Dead in the Water (18 page)

"I guess I better 'fess up," Andy said suddenly. Everyone turned toward him, as, behind them, Kate shook her head violently. Ignoring her, he said, "I got curious and tried it on this morning. And then I thought what the hell and took a little dip in the harbor." He grinned. "I'm from Ventura. I'm used to surfing every day. I miss the water."

The two officers exchanged a wooden glance. "There's a world of difference between the water off Ventura and the water in Iliuliuk Bay," the stocky officer said dryly.

"The idea here is to keep the hell out of the water if at all possible." He looked back at his clipboard, making a minute notation to his list. "Anyway, the point is to maintain your boat in such a fashion that you don't have to go swimming." He ripped off a copy and held it out to Harry. For a moment Kate thought he wasn't going to take it. Seth nudged him, and he extended a reluctant hand.

The slip was thrust into it unhesitatingly. "Your owners will receive formal notice within ten days to two weeks.

If I were you, I'd see to rectifying those violations before you ship out again. And if your mooring light is gone, maybe you should check your stock of bulbs for running lights. They generally tend to need to be replaced all at the same time." He touched the brim of his cap. "Good-bye."

Like a skinny mirror image, the second officer echoed the movement. "It's been swell," Kate heard her breathe, and then they were gone.

Harry chewed Andy out for a good five minutes, using every four-letter word in the book and some he made up on the spot, and when he was done, Ned took over.

When he was finished, Andy looked, if not squelched, at least a trifle subdued. Kate stood in the galley with him, knowing he had taken the onus of suspicion on himself, angry because he had, a little grateful, too, and more than a little touched by the gesture. She only hoped it didn't get him killed.

She had no chance to express any of these feelings.

Ned took the first watch and they rumbled out of the harbor on the evening tide. It was too early to go to bed, and Kate thought it best to fall in with the first night out's regular routine. There was some discussion as to who and what would occupy the VCR in the rec room. Seth chose Debbie Does Dallas, as expected, Andy chose Gandhi, also expected, and Harry chose The Dam Busters, which show of good taste amazed Kate. The fact that the movie was even in Harry's library amazed her even more, before she realized that their selection was probably standard issue on Alaska Ventures's boats. Kate, who harbored a secret ]etch for John Wayne, chose Rio Lobo. "Who wants popcorn?"

"Me!" came a chorus of three.

"Butter?"

"Lots!"

John Wayne saved the Union in spite of itself one more time and Andy got up to rewind the tape and start Gandhi.

"Did you know," Seth said.

Kate, full of buttered popcorn and relief, said lazily,

"What?"

"Did you know that the last shot fired in the Civil War was fired around these parts?"

"What," Kate said, "you mean around these here Aleutian parts?"

"Uh-huh."

"No way," she said.

"Come on," Andy said.

"Bullshit," Harry agreed.

"It's true. The summer of 1865, the Confederate Navy ship Shenandoah blew almost forty Union ships out of the Bering Sea. Whalers, merchant vessels, anything flying the wrong flag. On June 26 Waddell-he was the skipper-took six whalers off St. Lawrence Island alone.

Two days later he took eleven more in the Bering Strait.

See, the Confederacy was trying to hit the Yankees in the wallet."

"Wait a minute," Kate said, who wasn't a John Wayne fan for nothing, "Lee surrendered in April."

"The Shenandoah was umpteen thousand miles from home in April," Seth said, "and they couldn't afford a satellite dish. They didn't know. What's more, they were never caught. When a British ship told them the war was over, Waddell sailed her all the way around the Horn and back to England, where he surrendered to the American ambassador."

"Wow!" Andy said, eyes shining. "So the last shot of the Civil War was fired off the coast of Alaska! That's great! Isn't that great, Kate?"

Still suspicious, Kate said, "How come I've never heard of this before?"

"Why, I don't know, Kate," Seth said, so mildly it was impossible to suspect him of malice. "Could it be that you don't know everything after all?"

"I never said I did," Kate said, hurt, and made an instantaneous resolve upon next setting foot on shore to find the nearest history of the Civil War and took it up.

The credits for Gandhi rolled. Seth yawned and mumbled something about a long day. Harry was right behind him. Kate, who liked Ben Kingsley almost as much as she liked John Wayne, and who had no TV or VCR in her little cabin in the middle of a million square acres of federal park and so didn't get to see movies unless she was visiting Bobby, stayed put. She would have stayed put for Debbie Does Dallas.

When the door closed behind Harry she waited a few moments before saying in a low voice, "Andy?

Thanks."

He flushed up to the roots of his hair. Trying for nonchalance, his voice squeaked, and he flushed again. He cleared his throat and said gruffly, "Forget it." He picked up the remote and pretended to fiddle with the tracking.

"You ever going to tell me what you were doing on that island? Or what they were doing there?"

"Sometime."

"But not now?"

She shook her head. "Andy?" He looked at her and sobered at her expression. "This is my last trip on the Avilda. It should be yours, too."

"I haven't found another berth yet, I-"

"I'll help you find one," she said. "Let's get off the Avilda while we can still walk off. Okay?"

The color left his face, leaving it pale beneath his fading tan. "Okay."

They settled back to watch the movie. When it was over, Andy said on a long sigh, "Now there's a man who is on the road to Enlightenment."

Kate hid a grin. "No need to reinforce his prana, I guess."

"No, Kate," Andy said earnestly, "everyone has to do that. 'You must perform thy allotted work, for action is superior to inaction.' Like Jesus, Gandhi preached love of your fellow man, and he performed his allotted work so well that his legacy was a free India."

"And look how well things turned out there," Kate told him. "Pakistan and India are at each other's throats, they're starving in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka is in the middle of a civil war and every two or three years the Muslims murder a hundred or so Hindus, or the other way around. Some legacy, all right."

" 'Always perform the work that has to be done without attachment,' " Andy quoted solemnly, " 'for man attains the Supreme by performing work without attachment.'

"

"Is there anything you don't believe in?" she demanded, exasperated. "There's got to be some crackpot religion you've overlooked. Zoroastrianism? The Cathars?

Have you accidentally let a recruiter for the Rosecrucian Fellowship pass you by?"

" 'The ignorant man who is without faith and of a doubting nature perishes.' " And the little prick had the nerve to grin at her.

THE next day was as balmy as it got in the Aleutians.

It wasn't raining, snowing or sleeting, the omnipresent bank of fog stayed low on the southeastern horizon, and there were enough breaks in the clouds overhead for the sun to peep through occasionally with at least the illusion of warmth and cheer. A strong, regular swell caused the deck of the Avilda to lift and fall rhythmically beneath their feet but there was no breaking spray, and except where their hands got wet on the lines they worked dry for the first time in anyone's memory. Kate found that she was actually enjoying herself.

She was hanging a bait jar when she heard Andy cry out. She wormed her head and shoulders out of the pot and stood. "What?"

His eyes blazing with excitement, he pointed to port.

"Look! Look at them all!"

It was a pod of killer whales, cresting and blowing, their backs gleaming black and white in the erratic sun.

"For a minute I thought they were sharks," Andy said.

There was awe in his voice and Kate smiled to herself.

"Why are they called killer whales?"

"Because they do."

"What, kill? I thought whales only ate krill."

Kate's hands paused as she looked over at him. "And what do you know about krill?"

"Hey, I went to college." He was tying door ties with a deftness that had not been present a month, even two weeks before. "For one semester, anyway. I took a class in marine biology when I knew I was coming to Alaska."

"And you didn't learn about killer whales?"

"Well, I kind of ... left ... before we got to killer whales." He gave her an engaging grin. "So. What do killer whales kill?"

"Actually, they aren't whales, they're the largest dolphin.

And they eat just about anything they can fit into their mouths," Kate replied, loading bait jars. Even the smell of dead herring wasn't as bad this morning. "Seals, mostly, but any kind of fish, squid, penguins, sea lions.

Even other whales." She screwed down the lid on one jar. "They've even been known to attack boats."

"Wow, " Andy breathed. "You mean like Moby Dick?"

Kate nodded, and he stared at the retreating backs of the orcas, upright fins slicing through the water. "They're probably hunting now," Kate added. "They hunt in pods."

Olga's chant flashed through her mind. "When the killer whales come to a bay with a village, someone dies in that bay. " A whisper of unease crept up her spine. She shrugged it off and said to Andy, "Did I ever tell you I used to sing high sea chanteys?"

He was unable to repress an expression of alarm.

"No."

"Well, I did." She whacked vigorously at a block of frozen herring. "There was a song the whalers used to sing on their way south." And for the first time in two years she raised her voice in song. It was harsh, grating across the wound in her throat and coming out low and raspy, but it seemed somehow appropriate to the place and the day and the killer whales frolicking with lethal intent off their port bow.

'Tis a damn tough life full of toil and strife We whalemen undergo And we don't give a damn when the gale is done How hard the winds did blow."

She grinned at Andy, who looked like he was failing in love.

Now we're homeward bound, 'tis a grand old sound On a good ship taut and free, And we won't give a damn when we drink our rum With the girls of old Maui."

She handed Seth a full bait jar so he could hang it in the pot about to go over the side. He took it and didn't immediately turn to hang it, but stood for a moment, looking down at her. Her smile faded. "What's the matter?"

He shrugged. "Nothing," he said, and turned back to the shot of line he was coiling.

She stared at his back, puzzled. The expression in his eyes had seemed somehow regretful. She shrugged and went back to the bait table to cut more herring and fill more jars.

Rolling down to old Maui, my boys, Rolling down to old Maui

Now we're homeward bound from the Arctic round Rolling down to old Maui."

She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt this good.

Her last trip on the Avilda, and no matter what Jack said it was going to be her last trip, was going to be a piece of cake. As soon as they nailed the shark in Dutch, he'd put them on to the men in the Navaho, and when they finished singing, the truth of what had happened to Alcala and Brown would be known at last.

Harry Gault had no real idea there was a cuckoo in his nest, and all Kate had to do was help set and pull pots and make money and count the knots home. She hoped Jack had remembered to make her a reservation on the plane. The flights north were always jammed and she wanted to be on the first one that left after her tippy toe hit dirt at Dutch. She missed Mutt and her cabin and her homestead and the Park, though it didn't look like she was going to miss the first snow after all.

"How soft the breeze from the island trees Now the ice is far astern And them native maids in them tropical glades Is awaiting our return."

She was able to dismiss Harry catching her coming out of his cabin at two in the morning; he hadn't so much as raised an eyebrow in her direction, or referred to it in any way. He had likewise ignored her reference to his two previous crewmen's disappearance, probably having decided she'd heard the story over a bar in Dutch. He hadn't picked up on the shark's reference to Jack, and Andy, bless his heart, had covered for the wet survival suit.

"Even now their big black eyes look out Hoping some fine day to see our baggy sails running 'fore the gales Rolling down to old Maui."

She leaned head and shoulders inside a crab pot balanced delicately on the pot launcher, and began to hang the bait jar. Through the metal mesh stretched between the steel frames, she saw Ned raise his right hand, as if to wave toward the bridge. His left hand moved to the launching lever.

The engine changed pitch, the Avilda made a sudden jerk to port and the platform of the pot launcher shifted.

The pot tilted precariously, overbalanced and fell into the water.

It wasn't until Kate inhaled water and exhaled bubbles that she realized she had fallen with it.

Her first thought was how strange it was that her mind never stopped thinking, that she remained unpanicked, that she could assess her situation so coolly, ticking off items one at a time.

She realized she was overboard.

She realized she was inside a crab pot.

She realized it was no accident, and dismissed the knowledge as something to be dealt with later.

She spared one brief, bitter thought for the cocksure arrogance that led her to believe she was safe.

No, safe wasn't the right word. She had thought herself invulnerable. That, too, was something better dealt with later.

Meanwhile, she and the pot were sinking together, down, down, down, heading straight down through the cold, green waters of the Gulf of Alaska, water that grew ever darker as they descended toward the ocean bottom three hundred feet below.

Kate realized the killers had had no time to tie the door shut before dumping the pot. It had happened so fast, she still had the strap of the jar hanger in one hand.