Hell's Bay

by James W. Hall

  Rusty was groaning softly in my arms. “Aw, Jesus . . . aw, Jesus.”

  I skimmed my hands across her body until I found it. Rusty’s left knee was blown open. A single fragment of bone poked through her tattered trousers. Her head lolled in my arms. Aw, Jesus. The gunfire kept time to its demented metronome, opening hole after hole in the thin skin of the Mothership.

  I hooked an arm around her chest and, flat on my belly, wormed our bodies across the deck to the salon door and into the cabin that was half full of bay water.

  And still they came, one and-a two and-a three and-a four. The thousand-feet-per-second chunks of lead cartwheeled through the walls and windows, Sasha squeezing off another round and another, following the beat of the mad conductor’s baton.

  Mona was huddled in the passageway to the staterooms, knee-deep in water. She stared at me with such blind detachment I was staggered for a moment, thinking she might be dead.

  “Mona?”

  “She’s crazy,” Mona said. “Sasha’s gone insane.”

  I settled Rusty in the high, dry corner, went back for Holland, and stretched him out nearby. Then I slopped down into the pool of oily water and sorted through the jumble of furniture and pots and pans and toaster and coffee maker until I found the heavy oak dining table. I dragged it on its side up the steep incline and pressed the thick tabletop flat against the wall, then eased Rusty and Holland behind its screen. It wasn’t much, but it was better than relying on the three-inch wafer of fiberglass.

  Sasha Olsen ceased firing.

  Maybe taking a moment to snap in another clip. That she might have run out of ammunition was too much to hope for. I hadn’t been counting, but it seemed like close to two dozen rounds since she started. High-capacity magazines could hold twenty, sometimes slightly more. When she began firing again it would be worth noting the number. Use the reload interval to make a move. If I could still count at all by then.

  No doubt when she’d blown open the pontoon, she’d emptied a full clip. From a half mile away I’d counted roughly eighteen shots. How many clips could she have brought on such a mission? If her original intent had been to knock me off, more than forty rounds seemed excessive.

  Rusty groaned and closed her eyes. I took her hand and squeezed it and she gripped back. She wasn’t going gently into that goddamn night. No need to cheerlead, urge her to hang on, stay with me. All that bullshit didn’t need saying with Rusty. Hanging on was what she did. What she’d always done and always would.

  Holland was chanting a string of curses and seemed to be drifting in some twilight of consciousness.

  Stooped low, I hiked across the salon, wedged past Mona, went down the passageway by the staterooms and out the door onto the bow. Since I’d last looked, Sasha had changed her position, and when my head emerged, a slug blew the door from my hand and knocked me forward on the deck.

  A hornet was stinging my neck and wouldn’t stop. I blinked my vision clear, reached up, and fingered the spot. Red strobes blazed inside my eyes. I bit down hard, used thumb and first finger to pinch at the protruding nub, and plucked the splinter free.

  A jagged one-inch needle of fiberglass. Blood seeped down my neck, soaking the collar of my shirt. A trickle or a flood, it was hard to tell. If I’d lanced an artery I’d bleed out in minutes. Not much I could do. I’d get that verdict soon enough.

  I stuck my finger into the ripped opening at the elbow of my lucky shirt and tore off the bottom of the sleeve. Then I wrapped the fabric once around my throat and knotted it like an ascot.

  On all fours I circled to the submerged port side, out of Sasha’s sight. With water to my chest, I held to the top rail and half swam the length of the ship to the wheelhouse spiral stairs. I’d given up hope of finding the medical supplies we stored in the galley. Even if I could’ve located the kit, it would’ve been unusable, since the storage cabinet was four feet beneath the waterline. Worthless wet bandages. The only other first-aid box was in the wheelhouse where I was headed.

  For the seconds it took me to climb the spiral stairs and duck into the cabin, I’d be fully exposed. But I needed to close Rusty’s wound, and if she was going to survive the next few hours without going into shock, she’d do well to gobble a handful of the codeine tablets we carried in the kit.

  Assuming we had a few more hours.

  The sky was overcast and dusk was nearly done. Bad light for shooting. Though it was small comfort to consider the night ahead.

  At the base of the metal stairs, I gathered my breath and touched an experimental finger to the wound on my neck. I shouldn’t have. Teeter’s waffles rose up an acid column at the back of my throat. I turned and heaved them overboard along with another plateful of food. A pretty target I made for several seconds. But she wasn’t shooting anymore.

  I made it up the stairway, found the medical pack, and got down again in half a minute. I slogged back to the bow, peeked around the corner, and found she’d disappeared. I ducked inside, then jogged down the passageway into the salon.

  It was all exactly as I’d left it: Mona still crouched in the passageway, the half-swamped cabin, Rusty breathing unsteadily behind the cocked-up dining table, Holland auditioning for some punk-ass band.

  I unscrewed the hydrogen peroxide and took aim. When it met the open wound, it frothed like beer into a frosty mug. Rusty rocked her head back, shut her eyes, and endured my clumsy field dressing in silence. She couldn’t straighten the leg, and I didn’t see any point in trying to splint it. I used an entire roll of gauze, wrapping it as tight as I dared to staunch the bleeding, bandaging her from ankle to thigh and adding three more wraps around the knee itself. She passed out once but came to a few seconds later. I retrieved a plastic bottle of water floating with the rest of the debris and fed her three codeine tabs.

  When I was done with Rusty, I sterilized Holland’s wounds. The one on his arm was a ragged groove just above the elbow. The welt on his neck was more like a burn, as though he’d been touched with a branding iron. I used the last of the roll of gauze to wrap both of those.

  I spotted his broken camera stranded at the edge of the debris on the salon deck. I retrieved it and set it on his belly. Holland looked at it, then looked at me. He cradled the camera to his chest and nodded his thanks.

  The sun had set and the last silver flush was draining from the clouds. We had about fifteen minutes till night settled around us.

  I gathered all the flashlights I could find and handed them out. For Mona, the big bruiser: eighteen million candlepower, brighter than the tungsten floods that indoor photographers use. Visible more than eight miles away. Sixty-watt H4 halogen bulb, using a battery that could go half an hour without a recharge.

  I laid the black police Maglite next to Rusty. Four D batteries in the long heavy cylinder. Could be used as a baton to club drunks and other assorted idiots. Fresh batteries, weighed four pounds.

  I took the Mini Maglite for myself. It was the size of a half-smoked stogie and fit in my shirt pocket. Three triple-A’s powered the circle of tiny halogen bulbs. Its beam was narrow. Using it in the dark was like looking around a room through a hole in a sheet of paper.

  “Will they survive?” Mona had come over and was squatting beside me.

  “Damn right they will.”

  Rusty’s eyes were closed and every few seconds she puckered her lips and blew out a sharp breath as if she were in the last moments of labor. Holland seemed to be sleeping, his chest rising and falling like a sprinter at the finish line.

  “What now?”

  “Now it gets dark,” I said. “Very dark.”

  “And then what?”

  “We’ll have to see.”

  “Maybe she’s gone.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe out of ammunition. Maybe she’s had a change of heart.”

  “She just set her son on fire and murdered several people. That’s not a mind I can read.”

  We sat on either side of Rusty and watched the darkness invade the
cabin. The wind lay down and the Mothership grew still. I heard a hundred thumps of wings passing overhead, and some squeal and creak of metal, the ship’s structure straining from the unnatural position.

  “Don’t use the flashlights,” I said. “Only as a last resort. If she’s out there, it could draw fire. So keep them off. Do you hear me, Rusty? Only in the worst-case emergency.”

  She nodded that she understood.

  I slipped my hand into her hip pocket and drew out the walkie-talkie, then held it out to Mona.

  “What?”

  “Take it,” I said.

  “You want me to call her? Now?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “Is your wristwatch still working?”

  She shot her cuff and nodded that it was.

  “Illuminated dial?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now this is the big question, Mona. Can I trust you?”

  She had to consider that longer than I would’ve liked.

  “What’re you doing, Thorn?”

  “I’m going to get her.”

  “How?”

  “It’ll take me about thirty minutes to reach the inlet. It took longer this morning, but the seas were rough. Thirty minutes max.”

  “In the dark?”

  “In the dark.”

  “And you’re sure she’ll be in the same place?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not sure of anything.”

  “What’s with the radio?”

  “Thirty minutes, then call her. Keep calling her, keep talk-ing to her. That’s how I’ll home in on her position.”

  “If she has her radio on, you mean.”

  “She’ll have it on.”

  “Why me? Why don’t you take it with you? You press the call button when you’re set.”

  “Then if she presses hers, I’m exposed. No, you’ve got to do it. Thirty minutes from the time I leave.”

  “How do you find your way, Thorn? There are no lights, no stars.”

  “I’ll make it.”

  I leaned close to Rusty’s ear. She was focused inward, working on each breath, in and out and in again.

  “I’ve got to go,” I told her. “I’m going after her. Will you be all right?”

  She made a noise in her throat. It had already grown so dark, I could barely see her face. I found her hand and squeezed it and her grip was as strong as it ever was, maybe stronger.

  I slipped the Mini Maglite into my pocket, got up, and located the reciprocating saw balanced on the backside of the television. I took it out of its case and flicked it on and pressed the trigger. She was still alive and well.

  “You’re taking a saw? Why?” Mona asked.

  “If I get a chance, I’m going to cut her in half.”

  “I think you should stay, Thorn. I think it’d be safer for all of us.”

  “Thirty minutes,” I said to Mona. “Starting now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Buckle up,” Mosley said. “It’s the law. Right, Sheriff?”

  Carter Mosley pulled away from the Olsen house and headed down Prairie Avenue. Lights were coming on in liv-ing rooms, children winding down their lawn games. All along the Florida coast, all through the Keys, wineglasses were being lifted to the flashy horizon, conch shells blown. Toasts all around, ice in the blenders. Let the serious drinking begin.

  As Mosley slowed for a four-way stop, Sugar inched the table knife from his cuff, tested the blade with his thumb. Dull, very dull.

  He worked the knife into his pants pocket. Timmy noticed the squirm of his shoulders and leaned forward to nudge him with the Glock.

  “There’s about a dozen different stories that could account for why I had to shoot you, Mr. Sugarman.”

  “In the front seat of Mosley’s car?”

  “Don’t let’s argue,” Mosley said. “Let’s keep this civil and businesslike, what do you say, people?”

  “Mind if I ask where we’re going?”

  “Don’t mind at all,” Mosley said. “Sheriff, you mind if he asks?”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass, Carter.”

  “We’re taking a little plane ride,” Mosley said, giving Sugarman a cordial smile. “Swing out fifty miles or so over the Gulf of Mexico, see if we can spot any illegal activity on the waters below, or maybe catch sight of one of those alien spacecraft.”

  “Carter. Knock it off.”

  “The sheriff’s a serious person,” Sugarman said. “Dropping innocent citizens out of airplanes—that’s not something she takes lightly.”

  “Both of you,” Timmy said. “Shut the hell up.”

  “I don’t know how innocent you are, sir. From what I gather you’ve made rather a nuisance of yourself around these parts in a very short time.”

  Carter cut east on a narrow state road, into the heart of cattle country, the houses dropping away and with them the lights and road signs and billboards. Nothing to advertise, no one to buy it.

  “Covering up for Milligan must’ve pissed you off something fierce.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Just a guess,” Sugarman said. “Some screwup Milligan pulled when he was a kid. A kid with all the advantages. He builds that school with radioactive waste product and forgets to mention it when people start getting sick. Makes you wonder how long he might’ve known before DiUard brought it to your attention. But he never said shit, did he? Old John just let it slide. He’s the rightful heir to Bates International, so why should he care? He’s got Abigail to defend his ass. But it’s you standing up on that stage, taking all that razzing. You’re the scapegoat. That couldn’t have been easy. A man like you, so dignified, so polished. So goddamned short.”

  Mosley shrugged it off and drove in silence for a while. Sugarman cut a look at Timmy in the backseat, and she shook her head at him. Something in her eyes he couldn’t make out. Maybe she was dazzled by his in-your-face style. That take-no-prisoners honesty that Sugarman was becoming famous for. Or maybe she was just telling him to shut the hell up before Carter Mosley decided to pull off on one of these side roads and finish him off right there.

  Another silent mile went by, then Mosley slowed the big SUV for a turn down a narrow lane, blacktopped, but only wide enough for a single car.

  “A man like you, Mr. Sugarman, a common working man, a man with limited knowledge of the world of business affairs, might be surprised to learn that emotion plays a very limited role in most decisions.”

  “Like hell it does.”

  “I don’t know where you come by this view, but you’re wrong, sir. John Milligan did what any good businessman would’ve done forty years ago when he built that school in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible, and he’s continued to behave in the most forthright way ever since. He’s merely been protecting his investment.”

  “Covering his ass,” Sugarman said. “Or having you do it for him.”

  Branches swatted at the passenger side of the Lincoln and the high beams seemed to be barely making a dent in the darkness up ahead.

  “Almost there,” Mosley said.

  “Do you have children, Mr. Mosley?”

  “No, sir. I’ve not experienced that pleasure.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know if I can explain this. It’s kind of abstract.”

  “Oh, my. Well, then it’s probably way over my head,” Mosley said. He took a look at Sugar, then glanced over the seat at the sheriff.

  “And you, Timmy?” Sugar said. “I take it you don’t have kids.”

  She was silent.

  “Okay, I’ll take a shot,” Sugar said. “Seems to me this whole deal comes down to those with children and those without.”

  “A philosopher,” Mosley said. “How special.”

  “Abigail protects John at your expense, Mosley. And Sasha Olsen defends Griffin at Timmy’s. It’s that blood-and-water thing.
When it comes right down to it, family wins. You guys catch the shit.”

  “You’re not very smart, are you, Sugarman?” Mosley was slowing the SUV as they came into a glen. The headlights lit up an old stone birdbath toppled over, a wide lawn of shaggy grass, a rotting bench.

  “It’s the way I work,” Sugar said. “Say the obvious, see how it sounds.”

  “It sounds like bullshit,” Mosley said. “Don’t you agree, Timmy? Wipe a baby’s butt, burp it on your shoulder, that makes you superior. Gives you some favored status. I don’t think so.”

  She said nothing. And it was then Sugarman had his first faint hope that he might make it out of this alive.

  “I think you’re missing my point, Mosley.”

  “Fuck your point,” he said.

  Through the halo of suspended dust, the lights of the Lincoln showed an old two-story house with a wraparound porch and a swing suspended from the overhang. Sugar had seen the place before, but it took a few seconds to recall where. It was the house from the photo Thorn laid before him last night at Morada Bay. The couple sitting stiff on that swing were Thorn’s grandparents, and the two youngsters who’d posed next to the car were his mother and his uncle. Mosley parked the Lincoln in nearly the precise location where that old Ford coupe had been sitting all those years ago. The dizzy swirl of déjà vu passed through him.

  “Come on, everyone, let’s go flying.” Mosley opened his door and got out. “Sheriff, can you do your duty? Or do you require my help?”

  Timmy stepped out of the door behind Sugarman’s seat. “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Don’t let me down, girl. Can’t take any chances. Either one of us.”

  He angled off toward the side of the house. In the dark somewhere he flipped a switch that lit up a pathway of lights. There was a landing strip back there, Sugarman was sure of that. And a Cessna, and his one-way ticket to the lovely Gulf of Mexico. At least his body was scheduled to make that flight.

  He got out and stood facing Timmy Whalen.

  “May I?” he said to her, pointing to his shirt pocket.

  “May you what?”