Chapter 1 1 When you spend as much time at the mercy of the sea as I have, your soul forgets how to rest. As a seafarer, your ability to react to the slightest change in the environment, be it internally, in the structure and seaworthiness of your vessel, or externally, in the conditions of the ocean and sky that surround you, means everything. Lives depend on how quickly you can act. And the one person who must always be most attuned to each creak of a bulkhead or slam of the hull, to a shift in the cadence of the engines or the howl of the wind, is the captain. Even when I'm on my off-watch, lying asleep in my narrow bunk, my soul remains alert. So that December night I was already sitting up before my first officer had finished rapping his knuckles against my cabin door, was swinging my bare soles to the cool linoleum by the time he entered and saluted me. "Sorry to disturb you, Captain." He had his feet planted wide, to counter the pitch of the ship in the waves. There was a near gale outside--the forerunner of a monsoon come early, climate change having sent nature's calendar askew. "What is it, Yusuf?" "Flares sighted, sir." "Flares?" We were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, one thousand nautical miles from land in any direction--Africa, Sri Lanka, Sumatra--and even farther from our home port. There were no shipping lanes nearby; no fishermen would venture this far offshore. "Are you sure?" "Yes, sir." I reached into my locker for tomorrow's shirt. Pulled on my uniform trousers. "How many?" "Two. Both red parachutes. Umar saw the first one as it arced down. We waited two minutes, then a second went up." A gap of two minutes between the first and second. Red parachutes. Done by the book. I slipped on my shoes. "Any vessels showing on AIS?" "No, sir. But we're picking something up on radar, seven nautical miles east-southeast. We thought it was just a rain shadow." I returned with Yusuf to the ship's bridge. After the dimness of the corridor, the overhead lights were searing, and rap music blared from a phone. The air was spiked with spice and oil, and the spoor led to an illicit samosa wrapper by the bin. Ensign Umar was hunched over the radar, examining the screen where the range rings glowed, green leaching into black. Rain clouds and the growing sea state created ghosts on the screen, coming, going, coming again, changing shape with every revolution of the radar antenna. On the windshield the wipers were set to maximum speed, and past the reach of their curves the glass was greasy with salt. Beyond, all was black. I turned back to the radar screen. "Where's the object?" "Here," said Umar, omitting the sir . I suspected the rap music was his fault; a lot of my men were just kampong boys, really. Village kids. Umar tapped the screen at five o'clock. I watched the blip, trying to discern a pattern in the jigging pixels, to find the constancy that would confirm the existence of a boat. The rapper was still raging. " No one learns, key turns, kick back pales, first time fails. " Music was banned on watch. Whenever I was on board, I switched off my personal phone and left it in my locker. Besides, even when we were within signal range, there was no one left to call me. I blinked. "Ensign Mohammed Umar bin Rayyan. Turn that off!" "Yes, Captain." He scrambled to the electronics panel, where his phone was on charge. He constantly had it with him, was always polishing the glass, checking it was still tucked safe in its protective case. After he muted the music, there was a moment of blissful silence. And then I heard it. A call on the radio. "--day, mayday, -ver--" "Umar! The VHF." He was already there, reaching for the fist mic with one hand and turning up the volume on the transceiver with the other. Static filled the bridge, rushing in my ears like the roar of water a drowning person must hear. The call came through again. "May-, -day, may-ay." Everyone stilled. "--t Santa Maria , sailing ya- aria , sailing yacht Sant- Ma-ia ." "That's a woman," Umar said. I glared at him, straining to hear. Had she really said Maria ? "--edical emergency. Require immediate assist--" the woman said, in English. I took the mic from Umar and replied, also in English, " Santa Maria , this is Royal Malaysian Navy patrol vessel Patusan , over." There was a crunch of interference, and I wondered if my transmission had failed to reach her. I waited, my finger hovering over the send button. Umar and Yusuf's eyes were on me. Mine were on the radar screen. "Oh my God," she said, breathing distortion into her mic. She sounded British. "I thought you might be a mirage." She let out a noise, and I couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. "I've been calling for days. Then I saw you on my screen. This is Santa Maria . I mean mayday, I mean over." "Ma'am," I said, as clearly as I could, "I understand you require assistance. I need to know the location of your vessel and the nature of your distress." The connection was stronger as she read out her lat and long. Umar wrote down the coordinates and nodded to indicate they corresponded with the blip on the radar. Yusuf changed our course. "Please come," she said, and her voice broke. "My husband. He's badly injured. Very badly." "Your vessel, ma'am. Is it disabled?" "No, but he's hurt. He needs a doctor. Please hurry." "We are on our way, ma'am," I said. "Our ETA is--" "Two eight minutes," Yusuf said, in Bahasa Malaysia. "Twenty-eight minutes," I relayed in English. "Oh God." The tremor in her words made me reach past Yusuf's shoulder to nudge the throttles forward. Seawater exploded against the portlights. I couldn't take us any faster in this sea state. "Ma'am," I said, clicking down to transmit. "What happened? To your boat? To your husband?" There was just the soft crrr of white noise. I tried again, depressed the transmit button. "Ma'am? Can you tell me what has happened? With Santa Maria ?" I released my finger, listened. Again, nothing. Was I sensing reluctance, or was I reading too much into an unsteady radio link? Perhaps she was tending to him, out of reach of the radio. Depress. "Ma'am." My voice swelled with professionalism--my ability to switch off the personal had proved a blessing in recent years. "We are coming to you." Release. Although perhaps benefit was a better term, since I no longer believed in blessings. Depress. "My officers are trained in first aid." Release. I wanted--needed--to keep her on the line. Depress. "Ma'am, what is your name?" A crackle. "Virginie." "Virginie. I am Captain Danial Tengku." "Help us." Now she was definitely crying. Often, when I think of my wife, I wish someone had been there with her at that terrible time. She must have been so frightened. At least I could do something for this woman. "Virginie. Listen to me. We will be with you as soon as we can. It is now"--I checked the bridge clock--"twenty-six minutes." She was quiet. "Can you hear me?" "Yes." "Good." I let thirty seconds pass. "Virginie, are you there?" She answered immediately. "Yes." "Now our ETA is a little over twenty-five minutes." While we steamed toward Santa Maria , I called her every thirty seconds, using her name each time, both to calm her, so she'd know she wasn't alone, and to build a connection, trust. Ten, twenty, fifty, fifty-two times I did this. Fifty-two--the number of weeks in a year or cards in a deck, the number of Penangites lost that fateful day. "Virginie, are you there?" "Yes." Eventually, the drone of the engines lowered as Yusuf reduced speed. The Patusan lurched against the waves. I grabbed the flashlight and threw open the door to the deck. It was slippery, and I needed to hold on as I swept the churning black ocean with the beam. Nothing. Then-- boom! --the thick night was detonated, the sky lit white as day, and there, off our starboard bow, against a backdrop of star-censoring clouds, a sailing yacht was silhouetted, its sails and rigging flickering like a phantom in the guttering pyrotechnics of a dying flare. Santa Maria . Maria--my wife's name. I did then something I hadn't done for years. I crossed myself. Excerpted from Untitled by To Be To Be Confirmed All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
