The Ferry (4 page)

“I really don’t see any sign of life,” I tell him.

“I’ll take us closer,” he replies. “I can’t get
too
close, not with these winds, but maybe we can spot some kind of identifying mark.”

As the helicopter swings around, I use the binoculars to watch the ferry’s dark bridge. I’m starting to feel more and more convinced that the whole vessel has been abandoned, which means it was most likely ‘liberated’ from a junkyard and then set free, for reasons I can’t even imagine right now. Still, dealing with an unmanned wreck in a storm like this is far less of a problem than dealing with a ferry full of people who could drown at any moment. Feeling a rush of relief, I figure that we can hopefully just let the damn thing break apart.

“Holding her steady,” the pilot says after a moment, as the helicopter slows and we get to within about twenty feet of the ferry’s aft side. “I only want to do this once, so let’s make it count.”

With huge waves rising up all around us, the helicopter pitches slightly as we make our way past the ferry. I keep the binoculars trained on the bridge’s windows, but there’s definitely no sign of anyone in there, and after a moment I’m able to make out the navigation wheel, which looks to be completely unattended even though there’s an empty chair a little further back. Raising the binoculars slightly, I look at the very front of the boat, but once again there’s no-one there. A moment later, the ferry rises up on the crest of another huge wave and then crashes down, filling the air with a wall of spray.

For a few seconds, I start wondering whether the vessel has finally broken apart, but then I spot it again. I guess these old boats were built to last.

“The upper cargo hatch is open!” the pilot shouts, tapping the window. “I’m going to try the spotlight.”

Lowering the binoculars, I watch as the spotlight swings around, flashing across the side of the boat. A moment later, I feel my phone vibrating again.

“Hey,” I say as soon as I answer, “Mark, we’re just taking a look right now.”

“There’s another front moving in on your location,” he replies. “You need to get out of there. I don’t care how good that helicopter is, it won’t withstand those conditions for much longer.”

“I think the ferry’s abandoned,” I tell him. “We’re just checking to be sure. Either someone left after it got into trouble, or -”

I freeze suddenly as the spotlight flashes over the open cargo hold. For a fraction of a second, I swear I just spotted human figures down there, in the bowels of the ferry, staring straight up at us.

“Did you see anything?” the pilot asks.

“Turn us again,” I tell him, suddenly gripped with a sense of nauseating panic, deep in my gut.

“What’s wrong?” Mark asks over the phone.

“Hang on,” I tell him, squinting as I watch the dark ferry. The spotlight is moving toward the open hatch again, although it’s difficult to be precise in such high winds. A moment later, the light falls through the hatch and I see to my horror that there
are
scores of people, maybe a hundred or more, huddling in the cargo hold and staring up at us. I can’t make them out in detail, I can just see the dark dots of their eyes, but they’re definitely there.

“Crap,” the pilot whispers.

“We have a huge problem,” I tell Mark, trying not to panic. “There are people on-board Not on the bridge and not on the deck, not as far as I can see, but there are people in the hold. Lots of people. I think the crew must have abandoned them!”

“Are you sure there are people?” Mark asks.

“I’m sure,” I reply, raising the binoculars and trying to get a better view of the huddled masses in the hold. It takes a moment, but suddenly I see scores of faces staring right back from inside the hold. For a moment, I’m shocked by their calm, empty expressions, and by the way their eyes seem to have locked onto me. The spotlight is shining straight at them, casting sharp, angular shadows across their faces and making them look even more unworldly. I try to refocus the binoculars, and finally I see that the faces seem distorted somehow, and some of the dots-for-eyes seem more like holes in the skulls. I try to adjust the focus again, but a moment later the helicopter shudders a little and the light is lost.

“Incoming!” the pilot shouts.

I barely have time to turn before a huge waves crashes into the helicopter, washing over us and jolting us so hard that for a moment I feel as if we’re going to spin around. There’s a brief surging sound from the rotor above, but the blades keep spinning.

“Okay,” the pilot continues, turning the control column and bringing the helicopter around, “that’s enough warning for me. I have to take us to shore. If we’re going to be out in this kind of weather, I need to make some changes first.”

“But -” Before I can finish, I realize he’s right. With the storm getting worse and worse, it’s only a matter of time before we’re brought crashing down into the waves. As the helicopter swings out over the dark water and heads back to shore, I look down at the dark ferry and watch as it’s battered by yet another huge wave.

“Don’t worry,” the pilot tells me. “I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble. We’ll get back to base.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” I reply, moving to the other window and watching as we get further and further from the stricken ferry. “How the hell are we going to get all those people off the ferry?”

Chapter Three

“Are you
sure
there were people on-board?” Mark shouts, as we hurry away from the helicopter and across the slippery grass, heading for the trailers nearby. “Are you sure it wasn’t a trick of the light?”

“Ask the pilot!” I shout back at him. “He saw them too, they’re packed into the cargo hold! I think you were right, I think it’s some kind of people-smuggling operation. When they hit trouble, the crew probably abandoned ship and left the The damn thing’s probably weighed down. The helicopter’s camera was running, you should have the images by now.”

“Are you sure you didn’t see any sign of a crew, or someone in charge?”

“I just saw the people in the hold,” I reply. “They were just standing there, staring back at me. It’s like they weren’t even trying to get to safety, they weren’t panicking at all, but they definitely saw us.”

“There’s not much they can do,” he points out, opening the door to the nearest trailer and waiting as I make my way inside. “From the images we’ve been able to analyze so far, there don’t seem to be any life-rafts except maybe one very rickety-looking boat on the aft side. Those people are sitting ducks.”

“I’ve got the files!” shouts one of the technicians at a computer terminal, waving at us. “Downloading from the server now.” He checks the screen. “Done!”

“Find a shot of the cargo hold,” I tell him.

“Working on it,” he mutters, turning a wheel on the keyboard and speeding through the footage before stopping it suddenly and pausing. “What the hell are those things?”

Staring at the screen, I realize that the figures in the hold look even more unreal now, packing in tightly and staring out at us through the glow of the helicopter’s searchlight. The quality of the footage isn’t great, but each of the figures has two dark eyes that seem to almost burn through the screen, still staring straight at me. I reach forward and hit a button on the keyboard, moving the image on a few frames, but the effect is the same. Whoever those people are, they look almost as if they’re from another world, and the grainy image makes their faces look more like bare, hollow skulls.

“Who do you think they are?” the technician asks. “They look… I dunno, maybe Eastern European?”

“Maybe the Middle East,” another technician suggests. “Maybe they came up from Africa.”

“Let’s not worry about that yet,” Mark tells them. “Right now, we’ve got a worsening storm and scores of people trapped out there on that thing. Wherever they come from, they need our help.”

“They’re all bald,” I point out suddenly.

He turns to me.

“Look!” I tap the screen. “I know it’s hard to make out much, but from this image it looks like every single one of the people down there is completely bald. I noticed it earlier, but I thought it was a trick of the light.”

“Great,” the first technician mutters. “Not just a boat full of asylum seekers, but a boat full of
sick
asylum seekers.” He turns and holds out a hand for me to shake. “Louis Cole. I plug things in around here and get absolutely no thanks for my efforts.” He eyes me cautiously. “So you’re the one Mark’s always talking about, huh?”

“Ignore Louis,” Mark says, leaning over him and flicking a switch on one of the monitors. “He’s great with computers, but appallingly cack-handed with anything that involves human interaction.”

“This ferry can’t have come out of nowhere,” Louis continues. “It has to have an IMO number, and given where it’s ended up, there are only a few routes it could have taken to get here. It either came down from the east, maybe from Scandinavia or the Baltic region, or it came up the English Channel from the west. I’ve been backtracking along those routes, using the shipping records provided by the relevant authorities down past France and Portugal, and also up toward Greenland, but so far I’m not having any luck. Even if this vessel was trying to attract as little attention as possible, it should have at least shown up on radar. This is the twenty-first century. A boat can’t roam the high seas unnoticed, even if it doesn’t have transponders of its own.”

“We can worry about that later,” I point out. “Right now, we have to get those people out of there.”

“The storm’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Mark replies. “It might be dawn before we can safely mount a rescue mission.”

“Then we’ll have to take a few risks,” I tell him.

“Not under -”

“There are hundreds of people out there,” I continue, trying not to raise my voice too much. “They’re all going to drown when that ferry capsizes, or if the hull breaks. We can’t let that happen!” I wait for him to reply, but he seems to be hesitating. “You didn’t invite me down here to watch a bunch of people die,” I point out. “The ferry isn’t just a mystery for us to solve, it’s also a boat with a lot of people on-board and we have to get to them.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“The pilot said he can fly again once he’s made a few changes.”

“I know, but -”

“But what?” I ask, trying not to let my frustration show. “Mark, what’s holding you back?”

Grabbing my arm, he pulls me across the room until we’re away from Louis. “There’s a man coming from up-country to take charge of this operation. His name is David Stratton and he does everything, and I mean
everything
, by the book. Once he gets here, the people on that ferry are dead, do you understand? By the time he’s finished running through all the procedures we have to follow, the ferry will be at the bottom of the sea and all those people will have drowned. I’ve seen it happen time and again since Stratton got into position a couple of years ago.” He checks his watch. “There’s nothing we can do, not unless we want to break the new rules he put in place.”

Staring at him, I finally realize what he means.

“It’s the ferry, isn’t it?” I ask. “That’s all you care about. You just want to solve the mystery!”

“No, but -”

“There are people on there! When lives are at risk, we always go the extra mile!”

“That’s how things used to be,” he replies, “but these days the rules have been tightened. We’re not allowed to put ourselves in a position of extreme risk.”

“So you’re going to let them drown?”

“Stratton’s orders -”

“Screw Stratton’s order!” I hiss. “Are you seriously willing to just wait until we haul the ferry up from the seabed? Are you more worried about satisfying your curiosity than saving lives?”

“No, of course not -”

“Then we have to get back out there,” I continue. “You’re the one who dragged me down here, you must have known I wouldn’t just stand on the shore while those people drown.”

He pauses for a moment. “The helicopter can fly again?”

I nod.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Stratton’s the worst kind of bureaucrat,” he continues. “When he arrives, he’ll lock this entire operation down and there’s no way we’ll be able to get in the air.”

“Then I guess we need to leave soon,” I tell him.

***

“Here we go again!” the pilot shouts as the helicopter is buffeted by strong winds, just moments after lifting off from the makeshift helipad near the beach. “Get ready for a rough ride!”

“How exactly did you square this with the rest of the team at the coastguard center?” I ask, turning to Mark.

“I didn’t, really,” he replies. “I told them we were going out to see if we could make a close-line inspection. They’re going to be a little shocked when we come back with the first evacuees, but they can’t exactly complain. We’ll just say that we saw an opportunity and took it, and then they’ll see that a full rescue operation is possible. Stratton’ll be harder to calm down, but he can’t be too mad about something we do before he even gets here.”

“By the time they get all their paperwork in order,” the pilot adds, “that ferry’s going to be split in two on the seabed.”

“Did you hear about the Marienbad II disaster last year?” Mark asks.

“Off the Shetlands?” I reply. “Twelve deaths, weren’t there?”

He nods. “Twelve completely preventable deaths. David Stratton got us so tied up in procedures and rules, we weren’t even allowed to launch in those conditions until it was too late. Those people could have been saved.”

“Sounds like things have really improved since I left,” I mutter, grabbing the harness and slipping it around my waist as the helicopter swoops low over the waves.

“Hang on,” Mark replies, reaching out to stop me. “We can only send one person down onto the ferry at a time. I want you to operate from up here.”

“Are you kidding?” I ask. “I was always better on the lower end of the rope, you know that.” I pull the shoulder straps up and lock them into place. “Just keep me steady.”

He stares at me for a moment as I work on the harness. “Admit it,” he says finally, “you missed this.”

“I will admit no such thing,” I mutter, before glancing at him as the helicopter shudders a little in the storm. “Teaching sucks,” I add. “For me, anyway. My heart’s not in it. I’ve spent the past five years going through the motions, getting up every day, trying to persuade myself that I belong behind a desk and that I’m good at getting kids interested in Shakespeare and Dickens. The truth is, I’m more use out here, doing something like this.” I check the harness again before glancing back at him. “And reminding you to have a conscience.”

“We never should have lost you.”

“I had my reasons for stepping back,” I mutter, turning and pulling the final strap around the waist and attaching it to the front. I give the whole rig a tug, to make sure it’s secure, before looking back at him. “We both know that our job usually involved a lot of sitting around, waiting for something to happen. I was never good at that part, especially after the incident with the Sullivan family’s boat.”

“That accident really got to you, didn’t it?”

“Sometimes I see…” Pausing, I realize that there’s no way I can tell him the truth. “Never mind.”

“Contact from base!” the pilot calls out to us. “Sounds like David Stratton just got into town and he’s not happy about us coming out. He’s demanding that we head back for a briefing session!”

“Stall him,” Mark replies. “Just give him static.”

“Already on it,” the pilot continues, randomly turning one of the dials several times. Looking out the cockpit windshield, he pauses for a moment. “I don’t see the ferry where we left it. Looks to me like it must have drifted quite a way.”

“That’s not a surprise,” Mark says, shuffling to the window on the other side and looking out. “It can’t have gone too far, though.”

“Unless it’s gone down already,” the pilot points out.

“Do you really think it’s people smugglers?” I ask, watching the dark sea below as I look for some sign of the ferry. “I’ve never heard of them coming this close to British shores, it’d be an audacious move to try to land a bunch of asylum seekers on the Cornish coast and think they can get away with it.”

“We’ll work that out once we’ve rescued them all,” Mark replies. “I’ve been on the trail of this ferry for years, but it’s always managed to slip away. This time…” He leans closer to the window. “Got it!”

Hurrying over to his side, I look out the window and see the ferry down below, listing even more dramatically than before as huge waves continue to batter the hull. To be honest, it’s a miracle that it hasn’t sunk already.

“It’s not going to last much longer,” I tell him. “We have to get them all off before it goes down.”

“We can fit a maximum of twelve on this helicopter,” the pilot explains as he brings us in low over the ferry. “That’s not including us, so once you’ve got twelve of them up here we’ll need to go and take them to shore.”

“It could take twelve trips,” Mark replies, turning to me. “I don’t think we can -”

“We can try,” I remind him.

He nods. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Pulling the handle, he slides the door open, and a blast of rain and wind immediately surges through, almost knocking me back. I grab a helmet and goggles and slip them on, before edging closer to the open door and looking down. We’re just twenty feet or so above the ferry now, which I guess is as close as we can get given that the wind is making us so unstable. I’d almost forgotten how it feels to be caught up in such a huge storm, but the adrenalin punches up through my gut like a fist.

“Work fast and work smart,” Mark tells me. “Most of all, don’t doubt yourself. Prioritize children, and then -”

“I remember the rules,” I reply, not wanting to spend too much time talking about what to do. Easing myself down, I set my feet on the landing skid, although I almost slip in the process. Reaching to my chest, I instinctively check once again that the harness is secure. My heart’s pounding as I look down at the ferry.

“Good luck,” Mark adds.

“When did you start believing in luck?” I ask.

With that, I take a deep breath and push myself away from the helicopter. I immediately drop down a couple of feet through the driving ran, before the rope tightens and I’m left dangling as I wait for Mark to start operating the winch. I look down, seeing the ferry below my feet, and a moment later I feel a faint jerking motion in the harness before the rope finally starts to move, lowering me through the rain. At the same time, the helicopter moves around the stricken ferry a little, as the pilot tries to get us into position.