by Justin Scott
He had to mislead the escort. Deep in the bilge was the radar reflector he had removed at the Quoins. The rubber dinghy trailed astern. It had been easier to tow than deflate and, knowing that if he needed the boat he would need it fast, he had left it inflated. He wondered if he could step a mast on the rubber boat, attach the radar reflector, and sail it away from him at the moment of attack. Would the new radar blip draw the naval squadron far enough from LEVIATHAN to let him get close enough for a shot?
A tanker loomed to starboard, inbound. He started the engine and hurried across its bows. When he reached the side of the channel he kept going, away from the traffic, into the darkness, steering for an empty-looking patch several miles to the north. It was a broad area bracketed by two sea-rig fireballs. He headed for the dark center where no light from either gas flare penetrated.
A dim, white electric light grew apparent in the darkness. Thinking it was atop a deserted drilling rig that might offer concealment while he constructed his decoy, he steered toward it.
The light was nearer than he had assumed. The reason for the miscalculation, he saw in its down glow, was that it was much lower than a drilling rig and illuminated instead a bullet-shaped buoy, twenty feet high, that bobbed gently in the low swells.
The water shushed around it each time it rose, and gurgled expectantly when it fell. Hardin circled, puzzled, wondering what it was doing here all by itself. Whatever, the light was too bright. It shone on the Swan’s decks, making her visible from the air. He twirled the helm and steered back toward the dark.
The Swan pivoted violently and stopped dead.
Hardin was driven to his knees by the impact.
He scrambled to his feet and hauled in the flapping jib. What the hell had he hit? There’d been no sound of collision, no grinding of fiberglass, but in one instant the boat had been gliding at two and a half knots, and the next she was motionless, as if she had been snared in a soft net.
Something thrashed in the water. He spotted it in the glow of the buoy light, a fleshy-looking cylinder floating on the surface. It was a dozen feet long and at each end it coiled under water. One end submerged immediately ahead of the bow. Hardin stared, trying to fathom what it was. Over a foot in diameter and undulating on the swell, it looked like a giant squid’s tentacle.
He shuddered despite the absurdity. The Swan drifted closer to the buoy. Shining his five-cell flashlight on it, he saw Arabic characters, and beneath them western letters.
Stand Clear of Floating Hoses.
He’d fouled an offshore loading buoy. No wonder it was by itself; the tankers needed room to swing with the tide. He scanned the red horizons with his binoculars. There were no boats or lights heading toward him at the moment, so he got the boat hook and checked the length of the Swan for more hoses. Finding none, he stood in the bow pulpit and leaned out as far as he could.
The hose lay flat on the water. In the flashlight beam it was bright orange. He couldn’t reach it with the boat hook. The wind was blowing the Swan past the buoy, increasing the distance between the boat and the hose. Hardin waited, hoping. The hose tightened and the boat stopped. It was stuck on the keel.
He tied a short length of line to a small grappling hook he had stowed with the spare anchors and attached it to the boat hook, which he extended as far as he could and jutted back and forth. The grappling hook swung in a wider and wider arc. He gave it one more thrust and dropped the boathook’s tip into the water. The grappling hook flew over the hose, fell in the water and gripped it underneath. Hardin pulled in the hook, grabbed the line, and heaved.
The hose came closer. Putting his back into it, he slowly pulled the boat and hose together, then tried to lift it out of the water. It wouldn’t budge.
He pictured what had happened when the Swan hit the hose. The fin keel had driven deep into a fold of the empty tube. Then, when the boat had pivoted around the centrally placed keel, a loop had formed and tightened. It probably wouldn’t have happened if there weren’t sharp barnacles on the keel; the plastic hose would have slipped off.
Still, since the keel was neither deep nor straight, a little movement should dislodge the hose. He backed the jib until it filled and, wrapping the sheet around a forward winch, tried to sail her into the wind. She moved forward, then stopped with an elastic lurch. He let her drift back, then tried again. Again she held.
He tried to sail at right angles to the hose, but each time, after he had gotten a few yards, the buoy was still beside him, bobbing up and down mockingly, telling him he hadn’t moved. He decided he had to use the engine at the risk of fouling the propeller.
He checked the horizons again, and briefly considered knocking out the light atop the buoy. But it was protected inside a miniature steel cell like a dangerous prisoner.
He started the engine and tried to reverse away. The back of the fin was perpendicular, which would make reversing free difficult, but it had the advantage of moving the propeller away from the hose instead of toward it.
The hose and the boat remained one. Reluctantly, he eased the throttle forward, his hand poised to disengage. The Swan gathered way. He went back to neutral and let her momentum tug the hose. It stopped him like a rubberband. He tried starting fast, but the short space he could move in prevented him from getting enough way on the Swan to break loose.
He was down to one last possibility. He eased the boat forward to the limit the hose would allow, then slowly increased the power, keeping one hand on the throttle to stop the propeller as soon as she broke free. He held the ignition key with the other hand and watched the tachometer. The engine speed rose higher and higher. A thousand rpm’s, fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred. The Swan shuddered with the effort. Sixteen hundred.
She lurched forward.
Hardin yanked the throttle and cut the ignition, but he was too late. Before he had turned the key, he felt the prop bite into the hose, and heard a growl which stopped with a loud bang. The engine raced for an instant before the broken ignition stopped it.
The Swan drifted about in a broad circle. Her bow swung away from the buoy, but Hardin slumped in the cockpit, cursing himself bitterly.
He’d snapped the propeller shaft. In one split second of miscalculation he had hurled the Swan back to the nineteenth century. She had only her sails now. Only the wind to propel her and no hope of repair.
If LEVIATHAN came during a dead calm, he was finished. If the wind swung east, he was finished. If they saw his white sails, he was finished. He cursed again. How could they miss them?
The angry words died in his throat. The Swan had stopped drifting. The distance between her and the buoy hadn’t changed. The hose had wrapped around the prop. She was still caught.
There was only one way loose.
He couldn’t look at the red-black water. His fear was complete, total, as real and paralyzing as steel manacles.
He imagined the anchor chain that held the loading buoy and how slimy and overgrown it must have become. The mooring base and the underwater pipeline would act as a reef and, like a natural reef, every cranny would shelter some fish, or crustacean, or snake. And it would be dark, so dark he couldn’t see them, and his flashlight would lure them.
The snake’s bite was painless. You might not know it had pierced your skin. Socrates’ death notice—numb legs—would be the first you knew. He shivered spasmodically.
If he ditched the Dragon and waited for morning, a patrol boat or a tanker come to load would find him. There would be a lot of trouble, but nothing they could prove. The Arabs or the Iranians might get a bit tough, but with no crime committed against them and, with luck, American extradition for stealing the Dragon, they would let him go. Once he was back on U.S. soil Bill Kline would eat the charges for breakfast. Clean record, military service, upstanding citizen, businessman, doctor, suffering the awful aftermath of his wife’s death . . .
It would wash. What other evidence besides the Dragon? . . . Nothing but his log. Hurriedly, he thumbed through i
t for incriminating entries. Best to chuck the whole damn thing over the side. He threw it, and as it pinwheeled into the water, loose pieces of paper fell from the pages. He hooked up the block and tackle to hoist the Dragon out of the cabin. One of Ajaratu’s letters had fallen on the deck. It was the second one, the one he hadn’t read. He picked it up.
“Yesterday,” she wrote in a bold open hand, “I tried to dissuade you.”
I doubt that I did. I tried again today, but all I had left in me was a love letter. I miss you so. I’m feeling things I never did before and speaking words I never could.
I love you in ways I’ll need a lifetime to tell you.
I love how you look and touch and feel and smell.
I love how you rend me and make me whole.
I love how you hold me and make me fly apart.
I love the things you are, the things you have been, and the things you will be.
I love every moment we’ve had together, every kiss we’ve shared, every caress, every embrace.
I love the tears I’ve shed for you.
I love the laughter and the smiles.
I love the things you say.
I love the life you’ve shown me.
Please give it back.
She had scrawled tightly at the bottom of the page, “I’m sure this sounds silly to you. Perhaps these are just the feelings I would have felt if we’d had more time. . . . God go with you.”
Hardin put the letter back in the chart-table drawer. There wasn’t a word in the poem that he couldn’t have said to Carolyn.
Her face floated on the red water, the clearest he had seen her in weeks. Tears welled into his eyes. For a moment it seemed as if it had just happened and the emptiness was as horrible as his fear.
Sick and trembling, he looked for a way to protect himself from the snakes. A rubber wet suit would have been good armor against their smallish fangs, but he didn’t have diving gear because he hated diving, so he scoured the boat for a substitute. If he was going in, he had no time to waste. The boat was exposed in the glow of the buoy light and LEVIATHAN was steaming closer every minute.
His vinyl-coated heavy-weather gear might stop the snake teeth, but the garments hung loosely. He put on the pants and wrapped the voluminous folds close to his skin with elastic shock cord. Then he donned his sneakers and the jacket and wound the arms with shock cord until they fit snugly. His ankles, hands, and face were bare. He cut strips of material from the spare gear—Ajaratu’s—and wrapped his ankles. He tried to cut a mask, but it didn’t work and he hadn’t the time to try again. He put on work gloves and tightened the jacket hood over his brow and chin. His eyes, nose, and mouth were exposed.
He slipped his three sharpest knives and his cable cutters into the shock cord and tied a line around his waist and fastened it to a cleat in the cockpit. Then he stepped over the lifelines and sat on the gunnel. For a terrible instant, freed of the tasks, he let his mind return to the fear, the things in the water, the snakes.
He tried to calm himself with the theory that animals don’t attack unless provoked. But among many species invasion of territory was provocation in the extreme. A grimmer, more satisfying thought came to mind. The venom’s paralysis didn’t start for several hours; time, perhaps, to sink LEVIATHAN even if he were bitten.
Drawing a deep, sobbing breath, he lowered himself slowly off the hull into the water. It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did: The water was almost as warm as the air. He clung to the gunnel, then dropped off. The heavy clothing pulled him under. He fought the impulse to struggle to the surface, and let himself sink.
The water was pitch-black. He had expected the red sky to glow beneath the swells. He turned on the flashlight. The beam was not up to full power. The batteries had been in the damp too long. He felt the hull and knew by its curve that he wasn’t deep enough, so he stroked up to push down.
Something rubbery brushed his face.
Hardin recoiled. He struck out blindly with the flashlight, and clawed at the knife on his belt. He felt it again and cried out in fear. Water filled his mouth. Thrashing wildly against the hull, he struggled to the surface and emerged coughing and gagging, and shaking with terror. The heavy rubber clothing dragged him under and again his mouth filled. He struggled, sinking, and dropped the flashlight. It jerked up short on the line attached to his wrist.
His lifeline. He grabbed it and pulled himself up to the surface, where he spit water and regained control.
Then he let go the line and pushed under again. The flashlight shone on something that moved. It was sinuous, undulating. His eyes locked on it as he drew closer. The light reflected orange. A piece of the hose. It was drifting from the propeller. He grabbed it and pulled himself under the Swan.
The flashlight beam penetrated about two feet and he found the propeller more by feel than by sight. Passing the light over the blades, the shaft and the rudder skeg, he found where the ripped hose had tangled and where he would have to cut. By then, he was running out of air.
He forced himself to wait while he pulled down his excess line and looped it around the propeller shaft. Then he raced for the surface, filled his lungs, and pulled himself back down to the propeller by the line he had tied.
He turned off the flashlight and let it dangle from his wrist because it gave him the use of that hand and because he feared that the light would attract the snakes. The hose was made of a strong plastic and reinforced with tough, lengthwise fibers that resisted the knife. He drew it tight and sawed until he ran out of air, pulled himself to the surface, took a breath, and went back down into the warm, dark water. The first knife quickly dulled, and when he went up again for air he tossed it into the boat and took out his second knife. Slowly the hose parted, strip by strip, fiber by fiber. He surfaced for air, and when he got back down he turned on the flashlight to check his progress.
Something nudged his arm. He recoiled, thinking snake, then brushed it away, realizing it was a scrap of the hose, and raised his knife to cut some more. It hit him again. Harder. And again. On his chest. Sinuous muscle strained behind the blows. A life. Hardin shone the flashlight against his body.
A snub-nosed head—as big as a fist and mottled with thick scales—smashed into the lens. A sea snake with lidless serpent eyes as black as coal. The scales parted, the mouth hinged open.
Hardin scrambled back and knocked his head against the hull. The snake struck again, thrusting a gaping mouth against Hardin’s rubber jacket, forcing him hard against the rudder. A serrated row of teeth, slivery as fishbones, gleamed in the yellow light. It hit repeatedly, with the rhythmic speed of a jackhammer, its venom fangs reaching greedily beyond its needle teeth.
Hardin slashed at it with his knife. The water cushioned his blows, and the snake, fast as light, hit three times for every move he made. Had it penetrated the vinyl foul-weather gear? He didn’t know; he kept swinging the knife and trying to dodge the hammering head. It snapped at his neck. Belatedly, Hardin put his gloved hand over his unprotected face.
Disembodied by darkness, the gaping mouth shot into the light, hit, disappeared, and hit again. It was only a matter of time or accident before the creature went for his face.
Hardin forced himself to stop struggling. He turned off the flashlight and dropped his knife. Then he covered his face with both hands, pressed the lifeline between his fingers and his cheek so he wouldn’t sink, and tried to lie still in the water. Was it alone? Or were additional defenders streaming out of a nearby nest?
He felt the snake batter his legs. Shot after shot. Had it found a place it could penetrate the vinyl? The muscular body writhed against his knees. It curled around his thighs. And hit. Hardin felt himself tightening. It attacked again, higher. He squirmed. It passed between his legs, twitching and shuddering. It struck his groin.
He recoiled violently, unable to control the convulsion. The snake butted his hip. He hung still again, waiting. It brushed his waist.
His lungs were empty. His he
ad was starting to pound from lack of oxygen and he could hear his heart beating louder and louder. The snake was slowing its attack, hitting less often, tentatively. Was it tiring or probing his defenses? It struck his chest. Then his shoulder. He pressed his hands tightly to his face.
The scaly head nudged his fingers. He squeezed them together, torn between an almost irresistible compulsion to try to grab the thing and rip it to shreds and the sure knowledge that he wasn’t fast enough. Again the blunt head shoved between his fingers.
Hardin pressed his palms against his mouth to keep from screaming into the water.
The head withdrew. He waited, his chest aching. Had it gone? It struck his forehead above his fingers on the rubber hood of the foul-weather jacket. It hit hard, several more times, then stopped. Hardin waited for a fresh assault. He could feel his heart pounding behind his eyes. He had reached his limit.
Still holding one hand over his face, he worked his way up the rope, pulling smoothly so as not to threaten the snake with sudden movement. He brushed past the rounded hull, broke the surface, and gasped deep breaths of the reeking air. He held the rope with one hand, covered his face with the other, and waited for the snake.
Had it given up? Had it established its territory? Or had the attack ended because its instincts told it that Hardin must be dead? Or had it, like Hardin, merely retired to the surface for air. Was it waiting below with a full lung, ready to do battle as soon as he returned?
He took a final breath and let himself sink down the rope to the bottom of his boat. Another knife. He pressed the blade to the hose, pulled the material taut, and tried to cut with short, regular strokes, tried to blend with the dark water. It was very quiet. He heard his heart and he felt the vibrations of the blade against the hose. All other motion seemed suspended. He cut and he waited, as if he were watching a paper barrier through which something was going to burst.
