Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 03 - Dead In The Water

by Dead In The Water(lit)

  "Kate! You're alive!"

  She let go the ladder and leapt forward to slap one hand over his mouth. "Shut up!"

  Ignoring her, he folded her in his arms and hugged her unself-consciously, his head buried in her soaking hair, muttering over and over again, "Thank God, thank God, thank God. I thought you were drowned. We all did. Thank God you weren't! How did you get back on board? When did you get back on board? Why didn't you-"

  "Andy," she said, shaking him, "hush up. Dammit, I said be quiet!"

  Her hissed words finally penetrated his consciousness and he pulled back to stare down at her, his expression confused.

  "Never mind how, but my going overboard was no accident."

  He stared down at her, his hands lax on her arms.

  "It's true, dammit!" she said fiercely, her teeth beginning to chatter again. "N-Ned signaled t-to H-Harry to throw the b-boat on a sh-sharp tack wh-while hhe ]-launched the pot. Th-they w-waited until I was h-hanging the b-bait jar."

  "Why?" he said simply.

  "Th-they're sm-smuggling dope." His face changed.

  "C-cocaine. Th-they land it on A-Anua and s-sell it in D-Dutch."

  His face changed again, to something older and harder.

  Looking at her through narrowed eyes, he said, "What are you, really? A cop?"

  She was surprised at his quickness, and immediately ashamed of her surprise. She wouldn't have liked him so much if he was just another dumb blond. "N-no."

  She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to control the shudders rippling through her body. "N-never mind that now. Seth's locked in the meat freezer in the storeroom.

  "What!"

  "But there's still Ned and Harry. I don't think they know I'm back on board yet. I want you to lock yourself in our stateroom and stay there until I come to get you."

  He stared at her. "Lock myself in our room?" He drew himself up, seeming to grow a foot and age twenty years in a single instant. When he spoke his voice was deep and certain. "I won't go to my stateroom like a good little boy, Kate. I'm not a good little boy."

  "Keep your voice down!" She had pulled him against the bulkhead of the aft cabin and they crouched there together, speaking in furious whispers.

  "I want to help," he said, his face stubborn.

  "You want to what?"

  He gave the pale imitation of a grin, but it was a grin nevertheless. " 'Not by abstention from actions does a man gain freedom, and not by mere renunciation does he attain perfection.' Lead on, MacDuff."

  She swore once, and gave in. "Is Harry on the bridge?"

  "He was the last time I looked."

  "Where's Ned?"

  "Picking up the deck."

  "Okay. I'm taking this boat hook up the ladder after Harry. Can you distract Ned long enough for me to do it? Then the two of us can take him on."

  The scared look was back but he said stoutly, "No problem." He rose to his feet.

  "Andy!" He paused in the act of turning the corner of the cabin and looked back at her inquiringly. "Be careful, dammit. No heroics, no trying to take him yourself.

  These guys are playing for keeps. They've already killed bibtwice. Once they find out you're in the know, they'll try to kill you, too."

  His grin flashed and a measure of his youthful cockiness returned. "I love you, too, Kate. Even if you are a heathen and an atheist." He disappeared around the corner of the cabin before her tired mind could formulate a retort. A moment later she heard his voice. "Hey, Ned.

  Something in the fo'c'sle I think you should see."

  Kate could hear the bad temper in Ned's responding growl.

  "No," Andy said, far too cheerfully to still be mourning Kate, "this I think you've got to see for yourself."

  "It's show time," Kate muttered. "Move your ass, Shugak." As Ned was so fond of saying. She went up the ladder and slithered onto the catwalk. There was only the catwalk beneath her and the bulkhead of the cabin's second story on her right; the rest was open sky, and Kate had never felt so exposed or so vulnerable. Every time the Avilda creaked, every time the boat hook scraped against something, every time her wet clothing caught on something else and she had to pull it free, she started and froze in place and had to talk herself forward. After about a year of this she reached the portside door of the bridge.

  She didn't stop to think or plan or calculate the odds; she was too far gone for that. In one smooth motion she swung the door open and, boat hook held in a loose grip in both hands in front of her, darted inside.

  The bridge was empty.

  So was the chart room.

  She dropped like a stone to the floor of the bridge and swore helplessly and uselessly. "God damn it."

  She propelled herself crablike through the opposite door and back out onto the catwalk, where she crouched, flattened up against the bulkhead and tried to think of what the hell to do next.

  There was a yell from the forward deck and her head snapped around, straining anxiously to see what had happened.

  The worst possible sight met her eyes. Andy in one hand, the baseball bat in the other, Ned emerged from the fo'c'sle door. Andy's face was bleeding profusely and one of his arms was bent up behind his back in a remorseless grip whose force showed clearly on his agonized face. "Harry! I got the kid! Get the bitch!"

  There was a shout aft in reply, followed by the sudden pounding of rapidly moving feet. Kate took one last look at Andy's bruised and battered face and gathered herself to tackle Harry as he went by beneath her.

  A miracle occurred. Ned, attention divided between hanging on to Andy and calling for backup, tripped over the raised edge of the hold and lost his balance. He dropped the bat, which clattered down to the deck and rolled out of reach. He dropped Andy, who fell to his hands and knees, his head hanging, blood dripping from it to the deck. Ned waved his arms to catch his balance.

  It didn't work. The hatch cover, which Andy had apparently caught Ned in the act of replacing over the hold when Andy called him to the fo'c'sle, lay over only one corner of the opening.

  Into the hold Ned went, headfirst, in a swan dive that would have earned him ten points in any Olympic competition. The hold was only half full, but it was only half full of salt water and tanner crab, and he disappeared beneath a scrabbling layer of long, spiny legs and claws.

  His head reappeared immediately, spitting, coughing, his arms reaching frantically for purchase that wasn't there.

  "Help! Harry! Help me! Harry!"

  Kate surged to her feet. "Andy! Andy! Close the hold!

  Close the hold!"

  Andy, still on his hands and knees, shook his head, once, twice, and just as Kate, despairing, had decided he was too dazed to hear her or understand what she was saying, he crawled forward. He laid hands on the hatch cover, a metal lid six feet square that probably weighed more than he did. Kate could hear him grunting from where she crouched. He was a fearful sight, his face twisted into a snarl of strain, covered in congealing blood. For one awful second that seemed to last a year the hatch cover resisted, and then the Avilda, as if she knew, took a steep slide down an unexpected swell, Newton kicked in and the hatch cover slid over the hold with a resounding clang.

  As the last light disappeared Ned's voice rose to a shriek, until the Avilda's hull seemed to vibrate from the sound. "Harry! Ouch shit get away from me goddam mother, fucking sonofabitch I'll kill you You cocksucking little bastard HARRY GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

  Unhearing, uncaring, Andy collapsed forward on the hatch cover and Jay there. The running footsteps had ceased at Ned's first yell for help but the slide of wet leather against a slippery deck alerted Kate. She tore her attention from the forward deck and peered cautiously over the catwalk. Harry was crouched against the railing, a pistol in his hand, sighting carefully around the corner of the cabin. Terrified, Kate grabbed instinctively for the boat hook with both hands and thrust it hook first over the side of the catwalk.

  Just when she could have used a nice gale-force breeze to make some cov
ering noise in the rigging, the wind died. She must have made some sound, because Gault whipped around and looked up, in the same motion raising the gun. There was a loud bang, a smack and a whine of a bullet hitting and ricocheting off metal, Gault's savage curse, another shot and another as Kate crouched back out of range. She thought of Andy, all smiles and ideals, all energy and enthusiasm, all blood and silence on the forward deck, and she hurled herself forward, boat hook in hand, and thrust blindly before her into the shower of bullets.

  The hook struck something and caught. There was a flat, heavy tug, like a large halibut on a line, and a kind of a gurgle. Grimly, sickly determined, Kate sawed back and forth on the pole. There was a hideous grunting sound, a clang of something metallic falling. And then silence.

  Kate released a long, shuddering breath, and looked over the side of the catwalk.

  The boat hook had caught Harry Gault beneath his chin, the hook penetrating up through his jaw. He stared at her, eyes wide and surprised. His mouth was slack and through his open lips she could see the bloodstained hook had penetrated the roof of his mouth.

  She was afraid she was going to vomit. There was a step behind her and she felt a surge of relief. "Andy?

  Are you okay?"

  She turned and looked straight into Seth Skinner's mild, slightly mad gray eyes.

  Her mouth opened and closed. At last she said, her voice weak, "But you're in the freezer."

  His mouth twisted into something that might have been a grin. I was. Harry let me out." The grin widened. "Your turn, Katie."

  He raised the monkey wrench over his head. Kate wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn't. She wanted to move, to run, but she couldn't do that either. All she could do was lay there, too exhausted to flee, too numb for fear, and watch Seth Skinner kill her.

  And then Andy Pence came around the corner of the bridge with an avenging rage in his blue eyes and a feral scream ripping out of his throat and the Louisville Slugger in his hands. He brought that baseball bat down across the back of Seth Skinner's head and Seth Skinner's eyes rolled up and he went limp and he dropped the monkey wrench and he fell, heavily, across Kate's prone, unresisting body.

  The next thing she knew Andy had her by the shoulders and was shaking her roughly. "Come on, Kate. Wake up.

  Wake up, dammit!"

  "Andy?" she said groggily. She came upright and clutched at him. "Andy. I thought you were dead."

  He grinned down at her, a fearful sight what with all the blood and swelling. "Turnabout's fair play. You okay?"

  "I think so," Kate said vaguely. She couldn't look at the thing sprawled so obscenely on the deck below, the boat hook still protruding from its head. She shoved Seth's limp body farther away. "Is Seth dead?"

  "Him?" Andy said contemptuously. "Not a chance. I just brained him a little. Come on, let's get you below and out of those clothes."

  She shoved him away. "Take care of-take care of it first. Please?" she said when he would have argued with her. "Please, Andy?" She offered him a tired smile. "I'd do it myself but I don't think I can."

  For all his bravado Andy stumbled a little as he produced a blanket from the chart room and tucked it around her where she sat, with her back against the bridge bulkhead.

  He shinnied down the ladder from the catwalk to the deck and handed her up the pistol. She held it in a loose grip, not sure she could summon up the strength to fire it if Seth woke up.

  Andy produced a tarpaulin, rolled Gault's body in it and rolled the body into the fo'c'sle. Armed with Gault's pistol in one hand and the baseball bat in the other and with the biggest butcher knife in the galley clenched between his teeth, he got Ned out of the hold. Ned was numb and dazed and didn't put up much of a fight. Seth moaned when Andy dragged him by his feet down the stairs and over the raised sill of the galley door, but he, too, was safely behind the locked door of the fo'c'sle before he woke up enough to protest. Andy pushed a crab pot in front of the door to be sure, and to be surer still pushed and shoved another seven-by in front of it.

  Fifteen hundred pounds of insurance. He decided it was enough.

  Kate watched him, sitting on the catwalk with her back against the bulkhead and her feet hanging over the edge. Andy climbed the ladder, took one hand and pulled her to her feet and hoisted her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. In their stateroom, he stripped her down and bundled her between the covers. "I'm starting to feel like your mother," he told her.

  "Can you get us back to Dutch?" she managed to ask him.

  "Piece of cake,"' he said, pushing the blond thatch of hair out of his eyes. "After all, the lady's line is out, and I know my girl's been pulling on it since we left the breakwater."

  "You have a girl?"

  "Sure. Just haven't found her yet."

  Kate smiled in spite of herself.

  Before he left he pulled out his first-aid kit and rummaged through it. He held up two slender whitish rocks, flat-sided and columnar, about three inches in length.

  "Tabbies," he pronounced, and at her confused look elaborated, "tabular crystals." He closed her right hand around one, her left hand around the other. "A tabbie in each hand balances your energy flow and assists in communication with your higher self. They're especially good in helping ease extreme emotional stress. Every first-aid kit should have at least two. I chose them and they know me, but they'll help you because you're my friend."

  Looking up, he saw her eyes closing and broke off the lecture. "Relax," he said, patting her shoulder. "Sleep.

  I'll get us home."

  It might have been sheer exhaustion, it might have been the tabbies. Kate slept, her last conscious sense the feel of cool quartz crystal warming to the palms of her hands.

  TEN

  "So he bought up a bunch of old boats with nothing down and a promise of balloon payments within six months."

  Te reneged on the balloons," Kate guessed.

  Tot it in one."

  When was this?"

  Jack's grin widened. "April of 1989."

  "Right after the RPetCo oil spill."

  I told you you'd like it."

  "Gault was a millionaire, wasn't he? He signed on with RPetCo, and his boats worked the spill."

  "Got it again." Jack nodded smugly. "There's a guy at RPetCo we're talking to, seems he may have earned a little extra that summer for putting Harry's boats at the top of the hiring list. Then, when RPetCo declared the cleanup a success, Gault skipped on the mortgages, the boat crews' last paychecks, and boogied Outside. Next known address-"

  "Freetown, Oregon," Kate said.

  Jack cocked his thumb and fired his finger at her.

  "Where he married the boss's daughter and was rewarded with a boat of his own. Nice work if you can get it." He remembered and looked as abashed as a grown man can.

  "Sorry, sir."

  Nordensen inclined his head. "Don't be. It is the truth."

  Kate thought of the freezing wind, the icy salt spray, the slippery, shifting deck beneath her feet, tossing her cookies every two hours. Nice work if you can get it?

  She wouldn't go that far.

  "And," Jack said lightly, recovering from his embarrassment,

  "as I taught you when you worked for me in the D.A.'s office, if a perp has screwed up once, it's even odds he's screwed up in a prior life."

  "Don't start holding out on us now," Kate said. She was warm and full and rested for the first time in what felt like months and she didn't really care if Harry Gault had cheated on his wife, robbed his grandmother and beaten his dog all on the same day, but she summoned up a dutiful interest to keep Jack happy and the story rolling. "Tell, tell."

  "There's a warrant out on one Harley Gruber in California, who matches Gault's general description."

  "What's he wanted for?" Andy wanted to know.

  Kate smothered a laugh and Jack grinned. "Fraud and embezzlement. Something to do with a land development deal in western San Diego."

  "I thought most of western San Diego w
as ocean,"

  Andy said, puzzled.

  "Also, when Gruber skipped, not one, not two, but three, count 'em, three wives came forward to file claims to his estate."

  "Not including the wife in Freetown, Oregon. Any kids?"

  "By which wife? Guy'd been married more times than Mickey Rooney and had more kids than the King in The King and V'

  "Poor woman," Kate said.

  "Poor women," Jack said. "And this is the best part, Kate, you're going to love this. You know what Gault was doing with part of the dough he was scoring off the coke sales?"

  "No," Kate said, playing along, "what was he doing, Jack?"

  Jack's delighted grin almost split his face in two.

  "He was buying up sides of Kodiak beef, flying them down here in the Navaho and smuggling them on board Japanese processors. When they got back to Yokohama with their load of fish, whatever crew member was in on the deal would somehow smuggle the beef past customs and sell it on the black market." Jack's already wide grin widened. "You know how much beef costs per pound in a store in downtown Tokyo these days?"

  "No," Kate said faintly. "How much?"

  "Actually, I wasn't able to find out, either. None of the Japanese I talked to buy it at home, except in meals in restaurants. I talked to somebody at Alaska Pacific University and they told me imported beef is sold back and forth between suppliers without it ever leaving the freezer, until they can sell it for ten times what it cost them to buy it wholesale."

  There was a brief, awed silence. "So if you buy a T-bone for five bucks here," Andy said, "it'll cost you fifty in Tokyo?"

  "At least. You know, I've seen those Japan Air Line crews with their shopping carts full of beef at Carr's in the Sear's Mail in Anchorage. I mean full carts, too, piled right up to the top, and not just one cart, either, but three and four carts at a time. Yeah, I figure our buddy Harry was turning a tidy profit on what he made off the coke."

  Kate searched for an adequate response. There wasn't one. "I told you he was greedy."

  They were seated around a table at the Unisca Restaurant in Dutch Harbor, Andy and Kate hogging down the first meal in days they hadn't had to cook themselves.