Chapter 3

For the next twenty minutes, Kurt was everywhere. Supervising the placing of the barrels, the digging of the trenches, and the shoring up of the corrugated metal sheets. He even crawled up next to the whale to help dig the narrow trench underneath it that would be used for the fire hoses.

As the work progressed, the crowd at the top of the beach grew. By now the news had spread across the island and both the tourists and locals were coming out in force.

Surrounded by activity, the sperm whale made clicking sounds and flapped its tail, smacking the water loudly and drenching anyone who got too close. Farther along, the dolphins and the porpoises had begun to make anguished calls, while the humpbacks rolled in the shallow surf, waving their long pectoral fins uselessly. The situation was becoming more desperate, but they were almost ready to act.

With the last barrel filled, the corrugated metal sheets bolstered by berms of sand, and the high-pressure hoses in place, everything was ready. Everything except Joe.

Kurt scanned the bay to no avail, then grabbed a radio and called him. “We’re starting to lose the light here, amigo. Tell me you’re close.”

Joe’s voice came over the radio, buffeted by the wind. “I’ll be coming around the point any minute now.”

Joe entered the bay from the north, standing on the prow of a cabin cruiser as it churned through the swells. Behind him came a small harbor tug. Its shallow draft and powerful engines were perfect for what they needed. A third boat in Joe’s flotilla appeared to be a paragliding towboat. Another good choice, Kurt thought, as its pilot would be used to racing up on the beach to pick up and drop off customers.

As the fleet approached the shore, the two powerboats swung out wide and the tug came down the middle. It slowed to a stop, spun around, and then backed in the last hundred yards. As it neared the beach, one of the crewmen tossed a line toward shore. Kurt dove into the surf to retrieve it. Swimming back to the beach, he dug his feet in and dragged the line up onto the sand.

The small metal cable was connected to a larger-diameter rope. With the help of the volunteers, Kurt pulled the big rope in and attempted to loop it around the whale’s haunches.

At the slightest touch, the animal flicked its tail defensively, almost sending Kurt flying, but he’d been expecting it and had jumped out of the way.

“Come on now,” he said. “I thought we had an understanding.”

The whale flicked its tail once more and then smacked it down on the water. The sonic boom it created was almost deafening.

Kurt waited for it to rise again and rushed to pull the line underneath the flukes. As he reached the other side of the stricken animal, he locked the eye hook at the end of the line over the main part of the rope.

The tail hit the surf, sending a wave of water and foam at Kurt. The surge knocked him over but didn’t prevent him from pulling the line taut. It was now safely around the tail of the animal.

Climbing out of the beach, he found Lacourt, Chantel, and the leader of the construction crew. The fire brigade commander was higher up on the beach, waiting with a radio in his hand.

“Everyone ready?” Kurt asked.

The construction engineer nodded. The diagonal trenches were complete. The excavators were in the water now, trying to dredge out a path behind the whale.

“The panels are in place,” Chantel informed him. “Firmed up and ready to go.”

Kurt saw the tops of the panels sticking out just like his credit cards. Four-foot mounds of sand bolstered them from behind. “Full marks for following directions.”

Kurt grabbed the radio and checked in with the fire brigade. “Commander?”

“Ready to dump the barrels and turn the water on.”

The hoses from the pumper trucks were buried under five feet of sand and had been pushed as close to the sides of the whale as possible. The crews had heaped piles of sand on the exposed parts of the lines farther up, hoping to keep the high-pressure hoses from blasting free.

“Open the valves a quarter,” Kurt said. “Wait for my signal to go full power.”

The commander nodded and radioed his men at the trucks. The valves were opened a quarter and held there. The hoses flexed and jumped as they filled with water, the mounds of sand that were keeping them down shook and slid, but they stayed buried. Kurt considered that a win.

He called Joe. “Do your guys on the tugboat know to pull firmly but slowly? It would not look good to rip the whale’s flukes off while trying to save it.”

“I explained it to them in triplicate,” Joe insisted. “No promises, though. This is a first for everyone.”

Kurt couldn’t argue with that. “Start your run. Try not to crash into the whale or run up on the beach.”

Joe’s cabin cruiser started moving. Seconds later the paragliding towboat did the same. They moved out into the bay and then circled back, heading for the beach while building speed and momentum. As they came closer Kurt noticed their hulls rising a bit, but both Joe and the other driver cut the power back to keep the boats from planing. The idea was to displace the maximum amount of water.

Kurt watched and waited, raising his hand slowly and then bringing it down hard like a man starting a race. “Now!”

The pressure valves were opened to full, and water began blasting from the high-pressure hoses buried beneath the sand. A foamy layer grew up around the beast as the sheen of water spread across the beach. At the same time, the volunteers in the semicircle leaned into the drums, toppling them over. They fell in rapid succession, sending a thousand gallons of water surging into the sluice just as Joe and his counterpart in the paragliding boat came racing into the shallows.

They swung their boats sharply, turning hard at the last second like hockey players stopping at center ice. The maneuver sent two surges of seawater into the diagonal trenches. The seawater rose up, then poured into the sluice, joining the water from overturned barrels and the buried hoses.

For the next five or six seconds, the fifty-foot whale was surrounded by a bath of water. With the tug pulling and the sand underneath it now a pressurized mix of loose particles, foam, and uncompressible water, the great beast moved backward into the bay, like a newly commissioned ship going down the slipway.

Everything seemed to have gone off without a hitch until one of the high-pressure hoses worked its way loose and erupted from the sand like a giant angry snake.

As the fire crews cut the flow of water to the hose, a second problem appeared. The thrashing whale had caught one of the corrugated metal panels with its pectoral fin and was getting hung up on it as the panel dragged through the sand.

Kurt rushed out toward the whale and kicked the panel loose. The whale slid a little farther, but by now surging water was sweeping past.

To Kurt’s chagrin the whale’s large head was still up on the sand.

“Keep pulling,” he shouted.

The tug’s motors surged. The line pulled taut once more, but the danger of wounding the animal grew too high as the looped cords began cutting into its tail.

Suddenly, the fire crew was at Kurt’s side. They held the line that had escaped its bed. After urging Kurt out of the way, they aimed the nozzle at the beach and opened the valve wide.

A jet of water began scouring the sand from underneath the whale’s head. With little else he could do, Kurt leaned against the whale’s flat nose, dug his feet in, and pushed with all his might.

It was a ludicrous idea; the animal weighed fifty tons. He might as well have been trying to push a dump truck with its parking brake on. Then again, the whale was being pulled by a tugboat and was almost fully immersed in the water.

As he strained to force the creature back into the sea, he was joined by Chantel and her uncle and several other volunteers. The whale broke loose suddenly, sliding backward and then slipping out into the bay. The group tumbled forward into the surf.

Kurt got up quickly and helped Chantel and the prefect to their feet. “I’ve got to get out there to release her. Have the volunteers start the same process with the other whales. And get some lights down here, it’s going to be a long night.”

Chantel and her uncle were giddy with euphoria. They raced back onto the beach, feeling a surge of energy from the rescue that made them think they could work all night.

Kurt went in the other direction, diving into the surf and swimming to the cabin cruiser. Climbing up the stern ladder, he found the owners of the boat on board. They helped him onto the deck and offered him a glass of champagne. They held flutes of the bubbling liquid themselves.

“Thanks for the use of your boat,” Kurt said, dropping into a seat as Joe turned the craft and followed the departing tug.

“Glad to be of help,” the woman said. “I’ve always loved the sea.”

“This has been exciting and terrifying all at the same time,” the man announced, raising his glass. “What happens next?”

“We follow the tug out to deeper waters and cut the whale free.”

“Hopefully,” Joe added from the command chair, “without getting crushed in the process.”