"Somebody please shoot them before they get away," Greta said. "Or give the damn pistol to me."
The Miss Begotten was listing hard to port as Thorn climbed back into his chair. He rolled over to Greta. The Zodiac was already fifty yards away, sliding easily atop the waves.
"Second in my class," she said, holding out her hand. "Watch me.
Thorn lay the pistol in her lap. She raised it, steadied her aim for several moments, then squeezed off two rounds. Pepper and Tran swung around in unison and stared back at the yacht, but kept on going.
"Maybe you're a little rusty."
"Look again," she said.
He peered out at the inflatable and saw the two of them scrambling now, trying to wedge a towel into the hole Greta had blown in the side of the craft. But it looked futile, taking on water rapidly. All of them sinking into the same unfriendly sea.
"We should try to find something that floats," Thorn said. "Get ready for our morning swim."
For the next few minutes he and Bean scoured the upper deck. From the bulkhead wall, Thorn wrenched loose an old white life buoy with Miss Begotten printed on it, but the thing crumbled in his hand like a disc of sawdust.
They dug through the locker, all the storage drawers, but discovered nothing that would help. And the water was already rising up the stairway, waves sloshing over the sides every second.
"Can you swim, Greta?"
"I've had some practice lately. But I was wearing a life vest at the time."
"Well, come on, we need to get clear of this thing," Thorn said. "Before it sucks us down."
***
Monica saw the rubber raft about a mile away, rising up on a hill of water, then spilling down the other side. She took a heading on her compass and held the line as well as she could, but she didn't see the raft again or anything else for that matter. But then, of course, a freighter could easily be steaming past her, ten feet away, and if the waves were timed right, she'd miss it. Waves twice as high out here as back in the harbor. Scaring the ever-loving shit out of her, but she kept on going. What choice was there?
Down in the trough for half a minute, she gathered her courage, then held her breath, pushed the throttle forward, cut the wheel, and rode up the steep edge of a swell for a hasty and terrifying view from the crest, then almost instantly began the quick skid down the slope of the wave until she and her small boat were tucked again into another trough, twelve-foot walls of water on either side.
She almost ran them over. With a sudden glimpse of the orange life jackets, she jerked the throttle back. Two of them, a man with black hair, his face sagging toward the water, and a woman holding on to the back of his life jacket, towing him along.
Monica used the aluminum boat hook to drag them close. The woman was blubbering, spitting water. The man seemed dazed, his lips fluttered on each breath. Monica got them around to the stern, and unsnapped the dive ladder.
"Take him first," the woman said.
And Monica bent over the transom and grabbed the man's bright green shirt by the yoke and hauled him upward while the woman pushed from below. The man sputtered and moaned and floundered over the transom onto the bouncing deck.
In a sopping cream sweatshirt, the woman clambered up the ladder. On the top rung she lurched forward, thrown by the heave of another wave. Monica clutched her under the armpits, steadied her, then tugged her over the side.
The woman sat down on the deck beside the man. He was awake now, shivering, and muttering incoherently. Monica held the boat hook loosely in her right hand.
"Is he okay?"
"He's Vietnamese," the woman said. "That's just how he talks."
That was when Monica saw the pistol in her hand. And with sudden light-headed certainty, it came back to her. The two of them, a tall man and this tall woman, lit up by her headlights, both with pistols, bullets spraying her car as she hurtled past. Rover dead on the floor.
Breathing hard, the woman peered up at Monica and must've seen what was dawning in her eyes. It was all about eyes. Seeing clearly, reading the moment, reacting to the hard, inevitable facts.
Riding on a surge of utter certainty, Monica swung the boat hook at the woman's wrist. It wasn't anger, not fear, not even the desire for revenge. But a cold, fierce upwelling of instinct, as if some bestial warrior had wakened in her blood.
The gun skittered across the deck, banged into the console, and rebounded. And the big woman lunged for it, but Monica stepped toward her and chopped the aluminum staff across her wrist a second time. The woman wailed and rolled away. And though the boat pitched and reeled in the rising swells, Monica was steady on her feet. She stooped down and seized the gun and pointed it at her shivering passengers, and watched as each of them stared dismally into its small, dark eye.
***
Because Thorn's legs had not had time to atrophy, he was far more buoyant than Greta or Bean. When they first went overboard, Greta thrashed around for several moments, her head high out of the water, but her withered legs weighted her, and her chin began to slip below the sloppy sea. Thorn got to her in time, put an arm across her breast and towed her forward in some half-remembered Red Cross stroke.
A few yards away Bean ducked his head below the water and came up sputtering. He flailed his arms as he gulped air. Thorn swam over to him. Greta's body riding against his left hip.
"It's no good," Bean said. He coughed out a spray of seawater. "I can't get them off. Something's twisted, a buckle. Fucking legs are pulling me down, Thorn. Gotta do something."
"Okay," he said. "Hold on."
A wave surged under them and carried them high, and off to the east Thorn thought he glimpsed a small white fishing boat—a couple of people aboard. The sea dropped away, and in every direction there was nothing but the peaks and plateaus of gray water.
"Can you manage for a minute, Greta?"
"Do it," she said. "I'll be fine."
He let her go and sank beneath the water. Bean had opened his belt, pulled down his pants, exposing the buckles and snaps and Velcro fasteners that harnessed his artificial legs to his stumps. Thorn felt around, tried to read the array of clasps. He loosened what he could, tugged and ripped and got one leg free and it fell away. He was running out of air quickly, and as he was about to break off, he found on the other leg the twisted length of webbing that was jammed inside its metal buckle. He pried and jimmied the fastener, but only seemed to tighten the kink.
He floated to the surface, gasped, swiveled around to find Greta riding away on a rogue current, her face dipping below the waterline. He thrashed to her side, hauled her to the surface, and got her back in the swimmer's carry. She choked and spit up a mouthful of water.
"I'm okay," she managed. "I'm fine."
A few feet away Bean pumped his arms as if he were trying to launch himself into flight, but for every inch he brought himself above the surface, he dropped two inches below. Bobbing like that, he wouldn't be able to last ten minutes.
"You can't do it, Thorn," Greta said. "Just save yourself. Do what you can."
From his right, Bean lunged for him, took a panicked grip on Thorn's arm, levered himself up to get a clear swallow of air. Releasing Greta, Thorn gulped a breath just as he was forced below.
When he broke back to the surface, Greta and Bean were treading water furiously, heads tipped back, taking deep breaths, then holding them in like dopers with their precious smoke.
"Stay calm," Thorn said. "We can't panic."
"It won't work," Bean gasped. "You can't save us both."
"We'll take turns."
"What?"
Thorn paddled around to Greta and got her across the chest again and let her ride against the buoyancy of his hips.
"It's the only way," he said. "I keep one of you afloat till the other gets tired, then we'll swap."
Bean shook his head.
"Forget it," he said. "Everything's fucked. Goddamn drug doesn't work. Nothing works. It's all fucked."
"Don't g
ive up, Bean. Hold on. Someone's coming for us."
"Who's coming?"
"Monica and your dad. Maybe others too."
"My dad knows?"
Thorn nodded.
"Everything."
"Fuck it," Bean said. "I'm wired wrong, man. You were right. I been like this forever. I look at you, I look at my dad, and I don't get it."
"Hold on, Bean. Save your breath."
He pushed his head above the waves, arms working feverishly.
"Guys in 'Nam, you, my dad. Even Tran. Guys willing to risk their lives. Shit, I never understood that. I got something missing. A hollow place."
"It's okay, man. We're going to get through this. Stay focused. We keep swimming long enough, they'll find us. They're looking now."
Water splashing his face, Bean shook his head slowly.
"Fuck me. I should've done it right the first time."
He swiveled and with a clumsy breaststroke he paddled down the backside of a steep roller. It crested over him, and Thorn, riding at the top with Greta on his hip, saw his old friend's head sink below the surface and disappear. Thorn struggled after him but Bean didn't show.
With a quick word of warning, he let go of Greta and dug beneath the surface and swam down into the dark and soundless water. Eight feet, ten, blowing out a bubble of air, then another. It was too dark to see, the turbulent current buffeted him about like a rudderless boat. He was about to give up; ride back to the surface, when he bumped Bean's arm.
Thorn seized a handful of cloth and tried to drag him back to the light, but Bean wrenched away, blew out a stream of bubbles that tickled past Thorn's face. And he sank.
Thorn made a final lunge for him but got only a handful of water, and with his lungs roaring, he stroked back to the surface.
Bean had given up and the deadweight of his artificial leg was dragging him down into the lightless reaches of the sea, a world the two of them had once explored as kids, holding their breaths longer than was possible, feasting on the outrageous colors, every twitch of fin and braid of coral. Swimming side by side, boys with absolutely no wish to become men. Who even now after all these years still wrestled with the deadly allure of those dreams—to return to a time when absolutely everything was imaginable and nothing hurt for long.
Thorn swam with Greta on his hip, a listless stroke, doing just enough to stay afloat, letting the sea decide their direction. Greta did what she could to help, swishing her arms through the water, treading, keeping her head light against Thorn's shoulder.
They didn't speak. There was nothing to say, no air to say it with.
It was an hour, a week, ten years of pitching seas, Thorn's arm as heavy and useless as water-logged towels, before they heard the burbling exhausts of a sizable boat.
Thorn had just enough strength left to raise an arm from the water and wave it overhead while he held Greta with the other. But the boat passed by without seeing them. And again there was only the slap and turmoil of the sea. Beyond fatigue, they drifted on in silence, another half hour and another.
And there was no future and no past. No memories or hopes of bright days to come that kept him going. There was only a gray world of water and sky and a woman's living weight against his own. There was breath and there was cold and a spreading numbness in his chest. But he dug his free arm through the water, stroked forward, dug and stroked without thought, without aim or direction, streaming north in a current that rode its ancient pathway, a deep river that swept along the continental shelf, drawn ahead by the earth's endless rotation. And all he felt was the strange comfort of being caught in the machinery of much greater forces. Swimming forward, saving himself and this stranger on his hip, not because he was worth saving. Not because of any drumroll of heroism in his veins, but because he was an air-breathing creature and was required by natural law to keep his head above the waterline. To dig deep through the water, to breathe, to stroke, to go forward into the gray immensity, one stroke, then another and another.
When the lifebuoy splashed a few feet away, Thorn felt no sense of joy or relief. He wasn't even sure it was real. As if perhaps unknowingly he had slipped across into the afterlife. But he guided them to the white circle, and hooked his arm through it and he and Greta managed to keep their heads out of the water as the rope grew taut and they were drawn to the boat's wide dive platform.
Doc Wilson kneeled on the dive platform and Brad Madison and a kid with long blond hair stood beside him holding the rope.
Riding the rough seas a few yards away was a small open fisherman, Monica behind the wheel, handling the boat just fine from what Thorn could see. Beside her Pepper Tremaine's wrists were lashed with rope to the rail of the console. Trussed to the opposite side was Tran in his bright green outfit.
Brad Madison and the kid dragged Greta out of the water, wrapped her in a big blue towel and muscled her up on board. And through the murky cloud of his draining consciousness he stared across the swells at Monica, pretty and determined, with a grim smile for Thorn.
Bean Wilson and Brad helped haul Thorn up to the dive platform, where he lay for a moment, barely enough energy to breathe.
The doctor stared out at the gray water, his hair tossed in the wind.
"He didn't make it," the doctor said. "My son didn't make it."
"No, he didn't."
Thorn felt his blood going pale. His body rising weightless into a twilight of dull pink.
"I couldn't keep the three of us afloat," Thorn said. "We'd all drown. Bean realized that and he went off on his own so Greta and I could make it."
"You saw him go under?"
"Yes."
Dr. Wilson held tight to the stern rail and looked down at Thorn.
"He did that? My son did that? Sacrificed himself?"
"Yes, he did. He was very strong, very brave."
CHAPTER 33
Seventy percent recovery, they said. And even that was optimistic. Maybe he'd need a walker for life, braces on his legs. There were a couple of specialists who were convinced he'd be lucky if he ever wiggled a toe again.
For two weeks Thorn suffered through spinal headaches. Each time he tried to stand or sit a scalding spike drove through his frontal lobe. Dr. Wilson injected 10 cc's of Thorn's own blood into his epidural space and that seemed to help for a few hours at a time. But the headache returned whenever Thorn so much as considered lifting his head. His ears roared, the ceiling of his bedroom rippled like a highway mirage. The entire stilthouse swayed and dipped as though he were still riding twelve-foot seas.
A little at a time Monica filled him in on the news. Pepper and Tran in jail awaiting trial for first-degree homicide. Tran trying to pull some diplomatic immunity stunt, but so far it hadn't worked. Greta already back at work with the DEA. Brad Madison reprimanded and demoted. He and Greta dating cautiously. As for Dr. Wilson, he had decided to take a cruise through Alaska as soon as Thorn was well. And then last week, some small and twisted flotsam washed ashore near Vero Beach, three hours north, and after some dental checks, a name was put to the debris. Bean Wilson, Jr.
Early in the second week of convalescence, Greta Masterson rolled into his bedroom one afternoon with her daughter, Suzy. Greta held his hand and thanked him, then told Suzy that this was the man who'd saved her. A very courageous man. Suzy was pretty and serious and had long wavy blond hair and looked much like Greta must have looked.
"Stubborn is the correct word, Suzy," Thorn said through the roar of his headache. "Not courageous."
"Same difference," the little girl said, and patted Thorn on the hand.
Greta sat by his bed for an hour and she asked Monica about their life in Key Largo, about the fishing, about her job at the paper. Chatting like old friends. Monica showed Suzy her drawings and Suzy picked out her favorite—the one of Rover lying in the grass.
It was decided that when Thorn was feeling better they'd come back. They'd stay for supper. Greta would bring something. She made a mean vegetarian lasagna. They'd drink wi
ne. They'd go out on the boat to watch the sunset.
"Well, okay, maybe not the boat," Greta said. "I guess I've had enough of boats for a while."
"Oh, yes," Monica said. "I'm with you there. Dry land is fine."
Thorn listened to them talk. Two women getting along very well. Some laughter, some jokes at Thorn's expense. Suzy playing quietly with Thorn's fly-tying tools. Thorn lay still and watched them.
Just before Greta left, she gave Thorn a kiss on his cheek and the cool print of her lips lingered for hours.
***
By late in April, Thorn's headaches subsided and shortly afterward he wiggled a toe. A few days later he swiveled his right foot, then his left. Every day, Monica bent his legs for hours, pumped them to his chest. Rough as a linebacker, relentlessly working the blood back into them.
She gave him no rest. Worn and gaunt, she cooked his meals and stayed at his bedside all day and night. Whenever he chanced to open his eyes, she was there, massaging, bending, working his legs.
"You're lazy," she said, one rainy afternoon, with distant thunder rocking the timbers of the house.
"Lazy compared to what?"
"The last guy I brought back from the dead was up and around in a week."
"Maybe I'm just dawdling because I like the leg rubs. You're learning to give a damn nice massage, you know."
"Why don't you try it? Today, right now. Get up, one foot in front of the other. You can lean on me."
"Christ," he said. "You're vicious."
He sat on the side of the bed, planted his feet on the rough wood floor. He smiled at her. She smiled back.
She bent down and helped him loop his right arm across her shoulders and hefted him up. His knees buckled and he sagged, but Monica dipped and swayed and propped him back up as effortlessly as an old familiar dance partner.
"I don't know about this," he said. "Maybe it's too soon. We should ask the doctor first."
"Hey, if I can support you, you can do your share."
"Jesus, you just don't quit."
Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6) Page 31
