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“I untied it from my kayak before I let it go.”
She’s nothing short of amazing.
“You’d make a damn good Navy SEAL.” I swear I can feel the warmth of her smile. “But you’re still staying here.”
“Like hell I am,” she says, her words echoing mine. “I’m coming whether you want me to or not. You can punish me for disobeying you later.”
“Oh, believe me, I will,” I growl. I can tell it’s pointless to waste any more time arguing with her, but I’m going to stay alive just to make good on that promise.
I tie the rope around both of our waists so the current doesn’t separate us, but I show McKenzie how to free herself quickly if something happens to me so I don’t drag her down. I call out to Paige and tell her to keep yelling so we can find her, and on the count of three, McKenzie and I push off the rocky wall and into the deadly current.
She was right; she’s a strong swimmer, although I’m not taking any chances. When I begin to feel the tow of the current that pulled us into the cave, I grab her firmly by the waist and haul her along with me until we’re on the other side of it. After a few minutes, we find Paige holding on to the cave wall.
She’s trying to be brave, but she catapults herself into my arms and clings to me while I feel her arm to see if it’s broken, and I feel a tiny piece of my heart thaw. With her little body in my arms, I can’t help but think about Maggie. Would we have gone on kayak adventures? Would her arms have felt like this when she hugged me each night before she went to bed? Would she have held on to me like I was her rock in the storm? I shake my head. Of course not. I wasn’t her rock. I couldn’t even save her. There’s no point in wasting time thinking about things that can never be.
I quickly untie the rope from McKenzie’s waist and tie it around Paige. There’s no doubt her arm is broken. I’m surprised she was able to hang on to the craggy wall as long as she did.
“Your dad and Jake will have noticed we’re gone,” I explain. “I’m sure Jake knows his way around these caves and can guess what happened. We’ll just hang tight here until help arrives.”
“It’s better not being alone,” Paige says.
She’s right, but the price of not being alone means being vulnerable and losing those you care about. But she’s too young to know that.
The minutes tick by, and I’m starting to realize something is seriously wrong. Someone should have come by now. McKenzie’s trying not to alarm Paige, but I can tell she’s getting concerned, too.
“What time do you think it is?” she asks casually.
“Probably close to five,” I guess. Which means we only have about another hour of daylight. And the tide has been rising steadily since we’ve been in the cave.
I frown. I have no doubt that the fact that it was almost high tide is what caused McKenzie and Paige to get sucked into the cave. When you have a small entrance and big cave, the tide current will produce a much faster flow because of the constriction of the narrow channel into the cave. I’ve observed that the tidal range here in the Philippines is pretty low, so some caves, such as this one, will have a faster flow than others. As a local and a cave tour guide, Jake should have known this and warned us that this cave was potentially dangerous. Instead, he had encouraged us to go on our own. But I blame myself. Even the best tour guides make mistakes, and as a Navy SEAL, I know better than to trust someone else with my safety without doing my own due diligence and assessing the situation.
I run through the options in my head. The smart thing to do would be to wait out the tide, even though that means we’ll be stuck here for another twelve hours. But this part of the cave has a low ceiling, and as I feel my way around the slick rocks that are worn by water, I realize that at high tide, the entire cavern is going to be underwater. If we don’t get out of here soon, we’re going to drown.
“We’re going to be fine,” I lie. “But we’re going to have to try to get out of here on our own. They may not be able to find us.”
McKenzie tenses imperceptibly. Funny how I can read her body even when I can’t see her. She’s not buying my bullshit for a second. Luckily, Paige is. She clings to me with trusting arms as I tell McKenzie the plan, which is to make our way back to the entrance by crawling along the wall, which will mean working against the current, but not swimming in it. There’s no way McKenzie could swim the distance against the current, or that I could with Paige in tow for that matter.
“Let’s go,” McKenzie says without hesitation.
It takes forty-five minutes before we see daylight in the distance, although daylight is a misnomer. The sun is close to setting. Forty-five grueling minutes of clawing our way inch by inch along the jagged walls of the cave as the current pushes against us. I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to go back through the narrow channel of the cave with the rush of water from high tide coming in when I spot a bangka bobbing just outside the cave entrance.
“Someone’s out there!” I tell the girls. “Start yelling.”
We scream and yell as loud as we can, and after a few minutes, someone shouts back, “We hear you. Stay where you are.”
A few minutes later, a man in a two-seater kayak that’s tied to a rope connecting him to the boat appears. I have never been so glad to see someone in my life. We talk briefly, knowing we must work quickly if we’re all going to make it out of here. I quickly lift Paige into the kayak, and the boat slowly tows them out of the cave. A few minutes later he’s back, and I help McKenzie into the kayak.
“Don’t try to come back for me,” I say tersely to the rescuer. “The tide is getting too high for you to safely make it back into the cave. I’ll be fine here until morning when the tide is low.” It will be a long and cold night, but I’ve spent worse.
The man nods curtly. “We’ll be back to get you as soon as we can,” he assures me.
McKenzie’s eyes are wild as the kayak starts to move. She clutches my hand with a death grip.
“Noah!”
Her voice quavers, and there are unshed tears in her eyes. She’s been the epitome of grace under pressure since this whole fiasco began, and seeing her composure finally crack only when she’s leaving me cuts me to the quick.
“I’ll be fine,” I promise, kissing her hard. She reluctantly lets go of my hand at the last possible minute, but she doesn’t take her eyes off me as she’s towed farther and farther away from me, finally disappearing out of sight. I’m considering the best way to wait out the tide when the kayak appears again, hastily paddling toward me.
