Worse, the liberated slave girls below were doing their best to fill the crew dayroom with vomit, to the extent that Morales and Mary-Sue couldn't keep up with emptying the buckets over the side . . . when they and the girls managed to hurl into the buckets, that is.
The girls all wept and prayed and screamed, in between bouts of vomiting. Though they didn't exactly share a language, but only a language family, Morales didn't have a doubt that they were invoking the aid of the Almighty. That, or perhaps praying for death.
Above, straining to make himself heard over the roar of wind and sea and engine, Antoniewicz said to Simmons, "I fucking told you we should have put in at Havana, you asshole."
"Chief says we push on, we push on," the latter answered calmly, if loudly, likewise to be heard over the roar of the gale. Indeed, he answered amazingly calmly considering the boat was riding through waves almost as tall as it was long. "The last place he wants us or we ought to want to be is Cuba. That's enemy territory, still. Besides, Eeyore, we've made it fine so far. What makes you think it'll get any worse."
Antoniewicz's face, already a pale green, suddenly assumed a truly ghastly look. "That," he said, pointing astern.
Simmons looked over the stern and saw looming what was absolutely the biggest wave he'd ever seen. His hand automatically reached for the throttle and pushed hard. "Oh, fuck; rogue wave . . . CHIIIEEEFFF!"
Waves at sea, like radio waves and other electro-magnetic waves, operate at a frequency. Moreover, different waves, even in near proximity, will operate at different frequencies from other waves. Occasionally, a series of waves, all normally at different frequencies, will meet. At that point, there can be created an enormous wave, holding within it the mass, and rising to about the height of all the waves operating at the different frequencies that comprise it, together. This is called a "rogue wave," and, once formed, it can swamp a ship, break its back, or roll it over before so much as a "Mayday" can be sent out.
Biggus Dickus Thornton never heard Simmons' call. The waves and the gale were too much for that. He did, however, feel the stern rising rapidly in a way that he hadn't felt the Bastard quite move before. He looked astern on his own and saw the suddenly rising mass of foul looking white spray and foam and vertical greenish sea. He didn't have a throttle to push automatically. Instead, he reverted to his childhood, making the sign of the cross-head-abdomen-left shoulder-right-and saying, "For what we are about to receive, O Lord . . ."
And then he felt himself thrown from his feet and sliding to the stern, past where a forty millimeter Bofors had once been mounted, his ass skimming along the wet deck. He never quite finished his prayer. In English. Rather, he compressed it into a long, "Aiaiaiaiaiai!"
Eeyore had a little more warning than Thornton had had. Oh, he still lost his footing and began to slide sternward. But he was able to grip the rope that ran about his waist and stay, approximately, within the confines of the bridge. On the other hand, it hurt like the devil when he smacked his head off of the raised housing, just aft."Holyfuckingbastardmotherfuckingcocksuckingsonofabitchasshole!" This would have upset Mary Poppins deeply, and for more reasons than one.
Still, the stern of the ship continued to rise. Now Antoniewicz slid forward, slamming into Simmons' feet and causing that sailor to fall backwards, losing his grip on throttle and wheel. Rather than try to outdo Mary Poppins' fourteen syllable neologism, Simmons contented himself with a wild, inarticulate, "Gaaa!"
Mary-Sue and Morales found themselves against the forward bulkhead, in a tangle of lifejackets and decidedly post-pubescent and nicely female arms and legs and heads and breasts. Had the tangle not taken place in a rising tide of puke, and had the lifejackets not covered all too much of the breast mass, and had the screaming not reached concussive levels of volume and power, they might have enjoyed it. Morales didn't think it was even possible for the volume of the shrieking to go any higher.
But then the Bastard began shooting upwards, as near to straight vertical-though subjectively toward the stern-as one might imagine. Morales discovered that, No, there is no theoretical top limit to the amount of sound that can come from massed female lungs.
Not being a churlish sort, he elected to join them. "AYAAAHHH!"
Thornton found himself sliding away from the stern and back towards the raised engine housing. By pushing down with one hand, he was able to quarter turn himself so that he impacted sideways, rather than head first. It still hurt, but not as badly as a head blow would have. From somewhere inside the boat, he heard a massed scream.
The combination of boat pointing almost straight down, rising waves, wind and sea, and shooting up like a rocket had totally overridden Biggus Dickus' inner ear. He had no idea whatsoever which way was up, which down. Then, from under the stern, he heard the high pitched whining of triple propellers, spinning out of water. The boat made a last spurt upwards, hung in the air for a long moment, then slammed back down into water. It started to level out, then tilt toward the stern.
This particular rogue wave was composed of four others, in descending order of size and also speed that could have been called, "A," "B," "C," and "D." Having joined at precisely the wrong place and time, from the point of view of the Bastard's crew, these began to separate out again almost as soon as the waves made their final effort to launch the patrol boat into low orbit. A continued on, dropping substantially in height and power, as the rest dropped behind.
The Bastard slammed into B-C-D from above. The girls screamed. B then moved ahead, leaving C and D in its wake. The Bastard-no water underneath to support the hull-slammed into the remainder. The girls, and Morales, screamed. C then continued on, letting the Bastard slip down into the trough formed behind it.
Wave D then slammed into the Bastard, hitting at an odd and bad angle. It spun the boat, nearly capsizing it. D smacked Antoniewicz and the chief around like a pimp with a couple of his more recalcitrant and lazy whores. As the boat turned approximately seventy degrees from the vertical, everybody, including the chief and Mary-Sue, screamed.
D-86, 111 Miles North-northeast of Nombre de Dios,
Panama, MV Merciful
Where are they?" Kosciusko fumed. "Where the fuck are they?"
Ed had binoculars grasped in both hands, pressed to his eyes, scanning from about ten o'clock to two. His exec, similarly accoutered, did the same from two to six. Chin, as perhaps the most nautically experienced man aboard, likewise searched from six to ten. It was Chin who spotted the boat.
"When did your navy start putting young girls at the helms of small boats?" he asked. Chin concentrated a bit on what he could see of chest of the girl at the wheel. "Well, maybe not all that young."
Kosciusko swung his glasses around to see. "Ugh," he uttered. Not only was there a girl at the wheel, one he'd never seen before, the charthouse itself was about half gone, as were what he'd have expected to see of antennae, the radio mast, the life raft, the lights, the . . .
"What the hell hit them?" Chin and the Exec both shrugged. Dunno.
Worse, maybe, than what was missing, the boat that should have danced across the water like a ballerina across the stage limped along, on one engine, at best. And that one seemed to be putting out a lot of smoke. The boat was also riding very low in the water.