His eyes blazing with excitement, he pointed to port.
"Look! Look at them all!"
It was a pod of killer whales, cresting and blowing, their backs gleaming black and white in the erratic sun.
"For a minute I thought they were sharks," Andy said.
There was awe in his voice and Kate smiled to herself.
"Why are they called killer whales?"
"Because they do."
"What, kill? I thought whales only ate krill."
Kate's hands paused as she looked over at him. "And what do you know about krill?"
"Hey, I went to college." He was tying door ties with a deftness that had not been present a month, even two weeks before. "For one semester, anyway. I took a class in marine biology when I knew I was coming to Alaska."
"And you didn't learn about killer whales?"
"Well, I kind of ... left ... before we got to killer whales." He gave her an engaging grin. "So. What do killer whales kill?"
"Actually, they aren't whales, they're the largest dolphin.
And they eat just about anything they can fit into their mouths," Kate replied, loading bait jars. Even the smell of dead herring wasn't as bad this morning. "Seals, mostly, but any kind of fish, squid, penguins, sea lions.
Even other whales." She screwed down the lid on one jar. "They've even been known to attack boats."
"Wow, " Andy breathed. "You mean like Moby Dick?"
Kate nodded, and he stared at the retreating backs of the orcas, upright fins slicing through the water. "They're probably hunting now," Kate added. "They hunt in pods."
Olga's chant flashed through her mind. "When the killer whales come to a bay with a village, someone dies in that bay. " A whisper of unease crept up her spine. She shrugged it off and said to Andy, "Did I ever tell you I used to sing high sea chanteys?"
He was unable to repress an expression of alarm.
"No."
"Well, I did." She whacked vigorously at a block of frozen herring. "There was a song the whalers used to sing on their way south." And for the first time in two years she raised her voice in song. It was harsh, grating across the wound in her throat and coming out low and raspy, but it seemed somehow appropriate to the place and the day and the killer whales frolicking with lethal intent off their port bow.
'Tis a damn tough life full of toil and strife We whalemen undergo And we don't give a damn when the gale is done How hard the winds did blow."
She grinned at Andy, who looked like he was failing in love.
Now we're homeward bound, 'tis a grand old sound On a good ship taut and free, And we won't give a damn when we drink our rum With the girls of old Maui."
She handed Seth a full bait jar so he could hang it in the pot about to go over the side. He took it and didn't immediately turn to hang it, but stood for a moment, looking down at her. Her smile faded. "What's the matter?"
He shrugged. "Nothing," he said, and turned back to the shot of line he was coiling.
She stared at his back, puzzled. The expression in his eyes had seemed somehow regretful. She shrugged and went back to the bait table to cut more herring and fill more jars.
Rolling down to old Maui, my boys, Rolling down to old Maui
Now we're homeward bound from the Arctic round Rolling down to old Maui."
She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt this good.
Her last trip on the Avilda, and no matter what Jack said it was going to be her last trip, was going to be a piece of cake. As soon as they nailed the shark in Dutch, he'd put them on to the men in the Navaho, and when they finished singing, the truth of what had happened to Alcala and Brown would be known at last.
Harry Gault had no real idea there was a cuckoo in his nest, and all Kate had to do was help set and pull pots and make money and count the knots home. She hoped Jack had remembered to make her a reservation on the plane. The flights north were always jammed and she wanted to be on the first one that left after her tippy toe hit dirt at Dutch. She missed Mutt and her cabin and her homestead and the Park, though it didn't look like she was going to miss the first snow after all.
"How soft the breeze from the island trees Now the ice is far astern And them native maids in them tropical glades Is awaiting our return."
She was able to dismiss Harry catching her coming out of his cabin at two in the morning; he hadn't so much as raised an eyebrow in her direction, or referred to it in any way. He had likewise ignored her reference to his two previous crewmen's disappearance, probably having decided she'd heard the story over a bar in Dutch. He hadn't picked up on the shark's reference to Jack, and Andy, bless his heart, had covered for the wet survival suit.
"Even now their big black eyes look out Hoping some fine day to see our baggy sails running 'fore the gales Rolling down to old Maui."
She leaned head and shoulders inside a crab pot balanced delicately on the pot launcher, and began to hang the bait jar. Through the metal mesh stretched between the steel frames, she saw Ned raise his right hand, as if to wave toward the bridge. His left hand moved to the launching lever.
The engine changed pitch, the Avilda made a sudden jerk to port and the platform of the pot launcher shifted.
The pot tilted precariously, overbalanced and fell into the water.
It wasn't until Kate inhaled water and exhaled bubbles that she realized she had fallen with it.
Her first thought was how strange it was that her mind never stopped thinking, that she remained unpanicked, that she could assess her situation so coolly, ticking off items one at a time.
She realized she was overboard.
She realized she was inside a crab pot.
She realized it was no accident, and dismissed the knowledge as something to be dealt with later.
She spared one brief, bitter thought for the cocksure arrogance that led her to believe she was safe.
No, safe wasn't the right word. She had thought herself invulnerable. That, too, was something better dealt with later.
Meanwhile, she and the pot were sinking together, down, down, down, heading straight down through the cold, green waters of the Gulf of Alaska, water that grew ever darker as they descended toward the ocean bottom three hundred feet below.
Kate realized the killers had had no time to tie the door shut before dumping the pot. It had happened so fast, she still had the strap of the jar hanger in one hand.
Instinctively, she used it to brace herself and kicked at the door. It didn't move. She kicked again. It remained closed, perhaps the force of their descent causing the water to keep it closed, perhaps the water blunting the force of her kicks.
The pressure of all that water bearing down on her pitifully fragile self was building in her ears.
It would kill her.
If hypothermia didn't get her first.
If she didn't drown before that.
She kicked again, and still that damn door wouldn't budge, and suddenly she was overwhelmed with an energizing, revitalizing fury and she kicked again and again and again. She would not be disposed of like an inconvenience, Harry Gault and Seth Skinner and Ned Nordhoff would not be permitted to go their way as if nothing had happened, business as usual, she would get out of this pot, she would fight her way to the surface, she would flay all three of them alive and shove them over the side in a crab pot and see how they liked it.
She kicked again and her foot hit nothing. The fury cleared from her eyes and she saw that the door to the crab pot was open, forced by the water all the way open and back against the side of the pot. Without hesitation she grabbed mesh to the open end and, because the pot had tumbled and was descending door side down, pulled herself around the bottom and up the other side, virtually climbing around the outside of the pot.
When she reached the top she hesitated for a millisecond.
As rapidly as it was descending toward the ocean bottom, as much as the pressure was building in her ears, as numb as her hands and feet were becoming, still the pot was the only solid o
bject in her world at that moment, and it took a conscious effort to let go and strike for the surface.
She did it, though, following the long trail of bubbles up, upward, ever upward, stroking vigorously with arms that felt like lead, kicking steadily with legs that felt like spaghetti. Her lungs began to burn from lack of oxygen.
Was she still going up? Had she become disoriented and lost her sense of direction? Was she already drowned and didn't know it? The temptation to inhale, to gulp in great breaths of air, was so tempting that she opened her mouth to do just that when she saw a dark shape above her.
It was the hull of the Avilda, and with a burst of adrenaline she reached out for it with every numb sinew of her body. As it came nearer some detached comer of her mind noticed that the keel had enough kelp growing from it to qualify as a sea otter habitat. It must have slowed the Avilda's cruising speed by at least five knots. But then, what could you expect from a skipper whose creed was "Use it up, throw it out and buy a new one"?
The thought of Harry Gault, laughing at how he'd tricked her, triumphant in his successful disposal of what was surely nothing more than a temporary annoyance, less in importance than a rock he would stub his toe on, cleared Kate's head at once. She was close enough to where she could see the surface through the water now, could even make out the clouds in the sky. She made for the side of the boat, hoping to attract Andy's attention, but the side kept retreating in front of her. Her lungs bursting and her ears popping, she made for the surface, breaking out of the sea's cold embrace into air that felt even colder.
Gasping for breath, coughing water out of her lungs, she shook water from her eyes and looked up.
Just in time to see the stern of the Avilda swing toward her, the water boiling out from beneath its stem. Instinct took over and she sucked in and dived straight down as far and as fast as she could.
Even at that, the churning propellor tickled one booted foot. Another stroke and she was beyond it, just barely.
A flood of incredulous wrath filled her entire body, driving out cold, cramp and lack of air, although later she wondered why incredulous. Harry Gault had seen her surface. Harry Gault had seen her, had realized she had fought her way out of the pot and back to the surface, and had swung the stem of the Avilda around to try to catch her in the propellor and finish the job once and for all.
Furiously calm, letting the air stored in her lungs out one minuscule bubble at a time, she let herself drift for a moment, studying the movement of the hull above her.
She could see it quite clearly, and the propellor, as well as the rudder, and she waited, sure of Harry's next move.
When the rudder shifted to starboard she struck for the port side of the vessel and broke surface just as the aft cabin was slipping by. Something wet and slimy trailed across her cheek and with a reflexive motion she reached up to claw it away.
It was the lady's line.
The lady's line, the line Ned threw over the side when they were done fishing and ready to head for home. The thought that he had felt confident enough that the day's business was done to throw the line overboard banished the fear that her hands might be too numb to grip, and she forced her fingers around the rope.
On her peripheral vision she thought she saw the flash of a triangular fin, a white patch on a shiny black back, and for the first time she was truly afraid. That fear was enough to propel her up the rope, hand over hand, breaking the surface, bringing her feet down against the hull, walking up it, braced back against the pull of the lady's line. She caught at the railing with one hand, dropped the line and grabbed with the other. Scrabbling with her toes, she threw a leg over the railing and pulled herself up and over it, to collapse on the deck and fie there soaked and shaking in a puddle of seawater.
Never had air tasted sweeter, never had the deck of the Avilda felt firmer, never had she felt so alive. Life was good.
"When killer whales come to a bay with a village, someone dies in that village," she muttered, half hysterically. "But not this time, Auntie. Not today.
Not me."
Yes, life was good. If she wanted it to stay that way she had to move. She rolled over and came to her knees and banged at the sides of her head, shaking water from her ears. Raised voices came to her from the foredeck, and crouching, her back pressed up against the cabin, she inched her way forward. Where the side of the cabin began to curve into the front, she stopped to listen.
"That's all you're going to do?" she heard Andy say, his young voice agonized. "We've got to look for her.
We've got to at least try!"
"Forget it, kid," Ned's voice growled back. "She's gone. There's no buoy we can hook on to. That pot wasn't attached to a shot yet anyway."
"Seth?"
"Forget it, kid." Seth's voice was just as gruff but kinder. "It happens. Let's just get back into port."
Andy said no more. Kate, peering cautiously around the corner, saw him with tears coursing down his face, and wondered how she could attract his attention without attracting the attention of everyone else and without it being such a wonderful surprise to have his darling Kate back that he gave her away. If only he weren't so young.
If only Jack were on board in his place. But if Jack had been on board she would have brained him with her Louisville ice breaker long ago.
She drew back and hoisted a cautious eye over the edge of the porthole in the galley door. It was empty.
Swiftly, silently, she opened it and slipped inside. The warmth hit her like a blow and she staggered beneath it. She steadied herself and made for the passageway.
A movement caught the corner of her eye and she saw Seth gaping at her through the opposite door.
"Shit!" She dived through the entry into the passageway, hearing the starboard side door to the galley bang open and thumping footsteps behind her. She ran past the doors leading to the staterooms and out the door that led to the aft deck. She launched herself down the stairs and into the storeroom. She cast about desperately for some kind of defense among the stacked cases of canned goods, the burlap sacks of onions and potatoes, the industrial-size refrigerator and the hated walk-in freezer.
There was nothing, not so much as a butcher knife or an AK-47. She had time for one longing thought of the baseball bat stacked next to the sledgehammers in the fo'c'sle before she heard a footstep on the stairs. Fear at being caught unprepared sharpened her wits, and she improvised.
He came down the stairs slowly, one cautious foot at a time. Somewhere during the chase he'd picked up a very large monkey wrench and he was carrying it ready to swing. Any liking Kate Shugak had felt for Seth Skinner vanished in that moment.
"Kate?" he said in a low voice. "Come on out. Come on, you know there's no place to go. Don't make this any harder than it has to be."
She crouched behind the Elberta Freestone Peach Halves in Light Syrup, not moving.
The footsteps halted on the other side of her canned goods revetment. Her heart was banging so loudly in her ears she was afraid he could hear it. A drop of seawater, mixed with sweat, gathered on her forehead and rolled down her nose to splash onto the floor, and to Kate the 1964 earthquake and tidal wave combined had made less noise.
"Kate," Seth said sternly, sounding for all the world like a strict, no-nonsense father chastising a recalcitrant child, "I know you're in the freezer, you left the door open. Come on out now."
By then Kate was so conditioned to failure she almost got up. His voice stilled her.
"You've just come out of the water. You must be freezing in there, literally. Come on out. The game's over. Hey, I haven't even told the rest of them you're back on board. It's just me here. Come on.'"
The creak of the freezer door sounded loud and joyously in Kate's ears and she tensed in every muscle of her quivering body. She heard him take one step, another, and with every ounce of strength she possessed hurled herself forward, knocking the boxes into him and him into the freezer.
There was a yell and a flash of light; he'd
been reaching for the string that dangled from the single bulb in the middle of the freezer just as she'd hit him from behind and had pulled it on his way down. She didn't stop to question her good fortune, she kicked boxes out of the way of the door while he was scrambling to his feet and slammed the door shut in his face.
The latch clicked and Kate banged the locking bar down into its bracket with a feral cry. The thud of his body against the door one second too late made it vibrate beneath her cheek. She heard yells and curses and after a moment he began to bang on the door with the monkey wrench. The noise was muffled by the sound of the engine and by the thickness of the door itself, but she leaned up against the door anyway, ear pressed against it, trembling from cold and relief and elation, drinking in the sounds.
Straightening, she turned toward the stairs. One down.
Two to go. She wondered if he'd been telling the truth.
She hadn't heard him yell out when he'd seen her. If he'd been lying, Andy- she couldn't think about Andy now.
The passageway was still and silent, and she mounted the stairs. The beat of the engine through the walls of the engine room didn't falter. It was warm and dark in the stairwell, and the beat of the engine was hypnotic, a steady chant enticing her to rest, to sit down and relax for just a second. She tried and failed to remember what relaxing felt like, and shied away from the seductive temptation to sit down and find out. She opened the door to the deck. Her teeth were beginning to chatter and she was reluctant to leave the cozy stairwell for the cold, open air.
Her reluctance abated when she realized she'd forgotten the boat hook racked next to that door, as well as the ladder leading to the catwalk, the catwalk that circled all the way around the cabin's second story to the bridge itself. The bridge where Harry Gault stood before a large, spoked wooden wheel, steering his ship into harbor, no doubt smug as all get out in his sense of self-satisfaction over a difficult job well done.
She was about to mount the ladder when a gasp startled her. She jerked around, boat hook at the ready.
Andy was standing there, blue eyes enormous in his white face. "Kate?" He took one faltering step forward.
Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 03 - Dead In The Water Page 15
