turned off, but press as he might, nothing happened this time. The expensive smartphone was an inert object in his palm. He removed the back cover and took out the battery, waiting a few seconds before replacing it and trying again. Nothing—the phone was dead.
“What in the world?” Artie asked as he stared at his dumbfounded brother.
“I can’t imagine what could cause this,” Larry said. “Like I told you before, I’ve been in electrical storms on boats and seen everything on board fried. A good lightning strike could do this—and even take out stuff like the handheld GPS and computer that were not connected to the vessel’s electrical system. But I’ll be damned if I know what could do it on a clear sunny day like today.”
“I don’t see how even lightning could affect a device that’s not plugged into something. Isn’t that why they tell you not to leave the TV and stuff like that plugged in during a thunderstorm at home? Remember how Dad used to run around unplugging stuff every time a summer rain came up back when we were growing up?”
“In a lot of cases, unplugging stuff does save it. But sometimes if a sailboat like this takes a direct hit to the mast, it can send enough of a power surge through the whole boat to fry everything. I’ve heard of strikes melting all the 12-volt wires in the vessel. Hell, there have even been cases of lightning running down the mast and blowing a chunk out of the bottom of the hull—sinking the boat!”
“I guess I can see how that could happen with a really powerful bolt of lightning. But as you said, the sky is blue and clear. What could cause a power surge like that on a day like this? It has to be something to do with those lights I saw, but how?”
“It had to be some kind of electromagnetic pulse thing,” Larry said. “I don’t know enough about the science of it to know what’s possible. But I have read something about how solar flares could disrupt radio signals and such on Earth. I couldn’t imagine one powerful enough to short out electronic circuits though—but that could be what happened.”
“What if it was something intentional? Some kind of terrorist attack or something?”
“I suppose that’s possible too, but I don’t know how. Unless maybe if it was a nuclear attack, but the way you described those lights, it seems more like some freak of nature event to me.”
“Whatever it was, I just wonder how far-reaching the effects were? I sure hope it hasn’t done the same thing back home where Casey is.”
“Well, South Louisiana is a long way from the eastern Caribbean. I guess we’ll find out more when we get to St. Thomas in the morning. Surely it will be in the news.”
“I’ll just be glad to get to a working phone so I can call Casey and make sure she’s all right.”
Artie took another turn at the helm as Larry worked out their approximate position on the paper charts and made detailed entries in his logbook. The steady trades continued to bear
They passed one ship sometime around mid-afternoon but it was so far away on the horizon they could not distinguish any details other than that it was a freighter of some type and that it was moving slowly, if at all. The sea was otherwise devoid of traffic and they saw nothing but the occasional breaching dolphin until nearly sunset, when Artie noticed several objects floating in the waves several hundred yards ahead, and just slightly east of their course. He assumed it was floating garbage or debris of some sort until they sailed closer and saw how much of it there was. Many of the floating objects were shiny, reflecting the light of the late afternoon sun. Pointing it out to Larry, Artie asked what he thought it could be.
Larry stepped up to the cabin roof and leaned against the mast to get a better view through his binoculars. After a few seconds he told Artie to steer for the debris.
“What is it?” Artie asked, “Can you tell?”
“Some kind of wreckage. I can’t be sure, but maybe parts of a boat—or an airplane. We’d better check it out. There could be someone in the water. Head up a bit so I can ease the sheets. I want to slow down and be ready to heave to if we see anyone.”
As they closed the gap, it became obvious what the floating objects were. “Oh my God, it
“Looks like it was a small private jet, maybe a corporate aircraft of some type…. Definitely not a commercial airliner,” Larry said as they passed more recognizable pieces of fuselage and a tail section.
“You think it broke up like this when it hit the water, or could it have exploded first in the air?”
“Hard to say, but since there’s more than one piece here in the same place, it probably hit the water first. A lot of the parts may have sunk.”
“Maybe whoever was on it was already rescued,” Artie said hopefully, as they both scanned every wave for any sign of life, half-expecting to see the bobbing heads and waving hands of life-jacket-wearing survivors any minute now. “How long ago do you think this happened?”
“My guess is not all that long, considering that these pieces are still floating together. It wouldn’t take but a few hours with this much wind to scatter them miles apart. I’ll bet it happened when all the electronics shut down this morning.”
“You mean that you think that power surge or pulse or whatever it was that shut down our electronics could have also caused the plane to crash?”
“Absolutely. It might not have affected an older prop plane with manual controls, but this was obviously a late-model, high-tech jet. Aircraft like this have so many computer-operated controls and instruments that a total loss of on-board systems would have doomed it, no matter how good the pilot was.”
Larry grabbed the helm as he was talking and brought the bow of the small schooner through the wind to change tacks. “We had better crisscross through the area a few times and look carefully. If this plane crashed because of the pulse, no one has been here to look for survivors, and no one likely will, at least any time soon. They would not have been able to make a radio call before they went down, and anyway, air traffic control on the islands may be down too.”
Artie was stunned at the implications of what his brother had just said. “What about commercial airliners? Would they crash too if they were close enough to the source of the pulse to be affected?”
“Yes,” Larry said. “Let’s hope this thing was just local, but if not, I’d hate to think of how many jets would have been flying just in and out of the island airports in the area. St. Thomas is especially busy, with all the tourists connecting to the cruise ships there. You know, come to think of it, I haven’t heard any jets overhead at all today, or seen any vapor trails. There are usually so many you don’t give ’em any thought, but I
Artie climbed to the cabin top and began desperately scanning the waves for any sign of life among the floating wreckage. “You’d think we would see them if they were still here, even if they were dead. Wouldn’t the bodies float for a while?”
“Maybe, maybe not. The waves could have carried the wreckage at a faster speed than floating bodies. But from the looks of these pieces and parts, I honestly don’t see how anyone could have survived the impact. Then there are plenty of sharks in these waters too. You know that from the ones we’ve already seen.”
Artie shuddered at the thought of being in the water for a long time without a boat. He knew Larry was right. He thought that if he had been in that situation, he would have preferred to have died in the crash rather than be eaten alive later.
“I know in some of the big airliner crashes over water they’ve picked up survivors who had been more than a day in the water,” Larry said, “but this jet might have gone straight down with an impact no one could have survived. That, and the fact that there was probably only a pilot and perhaps a copilot and two or three passengers on board makes it even less likely we would find them even if they were still afloat.”
Larry tacked the schooner twice more and made a couple of passes upwind of the debris, just in case any swimmers or floating bodies were drifting at a slower pace than the remains of the aircraft. They both scanned the rolling seas on both sides of the boat continuously as they sailed, but saw nothing else, and soon the sun was rapidly sinking to the horizon, taking with it the last chance of seeing anything they hadn’t already spotted.
“We may as well get back on course to St. Thomas,” Larry said. “Maybe we can find the answers there.”
