The Wizardry Cursed

Twenty-five: MAROONED

Warm! Mick Gilligan thought as he spluttered his way to the surface. The water’s warm.

By rights it ought to be nearly freezing. But it was nearly as tepid as the Caribbean.

Nothing but surprises, he thought as he pulled his seat pack to the surface with the cord attached to his leg. At least this one is pleasant. He unsnapped the cover on the top half and inflated his raft.

Wait a minute! There are sharks in the Caribbean. He redoubled his struggles to get into the raft.

It wasn’t easy. An Air Force survival raft is about the size of a child’s wading pool and it is designed to be stable once the pilot is in it, not to be easy to get into. Gilligan was encumbered by his arctic survival suit, his G-suit and his flight suit. He wanted to hurry for fear of sharks, but he didn’t want to splash too much for fear of attracting them. If there had been anyone to watch, it might have been fairly amusing. But there wasn’t and Gilligan himself wasn’t at all amused.

Once he had flopped into the raft he tried to orient himself. The one thing that hadn’t changed was the fog. It was dense and thick everywhere. The air was a good deal colder than the water, so that wasn’t astonishing, but it didn’t explain why the water was so warm.

He pulled the seat pack into the raft and set it on his lap while he undid the catches on the bottom. Inside was a standard Air Force survival kit, including food, medical supplies and a lot of other necessities. Right now he was most interested in the radio and the emergency transponder.

The radio was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Eagerly Gilligan extended the antenna and trailed the ground wire over the side into the water. Then he tried the radio. Only a hiss and crackle of static came out of the speaker.

Grimacing, Gilligan carefully clipped the radio to the breast pocket of his flight suit. Next he pulled out the transponder and examined it.

The transponder was bigger than the survival radio, but it did more. When it received a signal indicating an aircraft was in the area it transmitted a powerful homing signal. Just now it was silent as the grave.

Gilligan punched the self-test button on the receiver and watched the LED indicator light up. Then he studied the other indicator for a few minutes and his expression got grimmer and grimmer.

Every military aircraft and almost all airliners and business aircraft carry beacons which would trigger his transponder. Gilligan knew for a fact that an AWACS and several other aircraft should have been within range. If even one plane was above the horizon, the device should have been screaming its little electronic heart out. Yet the self-test said it was working.

Either the self-test was lying or there were no planes above the horizon. Considering what the rest of this business had been like, Gilligan didn’t think the transponder was broken.

He pulled out his compass. He didn’t expect it to work this far north and he wasn’t disappointed.

There was one very non-standard item in Major Michael Francis Xavier Gilligan’s survival kit. A 9mm Beretta automatic with three fourteen-round magazines and a black nylon Bianchi shoulder holster to match. He inspected the pistol, slammed one of the magazines home and jacked back the slide. Then he struggled into the shoulder holster’s harness.

Then he felt a lot better.

Back at the base the people were feeling worse as the minutes ticked by.

The general wasn’t happy, Ozzie Sharp wasn’t happy, the squadron commander wasn’t happy and unhappiest of all was the young captain who ran the base’s rescue operation.

"We got on his last known position quickly and flew an expanding spiral search," the captain explained. "Then we did it again with a different aircraft and crew. We have had aircraft on top almost constantly. There is no voice communication and no transponder signal."

"What about the Russians?"

"They say they haven’t seen any sign of him."

"And you believe them?"

"It’s credible," Ozzie Sharp said. "The Russians returned to their base with all their missiles still on their wings." No one bothered to ask how he knew.

The general grunted. Then his head snapped up and he transfixed the young captain with a steely-eyed stare.

"Why the bloody hell can’t you even find the area where he went down?"

"Sir, this is a very unusual situation. He had sent his wingman back, so we don’t have as much information as we normally do." The captain thought about explaining how well they were doing to have gotten this far in the few hours since the missing pilot’s wingman had broken out of the dead zone. Then he caught the general’s eye again and decided not to.

"Have your crews found anything unusual?" Sharp asked. "Any unusual readings or problems with your instruments?"

"None, sir. As far as we can tell, there’s nothing in that fog but more fog."

The expression on Sharp’s face made the general seem mild by comparison.

"We’re going over the area again," the captain offered quickly. "But so far there’s no sign of Major Gilligan or his plane."

"Nothing on the transponder?" the general asked.

"Nossir," the officer said.

"Captain, I thought this sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen."

"It isn’t, sir."

It’s as if he dropped off the face of the earth, the captain thought. But it was bad form to say something like that.

Major Gilligan drifted through the fog and tried to figure out what the hell had happened to him. He didn’t have the faintest idea where he was, but increasingly he doubted it was anywhere near Alaska. There was still fog all around him, but when the sun broke through it was bright, warm and too high in the sky, totally unlike anything he had experienced in Alaska.

He could hear the sound of surf off to his left. Surf usually meant land of some kind, so that was as good a direction as any. Besides, the fog seemed to be marginally thinner that way.

Major Michael Francis Xavier Gilligan began paddling grimly toward the sound of the waves.