Fatal 5

by Karin Kaufman

She sighed and closed her eyes. There now, she could rest. She’d passed on the baton.

  * * *

  Jake awoke and found Ginny gone.

  The air in his lungs punched tight gasps out his throat. His heart thumped erratically in his chest. He turned the boat back on its path to find her. Lurching on quaking knees, he sped from bow to stern and back again, zig-zagging from one side of the boat to the other to search the water. She was still in the life vest and would be floating. The thought of her body, forsaken in the sea, tore at him.

  Maddeningly, the wind worked against him. He stripped down the sail and dismantled the oars, but the lighter proved unwieldy for one man to row. Locked into position, the pair of oars barely touched his fingertips when he stretched out his arms between them.

  No, no, no, it couldn’t be! Disbelief knotted his gut and yanked hard. He had lost her all over again. He glared at the rolling sea until its restless energy mesmerized him. Sapped him. Sucked out his insides until there was nothing. Only a hole, dark and empty.

  A gust of wind slapped his face, and the image of Captain Emilio shooting his pistol, its bullet roughing Jake’s cheek, rose in his mind. He drew in a slow breath. That man alone was reason enough to keep going. Numbly, he reassembled the mast and rudder and aimed the boat west again.

  At noon the wind died and the boat floated aimlessly. He tore off his life vest and in a fit, slammed it to the deck. All morning, his urgency to reach land had been matched by the steady pressure of wind against sail—as if he and God were teammates, yoked together to bring about swift justice. Now there wasn’t even that. He dove into the water to cool off.

  When the wind started up again, he climbed aboard and picked up the vest. His heart stopped at the sight of a crack running down the middle of the floor from bow to stern. He dared not remove the vest again. If the boat split apart and sank, the life vest was his only chance to reach land.

  He reoriented the boat westward and positioned himself on the side of the crack holding the mast. The wind was stronger than before, but it failed to cheer him. The pressure against the sail stressed the crack, and he had no idea how long—hours or days—it would be before it split open.

  Ginny’s death pounded on his soul like a fist on a hollow-core door. Over and over he asked himself what he could have done differently to prevent it. Over and over he came to the same conclusion: nothing. Everything that had happened had been beyond his control. It was Captain Emilio who had made all the choices, Captain Emilio who had molded the clay of their lives into the shape of hapless victims.

  But over and over, another question shoved him against the wall: We are Your beloved. Where were You?

  * * *

  Eve opened her eyes. Stars overhead, millions of them, sparkled in densely layered eons of light-years. She sat up and sought out the constellation Betty had shown her. It confirmed the wind was still blowing them westward. Gratitude welled within her that the storm had proved nothing more than a rough cloudburst, and that if Betty was right, the Philippines lay within a day’s reach. They were going to make it.

  She got to her feet and peered over the billowing sail. If land was out there, it was impossible to tell. The only distinction between black water and black sky was the twinkling stars.

  She checked on Betty and Crystal. The child was curled against Betty, probably more for emotional comfort than warmth. Surprising herself, Eve stooped and kissed Crystal on the forehead. At least she had her aunt to love her. And grandparents. More than Eve ever had.

  Betty’s pulse clipped at a rapid pace, but was short of racing. After the cloudburst, the sun had steamed all three of them into wilted seaweed. They needed another dose of rain—or better yet, land bursting with streams. She stepped over the sleeping forms and walked to the rear of the boat. The wind whipped her long hair away from her face, and she had to brace herself. Pulling down her shorts and panties, she crouched over the broken stern.

  There was a microsecond of realizing she was off-balance, and then the abrupt shock of hitting water. Its coolness surged through her like icy electricity. She clutched her shorts, struggled to tug them over her knees into place and at the same time kick upward to the surface. She churned, bewildered by the darkness. Which way was up?

  Blackness pressed in on her. Terror gripped her chest. She could never be alone in the dark, never. The air in her lungs squeezed for release. She had to let it go. Bubble by bubble it bullied its way up her throat and through her lips. Her body went limp. Her consciousness swirled like tub water spiraling down the drain. In one last effort, she clawed at the ocean, willing herself not to breathe in.

  Her head broke the surface, and she gasped at the air. Oxygen burned the lining of her throat and lungs like iodine on a raw sore. She choked and wheezed and coughed up seawater until finally she could breathe.

  The boat. Where was it? She twisted one way, then the other, until she saw it—a smudge against the stars as it sped away from her.

  “Help, Crystal, help! Wake up! Wake up!” She swam after it, stopping only to yell.

  She swam until she could swim no more.

  Then she shouted until she could shout no more.

  * * *

  The shriek woke Jake. Every hair on his body prickled in icy horror. Ginny! She was out there—alive—screaming for him! He jumped to his feet.

  The shriek came again, piercing his ears. Not Ginny, he realized, but the boat. The vessel shuddered as the crack down its middle split open like a zipper. In one final howl of agony, the injured craft burst apart and dumped Jake into the ocean.

  Chapter 8

  Crystal’s eyes darted frantically beneath her eyelids, her scream stuck to her throat. A gigantic sea monster hovered above her. She writhed helplessly as its raspy tongue slicked over her legs and tugged her into its huge, horrid mouth. Finally, a tiny squeal escaped her lips, and she opened her eyes. She was hanging halfway out the stern of the lighter, her legs flailing against something soft—the monster’s tongue! Its saliva sloshed at her waist, soaking her, disintegrating her.

  She squealed again and scrabbled onto the boat and grabbed her aunt. “A monster!” she screeched. “A monster’s swallowing us!”

  Betty sat up and peered sleepy-eyed at Crystal. “What in the world are you talking about?” She brushed her hand over Crystal’s legs. “Where’d you get this sand, child?” When she glanced over Crystal’s shoulder and her eyes widened, Crystal yelped and spun around.

  There was no monster. Instead, the rising sun revealed an expanse of bright turquoise water laced in rows of white froth. The water splashed giddily toward them and landed again and again in a heap of salty bubbles at the stern of the boat.

  Crystal and Betty rose, holding each other steady, and gaped at the beach. “Land!” they cried in unison. They turned to tell Eve.

  * * *

  Jake dozed in snatches until the change came. Awareness of it crawled into his dreams and elbowed him awake. He opened his eyes. Rain? Raising his head, body trembling, he scanned the heavens. Empty. Only the sun glaring from its own ocean of blue sky.

  No, beneath him. Motion, tugging him—a surge forward, then a stop. Surge forward, stop. He shook his head, lifted himself off his stomach. At the next swell he glimpsed the horizon. A green smear creased its edge.

  Land.

  LAND!

  His heart slammed into high gear, and he struggled to his knees. The water dipped and the land disappeared. The boat fragment slid forward. Stopped. Rose on the slow elevator of another swell. He held his breath.

  An island slipped onto the horizon. High on one end, sloping to sea level at the other.

  He sucked in air and hurled it out in a loud Ooo-rah that reverberated across the waves.

  As if startled, the boat fragment jumped, and he fell on his stomach. He grabbed the vessel’s edge. It rotated in a half circle and lurched forward on a new path. A path headed back to sea.

  An ocean current—it must have caught the longer part of
the fragment submerged in the water. He studied the distance to the island. The current might veer back and sidle up to the island, or, just as likely, it might tow his broken sea vessel farther away.

  Didn’t matter. He didn’t need the boat. Just the island.

  He slipped into the water and set his strokes on autopilot.

  At first he swam, but after several minutes, he flipped onto his back. No way could he swim the entire distance to the island. No food for two days, no water for a day and a half. He’d best conserve his energy for the final stretch. The damaged life vest provided minimal buoyancy, but by paddling his arms and legs he kept his nose and mouth far enough above the surface to breathe.

  The broken lighter crept away from him, dawdling on the crests of swells, inching forward in the valleys where the current gripped it. He forced himself not to keep checking and rechecking his progress. Was it because he was so tired that the island never seemed closer, or was it the chill seeping through the pores of his skin and crawling toward his heart that made him miscalculate? Maybe he should have stayed on the boat fragment. He could have clung to it, no matter where it took him.

  His legs drifted downward as if weighted with lead sinkers. His head sank deeper into the water. He groped for the surface and came up sputtering. Hypothermia. Alarms clanged like cymbals between his ears. He was a dead man if he reached the point of chattering teeth and a shaking body. The water at the equator was warm, but not as warm as his body temperature. Given enough time, the ocean would suck every drop of heat from him, and he’d be lunch meat for sharks.

  He grabbed a lungful of air, turned face down into a dead man’s float, and rubbed and squeezed and massaged his right leg and foot. Another breath, and he attacked his left leg and foot. Then his arms, then his legs and feet again, until his skin tingled and he could feel the blood coursing through his arteries. Forget floating, he’d swim for it.

  He nourished his strokes with prayer, and his prayer with steadfast glances at the island. At the northern end of the landmass, a volcano towered. Its southern rim had crumbled and the lava flow had run south, forming the rest of the island. Patches of white indicated beaches here and there skirting the coast. Most important, everything on the island was green—somewhere there was fresh water.

  Water! He rolled onto his back and swam, spitting out brine, picturing himself at a stream. Yes, he’d immerse his whole face and suck in a cheek-busting mouthful. Slosh it around, spit out all the residual salt crystals, cough out the slime on his tongue and throat. Then finally, finally, he’d swallow that first mouthful of water. Sweet, untainted, salt-free water.

  He emerged from his reverie, nerves sparking alarm at the roar reverberating across his eardrums. He flipped onto his stomach and caught his breath. Steep rock walls loomed above him. Waves blackened by the cliff’s shadow smashed against the rock base and plummeted back in white, foaming shreds. Beneath him, an undertow whisked swirling patches of froth to the surface, tugging at his arms and legs, grasping cold fingers at his clothing.

  Stomach acid surged to his throat. He forced himself to breathe evenly and swim in measured strokes away from the tumult. The roar of the hungry cliffs urged him to slash through the water, to burn up his energy. He quaked with the desire and fought against it.

  Swimming first on his back, then on his stomach, he watched the cliffs alongside him gradually stoop lower to the ground, heard their snarls lapse into grumbles. At last, his breath shaking out of his chest in short gasps, he allowed himself to float. At the tip of the island, where sea and land met, he’d swim in. For now, it was all he could handle to paddle on his back and let the bobbing current carry him parallel to the island.

  A wave smashed against him and rolled him over. He surfaced, choking and gagging, unable to pull air into his lungs. He thrashed helplessly as another wave clenched him in its salty jaws and dragged him off like a lioness with her prey. He gasped in air and fought the wave. It dropped him, but another pounced on him and lugged him determinedly toward its destination. Wheezing for air, dreading what awaited him, he twisted around.

  Instead of rocks, a swatch of sand lay a short distance away. He mouthed a grateful Ooo-rah heavenward.

  In control now, he sprawled on his stomach and rode the wave in. Then another, and another, until his feet struck bottom. He stumbled toward the beach, relishing the weight of his body on the soles of his feet. Beneath water that shimmered an indigo blue, he stepped over shells half-buried in the sand. Little fish darted away at his clumsy approach.

  Toes numb, he fell several times and staggered in the shallow water lapping the shore. When he stepped onto the beach, his feet glared in the sun like the pale bellies of dead fish. Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean he had lost his shoes.

  No one came running to meet him. Either the island was deserted, or its inhabitants were hiding. He scanned the sand for signs of disturbance—footprints, depressions from boats shoved to or from the water. Nothing. He squinted at the wall of palm trees and jungle growth behind the beach. Again, nothing. A sea gull, and then a second and a third, coasted overhead, adding their squawks to the slap of ocean waves.

  He spotted a coconut under a palm tree and tucked away his unease. The sand burned his hands and knees when he fell twice, but his anesthetized feet were as good as encased in jungle boots. He tromped over to the jungle’s edge, where several nuts lay on the ground. A brown object launched out of the palm tree and swooped past his head. He ducked and pivoted to face it, laughed when it plopped onto the sand and dashed under a bush. A flying lizard.

  He scooped up the largest coconut and pounded it on a sharp outcrop of rock until the hairy husk fell away and the inner shell cracked open. The first mouthful of milky fluid he spat out. The salt crystals caking his tongue loosened, and he spat out the next mouthful. The third time, he swallowed the sweet juice and dug into the coconut meat. Only then did he allow himself to collapse and sleep.

  When he awoke, he consumed another coconut. The sun hung directly overhead, baking the beach, steaming the flora into an aroma of pungent leaves and bark. A globe of tiny insects hovered around his head like a helmet. The only sounds were the murmur of waves and the flutter of palm fronds.

  He stood, grunting as a hundred needles pierced his feet from ankles to toes. Good, at least his feet were recovering. He hobbled in the palm trees’ shade until the pain subsided, and once again scanned his surroundings. No signs of human life on the beach or the nearby jungle. Most likely he had landed on one of the remote, uninhabited islands of the Philippines. He grimaced at the thought of island-hopping his way to civilization.

  Holding his life vest over his head as a shield against the sun, he returned to the shallow water of the beach. South, toward the lower elevation of the island, was his best bet for finding a stream.

  The beach stretched farther than he’d figured. The vista was like walking onto a movie set—palm trees waving in the breeze, sun and gulls overhead, ocean waves lapping at his feet—except the film crew had gone home. Only he and God on the island. He clenched his teeth against the tightness rising from his stomach to his throat.

  Ginny. She should be here with him.

  His footsteps slowed. No one knew he was alive. No one knew where he was. Who would tell Brett and Dana about their parents’ deaths? Dana would crumple to the floor; Brett would stand stalwart but shred inside. Jake quickened his pace. He needed to get to civilization, get a phone call through to his kids, get the authorities after Captain Emilio.

  He stopped, his breath rushing out of him at the sight of a man-made object down the beach. A boat. It sat on the sand, barely out of reach of the waves. In spite of sore muscles, he jogged over to it, breathing raggedly, his heart pounding. It couldn’t be, but it was—the other lighter from the cruise ship.

  He stood at the bow and peered down the length of the boat. Sure enough, it had sustained severe damage from the explosion, but only at the stern, where the motor had been. Why two explosions on his lighter
but only one on this boat? Had the explosives on the bow not detonated? He climbed over the side and squatted to examine the bow’s interior. No evidence of C-4 or other explosives. He huffed in frustration. What distinguished his lighter from the other, that Captain Emilio had placed two explosives on it?

  Close by on the deck lay the detached sail, neatly folded next to the mast, and a set of oars. Unlike the equipment on his lighter, no damage marred them. The wind would have swept the boat far ahead of his to the island, easily skimming the lighter over the current onto the beach. But who had sailed it? Could someone have survived the blast and overpressure? Impossible.

  He inspected the rest of the boat. A crack zigzagged down the length of the deck, promising a dunk in the ocean. No matter, he’d risk it. One thing was for sure—this vessel was his ticket home. A supply of coconuts was all he needed, and he’d be on his way.

  At the lighter’s stern, he stepped back onto the beach. The sand at his feet was heavily disturbed, as if there had been a struggle. From there, footprints headed toward the jungle.

  As badly as he wanted to confiscate the boat, he couldn’t leave without checking out the owners of those footprints.

  Chapter 9

  If there was trouble, Jake wanted both hands free. He picked up his life vest and slipped into it, wincing as the hot rubberized fabric sizzled like a steam iron on his sunburned shoulders. The trail leading away from the beach was pocked with disturbed sand, and the jumbled footprints made it hard to tell how many people he was following. Two, maybe three? He trotted alongside the tracks, gasping with each step as his bare feet smoldered like coals on the hot sand. At the jungle’s edge, the trail curved toward a tall palm flapping green fronds in the wind.

  A scream pierced the air. A child’s scream! Jake took off in an all-out sprint. Why hadn’t he thought to bring an oar for a weapon?

  Approaching the palm tree, he spied—of all people—the young girl who had joined them for dinner with her aunt. Crystal, was it? She was crouched halfway on her feet, breath rasping in and out of her throat in squeaks of terror. Near her lay Betty, eyes closed, mouth slack. His mouth dropped open. How had they escaped the explosions?