Zack Chasteen 04 A Deadly Silver Sea, page 15
part #4 of Zack Chasteen Series
And then something bumped me, square against my back, the way sharks do it, tapping first to see if you’re edible and then circling back for the kill.
I whipped around and found myself face-to-face with . . . a cardboard box. One of the computer boxes tossed off the ship, the SOS message scrawled on its side. It was well sealed and floating upright, pretty as you please. Trailing behind it—a long piece of the webbed strap that had held the boxes together on the pallet.
I spotted another box floating just a few yards away. Beyond it another. The more I looked, the more boxes I saw. A dozen or so of them. The provisions master had done one heck of a job tossing them out the marina hatchway.
For a fleeting moment I entertained the fanciful notion that I could round up all the boxes, lash them together, and build myself a raft. Do a Huck Finn thing on the high seas.
But that’s all it was, just a fanciful notion. In the end, before current and waves sent them far out of reach, I was able to gather up just three more boxes.
I tied two of them together with my pants, the other two with my shirt. Between the pairs of boxes, I tied the webbed strap.
I couldn’t lie across the boxes. They weren’t nearly buoyant enough to support all my weight. But I could hold on to the strap and hang in the water between them.
Things were looking up. Oh, yeah, way up. If I was lucky, I figured I might survive an entire day.
42
FRIDAY, 7:14 A.M.
They were in the salon of Sam Jebailey’s suite, Ron Diamond on a couch, Todora pacing the room and smoking a cigarette.
They had heard the gunfire when it first erupted, Todora rushing off to see what it was all about, leaving Diamond alone for nearly two hours, warning that she would shoot him if he tried to sneak out. Todora had hung back, away from the action. And when the time was right, when Glenroy had returned to the bridge, when Pango and the waiters were busy escorting the male passengers to the Galaxy Lounge, she had slipped into the purser’s office and retrieved the two laundry bags filled with cash and jewelry. They now sat on the floor by the couch, right next to the Halliburton.
Todora said, “So this helicopter of yours. It is where?”
“George Town, Exuma. With my yacht,” Diamond said. “I spoke with the pilot right before we left Miami. He was getting ready for a checkout flight. It’s fueled up and ready to go.”
“And it would take how long for him to get here?”
“I’m thinking two hours, tops.”
“But he cannot land on the ship. Glenroy will see him and . . .”
“No, we’ll have to figure out a way to get off the ship. Take one of the lifeboats or something. You know how to lower them?”
Todora nodded.
“Yes, of course. We are all trained to know. For emergency.” She thought about it. “It could work. It only takes a moment to prepare the lifeboat.”
“Good,” Diamond said. “Then they would pick us up from the lifeboat.”
“They?”
“The pilot and whoever he brings with him, someone to lower the sling.”
“Sling? What is this sling?”
“What they pull us up with.” Todora looked at Diamond, not understanding. “The helicopter can’t land in the water, see? They lower a sling—it’s a harness, you just strap yourself in—and they pull us up one at a time.”
“Over the water?”
“Yes, over the water. I mean, where else . . .” Diamond stopped, seeing the look on her face. “What is it?”
Todora shook her head.
“Is nothing.”
Diamond studied her.
“You can’t swim,” he said.
She didn’t say anything. She stubbed out her cigarette on a brass table.
“This sling,” she said, “it will take the money, too?”
“Yes, of course, the money, too. Just strap everything in the sling and pull it up.” Diamond pointed at the laundry bags. “You might want to find something a little sturdier than those things, duffel bags or something.”
Todora lit another cigarette, thinking about it.
“OK, then,” she said. “First they pull up me. Then money. Then you.”
Diamond shrugged.
“However you want it. Makes no difference.”
“And then to Cuba.”
Diamond shook his head.
“Not in the helicopter, no way. The Cubans aren’t real big on unannounced flights into their airspace.”
“What then?”
“Back to the Bahamas. I’ll hire a boat that will take you to Cuba, if that’s where you really want to go. Bahamian boats go back and forth to Cuba all the time.”
“Yes, Cuba,” Todora said. “But a question.”
“What’s that?”
“How will you explain it? How will you say you escaped this ship, how you got away?”
“I’ll tell the truth.”
“Truth?”
“You stuck a gun to my head and forced me to do as you said. And as soon as you were gone, I immediately contacted the authorities, told them the ship had been hijacked, and let them come to the rescue.”
“And what will you tell them about me?”
“I will tell them that you disappeared, that you forced me and my people to drop you off somewhere, on some island in the Bahamas or someplace, and I don’t know where you went from there,” said Diamond. “Don’t worry, whatever I say, they’ll believe it.”
“So, you will be hero, the famous man who helped rescue the people on the ship.”
Diamond smiled.
“Yeah. And you will be two million dollars richer,” Diamond said. “Plus whatever’s in those laundry bags.”
Todora took the pill bottle from her smock, shook out one, and swallowed it. She offered the bottle to Diamond.
“What is it?” he asked.
“For staying awake.”
Diamond shook out a pill, examined it.
“What the hell,” he said and swallowed it.
Diamond sat back on the couch. Todora sat down on the divan across from him. She lit another cigarette.
“Just one thing, one big thing,” Diamond said. “How do we get a call through to my pilot?”
“I will take care of that,” Todora said. “There is a bigger thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been thinking,” Todora said.
Diamond waited.
Todora nudged the Halliburton with a foot.
“This fancy suitcase,” she said. “I’ve been thinking that maybe there are more than just one of them.”
Diamond didn’t say anything.
Todora said, “I am right, aren’t I? There is more than just one suitcase.”
Diamond shrugged.
“Maybe you should ask Sam Jebailey about that,” he said.
“Yes,” Todora said. “Maybe I should.”
43
I kept cussing the night, anxious for the sun to break through. Come daylight, I told myself, this would all be over. Someone, somehow, would find me.
I could see ship lights, specks on the horizon. Once, just before dawn, I caught a glimpse of what I felt for sure was the Royal Star as it looped back on its curious circular route. It came within a mile or so before turning north and then east again.
I took encouragement from the fact that I was bobbing along in one of the most frequently traveled and watched-over stretches of ocean in the world. A major thoroughfare for cruise ships and island-hopping sailors. Florida and the Bahamas to the north. To the south—Cuba and Hispaniola, separated by the Windward Passage, the most direct route between the Panama Canal and ports of the Eastern Seaboard. And, given the twitchy state of affairs between the U.S. and Cuba, along with the ongoing gambits of drug smugglers and refugees, a place where lots of eyes were always watching.
There was no shortage of military traffic in these parts. Constant vigilance by U.S. Coast Guard cutters and Cuban gunboats. Regular flyovers by fighter jets out of Key West Naval Air Station and the base at Guantanamo Bay. Plus, all kinds of light aircraft doing the puddle-jumping thing.
Yes, if you had to leap off a ship and get stranded in wide-open water, then this was definitely the place to be. It was just a matter of time. Sooner or later, someone would come along and fish me out.
But daytime didn’t bring relief. Ship lights that offered hope during the night dimmed with the advance of the sun. As the sky brightened, the world became a vast and empty place. And with that emptiness, fear surfaced to fill the void: No one knows I’m out here. No one is looking for me. Absolutely no one.
The wind died, waves flattened. Harsh light strafed the water, created a surface almost metallic, a blinding glare.
I looked and looked, saw nothing and more nothing. No fish swirled the water, no birds soared the sky.
Just me, alone, on a deadly silver sea.
I don’t know how I managed to doze off. The lull of Mother Ocean, I suppose. That, coupled with total exhaustion.
I woke up gagging. I’d lost my grip on the strap, become briefly submerged. The boxes had drifted a few yards beyond me.
And in my wild paddle to reclaim them, I spotted the cargo ship.
Far to the south, three or four miles, but plowing northward on a course that would take it just to the west of me.
It was my best shot. Maybe my only shot. I didn’t know how much longer I could stay afloat. The computer boxes weren’t holding up well. They were getting soggy, riding lower in the water.
I wasn’t holding up well either. Arms and legs cramping. Mouth dry. Head pounding. Dehydrated. Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Only, this particular mariner might never make it to ancient.
I had to get to that cargo ship, had to figure out a way for someone on that ship to see me.
I tried lying across the strap and swimming between the boxes, using them like water wings. But my weight pulled the boxes down and threatened to sink them altogether. So I flipped over, hooked my feet behind the strap, and started backpaddling, using just my arms, windmilling them to power forward. It seemed to work.
I had one thing going for me—the current. The Atlantic North Equatorial Current, to be exact, the southern terminus of the subtropical gyre, the huge wheel of water that’s on a perpetual spin cycle from the Equator up to the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the prevailing trade winds, the current here bore westward before melding forces with the Yucatan Current in the Straits of Florida to form the Gulf Stream. If I was a man of leisure, maybe kicking back in a floating lounge chair, beverage in hand, I could let the current carry me all the way to Ireland.
But right now I would settle for it helping me trudge a half mile or so to the west, where I projected the cargo ship would pass.
I briefly considered abandoning the boxes and going it on my own. I could make better time. But the bulk of the boxes created a profile on the water, provided the crew on the bridge of the cargo ship with something they might see. Plus, I didn’t want to let go of the boxes. They were all I had. Without them it was just me and the sea.
So I paddled. And paddled. And paddled some more. The cargo ship loomed larger and larger. I was making definite headway. Our paths drawing closer and closer.
Twenty minutes and I was worn out. I took a break. The ship was at least a mile away. I wasn’t anywhere near where I needed to be, but I could see that the cargo ship was actually two vessels—a long storage barge towed by another barge with a towering wheelhouse.
I started paddling again. My shoulders ached, my back ached, everything ached. I began counting strokes. After a hundred I would stop, stretch, catch my breath. Then I would start all over again. Hard, hard going.
But it was paying off.
Three-quarters of a mile from the ship, and I could see orange, white, and green containers stacked on its decks. Cargo ships don’t carry a lot of crew. Maybe no more than a dozen on one this size with at least a third of them sleeping or off-duty at any one time. But there had to be someone out and about. Had to be.
Another hundred strokes. Then two hundred, three hundred.
And now there was a distinct hum in the water, the cargo ship’s engines. I caught a whiff of diesel fumes in the air.
I stopped swimming, checked my position.
On our present paths, the ship would pass about a hundred yards away. Close, but not close enough.
Another hundred strokes. The ship was closing in, less than a quarter mile, with me about fifty yards abeam.
I stopped.
I was at a disadvantage with the sun. Anyone on the ship would have to stare straight into the glare to see me. Far better if I was on the ship’s portside. But there was no chance of that now.
I waved my arms. I hollered.
I wanted only to hear the ship’s horn, signaling that it had seen me, calling the crew to action.
But nothing.
The ship’s bow drew even with me.
I waved my arms. I yelled. I slapped the boxes. I thrust myself down, then surged up, waist-high out of the water, splashing, creating a commotion.
Nothing.
Spooked by the ship, a school of flying fish skittered across the water, parting as they passed me with balletlike precision.
Still no signal, no sign that I’d been seen.
Just behind the wheelhouse, gantries extended to either side of the ship. Between them hung a pair of hammocks, a man resting in each, gently swaying from port to starboard.
I hollered. I waved. I splashed.
Nothing.
And now the first barge was past and I was abeam the second. No sign of anyone on its deck. Just stacks of containers.
The sea rose up—the ship’s wake. It carried me forward, then sent me down its backside. Another wave followed. And another.
Then I was staring at the ship’s transom, at its name and registry: “Titan IV, Panama.”
Bound for wherever it was going. Leaving me behind.
44
FRIDAY, 9:00 A.M.
“Just try not to think about it, dear.”
Marie Lutey was doing her best to comfort Barbara, the two of them still on the stage of the Galaxy Lounge with the other women, Barbara resting with her head in Marie’s lap.
“It’s impossible not to think about it,” Barbara said. “The waiters said they shot him, that he fell overboard.”
“Do you want to believe that?”
“Of course I don’t want to believe that.”
“Then don’t believe it, dammit. You don’t have to believe anything you don’t want to believe.”
“But . . .”
Marie put up a hand.
“Not another word,” Marie said. “Just visualize.”
“Visualize?”
Marie nodded.
“Yes, I do it all the time. Like whenever I get on an airplane and I am convinced the plane is going to crash and burn and we’re all going to die. Which is each and every time I get on an airplane. So I visualize. I visualize the airplane’s wings and how they are strong and perfect and how they are going to get us where we need to go and nothing bad is going to happen. And then I visualize a zillion tiny angels under those wings, holding them up, their tiny angel wings just beating like crazy, like they were hummingbirds or something. I am proud to report that no airplane I’ve been on has ever crashed,” Marie said. “Of course, a couple or three martinis along the way helps, too, but that is neither here nor there.”
Barbara smiled.
“Zack always downs a martini when we fly somewhere,” she said.
“Gin? Or vodka?”
“Gin,” Barbara said. “He maintains there’s no such thing as a vodka martini.”
“The more I know about that man, the more I like him,” Marie said. She patted Barbara’s cheek. “Just close your eyes, dear, relax.”
Barbara closed her eyes.
“Now visualize your husband drinking a martini and smiling at you over the rim of the glass with those gorgeous big brown eyes of his.”
“He does have gorgeous eyes, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, he does. And the rest of him is pretty gorgeous, too. So you might as well go ahead and visualize every delicious inch of him,” Marie said. “And feel free to share all the details, because I am old and horny and enjoy such things.”
Barbara laughed.
“You’re terrible.”
“Beyond your wildest imagination,” Marie said. “Now shut up and visualize.”
Barbara lay quiet. Marie stroked her hair and looked around the Galaxy Lounge.
Two waiters, Tony and Marcos, were still keeping the passengers separated—women on the stage, men in the seating area. After the initial commotion when the men had been led into the lounge, the waiters had allowed no talking back and forth between the two groups. A couple of men had tried to speak with their wives and been rewarded with jabs from rifle butts and sent sprawling on the floor.
Nearby, Attavia Linblom let out an occasional sob. Her husband hadn’t been among the male passengers brought up from Deck Two and Attavia feared the worst.
Barbara said, “We’re sitting in a restaurant.”
“What’s that, dear?”
“Zack and I. I’m visualizing us sitting in a restaurant, both of us with martinis and toasting each other. I’m holding the baby.”
“Oh, my, that’s wonderful. A boy or a girl?”
“I can’t tell. It’s all bundled up and I can’t really see it,” Barbara said. “But we’re happy. All three of us. Zack is smiling. He has a big plate of stone crabs sitting in front of him.”
“That’s it, bring him to life,” Marie said. “But don’t just picture him, smell him, too. He’s got a good smell, doesn’t he?”
“Uh-huh. He uses bay rum like it was bathwater. Smells like clove and cardamon.”
“And the way he sounds.”
“He’s got a nice voice. Comforting. Just a touch of a Southern accent. Not too twangy or anything.”
