by Nevada Barr
Cliff hung in the water nearby, as comfortable and perfectly balanced as Linda had been. At his "follow me" signal Anna kicked into motion. Once the initial sting had passed it felt wonderful to be underwater. The freedom and weightlessness of diving was the closest thing to flying unaided Anna would ever experience. It was good to stretch her bruised muscles; good to have the weight off her scraped buttocks. And it was good to be doing something other than gridding the ocean with a potential widow and finding nothing.
As they swam past the wreck, she was fascinated by the new configuration the second explosion left behind. The stern, still of a piece, had been shifted, and the floating life jacket, instead of straining for the surface, was half buried beneath. The bow section no longer existed: no structure, no cabin, just pieces blown out in a rough cone shape pointing in the direction from which Anna had been swimming. It was easy to see how Linda, much closer to the bow of the boat, had fared no worse than she had. For all their might, explosives could be aimed and channeled by containers no more substantial than wax. What had aimed this, Anna couldn't begin to guess and doubted it mattered. She had not been the target. Nor had anyone else.
Further on Cliff stopped, hovering several feet above the bottom. They were about twenty-five feet down. The ocean floor was devoid of vegetation, though not of life. Without trying, Anna found two tiny fish. One no bigger than her thumbnail vanished into a burrow in the sand at her approach. A red flag, like a surveyor's flag on an eighteen-inch wire, had been stuck in the sand. This, then, was where Bob Shaw's gun belt had been found. With a fingertip, Anna drew a spiral out around the flag, pointed to herself then Cliff. He made the okay sign with thumb and forefinger. Staying ten feet apart the two of them began swimming in an ever-widening circle with the red flag at its center.
The small desolate plain of sand and dead coral gave way to an underwater meadow of what looked to be grasses covered with fur. Soon, on the northern edge of their circle, they swam over the remnants of the sunken go-fast boat. Because of the boulders of coral, they were forced to swim nearer the surface.
On the fifth circuit, more coral intruding with its cacophony of color and confusion of life, they found Shaw's deck shoes. Twenty feet apart and tumbled into a forest of hot pink anemone, Anna was surprised they had spotted them. After the location of the second shoe was marked with another of Cliff's flags, Anna stopped. Hanging in the water, clear now that they'd moved away from the area of disturbance, she looked back across the imaginary circle till she found the red flag marking where the gun belt had been found. A compass reading from the line between shoes and flag read NNW. Turning, Anna followed a SSE heading, continuing the line.
Approximately three hundred feet farther she came upon what she'd known must be there: the Bay Ranger. A jagged hole in her bow, she lay on her side in a patch of sand beneath twenty feet of clear, still water. Had the wreck of the go-fast boat not stopped them, Danny and Linda would have found her in the next couple of passes. Already, curious fishes had come and swam languidly around the control panel and its sunshade.
The little Sylvan runabout had no cabin, no belowdecks. Anna and Cliff could see at a glance that Bob was not onboard. Had Bob been on one of the other patrol boats--both Boston Whalers--like Molly Brown, he would have been unsinkable. A Whaler would float even when cut in half, and run if you happened to be on the half with the engine. She hoped Bob's love affair with stealth hadn't killed him.
Because she'd be a fool not to, Anna swam around the boat to be sure a corpse was not pinned beneath or thrown nearby. She knew she would find nothing. Bob Shaw had been alive and swimming at one point. Either he'd left the site of the Bay and dropped first shoes and then duty belt in an attempt to reach the boat that had exploded, or he had jumped from the green boat before it sank and was swimming toward the Bay, dropping first belt then shoes.
Anna guessed it was the former for a couple reasons. Though they couldn't be sure without further investigation, it was a good bet that a piece of debris, blasted from the green boat, was the missile that smashed a hole in Bob's hull. The other reason was, knowing Bob Shaw, if he needed to offload weight, his shoes would go before his firearm.
Catching Cliff's eye, Anna pointed up. Together they surfaced. The strain of a long night, a severe pummeling and a near-death experience were catching up to Anna. Removing her snorkel, she whistled high and piercing, two fingers under her tongue the way Carl Johnson taught her in third grade. When Daniel sighted them she waved and was comforted to see him loose the two boats so they could motor over. Anna didn't feel up to swimming back, but, she told herself--as she would tell them--she remained where she was because she wanted them to see Shaw's boat.
Back onboard, scrapes again on fire from various abuses incurred boarding and stripping off gear, Anna shared what she was fairly sure was the good news.
"It looks like when the other boat exploded, a piece of it pierced Bob's hull and the Bay sank. Probably very quickly. It's a damn big hole. Bob was either thrown overboard or jumped. My bet is thrown. His radio is still on his duty belt. If he'd had time, he would have radioed for help before the water ruined it. From where we found the deck shoes and the belt, it looks as though, once in the water, Bob swam toward the other boat.
"There were survivors on it, is what I'm figuring," Anna finished.
"Bob died saving someone, or trying to?" Teddy asked. Her voice was vague, seeking her hero husband through darkness and fog, looking for an image to take to bed for a lifetime of lonely nights.
"I don't think he's dead," Anna said flatly. "He was swimming. We know he had a personal flotation device, and he was hale and hearty enough to think about saving someone's skin other than his own." She looked at East Key, a skinny ribbon of sand barely above waterline, a half-mile from the boats. "I think Bob and whoever he swam to save must be there; the closest landfall."
"Bob," Teddy said. It was half a question and half a call to the man she had come perilously close to giving up as dead.
"I think he could have tried for East Key." Anna tried to lower what could be false hopes, but it was too late. Teddy was firing up the Reef Ranger without waiting for anyone's by your leave. It was a wonder Anna and Cliff threw off the Reef's lines and saved the Curious from being bumped and towed alongside.
Anna stepped up to the bench and slid in beside Teddy. "Let me take over from here." Teddy had the boat up to ramming speed and, if the look on her face was any indication, had no intention of slowing down to beach the thing.
For a second Teddy glared at her, feral as any half-starved cat, but reason returned. She turned the boat over to Anna and moved to the bow to be that much closer to the place her husband might be.
Anna felt a pang of envy at the obvious love between the Shaws. So what if it was based on castles built in the sand of the Caribbean? And she dearly hoped she was right about Bob. After the first glad tidings and the departure of the Reef an unpleasant thought had darkened her mood. If Bob was on East Key and he was alive, why hadn't he been jumping, waving, signaling two NPS boats a mere half mile out to sea?
Cutting throttle, she let a wave catch and carry the Reef onto the sandy shoreline. East Key was concave along its western shore, creating a nice landing place. Teddy leapt ashore yelling, "Bob!" Anna stayed to give the Reef an extra pull above waterline. East Key was so small--measured not in acres and miles but yards and buckets--Teddy would either find her husband or know he wasn't there before Anna'd done.
"Bob! Bob?" Then, music to Anna's ears: "Oh, Bob."
Anna turned to follow the joyful noise. Teddy's head popped above a low dune with a prairie-dog quickness that nearly made Anna laugh.
"Bring the first-aid kit," Teddy ordered in a voice that had Anna hopping like one of Teddy's emergency-room orderlies.
The Reef's medical kit slung over one complaining shoulder, she scrambled up the dune behind which she'd seen Teddy Shaw's head. Sand ground into the abrasions on her bare legs and scorched the bottoms of he
r feet. As she topped the low dune, she forgot her petty concerns.
Ranger Shaw lay on the other side, his lower body sprawled across the legs of a dead man as if he'd lain atop the corpse before his wife turned him face up. Teddy cradled his head in her lap.
"He's not dead," she said fiercely as Anna took in the scene.
"Bleeding out?" Anna asked.
"No."
"Breathing?"
"Yes."
Shaw would live another couple minutes.
"Water," Anna said, dropped the first-aid kit where Teddy could reach it easily, and trotted back to the Reef. Shaw had suffered some kind of trauma, swum at least a half-mile if not more, either pursuing or towing another man, then lay in the sun for half a day. Dehydration would be a serious factor.
In the minutes Anna was gone Teddy completed the evolution from wife to head ER nurse. The dead man had been rolled on his side, facing away, to give him his dignity. The medical bag was set to shade Shaw's face, and Teddy had his trouser leg nearly cut off.
Anna joined her, unbuttoned Shaw's shirt, then ran both hands over his head, neck and torso to check for damage. "Back okay?" she asked as they worked.
"Clean," Teddy replied. "He was laying facedown half on the dead guy. I checked his back before I rolled him over.
"Head, neck and chest are okay," Anna said. "Oh, hey, got some eye movement."
"Not surprised. I hurt him. Look here." Below Bob's left knee the white of bone showed through the flesh. "Broken," Teddy said. "Compound. And lost a lot of blood.
"Bob, open your eyes," Teddy said commandingly.
Shaw opened his eyes; blinds going up in an empty room.
"You're okay, honey. We're here. You need to stay awake. We're going to sit you up so Anna can give you a drink."
Shaw came back into himself, his soul back in his eyes. "Water," he repeated. "Good . . ."
Cliff, Mack and Danny arrived. Bob was packaged and Danny and Mack carried him aboard the Reef. Mack argued for the Atlantic for some reason but was ignored. After the night's terrors and the day's adventures, Anna was going to carry her catch home.
She did give Mack the unidentified corpse. They didn't have a body bag and the remains, made festive by beach towels, were strapped to a backboard.
Teddy stayed at Bob's side murmuring endearments and giving him as many small sips of water as he would take. The bleeding around the fracture had stopped on its own hours before. Compound fractures were always bad, but where the exposed end of the bone had been drying in sun and jammed full of sand for five hours, complications proliferated. Other than rehydration, neither Anna nor Teddy would attempt treatment. Anna radioed Duncan, the fort's historian, to call the mainland for a helicopter. Before the Reef Ranger brought her cargo to the dock, he radioed back to let her know one had been dispatched.
Mack and Danny carried Bob to his wife's "hospital." The corpse was housed in the researcher's dorm with the air conditioning turned as cold as the thermostat had numbers for. The body would fly back to Key West with Bob and Teddy Shaw.
Everyone was anxious to hear Bob's story, but at Teddy's request, they left the infirmary. Mack, more tenacious or more curious, was inclined to ignore requests, and Anna had ordered him out. After that he remembered his manners and left with good grace. Nobody but the Shaws seemed to want to admit the adventure was over.
With water to drink, a saline IV drip to assist, and a cool dim place, Bob regained full consciousness. Anna asked to do the intravenous drip, needing the "sticks" to keep her IV status as an emergency medical technician current. After she failed twice, leaving small bloody prints behind, Teddy snatched the needle away and inserted it neatly.
"I'd have got it in another try," Anna said.
"Bob's suffered enough."
Anna knew that, but "sticks" were hard to come by.
After a shot of Demerol authorized over the phone by the medivac doctor and administered by his wife, Bob bordered on jocular. Sometimes being alive did that to a person.
When Bob was as comfortable as possible, Anna pulled up a stool and sat by the bedside facing him. Several times she breathed in and out, ridding her feverish brain of the strangeness and ghostly half-images that had plagued her since being awakened by Teddy in the middle of the night. Mind clean and open, she was ready to listen.
"So," she said. "Tell me what happened." She half expected to get a rebuke from Teddy. Though alert and oriented, Bob was in pretty bad shape. Teddy said nothing, and it occurred to Anna that heroes, regardless of personal injury, were expected to make it back through enemy lines to report, even if they had to do it with their last breath.
Bob began his tale with scattered thoughts and broken time lines, stopped, made adjustments inside his skull, and began again, this time at the beginning.
"Just before midnight I was heading in from checking the northwest boundary of the park. Three shrimpers, all outside our waters. Two family-owned. Been here before. Never been any trouble. The third looked like trouble. Details in my patrol log."
Bob's patrol log was providing reading for the fishes, but Anna didn't interrupt.
"As I came past Loggerhead, I caught a glint of something toward East Key. No lights, nothing like that, just a place on the water that didn't match up. I radioed in . . ."
His voice trailed off, and Anna watched his eyes grow dull as he searched his mind for verification of his words.
"You called in," Teddy said, taking the place of memory. "You told me you were onto something and needed radio silence."
"Okay. I radioed in, then turned off my running lights and cruised toward the place on the water. With binoculars I could see it was a Scarab--one of those go-fast boats, like a cigarette boat but bigger and only a few years old. It was black or some dark color, moored in the middle of a coral bed, no lights. Two people onboard. Maybe three but at least two. Could see the lit ends of their cigarettes. Looked hinky.
"About fifty yards out I turned my light on them and hailed. The boat was deep metallic green and rode low in the water like it was loaded to the gunwales. Not usual for a go-fast boat. They'd have heard my motor so my being there was no surprise, but as soon as they realized I was law enforcement, one guy ducks into the cabin and the other fires up the engine. He got panicked or something and didn't take time to turn on the fans to purge the bilge and engine compartment of gas fumes.
"Must have been a spark, because it blew up. A piece of it hit my boat. I was thrown overboard. My boat sank, theirs burned a second then went down."
Bob stopped and rubbed his eyes with both fists like a sleepy child. "God, it was fast," he said, sounding less like a Joe Friday and more like a real person. "Two boats afloat. Bang. Flash. Both boats gone like they never happened. I didn't know they could sink that fast. I might have a funny time sense. I was never out cold, but things were hazy after I went overboard. Just for a couple seconds." This last was to Teddy, who nodded as if she expected no less from him.
"I could see one of the passengers on the other boat--I think the one that started the engine--was still alive but in a bad way. I got my PFD inflated and started to swim over to give him a hand. Till then I didn't know my leg had been hit--it didn't hurt, nothing. Once I knew, it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. Anyway I swam toward the guy but with my leg it was rough going and I had to drop my duty belt. I lost my sidearm."
Bob looked at his wife, loath to admit this gross failing on his part.
"Only a damn fool would have kept their gun given the circumstances. Anyway, Cliff found it for you," Anna said. "Go on."
"I got to the guy. He was alive but hurting and not able to help himself. I towed him to East Key--and tried to get up a signal fire. I couldn't manage it. By the time the sun came up the guy was breathing bad. I tried to shade him. Then I don't remember anything till Teddy yelling, 'Bob.'" He smiled at his wife and Anna looked away, not to give them a moment's privacy but because their faces had blurred. She rubbed her eyes, wondering if she needed sleep or
what. When she looked again they were back in focus.
"The man you saved--"
"He died."
"Still counts," Anna said. "The man never said anything?"
"Not much. He was never fully there, if you know what I mean. He was burned, and I think he'd been struck on the head. Pain and concussion or whatever had him scrambled."
"What did he say?" Anna asked.
"Let's see." Bob closed his eyes the better to recall. "He was scared, wanted to get to dry land. 'Feet on American soil,' he said once. Once he said, 'cold' and then I thought he was saying 'tree saw' but it made no sense. Nothing he said made sense."
For a minute, or maybe more, Anna waited in case Bob should wish to add anything, but he didn't. "I'll let you rest," she said. "Your ride should be here in half an hour or so. I want to get a look at the man you saved before they haul him off to the knackers."
As she closed the infirmary door it suddenly struck her that Bob had done it. When reality came knocking he'd been able to act out his fantasy. He'd swum over half a mile with a compound fracture dragging behind him a man he'd saved from the briny deep. He'd tried to build a signal fire and, when he felt himself blacking out, his last thought was to fall in such a way as to protect the other guy from the burning rays of the sun.
That made him a genuine, bona-fide hero in Anna's book.
Later there would be time to fete Bob, to wonder why the riders of the green go-fast boat were hovering off East Key, why they panicked sufficiently when they saw law enforcement to forget to clear the gasoline fumes, and why they carried extra fuel in their bow. Right now she had a corpse to examine. The helicopter from Key West would be at the fort in less than thirty minutes to whisk this bit of human jetsam away.
It took her only a minute to fetch a camera and return to the researcher's dorm. Danny and Mack did their work well. All six generators must have been working overtime. The dorm was as cold as a morgue. And as dim. The long narrow room, packed floor-to-ceiling with bunk beds, had but one window facing out on the parade ground, and that was dull with a cataract of mini-blinds.
