dark, ocular vacancies staring back at them, a man and two women in the water adrift, shouting at the vessel to stop, screaming at the mirrored windows of the wheelhouse as dark faces began to yell back, the mass of them sprouting bony arms and hands that pointed at them in reply.

Michael shouted, “They see us!” and Grace began to weep, saying, “Thank you, God. Oh thank you, dear God!” watching the vessel slow, then turn in the heavy seas, wallowing in the troughs of waves, hammering geysers of wake as its bow swung toward them.

Janet, Michael, and Grace were all waving their arms wildly as the vessel came about, and they watched the door of the wheelhouse slide open. A huge, very fat brown man came through the door-a man so wide that he could only fit through the opening sideways. He was followed by a tall, cadaverous man who had a shockingly white face shaved smooth, his flour-pale skin covering sinew linked by bone. Draped over his head, as if to shield him from the heat, he wore a dirty-looking rectangular cloth that was folded diagonally and held in place with a headband.

An albino person, Janet realized.

Michael called up to them, “Drop a ladder down! Our boat sank and we’ve been adrift all night!”

The albino and the fat man stood holding on to the steel railing, looking down at them, and they seemed to be conferring, talking back and forth.

Michael shouted, “If you don’t have a ladder, throw us a rope. We can climb up!”

Still, the two men did not react, continuing to talk among themselves-a disturbing hesitation. They seemed indifferent.

“We need help! Please. We’ll pay you. We’ll pay you whatever you want!”

Then Janet said, “What’s he doing? What’s he going to do with that?” as the albino ducked into the wheelhouse and came out holding a rifle.

Because she’d been worrying about it all night but had not allowed herself to mention it, Grace now said what was in her mind. “Maybe we have sharks around us. Maybe that’s it. Probably got it to keep sharks away, don’t you think, Sandman?”

Then all three watched, weary beyond shock, as the albino snugged the rifle against his cheek and shoulder, then swung the barrel seaward, taking aim at Michael Sandford.