As the reptiles squirmed across the teak-wood, the crowd panicked. Several men tried to stomp on the snakes; others rushed forward brandishing deck chairs and fire extinguishers. Many of the snakes became agitated and began snapping in all directions.
Mrs. Gilbert, among others, was bitten on the ankle.
Her husband the doctor stood there helplessly.
"I'm just a radiologist," he said to Mack Dane.
The captain of the Nordic Princesslooked down from the wheelroom and saw bedlam on his ship. To restore order, he blew the ship's tremendous horn three times.
"What does that mean?" cried Sam Gilbert, who was carrying his wife around on his back.
Mack Dane did not care to admit that although he was a travel writer, he knew nothing about ocean liners. So he said: "I think it means we abandon ship."
"Abandon ship!" screamed Mrs. Gilbert.
And they did. They formed a flying wedge, hundreds of them, and crashed through the rails and ropes of the upper deck. The Gilberts were among the first to go, plunging seventy feet into the Atlantic Ocean, leaving the ship to the damnable snakes.
As soon as he hit the water, Mack Dane was sorry he'd said anything about jumping overboard. The water was chilly and rough, and he wondered how long he could stay afloat. It also occurred to him, in hindsight, that sharks might be infinitely worse than a bunch of frightened snakes.
The Nordic Princesscame dead in the water, towering like a gray wall above the frantic swimmers. Fire bells rang at both ends of the ship. Mack Dane could see crew members on every deck throwing life preservers and lowering the dinghies. The ocean seemed full of shrieking people, their heads bobbing like so many coconuts.
Mack Dane noticed that the mystery helicopter was circling again, firing its hot-white spotlight into the water. Occasionally the beam would fix on the befuddled face of a dog-paddling tourist.
From the helicopter drifted a melody, muted by the engines and warped by the wind. It was not a soothing song, either. It was Pat Boone sounding like Brenda Lee. It was the theme from the motion picture Exodus.
A good-looking man in a business suit who was treading water near Mack Dane raised up a fist and hollered at the helicopter: "You sick bastards!"
Mack Dane recognized the man as the mayor of Miami.
"Who are those guys up there?" Mack Dane asked. He was thinking about the story he'd have to write, if he survived.
"Fucking Nachos," the mayor said. He kicked hard and swam off toward the SS Nordic Princess.
Mack Dane watched the chopper climb sharply and bank east, against the wind. The white spotlight vanished and the cabin door closed. In a few moments all that was visible were three pinpoints of light—red, green, and white—on the fuselage, although the racket of the propellers remained audible, dicing the night air.
An empty lifeboat drifted toward Mack Dane and he pulled himself aboard. He peeled off his blazer and laid it on his lap. As he was helping a young couple from Lansing, Michigan, climb in, Mack Dane saw a diamondback rattlesnake swim by. It looked miserable and helpless.
"What a night," said the man from Lansing.
Something about the sound of the helicopter changed. Mack Dane looked for the lights and spotted them about a mile east of the ship, and low to the purple horizon. The rotor engines sounded rough, the pitch rising.
"Something's not right," Mack Dane said.
The next sound was a wet roar, dying among the waves. Then the sky turned quiet and gray. The helicopter was gone. A plume of smoke rose off the water, marking the grave as surely as a cross. A few minutes later, the rain came.
Miraculously, none of the voyagers from the Nordic Princessperished in the Atlantic Ocean. Many had snatched life jackets before leaping overboard; others proved competent if not graceful swimmers. Some of the tourists were too drunk to panic and simply lolled in the waves, like polyester manatees, until help arrived. Others, including the Gilberts, were saved by strong tidal currents that dragged them to a shallow sandbar where they waited in waist-deep water, their hair matted to pink skulls, each of them still wearing a plastic nametag that said, "Hi! I'm ___" Luckily a Coast Guard cutter had arrived swiftly and deployed inflatable Zodiac speedboats to round up the passengers. By midnight, all 312 missing persons had been retrieved. The rescue had unfolded so quickly that all thirteen victims of poisonous snakebites made it to the hospital with time to spare and only transient hallucinations. A survey of other casualties included one possible heart attack, seven broken bones, four man-of-war stings, and a dozen litigable whiplashes.
Although the thrust of the rescue efforts concentrated around the cruise ship, a small contingent of Coast Guardsmen launched a separate search for the mystery helicopter one mile away. A slashing rain and forty-mile-per-hour gusts made the task dangerous and nearly impossible. As the night wore on, the waves grew to nine feet and the searchers reluctantly gave up.
The next morning, in a misty sprinkle, a sturdy shrimp trawler out of Virginia Key came upon a fresh oil slick a few miles off Miami Beach. Floating in the blue-black ooze was a tangle of debris: two seat cushions and a nest of electronic wiring from the helicopter, an album sleeve from an old Pat Boone record, a bloodied white-and-aqua football jersey, an Australian bush hat with a red emblem on the crown, and two dozen empty plastic shopping bags from Saks Fifth Avenue. Judging by the location of the slick, the helicopter had gone down in 450 feet of water. When the skies cleared, the Coast Guard sent two choppers of its own, but no more wreckage was found. A forensics expert from the Navy later reported to the Fuego One Task Force that no one could have survived the crash, and that there was virtually no chance of recovering any bodies. The water, he said, was full of lemon sharks.
Terrorist Believed Dead After Aerial Assault on Cruise Ship.
Skip Wiley had been right. The wild saga of the Nordic Princessappeared in sixty-point type across the front page of the Miami Sunthe next morning. Cab Mulcahy had been left with no choice, for Wiley had shrewdly selected the day of the week with the most anemic competition for news space—the President was giving a speech on abortion, a bus filled with pilgrims crashed in India, and a trained chimpanzee named Jake upchucked in the space shuttle. The sensational story of Las Nochesgot big play all over the country, and wound up on the front pages of the Washington Post,the Atlanta Journaland Constitution,the Los Angeles Times,the Chicago Tribuneand the Philadelphia Inquirer.The version that appeared in the Miami Sunwas the most detailed by far, though it made no mention of Wiley's role; Mulcahy was still trying to reach Al Garcia to tell him.
Only one other newspaper devoted as much space to the Nordic Princessstory as did the Sun,and that was the Tulsa Express.(Old Mack Dane had outdone himself, dictating thirty-eight breathtaking inches of copy to the national desk over a Coast Guardsman's marine-band radio.) As for the broadcast media, NEC had capitalized on its extra Orange Bowl manpower and diverted camera crews to the Port of Miami, Coast Guard headquarters, and Flagler Memorial Hospital. Heroes, victims, witnesses, and distant relatives flocked to the bright television lights, hoping to be interviewed by Jane Pauley or someone equally glamorous. By Sunday noon, much of the United States had heard or seen the story about killer snakes from the sky and the gang of South Florida crazies known as the Nights of December.