Code name, p.27
Code Name, page 27
Those men then moved to the stern and helped the others lift and carry the hull forward until she floated free and the keel had a foot of water under her.
When the boat was fully afloat, Mark held her by a length of line around a bow cleat, and the dozen strong men who had come to help simply vanished into the night, leaving only Franco and Marie to see them off on the voyage.
Puzzled about the sudden disappearance of the men, Laura asked, “Where did they all go?”
“They come to help, ’cause y’all be friends, but they know y’all be leavin’ and that make them too sad to stay and see you go. These men be big and strong on the outside, but they be purty soft on the inside.”
A faint beam of light swung across the sky and broke the utter blackness of the night. It came from a long distance to the north, perhaps a mile away from where they stood. It flashed across the low-hanging clouds and then disappeared, but Mark knew instantly what it was.
Urgency filled his voice, “A car. It’s them. We’ve got to get out of here right now.”
Laura turned and hugged Marie, then quickly waded out to the boat, Carli in her arms, wrapped in Marie’s old tablecloth. As she reached the boat, she softly called over her shoulder, “Thank you. “
“Go, child,” Marie instructed. “Trouble be right behind.” Then the old woman turned and began the climb back up to the salt mine ruins.
Franco waded out to shake Mark’s hand. Looking toward the sky he felt the breeze on his cheek. “There be just enough wind for a perfect cruise. Y’all gonna need this,” he said as he palmed a hard lump into Mark’s hand.
When Franco moved his hand, Mark saw an old military compass.
“After y’all clear the point, swing to a bearing of 205 degrees for five hours, then to 180 degrees for another five hours. That’ll get y’all out past the little islands and reefs in the dark without no problem. You got that?”
“Yeah,” Mark said breathlessly.
“Then come back to a heading of 135 degrees and stay that course ’til this time tomorrow night, plus two hours.”
“Right,” Mark whispered.
“Then come around to 180 again and it’ll take y’all to the west coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in about eight days, give or take a day or two, dependin’ on the wind. You can’t miss it.”
“Now how would you know about that?” Mark asked, bewildered.
“Been there once on a sailin’ shrimp boat, long time ago; I was the navigator.” Pride sounded in his aged voice. “I was the only one who knew how to use a compass; learned it in the army. One of the only things they taught me that ever come in useful.”
“Trust me now,” the old man said. “I think I know where y’all be headin’. Least I know where I’d be a headin’ if the govemint was on my tail.” He laughed softly. “Lotsa wilderness land down there where y’all can get good and lost. Go on now, we go back to the house and remember y’all for the rest of our lives.”
Even in the darkness, Mark could see damp eyes in the old Cajun preacher’s face. And the lump in his own throat kept him from saying anything more than a simple “Thank you.”
Franco nodded then turned and joined his wife at the salt ruins, and they both vanished into the night.
Laura had laid Carli in the cockpit and scrambled aboard. Mark pushed the bow to the southwest, gave the boat a shove to get her moving away from shore and then pulled himself over the rail and into the cockpit.
A soft breeze filled the makeshift mainsail as he hauled away on the halyard and secured the line to a mast-mounted cleat. With one hand on the tiller and the other on the main sheet, he coaxed the little boat into a close reach and she heeled gently as the wind pulled her forward.
Within a few minutes, the shoreline was no longer visible, and everything in every direction was black.
“It’s as if someone pulled a blanket over my head,” he said to Laura.
“How can you see where we’re going?” she asked anxiously.
“Two-zero-five degrees for five hours,” Mark squinted at the face of the compass, then at his watch. “That’s what Franco said. We’ll just have to trust him. He’s done this before.”
They had sailed for less than an hour and were still only a few miles from shore when they heard the unmistakable sound of distant gunfire.
Mark reached for Laura’s hand. Without a word, they stared into the inky night. Unable to see twenty feet beyond, they stared as if their eyes could somehow burn through the blackness and show them what was happening miles away.
“Maybe somebody’s gator hunting,”
Laura looked at him and shook her head. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”
“What can we do?” he whispered, a great sadness in his voice.
“Nothing. We have to go on, make a home for Carli. There’s nothing else we can do.”
Mark nodded. It was not easy to slip away into the night, knowing that their friends might be in serious trouble. There was no way to know the meaning of the gunshots. They had only one mission ahead of them now, and that was to escape to Xulakan. There was no turning back.
“The men of the Atchafalaya are good and capable men. It would only complicate matters if we were there,” he said.
A soft fluttering sound above him broke his thoughts. He glanced down at the compass then up the mast. The leading edge of the mainsail was beginning to flap just a little. Mark moved the tiller a few inches, tightened the main sheet, and the fluttering disappeared.
He knew it would be a long and tedious night of watching the compass, checking sail trim and staring off into the blackness, searching for boats or other hazards. After becoming familiar with the boat, he would be able to steer and trim by feel and by sound, and no longer have to crane his neck to look up the mast at the sail shape. Pressure on the tiller handle, the angle of heel, the sound of the sails would tell him all he needed to know. It would become instinctive, like riding a bicycle or walking.
“Wind strength is about ten knots out of the southeast,” he said, “so maintaining a speed of five knots should be fairly easy on nearly a beam reach.”
“What does all that mean?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Just making mental notes to myself. But it means conditions are good.”
Again and again, he went over Franco’s directions in his mind, not wanting to risk confusion during a moment of exhaustion. The course would help them avoid a maze of hazards that could rip the belly out of a tiny sailboat and send them to the bottom.
After an hour of watching the black horizon, Laura stretched out on the cockpit sole and rested with Carli bundled close to her breast. On a beam reach, the boat heeled only a little, but still it was a hard surface to sleep on, making it a miserable place to try to get any rest. But the motion of the boat was soothing, and soon she was asleep.
Even though the night was warm, he noticed that she shivered in her sleep, as the damp ocean breeze found its way to her. Using the tail end of the main sheet, Mark tied off the tiller to cleats on both sides of the cockpit, to hold a steady course. Then he untied one of the canvas-wrapped bundles, emptied it out and spread the material over his quivering wife. She reached for his hand as he tucked the cloth around her shoulders.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t really. I was just resting and thinking.”
“What about?”
“Umm,” she hesitated, then with a lilt in her voice, “about what a lucky girl I am to have a husband like you.”
“Right,” he scoffed. “I’ll bet just about any girl on earth would gladly trade places with you tonight under this cozy canvas comforter.”
“No,” she scolded, “I’m serious. You’re a wonderful husband. I feel safe when I’m with you, and I know everything will work out. What we’re going through right now will pass. Tonight will pass. The sun will rise tomorrow, and a week from now we’ll be on Xulakan. In a month, we’ll be in a home of some type – maybe something with a palm-thatched roof. I’d like that. Six months from now, Carli will be crawling all over the island.”
“Hold on there. Pretty soon you’ll have her out on her first date.” He laughed then quickly sobered. “Umm, that does raise the question of her future. Eventually she’ll get old enough to want a normal life. I wonder how we’ll work that.”
She hugged his hand. “We’ll figure something out. “
Half an hour later, Mark felt the wind shift and increase in speed. “I think we have cleared the bay and moved into the open Gulf,” he said to Laura.
He hauled in on the main sheet, then the jib sheet until both sails were full and taut. The boat heeled more than before, and he heard the sound of the wake increase. They were moving fast, and that was good. He looked at his watch and the compass. It was time to bring her to a heading of 180.
Mark rested the compass on his knee and gently pushed the tiller to starboard. She responded instantly, and he adjusted sheets as the bow swung to the left. Finally, she settled in at 180 degrees on the compass, and the sails were full and taut once again.
How he wished he could see what was around them! They were sailing through utter darkness. Even the sky was a complete blank, covered by clouds so low and thick he could see no stars or moon. It was like living inside a black velvet box, with no visual stimuli. Only the sound of water against the hull and the wind on his face told him the boat was making progress.
The breeze had picked up and the swells were larger out here. How large would the waves become, how heavy the wind, he had no way of knowing. They were at the mercy of the weather, a tiny craft on an enormous sea, vulnerable as a feather in a thunderstorm. If conditions turned nasty, there was nowhere to run and hide.
Beating to windward, the boat heeled until the leeward rail was close to the water. Spray came over the bow each time they took a wave on the nose, and the chop seemed to be getting worse the longer they held this course.
Laura sat on the cockpit floor and stared at Mark as he worked the tiller. Cold spray came over the bow, drenching them both, and she pulled the canvas over herself and Carli.
“Are we okay?” He heard the concern in her voice. She was frightened, and with good reason, having never put to sea in a small sailboat before.
“Oh yeah,” he assured her. “This is a good little boat, very strong, very capable.” Then seeing how wet she was getting, he said, “I wish we had some sort of cabin to keep the spray off.”
He thought of the tiny forward compartment. It was nothing but a small enclosure for storing life vests and sails. “Take a look in there,” he pointed. “Maybe there’s room for Carli to sleep inside.”
“Okay,” she shouted over the noise of the rising wind. She tucked Carli in the forward compartment, then crawled back under the canvas and positioned herself in the corner.
On through the night they sailed, tacking every half-hour to hold an overall course of 180 degrees through a maze of unseen islands. Six times, the process was repeated. Three hours later the seas seemed to quiet a bit, and Mark smiled to himself for guessing right about the contrary tide and wind.
Then he noticed the stars, as the clouds quietly opened. From the look of the sky, it would be a clear day when the sun came up – a hot and humid day on the Gulf.
There was a three-foot swell about every six seconds. A gentle rise and fall that was relaxing, almost hypnotic. His breathing slowed to match the rhythm of the swells. His hand relaxed on the tiller. Suddenly, he realized that he was exhausted.
He glanced at the compass, then at his watch, and was stunned to see that he had missed a tack. They were still on a course of 195, and he had apparently fallen asleep and failed to tack, now ten minutes overdue. Without hesitation, he threw the tiller across, ducked the boom, threw off the jib sheet and hauled it in on the opposite side. The boat swung about to 115 degrees, and set into a solid heel on a starboard tack.
“Hey!” Laura yelled from under the rumpled canvas as she tumbled across the cockpit floor.
“Oh, sorry. I fell asleep and missed my turn. Are you okay?”
She threw the covering off, sat up, blinked hard and rubbed a bump on her forehead. “Yeah, I guess so. I was dreaming … it was so peaceful and then all of a sudden I was falling.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized again. “I got so tired …” his words drifted off. “Do you think you can spell me for a bit … just long enough for me to shut my eyes for twenty minutes?”
She crawled to the seat. “Sure. But you’ll have to tell me what to do. I’ve never sailed a boat before.”
“It’s easy in these steady winds. We’re on the tack we need for the next half hour. All you have to do is hold the tiller and steer so the compass needle points to 115 … right here.” He pointed at the compass face. “If the sails begin to flap, move the tiller toward the uphill side of the boat just an inch or two until the sail is full and firm again, then try to sneak the boat back to 115 degrees.”
Laura moved near the tiller and took hold of the handle. “Move it a little each way to get the feel for how she steers,” Mark instructed.
She moved the handle first one way then the other. “All right, I see now. Move the tiller to the right and the stern moves to the right, which turns the bow to the left. Got it!” her smile beamed.
He looked at his watch. “Great. Just hold on 115 degrees for another twenty minutes. If something goes wrong, wake me up.”
“What could go wrong?” She sounded worried.
“A wind shift, or something like that.”
“Okay, I got it.”
He grinned. “Or sea monsters, or pirates, or …”
“Cut it out,” she warned.
He kissed her, handed her his watch, lay on the floor and pulled the canvas over him. He felt so heavy. Everything about him felt heavy – his arms and legs and especially his head. So heavy. So tired. He felt himself sinking into the wood of the cockpit sole, melting into the corner. Inside his head was a growing fuzz, dark and swirling and blurry, and his eyelids refused to stay open. He yawned, “Don’t worry, nothing will go wrong. I’m just going to close my eyes and give them a little rest.”
The words were barely out of his mouth, and he was gone, a steady purr replaced his voice and he slipped into profound unconsciousness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Pages 52–59, notebook #3
From far off in the distance, a shrill scream broke the silence. He listened and it came again, sharp and high-pitched, a voice in agony crying out for help. Then his body was rocked and prodded by something he couldn’t quite identify.
“Mark, the baby is hungry. I have to nurse her.”
Coming out of a coma is a gradual process, and his sleep had been deep as a coma but all too brief. “Wha …?” he stumbled for understanding, but his brain was still asleep.
He struggled to his knees, still groggy. “What time is it?”
“We’re just coming up on 6:00 a.m. – time to tack.”
“Umm,” he rubbed his eyes and squinted into the morning light. “Did I sleep twenty minutes? Seemed like I just barely closed my eyes.”
“You slept like a log,” she laughed, “and a noisy log at that. My gosh, I’ve never heard anything like it in my life. I’d say six-point-oh on the Richter Scale. Poor Carli, she probably thought she was going to be eaten by a bear.”
Mark yawned and mocked a smile. “Ha-ha, real funny. She doesn’t even know what a bear is. But now at least she’ll know that her daddy is a ferocious animal that can protect her from anything. Well, anything except starvation. I can’t do that job, so I better take the tiller.”
Laura handed the tiller to Mark and went forward to nurse Carli. The baby was immediately quiet, nursing eagerly. Laura smiled, “Witness the magic of a mom.”
He smiled and nodded in concession that there are some things no man can do and then turned his attention to the boat. A quick study of the horizon confirmed that they were completely out of sight of land. Water stretched away to the gentle curve at the edge of the earth.
To the north and east he could see the dark discoloration of air pollution and fog mixing along the coast. Based on time and estimated speed, he reckoned they were about 40 miles south of Marsh Island.
He rehearsed Franco’s instructions over and over in his mind. He could think of almost nothing else. Whether his family lived or died depended on his ability to sail them safely across a broad and often violent expanse of water, and then to pinpoint a tiny island, all without modern navigation equipment.
It was true that Joshua Slocum had sailed around the world in the late 1800s with only a timepiece, a compass, a sextant and a set of charts to guide him. But even that slim inventory put him two steps ahead of Mark, who had no sextant to indicate the boat’s position and no charts to show him water depths and land masses.
He thought back to the time when he and Laura had first conceived their plan. He had spent days poring over charts covering the area around Xulakan. Now from memory alone he had to find their way.
The sun rose quickly, and the cool pastel blue of morning gave way to a hot sky the color of a sapphire flame. Out here, under these conditions, exposed skin shows pink in an hour and blisters by nightfall. Sweltering in the heat could leave them dehydrated.
It would be a long week, but he knew it would seem much longer than that. A day on the sea in an open boat is like a week anywhere else. Time stands still, measured only by the monotony of the swells: ten times per minute, 600 times in an hour, 14,400 times in a day – rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall – with the invariability of a metronome.
An unmerciful sun bore down, steaming the moisture from their bodies, searing their exposed skin. Once in a while a wave broke over the bow as they plunged into an oncoming swell, sending spray all the way back to the transom, showering them with cool sea water.
“Oh,” Laura cried out, as a wave sprayed her. “That feels good.”
