“What on earth is happening?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Fernandez reached the wheelhouse within seconds, the shrill blast of the alarm vibrating through his skull. He pushed his way past Harry, who was standing uselessly near the door with his hands over his ears, and over to where the captain was leaning over the controls, his fingers frantically working the keyboard as he peered intently at one of the screens.
“What is happening?”
His voice, always cold, dripped menace. He saw Harry look at him, worry obvious in the nervous flicker of his eyes.
“It’s probably nothing much.” Harry gave a strained laugh. “Might be a sensor on the shaft or something. The boys might have set it off when they were pulling off the weeds.”
Fernandez ignored him and leaned closer to the captain.
“I asked you, not him.”
The man looked up from the controls, his face carefully neutral but dislike and resentment written plainly in the tone of his voice.
“Something in the engine room. I can’t be sure from here.”
He turned and gestured for Fernandez to accompany him with a careful sweep of his arm that managed to convey contempt within the arc of its polite invitation. Fernandez’s flat gaze hardened even further, but he said nothing. The tenuous strands of his patience had thinned to their breaking point. He no longer had any doubt that this was sabotage. The question was by whom.
If the noise on the bridge had been loud, it was deafening in the engine room. Alarms screamed from two speakers, and both engines were running, but they wouldn’t be running for long. Water covered the floor. It had already covered the engine mounts and was creeping up the sides of the engine blocks. The captain stared at it for a moment, then reached up to a control panel mounted high on the wall and pressed a series of buttons. The alarms fell silent and the engines died with a series of rough coughs and shudders. The sudden quiet that followed was quickly shattered as another motor started up, this one presumably attached to a pump, because a vortex suddenly appeared on the surface of the water.
“Holy shit!” Harry had followed them and now stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at the flooded engine room. “What the hell is going on?”
“I think perhaps that is my question.” Fernandez’s voice was dangerously quiet as his unblinking stare fixed on the captain. “The crew boat will not start. The propeller will not turn. The engine room is flooded. A little too much for coincidence, no?”
The captain’s attention was focused on the water level, his eyes assessing the likelihood of damage to the engines, but he nodded his agreement. “It certainly would seem that way.”
“Indeed.” Fernandez’s gaze had not wavered, but the captain was too concerned with his ship to acknowledge him.
“I’ll radio the coast guard. We can’t control this when we don’t know what’s causing it, and we have no hope of reaching a repair facility.”
Fernandez moved to block his way. “I think not.”
The captain stared at him in disbelief. “We have no other choice. Look at that water. This ship is in danger of sinking, and thanks to you and your bloody scheming, we don’t even have a decent dinghy to get us to shore, let alone to civilization.” He started to push past on his way to the bridge but froze in horror as Fernandez calmly pulled a small black Beretta pistol from under his shirt and pointed it at him.
“Jesus, man, take it easy!” Harry was still hovering at the top of the stairs. “He’s the captain, for God’s sake. He knows what’s best for the ship.”
“But not for me.” The gun did not waver, although the muzzle rose and fell briefly as Fernandez nudged the man forward. “You first, my friend.”
The captain stumbled up the stairs with Fernandez’s gun pressed firmly to his back. As they reached the top, Fernandez stretched out his other hand to grasp the man’s shoulder and bring him to a stop.
“Turn off the pumps.”
“What?” Harry had taken a step or two back to let them pass, but now he pushed forward again, his voice incredulous. “Are you fucking crazy? You heard the man. We’re sinking!”
The sharp click of a safety being released was the only answer he received, and without comment the captain raised his hand and pressed a button on the panel. The silence that followed was broken only by the ragged sounds of their breathing and the gurgle of the water as it started its relentless climb up the engine blocks again.
“Very good.” Fernandez once again urged the man forward. “And now we will go to the bridge. You also, Harry.” The muzzle moved briefly.
“You bastard.” Harry clutched his blue blazer more tightly around his chest. “I’ll see you in hell for this.”
The three men walked back through the teak-soled passageways and elegantly appointed rooms until they reached the stairs leading to the upper deck and, ultimately, to the bridge. The captain led the way, with Harry so close behind he kept bumping into him and knocking them both off-balance. Fernandez stayed back, keeping himself a steady distance behind them.
“Call a helicopter.”
Fernandez stopped at the entrance to the bridge and propped his shoulder casually against the door frame as he watched his words register with the two men standing rigidly in front of the console, staring blindly out through the windshield.
“A helicopter?” Harry whirled around to face him. He was almost apoplectic, his face red and covered with a sheen of sweat. “I already told you that won’t work. Sure, the wind’s dropped a bit, but a helicopter still won’t get here for maybe two hours. Maybe more. We’ll have sunk by then. And where the hell could it put down anyway? There’s not a flat piece of land within—”
“Tell them to go to Shoal Bay.” The Rolex on Fernandez’s wrist glinted in the pale light. “We will be there by one o’clock.”
“Shoal Bay?” Harry spat the words out. “How the fuck are we going to get to Shoal Bay? We sure as hell can’t get there on Snow Queen, and that piece-of-shit dinghy hanging off the stern is too small to carry all of us.”
“A problem.” Fernandez allowed himself a thin smile. “But one I think we can solve.” His eyes moved to the captain again. “The helicopter, please.”
The captain shot a quick glance at Harry before picking up the radiophone and putting in a call to West Coast Helicopters. The company responded almost immediately, and the conversation could be heard clearly over the speakers. There were no problems arranging for a pickup in Shoal Bay. The wind had dropped enough to allow an MD500D that was stationed at a West Coast Helicopters base in Port McNeill, a hundred and twenty miles south, to take off. It could carry four, and while it would have to stop at McNeill again on the return trip in order to refuel, it could have them in Vancouver before dinner. The company had worked with Harry several times before and did not question the request.
“Well done, Captain. Now just one more thing and we can go.” The gun was aimed steadily on the captain’s chest. “The anchor, please. Pull it up.”
A look of incomprehension crossed the captain’s face, and for the first time since he had seen the gun, he spoke out in protest. “Haul the anchor? You can’t be serious! The engines won’t start. There’s too much water. She’ll drift out into the channel. It’s deep water out there and strong currents. Once she sinks we’ll never be able to get her up.” He turned toward Harry. “Talk to him, for God’s sake. This is madness.”
“He’s right, Fernandez.” Harry’s struggle to control his anger played out across his face, but he managed to control himself enough to work a placatory note into his voice. “It won’t work. Snow Queen is crippled. She can’t go anywhere.” The anger was creeping back and he checked it again. “Anyway, Shoal Bay’s not that far. We can use the dinghy. It’s calming down out there. We’ll get there in plenty of time.”
Fernandez regarded him for a few seconds, his expression inscrutable. After all that had gone wrong, it seemed he was being offered an easy solution to at least one of his problems. “P
erhaps you are right, Harry. Go and pull the dinghy up. We will join you in a minute.”
Harry appeared to sag with relief. The tension drained out of his body and the anger left his face to be replaced by an eager, almost childlike smile as he straightened and strode out of the wheelhouse, his step full of bounce. The outside deck was narrow here, just wide enough to allow the helmsman to step outside, and it was well over twenty feet above the waterline. For a moment he was framed by the open doorway, the black railing glinting in front of him, his body silhouetted against the restless water. The next he was gone, his body falling forward, its momentum carrying him out over the railing, his legs and feet briefly slowing his progress as they dragged lifelessly over the shining dark metal.
Fernandez turned the gun back on the captain, who stood frozen in shock at the console. It had been an easy shot and perfectly timed, so casual that anyone watching might have believed it had never happened, that Harry had simply slipped and fallen or had descended the stairs to the lower deck. Except for that hard, sharp sound that still reverberated through the still air of the wheelhouse and the acrid smell of gunpowder drifting through the air.
“You are a madman!” The captain was staring at him, disbelief warring with horror on his face.
Fernandez’s smile did not reach his eyes. “Merely practical. You heard him say the dinghy can’t carry us all.” The muzzle of the gun moved slightly. “The anchor, please.”
The captain’s eyes followed the movement with a kind of fearful fascination before he raised them to meet Fernandez’s unflinching stare and then the man turned away and pulled down a knife switch on the console. The distant hum of an electric motor was accompanied by the groan of the chain as it passed over the windlass. That was followed a few minutes later by the solid thud of the anchor as it seated itself in its cleats and then silence as the motor shut off again.
“And now we will go to the dinghy, Captain.”
“Are you going to shoot me in the back too?” The man seemed to have recovered from his shock.
“Of course not. There is no need. You are proving to be most helpful. We will travel together to Shoal Bay; then I will leave you.”
“Alive or dead?”
“That will depend on you. But we talk too much. The dinghy please. Now.”
The unequivocal tone of the demand was impossible to mistake, and with a quick glance down at the gun, the captain moved warily across the bridge and onto the deck. Fernandez followed.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Even before Harry’s body had disappeared beneath the surface of the ocean, Dan figured the man was dead. He had seen the telltale arch of his back and the sudden flowering of his jacket as the bullet hit, and he had heard and recognized the sound of the shot even though it was muted by distance. He watched helplessly as Harry tumbled over the railing, gravity lifting and twisting his arms in an eerie ballet before his limp body plunged into the water and sank below the waves.
Beside him, Claire gasped in shock. “Oh my God. We have to help him!”
He reached out and grabbed her arm before she could get up. “We can’t help him. It’s too late. He’s already dead.”
He regretted the harshness of his words even before he had finished speaking, but it was too late to take them back. He could see the reproach in Claire’s face as she tried to pull her arm away. “You don’t know that! It might have been a heart attack. He didn’t fall that far. He might have survived it.”
“He didn’t have a heart attack.” Dan tried to think of what he might say to convince her but couldn’t find anything except the truth. “He was shot. Didn’t you hear it?” He heard her sudden, sharp intake of breath.
“Shot?” She stopped struggling and looked back to Snow Queen. “I heard something, but . . .” The sound of the anchor being winched up interrupted whatever she had been going to say. “Are they leaving?”
He carefully pushed the grasses aside to get a better view. “It sounds like it, but that little inflatable is still in the water, and there’s something odd about the hull. She’s sitting too low in the water.”
“Someone’s coming out of the wheelhouse,” Claire said.
“Yeah. That’s probably the captain.”
“There’s another man too. I think it’s the guy with the ponytail.”
Dan caught a glint of metal as the second man followed the captain through the door. “Yeah. And he’s got a gun, so I guess we know who shot Harry.”
“Harry?” Claire was looking at him in astonishment. “You know these people?”
He shook his head, chiding himself for not keeping his mouth shut. Now he would have to explain. “No, but remember when I came to pick you and Walker up off that island and I took a look at the black ship?” She nodded. “I saw the guy who just got shot. He was walking along the deck, and I knew I’d seen him somewhere before. I just couldn’t remember where. Then yesterday I figured it out. It was when I was on the job. His name is—was—Harry Coombs. He’s a crook. A bad guy. We figured we knew what he was up to, but we could never get anything on him that would hold up in court.”
Claire was silent, and he glanced at her. She was looking back at the water, maybe watching the ship, maybe searching for some sign of the man they were talking about, but mostly she seemed to be lost in thought. He watched her for a moment, wanting to find a way to reassure her and also turn that look of reproach into something closer to warmth and . . . was it her approval he wanted? He pulled his attention back to the black ship.
There was still no sign of Harry in the water, and the two men from the wheelhouse disappeared from view as they moved aft along the side deck. With the anchor up, Snow Queen was swinging her bow slowly out into the wind. As her stern swung around toward them, Dan saw two more men standing on the aft deck and recognized them as the ones he had seen earlier in the inflatable. Now they looked relaxed and unconcerned, like they were simply waiting for someone; they had made no move to go to see what was happening in the wheelhouse, even though it was impossible to believe they hadn’t heard the shots. Which made them part of the gunman’s team, Dan thought to himself. How many more were there or had everybody else left with the crew boat? A moment later the captain, still followed by the gunman, appeared from the side deck, and after a brief conversation that he couldn’t make out, Dan watched the two men move to the stern and pull both the dinghy and the inflatable up to the grid.
“Are they all leaving?” Claire whispered the same question he had been asking himself.
“Looks like it,” he replied.
“But that doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t they leave someone behind on the ship? They’ve hauled the anchor. She’ll just drift away.”
Dan nodded. He was as confused as she was, but even as they watched, the captain was urged into the dinghy, the gunman followed, and the other two men clambered into the inflatable. Both boats roared to life and motored out into the channel together before turning west and disappearing around a point. Moments later, silence returned.
Dan turned his attention back to the black ship. He couldn’t see any sign of life aboard her and couldn’t hear the sound of any engine or equipment running. Suddenly his mind slipped back to the night he’d been anchored up north and he had seen the furrowed wake of a passing boat but had heard nothing. He hadn’t linked that with the black ship up to now—hadn’t had a reason to. He had never seen it under way, but now that he thought about it, he figured this was almost certainly the same ship. It must have some new engine and prop design, one he had never heard of that made no sound. But that boat had been under way and traveling at speed, judging by the wake it had left. Snow Queen looked like she was just drifting.
He and Claire lay side by side for a few minutes, staring out at the drifting ship, thinking their own thoughts, feeling the sun warm their backs when it dodged out of the clouds. The wind had veered and was still dropping and Snow Queen swung aimlessly as each gust caught her, but she was inexorably drifting out into the deep wat
er of the channel and the current was starting to catch her, pushing her west.
“She looks like she might be sinking and they’ve abandoned her.” Once again, Claire had put his thoughts into words.
He looked at her. “It certainly looks that way, but I guess there’s only one way to find out for sure.” He pushed himself back from the ridge, stood up, and turned to head down to where the dinghy still sat on the shore below them.
“You planning on just leaving me here?”
He turned to find her still sitting on the grass, her face so indignant that even though her question had caught him off guard, he had to struggle not to laugh.
“Claire, we don’t know for sure there’s nobody there. You saw what happened to Harry. These guys are dangerous.”
“And? What are you going to do if there is someone there? Hit him on the head with your paddle?”
“Claire . . .”
“And what about me? What am I supposed to do here without the dinghy if you get into trouble? I assume you were going to take the dinghy, or were you planning on swimming?”
The indignation had disappeared, and he could see her anger building with every word.
“Claire . . .”
“Men! You’re all so damn stubborn.” She twisted to her feet, ignoring the hand he extended to help her up. “I’m coming with you.”
She brushed past him and he watched as she stalked down the bank to the water and pushed the dinghy out. What the hell? Where had that come from? It was a side of her he hadn’t seen before, and oddly enough, he thought he liked it, although now was neither the time nor the place to try to figure out why. He gave himself a mental shake and went down to join her. She was sitting in the bow, facing forward with her back rigid, her shoulders straight, and her gaze firmly fixed ahead, as he pushed out into deeper water and started the motor.
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