The lower the boat descended, the darker the stygian atmosphere around them became. The thick mists being churned up at the bottom of the whirlpool had thickened and further cut down the meager sunlight from the surface. Both Trouts were suffering from vertigo induced by the constant spinning. The moisture-soaked air would have been hard to breathe even without the choking exhalations from the pit: a foul combination of brine, fish, dead things and muck that smelled like the inside of a fisherman's boot.

The boat had remained at the same slanting attitude with its bottom parallel to the side of the vortex. Gamay and Paul sat side by side, so close they seemed to be joined at the hip. They were holding on to the boat's safety line, and to each other. They were numb with exhaustion from riding in a half-standing, half-sitting position, with their bodies angled and feet wedged under the lower pontoon. Moisture had seeped in around their rain gear, soaking their clothes, and the cold added to their misery.

At their accelerating rate of descent, it was clear that their suffering would end soon. They were minutes away from plunging into the thickest part of the billowing mists. Gamay glanced upward for one last look at the sun. She blinked, unable to believe her eyes.

A man was dangling above the Zodiac. He was silhouetted against the dull sunlight, and she couldn't make out his face, but there was no mistaking the broad shoulders.

Kurt Austin.

He hung from a line attached to the helicopter. He'd been waving his arm and shouting himself hoarse, but the noise from the whirlpool had drowned out his voice as well as the sound of the whirling rotors.

Camay dug her elbow into Paul's side. He managed a grim smile when he followed her pointing finger with his eyes and saw Austin doing his Peter Pan imitation above their heads.

The helicopter was matching the Zodiac's speed around the inside of the whirlpool. In an amazing example of stunt flying, Zavala flew the chopper at a banking angle to keep its rotors from touching the funnel's watery walls. A miscalculation, a drift of a few feet, and the helicopter would come crashing down on the Zodiac in a whirl of broken rotors.

The rescue had been hastily improvised. As the helicopter descended into the whirlpool, Austin had spotted a small flash of bright yellow more than halfway down the side of the funnel. He recognized Trout's foul-weather gear immediately and pointed it out to Zavala.

The helicopter chased after the whirling Zodiac like a cop pursuing a speeding car. Austin quickly tied a series of man-harness hitches in the rescue line. He had his foot in one of these loops and his hand in another as he swung back and forth in the turbulence caused by the rotor downwash and the updraft from the whirlpool.