Scorpion

by Ken Douglas

  “ I’m lucky I survived that.”

  “ I wanted it to be good for you,” she said. “I wanted it to be the best.”

  “ Baby, it was,” he said.

  “ Good, let’s take another shower. And then we have to talk.”

  Twenty minutes later she told him about the plans to take over a country, and how he could help.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Broxton struck out, swimming toward the deep water. Ramsingh must be heading for one of the anchored yachts. It was the only thing that made sense. He stopped, treading water. But which ship? The closest? He was shivering cold and at a complete loss. From the beach the yachts were barely visible, but out here, closer, he could see that they were as thick as trees in a forest. His chances of picking the right boat weren’t good, but he couldn’t stay where he was, so he started for the nearest yacht.

  The black sea chilled him to the bone, his wet clothes became his enemy now, making it harder for him to move through the water, pulling at him, slowing him down. He stopped again, treading water. He was farther out, the wind had kicked up, and it was harder for him to stay afloat. He had to get rid of his pants or he wouldn’t make it.

  Treading against the sea with only his left arm he loosened the top button of his Levi’s with his right. He popped open the four buttons, but the pants, wet and tight, fit him like a second skin. Try as he might, he couldn’t slide them down. Maybe if he was in a quiet bedroom with his rump on a soft mattress, but not out in the cold sea, while he was treading water with only one hand.

  A chill, colder than the sea, gripped his spine and squeezed it. The Levi’s had to come off. If not he was going to die. He was out of breath, out of strength and his waterlogged jeans were pulling him down sure as cement shoes on a snitch’s feet. He wanted them off, had to get them off. But no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t force them down with only one hand.

  He grabbed a deep breath, slipped his thumbs between flesh and denim and curled himself into a sinking ball. He was alone in the dark as he grabbed the jeans tighter at the hips and wiggled them off. Then he started toward the surface, fighting to hold his breath against the pressure pounding in his chest.

  He broke through, taking in air, before he sank back down. He windmilled his arms in an effort to stay afloat. Then he felt something hit him, something grabbing at him. Shark was his first thought, and he lashed out at it, but it moved away. He tried to turn, to face it as it came at him again, and it did, grabbing at his back, tugging at his shirt. He threw a hand over his head, trying to get at it, but he couldn’t reach.

  “ Slow down! Don’t panic!” Ramsingh shouted. “I’ve got you.” The prime minister’s steady arm wrapped around him. “It’s all right,” he soothed, and Broxton stopped flapping, stopped fighting, and allowed the prime minister to support him while he sucked in badly needed air, heaving it in and out, like a long distance runner at the end of a marathon.

  “ Lay back, take it easy,” Ramsingh said, and Broxton obeyed, floating on his back, putting complete trust in him, allowing the older man to keep him afloat as he stared at the round moon and the slow moving clouds that threatened to take away its light. He’d always thought of himself as a good swimmer, but tonight proved him wrong. And he’d thought himself in fair shape. This night proved him wrong about that, too.

  “ Better?” Ramsingh asked.

  “ Yeah, thanks,” Broxton said.

  “ We never give up, we never quit,” Ramsingh said, and Broxton felt himself nodding. “That was my campaign slogan,” Ramsingh said, his voice soft, slow and rhythmic. “The polls had me so far behind sometimes I wondered why I kept on, but I did, and when things looked the blackest I said that to myself, over and over, like a mantra, ‘We never give up. We never quit. We never give up. We never quit’.”

  “ We never give up. We never quit,” Broxton said along with him.

  “ That’s the spirit,” Ramsingh said, still holding him afloat. “The only thing you have to be afraid of out here is yourself.”

  “ Thanks,” Broxton said, breathing easier now.

  “ You’re in control?”

  “ Yes, sir,” Broxton said, and Ramsingh eased his supporting hand away and he began treading water on his own.

  “ There’s a ship out there. Not far, without any lights.”

  “ Not the closest?” Broxton said.

  “ No, not the closest, but we can stop and rest along the way.”

  “ How do you know?” Broxton asked.

  “ I’ve already been out there,” he said. Then he started swimming slowly out toward the anchored boats with the easy, graceful strokes of a professional swimmer and Broxton followed. While he swam he thought about what Ramsingh had done. He’d been safely away, yet he’d abandoned that safety and come back for him, saved him from a cold, silent and dark death.

  Lightning flashed overhead and the heavens opened as those clouds finally covered the moon. The ocean was turned into a psychedelic supermarket as water pelted the sea, splashing all around him. Visibility was reduced to almost zero and he added a renewed vigor to his strokes, determined not to lose sight of the prime minister.

  Then he saw Ramsingh grab onto a dinghy that was tied off the back of a small sailboat and relief swept through him when he saw the prime minister’s outstretched arm. He grasped it in a Viking grip and in seconds he was holding onto the dinghy. He started to speak, but Ramsingh held an index finger to his lips and pointed to the boat. Broxton got the message, someone was home.

  Ramsingh put his lips to Broxton’s ear. “We have to wait for the rain to stop.” Then he pulled himself up into the dinghy and Broxton flopped in after him. Both men huddled forward against the pelting rain and just as it seemed like it was going to let up, a brisk wind blew out of the west bringing even more rain.

  Then as suddenly as it started, it stopped. The squall had blown through, leaving a star studded sky in its wake. Ramsingh, able to see now, pointed to another boat, bigger, dark with no dinghy tied up to it. Broxton got the message and he stole a few quick breaths as Ramsingh slipped over the side, back into the water, and started swimming toward the dark boat. Broxton was tired, his arms felt like they were weighed down with lead, his legs were spaghetti and his chest was about to explode, the rest had helped, but it wasn’t enough. Still the prime minister was an old man recently out of heart surgery, and if Ramsingh could make it, then he bloody well could too.

  He let go of the rubber boat and took long, slow, even strokes toward the black ship. At first he grabbed air every other time his right arm dug into the water, but before long he was operating on sheer will and forcing his heavy arms up and out of the water was harder with every stroke. His body demanded more oxygen, so every time the right arm came out of the cold he sucked in air until even that wasn’t enough and he had to stop and rest.

  The cold no longer bothered him as he flopped over onto his back. He sucked in needed air as the salt water stung his eyes. He wondered if he’d have the strength of mind and body to roll over and continue on his way. What would happen if he stayed on his back forever? Would he drift out to sea, or would the tide take him into shore and into the grip of a killer’s hands?

  “ You’re there, Broxton,” Ramsingh said. “You’ve made it.” Broxton forced his eyes open. Ramsingh was hanging onto some kind of pipe structure attached to the rear of the boat and once again he was holding out his arm.

  “ I thought it was all over.” Broxton rolled off his back and grabbed onto Ramsingh’s arm with another Viking grip.

  “ Nonsense, you did very well,” Ramsingh said.

  “ You came back for me out there. You were safe and you came back.”

  “ Of course, you’re my bodyguard.” Ramsingh pulled him toward him, and Broxton studied the bar that the prime minister was hanging onto. It was part of a structure that curved around the stern of the boat, two thick bars, one at the bottom of the stern, another by the top.

  “ What is it?” he a
sked.

  “ Self-steering gear,” Ramsingh said.

  “ What’s it do?’’

  “ Uses the wind to steer the boat, and we’re going to use it to get out of the water.”

  “ How?”

  “ Think you can hang onto it and support my weight for a few seconds?”

  “ Yes, sir.”

  “ I’m heavy.”

  “ I’ll manage,” Broxton said and he wrapped both hands around the bottom bar, letting his body hang in the water, arms stretched like he was dangling from a gymnast’s high bar. “I’m ready,” he said, and Ramsingh moved behind him, also hanging onto to the bar. Broxton grit his teeth as the prime minister planted a foot on his back, then another on his shoulder, but he didn’t scream out when the sudden shock of Ramsingh’s weight pushing down on him stretched his arms like a medieval rack.

  “ Hurry,” Broxton grunted, as Ramsingh struggled out of the sea, using Broxton’s back and shoulders as a foot hold. Then he was up and the weight was gone.

  “ Are you okay?” Ramsingh asked.

  “ Yeah, now how do I get up?”

  “ Hang on.”

  “ Very funny,” Broxton said.

  “ There’s a swim ladder, I’ll lower it.” Although it only took seconds for Ramsingh to get the ladder down, it seemed like forever to Broxton, and under ordinary circumstances climbing the four or five rungs from the sea to the safety of the boat would have been as easy as falling out of bed. Now it took all of his remaining strength to get on board.

  “ We made it,” Ramsingh said as Broxton lowered himself onto his back in the cockpit. He closed his eyes, sucking sweet air deep into his belly as he let the evening breeze wash over his chilled body. He was wet and cold and he didn’t care, because his body craved rest more than warmth.

  “ Can’t sleep yet, Broxton,” Ramsingh said.

  “ Five minutes.”

  “ No, we have to get inside and get out of these clothes.”

  “ We can’t break in.” Broxton said, realizing how hollow it sounded as soon as the words came out. Apparently Ramsingh did too, because he picked up something that looked like a hammer that had been in a plastic holder under the winches, and with a few hard strokes he broke open a hard plastic deck hatch.

  “ Winch handle, very handy,” Ramsingh said, sliding it back into its holster. “You want to do the honors?” he said.

  “ You’re doing fine so far,” Broxton said.

  “ I might have a little too much around the middle to slide through that hatch. It’d be better if you did it.”

  “ Then what?” Broxton leaned forward on the cockpit seat.

  “ Find the tool box. There should be a hacksaw blade in it.”

  “ And.”

  “ You hand it up to me. I cut off this lock,” he said, touching the lock that secured the companion way cover. “Then we go to Trinidad.”

  “ You’re not talking about stealing the boat?”

  “ No,” Ramsingh said. “We’re just going to borrow it. Sort of like you did with that Mercedes.”

  “ Can you sail it?”

  “ My wife and I wandered the world in a sailboat for fifteen years before our money ran out and I had to come back and take up the law. We’d always meant to go back, but we had kids, and bills, and then politics got in the way.”

  “ You can really handle this?”

  “ Son, if it sails I can make it dance. You just get me that hacksaw blade and we’ll be on our way.”

  Moonlight showed through the hatch, offering Broxton a glimpse of a small salon below. It’s like a motorhome, he thought, as he shifted his position and slipped his legs through the hatch. He dropped onto a settee that reminded him of a sofa in a small living room. “So far, so good,” he said, and then he went looking. It didn’t take him long to locate a tool box in a cabinet by the engine room. “Found the tools,” he said up to Ramsingh and five minutes later the prime minister was using a broken hacksaw blade on the lock, while Broxton continued to search the boat.

  When he was a child he’d crossed the country from California to Florida in a motorhome with his parents. Aside from the never ending religious war that was politely fought between his devoutly Jewish mother and his staunchly Catholic father, he remembered the size of the rooms in the home on wheels. Small kitchen, the bedroom in the back, large by motorhome standards, but small compared to a house, the dining table taking up half of the cramped living room. The boat was like that. Compact. There were two small sleeping cabins, one toilet, a salon half filled by the table exactly the way Broxton remembered it in the motorhome, a galley that was slightly larger than the motorhome’s kitchen, and an engine room.

  He found clothes that fit in the forward cabin, shorts and sweat pants, tee shirt and sweat shirt and several towels. In seconds he had his wet things off and was slipping on the sweatshirt as Ramsingh finished with the lock.

  “ There’s some dry things back here, Mr. Prime Minister,” he said.

  “ Call me Ram, you keep forgetting,” he said, as he came in through the companionway.

  “ How’d you know about the tool box?’’

  “ No properly maintained boat would be without a full compliment of tools,” Ramsingh said as he was shucking out of his wet clothes.

  Fifteen minutes later Broxton was holding onto the headsail and leaning over the bow, pulpit, with his foot on the windlass button, watching the anchor come up. Ramsingh had raised the main and was behind the wheel. They were going to sail off the hook.

  As soon as the anchor broke free the boat started to move backward, no longer secured to the ocean floor. But Broxton kept his foot on the button until the anchor clanked into place as he’d been instructed, then he made his way back to the cockpit, keeping his head under the moving boom as Ramsingh spun the wheel to the right allowing the wind to fill the main.

  “ Have you ever been sailing before, Broxton?” Ramsingh asked, once Broxton was comfortably sitting in the cockpit.

  “ Never,” Broxton said, “but I served on a carrier in the Navy.”

  “ Doesn’t count. This is different. In a powerboat we’d go directly to Trinidad, be there in twelve or fifteen hours, but since we can’t sail against a headwind we’ll have to make for the mainland and motorsail along the coast.

  “ How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “ A day, if we don’t stop, maybe a little longer. We’ll see.”

  Broxton sat back as Ramsingh let out the jib and the boat picked up speed, gliding through the water like a skater glides over the ice. The moon played off the sea, casting the night in an unearthly glow, and Broxton was reminded of his religious parents, each believing, in their own way, in a God that he’d never been able to find. When he was a child his mother wore her Judaism as a burden and his father, his Catholicism as a cross. But they’d both grown out of religion and into God, coming to peace with each other and their marriage. So Broxton was never barmitzvahed, never confessed, never confirmed. He’d been ignored by two of the world’s great religions and as a result God was no more than a word to him.

  But still, on nights like this, he wondered.

  “ You should go below and get some sleep,” Ramsingh said.

  “ I can stay up,” Broxton said.

  “ I don’t doubt it, but you shouldn’t. We’re going to have to go all night, so we’ll need our rest. I’ll take the first watch, two hours, then I’ll wake you.” Ramsingh ran a hand through his long gray hair, pushing it back. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

  “ Sure you don’t want me to take the first watch?”

  “ I’m okay,” Ramsingh said. “The swim was exhilarating.”

  “ What about your heart?”

  “ It’s been six months since the surgery. I’m in better shape than I ever was. I jog every morning. Eat better. Work out in the gym at night. Easy workouts, but I work out. I’ll be okay. You’re done in. Go below and get some rest. I couldn’t sleep now even if I wanted to.”
>
  “ Yes, sir.” Broxton was relieved that Ramsingh was in better health than he’d thought, but he was reluctant, nevertheless, to go below.

  “ You can sleep in the cockpit, if you wish,” Ramsingh said, seeming to understand Broxton’s feelings, “but you should sleep.”

  Broxton stretched out on the cockpit seat and closed his eyes and his thoughts drifted from God and the universe to Dani and Maria. For the first time in his life he had two women on his mind. Their faces kept switching and changing under his eyelids until he drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

  “ Okay Broxton, it’s your watch.” He felt Ramsingh’s hands gently shaking him and he opened his eyes to the stars overhead.

  “ Seems like I just closed my eyes.”

  “ Happens like that,” Ramsingh said.

  “ Who’s steering the boat?” Broxton asked, stretching and looking at Ramsingh on the cockpit seat opposite him.

  “ Uncle Dick,” Ramsingh said.

  “ Who?”

  “ My wife and I had a great friend, Richard McPartland. He sailed with us from Seattle to San Diego. He died shortly after, lung cancer. We carried his ashes to the South Pacific, because he always wanted to go, and spread them along the sand on a small beach on Hiva Oa Island in the Marquesas. Ever since, we always felt that Dick was still with us, so we christened our self-steering gear ‘Uncle Dick.’ Right now Dick has the boat, all you have to do is stay awake and aware. If it looks like he is going to run us into anything, wake me.”

  Broxton looked back at the self-steering gear attached to the stern. “You mean that’s really steering the boat?” He saw the wheel turn to the right, then back again.

  “ Sure, the wind moves the windvane, which moves the wheel. Simple and effective, and now I’m going below. Wake me in a couple of hours.”

  And then Broxton was alone.

  The cool night breeze closed over him, sending a delicious spiny chill over his skin. The slight goose bumps pleasured him and the tingling at the back of his neck told him that he was alive. Not living, but alive. There was a difference.