Page 14 of Untamed Coast

He needed to find her.

A whistle? A voice? The interminable waterfall of static hiss on the SSB was punctuated by something. Marco turned up the volume. A faint tone buried in the noise.

Was it his imagination? The static sounded normal now. Or almost normal, like the surface of a river with a rock below, just a small disturbance.

He wondered if his handheld radio might pick up something if he climbed to the top of the island. The antenna would be much higher, unobstructed. It was worth a shot.

The seafloor rose gently on the sonar display. Smooth—good place to drop the anchor for a bit. The water was calm, protected by the island’s steep terrain.

He lowered his anchor and set it carefully, making sure the plow was firmly secured in the muddy bottom. Solid enough.

He killed the engine.

The loaf of twenty-one-grain bread was almost out. Marco would need to reprovision soon—maybe when he went into Juneau to pick up his friend Bill from the airport.

Bill Worth, a longtime friend of Marco’s, had been planning for months to come join Marco on the boat for a week or so. He’d about driven Marco crazy texting questions about what to pack. Marco had to remind Bill that even though Alaska was remote, there were a number of people who lived here year-round. Bill didn’t need to pack like he was crossing Antarctica on foot.

Marco spread olive oil mayo generously on the…

Four slices of bread.

He put his hand to his chest, trying to hold back the rising sob. Just a simple distraction, and he was automatically making two sandwiches.

I’ll save yours for later, honey.

He put two slices mayo-side together, wrapped them in plastic wrap, and stuck them in the refrigerator. He’d make another sandwich with them soon.

Marco opened the last can of his fancy line-caught tuna. Michelle had always wanted the good stuff. Now it was his fallback when he hadn’t been able to catch enough fresh seafood to feed himself. He spread a little Dijon mustard on the bread, drained the oil from the tuna can, then dropped the entire contents onto the sandwich. He topped it with a slice of pickle.

A question was nagging at him about Radioville. This was a truly remote place. Back in the 1930s, it had been even more isolated and hostile. The only civilization—if you could call it that—was a handful of mining operations scattered along the coast. If you were going to set up a radio installation to communicate from those mining camps back to the rest of the world, wouldn’t the logical place be at one of the mining camps, where there were already buildings and regular supply deliveries and…other people?

Had this Joe Baxter guy found some great radio reception on a particular one of these rocks that made it worth setting up such a remote site? Or did Baxter have some other reason for keeping himself isolated?

Marco’s saliva glands gleeked painfully as he took the first bite of sandwich. He hadn’t been eating well lately, and he was starting to feel it. Being alone for long periods on the boat, it was easy to fall into bad habits of forgetting meals, just doing the minimum to keep himself going.

Outside the salon window, two humpback whales dove in tandem, their flukes slipping smoothly into the deep. Marco never got tired of the stunning natural beauty of this place, and he welcomed the quiet solitude. Maybe that was reason enough for Joe Baxter to build his radio shack out here all those years ago. Or somewhere out here at least.

Which one of these islands would I choose to set up shop and lie low?

He was antsy to get going. The woman was out here alive somewhere, he could feel it. He wrapped the last half of his sandwich in plastic to take with him to shore and dropped his plate into the sink.

His dinghy—a rigid inflatable boat half the size of the mysterious flat-black one Marco had seen—hung suspended from the two stainless-steel arms of the electric-lift davit attached to the back of Radio Flyer. Most boaters preferred cranes that hoisted the dinghy onto the top deck of the big boat. Marco liked the speed and convenience of the stern davit, particularly since he was almost always alone, single-handing. Launching a dinghy with a crane took longer, was better with two people, and could get dangerous in heavier seas. With the dinghy on the back of the boat, he could do the launch solo and be on his way in less than a minute—every time.

Marco put on his life vest. He was diligent about wearing his personal flotation device anytime he was outside, particularly since he was single-handing. One rogue wave could easily send him overboard, and hypothermia could disable even the strongest swimmers. He imagined the woman he was searching for slipping overboard, the shock of the cold water, trying to force her muscles to obey, to swim to some kind of safety.

But had she, or was the Coast Guard right? Had the radio transmission he heard been just a coincidence—a snippet of a distant conversation overheard and misunderstood? The Coast Guard sure didn’t seem to be giving it much weight.

She had to be on one of these islands. And finding Radioville was his best lead. He’d get to some high ground and try again to raise her on the radio.

He lowered the dinghy slowly into the water, stepped in, fired up the outboard motor, and gunned it.

The little boat rose up onto plane, skimming across the water at over twenty knots. It smacked a small wave, sending cold saltwater spray across Marco’s exposed face and neck. Within seconds he was approaching the shore. He throttled back and tossed a small anchor over the stern, attached by a long bungee cord.

The bow of the boat slipped onto the beach. Marco balanced himself and climbed out, then walked up the beach and tied the end of the shore line to a tree.

He checked the tide table app on his phone. The tide would rise for another few minutes, then start falling—dropping almost fifteen feet over the next six hours. He set an alarm. Last thing he needed was to end up stranded on the beach by the outgoing tide.

Chapter 11