The fishing boat’s captain stepped out of his small booth to investigate the horn and his mouth dropped open when he saw the wave less than half a mile away. His two crewmen, folding nets on the deck, also looked up and froze in horror.The captain quickly spun one-eighty degrees to find the entrance to the walled harbour several hundred metres away, his mind racing to calculate if he could make it in time. The harbour was made up of two stone sea walls that curved out from the land and overlapped where they met out to sea with a gap between them wide enough for a large boat to pass through. Inside was a calm harbour housing hundreds of yachts.
He ran back inside his booth and pushed the throttle fully home. The increase in power was barely discernable. Keeping a hand on the wheel, he stepped out of the booth to take another look back at the wave as his mates dropped what they were doing to join him.
‘My God,’ he murmured.
The tour boat was also heading for the harbour but it was much further away than the fishing boat and would never make it in time.
A woman passenger taking photographs of the horizon was the first to notice the wave through her lens. She put the camera down, hoping it wasn’t what she thought it was.
‘Ken. What do you think that is?’ she said to her husband.
Within seconds the twelve other passengers were on their feet staring at it.
‘It’s a tidal wave!’ one of them shouted in horror, and panic immediately swept through the boat.
The pilot glanced over his shoulder at the sound of the klaxon and blanched. He quickly gauged the distance to the harbour mouth and, his engines already at full power, knew they would not make it.
Stratton looked at the fishing boat as they moved away from it. If it had a chance, it was a slim one. The VSV could get to the tour boat before the wave.The question was could they unload it in time? He was prepared to leave some people behind if he had to.
Jock looked back at the wave as they closed, mentally preparing himself for what was going to be a delicate procedure. He assessed it would be at the tour boat in less than a minute.
‘We’ve got about twenty seconds to load that lot and I’m pulling away,’ he said.
‘Understood,’ Stratton said. ‘You got the next bit worked out?’
‘Nope.’
Stratton patted him on the shoulder and headed for the back of the VSV.
‘Stratton,’ Jock said. ‘You’re a good man. But if I don’t get the chance to tell you later, you can also be a real arsehole at times.’
Stratton stepped through the rubber door flap to join Scouse and Jab outside.
All eyes in the tour boat fell on the strange vessel approaching at speed wondering if it had come to help, but as the VSV bore down on them, for a tense few seconds it looked as if it was going to smash right through.
Jock gauged the distance perfectly and half a dozen boat lengths away he slammed the engines into full reverse at the same time turning the VSV hard over. As it halted its forward progress it slammed broadside into the tour boat and Stratton immediately yelled at the passengers.
‘Get aboard. Now. Go, go, go!’
They needed no encouraging as Stratton, Scouse and Jab formed a chain and grabbed the first person, a woman, and pulled her violently on to the VSV and into the cabin.
‘Move yourselves!’ Scouse shouted. ‘Or we’ll leave you behind!’
It was enough to shift any doubters into top gear. They piled out of the boat as quickly as possible. A woman tried to jump on to the front of the VSV and slipped, landing brutally hard on the side of it, cracking several ribs, but managing to hold on. Jab scurried along the side, grabbed her unceremoniously and hauled her back and inside the cabin despite her groans of pain.
Stratton jumped on to the tour boat and pulled a man clutching his frightened wife up on to the side and across the small gap between the boats where Scouse took over and virtually rammed them inside the cabin.
Stratton snatched a look at the wave now only two hundred metres away.The VSV’s engines gunned, a message from Jock he was leaving any second.
The passengers fell into the VSV like lemmings. A man slipped out of Jab’s grasp and landed face first on the deck, his nose exploding on the metal surface.
When the wave was less than a hundred metres away, there were three people still in the tour boat: the pilot and his only crewmember, wrestling with a hysterical woman. The pilot finally punched her in the face and, as she staggered under the blow, with the help of his crewman threw her over the side and into Scouse’s arms.
The wave was now close enough for them to hear the deep lashing sound of tons of water rising up and curling over the frothing peak, coming on relentlessly and hungry to roll and crush the boats to pieces.
Stratton leapt off the tour boat and on to the VSV. ‘Go for it!’ he shouted back at the pilot and his crewman.
As the back of the VSV started to rise with the front of the wave it powered away and the crewman and pilot took Stratton’s advice and leapt into the growing void. Jab grabbed the crewman’s hands as they slapped on to the back of the VSV, but the pilot missed and plunged beneath the water. Scouse and Jab pulled the crewman in as the VSV screamed away from the tour boat, which angled up the slope of the vast wall of water into the vertical before flipping over. It tumbled once, pieces flying off it, and was then consumed by the wave.
The fishing boat was three lengths from the staggered mouth of the harbour when the wave hit it like a hammer coming down on a toy.The two crewmen leapt over the side in desperation just before it struck but the old captain remained in the doorway of his booth, holding the wheel, defiant to the last. The wave picked up the boat and threw it against the wall where it shattered into a thousand pieces. The two crewmen suffered a similar fate, their bodies smashed against the granite and obliterated by the tons of water that followed. The vast harbour wall held and the sea shot vertically into the air along its length. Those inside could only freeze in horror as the wave shook the wall with a thunderous roar and the spent monster gushed over the top.
Jock held the VSV’s engines at full power and headed towards the beach half a mile away as if he intended to drive up it. Stratton stepped into the cabin, past the shattered people seated in the neat rows of plastic chairs and into the cockpit.
‘Well, Jock?’ he asked.
‘Only one option,’ Jock shouted as he gradually turned the wheel and the VSV leaned steadily over. The frightened people in the cabin held on to the boat and to each other, aware that they were far from out of danger.
‘I think the trick will be not to hit it too fast,’ Jock said. ‘Our problem isn’t going in, it’s getting out the other end before we sink. Get everyone to hold on. We might tip so be ready to get the fuck out.’
The VSV turned around smoothly until it was facing the wave. ‘Come on, you bitch,’ Jock shouted as he held the power steady and they closed on it. Stratton wasn’t sure if he was talking to the boat or the wave. ‘Have some of this, why don’t you,’ he added.
‘Hold on!’ Stratton shouted to the civilians.
Scouse grabbed the hysterical woman who was weak with shock and clamped her between his body and the side. Jab helped a father hold his son fast to the deck. Stratton remained standing in the doorway of the cockpit, looking out of the front window which was filled with nothing but a wall of water running vertically.
Jock throttled back allowing the boat to ride up the slope a little instead of going straight into it, which might put them too deep underwater. As the nose of the VSV started to rise, he opened up the engines again and cut deep into the wall. As they disappeared inside everything went instantly dark. The sea engulfed the back and thumped hard against the rubber flap, bending it inwards in an effort to get inside where, if it did, it would flood the boat. The flap was nothing more than a sheet of reinforced rubber designed to fall back against the opening to create a seal in the event the VSV went underwater, but that was envisaged to last no more than a few seconds, and at no great depth. As the VSV penetrated the mountain of water the pressure soared and the flap was barely holding, and way beyond its spec.
Stratton looked around at Jock who was standing doing nothing but looking out of the window and praying for daylight. ‘Jock?’
‘This isn’t a submarine,’ Jock shouted. ‘It’s not meant to be anyway. I can make it go left and right but I can’t make it go up!’
To make matters worse the boat started to tilt.The civilians were horrified enough and might have been more so if they knew it was not meant to happen quite this way.
