Buried At Sea (2 page)

"How about lamb for dinner?" he called in a tight voice.

"What?"

Will yanked a frozen leg of lamb from its Ziploc freezer bag and tossed it into the sink, where it landed with a clang that Jim heard over the roar of the engine. He slipped both parts of Jim's heart-rate monitor into the plastic bag, zipped it shut, and hurried up the steps into the cockpit. The bag was ballooned with trapped air.

"What are you— Hey!"

Will leaned over the back of the boat, and Jim heard a splash. When he lunged to the stern rail, he saw his heart monitor bobbing in the propeller wake. "That's mine!"

"They're tracking us with it."

"Tracking us?"

"They bugged your heart monitor. They put a homing device in it."

"They? Who? What are you talking about?"

"Their 'gift' beeps out a radio signal that shows them exactly where we are." Jim Leighton stared at the older man. "Who are you talking about?" A variation on the personal trainer's nightmare: You let a type A geezer push too hard and suddenly your client has a stroke and goes mental.

"Who, Will?" Jim repeated. He probed Will's eyes for some hopeful clue that a clot wasn'

t blocking a capillary or an aneurysm hadn't ruptured, leaking blood in his brain. His pupils were dilated. The sign of a stroke? Or was it simply due to the fear that was chewing up his mind? "Who's tracking us?" Jim asked again.

"The sons of bitches on that ship."

"What ship?"

"Look." He handed Jim the binoculars. Clumsily, Jim

tried to find the smudge. But the engine caused Will's boat to pound against the waves, and the horizon line lurched and jumped like something living no matter how hard Jim tried to steady the glasses. "I don't see anything."

"They're behind that squall. See that dark area? That's a rain squall. They're behind it. Lucky break for us."

"I'm not even sure I saw a ship. There might have been nothing there."

"They're there, all right. Pray by the time they find your `gift' we'll be gone in the night." Jim lowered the glasses and looked hard at Will. He was used to working with people to help them overcome doubt and fear to fix their bodies and get where they wanted to go. He could deal with the man's fear.

"Will, turn around. Go back and get my monitor?' "What are you, nuts?"

"No, I'm not nuts. It's mine. It cost three hundred bucks. I want it back."

"I'll give you the three hundred bucks. Soon as it's dark I'll go below and write you a check. Okay?"

"I don't want your check. It was a gift. It means something to me." Jim was fully aware that he was arguing the wrong issue. This was not about the Accurex, it was about Will's mysterious "they." But if he could convince Will to turn the boat around, he might make him realize that he had temporarily lost his grip. Out of that realization would come reflection; out of reflection, some simple explanation.

"They will kill us, Jim. There is no way we're going back."

"Who will kill us?" Jim asked. "Who are 'they'?" Will looked at him. He wasn't buying into realization, reflection, and simple explanation.

"You think I'm making this up? You think I'm crazy?"

Jim felt the first stab of fear.

HOW DO WE know he's a competent sailor?" Shannon had asked Jim when Will first telephoned. She inhaled adventure books—the wetter, the colder, the higher, the better—and knew from her reading that offshore sailing demanded boat skills, sea skills, and navigation skills.

Will's answer, which they had both found completely reassuring, was that he had bought his latest boat (his third) in Hong Kong, personally supervised an extensive refit, and then sailed it halfway around the world to Barbados. Based on that feat, Jim had put his life in the older man's hands. And judging by the effortless way Will handled the boat, Jim had e-mailed Shannon, he couldn't have asked for a safer captain. Until now. What they should have demanded was a letter from his shrink.

"No," he said carefully. "I don't think you're nuts. But I am very confused. What's going on?"

"Long story, kid. Most of it I can't talk about."

"I want to hear it."

"Maybe later. For the moment, let's just say we're goddamned lucky you spotted them in time." Will looked back again and snorted a little laugh. "I'd love to see their faces when they find that homing device floating all by its lonesome?'

"They?" Jim repeated, treading very carefully. In one of his recurring dreams, he is snatching three hundred pounds when the bar snaps, and the weights smash his feet. Shannon called it his "fear of trying" dream. But that's how he felt now, as he talked to Will. If he asked the wrong question, the old man would suddenly snap and fall to pieces before his eyes. Where would that leave him?

"Do 'they' know that we're sailing to Rio de Janeiro?"

"Good question." Will paused to reflect on what "they" knew. "Probably," he said. " Though maybe not—considering they planted that homing device on you—but I'm not taking the chance."

"What do you mean?" Jim asked.

"No way we're going to Brazil?'

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Where are we going?"

"Africa."

"Africa? What are you talking about? We're going to Brazil. My flight home leaves from Brazil."

"I'll buy you a ticket from Lagos."

"Nigeria? Isn't there a civil war going on there?" "No," said Will.

"The Daily Show said the UN was sending slave ships to rescue West African refugees?'

"That is cruel, crude, sophomoric—"

"But they made it clear that it's dangerous?'

"Not where we're going."

"How far from here? How long are we talking about?" "Month or so. Depending on the wind."

"Or so? Five weeks?"

"Could be six or seven depending on conditions. We've got to get through the Doldrums, which can slow us down. We've got to sail the rest of the way across the Atlantic and pretty deep into the Gulf of Guinea?'

"We had a deal, Will. We're going to Rio. Three more weeks, you said. Now you're talking six or seven."

Will Spark scanned the darkening water behind them. "It's your watch. I've set her due east. I'll go below and work out an exact course. You keep an eye astern. Call me if you see any lights."

"No, Will. We had a deal."

"Don't blame me: it's you who brought them after us with that goddamned monitor." Jim started after him, then stopped and waited in the cockpit, trying to figure out a way to talk sense into Will. The trouble was when he took this job, he hadn't really known Will much better than any of the students who had taken his group spinning classes. He didn't know anything. In retrospect, Jim realized, he had been in a state of confusion since the night he'd landed in Barbados.

Instead of picking him up at the airport, as promised, Will had sent a taxi driver who had Jim's name scrawled on a piece of paper and spoke with an accent he couldn't begin to understand. The taxi drove through dark villages to a wind-whipped cove where a small fishing boat was banging against a rickety dock.

"Captain Spark" had left already, the fisherman explained in only slightly more intelligible pidgin English. He was trying to outdistance a weather front bearing down on the Caribbean island. The fishing boat headed to sea, pounding for hours through inkblack water, until Will's sailboat finally appeared in its searchlight. The seas were rough: the two boats scissored up and down, and Jim had nearly fallen between them in the transfer. As the fishing boat's motor faded he found himself as thoroughly disoriented as a kidnap victim who'd been bound and gagged in a car trunk. Will had greeted him with a cup of coffee and a doughnut, and before Jim knew it he was seasick.

There was no way he was going to Africa.

He went below, down the four-step companionway into the luxurious main salon. By day the rich, dark woodwork made the cabin a serene retreat from the harsh sun and the dazzling sky; now, little lamps cast a soft, golden glow. It reminded him of the fancy libraries in the Gold Coast mansion museums his mother used to drag him to. Will was in the galley, an elegant workspace of brushed stainless steel with a maple block countertop, a gimballed stove that swung level when the boat heeled, knives like razors, and spices Jim had never heard of. Will was braced against the sink as he peeled foil off the frozen leg of lamb:

Jim stood by the chart table opposite the galley and stared at the chart, rehearsing what he had to say. He noticed that Will had penciled in their global positioning system fix. The chart showed that the water here was shallow, relatively speaking, a mile deep instead of three. There was a kind of shelf midocean on which sat Saint Paul's Rocks.

"I probably saw these rocks."

Will shook his head. "Doubt that."

"I never really saw a ship. It could have been these rocks."

"Was it white?"

"What?"

"Was what you saw white?"

"No. Grayish."

"Saint Paul's are white as snow. Covered with bird crap." "The sun was behind the clouds. It could have been white."

Will laid the lamb in the sink, crossed the narrow space between the galley and the nav station, and reached past Jim to lift a fat green volume from the bookshelf.

"Nathaniel Bowditch, American Practical Navigator."

He flipped pages to an article titled "Distance Off."

"Bowditch is the bible. And the bible says here that the distance you can see in miles is about one and one-seventh times the square root of your height. Figure when you're standing in the cockpit your eye is about nine feet above the water."

"I was on the bike, up on the deck."

"Okay," said Will. "So figure your eye was eleven feet above the water." If your eye is eleven feet high, the distance you can see to the horizon is about 3.8 miles. Now, the ing Directions say"—he pulled down the blue-jacketed Sailing Directions for East Coast of South America and showed

Jim an article titled "Off-Lying Islands and Rocks"—"that the tallest of Saint Paul's Rocks are twenty meters, or sixty-five feet, out of the sea. So you add to the distance you can see the square root of sixty-five times one and one-seventh, which equals . . ." He picked up the calculator, punched in a slew of numbers, and showed Jim the screen. " That increases the distance you could see Saint Paul's to 12.7 miles. But according to the GPS we are fifty miles from Saint Paul's Rocks. So, sorry, you didn't see rocks. You saw a ship hunting us."

"Maybe I saw a ship. But I didn't see a ship hunting us." He looked around the main cabin. Nothing he saw gave him hope. The polished teak aglow in the soft golden light of the brass lamps, the dark mahogany cabinets, the leather-bound books, the banks of expensive electronics were all vivid reminders that Will Spark was a very wealthy man who was accustomed to getting his own way. While Jim Leighton was a lopsided cross between employee and guest with less say in important matters than a house pet.

"Look, Will. A deal is a deal."

"I thought you were on watch." He went back to the sink and resumed pulling foil, and the plastic wrap under it, from the frozen lamb.

"You can't just change everything like this. I have a right to be dropped off where you promised."

"I told you. That is no longer possible."

"Will, I don't want to be hard-assed about this. Don't make me force you to turn the boat around."

"Force?" Will Spark looked up from the sink. He dropped the leg of lamb and moved quickly toward him.

Jim backed up, startled.

"You may be younger and stronger, sonny. But suburban college boys don't learn street fighting in health clubs."

Jim had wondered about the scar tissue on Will's fists and the boxer's white ridges over his brow, and the time-bleached U.S. Marine Corps Semper fi tattoo on his biceps, none of which fit the Yale-man image. What was new was the suddenly implacable expression on his face. Well, fuck

him. Jim was younger. Lots younger. And much stronger. Health clubs taught kickboxing, and the places he worked in now featured the Brazilian martial art capoeira. Will seemed to read his mind. He stepped closer and tapped his chest, hard. "You have muscles like a pocket Schwarzenegger. But you're really a little guy. You have lousy bones. You're built too light in your knees and your wrists and your ankles. It must have taken twice the work to bulk up like that. What kind of problem drove you to put on all that muscle?"

"It comes in handy. At times like this."

"Go ahead. Take your best shot."

"Come on, Will."

"Makes me wonder what a bright kid like you is avoiding to shift all that effort into bodybuilding."

"Turn the boat around."

"Or what?" Will shot back. "Even if you could take me, how will you sleep? You going to watch me twenty-four hours a day? What's to stop me from bashing your head in when you close your eyes?"

"Come on, Will," Jim said. But he couldn't help glancing at the pilot berth where he usually slept between watches. The weird thing was, he could almost see it in his mind: Will creeping down the companionway with one of the heavy chrome winch handles.

"You could always tie me to my bunk," Will mocked. "Except, how are you going to sail home alone?"

"All I'm saying is I want to go to Rio like you promised."

"And I'm saying I apologize for disappointing you, and I also apologize for dragging you into this mess. But the fact is, you're with me, so you're in it. I've got no choice but to run. So you've got no choice but to run with me. Remember, if they catch me, they've caught you too. Lotsa luck explaining that you're just along for the ride:'

" 'They' are in your head, Will. There is no 'they.' I'll prove it to you. Let's look on the radar."

"We can't chance using the radar."

"Why not?"

"What if they have ECM?"

"Excuse me, what's ECM?"

"Electronic countermeasures. I can't take a chance they wouldn't lock onto my radar pulse."

"Just for a second. We'll just turn it on, look, and turn it off."

"They'd have our bearing and range in a microsecond?' Jim slipped into the leather bench built into the bulkhead beside the nav table. "One quick look."