Dane didn't question it. He had long ago learned to accept and believe in the wisdom of his animal side.
Not particularly wanting to get too far from the island where the human part of him made its home, he swam in slow circles. Around him, the storm grew more intense. Dane dived to escape the fury of the lashing waves, surfacing only to breathe.
With the patience of any wild creature, he waited to find out what his shift animal had sensed.
MIRA
I'm goingto die out here,Mira thought.
Once again, she reached for the radio.
"Mayday, mayday," she said calmly, trying not to allow herself to panic at the squawks of static or the deck wallowing under her on the huge waves. "This is the vesselMerrylegs, registration number—" The boat slammed into another wave; she barely managed to gasp out the familiar string of numbers. "My current location is unknown," she got out, as the boat leveled out again. "I've lost GPS. I'm somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland."
She hung up the radio mic and breathed deeply for a few minutes, holding the boat's steering wheel steady with arms that ached from the waves she had already fought her way through. She didn't know how long she could keep doing this.
Mira briefly risked taking her eyes off the raging sea to look around the tight surroundings of the boat's pilothouse. It was full of small keepsakes: the good-luck charm dangling from the front window, the dog-eared books, her favorite thermos covered with stickers from the places she had been. The rest of her worldly goods, which consisted mostly of clothes and household items, were belowdecks in the cabin. She could hear some things that had come loose banging around down there, and hoped that the worst she would have to deal with, when the storm was over, was cleaning up a mess.
Merrylegswas not just her boat, but her home. She had lived on the old fishing boat for the last four years, making ends meet by carrying cargo and passengers between the small islands around the coast and scattered islands of the sea around Newfoundland and Labrador.
She knew the area well, and normally would be far too savvy to be caught in a storm of this magnitude so far from land. But she had allowed herself to be lured by a lucrative cargo, some necessary supplies to be delivered to a commercial fishing fleet anchored far out on the Grand Banks, away from the coast. She had known there was heavy weather moving in, but hoped to be back and safely moored before it hit. She'd dropped off the cargo with no problems, but soon found that the storm was moving much faster than she had realized.
The big commercial ships would be fine. Her little boat ... not so much.
She had been in some hair-raising situations during her previous career as an Army pilot, but for sheer terror, this beat them all.
Another great wave rolled under her, lifting the boat and then plunging it into a trough on the other side. Mira cried aloud as she saw another wave rising on the far side, lifting and lifting into the gray sky.
"Okay, it's time to stop being optimistic and start being sensible," she muttered.
She snatched the life jacket down from its hook and fastened it around herself, buckling it one-handed since she didn't dare take her hand off the wheel. Then she snapped a locator beacon to the vest.
All she could do now was trust to fate, and hope that she was close enough to the shore or to some vessel that had received her distress call.
"If we don't both make it out, you've been a good friend," she murmured to the boat as the deck started to lift again.
She knew the handling of her boat well enough to tell they weren't going to make it this time. The boat yawed wildly and teetered on the edge of going over. There was a moment when it almost seemed possible to recover, but then water began to swamp the pilothouse, and she could tell they were going to flip.
Tears filled her eyes as she abandoned the controls and threw herself at the door. She scrambled out onto the deck just as the boat went over.
Mira caught a deep breath and tried to jump. Her foot snagged on the railing and she was dragged down. There was a terrifying moment when water seemed to be everywhere; there was no up and down, nothing but water filling her ears and nose.
Remember you have a flotation device. Stop struggling and float.
It took every bit of nerve she had, the steel nerves that had been honed flying helicopters in combat zones, to relax and let herself float toward the surface. It was too dark to see the boat, and she was terrified that she was going to end up trapped underneath it, or tangled in the spinning prop. People had died that way.
But her head popped to the surface, and she gulped a great breath of salt-flavored air.
Rain and spray lashed her. She was floating on a vast, rolling sea. There were a few scattered items near her, briefly glimpsed on the roiling surface of the water—things that had floated free when the boat sank. She lost sight of them almost immediately. Then it was just her, all alone, tossed by the waves.
She checked to make sure her locator beacon was operating, then tried to relax and let herself drift, but quickly realized that she had big problems. For one thing, the water was cold. It felt like needles of ice penetrating her clothes. The flotation device could keep her afloat for a long while, but she wasn't sure if she could survive the hypothermia.
And then there were the waves battering her. In spite of the life jacket buoying her up, she had to tread water vigorously to keep herself from being flipped over or dragged down.
Her limbs soon began to feel like lead. She was becoming exhausted. Waves slapped her face, and it was increasingly difficult to keep her head out of the water.
No,she thought, furious. She refused to allow the storm to win.I didn't survive flying evac in combat zones to end up being drowned by a stupid bit of rain and wind!
The rain and wind were certainly trying their best, though. The air was so full of spray that she could barely tell when her head was out of the water. She was thoroughly drenched, exhausted, and shivering.
