At last Jack got to see what was inside. At first all he noticed was thick Styrofoam, layered to hold tight whatever the object was so it wouldn’t shift around.
Alex tore off the Styrofoam and threw it on the deck. Then, bending forward, she lifted—a plate?
It looked like a plate, but as she picked it up Jack saw that it was a heavy steel rim painted yellow, with bolts all around the edge and in the center, a sheet of thin, shiny, crinkled black metal. The whole thing measured about 18 inches in diameter. What it might be was impossible to guess.
“It ticks me off that those geeks charged me a quarter of a million to rebuild this part after the experimental one broke,” Alex was complaining. “That’s as much as I paid for my whole boat.”
Scully answered, “Yeah, but this boat is an old tug from back when they shoveled coal into the boilers in the engine room.”
“Right, and why’d I buy an old tug? Guess! Because it doesn’t arouse suspicion. A year ago, this ‘old tug’ was fitted with an 800-horsepower diesel engine, get the picture? And now it’ll have a phenomenal sonar system, once I ditch the defective part and install this state-of-the-art acoustics transducer. Nobody else will have anything this good for the next five years. Anyway, I gotta go tell Hashim the part’s here,” she said, hoisting it. “So what do you plan to do with these two kids, Scully?”
“Throw them overboard.”
Ashley gasped and Jack jerked backward, ready to run, but where could he run to? It was like being on a tiny island, with no escape.
“You’re joking, right?” Alex asked Scully.
Coldly, he answered, “I’m not gonna screw up a ten-million-dollar operation because of a couple of nosy brats. You got any better ideas?”
“Me?” she cried. “Hey man, they’re your problem, not mine. But let me tell you, I’d prefer not to have any kids murdered on my boat.” Alex spoke calmly, as though she were discussing a maintenance problem. “So whatever you do with them, I don’t wanna know about it.”
What did that mean? If Scully murdered Jack and Ashley on the boat, it would be OK as long as Alex didn’t find out?
Trust Ashley to always spout off at the wrong time. “I guess if you’re the kind of person who murders whales, Alex, you won’t worry about killing us. But, listen, if you let us go, I promise we won’t tell anything.” She held up her right hand as though taking an oath in court.
“Like I believe that,” Alex scoffed. “I can’t waste any more time on this, Scully. Do whatever you have to.” Cradling the sonar device in her arms as if it were a baby, Alex turned her back on them and walked through the cabin door.
Jack and Scully eyed each other. Ten feet of deck separated them, enough to give Jack and Ashley a slight head start if they ran. Jack had no intention of standing still and letting Scully kill them—not without a fight. They’d run first, and maybe find someplace to hide.
As Scully reached for his knife, Jack yelled, “Go,” as he shoved Ashley away from him; whatever direction she ran, he’d move the opposite way, hoping Scully would chase him and not Ashley.
She sprinted toward a ladder that reached from the deck they were on to an upper deck behind the pilothouse. Jack hesitated for a split second until he was sure Scully was focusing on him, then ran toward the giant spool wound with inch-thick cable, scrambling behind it and crouching down. He heard Scully’s heavy boots slamming on the deck, then a few seconds of silence while Scully tried to see where Jack had gone. Those seconds would give Ashley time to locate a hiding place on the upper deck, he hoped.
When Scully spotted him, Jack leaped to the top of the huge spool, grabbed the base of the flagpole, and hoisted himself onto the upper deck. He couldn’t see Ashley, but that was good. It meant she’d found shelter.
Swearing, because he was too big and heavy to swing himself up the way Jack had done, Scully ran back around the deck to the ladder and started to climb. Looking around, Jack saw two freestanding structures, one of them a shed about the size of his bedroom closet, and the other one was—a smokestack! Left over from when this old boat burned coal in its engine room.
He heard her then, a soft call, “Jack! Up here.”
It was Ashley, inside the smokestack, clutching the edge of it, white-knuckled, with both hands. Ashley, always nimble, had somehow scaled the smokestack, even though its top stood a good ten feet above the deck. How did she do it? Jack realized she must have climbed to the top of the shed and from there jumped over to the smokestack, slithering inside it.
Scully’s swearing sounded closer, so Jack thought he’d better try the same escape. Looking for toeholds in the rough wood, he dug in with the rubber tips of his sneakers and made it onto the shed’s roof, but not before Scully saw him. Knowing that Scully, who was already panting, couldn’t climb up there very fast, if at all, Jack stood poised to jump—but not to the smokestack. That would show Scully where Ashley was hiding. Instead, if Scully started to climb, Jack would jump straight down on him, hoping to knock the big man onto the deck and kick the knife out of his hand.
“Jack, look!” Ashley screamed. That was when Jack heard it—the thump of rotor blades on a helicopter. Alex had said a chopper would be coming to pick up Hashim—that must be it. Jack wondered where it was going to land, since it looked too big for the deck. It was about half as long as the whole hull of the boat.
And then he spotted the most beautiful words he’d ever seen: “U.S. Coast Guard.”
Painted bright red, with a broad white stripe near the tail, the helicopter hovered over Jack like an angel. He stood up and raised his arms, waving wildly. Beneath him, he saw Scully running, probably to warn Alex. In the distance, two Coast Guard vessels skimmed the waves, moving fast toward the boat.
While the chopper hung overhead, wind from its rotor nearly blew Jack off the roof of the shed. Then, amazingly, the door of the chopper opened and a man wearing a helmet and a harness was lowered on a hoist. Toward Jack!
“Get my sister!” Jack yelled as loudly as he could to be heard above the roar of the rotors. He gestured to the smokestack where Ashley was hiding, her head now poking out like a jack-in-the-box. The man gave Jack a thumbs-up, then maneuvered the hoist toward Ashley. After he reached down to grab her around the waist, he slipped a rescue sling over her head and under her arms, then signaled someone in the helicopter to raise the hoist. With her rescuer hanging beside her on the hoist, they were safely inside the chopper in less than a minute.
The helmeted man, still on the hoist, pointed to Jack and then pointed to one of the Coast Guard vessels that had almost reached the tug. So Jack was going to be picked up by boat! As thrilled as he felt about the arrival of rescuers, he also felt a pang of disappointment. Ashley got lifted on a hoist into a helicopter, while Jack would be rescued by boat. It wasn’t fair.
Suddenly an amplified voice boomed at Jack, “Wanna do it her way?”
Jack nodded furiously. Immediately the hoist snaked down toward him, with the helmeted man soon dangling above Jack’s head. Thrusting his arms quickly through the rescue sling, Jack felt the hoist move upward, and then he was flying! Instead of pulling him up into the chopper, the pilot moved slowly over the nearest Coast Guard vessel. Gently, as though Jack were a spider on a strand of silk, the chopper lowered him to the deck, where waiting arms caught him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“It looks just like a white castle,” Ashley exclaimed.
“No, it looks like a lighthouse,” Bindy corrected her. “’Cause that’s what it is—Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse. It was built in 1858, and, according to this brochure, it stands 56 feet above the mean high water mark.”
When Ashley murmured, “Well, it looks like a castle to me,” Bindy put an arm around her and teased, “You’re such a romantic. Maybe you should take up acting!”
“No way! I’d rather save whales.”
Steven’s voice floated up to them, “Kids, come down the stairway—you’ve got to see the ocean from here.”
As Ashley and Bindy followed the path toward the stairs, Jack called after them, “Tell Mom and Dad I’ll be right behind you guys. First I want to get a few shots up here.” He’d brought his camera to Acadia, but with all the exciting things that had happened, he’d hardly had a chance to take pictures until now.
He checked his camera settings as he moved around to get the best view of the lighthouse. Ashley was right, Jack decided—Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse did look like a miniature castle, rising from a cliff that overlooked the ocean’s endless blue-green water. A small roof of red tile capped the big lights at the top of the tower. Once the sky darkened, those lights would come alive, sending out beams like Star Wars light sabers. Jack could imagine himself inside the lighthouse, scanning the ocean for tall, masted ships; it would be like living in a postcard. He kept clicking the camera’s shutter until he ran out of film.
After their exploration of the lighthouse, they drove to the nearby town of Bass Harbor and found a small restaurant huddled in a row of brightly painted stores. Inside, Jack and Ashley sat opposite their parents while Bindy perched on a chair at the end of the table. Since this was Bindy’s celebration party, she’d been allowed to order anything she wanted from the menu.
She set down her spoon and stared ruefully at half of a chocolate fudge nut sundae still in her dish. “Whew, that’s enough!” she exclaimed. “Even I have a limit. But I hate to waste it.”
“It’s all right, Bindy, you can waste it,” Jack told her. “After all, it’s your third one.”
To stifle a giggle, Ashley covered her mouth with her hand, getting a bit of chocolate on the tip of her nose. That made Bindy giggle, too.
“Wasting a fudge sundae isn’t important,” Olivia commented. “Wasting a life—that’s tragic.”
“You’re thinking about Alex?” Steven asked.
“Yes, former Lieutenant Commander Alex Turner, the technical wizard with no moral principles. Greed got in the way of that brilliant mind. What a waste!”
“And she’s so pretty, too,” Ashley said. “She could have been anything she wanted to be. A model!” When Bindy glared, Ashley stammered, “Not that good looks mean anything! Anyway, Bindy, you said everyone believes you if you’re beautiful. Well, no one believes Alex now. She’s in jail. Maybe forever.”
“For selling technology secrets to the enemy,” Bindy agreed.
“And that punk Scully is in jail too,” Jack added vehemently. “I hope he stays there till he rots.”
“Take it easy,” Steven told him. “They’ll both get what they deserve.”
Olivia reached over to wipe the chocolate off Ashley’s nose just as Ashley asked, “Dad, I still don’t understand everything about how you found us. Tell me one more time.”
Steven answered, “Luckily, I got back to the room within minutes after you two were abducted. Bindy had been trying to call the police, but they weren’t paying any attention to her, and neither would I, at first, and I feel really bad about that now. Anyway, she dragged me out onto the balcony to show me where the boat had gone.” Steven paused. “It just happened that I already had my strongest telescopic lens on my camera, so I was able to see the boat and take pictures of the direction it was headed. After that, everything fell into place.”
“That’s the part I want to know about. Keep going, Dad,” Jack urged.
“It all worked out because of our nation’s homeland security program—that, and our incredible communications system. I talked to the Bar Harbor police; they called the Navy. The Navy was keeping an active file on Alex, so they knew about the boat she’d bought.” As he spoke, Steven traced circular patterns and lines on a paper napkin with his fork, explaining, “They plugged into a surveillance satellite that within minutes located the tug in the Atlantic. It even spotted the speedboat just when it was docking alongside the tug. The Coast Guard was contacted next, because they already had units patrolling the area. That’s it!”
“Amazing!” Olivia breathed.
“And they caught Alex before she could put the replacement part in the new sonar she was selling to the bad guys. That means whales’ lives are going to be saved. All because of Bindy!” Ashley exclaimed. “Let’s all celebrate Bindy, the hero!”
Looking a little sheepish, Steven said, “I apologize for not believing you at first, Bindy.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, getting believed. That’s always the hard part.”
“You’re right,” Steven said, covering her hand with his. “Now I understand what it’s like not to be trusted. When I tried to tell the police what you’d said, they just brushed me off. I knew what they were thinking—I was some kind of incompetent who couldn’t keep track of a foster child. After all, I’d already been to them twice about you running away, Bindy.”
“And then you called them with this wild story about your two children missing, too,” Bindy said. “So they figured this guy’s a nut case, trying to get some attention. Yeah, I’ve been there.”
All of them fell silent, probably thinking about Bindy’s problems with Cole. Ashley asked, “How’d you get them to listen to you, Dad?”
“I made them call Harvard Medical School for the necropsy report on the dead whale. That’s when they started to pay attention.”
“Yay!” Ashley cheered, clapping her hands. “What a smart dad I have!”
Steven still looked a bit unhappy, and Jack wondered whether he was regretting all those great pictures he didn’t get to take of Spud returning to the ocean. Maybe Olivia was thinking the same thing, because she said, “I know Steven’s whale rescue photographs would have been the best, but there was plenty of media coverage about Spud. As the day went on, all the television stations for hundreds of miles around sent reporters and cameramen. The whole rescue is on videotape, so you kids will get to see Spud swimming back to his mamma.”
“And you’ll see me, too,” Bindy said.
“What? Swimming back to your mamma?” Jack was trying to be funny, but as soon as he said it he wished he could bite his tongue. Bindy looked crestfallen.
“No. I meant I was on camera. Three of the TV reporters interviewed me about how I got you two rescued.” Suddenly she brightened. “You know what?
I liked being back on camera. I decided I really miss it.”
Olivia nodded. “I can understand that, Bindy. You’re a natural-born actress.”
The stone steps leading down to Thunder Hole were slick with seawater. Careful to keep his hand on the railing, Jack could feel the condensation as he slid his palm down the cool metal. Since his parents had run into Greg in the parking lot, they’d told the kids to go on ahead to Thunder Hole, promising to catch up soon.
Before they left, Greg asked, “You kids know much about Thunder Hole?”
The three of them shook their heads no.
“It’s a true natural wonder. Every once in a while a really big wave hits, and the force of it smacking the air inside the hollow cavern creates a clap so loud it’s almost like a sonic boom. But it gets cold down there,” he warned them. “Thunder Hole sprays out a lot of water, and with the breeze up like it is now, well, you’ll feel the chill. You might want to grab your jackets.”
“We didn’t bring any,” Ashley told him.
Olivia brightened. “Bindy, why don’t you get those blankets we’re going to return to the rangers? I left them in the car.”
“Sure thing,” Bindy answered, backtracking quickly.
Now, as the three of them made their way down the steps, Bindy threw one of the blankets around her shoulders while Ashley draped a second blanket over her head, clutching it under her chin. Jack had already decided that wearing a blanket would look too wimpy. He preferred to tough it out in his T-shirt.
The end of the pathway led to an enormous slab of rock enclosed by a steel railing. Its shape reminded Jack of the bow of a ship. Beneath him, he saw a natural cavern that had been carved, over eons, by the force of waves crashing against rock. The bullet-shaped hollow was d
eep enough that when the ocean rushed into it, water shot into the air like a geyser, before curling back on itself.
As Jack leaned over the railing, a spent wave retreated; the blue-gray water roiled as if boiling in a cauldron.
“How come I don’t hear anything but splashing?” Ashley asked. “Where’s the boom?”
“Remember what Greg said. We have to wait for a really big wave before the sound happens. You have to be patient.”
Another wave hit the hole, sending up a spray of water that seemed to burst into a million water crystals, but there was no boom. Jack watched the ocean, shivered, and waited. More swells hit Thunder Hole and retreated. A mist chilled his bare skin, and he could feel gooseflesh rising on his arms. Maybe he should have accepted a blanket.
Suddenly, Bindy grabbed Jack’s arm. “Look! Here comes a huge one!” she cried, pointing. “Whoa—this ought to do it!”
He watched the line of a wave swell and curl, pushing toward the shore with mounting force until it hit the hole with tremendous power. A sound like thunder exploded around them, causing spray to shoot so high it seemed to touch the clouds. The water rained back down onto Thunder Hole before receding to the ocean once more. In the silence that followed, Jack heard droplets drizzle off the rocks in tiny waterfalls. “Man, that explosion sounded like a cannon,” he exclaimed. “It was loud!”
“Hence, the name,” Bindy told him, grinning. Pulling the blanket around her, she squinted into the sea, the wind tousling her hair into languid wisps. She seemed to be thinking about something.
“Hey, Bindy,” Ashley commented, “what’s wrong? It’s like you got sad all of a sudden.”
“I’m not sad. It’s just—oh, I don’t know. I was looking out there in the ocean for Spud and his mamma, hoping the two of them would be all right. I guess that made me think of my own mom. I…I miss her. So much.” A flush crept across her cheeks, and Jack could hear her voice tighten. “Sometimes I’m OK, and then I see real families and I feel so cheated. It’s not fair. None of it’s fair.”
Out of the Deep Page 10
