The Terror of Living

by Urban Waite

  The captain of the cutter came on the loudspeaker, the light searching the water, but as Hunt watched he became aware it was not him they were looking for. Still night out there and the amplified, almost mechanical voice of the captain playing on the water, Hunt placed his hands on the metal frame of the windshield and watched as the Coast Guard's tower light scanned the darkness. He turned his engines off completely and listened: the deep thrumming of the cutter's engines, and something else, too, a gurgling of horsepower out there, water lapping at the sides of his boat, and his pursuer shrouded somewhere in the darkness.

  The searchlight passed across the surface of the water. A half mile off, Hunt saw the other boat come into focus and be taken up in the light, a midnight blue sixteen-footer with twin engines. The cutter turned, training a steady beam of light now on Hunt's pursuer. As the cutter came on, Hunt watched the small boat rise up out of the water, propelled forward on two powerful motors, light chasing after it, froth spraying in the air, and then the huge bow of the cutter came into view as the searchlight followed. There was the sound of the machine gun again from the smaller boat and the look of sparks flying along the cutter's metal hull.

  From the compartment to the right of the throttle, Hunt raised the binoculars and sighted the smaller boat. With one hand on the wheel, the man raised the gun and fired on the cutter, the machine gun bucking wildly in his hand and the bullets spraying everywhere.

  Twice the smaller boat circled the cutter, the bullets reaching up toward the light, trying to take it, trying to leave all of them in darkness once again. On the second turn, Hunt could see the man clearly, the thin white skin, with the pale pink around the eyes and the dark, blood-filled bags beneath. He knew him, recognized him from the docks, from their conversation.

  Grady charged the cutter and let out a muzzle burst. There was the clatter of bullets ricocheting on the cutter's metal hull. The searchlight went up in a shower of sparks, and Hunt could hear Grady's smaller boat passing through the ensuing darkness, the noise of the boat's engines falling as the cutter came between him and Grady, chasing after Grady. Still, Hunt could hear the sound of the loudspeaker and then gunshots, different from the ones that had sounded before, pistol fire from the cutter, without the reckless sweep of the automatic. In the darkness there was no clear target, and Hunt knew Grady would get away.

  Hunt waited, listening as the two boats moved off. When he was sure they had moved far enough away, Hunt started his engine. The Bayliner gurgled to a start and the smell of exhaust came to his nose and tainted the air. Grady had the Coast Guard's attention for now. The muffled sound of pistol fire came across the water, pulled on the wind like distant thunder. Hunt listened for return fire from the machine gun but didn't hear anything more than the water at the sides of his boat. It was as still and calm as it had been before. He breathed deeply, the taste of the air on his tongue, rich ocean air, saline and vegetal. Cold north wind funneled down out of Canada. Hunt opened up the throttle again and sped toward land.

  * * *

  III

  BY LAND

  FROM WHERE HE LAY ON THE COUCH IN THE LIVING room, Eddie heard the kitchen phone ring. By the end of the first ring, he could hear the pulse of the phone upstairs, the two phones off by a half second. He knew then that it had not gone as he thought it would and that Hunt was alive.

  For a moment he lay there on the couch and listened to the muffled sound of Nora's voice. From beneath the cushion where his head rested, he removed the.22 and disengaged the safety. He wore a pair of Hunt's sweats and an old T-shirt he had been given. With the pistol in his hand he went up the stairs until he could see the light escaping beneath the door. He waited a moment on the stairs, feeling the soft imprint of the gun in his hand.

  After a half second, he went to the door and rapped lightly. The pistol he put to the left of the doorframe, and with it hidden, he opened the door. Nora turned to look up at him from the bed, her eyes playing over him for just a second before looking away. She had pulled the phone to her, and the line lay all along the floor and climbed the bed to where she sat. He stood looking down at her from the doorway, the gun held out beyond the frame in the hallway. He didn't want to use it, but he would. It seemed unreal to him that this was what it had come to. He didn't know what Hunt had told her already, but he could hear his voice on the other end of the line and it sounded rushed and a little frantic but not altogether out of control. Eddie looked for any sign of recognition in Nora's face. Again, he hoped to find nothing.

  "Eddie is here," Nora said, and looked up at him. "No. I'll put it together, but the truck?" She went to look out the window, and Eddie knew she was looking at the horse trailer and he knew exactly what Hunt was thinking.

  "Does he want to speak to me?" Eddie asked. He was still waiting at the door, his hand growing tired from holding the gun, and then as he lowered it to rest against the outside frame, he heard the butt skip a moment along the wall. Nora was still at the window, listening to Hunt. "Let me talk to him, Nora."

  Nora turned to look at Eddie, but when she asked Hunt, her face showed no indication that Hunt cared to speak to him. "Give me the phone, Nora." Eddie felt his hand tighten on the grip, and he was careful to raise his finger from the trigger and place it along the guard. Nora gave him a look and turned back to the window. "Okay," she said. "Okay. Yes, I think I can do that." And then she was saying good-bye and putting the phone back in the cradle of the receiver.

  "Why didn't he want to talk to me?"

  Nora turned and in the same moment began to move across the room. "He said something went wrong. He said someone tried to kill him. It was not the Coast Guard, or the DEA, but someone with an M-16 or something big, shooting up the boat. He says he still has the package, but he's hurt. I could hear it in his voice. He wouldn't tell me a thing about it." Nora drew up next to Eddie and she stood looking up at him, his chin just at the height of her nose and cheekbones. "I could tell something was wrong. His voice was strained in a way I've never heard before." Eddie brought his arm around and he hugged her close in the doorframe and brought the gun up until his arm was played back and the.22 rested safely behind him.

  "He'll be fine," Eddie said. "He'll be just fine."

  THOUGH THE COAST GUARD HAD STOPPED SHOOTING, Grady turned wide, throwing the boat up on its starboard side and hitting the throttle. Close behind, he could see how the cutter ate up the trail of his wake. He saw the green and red beacon lights and the aura of white light produced by the internal cabins. He didn't know where Hunt was; for the moment he didn't care. All he could think about was getting away. In his smaller boat he was certainly faster, but he was sure there would be inflatable Zodiacs and, if he didn't reach the shore soon enough, a helicopter. The lights of a small community lay ahead of him. He had no way of knowing whether the water he was riding through was Canadian or American, and he pushed the boat faster, standing in front of the wheel and feeling the spent shell casings bobble and roll against his feet. There was the hollow metal sound as the casings rolled back with the boat, and when he looked around he could see them all there, building into a small mound against the aft deck.

  Behind him, the cutter dropped away. There was land coming up at him out of the darkness, and the hull hit and scraped against the pebbled beach, the fiberglass splintering beneath him. He was thrown forward. His head hit the console and he felt blood rise and fall into his eyes. The propellers caught-sound of metal twisting, rock scraping. The boat lay down on its port side, its white belly laid out on the beach with the waves rising toward it. Everything silent but the sound of the waves and the wind as it whistled over the starboard gunwale. He wiped an arm across his head and for a moment sat looking at the dark stain on the sleeve of his shirt.

  On the shore he could see rocks and a few large pieces of driftwood, then farther in how the grass grew and built up toward a street lined at hundred-yard intervals with yellow overhead light. He wiped again at his head with the sleeve of his shirt. The AR-15 lay a
t his feet, and he picked it up, releasing the stock and laying it along the body of the rifle. He carried his bag and went stumbling up the bank of grass and out onto the street.

  DRAKE WOKE TO THE SOUND OF HIS PHONE VIBRATING on the bedside table. His wife stirred and pulled the hotel bedding over her face. They'd forgotten to close the blinds, and there was a pale moon over downtown. He had fallen asleep immediately. He picked up the phone and went to the window to answer. Below, on the freeway, nothing was left of the accident Sheri and he had watched the night before. For a brief moment he thought of the people involved, of the cars sitting in their driveways, of evidence and things left behind.

  Still half-asleep, he listened to what Driscoll was telling him. He closed the phone and for a half second stood at the window looking out on the city. Late-night traffic, yellow cabs waiting outside the hotel doors twenty-some stories below, the golden beams of their headlights playing on the wet cement. He turned back to the room and found his pants, then checked the time, just a little past midnight, fifteen minutes till Driscoll arrived.

  He took a shower with the door open so that he could hear the phone ring. When he was done, he toweled down, shaved, and combed his hair as best he could to disguise his thinning temples, then dressed and went back out into the room. He walked back to the bed, the bathroom light leaking into the hotel room and outlining the profile of his wife's body under the sheets. He pulled the sheets back and gave Sheri a light kiss, then stood and fixed his holster on his belt.

  Sheri pulled a pillow over her head to block out the light. "You're leaving again?" she said, her voice cracking with sleep, her auburn hair flattened and mussed by the pillow.

  "Sorry."

  "This is some vacation you got me on."

  "I know," he said, "but it'll be over soon."

  "I liked it better when you saved cats from trees and wrote reports on cow tippings."

  "I never saved any cats," he said.

  "I was just doing some cheerful thinking."

  Her bare foot was sticking out of the bottom of the sheets, and he went over and gave her big toe a playful tug. "You going to be okay here?" he said.

  "Just tell me all you're going to do is save a cat from a tree, and I promise not to worry."

  "I'm planning on saving a mess of cats, a whole litter." He bent and kissed her, and he felt her hand come over his neck and linger there for a moment before it dropped away.

  "That's good," she said. "That's just fine."

  HUNT MADE NO EFFORT TO HIDE HIMSELF. THE GIRL sat in the seat beside him. She didn't say a thing, just watched Hunt with her brown eyes. Hunt felt the pain in his calf. He tried to catch his breath, tried to lock the hurt away inside him, thinking the whole time of the distance still to travel.

  His boat lay facing inland with the bow out of the water, the waves rising up and splashing over the aft deck. In the distance he could hear the sound of a helicopter rotor. The boat was useless, rifled through with bullets, the smell of burnt wiring and melted plastic. With his seat swiveled around, he watched the red and white Coast Guard Dolphin fly low over the water toward them, the searchlights scanning the water as it came. Soon the lights would be on them. Hunt held his breath, the girl beside him, watching the helicopter until it curved north, veering away from them on some unseen rail. It hadn't seen them, their bullet-torn boat hidden on the radar by the mass of land they had beached on. Had they stayed out there, at any speed, the helicopter would have found them. They needed to get away from the boat. Hunt watched as the flashing helicopter lights tracked up the coast, passing in the night at a mile's distance.

  A few drops started to fall. He could hear the rain, the small collision of it on the fiberglass deck, something wet across his forehead and then again on his forearm. His senses were coming back to him, taken up by all the adrenaline, covered up, heightened. He wasn't sure. He looked over at the girl. High cheekbones, skinny, with a few wrinkles around the eyes. She was looking at him. Had she said something? A sudden wash of pain as he tried to stand. He sensed everything at once, and none of it felt right.

  He looked down at his leg to where the slim line of blood escaped, and he could feel the pain all through him, shooting up along the nerves like venom in the vein. He tested it, putting more weight than he needed to onto the wound, and he felt the pain come again and something new, almost jellied, slip down his leg. The leg would do for walking, though he did not know for how long or to where.

  He had remembered the slip of land from past runs, the long angle of the island, connected at one end by a small ferry dock. It was an Indian reservation two and a half hours north of Seattle. In the past he'd had a friend here, a man he'd known in Monroe, someone who could put him up, could help him out, but that was years ago now, when Hunt had been a different man altogether. Hunt didn't even know if the man still lived here, if he still existed - it was a lifetime ago - but he hoped if he could find the house, if he could find his friend, it would do for a safe haven.

  The slim line of red trickled down onto the floor, and he could see where the rain was beginning to fall and wipe the color away. Under the silver light of the moon, the deck beneath him was washed with the pink watercolor of his wound. In one of the compartments he found the boat's small orange survival bag. He took from it a roll of gauze, a surgical rag, a pair of scissors, an Ace bandage, the hydrogen peroxide, and the iodine. He placed some of these on the console and the rest he gave to the girl and told her to hold it. He rested in the captain's chair and cut away his pants until he could see the purple hole through his calf, the blood already congealed in sticky red scabs. He let the peroxide fall onto it and felt the coldness of the bubbling liquid as it went down into his shoe. When he thought he could handle it, he rubbed the wound down with the rag and winced and saw white-hot spots appear beneath his eyelids.

  Had anyone passed in that moment, they would have heard the scream carried with the wind and then suddenly ending. Hunt had not passed out, but it was close. He unscrewed the iodine and let it fall freely, feeling the iron-colored liquid enter into the torn flesh. Quick as he could, he wrapped the gauze, then secured it all down with the Ace bandage, his leg swollen with blood and pumping beneath the bandage like some monster trying to break out.

  He felt a moment of nausea pass quickly across him. Then it was gone. Anything of importance he kept in the bright orange survival bag. From the console where he had laid out the medical supplies he selected the iodine, peroxide, bandages, and tape and put them into the bag with the scissors and his lighter. He opened the compartment beneath the console and took out his wallet and cell phone. From a side pocket beneath the throttle he took the flares, cracking open the breech on the flare gun and then snapping it closed again. All of this went into the bright orange bag. He zipped the bag closed and swung it across his back. He searched the floor for the Browning but didn't find it. He took his first painful steps and walked down toward the engines, careful not to slip. He motioned to the girl with his hand. When she came down the deck carrying her bag, he showed her what he wanted her to do.

  With her hands she felt the dark water. On the surface the little discarded things of the boat floated-random pens, a coil of rope- and on the bottom, in the shallow parts where the water dimmed to a black murk, Hunt could see coins, broken glass, all of it fallen to the deck and collected there. He saw now the fuel in the water and smelled where it had coated the rope and the pens. A wave came over and washed along the deck; he felt the cold on his tennis shoes. He told the girl to run her open fingers along the corner of the deck until she felt the barrel of the Browning. "Like this," he said, spreading his fingers wide. She knelt and, after three sweeps of the water, pulled the Browning up. He undid the orange survival bag and let the gun fall in.

  Careful not to bang his calf, he went over the side of the boat, landed with his good leg as support, and hopped forward slowly with his hand on the bulwark. He felt his way along, finding the boat cleats and using these for support.
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br />   He checked his watch but found the face broken and the time stopped a little past eleven. The cell phone lay in his bag, but he did not check it and instead began to walk up the beach, holding his leg stiffly beneath him. The girl followed but did not offer to help. To her, Hunt must have seemed near death, his pants torn and his calf swollen as big as his thigh, the blood beginning to soak through the bandage. And on his back, the bright orange bag, like a warning.

  Hunt estimated there to be eight more hours before the sun came up and the boat would be found.

  DRISCOLL WAS WAITING JUST OUTSIDE THE LOBBY WITH his cruiser door pulled open and his hand up over the roof of the car when Drake saw him. "Hey, I'm sorry to have been so blunt when I called earlier, but I think you're really going to like this."

  "What are we doing?"

  "I think we got your guy."

  Drake opened the car door and stepped in. He wore his hat again. For a brief moment, he'd thought of wearing the full uniform, but then dressed quickly in a pair of worn jeans and a light henley. Driscoll was dressed as he was earlier, in a brown suit, yellow shirt, and maroon tie. The smell of scotch and steak still clung to him, and Drake could feel it heavy in the air when the doors closed.

  "Now you're ready for me to be a detective?" Drake said.

  "No, the world's not ready for that."

  "What, then?"

  "I just think you'll have a good time with this one. Plus we'll need you to identify this guy."

  Drake looked out on the downtown streets, a light rain falling. He took his hat off and laid it on his lap and gazed up at the tops of the buildings as they passed. Driscoll flipped a switch and the grill lights began to flash, and Drake could feel the acceleration take hold.

  "Did you bring your gun?"