Fins

by Randy Wayne White

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew it was the wrong thing to say.

  Sabina hated taking orders. And her little sister wasn’t afraid of anything.

  Maribel felt helpless—until she remembered the little waterproof camera.

  She reached for the camera, thinking, Maybe the police will believe us this time.

  NINETEEN

  THE POACHER’S THREAT AND LUKE’S PROMISE

  Sabina wanted people to think she was fearless, even though it wasn’t true. Like now. She was cold, wet, and huddled alone on a boat that was adrift in a storm. To her, the situation was scary, but she had experienced worse. She and Maribel had drifted for days, by themselves, on the Gulf Stream. Waves the size of buildings had swept them toward the unknown.

  Twice rain squalls had brought lightning.

  The memory of those nights in darkness still haunted the girl.

  Lightning had no heart. In Cuba, after a hurricane, lightning had burned their house to the ground. It had scorched a neighbor’s cow. Even magic chants with the aid of her necklace could not stop its mindless destruction.

  Lightning had no soul.

  Yet when she heard Maribel order her to “stay down … he’ll see you!” the girl immediately sat up, then bounced to her feet.

  “Why?” she demanded. “Who will see me?” Then asked, “And what is making that awful noise?”

  It was a roaring sound similar to that of a small airplane.

  Sabina shielded her eyes and spun around. She was startled by the sight of a boat speeding toward them. She grinned and waved her arms. “Over here!” she yelled through the rain.

  Her grin melted when she saw the man who was driving. He sat atop a metal tower at the controls. On the deck below was the dog that had attacked her.

  “Hide … please, he’ll see you,” Maribel pleaded. She grabbed her sister by the shoulders and tried to force her down.

  Sabina wrestled away and faced the man when the boat pulled closer and stopped. “Stay away from us, you drunkard!” she screamed. “I’ll tell the police and they’ll arrest you. My friend the detective will put you in jail!”

  The airboat’s propeller was so loud that even Luke, standing on the stern, didn’t hear all of the girl’s threats. The bearded man couldn’t hear, either. For sound protection he wore plastic earmuffs over a ball cap turned backward.

  The man recognized Sabina. His look of surprise left no doubt when he spotted her from the tower. He snarled and pointed. Then his lips formed two soundless words: It’s you!

  Sabina clutched her beads and shook a small fist. “Leave us alone, you criminal—or you’ll be sorry.”

  The man’s head tilted back in laughter. The propeller kicked water into a froth as the airboat spun around so close it banged the side of the rental boat. He ripped the earmuffs off and killed the engine.

  A sudden silence cloaked the sound of rain and thunder. The airboat and their little rental drifted side by side toward a jagged area of oysters and waves. To the west was a purple horizon. Beyond was the open sea.

  “Well, well, well, look what I found,” the man roared, looking down. “If it ain’t the little girl with the big mouth. Get your picture in the newspaper lately?”

  On the deck below the tower, the pit bull, barking, strained against a steel-studded leash.

  “Shut up, dummy,” the man commanded the dog.

  The pit bull whimpered as if it had been whipped, and put its head down.

  Luke frowned but said nothing. He sensed the animal’s fear.

  “When the police arrest you,” Sabina shouted, “we’ll be on television, too. And the internet! Now go away and leave us alone.” She shook an angry fist—until she remembered they were in trouble. “Hey, mister?” she amended. “Before you go, would you mind lending us an anchor? My sister lost ours, and she broke our motor, too.”

  The man snorted through his beard and laughed. “From what I’ve heard, the police don’t believe anything you brats say. In fact, I doubt they’d even bother to—” A thunderous bolt of lightning interrupted him. That’s when he noticed Maribel doing something suspicious behind the steering wheel.

  “Hey! What do you got there?” he yelled.

  Maribel had the waterproof camera in video mode. Her hands shook as she positioned it atop the console. “Just our little radio,” she lied. “I called for help, and they’re on their way now.”

  “Liar,” the man hollered. “No one can use their radio when I’m around”—he glanced at a strange-looking antenna behind his seat—“and I didn’t hear no call for help to the Coast Guard.”

  “Not the Coast Guard, a friend of ours,” Maribel answered. “She’s a fishing guide at Dinkins Bay. We don’t need any help. She and a bunch of other fishing guides will be here soon.”

  Sabina took this as the truth. It made her bolder. “I bet the police handcuff you and take you away in chains,” she taunted. “Your mean dog, too. So give us your anchor and get out of here!”

  The man thought that was hilarious. He scratched his jaw and looked north through the rain. Harsh sunlight showed a golden fringe of mangroves several miles away. A boat leaving Dinkins Bay would have to come from that direction. And there was no rescue boat to be seen.

  Luke sensed the man thinking, I’ve got plenty of time.

  The boy felt nervous and on edge, but not scared. The guy reminded him of his stepfather, the way he yelled orders. But Luke wasn’t too nervous to memorize the airboat’s registration number, which was printed plainly on the side. And he noticed a couple of oddities. On the boat’s front deck was a mountain of heavy netting. It looked strong enough to entrap sharks. On the back of the boat, next to the propeller cage, was a small electric trolling motor—it could be used to move silently, unnoticed at night. Attached to the control tower was the strange-looking pole. It had to be twenty feet tall.

  That’s weird, he thought.

  It wasn’t a boat antenna. Marine antennas were fiberglass. This pole was metal, a couple of inches thick. It narrowed at the top, where there was a tiny cross bar wrapped with wire. So … maybe it was a different kind of antenna. But why leave it up during a thunderstorm?

  Wondering about that, Luke drifted off into his own world for a moment. He returned when the man called to him, “Hey, you little twerp. I’m not gonna ask again! Are you gonna let these girls do your thinking for you, or toss me that rope? You’re running out of time, bucko.”

  The boy realized he’d missed something important. “Sorry, mister,” he called. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “You heard just fine,” the man shouted back. “I got work to do, sonny. I’ll give you—” He lifted a thick arm to check his watch. “You got exactly one minute to make up your mind.”

  Luke moved closer to Maribel. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Don’t do it,” Sabina said. She had wiggled between them. “You didn’t hear? He said he’ll help get our motor started if I forget about seeing those shark fins. And we have to promise to never tell the police.”

  Maribel, with her sopping hair and T-shirt, did her best to stay calm. “We’ve got to do something. Look,” she said, and pointed downwind to a shallow area. Waves hammered a long, jagged reef of oysters. “If we keep drifting, our boat will get beaten to pieces—and probably us, too. I don’t trust that guy, but we need help. And we need it fast. Either that, or one of us has to get out and cut the rope off our propeller. The engine won’t work unless we do.”

  “Hannah is on her way,” the younger sister argued. “You said so yourself. I hope she brings Marion. Dr. Ford would tell that man to go straight to—”

  “Quiet,” Maribel said, and spoke to them both. “I lied about reaching Hannah. I don’t know if she’s coming. It’s my decision, but, Luke, I want to know what you think.”

  Sabina bickered with her older sister while a nagging detail surfaced in the boy’s mind. He thought back to the laboratory, earlier in the day, when he’d said to h
is aunt, “I guess we won’t be fishing for sharks today.”

  Guess not was Captain Hannah’s reply.

  So Hannah not only wasn’t searching for them—she probably didn’t know they’d gone out in the rental boat.

  How could he have forgotten something so important?

  A familiar tension knotted the boy’s stomach. It was the same feeling he’d gotten back in Ohio when he’d lost his homework or the cool catcher’s mitt he had worked so hard to buy. Two months of baling hay, the glove had cost him. Yet he’d left it in the dugout after a tournament in Bryan—a big town, by his standards.

  And today, forgetting what Captain Hannah had said about not fishing was his biggest mistake by far.

  From the tower of the airboat, the bearded man hollered, “You got thirty seconds, kiddies.” He seemed to be having fun. He was trying to light a cigar, but the rain kept putting it out.

  Luke pulled the girls closer until their faces nearly touched. “I did something stupid,” he said. “I mean really stupid.”

  “What’s new?” Sabina responded.

  Maribel gave her sister a stern look. “Don’t worry about that now. We all do stupid stuff.”

  “But you don’t know what it is.”

  “Luke, we’ll talk about it later. We have to make a decision”—she lifted her head and saw the oyster reef only a hundred yards away—“and we have to make it now. Can you cut that rope off the propeller? I have to be ready to start the engine if you can.”

  Maribel’s kindness was like a reprieve. The boy stared at the pit bull for a moment, then studied the ball of rope knotted around the drive shaft. “Yep, I can do it,” he said.

  “Ten seconds,” the man hollered. The cigar was lit, and he exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Don’t be stupid, boy. Toss me that line before those oysters tear the bottom out of your boat.”

  Maribel whispered, “Are you sure, Luke? I don’t want you to get hurt, and it’s awful rough out here.”

  Luke saw confident shades of bluish silver in his mind. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and thrust his jaw toward the bearded man. “Anything is better than trusting that big bucket load.”

  A moment later the man bellowed, “Time’s up, kiddies. I’ll warn you right now—if you talk to the cops or cross me again, I’ll find you. I swear I will. And I’ll beat your butts until they’re raw. What do you have to say to that?”

  On the deck below the tower, the pit bull gazed at Luke. It whined piteously and wagged its stubby tail.

  Maribel was getting it all on camera. A flare of lightning showed her cheeks turning red. She stood and faced the shark poacher. Then she cupped her hands to her mouth to be heard. “Here’s what we have to say to that,” she said, and yelled a harsh-sounding phrase in Spanish. The girl whirled around as if she had better things to do.

  The man responded with a few profane threats of his own and started his engine. The propeller kicked a jet stream of wind that caused the rental boat to spin like a leaf.

  “Wait until I tell mamá what you said,” Sabina hooted. By then the airboat was motoring away. “When she finds out, I’ll be able to swear whenever I want.”

  The rain had slowed. The wind had picked up. Lightning bolts stabbed at the earth beneath an orange-sunset sky. Luke was retying his shoes, getting ready to go over the side again—until he saw the airboat accelerate and turn.

  “He’s coming back,” he warned the sisters. “I don’t like that guy. I think he’s got a screw loose, and he’d kill us if he could.”

  TWENTY

  ON THE RUN!

  The rental boat was drifting toward disaster. Downwind, waves crashed over a jagged reef. From the opposite direction came the airboat at full speed. The man’s wild long hair framed his eyes. His cigar was a spike that widened his grin.

  “He won’t hit us,” Maribel insisted, yet sounded unsure. “He’s a bully. But tighten your life vests just in case.”

  She and her sister had ducked behind the console for protection.

  Luke knelt near the motor and adjusted the straps on an inflatable life vest that resembled a set of suspenders. A red string dangled from the left shoulder of the suspenders. Pull it, and the vest immediately inflated. The vest would also inflate if submerged in water—a safety precaution in case the wearer was unconscious and fell overboard.

  Maribel put the handheld radio to her cheek. As the airboat neared, she pressed the Transmit button, and called, “Mayday, Mayday—we need help!” But she was again cut off by a terrible static noise.

  Mayday, as they’d been taught, was an emergency code word that should have gotten an immediate response.

  Maribel looked at Luke and shook her head. No one had heard the transmission. She had to wonder if the static had something to do with the airboat’s strange antenna.

  She tried again, saying, “Mayday, Mayday!” in a louder voice.

  Her words were smothered by more static and the roar of the airboat speeding toward them.

  “Grab something and hang on,” she yelled, and braced herself for impact. But instead of ramming them, the airboat rocketed past so closely that the nose nearly clipped their broken motor. The gust from the propeller was almost worse than a collision. The wind stream sent bottles and the remains of their sack lunch flying. The blast was so intense that, for an instant, Sabina thought she would be blown out of the boat, too.

  She nearly was.

  On the console, the waterproof camera skittered toward the water. Maribel lunged and managed to grab the thing just in time.

  The airboat turned. It circled updrift and pivoted so that the giant propeller was aimed at them. When the engine revved, a wall of wind hit the rental boat with the force of a tornado. The deck reared. The boat teetered wildly.

  What’s that man doing? The question was in Sabina’s panicked reaction.

  “He’s trying to blow us onto the reef,” Maribel shouted. “Get your shoes on—hurry, Sabina! We might be better off in the water.”

  A lightning bolt flashed nearby. Thunder muted the roar of the airboat briefly. It was almost impossible to be heard.

  Luke had withdrawn into his own silent world. He focused on the bearded man. Only the guy’s head was visible above the propeller cage unless the airboat swung to the right or left. Somehow the pit bull had climbed to the upper deck and was beside him.

  No … Luke knew the truth. The man had dragged the dog up by its spiked collar. He was screaming at the animal for some reason. When the man raised a fist, the pit bull half jumped, half fell to the deck below.

  Luke’s jaw flexed. His eyes moved from the tangle of rope around their propeller to the heavy fishing rod he had used to land the sawfish. It was the same rod he had used at the marina to practice casting tennis balls for the retriever. And to improve the accuracy of his casting.

  Next the boy’s attention shifted to the airboat, with its massive propeller.

  The bearded man was looking over his shoulder as if backing up a car. He yelled something—a threat, possibly. With the engine in neutral, he allowed the airboat to drift closer into what Luke, a baseball player, considered easy throwing distance. When the man hit the throttle again, the propeller’s wind stream lifted their rental boat. A wall of air pushed it like a sled, faster and faster toward the jagged oysters.

  “Inflate your life vests and get ready to jump!” Maribel called. She feared their boat would flip when it hit the reef. They might all be crushed.

  Sabina glared at the man. She was chanting words she had learned at her favorite store in Havana.

  Luke reached for the fishing rod. The special hook at the end of the line was designed to break easily. But the line was not. It was thick monofilament, strong enough to land a monster bull shark. Above the hook was a heavy lead sinker. When he freed the hook from an eyelet, the lead sinker swung like a miniature wrecking ball.

  “Did you hear me, Luke?” Maribel demanded. “Inflate your life vest. We have to jump before we hit those oysters. Th
ey’ll cut us to pieces.”

  The boy didn’t have to look. He knew they had only a minute or two before their boat slammed onto the reef. He could hear waves breaking over the razor-sharp shells.

  “Don’t wait on me,” he responded. “I’m coming.” To convince the girl, he yanked the string on his life vest. With a whoosh the inflatable suspenders ballooned around his neck.

  Sabina went over the side first. After a frightened glance at the boy, Maribel followed her sister.

  Without hesitating, Luke raised the fishing rod in both hands. He leaned back for leverage. When he felt the rod bend, he took aim and catapulted the fishing line forward at the airboat. The lead sinker hit the propeller cage like a gunshot.

  For a moment he thought the sinker had dropped harmlessly into the water. But when the rod was nearly snatched from his hands, he knew the line had tangled in the huge wooden blade.

  Fishing line streamed off the reel. The boy’s arms weren’t strong enough to hang on to the rod, so he dropped to the deck and braced his feet against the cooler. Slowly the rental boat turned. It was like a giant fish being dragged toward the spinning propeller.

  The bearded man, wearing earmuffs, didn’t notice. He looked over his shoulder again and grinned at the sight of the two sisters floundering in the waves. To him, this was proof that the kids who had pestered him were in serious trouble. If they survived crashing onto the reef, that was okay, too.

  “The police don’t believe anything you brats say,” he taunted.

  When the poacher was satisfied with what he’d done, he shouted something that sounded final and dismissive. He turned and didn’t look back. His attention was on the fishing trawler anchored in the distance through the rain.

  Luke clung to the rod as the airboat idled away. It began to tow the rental boat but at a much slower speed than the line melting off the reel. Their fishing reels, Hannah had told them, held nearly a quarter mile of stout monofilament. The boy knew that soon every inch of his line would be wrapped around the airboat’s propeller. But unlike the rope that had disabled their boat, the fishing line seemed to have no effect on the much larger engine.