18 May 2011

Heidi saw a brilliant globe drop from the Coast Guard plane. It was followed by a second and a third. The globes fell into the water but were not extinguished: in fact, they burned even brighter in the waves. Heidi could have hugged herself: these guys knew what they were doing. Not one of the white creatures that was hanging about would mess with her now. Those pea brains are scared of things they do not understand.

The light from the floating globes was broken up by the roaring waves-a spasmodic cardiogram-and gilded the night air. The darkness could not close over Heidi’s head.

The captain focused his binoculars. Forty-fifty degrees off to the starboard of the course they were following he saw multicolored streaks on the horizon. To all appearances a fire on board a large ship.

The Americans sighted the approaching refrigerator ship and fired a series of orange flares. The signal meant, “ A man in distress needs help.” Now the sky shone, too.

The captain saw all this. It conjured up a picture in his mind: rockets over the black ruins of Leningrad buildings. He was making his way through a pitch-black courtyard, he was a puny 14 year old, and buildings were on fire after an attack. The way was illuminated by an orange light.

And rockets were in the air.

The captain shook himself.

“Man overboard!” he said. “Turn on the searchlights!”

Three searchlights-one on the bow and two on the deck house-lit up simultaneously. Those who would be working in the waves pulled on life jackets. The windlasses began to hum. Tarpaulin slapped in the wind. The ship’s doctor, Natasha Popova, drank down some tincture of valerian and got ready to save the lives of the burned people.

The ship had been moving at top speed-now it needed to be slowed to a halt. Otherwise, the multiton vessel could add to the misfortunes of those who had gotten a full dose already. The calculations had to be perfect. Captain Mochalov directed the approach to the site of the emergency.

Heidi’s raft was tossed about like a child’s shoe. Her last ounces of strength went towards holding on. The ship and plane were before her eyes.

Heidi got ready to live!

The Ussuriiskaya taiga performed a couple of ponderous maneuvers and hove to. The point of the maneuvers was to protect the starboard lifeboat from the waves. Everyone not on watch-everyone who was loitering idly about-had come up on desk. They looked at the roaring night sea. From a distance some took the lights to be the burning remnants of a ship, others for lifeboats.

“All of you go,” the captain ordered his mates: Logvinov, Stepanov and Zarichansky. “Take 12 sailors with you.”

Twelve young men took their places in the boat, and it set off alone to contend with the waves. Four hundred meters-that was approximately where the boundary lay between the pinkish darkness and the yellow-red light of the globes.

From – No Man Is An Island

Written by Gennady Bocharov