Two hours later he saw a ship on the horizon, heading west. Probably a supply ship, coming back from delivering her cargo of oil-drilling equipment to the new oil field discovered farther east, up the Lena River, south of Tiksi. Judging by the ship’s wake, she was making her best speed, obviously trying to outpace the very storm into which they were headed.
Vanya appeared at his side. “Engines are fine. We’re locked down tight.” Vitaliy had asked him to prepare the boat for the impending weather. What they couldn’t do was either prepare their guests for what was to come or prepare for what the sea might do to the boat. Mother Nature was fickle and cruel.
Earlier, Vitaliy had asked Fred to have his men lend a hand in de-icing the boat, something they did despite their unsteady legs and seasick green pallor. While half of them chopped at the ice with sledgehammers and axes, the other half, under the supervision of Vanya, had used grain shovels to scoop the loosened chunks of ice overboard.
“How about after this we move to Sochi and run a boat there?” Vanya asked his captain after releasing the passengers to go below and rest.
“Too hot there. That’s no place for a man to live.” The usual arctic mentality. Real men lived and worked in the cold, and boasted how tough they were. And besides, it made the vodka taste better.
Ten miles off their bow the storm loomed, a roiling gray-black wall that seemed to visibly surge forward before Vitaliy’s eyes. “Vanya, go below and give our guests a refresher course on the immersion suits.”
Vanya turned toward the ladder.
“And make sure they pay attention this time,” Vitaliy added.
As a captain, he had a professional responsibility to ensure the safety of his passengers, but more important, he doubted whoever his party worked for would be forgiving, should he get them all killed.
An idiotic exercise, Musa Merdasan thought, watching the gnomelike Russian man unfold the orange survival suit on the deck. First, no rescue ships would reach them in time, suit or no suit; second, none of his men would be donning the suits in any event. If Allah saw fit to give them over to the sea, they would accept their fate. Moreover, Merdasan didn’t want any of them being fished from the sea at all; if they were, he prayed it would be in an unidentifiable state. That was something to consider, how to ensure neither the captain and his deckhand survived any such catastrophe, lest the nature of the trip and their passengers be scrutinized. He couldn’t count on a gun if they went into the water. Knife, then, preferably before they abandoned ship. And perhaps slit open their bellies to make sure they sank.
“First you lay the suit flat on the deck, unzipped, and then you sit down with your rear end just above the lowermost point of the zipper,” the Russian was saying.
Merdasan and his men were, of course, following along, doing their best to appear attentive. None of them appeared well, though, the building seas having leached the color from their faces. The cabin stank of vomit and sweat and overcooked vegetables.
“Legs go in first, followed by each arm in turn, followed by the hood. Once that’s done, you roll to your knees, pull the zipper fully closed, and close the Velcro flaps over the lower half of your face.”
The Russian went from man to man, making sure each one of them was following his instructions. Satisfied, he looked around and said, “Any questions?”
There were none.
“If you go overboard, your EPIRB—”
“Our what?” asked one of the men.
“Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon—the thing attached to your collar—will activate automatically as soon as it is submerged.”
“Any questions about that part?”
There were none.
“Okay, I suggest you get in your bunks and hold on.”
Though Vitaliy knew what to expect, the speed and ferocity with which the storm hit was jarring nevertheless. The sky went night-black around them, and within five minutes the sea went from relative calmness, with six- to eight-foot swells, to a roiling surface and twenty-foot waves that crashed into the bow ramp like the hand of God itself.
Great plumes of spray and foam billowed over the slab sides and pelted the wheelhouse windows like handfuls of hurled gravel, obliterating Vitaliy’s vision for ten seconds before the wipers could compensate, only to clear in time to give him a glimpse of the next wave. Every few seconds, tons