Buried At Sea (50 page)

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Authors: Paul Garrison

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To Jim he said, "Suspecting that you would perpetuate Will's lies, Andy brought what used to be quaintly called a truth serum."

"What?"

McVay looked at Shannon. "It will be administered to the young lady." Val exploded, "Dad, for goodness' sake, what are you gassing on about? It's on the boat somewhere. Search for it!" "For all we know, it's booby-trapped. Andy!" Andy Nickels signaled his men on the ferry. They started flinging meat into the water. Lloyd McVay said, "Will Spark must have left behind some sort of floatation signal instrument. An extremely low frequency transmitter of a type used to communicate with submarines, I would imagine. Wouldn't you, Val?"

"ELF," said Val.

Before Jim saw the first shark, he knew he was beaten.

McVay said, "If you hand it to me in less than sixty seconds, Jim, Andy will not throw young Shannon overboard."

"It's behind the freezer, next to the compressor. And it's not booby-trapped, for Christ's sake."

"Go with him, Andy."

Nickels went down the companionway first and watched closely while Jim knelt to get the ELF transmitter. "You asshole. You really thought you'd get away from us on a fucking sailboat?"

Jim stood up and handed him the transmitter. "Love your nose job." Andy Nickels threw a hard jab at his face. Jim slipped some of the stinging blow and landed a left that smashed the former Ranger into the bulkhead. As they squared off, Lloyd McVay called down, "Andy, we don't have all day."

"Right here, Mr. McVay?'

"Bring up the bloody thing."

The ELF transmitter had a telescoping antenna with a cuplike protuberance at the end. They lowered it into the water

and turned the instrument on. It beeped at ten-second intervals to indicate it was working.

"How long, Val?" asked McVay.

Val was already calculating the time for the signal to reach the microprocessor in the mile-deep water, how air bladders would fill in stages so as not to explode, and a rate of ascent.

"Ten minutes, I would guess."

At the end of ten minutes, all that was visible in the bloodied water was a pair of bluetipped sharks. At twelve minutes, Lloyd McVay said, "Val, your data are suspect."

"There!" shouted Andy.

Fluorescent orange dye spread on the surface, twenty feet from the sailboat. In its midst was an orange balloon. "Get it!" ordered Lloyd McVay.

"Dive!" yelled Andy.

The divers hesitated. Two sharks were circling. In that moment of confusion, Jim Leighton saw a chance to turn the tables. But it required mustering the courage to dive into the water.

It was a chance to keep the prototype out of the McVays' hands. But more important, it was his only chance to save Shannon. The gunmen lining the rails left no doubt that the instant Lloyd McVay had Sentinel aboard the big ferry the order would be given for all engines full ahead to smash Hustle and her witnesses under the sea. Jim stepped over the lifelines and lowered himself smoothly into the water before anyone noticed. Careful not to splash, he swam a swift, quiet breaststroke toward the floating canister. He heard Shannon call, "Jim!"

A dorsal fin cut the surface. Fear sucked the breath from his lungs. He tucked up his legs and hugged his body with his arms, trying to make a smaller target. A ten-foot blue-tip shark smacked into him, rasping his skin with its rough hide. Fighting panic, Jim slammed his elbow as hard as he could into its flank. He sensed another rush. He dove underwater, tucked into another ball, and kicked it full in the nose. His running shoe snagged on a

tooth. Both sharks veered away and circled warily. Jim resumed his smooth swim into the orange stain.

He plucked from the water a shiny canister, the size of a beer can.

"Good lad," called Lloyd McVay. "Now just bring it right here." Treading water, Jim ripped away the float bladder and the dye marker and held the canister over his head. It was heavy, made of stainless steel.

"No!" shouted both McVays.

"Guns overboard!" Jim yelled. "Or I dump it." Lloyd and Val McVay couldn't take their eyes off the shiny canister. "Name your price!" Lloyd McVay called.

"It won't float. Guns overboard!" A fin circling closer began cutting toward him. Jim instinctively reached to block it with the canister.

"A million dollars!" shouted Lloyd McVay.

"Ten million dollars," shouted Val. "Get out of the water." "Jim!" Shannon pleaded. "Get back on the boat." "Guns overboard."

"Do it!" yelled Lloyd McVay. "Weapons over the side. Now. No holdouts." Assault rifles and pistols rained into the water.

"All of them!" yelled Jim.

A sawed-off shotgun splashed near him. Trying to keep

track of the sharks, Jim scissor-kicked toward Hustle.

"Help him," snapped Val and Andy Nickels reached out

to pull Jim aboard.

"Get away!" shouted Jim. "Back off. Back off. Shannon, the dive ladder."

"Help her!" cried McVay.

"Get away from her.".

Shannon crawled out of the cockpit and across the stern deck and shoved the dive ladder into the water.

Jim climbed partway up, inches ahead of another blue tip, and stood on the bottom rung as the rising and falling stern plunged his legs in and out of the sea.

"Here's the deal. Everyone off your boat and into our

boat. We'll trade. As soon as we can figure out how to run yours, I'll throw you the canister."

Red with anger, Lloyd McVay ordered his crew to abandon ship.

"Make 'em all stay up on the bow," Jim yelled.

"Wait," Val said to her father.

"Shut up," he told her. "On the foredeck, all of you!" Jim watched six men clamber down to Hustle's foredeck. He had no way of knowing whether they were the entire crew. They'd deal with that when they got aboard. The important thing was to put more space between them. He climbed another rung on the dive ladder and looked around, gauging his next move. The huge ferry loomed to his left, rubbing Hustle's port side as the two vessels moved on the swell. The six men were crowding the bow, ahead of the mast, fifty feet from where he was holding the canister over the water. Shannon was crouched beside him on the stern deck. Val was twenty feet straight ahead on the cabin roof. Andy Nickels and Lloyd McVay were standing near her on the starboard side deck, eyes flickering between the canister and the shark-roiled water at their feet.

"Okay, Shannon." He touched her arm and she returned a level, I'm-all-right gaze. "You first. Can you pull yourself up that ladder?"

Shannon grasped the rope they'd hung from the backstay, hauled herself to her feet, and swung across the cockpit toward the nearest ladder dangling from the ferry. As she did, a swell tilted the boat, causing her to swing wide. Andy Nickels was on her in a flash, encircling her waist with one arm and dragging her to the lifelines.

"Pool party's over, asshole. If it sinks, she sinks. Give Mr. McVay the canister." Jim felt himself die inside. So close. So close. They wouldn't kill Shannon now. They would kill her later. But he had to deal with now. Will, the great optimist, had laughed on his deathbed.

"Catch!"

He lobbed the canister in the direction of Nickels and McVay, along the side of the boat.

"Catch that, Andy!" Lloyd McVay shouted.

Nickels released Shannon, vaulted the lifelines, and lunged, bobbling the canister on the stumps of frostbitten fingers. As it bounced free, he tumbled toward the water, caught himself on the lifelines, and hung half over the side. The much taller McVay, as long and graceful as a shore bird, reached farther. Stepping over the lifelines, his shoes planted on the gunnel, one hand grasping the lifeline.

The canister containing Will Spark's microprocessor danced on the tips of his fingers. As it bounced away, he lunged farther, let go of the lifeline, and with a cry of triumph closed his hand.

Teetering on one foot, he reached back and hooked a finger of his other hand around the safety lines again. Directly under him, Andy Nickels screamed in terror as a shark smacked the hull beside him. Desperately swinging his legs out of the water, Nickels kicked the lifeline from Lloyd McVay's grasp.

McVay looked down in sudden amazement, as if noticing the churning water for the first time. He froze, suddenly rigid with fear. Sentinel slipped away from him and splashed into the sea.

"Val!" he shouted as he grasped for her hand, his eyes riveted on the sharks. Val McVay did not hesitate. She had a split second to weigh her future without Sentinel. The Sentinel concept was still viable. But developing it would demand single-minded effort and unquestioned control of the McVay Foundation for Humane Science.

"You're forgetting your Shakespeare, Dad."

"Help me!"

"It's serpent-tooth time."

THE FAST FERRY had vanished over the horizon with Val and Andy and their crew. But only after the sharks had finally gone did Jim and Shannon speak, and then, only in stunned whispers.

"Why didn't they kill us?" Shannon asked.

"Val's not a killer."

"Or we weren't a threat?'

"Or there were too many witnesses."

The sails were slatting. Jim let the boat fall off the wind and filled the jib. Then he sheeted in and locked the helm. It felt good to do something with his hands.

"From where I was watching, she could have saved her father." Jim shrugged. "He might have pulled her under. . Will used to say to me, 'People do what they have to do. It's the real world, Jim.' He was talking about poor people, but the warning was clear: look out for the needy ones. Then he'd laugh at me like I was totally naive."

Shannon was looking at him strangely. "Didn't that bother you?"

"Why should it? I was naive. Or sentimental, which is

worse. Almost thirty years old but still dumb as a post. I had a lot to learn. He had a lot to teach."

"You really admired him."

"Shannon, we've been through this. You know I liked him."

"But did you admire him?"

"I liked him, warts and all."

"I think you should sit down." "why"

Y•

"Sit down."

He sat beside her on the cockpit bench. "I'm sitting." "There was never time to talk about this. And then when

we finally did have time, Val was around. Maybe I used her

as an excuse. But I didn't know what to do with it." "With what?"

"I don't know what it means. But I have to tell you. When I first telephoned the Larchmont Yacht Club hoping to learn about Will, they hung up on me. Then after you found out about Billy Cole and we went through the whole Billy Cole thing, I was really worried.

"So I drove over there. Pulled right up to the front door of this gorgeous old building and hobbled in. 'Here comes the cripple with the brave smile.' They were very nice to me. I said I was looking for my grandfather, Will Spark. `Mr. Spark is not here, blah-blah-blah. Simply ages since we've seen him.' His boat was gone. Somebody heard he was on another boat in Barbados. Anyhow, I kept smiling around until a nice old guy asked if I wanted lunch."

"Don't tell me you hooked up with a rich old man."

"Listen to me! I said, 'Sure, thanks.' So we're having lunch and a glass of wine: 'Oh, here comes an old friend of Will's'—'Hullo, Bunky. Meet Will Spark's granddaughter'—blahblah-blah. Bunky and I start talking. When the first old guy shuffles off to pee and we're alone, he goes, Will never had a granddaughter.' "

"You were caught."

"Egg all over my face. Except I got this brainstorm. I said, 'Billy Cole had a granddaughter.'

"Bunky laughed. 'Billy didn't either. And don't tell me it was Mick Creegan.' "

"Mick Creegan! That's the first Will! I think it was his real name."

"It was. Bunky knew Will way back when. They had always stayed in touch. I don't think he was another con man. I think he just happened to like Will."

"What did he tell you about him?"

Shannon reached for Jim's hand. "Jobs he'd had. All the things he learned how to do. Names. Some of the scams. He knew he'd been to jail."

"I always wondered, was he really in the Marines?"

"Oh, yes." Shannon began to stroke his hand in both of hers. "He did a bunch of stuff."

"Like what? What are you trying to tell me?"

"He'd been a teacher. He taught Outward Bound. And sailing. And survival courses." She kept rubbing his hand. "Back in the seventies, he was an est trainer."

"What?"

"He led est retreats. In California. In the mountains." A hundred thoughts scattered. A thousand fell in place. Shannon said, "I sat there. My head was spinning. Could it be a coincidence?"

"Has to be."

"Could your mother have—"

"I don't know. I mean, I—Jesus, I don't know what my mother . . . 'The dark at the top of the stairs' . . . Did the old guy, Bunky, know? About—about me?"

"No."

"Is that why Will gave me the boat?"

"He gave you the boat because you were ready for the boat," Shannon said firmly.

"He made me his heir."

"In my opinion the boat was a gift—a reward—from a teacher to his prize student."

"But if he was more, if he was—" Jim couldn't speak the word. "Why wouldn't Will tell me?"

"I thought a lot about that. Maybe he was ashamed of himself."

"He could have told me."

"Jim, I think he tracked you down. He joined the Bridgeport club to take your classes. . .

. He checked you out. . ." Shannon touched Jim's cheek. "And liked what he saw . ." Jim took her hand and pressed her fingers to a smile that opened his face wider than Shannon had ever seen. Sentinel was lost on the bottom of the ocean. They were low on food and water, far from any shore. They were broke. The boat needed work. The hurricane season had begun. And all was right with the world.

"He took me sailing."

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