Sixteen people pulled from the Pacific off Baja California, and the search goes on for the rest of a boat that never arrived

When the first helicopter arrived, there was no boat to find. There were people in the water, in the dark, 140 miles from shore.

The distress call came at about 1 a.m. on Friday from a vessel taking on water west of Ensenada, in Baja California. A survivor told rescuers as many as 27 people had been aboard. Coast Guard crews from across California, a Navy contingent and Mexican authorities answered with two helicopters, a fixed wing aircraft and a cutter, working from the position the signal came from. By the time they reached the scene, searchers found debris from a vessel and 16 people floating. San Diego Fire Rescue said 16 patients were brought in by 13 ambulances waiting at the Coast Guard station, two of them in critical condition and the rest with moderate injuries, as of Friday. Three went to Scripps Mercy Hospital, one with a suspected shark bite and two treated for cold exposure. Coast Guard officials said two of those rescued are Mexican nationals. The nationalities of the others had not been confirmed as of Friday evening.

What the boat was doing out there is the part officials are choosing their words on. A San Diego city spokesman confirmed to local television that it was a human smuggling boat. The Coast Guard would not confirm that description to reporters, but its San Diego sector commander, Capt. Robert Tucker, said the vessel was carrying a large number of people on a route normally used in illegal maritime smuggling, and that offshore conditions are unforgiving and can quickly result in death. Smuggling boats have capsized fatally on this coast before, overloaded craft taking the sea route around the land border.

Eleven people, on the survivor's count, were still unaccounted for as the search continued through Friday. Tucker said the priority remains search and rescue, in so many words: people are still out in the water. Every hour in the Pacific lowers the odds for anyone still floating, which is why aircraft were pulled from as far away as Sacramento. Whether the missing are found alive is now a question of hours, water temperature and luck, and as of Friday evening the Coast Guard had announced no change in the count of the rescued.