others out and along the narrow external passageway alongside the ship, towards the bow. The whole point of this third sortie was to hold their attention, so I brought it in shallowly from behind the ship, at a moderate altitude, hopefully visible and audible the whole time.
It wasn’t easy to simultaneously steer the UAV, which required both hands, and walk along the narrow passageway above the ship’s edge while the deck heaved and surged beneath me, all as quickly and surreptitiously as possible, while suffering from a piercing headache. Somehow I managed, probably because my mind was so focused on the iPhone’s screen that it didn’t interfere with my body’s instincts. My problem with tricky physical feats had always been that I thought about them too much.
The gunshots began just as I reached the the flat deck at the bow of the ship. I started, nearly pitched forward over the railing and into the ocean, but Anya grabbed my bicep and pulled me to safety. I held tightly to my phone as I spun around to see – nothing. We remained undiscovered. The gunmen were shooting at the drone arrowing towards them.
Their anti-aircraft fire swallowed up the loud whoosh of the inflatable life raft’s expansion. I made one last UAV course adjustment while Jesse and Sophie hurled the raft over the side of the boat and jumped after it. It landed open-side-up almost directly beneath me. I tossed the phone into it before leaping into the sea. The water was warm, but my sudden immersion was still a physical shock. Anya followed.
They must have heard the splashes. By the time I made it into the raft Sophie was already busy on the iPhone, and Jesse had already connected the rope to the D-ring at the back of the waiting USV, the plan was working at top speed – but it wasn’t enough. The submersible vehicle launched forward, towing us behind it, but it was too slow. We weren’t more than a hundred feet away when I looked back and saw the three Hispanic men armed with assault rifles, standing behind the bow railing.
Sophie groaned aloud, as if she had been cheated.
“Game over,” I muttered, hardly hearing myself. We had come so close, but it hadn’t been enough. I realized with horror that now we couldn’t stop if we wanted to, it would take too long to detach the raft from the USV. We had left them with no option but to shoot us, and they would almost certainly wound or kill some or all of us before they sank the raft.
One of them levelled his weapon at us.
I closed my eyes. I felt like I was already drowning.
Nothing happened.
When I looked up I saw the three of them gesticulating violently. Whoever didn’t want to shoot us won the argument. Instead they climbed to the bridge, where they tried to restart the
The life raft had an onboard survival kit with fresh water, a solar still, some tasteless but allegedly nutritious crackers, sunscreen, a first-aid kit, rope, signal flares, paddles, life jackets, and a transmitter that would broadcast a distress signal to the world. We decided not to use that last just yet: no sense painting a bullseye on ourselves when our hunters had doubtless already called in assistance. There was a brief dispute over the water, but eventually the carry-it-in-you crowd, which consisted of me and Sophie, won out over the ration-it faction by the simple expedient of drinking our share and ignoring Jesse and Anya’s protests. It was stale but the sweetest I had ever tasted. Captivity and escape were thirsty work.
We were being towed due north, towards Haiti, but we were still far from land when the air began to grow damp and smell faintly of ozone. Shadowy cloud-patterns like bruises swirled in with amazing speed from the horizon. Gusts whipped across the water as a darkness almost like night fell. In all the excitement I had forgotten about Jesse’s warning of an oncoming tropical storm.
I wanted to shout out a protest to the universe. This wasn’t fair. Our escape had seemed a triumph, if a nigh- inexplicable one; but it had left us out in open ocean, on a flimsy raft, and there was a storm coming, a big one, a bad one.
It was Anya who said what we were all thinking: “Maybe we should have stayed on board.”
She sounded bitterly amused by this joke that might well kill us all.
Chapter 31
If we hadn’t donned life jackets and roped ourselves to the raft we wouldn’t have survived. The storm tossed us around like a twig, and once, memorably, like a Frisbee. I lost count of how many times the raft flipped over like a pancake. Upside down was actually better; the sea was warmer than the rain, and we could keep our heads in the air pocket beneath, mostly protected from the elements, other than the Caribbean surging up and down some ten metres every few seconds, which was dizzyingly unpleasant but still much better than facing the onslaught full-on. There were periods when the rain hit so hard it left bruises on Sophie’s sensitive skin.
We had no idea how long the storm lasted; while we were in it, time seemed unstuck. My only clear memory of the ordeal was the time we flipped back over and I noticed, distantly, that the sky was growing brighter. Shortly afterwards the weather unravelled with amazing speed. One moment I saw faint tendrils of light on the horizon; the next, it seemed, the sun burst through blue sky, and warmed our battered bodies as we lay sprawled on what was left of the raft. Two of its compartments sagged, punctured during the storm. If we had lost a third we would probably have sunk.
Our few possessions not lost forever were utterly waterlogged. My iPhone was still in my pocket but would never function again. We basked like reptiles in the sun, too exhausted by the effort of survival to speak or stand until that faraway ball of nuclear flame warmed and roused us a little.
Anya was the first to stand, and promptly reeled as if drunk; our collective sense of balance had been knocked more than a little askew.
“Anything?” Jesse asked, as she peered into the distance.
She shook her head. As the ramifications of that began to hit me, my relief at our survival began to warp into new fear. I had been operating on the simple assumption that enduring the storm meant survival. But if we had been blown far offshore, it only meant a longer and more lingering death by exposure.
“There’s a cloud bank,” she said, squinting. “That might mean land.”
“We should paddle that way,” Jesse said.
But we had no actual paddles, and without them we were unable to affect the raft’s course. We could splash at the water with our hands, or stick our legs in and kick, but in the end the ocean swept us where it would: in this case, parallel to and slightly away from that line of wispy clouds, deeper into the endless sea.
As the sun neared its zenith it became an enemy. The ocean lapped at our battered raft. A few birds skittered across the sky. Time crawled by meaninglessly, and my headache began to return.
I left Anya and Jesse to try to play sailor and huddled miserably beside Sophie in the bottom of the raft. Her trembling hand crept out and took mine. I squeezed it reassuringly. When that didn’t work, I reached out and took her into my arms. She held me gratefully.
I remembered what Lisa had said in the jungle about enjoying every moment, especially the bad ones, and I tried to savour my breaths, to relish this awful experience. It wasn’t easy. I reminded myself that we could have died back on the boat. Living only hours longer was still a bonus. Every second, every breath, was a precious gift.
“I’m really scared,” Sophie whispered into my ear.
I nodded. It had been better when we could do something and at least pretend to be captains of our fate. This drifting and drawn-out uncertainty, surrendered to the elements, was in its own quiet way worse than the storm.
“James,” Sophie murmured. “Listen. There’s something I need to tell you. Just in case. Listen carefully. My neural nets. There’s not just a kill switch. There’s a built-in override sequence you can use to seize control.”
I didn’t understand why she was talking technical trivia. “In case of what?”
“In case something happens to me. Let’s face it. I’m not exactly durable. If anyone doesn’t get out of this, it’ll be me.”
