Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries)

by Tom Hilpert

  The getaway boat was idling its engine and heaving with the waves, about thirty yards away. They had apparently pushed off, and were preparing to watch the explosion from a safe distance.

  “Angela,” I shouted again. “I’ve got your money. The explosives are on your boat.” I threw the money in my right hand up into the wind. It disappeared into the rain and spray of the dull-gray morning. “Now,” I yelled, “You drop your guns and the explosives over the side, and give us Leyla and Jasmine, and we’ll let you have your money, and go wherever you want. If you don’t, the money goes to the bottom.” I shook the duffel bag over the water.

  Something strange was going on. I expected every one of them to be fixated on me and the money, but they seemed to stop paying attention long before I was finished. There was a flurry of movement, and then Angela was saying something urgently to Red Holland. Jasmine thrust something into Leyla’s hands and then suddenly they both jumped overboard into the waves. Phil, Red and Angela followed almost immediately. They all started swimming away from the power-boat, frantically battling the waves and kicking up spray.

  “Oh no,” said Stone behind me.

  The swimmers had covered maybe half the distance between us when there was a massive “thump” that I felt deep in my chest. A huge fountain of spray burst into the air where the power boat had been.

  I turned and hurled myself down the companionway, grabbing life vests and racing back to the cockpit. I didn’t know if anyone on the other boat had had time to get them. I emerged to see a giant wave swelled up over us. It grew bigger and very steep. As the wave loomed higher, an awful realization grew within me. I threw the life vests at Stone, and turned to pull the companionway doors shut. But they wouldn’t latch – I had broken them in order to get out in the first place. I tugged frantically, and then the wall of water fell on top us.

  I was slammed into the side of the cockpit, and then swept down into the cabin by a raging torrent of icy water. It poured in like a river. I scrambled to my feet, the water already to my waist, and saw another life vest bobbing by the galley. With extreme effort I managed to push forward and grab it. I buckled it on securely and pulled the straps as the water reached my chest and lifted me off my feet.

  A second later, the cabin was completely full. I took a deep breath, and then I was under water, but there was no longer a current against me. My life jacket floated me up toward the ceiling. I opened my eyes, and saw the dim outline of the companionway. I could feel the pressure building on my ears. Frantically, I pulled myself up the passage and then I was out. A piece of wire rigging snagged me for a moment. I struggled insanely, and then suddenly I was free, floating upwards, while the ghostly shape of the Tiny Dancer dropped like an iron bar into the clear timeless depths of Lake Superior, carrying with it more than half a million dollars in unmarked bills.

  My lungs were bursting by the time I hit the surface. The top of the mast was just disappearing below the waves maybe eight yards away. Even in the dull light of the storm, as I looked below my feet, I could see the white sail and the dim shape of the hull slowly receding into the deep darkness far below.

  I looked around me. Wreckage from Red Holland’s vessel was spread out all over the surface. Bits of wood, pieces of cushions, a water bottle. Tony Stone was ten yards away, riding up a wave to my right. I could see the dark heads of the others a little beyond him. As before, the icy water was stealing my breath and strength, but I forced myself to swim towards them. I saw Stone toss someone a life vest. As I got closer, I could see that something had reopened his wound, and blood swirled in the water next to him. At least in this vast freshwater sea we didn’t have to worry about sharks.

  After what felt like a long time, I reached the others. They were all there: Leyla, Jasmine, Stone, Angela, Phil and Red. By the time I reached them, everyone had a life vest. Even if Superior did have sharks, I figured the cold would kill us long before any predator would have found us. I figured we had less than half an hour.

  “Huddle,” I gasped. “Our body heat will help.”

  “I don’t have any body heat left,” muttered Jasmine. But we all dog paddled toward each other, grabbing on to arms and life vests. I worked my way to Leyla and put my arms around her, grabbing Stone’s vest on the other side. Someone else held mine from behind.

  No one said anything for a while. We bobbed high, riding a wave, and then slid back into a valley.

  “Anyone know how close we are to land?” asked Leyla.

  “Maybe fifteen, twenty miles from Isle Royale,” said Red. A lot of teeth were chattering. Every face that I saw had blue lips. By some strange, common, unspoken consent, we avoided talking about the strife between us.

  “Not likely anyone will be out and about in this weather,” commented Jasmine.

  I put my face close to Leyla’s. “Courage, dear heart,” I said. She squeezed my arm.

  “I love you, Jonah.”

  As I hung in the bone-numbing cold of the water, feeling the heat slowly ebb out of me, certain things became very clear.

  “Leyla,” I said in a low murmur, close to her ear. “I would not have planned it this way. This isn’t the atmosphere I would have aimed for. But I need to tell you some things. I know now that I cannot stand the thought of losing you. Ever. I can’t picture a life without you in it. I have made peace with my past, and the only thing I can see in my future is you.”

  She turned to stare at me with wide eyes. I pulled her closer.

  “Leyla Bennett,” I said softly, “will you marry me?”

  Her shoulders began to shake. Her face twisted strangely. Then her whole body was shaking. It took me a moment to realize that she might be laughing. I waited with difficulty.

  “You – ” she gasped, “you – wouldn’t have planned it this way?” Now she was laughing in earnest. I felt Stone twist to look at us. A smile began tug at the corner of my mouth. I could see her point.

  “Yeah. I meant to salvage a bottle of wine and two goblets. And we were supposed to sink in Fish Lake, not Superior.”

  Now we were both laughing out loud. The others were starting to stare at us. Suddenly, Leyla stopped laughing and hugged my neck with so much force that it set my head to aching again. She released me and looked at my eyes. There were tears in hers. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, Jonah. Yes, here, yes in Fish Lake, yes whenever, wherever.”

  I wasn’t sure how much the others had heard, but I didn’t really care. We bobbed in silence for a while, holding each other tightly, alone with each other even the midst of that miserable huddle.

  Another wave washed over us, and my head went under water. In the second before I bobbed back up, I heard a thin whine. I came up, and then dipped my head forward under water again, though the cold made it ache even more. The whine was still there. Anyone who has ever swum in a lake in the summertime knows that sound. It is the noise a motor-boat makes in the water when it is near.

  “Boat,” I spluttered. “I can hear it.”

  Several people thrust their heads under quickly. “I hear it too,” said Leyla.

  “Where is it?” asked Phil.

  “No way to know,” said Stone. He sounded very hoarse. The only one who did no talking at all was Angela.

  After about two minutes, we heard a sound above water – the sound of a powerful, high speed motor.

  “Here!” shouted Holland. He flung his hand over his head and shouted again. It was ridiculous, of course. They wouldn’t be able to hear us over the sound of their own engines. And seeing us was only slightly more possible. However, they might slow and start to search when they encountered the wreckage of Holland’s boat. All of us began to shout and fling our arms into the air, especially whenever we were at the top of a wave.

  And then, incredibly, Phil shouted, “I see it! Over here!” He let go of Angela next to him, and threw both hands into the air. “Over here! Over here!” Then I saw it too – a powerboat, circling slowly, through the flotsam, about sixty yards away. We went ins
ane, shouting and waving. I kicked my feet to try and rise up higher above the water. Miraculously, the boat circled closer, and then we could see that they spotted us. Less than a minute later, it pulled up next to us.

  Iverson leaned out over the side and looked at us, Felix and Jones beside him. “You folks need a ride?” he asked.

  CHAPTER 5 4

  With some difficulty, they got us all on board the launch. None of us had much strength to help, so Jones and Felix had to dead-lift us out of the water like fish. Stone cried out once as they pulled him up by his arms, but after that he was quiet. When I was on board, I pointed to Angela, Phil and Red. “Those are the bad guys,” I said to Iverson. He jerked his head at Felix who moved and stood over them.

  “Just sit still now,” he said. It was probably the easiest guard duty anyone had ever had. Not one of us had the strength in our frozen limbs to even point a gun, much less lift one.

  The rest of us huddled forward, sitting up under the bow-deck, in front of Iverson’s feet as he piloted the boat. Jones found two canvas tarps. He wrapped one around Angela, Phil and Red, and the other around Leyla, Jasmine, Stone and I. We all moved close together, and eventually began to feel a tiny trickle of warmth, though none of us was able to stop shivering.

  Iverson gunned the engines, and the noise was too loud for conversation. I held Leyla’s hand under the tarp. At least, I hoped it was Leyla’s. She smiled at me, and the hand seemed too small for Stone, so I guess I was all right.

  Time seemed to go on forever, but it was probably less than an hour when Iverson cut the engine back, and we slowed. From my low vantage point, I caught a glimpse of the great hull of the Superior Rose. While Felix stood relentless guard on Angela and her gang, we were hoisted up the side of the freighter and swung into deck. I saw that this time we were at the forward superstructure, rather than the rear one where the engine was. After we were all off the launch, Iverson led us into the ship, to a large room walled with cheap fake-wood paneling. The floor was shiny, dark-blue linoleum. There were tables and chairs and inexpensive wood-framed couches bolted to the floor of the room, and two long windows in one wall.

  “This is our crew’s mess,” he said. “The captain will be down in a little while.”

  We stood on the floor, dripping. After a minute, two sailors walked in, carrying towels, blankets and dry men’s clothing. One of them was Jones. Jasmine and Leyla held one of the blankets in a corner for each other while behind it, they dried and changed. Stone and I did the same. Phil held a blanket for Angela, and then he and Red held it for each other.

  When we were dry, and I was beginning to feel warmer than I could recall ever feeling, we sat down, wrapped in blankets. Leyla and I cuddled on a love-seat under one of the windows. Stone and Jasmine shared a couch to our right, while Phil and Red sat at a right-angle to our left, against a wall. Angela was across from us, next to the door, in a chair by herself.

  “Superior Rose,” said Jasmine, looking at a life ring hanging on the wall, stenciled with the name of the ship. “Jonah, your life vest said Superior Rose.”

  “Oh yeah, Borden’s been here already,” said Iverson. “He was here last night.”

  Six pairs of eyes swiveled in unison to stare at me. So I told them briefly about my adventures of the night before. Then I turned to Iverson. “But what were you doing out there, still? I thought you guys would be long gone.”

  “Cap’n got permission from the company to remain in the area,” said Iverson. “At least until the Coast Guard gets here.”

  “So you aren’t the Coast Guard?” asked Angela, speaking for the first time since we had all gone into the water.

  “No,” said Iverson.

  “Wait,” said Leyla. “You were safe aboard here, and you came back to the Tiny Dancer?”

  I nodded.

  “Stupid fool,” muttered Stone.

  “We’d all be dead if he hadn’t,” said Jasmine, looking at me.

  I was getting uncomfortable. “But why were you out there in the launch?” I asked Iverson.

  “No way was I going to throw you in the water and sail away,” he said. “We waited and made as sure as we could that you got back on board. It was hard to tell, but we came slowly up behind to pick you up, in case you hadn’t.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Anyway, Cap’n and I talked about it. We decided before I left that if we got permission, it would be best for me keep trailing you, but out of sight, at least until the cavalry got here. With such poor visibility and the noise of the storm, we were able to keep pretty close to you. You weren’t using running lights, but you did use cabin lights, so that helped. Then, all of sudden, we lost you.”

  “We veered off course for a while,” I said. “To try and buy time.”

  “Plus we ran out the battery,” said Jasmine, “so you probably quit seeing our cabin lights about the time we went off course.”

  Angela’s face darkened, and she looked at us with venom in her eyes.

  “So that was it,” said Jones. “Anyway, we thought it was over. We circled around for an hour or two along the course you were supposed to be on, but we couldn’t pick you up. And then all of sudden, just before dawn, there you are in high-fi sound, talking on the ship-to-ship channel. That was the same channel we were using to talk to the Superior Rose. They heard you too, so we triangulated your position between the launch and the Rose. We were coming up kind of slow, trying not to let you know we were there, when all of sudden we hear an explosion. After that we raced to your last known position and starting circling. You’re lucky we found you. Another fifteen minutes, you’d all be frozen to death.”

  “Maybe not that long,” said Jones, leaning against a wall.

  “What happened anyway?” I asked, looking at Phil. “Why’d you guys detonate the bomb?”

  “Angela pushed the button before you got out of the Tiny Dancer’s cabin,” said Jasmine. “Luckily they had programmed a two minute delay between the activation and the detonation; I suppose to give them a little time if something went wrong. It saved our lives. When we saw you had the money, they figured it out and started jumping overboard.”

  There was a brief silence, and then the door squeaked open. Captain Dillon stepped into the room. This morning he was in uniform, apparently in honor of so many guests. I felt a little hurt that he hadn’t dressed up for me the night before, but then, no one likes to be overdressed at midnight.

  “Here they are, Cap’n,” said Iverson.

  “Thank you, First,” he said. He found my face and nodded. “Borden.”

  I opened my mouth to thank him, when suddenly, Angela stood, threw off her blanket and wrapped her left arm around the captain’s neck. Her right hand held a small pistol – maybe a twenty-five or thirty-two caliber. She pulled him into the center of the room, pushed the gun into Dillon’s temple and looked at Iverson.

  “That’s my gun,” said Jasmine.

  “Get on that phone, and tell someone to get the launch ready,” said Angela to Iverson. “We’re leaving again.”

  He just gaped at her. We all did.

  “Angela,” said Red. “It’s over.”

  “Shut up Richard,” she said. “It will never be over. I will not let them win. I will not let him hurt me again. We are going to get away, and he is going to die. Philip, get Leyla. Richard, get Borden.”

  For three heartbeats, it was like we were in a wax museum. No one moved. We all stared at Angela’s white face, twisted and working with fury and desperation. Red was just starting to rise when there was a tremendous echoing boom. Angela screamed and dropped her gun, clutching at her shoulder and staring at her husband.

  Phil sat calmly, holding his big automatic. A wisp of smoke curled out the end of the barrel. The slide was locked in the open position, because he had fired his last round, the bullet I had inadvertently left in the chamber. Angela began to curse him, shrieking out a vicious, poisonous flow of invective in some of the most hurtful words I have e
ver heard. Iverson picked up her pistol, and Jones and captain wrestled her out of the room, still screeching hatred at the top of her lungs.

  Phil put his weapon carefully on the floor. “I guess I finally did one thing right,” he said to no one in particular. Then he put his face in his arms and sobbed like a broken-hearted child.

  CHAPTER 5 5

  It was a gorgeous sunny day on the North Shore, though not much above freezing. We had been back in Grand Lake for about a week. My bruises had healed, but I still felt cold all the time. That could be, however, because I lived on Minnesota’s North Shore, and it was the end of October. I tried drinking a lot of coffee to keep my core body temperature up. It seemed to help, so I decided to stick with it.

  Alex Chan was in his office. As it happened, Julie was not.

  “She’s working for you today,” said Chan, morosely, ushering me in and taking my coat.

  “She doesn’t work for me, she works for the church,” I said.

  “I didn’t realize your church was so disorganized and forgetful.”

  I sighed. “She’s rubbing off on you.”

  “It’s one of the things that draws us together – a mutual love of keeping you humble.”

  There didn’t seem to be much for me there, so I changed the subject. “Thanks for taking care of my cat.”

  “Sure thing,” said Chan. “We left you some cat food in your kitchen closet.”

  “We?”

  “Julie helped me.”

  “I didn’t realize it was so much trouble.”

  Chan grinned his wide, white-toothed grin. “No trouble at all. A pleasure, in fact.”

  “Be careful with Julie,” I said. “I mean it.”

  “We’re fine,” he said, waving a hand. “We’re having fun, and taking it slow.”

  “She doesn’t even know you like her, does she?”

  “I’m Asian. I am inscrutable, difficult to read.”

  “You’re Californian, and you’re an open book.”

  “You do realize you’re paying me for this time, don’t you?” said Chan, picking up a pencil and looking businesslike.