November 14
As it turned out, we didn’t leave Rocas Atoll until yesterday, November 13. Reason: weather.
We tried to leave on November 11. And technically, we did. For all of about four hours. That was when the marine weather radar started throwing back intermittent crap from directly along our course back to Fernando de Noronha. It was heavy rain or what looked like it. And it was intensifying.
So after a quick confab in the pilothouse, and a look at the darkening skies rising higher along the eastern horizon, we came about and made for the atoll, again. All the way back, it looked like the junk on the radar was moving a lot more slowly than we were but was getting steadily thicker.
Now the simple fact of the matter is that civilian marine radar made for small, personal boats is not great for analyzing weather. And that job fell to me: not because of any expertise, but because I was the one who had read—and remembered—the manual.
But still, I totally sucked at it. Translating what you see on a radar screen into reliable information is not something you really learn in a book. Just a few days out from Ascension Island (where we picked it up) I had come to the conclusion that, like most things at sea, there is simply no substitute for experience. And when it comes to weather…well, mariners have a kind of hybrid superstitious/mystical outlook on it.
The Captain’s books on seafaring are full of tales about sailors who “had a knack” for predicting the weather. They also revealed that most mariners take a dim view of trying to scientifically “explain” why some people have that skill. It’s almost as if they believe that asking too many questions will chase the mojo away. For them, uncanny skill at weather prediction means that person has been touched on the shoulder by fate or the sea gods or whatever.
Can’t say I blame them. Science never did find any good explanations. Barometric hypersensitivity, olfactory hypersensitivity, subconscious detection (and understanding) of water pattern changes on the leading edge of a storm: all were examined, all were dead ends. The only common trait was long years before the mast. That didn’t guarantee you were going to get the mojo, but it’s apparently a prerequisite.
None of us could check that box: our time before the mast was measured in months. So without that sixth sense, all I had to go on was a radar screen showing what looked like a growing, oncoming storm. And once everyone else had a look at the screen and either nodded or shrugged at my interpretation, we started back.
A few hours after reaching the atoll, the wind picked up a bit, with occasional, unpredictable gusts. Hurricanes are rare in this part of the world (they all seem to get sucked north toward the Caribbean), but there was no reason to take a chance. So we guided Voyager deeper into the Barretinha, a small inlet between Farol and Cemiterio islands.
As the tide came in, we steered her carefully to a point where her two-point-three-meter draft would leave her beached in waist-deep water when the tide went back out. We broke out all our anchors, moored her at several points, unloaded key gear, struck and dismounted the sails, and made sure the dogs—Cujo and Daisy—were on secure leads in the stilt-legged researchers’ shack to which we retreated. Then we prayed to whatever god or gods we did or did not believe in that the storm would blow over, go somewhere else, or at least not be a hurricane.
It didn’t blow over, it did hit us, but it was not a hurricane. Hell, it wasn’t even a real storm. It took almost a day to arrive, and when it did, it was just a series of pissy little squalls that hammered at us intermittently. It dumped a fair amount of rain but never a lot at once, and although there were a few big gusts, the risers never topped six feet. Bottom line: Voyager was untouched and the worst that happened to any of us was that we got wet.
The next day we reloaded her, and made sure the rising tide floated her out safely with the aid of one of the winches we’d scored on Ascension. A leisurely sail (despite constant tacking) got us to FdN at sundown. Today we cruised around the island slowly, the Zodiac towed behind in case we needed to take some soundings to double-check our crappy depth chart.
We confirmed that Baia Sueste, the place we landed just a week before, is the only place to go ashore on the south coast of the island. Everything else is wave-beaten cliffs. The north coast is mostly approachable, but there’s only one sheltered mooring: the anchorage behind the L-shaped jetty at the north end of St. Anthony’s Bay. That long stone pier was also a narrow funnel for any mob of infected we might be able to bring to us.
There were still some boats riding at anchor there and a few tied up to the wharf on the leeward face of the breakwater. We weren’t really worried about the ones in the little bay; anyone who turned while aboard one of those would have starved to death by now. The boats lashed to the wharf were a different story. Although it was unlikely that stalkers would remain on them, it wasn’t impossible, and we were way past assuming anything about the infected. If they could do something, we pretty much took it for granted that one or more of them would do it.
So by a really obvious process of elimination, it looked like St. Anthony’s Bay was our primary site of operations. But, being at the extreme northern tip of FdN, it seemed unlikely that we’d be able to attract all the infected to come visit us there. Too many would be beyond the range of any noise we could make. Which meant we needed to find a second landing point where we could attract most of the other stalkers to a safe choke point.
We had seen only one other place that might answer that need: a beach access road that led down to a juncture between two shallow bays with beaches. Lying atop that juncture, a spine of rock from the overlooking slopes flattened out, dipped just below the waves, and then rose up into the stone spur the maps labeled Ilha da Conceição. Getting there involved less than a mile of coast-hugging to the west. We were about to come about to give it a closer look when Steve shouted “Shit!” so loudly that, for one instant, his voice drowned out the surf.
“What?” I yelled.
He just pointed northeast.
Over the farthest island of the FdN chain, Ilha Rata, an eye-searing pink star was slowing as it reached the apex of its ascent.
“Is that—is that a flare?” Jeeza gasped.
“Most definitely,” Prospero muttered as I brought the bow around and Jeeza and Rod did some fast, efficient sail-handling to set us up for tacking narrowly across the prevailing wind out of the northeast.
Chloe had come up to the pilothouse, sat alongside me. “Can you believe it?” I asked her.
She nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“You have a bad feeling about this?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have any feeling about this.”
“Not even curiosity? Not even a little excitement?”
“Alvaro,” she said in her flat, “wake up, cupcake” tone, “almost every surprise in my life has been a bad one.”
I glanced at her. The .308 hunting rifle was cradled in her lap.
Whatever we might have been expecting when we drew into the long, shallow bay on the southern side of Ilha Rata, it certainly wasn’t what greeted us.
Silence. And a deserted shoreline of water-rounded rocks.
Prospero frowned. “Well, I wasn’t anticipating a brass band, but still…”
Chloe had climbed atop the pilothouse and was lowering herself into a prone position as she dragged over the “sniper’s sandbag” we had up there for just such occasions. “Not so strange if this is a draw play.”
Steve frowned. “What?”
Chloe half-shrugged just before she snugged the stock back into her shoulder. “Why else would they get coy after shooting off a flare? Most likely they’re counting on us to get all eager, rush on over—and right into a trap.”
Jeeza turned to stare at me. “So do you think this is a ruse?”
“No, but I think it could be a ruse. Until we know which it is, we don’t take chances.”
“Well, that could make this kind of difficult,” Jeeza pointed out.
“How?” Chloe asked.
“Mexican standoff,” Rod answered. “They’re waiting for us to reassure them while we wait for them to reassure us. That could go on for a long time.”
“Fortunately,” Prospero murmured, “time is on our side. For once.”
“How do you mean?” asked Steve.
“I mean that we have at least two and a half weeks until your friends arrive. We can easily spend a day, even two, waiting for the people—or person—who fired the flare. No risk to us, and they can take as much time as they like looking us over.”
“Yeah, well, if they can look us over, then they can target us through a scope,” Chloe pointed out glumly.
“Agreed,” Prospero said with a nod, “but that won’t be of any benefit to them unless they are simply homicidal maniacs. And very, very good shots, in the bargain.”
“They don’t have to be very good to beat me as long as we’re on a boat,” Chloe groused. “Between the range and the chop, I’d be lucky to hit the side of an outhouse.”
I shrugged. “On the other hand, it’s long odds that someone here on FdN has a rifle capable of that kind of shot. The police on the island were standard, low-intensity types; no SWAT equipment or anything similar. Also, there was no hunting on the island; hell, there’s nothing to hunt. But even if someone does have a gun with that range, one shot and we kick on the outboard. And we are gone.”
Chloe’s response was a subvocal grumble which meant she didn’t really have a rebuttal but still wasn’t comfortable with the plan.
Rod sighed. “Still, it would be really good if we could wrap this up in a day or two. At the most.” He looked briefly down the companionway.
It took me a moment to understand his glance. “Oh. Daisy.”
“Yup,” he sighed again. “I’m no vet, but she’s heavily built and even that didn’t keep her from showing when we left Ascension three weeks ago. If I’m right—”
“You are,” Chloe growled. “I know dogs. Well, big dogs. I think Rotties are about nine weeks, plus or minus a few days.”
“And she’s getting there,” Rod agreed. “Decreased appetite, decreased water intake. Doesn’t want to move much. So I’m thinking—” He glanced at shore.
Now his desire to get things concluded quickly made sense. “You want her on land when she whelps.”
He nodded. “Dogs get fussy, nervous. Particularly if this is her first litter. Whelping them on a boat—I don’t know, Alvaro. That’s asking for trouble.”
“It’s a good point,” I agreed. And I meant it. None of us knew what long-term life in a stalker-infested world was going to be like, but dogs would make it safer. The locals, and our own experiences, on Ascension Island had proven that. So we couldn’t afford to lose either Daisy or her pups.
“So what are we going to do?” Rod asked.
“It’s what I’m going to do,” I answered. “Do me a favor; prep the Zodiac.”
“If you survive,” Chloe hissed, “I am going to kill you.”
“Then either way, how about one last kiss?”
“Jesus,” she shouted and flung herself inboard, away from Voyager’s side. I shrugged as Jeeza smiled at me and handed down the last of the supplies.
“Seriously,” she said in a low voice so Chloe wouldn’t hear, “are you sure about this, Alvaro?”
“Who can be sure about anything, anymore?”
She swatted me lightly. “Don’t be a wiseass. You know what I mean. Going there.” She glanced at the stone-gray shore. “Alone.”
“Well, Jeeza,” I said, pushing away from Voyager’s hull with a gaff hook, “I couldn’t really ask anyone else to do this job. But don’t worry; I’ll be right back.”
She stared down at me. “That’s what everyone says. Including the ones who never come back.”
I didn’t have a wisecrack ready to deflect that particularly grim truth, so I flipped the switch on the electric trawling motor and swung around before anyone could see me start to shake.
We had waited until the tide was in. That way, I didn’t have to hump the supplies up above the high-water mark. I ran the Zodiac in slow until I heard the gurgle of shallow water over submerged rocks, and rolled out, kit in one hand, shotgun in the other. But rather than having my hand near the weapon’s grip, I kept hold of its center of mass, just forward of the ejection port: as nonthreatening a carry as possible.
I hardly needed to go up the shore in a serpentine; the footing was treacherous enough that I couldn’t have made a straight-line assault charge if I had wanted to. Besides, the sun was still strong at three p.m. and was full in the face of anyone who might be covering the slowly curving shoreline of Enseada da Ressureta, or Resurrection Cove. I hoped the name wasn’t a foreshadowing of the kind of miracle I might need in the next few minutes.
Ten yards up from the surf, I settled to one knee and worked fast. Unfolded the pack, unloaded the contents: lots of canned food (mostly starchy vegetables), packets of sugar, aspirin, a K-bar, a few cans of soda, and a greeting written in English, Spanish, and what pidgin Portuguese we could put together (mostly words extracted from the “handy phrases for travelers” section we found in one of the non-Fodor guides).
I carefully picked up the shotgun again, thought about standing straight and walking back to the Zodiac—always good to send a message that you were strong and unafraid—but decided it was better to stick with smart and careful. I reversed down the surf-smoothed rocks in a crouch, face toward the trees that hemmed in the eastern half of the shore.
Once at the boat, I had to smother a surge of what would have been maniacal giggling; I have no idea where that came from. With two good shoves, I was clear of the rocks.
Swinging myself into the Zodiac was easy in the still water. I snapped on the trawling motor and turned the boat’s stubby rubber bow toward Voyager.
As I got up on deck, the sun was starting to get orange, and Chloe’s face was getting red. Not with sunburn.
She started toward me stiff-legged, each stride longer and faster than the one before.
“Behold the face of your executioner,” Prospero intoned through a sly grin.
“No shit,” I managed to get out just before Chloe almost rammed into me, hands grabbing my shoulders.
“Damn you!” she shouted. “I’m going to kill you!”
I just waited.
Then, suddenly, she looked like she might cry—but before she did, she kissed me really hard. Really messy. It was great.
I leaned back. “I thought you were going to kill me.”
“That can wait,” she growled, grabbed the front of my web-gear, and dragged me toward the nearest companionway.