The two men exchanged glances. “Another boat got caught in the same storm.”
“Which one?”
Again that exchange of glances. “The Daisy Mae.”
A sick dread grew inside her. “And?”
Seth shook his head, his gaze somber. “They were able to get off a distress call, and their Loran numbers. The Coast Guard responded but by the time they got there, there was nothing.”
“They recover the bodies?”
He shook his head again. “Then we have to go,” Kate said. “They might have had time to get into their survival suits. We have to go help look. We have to,” she insisted at his disbelieving look. “We have to look for them. They’d look for us.”
“We barely made it this far,” Harry growled. “The Coasties are on the scene, and half a dozen other boats. We go back out there and they’re liable to have to come looking for us.”
She couldn’t stop the words. “You make a habit of not looking for fishermen lost at sea.”
Suddenly it was very still in the galley. A dark red flush rose up from Harry’s collar to flood his face. He stared at her, his lips drawn back from his teeth. She met his look squarely, knowing her contempt was obvious, unable to disguise it. From the corner of one eye she saw him raise one clenched fist, and waited with a curious kind of detachment to see what would happen next.
Seth caught Harry’s elbow. With a growled obscenity Harry whipped around. Their eyes locked and for a moment, just for a moment, Harry froze. Seth said nothing, just looked at him. Breaking the spell, Harry yanked his arm free and shouldered past Seth, leaving Kate standing alone, unanswered, exhausted and sick at heart.
She shook off her paralysis long enough to wobble down the passageway and fumble the door open to her stateroom. Her rain gear snapped and was easily discarded and she toed her boots off, but for some reason her sweater just wouldn’t come over her head. She looked down at her hands. They were curled in imitation of her grip on the baseball bat. She couldn’t straighten them. She couldn’t even feel them. They were incapable of gripping the hem of her sweater.
It said much for her state of mind that she was unalarmed. She tucked her hands into her armpits, rolled into her bunk fully dressed, curled up in a ball and fell into a fitful, restless sleep, to dream the same dream over and over and over again, white fog and green water and thickening ice and a sinking boat and drowning crewmen. The last boat to sink was the Avilda, and the last drowning crewman’s face was her own.
*
Her eyes snapped open and she stared into the darkness. She lay still, listening, trying to figure out what it was that had woken her. She would have bet every dime the Avilda had earned her that nothing short of a nuclear holocaust could have gotten between her and the land of Nod that night.
As usual on the Chain, the weather had done a volte-face and the slight swell was barely perceptible. The wind had died completely. The Avilda rode calmly at anchor in her bay on some island like a car in a parking lot. Kate had just decided that Andy’s snoring must have woken her when a thump reverberated down the starboard side of the hull, the side her bunk was on, followed by a distant splash, a splash that sounded exactly like oars hitting water.
She rose with an effort, her body aching from the bones out. She sidled into the passageway, pausing when she saw that the door to Seth and Ned’s room was ajar. She pushed it open a bit farther and peered around it. Their bunks were empty. She took a chance and opened the skipper’s door. He, too, was gone. In stocking feet she padded swiftly to the galley and over to the starboard side door to peer out the window.
In the faint light of the stars Kate could detect the outline of the island. There was something familiar about its shape, and she studied it, brows puckering, before a movement below drew her gaze down to the water level. She stared intently, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, and caught the movement again.
It was oars, oars attached to the Avilda’s skiff, a skiff that should be stowed upside down on the aft cabin roof at this moment. Remembering something Abel had taught her about making out indistinct, distant objects in the dark, she shifted her gaze a fraction to the right. On her peripheral vision the skiff registered clearly. It was heading toward the island, and there were three men in it.
Kate thought rapidly. The life rafts were out, she would never be able to deflate a life raft and repack it into its barrel without being caught. Besides, with Harry Gault at the helm she wanted both life rafts right where they were. Her hands clenched. Dammit, she had to know what was going on on that island, what Harry and Ned and Seth were up to.
She heard Jack’s voice again, so carefully nonchalant. “There are survival suits aboard the Avilda, aren’t there?”
Without stopping to think, because if she’d thought about it for even five seconds she never would have done it, she whipped around and headed for the opposite side of the galley and the locker beneath the bench next to the galley table. In the darkness she fumbled for the finger hole. She didn’t dare turn on a light for fear it would be seen from the skiff. She hooked the hole at last, pulled the seat cover up and out and felt around inside for one of the plastic-wrapped packages, the one that had been opened before.
She had been looked at a little sardonically when she had insisted, her first day on board, on trying on one of the survival suits, but it was a good thing she had. It was bulky, made of a thick synthetic material that reminded her of nothing so much as woven polypropylene, with a multitude of zips and snaps and pull-tabs for an inflating collar and a buddy belt and a helicopter ring and who knew what else. She would never have been able to fumble her way into it in the dark if she hadn’t done it at least once in daylight. As it was, she fought to get the right fingers into the right sections of the divided mitts and prayed the zip flap and the hood were properly fastened.
Opening the galley door, carefully muffling any sound that might carry across the water to the cursing men just now working the skiff off where it had caught on a reef, she stepped across to the railing and with great courage and no brains lowered herself over the side and into the water.
A body submerged in water loses body heat twenty-four times faster than it does in air of the same temperature. Kate’s inconvenient memory produced this interesting fact at exactly the same moment the chill waters of the Bering Sea closed over her body. Cold, cold, it was so cold. Her hands and feet, which had already taken enough abuse that night, went numb instantly. Swearing at Gault, swearing at Jack, swearing at herself, she struck out for shore, struggling to keep her head up and her face out of the water.
The Avilda was anchored half a mile offshore. The tide was almost in and the distance seemed endless. The water lapped at her chin. She alternated a breaststroke with a dog-paddle and concentrated on breathing while trying not to splash. Once her knee scraped against a rock too close to the surface, and she knew a moment of terror that the suit had been breached. Ahead of her she heard a scrap of muttered conversation, the grating sound of the skiff’s hull as it was drawn up the shore, the crunch of sand beneath boots. Galvanized, she struck out for shore.
One kicking toe touched bottom, another, and she stood up and waded out, crouching in the water as long as she could so the water pouring off her would make as little noise as possible. Once on the beach, she stopped to catch her breath and listen. The sound of footsteps crunching through crusted snow floated back to her clearly on the still morning air. Trying to keep up with their pace so as to disguise the sound of her own steps, she began to walk behind them.
If Jack could see her now. This was a little different from tailing someone through the greater metropolitan area of Dutch Harbor, or downtown Anchorage, for that matter. Dripping and numb, she smiled into the darkness. Unzipping her mitts and freeing her hands, she moved forward cautiously, feeling her way up over the lip of the beach and into the thick grass. The sound of the men’s footsteps began to fade, and afraid she was going to lose them she quickened her pace. Somethi
ng tripped her and she lost her balance. The heavy survival suit made her clumsy and she fell. Something caught her and held, for just a moment, before it gave way and she was tumbling, down in the dark. She hit hard, and lay, feeling bruised and shaken, staring up at a hole in the world through which she could see stars twinkling. She gave an experimental wriggle. Material rustled beneath her. Feeling around with an inquiring hand, she touched tarpaulin. She looked back up at the hole and realized why the outline of the island had looked familiar. “Anua! We’re on goddam Anua!”
At that moment she heard the sound of a distant engine, and for a single panicked moment thought the men had doubled back on her, returned to the Avilda and were leaving the island without her. She leapt to her feet, and recognized the sound of an airplane engine. Extremities numb from the cold water, body bruised from the fall, self exhausted from fighting the ice storm, all were forgotten as she yanked open the barabara’s door. The sound of the airplane grew louder and Kate turned and headed for the airstrip at a smart clip, the thudding of her feet through the dry grass and snow covered by the noise of two engines on a short final. This time she didn’t stumble. She was in familiar territory and she knew where she was going.
She topped the little rise and crouched immediately behind a clump of dead rye grass. A twin-engine Navaho was touching down to a landing on the hard-packed snow of the strip. Kate immediately stretched out flat on her stomach and prayed they hadn’t seen her come crashing up while they were still in the air.
The Navaho bounced twice before rolling out to a stop next to the gas tank. Two men got out. The three men from the Avilda advanced to meet them. Nobody shook hands. Kate, cursing the lack of cover and the bright orange of her survival suit, strained to hear something, anything.
“Have you got it?” she thought she heard Harry say. He was answered by a low laugh. One of the men returned to the plane and produced a suitcase. A thickset figure Kate recognized as Ned produced two suitcases of his own, shiny silver suitcases that gleamed even in the predawn light. Shiny silver suitcases so well chaperoned that she hadn’t been able to lay her hands on them for the past seven days.
One man each from boat and plane went to the gas tank to connect the hose to the Navaho’s wing tanks and refuel the plane. The other three squatted down on their haunches, produced flashlights and opened two of the suitcases. One was filled with a lot of something white, the other with a lot more of something green.
“Yes,” Kate hissed. She was filled with a rush of fierce triumph. “Gotcha, you sonsabitches.”
Kate harbored no illusions about honor among thieves. With leverage like this, it was only a matter of time before she got one crew member to roll over on the others and finally tell what had happened to Alcala and Brown. “Yes,” she said again, her satisfaction as cold and hard as her toes presently were.
She’d seen enough, but she hesitated. If she could just wait until it got light enough to make out the Navaho’s tail numbers. No. It was too risky. She had to get back to the Avilda and on board before the men. Already the suitcases were being closed. Stealthily, she rose enough to move in a kind of crouching, sideways walk, hands and feet the only things touching the ground. When she was out of sight she straightened up and ran, no mean feat in a survival suit in the dark, over clumps of rough grass and sudden drifts of snow. Her feet splashed into the water, she fell forward and struck out, suddenly terrified that she would be caught. At first she couldn’t see where she was going, then the Avilda’s hull swung sharply into focus and with alarm Kate realized how light it was getting. They would see her climbing aboard from shore. Fear spurred her on and she maintained a steady breaststroke, eyes fixed on the Avilda’s oh-so-slowly nearing hull, ears straining for the launch of the skiff and the dip of oars in the water.
Her knee hit a rock, probably the same one that got her on the way in, she thought wearily, and began a halfhearted frog kick. For Harry Gault to have found his way through the series of killer reefs she remembered seeing, he had to have made this trip more than once.
So interesting did she find this thought that she missed her stroke and swallowed a mouthful of seawater and began to choke. A violent cough brought her knees up, a second banged her head against the hull, surprising her into swallowing another lungful of seawater and setting up another bout of hacking. A clumsy hand searched for some kind of hold on the hull, and slid off. God, she was just so tired.
“What the hell?” From a long way off, the voice was young and scared, and a little angry, too. “Kate? Kate, is that you?”
She almost went down for the third time. “Andy?” Then, sharply, “Shh! Sound carries over water. Meet me on the other side.”
“What?”
“Hush! The other side of the boat! Meet me around the other side of the boat!”
It took all of her remaining energy to push and pull her way around the hull, ducking beneath the anchor chain at the bow, and by the time she reached the opposite side she was nearly spent. Back on Anua the Navaho revved its engines and began the long whine to takeoff. Galvanized, Kate said, “Andy?”
“I’m here.”
She paused for breath, just trying to speak exhausting her all over again. “I can’t get up, Andy. Can you help me? Don’t turn on the deck lights!”
His whisper was annoyed. “I wasn’t going to. Hold on a minute.”
“To what?” she asked.
A moment later there was a soft scrape. “Here. Grab this.”
It was the boat hook, and with the last ounce of strength left in her Kate grasped at it with both hands, realizing for the first time that she’d forgotten to pull her mittens back on before reentering the water. The suit had been leaking up her arms all the way back to the boat. She wondered in a detached sort of way if her hands had the strength to hold on long enough to get her aboard. The next thing she knew she had collapsed on the deck, gasping like a dying fish. Andy knelt next to her. “Are you all right? What the hell were you doing out there?”
Kate gave a ghost of a laugh. “Surf’s up.”
“Surf’s up, my ass!”
“Why, Andy,” she said weakly, “you’re sounding more like me every day.” A giggle rose to her throat. Recognizing the beginnings of hysteria, she quelled it sternly.
“Where’s the skipper? And Ned and Seth?”
Wet, cold, sore, tired, she said, her voice an unconscious plea, “Can you get me to our stateroom?”
In stiff-lipped silence he hauled her to her feet. “No,” she said, when he would have taken her through the galley, “let’s use the aft cabin door. And you go in first and get some towels so I don’t drip all over everything.”
He did as she said, helping her out of the survival suit and mopping up the floor where it had dripped. With impersonal hands he stripped her to her skin, rubbed her down and tucked her up in her bunk with three extra blankets on top of her sleeping bag. She was shivering uncontrollably and he wanted to make her a hot drink but she wouldn’t let him. “Get into your bunk. Now.” When he hesitated, she said, her voice a thin thread of sound, “Now, Andy. Please. They can’t know we were awake.”
He hesitated a little longer, and then reluctantly did as she asked. Together in the darkness, they listened as the bow of the skiff bumped the hull, as oars were shipped, as footsteps padded the length of the boat, as doors creaked open and slid shut.
“Are you asleep?” Andy whispered. “No,” she whispered back. “Care to tell me what the hell is going on?” “No,” she said. “Not yet.”
She went to sleep listening to him toss and turn in the bunk above.
Seven
THEY PULLED THE HOOK and got under way early the following morning. Kate slept right through it and woke to a rolling, ocean-going swell and the steady throb of the engines. She yawned and stretched, her muscles sore but not as sore as she’d expected. She heard a muffled noise and looked around. Andy was back under his sheet pyramid, taking up most of their limited floor space. A low hum emanated fr
om beneath it.
“What does that thing do again?” she asked in a lazy voice. “Reinforce your penis?”
“Prana. It reinforces my prana, and you know it.” His fair head poked out from between the sheets. “It’s about time you woke up.”
“Why? What time is it?”
“High noon.”
“Jesus, did I sleep through my watch?” Kate sat up and threw back the sleeping bag.
“Relax. We’re going back to Dutch. The skipper’s taking us in.”
“What!”
“We’re going back to Dutch,” he repeated, eyeing her with a curious expression.
“The hold isn’t even half full,” Kate protested. “We haven’t picked any pots to speak of, and what we’ve set are scattered from hell to breakfast up and down the Chain. We’re just going to leave them there?”
“Evidently.” Andy seemed unperturbed at the prospect, although his paycheck was going to be as short as her own on their return.
She flopped back down on the bunk, her mind busy formulating and discarding scenarios. “Well, well, well. What do you know.”
“I don’t know. What do you know?” He saw her look and said firmly, “I mean it, Kate. What was all that business about last night?”
“Shush!” she hissed.
In a lower voice he demanded, “Where were we? What were the guys doing on shore? What were you doing on shore? What was that plane I heard doing there? Why’d I have to drag you out of the water in a survival suit, and why was it so important that the other guys not see us? What’s going on?”
“What did you do with the survival suit?”
“I snuck it back in the locker when no one was in the galley.”
She blew out a relieved sigh. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Now tell me what’s going on.”
She looked at him, sitting facing her in the middle of the floor, draped in folds of white cloth like some minor Middle Eastern potentate, his legs twisted into an impossible position and a stubborn look on his fresh, open face.
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