The Shadow Box(22)
Computer models showed that if the children had made it into the water in the small yellow life raft, they would be drifting toward or past Block Island. At that point, they would be in the open Atlantic Ocean, a far more treacherous proposition considering that the next landfall was Portugal.
Tom studied the chart. The computer factored in every possible environmental factor and wanted to send him south-southeast—and that rang a huge bell. It had done the same thing on a previous SAR, for two young girls whose voyage had started off roughly five miles from the site where the Sallie B sank.
If he had followed directions, he would have missed the children entirely—they would have been presumed lost at sea. But he had accounted for the possibility that they might somehow have steered themselves to safety, and he had checked unlikely rock outcroppings. That’s when he had found them on Morgan Island.
Tom took a deep breath. He ordered Nehantic’s officer of the deck to change course. The day was so bright and the water so calm that the sea was a mirror. It was time to look at Morgan Island. It had saved two sisters’ lives once—why not Gwen and Charlie now? But the radio squawked, and he heard the Jayhawk pilot calling in, saying they had just spotted a yellow raft on the far side of the Block Island windmills. It appeared that no one was aboard.
Nehantic was the ship closest to that location, so Tom ordered another course change, and they steamed full speed toward the reported position. The helicopter hovered above, at enough altitude to avoid swamping the small craft.
Tom had the same concern about the large wake caused by his 270-foot cutter, so he deployed a rigid inflatable boat. Seaman Ricardo Cardoso steered the RIB toward the yellow raft; Tom stood on the starboard side, ready to lean over and grab a line when they approached. His heart was racing, but it crashed as soon as they came broadside. The pilot was right: the raft was empty.
Tom turned toward Seaman Cardoso and started to shake his head when he heard what sounded like a bird. It squeaked once, twice. He leaned farther over the side of the USCG inflatable and saw her. A little girl was lying on her side in the shadow of the raft’s hull, pressed so tightly against it that she might have been part of the boat. There was no sign of the boy.
The raft was small. Tom was afraid his weight could cause it to capsize, so he balanced himself by holding the inflatable’s rail, lowered himself dead center in the raft. He knelt beside the girl—slight, white-blonde, wearing bright-yellow shorts and an orange PFD over a pale-yellow shirt. At first, he didn’t see her breathing, and he thought the worst, but then he saw the pulse in her neck beating fast.
“Gwen?” he asked. “My name is Tom. I’m a coast guard officer, and I’m here to take you home.”
She didn’t speak or turn toward him, but he heard that bird sound coming from her mouth—tiny peeps. He lifted her into his arms, smelled smoke from the explosion, saw that her eyebrows had been singed and her eyelashes burned off. His chest tightened at the thought of what Hunter had told him: that Dan said Sallie had done this on purpose.
Cardoso leaned over the rail, and Tom handed Gwen into his arms. The raft was barely four feet long and obviously empty. Charlie wasn’t there. Tom would radio the Jayhawk and the rest of the fleet, and he knew they would focus their search for Charlie in this area.
When Tom climbed into the RIB, he went to Gwen and tried to meet her gaze. Her eyes were open, but she seemed to be staring at a point far off in the distance. “Gwen?” he said again. “You’re okay. We’re taking you home. Gwen, can you tell me about your brother? Where’s Charlie?”
A tremor shook her body so hard that he thought she was having a seizure. After a moment it subsided, but she still wouldn’t, or couldn’t, meet Tom’s eyes, and she didn’t answer him. But the squeaks didn’t stop—they kept going over and over, almost as if they were her breath, almost as if they told her she was still alive.
Tom took off his personal flotation device and uniform shirt. Even though Gwen was so small she swam in them, he buttoned and buckled them tight around her to keep her warm and safe. He held her tight while the Jayhawk lowered the rescue basket.
He climbed into the basket with her and shielded her with his body as the winch roared and hoisted them up. He held his hands over her ears, so the booming sound of the rotors wouldn’t scare her, and he didn’t let her go until he carried her into the chopper’s cabin, laid her on the gurney so the medics could take care of her. He took her hand; it was ice cold. She neither squeezed his hand nor pulled away.
She didn’t flinch when the medics took her vital signs and pricked her arm with a needle to start an IV. They all spoke to her, making sure to say her name: “Gwen, you’re safe now.”
“Gwen, do you know where you are?”
“Hey, Gwen. How old are you? Are you nine?”
“Gwen, what’s your favorite color?”
But she didn’t reply to any of them. She just kept staring off into nothing—or at least nothing that Tom or any of the others could see—peeping like a baby bird, in a language that made sense to no one but Gwen.
Then she said one word: “Mermen.”
After that, the tiny sounds resumed.
FOUR DAYS EARLIER
11
SALLIE
Love was truly a series of blunders. That’s how Sallie Benson had started to think about it. Even knowing that she was making a mess of her life, she felt powerless to stop. Here she was at West Wind Marina, on a boat two docks over from where she and her husband kept the Sallie B, waiting for her true love—a man who wasn’t her husband. Dan was at work, their kids were at school, and she was breathless with desire and guilt. She was addicted; she might as well be waiting for her dealer.