The Shipkiller

by Justin Scott

  A jaratu woke during the night. Hardin’s overhead luminous dial clock said four. The boat was pitching and she was cold. She reached for Peter—remembering. Her body felt liquid, deep, and brimming. She tasted him in her mouth and smelled him on her hands. He wasn’t there. A sail crackled sharply overhead like pistol shots. It invaded her memories and confused her.

  Then the sound stopped and the boat lunged forward and stopped pitching and she realized that he had adjusted the rig. Trembling with cold and anticipation, she crawled into his sleeping bag and waited for him to trim the steering gear and come back to her. She awakened again at dawn, curled in a tight ball with her hands between her thighs, still alone. The boat was heeling. It sliced through a wave and spray plumed past the window.

  The teak cabin was yellow-gray with first light. She found the parts of her bikini, put them on, and draped one of his work shirts around her shoulders. Then she shook out her hair with her fingers and went up to the cockpit.

  Hardin was standing squarely behind the binnacle with both hands on the wheel, his eyes on the sails, his leg muscles flexing with the boat’s motion. Bracing herself against the sharp heel, Ajaratu edged toward him and kissed him shyly. He reached around her and cranked one of the winches.

  “You look like an old man,” she said. “Your hair is white.”

  His face was caked with salt spray. She waited for a reply, got none, and looked around. Waves were lapping the Swan’s lee rail. The stern wake poured furiously behind them and the boat seemed to leap across the troughs.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  There was a third sail between the main and the big genoa, rigged like a jib from a new stay between the mast and the forestay.

  “Staysail,” said Hardin. “I rigged it last night.”

  “Why?”

  “Speed. But it’s not working too well; it’s robbing the genny. That’s the trouble with a sloop. On a ketch you’ve got seventeen places to hang a sail, but it just doesn’t work that way with one mast.”

  Ajaratu nodded uncertainly. She had never seen the Swan strain so. What had been a broad and comfortable platform on the sea had become a tilting, racing sliver, cutting the water like an angry knife.

  “Would you like coffee?”

  “Please.”

  She edged back down to the galley. She tied the coffeepot to the gas range with an elastic shock cord and braced herself against the stove as she measured the coffee. It was getting low. When they got to Monrovia, she would help him shop to provision the Swan for the crossing to South America.

  Tears splashed onto the pot and sizzled away. It wasn’t the leaving. She wouldn’t shed those tears until after he had gone. But why hadn’t he said anything about the night? She thought she had pleased him. She knew she had. She alone couldn’t have felt such pleasure.

  She poured the brewed coffee and climbed the companionway with his cup. The Swan was leaning way over. She looked at the water racing past and admitted what she had known since she had awakened. Hardin was driving the boat, racing for Monrovia, rushing to put her off, chafing to be alone.

  He took the coffee with a quick nod.

  “Would you like me to spell you?” she asked.

  “Thanks.” He moved aside so she could stand where she could see the binnacle, tapped the compass, and said, “One eighty on the nose.”

  The boat was close-hauled and it took her several minutes to adjust to the feel of it. It kept trying to turn into the wind and the wheel required more than the usual restraining pressure to stay on course.

  Hardin corrected her twice—sharply the second time—before he sat and took a sip of his coffee. Soon he put it in the gimbled holder and cranked the staysail winch. Though he was no longer steering, his eyes were still restless on the sails. Ajaratu spread her feet on the slanting deck and gradually got used to the wheel. It tugged like something alive, but it took less strength than concentration to control it.

  Hardin stood abruptly. Her eyes shot to the compass. She was afraid she’d gone off, but he said, “Head upwind a hair. I gotta drop the staysail. It’s not pulling worth a damn.”

  She let the Swan go up. Hardin winched the sail in, ran forward, lowered it, and stuffed it down the forehatch.

  “Back to one eighty!” he yelled as he went down the hatch to stow the sail. When he returned to the cockpit, he adjusted the sliding snatch block through which ran the genoa sheet. His eyes were busy, flicking from sail to sail, to the water, to the telltales, to the sky, and back to the sails. A luff rippled the main. He winched it out.

  “Wind’s shifting north.”

  “We’re flying!” she said.

  “And it’s dropping off, dammit.”

  “You look tired.”

  “I’m fine.” His eyes shot to the top of the main. “Watch the sail. It’s telling you you’re off.”

  “Sorry.”

  She brought the Swan back to one eighty. What was he doing? Why rush? What harm in a few days together? She brought her fingers to her throat, remembering the things they had done last night. Her cross was gone.

  She laughed. “Do you want to hear something funny?”

  “You’re heading up.”

  “Sorry.” She corrected, then spoke. “Do your remember that you said I was religious? We broke the chain for my gold cross.”

  Hardin glanced from the straining staysail. His eyes met hers and for just a moment they softened his face in a way she had never seen.

  “Thank you for last night.”

  Her heart flew. “Did you . . . ? I thought you were sorry.”

  He searched her face and brushed her lips with his, making her tremble. “I’m only sorry that it’s not another time and another place.”

  “What other time?” she murmured.

  “Any other time.” He looked away.

  “Did you see my cross?” she asked.

  “No. It’s probably in the berth.” His attention returned to the sails. The wind continued to shift toward the north, dropping in strength, until the main and the genoa were boomed far out and the Swan’s speed grew slower and slower. When it was almost dead astern, Hardin said, “I’m going to try a spinnaker.”

  Ajaratu took the helm and followed the orders he shouted from the foredeck. After lowering the genoa jib, Hardin attached the spinnaker halyard to the big light sail, fastened the spinnaker pole, clipped on its sheets and guys, and quickly hoisted it opposite the main. Returning to the cockpit, he pulled the pole aft.

  The sail filled like a balloon. The boat seemed to lift out of the water as the straining nylon bulged ahead of it. Hardin cast a triumphant glance at the boiling wake.

  Ajaratu was captured by his excitement and the boat’s powerful response. It surged through the sea, and because the wind was astern, it moved quietly, the only sound being the bow wave and the bubbling trail astern. It seemed to go faster and faster as the white sun rose in the limpid tropical sky. Even when the day grew hot and the water flattened, the Swan still flew.

  Hardin controlled the spinnaker sheets. Its very size made it delicate and he watched it closely, surveying its billowing surface, measuring the wind, testing, evaluating, accommodating.

  Ajaratu became absorbed in the Swan’s rhythm; she began to feel a mystical kinship with the sails and the lines, knowing almost ahead of time what to do to drive her best, when to ease off, when to take in, when to steer with the helm, and when to guide her with the sails.

  They ran for hours, rarely speaking, married to their tasks, lost in the lifting, driving speed. At last, as the lowering sun yellowed like old paper, Ajaratu began to tire. Her concentration lagged.

  “One eighty,” snapped Hardin. “Steady.”

  “I have to eat,” she replied. “You should, too.”

  Hardin said nothing.

  “Can we ease off for a while? Let me make something to eat.”

  “I’ll take her,” he said. “Just be ready to come running if the wind picks up. It feels like
it’s going to.”

  She went below and again she worried that he regretted making love with her and wanted her gone, off his boat, out of his life. The boat rolled unpleasantly with the spinnaker and, as she had the coffeepot, she tied down the kettle to heat water for soup. She trimmed mold from the bread’s crust, unwrapped some cheese, and cut up their last apple. The fresh food was almost gone, nothing left but the rows and rows of cans.

  Suddenly she felt she had been at sea too long. She wanted to see land, to smell soil. She thought of a green salad fresh from the kitchen garden. Crisp lettuce and icy radishes. It was the rolling, she decided. The constant side-to-side motion was depressing.

  While she waited for the water to boil, she tidied up his bunk and looked for her cross. It wasn’t in his sleeping bag. Nor was it on the settee beneath the berth. She knelt on the settee, gripping the edge of the bunk, and laid her cheek on the foam cushion and tried to think of a reason not to cry.

  Her cross glinted on the cabin floor. She crawled under the table, but when she tried to pick it up she found that the chain was caught in a crack in the floor.

  It was time to douse the spinnaker.

  The wind was rising quickly. He called Ajaratu. She didn’t answer. Probably in the head where she couldn’t hear. A strong gust caught the sail, pulling the Swan forward in an awkward lunge. He decided not to wait for her.

  He engaged the steering gear, slacked the spinnaker guy, and started forward, snapping his safety harness around his torso and connecting it to the center line. As he reached up to release the spinnaker pole, the wind filled the headsail, even though he had slacked the guy. There was too much pressure on the pole to move it. He yelled for Ajaratu. The wind whipped the words away.

  He hesitated, afraid to lower the bellying sail because if it fell ahead, the boat would run it over. Better to spill the wind. Fast. It was blowing hard. He raced back to the cockpit, slacked the spinnaker guy some more, and started to winch in the leeward sheet. It was too late. A powerful gust whipped the crest off a wave, wetted his face, and banged into the sails.

  The spinnaker blew apart with a thunderous report.

  Hardin gaped at the split nylon flapping like a pair of pants on a wash line.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  He leaped forward and caught the flailing spinnaker pole before it broke its mast fitting, secured it in its niche beside the cabin, then lowered the torn sail in stages, struggling to keep the billowing mess out of the water. When he had it down, he steered back to one eighty, set the self-steering, and stormed below to see what the hell had happened to Ajaratu.

  The kettle whistle was shrilling and the steam had beaded drops of water on the teak cabinet doors behind the stove. Ajaratu was kneeling on the cabin floor. For a second he had the crazy thought that she was praying. Then he saw the floorboards heaped to one side. She was staring into the open pit of the bilge beneath the dining table. She faced him, her eyes wide with disbelief.

  “What are you doing?” asked Hardin. He turned off the gas jet and the kettle quieted.

  “I was trying to find my cross,” she said in a choked voice. “The chain was stuck in a crack.”

  Hardin approached the bilge and looked in. She had pried the top from the wooden crate. He supposed he would have too if he had seen the U.S. ARMY stencil. The rocket was a deadly-looking cylinder, its thickness awesome, its purpose unmistakable, dark and evil as a lie.

  “Are you mad?” she breathed, still crouching over the hole.

  Hardin stared down at her, his hands working at his sides. Was this the price of letting go? Retribution for betraying Carolyn?

  “It’s madness!”

  “No,” said Hardin. “It’s not madness.”

  “What is it then?” she asked loudly, rising and advancing on him, searching his face with anxious eyes. “Suicide?”

  “It’s my life,” said Hardin. “Not yours. But no, it is not suicide. Now get up on deck!”

  She planted her feet firmly and stared back at him. “Can you rationally say that you don’t care about the lives of the people on that ship?”

  “They’ll have time to get off.”

  “Are you quite sure?” she said witheringly. “Or did you just think of that? ”

  “I don’t have to convince you, Ajaratu. Take the helm. We’re close to the shipping lanes.” He knelt on the cabin sole and began replacing the floorboards. She stood over him, unmoving.

  “If just one man doesn’t get off in time you’ll be a murderer.”

  “They’ll get off.”

  “You don’t realize what you’re doing, Peter.”

  He looked at her coldly. “The helm.”

  She stalked up the companionway. Hardin finished resealing the rocket crate, then went out on the foredeck to untangle the spinnaker sheets. The fore guy had jammed in its eye fitting and he crouched at the stem, struggling to free it. It didn’t matter about the spinnaker. He had another—and besides, it was an awfully big sail to fly alone. The Swan fell off a sea. The bow plunged and

  Hardin lost his balance. He had to drop the fore guy and hold fast to the lifelines.

  “Wear your safety harness!” Ajaratu yelled from the cockpit.

  He ran to the cockpit where he’d left it. Even in light seas, he had drummed into her, wear the harness whenever working near the edge.

  “Sorry,” he said, as he buckled it on. “I forgot.” He looked at her. She sat stiffly beside the helm. It sounded so stupid. She called him a murderer and he apologized for not wearing his safety harness. She returned his look with smoldering eyes.

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing. It’s funny. You hate me, but you want me to be careful.”

  “Do you think I could sail this bloody boat alone?” She burst into tears. “Please. I don’t hate you. Listen to me, Peter, please.”

  Hardin sat beside her, surprised by her tears. She had been a cool, almost forbidding presence at her hospital, and unceasingly cheerful aboard the boat, but now she was dissolving like a child. Her body heaved and shuddered. He took her in his arms.

  She pressed her face to his chest. “We’ve shared so much. I can’t believe you’re the kind of man to do such a thing.”

  Hardin gripped her shoulders, held her at arms’ length, and forced her to meet his eyes. “Now listen to me. That ship destroyed everything I cared about.”

  “Care about new things,” she demanded. “Care about living.”

  “Not until I’m through with the past.”

  “It’s not for you to finish the past. It’s done.”

  “It’s not over.”

  “A man can’t proclaim when a moment is over.”

  “The hell I can’t.”

  “But vengeance is God’s right, not yours.”

  “I was waiting for Him. Next you’ll tell me that LEVIATHAN stomping my boat into the ocean was an act of God.”

  “Perhaps it was an act of God.”

  “Well you just consider this a reaction of man.”

  Her face set in hard lines and the tears stopped. Hardin stood up angrily. The boat was suddenly very small. He started forward to put up a headsail, then he grabbed her shoulders again.

  “I’m going to tell you one more thing. You take it any way you want. I thought I was going crazy. Nightmares were tearing my head up. I was dying inside. Right up to the moment I knew for certain the one thing I had to do was sink that monster.”

  “Have you no doubts?”

  He drew her closer. “I was afraid to make love to you. I thought you might soften me.”

  “Did I?”

  “No. You made me a lot tougher.”

  “How?” Puzzled.

  “You reminded me how happy I’d been.”

  She contemplated his face, searched his expression. “If I were on LEVIATHAN, would you still—”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference.”

  “What?”

  “You’d get off with the rest of them.�
��

  “How can you be so sure?” she asked, her eyes probing his.

  “You have no idea how big it is. It’s not going to sink like a stone or vaporize. It will take a long time to die.”

  “You’re out of your mind, Peter. If it’s that big, how can you possibly sink it?”

  “I know its flaw.”

  “You’ll be killed.”

  “That’s not part of my plan,” he said with a small smile.

  Ajaratu pulled away from his hands.

  “What if I try to stop you?” she asked. “What would you do to protect your vengeance?”

  Hardin stared at her.

  “Would you kill me?”

  He smiled coldly. “I’ve already figured that out. I’m putting you in a dinghy at the Monrovia harbor and then I’m taking off like a bat out of hell.”

  “And what is to stop me from reporting your intentions?”

  “Somebody beat you to it. They’re hunting for me with an armed helicopter.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know it.”

  “Then it’s over anyway. You can’t do it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Hardin gave her a thin smile. “So you can turn me in?”

  She shook her head angrily. “I didn’t say I would.”

  “I can’t take the chance.”

  “What if I give you my word?”

  “I’d suspect you were humoring a madman.”

  She brushed by him and disappeared down the companionway. He ran up the genoa and pushed the Swan to make up the speed lost since the spinnaker blew. The trade wind—unusually far south according to the Sailing Directions—blew steadily stronger, and occasionally the Brookes and Gatehouse speedometer showed an incredible ten knots.

  Ajaratu returned to the cockpit. She was silent for an hour. Her face was devoid of expression, turned inward. Hardin watched the speedometer needle’s fits and starts. He wondered if the instrument’s propeller shaft was worn. He would check the speeds against the distance covered between sun shots as soon as he got another long run with the wind astern.

  “Look,” he said suddenly, leaning over the leeward side and pointing at the bow.

  She hesitated before following his lead, but an involuntary cry of pleasure escaped her lips when she saw the trade-wind rainbow dancing in the gossamer spray of the bow wave.