The Golden Catch

by Roger Weston

  On his next try, Mok Don won his feet. He climbed up on the rail and jumped. He dropped twenty feet and splashed into the water. After a couple of seconds, his head broke the surface and he started swimming toward the life boats. Frank stood there and watched him fall away with the wake. Soon he was far past the Hector. Frank turned and went forward.

  ***

  Mok Don swam for some twenty minutes before he got within hailing distance of the life rafts. The men yelled to him and waved. He waved back. They began rowing in his direction. He swam toward them. The water was choppy and the distant life rafts were occasionally whelmed from sight. He swam on, occasionally spotting them, hearing their cheers. Soon he was close enough to one of the boats to glimpse the expressions on their faces.

  Something was wrong!

  The men were waving and shouting frantically. They were pointing beyond Mok Don. He stopped swimming and listened, treading water with his ears clear of the water to listen.

  “Shark!” the men were yelling. “Shark!”

  Mok Don gasped for breath and hit his stride sprinting and splashing. Terror alone more than tripled his swimming speed.

  Then his kick was intercepted. His leg was stuck as if suddenly in a clamp. Saws ripped into his thighs, and he began spinning violently. He let loose a shrill shriek as he was dragged underwater. His breath was gone and yet his body spun so violently nothing mattered. There was no pain, only shock--horror.

  It all happened so fast. Next thing he knew he was above water again, flailing by the lifeboats, which he could almost touch. He gasped in absolute horror. The thing would be back! He was almost safe now. But he had taken a proper thrashing and his leg was useless--in fact he couldn’t feel it at all. There was no pain and he thrashed toward the boats.

  The men shouted back and rowed alongside of him. He was pulled up over the side of the boat and in.

  Immediately the men were gasping and groaning. “His leg! The shark took his leg!”

  “No!” Mok Don yelled. He turned over and looked down. Blood was spurting from his thigh. His leg had been taken from above the knee. “No!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Gray water slipped by at eighteen knots. The wind blew cool and fresh. Walking fore, Frank stepped through the doorway to the inboard companionway.

  He climbed a stairwell to the accommodation deck, where he checked several cabins, finding them empty. He climbed to the boat deck, which was also abandoned and silent. On the bridge deck, he expected to find the best accommodations and probably the shipmaster’s quarters which were usually positioned near the wheelhouse.

  The first two staterooms were empty but for personal effects. The third stateroom contained dozens of the finest relics from the Kiska treasure, carefully arranged across the room’s floor. Frank’s eyes fixed on the gold suit of armor. Next to the armor helmet lay the gold crown Frank showed Abby on the eve of their arrival at Kiska. Clipped to the gold girdle, was Luke’s prize gold sword. Frank thought of Chull-su being left behind on the island.

  He scowled and began kicking the relics aside, working his way towards the suit of armor. The noise was terrible. He seized the gold sword and bashed the gold crown, which folded around the blade and hit the wall. Fragments of splintering curved jade shot in every direction. Frank’s next hack bent the breastplate. He turned and walked out carrying the gold sword next to his rifle. He climbed up another deck and walked into the wheelhouse with his AK-47 leading the way.

  He stood there momentarily, looking over the control center of the Pinisha. He walked to the control consul and looked at her position on the electronic chart. She was over the Aleutian Trench, east of Kamchatka. He glanced at the CRT display of the satellite receiver, noting her position, then entered several numbers into the digital readout on the autopilot to indicate the new heading in degrees.

  He was going home. He hoped it wasn’t too late for Luke, Abby, and Ingrid.

  The wretched treasure. The treasure caused it all. All the tragedy.

  Today he’d shown mercy. He let murderers go free. Wasn’t that a crime in itself? He gave them a fair chance at sea. If they survived, their future victims would have Frank to blame.

  Carrying Luke’s sword, he clamored down three decks and went astern. The Hector was a beautiful sight, and he was eager to board her. He sheathed the sword by sticking it through his pants, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and climbed over the taffrail. Then, hanging from the tow rope, he climbed hand over hand above the Pinisha’s wake and back to the Hector.

  Once aboard his rolling crab boat, he hastened to his office in the house. Hands numb, he set the rifle on his desk and sat down. He leaned back in the chair.

  Emotionally, he felt as numb as if Novocain were running through his veins rather than blood. He thought only of stopping the man who was hunting down Luke, Abby, and Ingrid, hunting them like animals. He fell into a trance and found himself staring at the small bottle that lay upon the edge of his desk. He focused his eyes and stared at it for several minutes, stared with traces of hostility well-known to the unforgiven. Slowly, he leaned forward and reached out for the little bottle. He picked it up and looked at it more closely. Inside was his seed, his symbol of faith. He set it down gently and looked at it for a few minutes.

  His eyes closed leaving tight wrinkles. He leaned over on his desk.

  Rising, he took the spiral staircase down to the engine room and walked to the aft engine room supply locker. Finding the key atop the beam, he opened the locker and removed a box from the bottom shelf. He slipped the box into a knapsack, which he put on.

  Back onboard the Pinisha, he opened the door to the after deckhouse and went inside. He found a flashlight hanging on the wall. The deckhouse was used for stores: gears, fittings, etc. Frank inspected the floor for a round hatch. He opened the hatch and climbed down the ladder to the steering gear space below. The hatch closed behind him, and blackness enveloped.

  He turned on the flashlight. The steering gear space berthed oily hydraulic machinery. Probing the darkness with his flashlight, he spotted two round deck hatches and an access hatchway. The access hatchway led to hold #5. As he recalled from boarding ships years ago, one round hatch opened to a tunnel escape leading to the after peak, a recess below; the second hatch opened to the rudder trunk which housed the upper rudder stock used to turn the rudder.

  He opened the hatch to the tunnel escape and started down the ladder. Slowly, he made the vertical descent into the bowels of darkness. The booming noise of the shaft below stunned his senses and swamped him with a strange feeling of isolated vulnerability. The ladder ended in the after peak. Looking around he noticed a round hatch that lay on the floor.

  Frank opened the hatch and climbed down into the lowest bowels of the Pinisha. This deep recess housed the noisy propeller shaft tunnel. He climbed down amidst the harsh-sounding clamor, his feet stepping into a quarter inch of water. He splashed through the damp, dark passageway, his roving shaft of light cutting through blackness, stabbing at imprisoned night. He was walking forward, but stopped short of the big watertight door through the crosswise bulkhead.

  He removed his knapsack and took out the square package--about the size of three dictionaries--plastic explosives. Holding the flashlight under his arm, he removed the wrapping and molded the block of explosives to the bulwark above the bilge water against a horizontal girder. He attached a detonator unit to the top of the block and ran a wire from his wire coiler to a timer which he also placed on the explosives. He set the timer for forty minutes, took his flashlight, and stood up.

  Frank quickly scanned the blackened obscurity with his probing needle of light.

  The big metal door through the forward bulkhead led into the main propeller shaft tunnel. Opening the door and passing into the next section, he kept moving, splashing through bilge water as he went.

  Suddenly, despite the booming engine and shaft noise, he heard metal clank to aft. Switching off his light, he froze in total darkness
and waited several seconds, tension tight in his gut. He took the AK-47 in his hands. He waited. No more sounds. Perhaps the ship’s rocking had caused something to fall over. He stood as still as a statue. Perhaps it was nothing.

  Flashing on his light, he followed the narrow column of dancing white illumination, looking nervously backwards several times. He arrived at another metal door and spun the dogs. Opening the door, a flood of bright light blinded his unadjusted eyes. Squinting, he edged his way inside the lower engine room. Calculating boundaries, he recalled the forward bulkhead separated the lower engine room from the wing fuel tank. The only way out was up or back. He slid the flashlight tightly into his pocket. He set a second charge by the forward bulkhead, synchronizing the timer to coincide with the first.

  The metal grate staircase led up to the ‘tween engine room, and Frank hurried past pipes, generators, valves, engines, and boilers; as he did so, creaks, hisses, whirrs, hums, and murmurings streaming out of ventilators changed pitches and volumes against his position. The heat from the engines was stifling. Another clank.

  He walked fore on metal walkway gratings over machinery and passed through the forward bulkhead into the soundproof engine control room and closed the door behind him. Shivers ran up and down his spine. He turned to the window and watched his trail for several minutes.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Leaving the control center, Frank returned to the deafening blare of the engine room. Carefully, warily, he ducked and searched through pipes, ventilators, pumps and knobs, looking for a cranny with a good angle on all the approaches. While he foraged around, he kept an eye on the stairway. Finding what he was looking for, he slipped in a nook by a vent shaft. He couldn’t crouch down with the sword sheathed through his pants, so he withdrew the blade and set the weapon aside. Then he waited . . . Unbearably hot . . . Sweating . . . The flashlight digging into his gut.

  Several minutes passed. Then Frank saw the nose of an assault rifle poke into view. Someone stopped a foot before Frank’s nook. Frank remained still. Slowly, the gun’s barrel began moving forward into view. Frank saw a hand. Scabbing rope burns ringed around the wrist. A feverish, hugely muscular Korean moved into view as slowly as a crawling lion. Frank recognized him as one of the men who attacked him at the monastery. The man’s eyes orbed wide as he looked into the nook and straight at Frank.

  Frank shook his head negatively, his rifle trained between the man’s eyes. He yelled to be heard over the mains: “Move fast and you die.”

  Intensity gripped the man’s face. He showed no fear, but seemed to realize that he was one false move from the end. Slowly the man laid down his weapon.

  Frank reached over for the sword with one hand and grasped the handle. He stood up, sheathed the long blade under his belt, and eased out of the nook.

  The man watched him closely.

  Frank ducked beneath a vent as he stepped out on the grated walkway. When his arm brushed against a searing hot pipe, he flinched reflectively and jerked away from the hot surface. The big man seized the moment, his hands exploding outward, batting the gun out of Frank’s hands and pushing him backwards. Frank landed on his back and slid on the grating.

  The man dove at Frank, who grabbed the sword, pulling the blade upward. The man crashed down onto the upturning sword. He wailed in shock and pain as the blade came out of his back.

  The man’s eyes swarmed with primordial rage as he grabbed Frank’s neck and throttled, cutting off breathing. Frank was choking, and the man squeezed harder. Murder raged in his eyes until they turned up unnaturally in the sockets and started twitching violently. Frank tried to wrestle him off but was in too awkward a position. The grip around his neck became murderous, and he thought his lungs would explode. Those eyes over him were windows of suffering. Then the man’s grip faltered as he began heaving in violent spasms.

  Frank gasped for air. The man atop him made horrible wailing sounds that gave way to a pitiful cry. Frank tried pushing him off, but the sword had them attached. Using all his strength, Frank rolled to port. The man hit the grating and yelled desperately. As Frank stood up, his belt pulled the sword out of the man’s guts, causing him to let out a hideous gasp. Frank kneeled down to the man and ripped his shirt open. Blood gushed from the wound.

  “Shouldn’t have done that,” Frank said, catching his breath, his lungs still burning.

  The Korean was trying to speak, “It’ae--”

  Frank couldn’t hear or understand what he was saying. “What?”

  “It’aewon--”

  Frank knelt down. “What are you saying?”

  The man grabbed his collar and pulled him close. He was gagging but he rasped his dying words into Frank’s ear in English.

  “Are you sure?” Frank asked.

  The man was gasping deeply and harshly. Frank tried to stop the bleeding with the man’s shirt, but within a few minutes the man’s eyes rolled back again, froze, and he was dead.

  Frank picked up his AK-47 and walked back into the engine control room, closing the door behind him against the clamoring mains. He walked to the center of the sound-proof room and stared at the watertight door through the crosswise bulkhead.

  Thunder blasted through the glass, sending the exploding window shattering to the deck; simultaneously, something batted Frank’s legs out from under him, sending him twisting, crashing down upon the steel decking. The deafening marine diesel engines now wailed into the control room. At the same moment he was dazed and shocked. Adrenaline was clawing in him. He was shot beneath the knee.

  Frank crawled for cover, dragging his leg. Another burst of gunfire batted the decking just beyond him. Bullets ricocheted inches from him. He balled up and rolled. A snapping catapult of wretchedness told him that his leg was broken.

  Rising up on his elbows, he pushed the control room door open a crack. He just barely peaked up over the metal doorway sill, which reached twelve inches above the deck level. He ducked.

  The big man lay where he fell. There was someone else in the engine room.

  Frank reached around and pulled a piece of glass out of his back and threw it on the glass-sprayed floor, pulled a bloody shard from his elbow.

  Where was the shooter? The answer came in a question: How did Frank get shot in the lower leg? Behind the waist-high bulkhead, his legs should have been shielded—unless the sniper was elevated. The grated stair landing. He must be on the stair landing aloft. Frank looked up over the doorway sill and this time looked high. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Looking under and beyond a big round horizontal vent shaft, he saw movement by a vertical pipe. Frank was in the man’s blind spot.

  He raised the AK-47 into position, aimed, and squeezed off a single shot. The report slapped back with a loud boom. Over the clamorous marine diesel engines, he heard the sound from aloft of a body crashing down on the stair grating. He heard the man ranting hysterically in Korean.

  After that, Frank heard only the big marine engines. He waited several minutes. His entire leg was numb, but with the slightest pressure on it--strokes of pain smote him. He was fairly immobilized. The explosives would soon detonate. He glanced at his watch. Stared in disbelief.

  Only nineteen minutes remained till the Pinisha would explode.

  He had to get out of there. Again he looked up over the raised sill of the doorway. Gunfire rang out, battering the bulkhead next to his face. The man was still alive and had a new angle on him. Frank was pinned down, could hardly contain his adrenaline. There was no going back the way he came and certainly no going up with the sniper waiting for him. Time was going too fast.

  Using guesswork and calculation, Frank lifted the AK over the sill and fired a burst in the direction of the sniper. In the moment afterwards, he scrambled across the floor, crawling wildly across the shattered, splintered glass. He scrambled through the deadly window of vision where he was shot. The pain in his leg hurt like stabbing knives, but he reached cover beyond the sniper’s view. Blood soaked his pant leg and seeped fro
m cuts in his hands. He pulled several pieces of glass from his knee.

  A watertight door secured with dog latches opened fore. With his shot leg dangling, Frank muscled the dogs and moved awkwardly into the darkness of ‘tween hold #4, latching the door tightly behind him. With a tap on the deck, a shaft of pain speared up his bad leg all the way to the back of his head. Frank stiffened against the shock. When the torment passed, he noticed that his elbow felt wet and he withdrew glass. He quickly pulled jagged fragments out of his knee and the palms of his hands. He could feel the warm blood soaking his clothes, causing them to stick to his skin.

  He withdrew the flashlight from his pocket and turned the light on, flashing the beam around the expansive, dark compartment. The hold was empty.

  He hopped a few times, but excruciating hurt brought him to his bloody, slippery hands and knees. Dragging his leg, he crawled along the edge of the hold. His every movement was tempered by the need to minimize pressure on his broken leg. Despite his best efforts, the leg was constantly jarred, jammed, twisted and jolted, spawning shutters of pain. His progress was slow, but he grappled on.

  At the forward bulkhead, he struggled up onto his good leg and stepped through another doorway into ‘tween hold #3. The compartment was laden with unmarked crates of some unknown commodity.

  He crawled through the darkness as fast as he could, knowing the timer on the explosives was ticking and every second could be the difference between life and death; but with awkward movements, the whip of pain would snap him out of the numbness. His pace erratic . . . The toil endless . . . Minutes ticking away. . . .

  As he progressed through the dark, vibrating compartment, he wondered how he could get off the ship. He had a broken leg; time was running out; he was moving at a slug’s pace; and he had no idea the condition of the sniper in the engine room. He kept looking back to make sure nobody was following him through the holds. His ears were ringing and he kept thinking he heard noises, all the way expecting to take a bullet in the back. He wanted to pick up the pace, but couldn’t go any faster.