Dead in the Water (19 page)

Instinctively, she used it to brace herself and kicked at the door. It didn't move. She kicked again. It remained closed, perhaps the force of their descent causing the water to keep it closed, perhaps the water blunting the force of her kicks.

The pressure of all that water bearing down on her pitifully fragile self was building in her ears.

It would kill her.

If hypothermia didn't get her first.

If she didn't drown before that.

She kicked again, and still that damn door wouldn't budge, and suddenly she was overwhelmed with an energizing, revitalizing fury and she kicked again and again and again. She would not be disposed of like an inconvenience, Harry Gault and Seth Skinner and Ned Nordhoff would not be permitted to go their way as if nothing had happened, business as usual, she would get out of this pot, she would fight her way to the surface, she would flay all three of them alive and shove them over the side in a crab pot and see how they liked it.

She kicked again and her foot hit nothing. The fury cleared from her eyes and she saw that the door to the crab pot was open, forced by the water all the way open and back against the side of the pot. Without hesitation she grabbed mesh to the open end and, because the pot had tumbled and was descending door side down, pulled herself around the bottom and up the other side, virtually climbing around the outside of the pot.

When she reached the top she hesitated for a millisecond.

As rapidly as it was descending toward the ocean bottom, as much as the pressure was building in her ears, as numb as her hands and feet were becoming, still the pot was the only solid object in her world at that moment, and it took a conscious effort to let go and strike for the surface.

She did it, though, following the long trail of bubbles up, upward, ever upward, stroking vigorously with arms that felt like lead, kicking steadily with legs that felt like spaghetti. Her lungs began to burn from lack of oxygen.

Was she still going up? Had she become disoriented and lost her sense of direction? Was she already drowned and didn't know it? The temptation to inhale, to gulp in great breaths of air, was so tempting that she opened her mouth to do just that when she saw a dark shape above her.

It was the hull of the Avilda, and with a burst of adrenaline she reached out for it with every numb sinew of her body. As it came nearer some detached comer of her mind noticed that the keel had enough kelp growing from it to qualify as a sea otter habitat. It must have slowed the Avilda's cruising speed by at least five knots. But then, what could you expect from a skipper whose creed was "Use it up, throw it out and buy a new one"?

The thought of Harry Gault, laughing at how he'd tricked her, triumphant in his successful disposal of what was surely nothing more than a temporary annoyance, less in importance than a rock he would stub his toe on, cleared Kate's head at once. She was close enough to where she could see the surface through the water now, could even make out the clouds in the sky. She made for the side of the boat, hoping to attract Andy's attention, but the side kept retreating in front of her. Her lungs bursting and her ears popping, she made for the surface, breaking out of the sea's cold embrace into air that felt even colder.

Gasping for breath, coughing water out of her lungs, she shook water from her eyes and looked up.

Just in time to see the stern of the Avilda swing toward her, the water boiling out from beneath its stem. Instinct took over and she sucked in and dived straight down as far and as fast as she could.

Even at that, the churning propellor tickled one booted foot. Another stroke and she was beyond it, just barely.

A flood of incredulous wrath filled her entire body, driving out cold, cramp and lack of air, although later she wondered why incredulous. Harry Gault had seen her surface. Harry Gault had seen her, had realized she had fought her way out of the pot and back to the surface, and had swung the stem of the Avilda around to try to catch her in the propellor and finish the job once and for all.

Furiously calm, letting the air stored in her lungs out one minuscule bubble at a time, she let herself drift for a moment, studying the movement of the hull above her.

She could see it quite clearly, and the propellor, as well as the rudder, and she waited, sure of Harry's next move.

When the rudder shifted to starboard she struck for the port side of the vessel and broke surface just as the aft cabin was slipping by. Something wet and slimy trailed across her cheek and with a reflexive motion she reached up to claw it away.

It was the lady's line.

The lady's line, the line Ned threw over the side when they were done fishing and ready to head for home. The thought that he had felt confident enough that the day's business was done to throw the line overboard banished the fear that her hands might be too numb to grip, and she forced her fingers around the rope.

On her peripheral vision she thought she saw the flash of a triangular fin, a white patch on a shiny black back, and for the first time she was truly afraid. That fear was enough to propel her up the rope, hand over hand, breaking the surface, bringing her feet down against the hull, walking up it, braced back against the pull of the lady's line. She caught at the railing with one hand, dropped the line and grabbed with the other. Scrabbling with her toes, she threw a leg over the railing and pulled herself up and over it, to collapse on the deck and fie there soaked and shaking in a puddle of seawater.

Never had air tasted sweeter, never had the deck of the Avilda felt firmer, never had she felt so alive. Life was good.

"When killer whales come to a bay with a village, someone dies in that village," she muttered, half hysterically. "But not this time, Auntie. Not today.

Not me."

Yes, life was good. If she wanted it to stay that way she had to move. She rolled over and came to her knees and banged at the sides of her head, shaking water from her ears. Raised voices came to her from the foredeck, and crouching, her back pressed up against the cabin, she inched her way forward. Where the side of the cabin began to curve into the front, she stopped to listen.

"That's all you're going to do?" she heard Andy say, his young voice agonized. "We've got to look for her.

We've got to at least try!"

"Forget it, kid," Ned's voice growled back. "She's gone. There's no buoy we can hook on to. That pot wasn't attached to a shot yet anyway."

"Seth?"

"Forget it, kid." Seth's voice was just as gruff but kinder. "It happens. Let's just get back into port."

Andy said no more. Kate, peering cautiously around the corner, saw him with tears coursing down his face, and wondered how she could attract his attention without attracting the attention of everyone else and without it being such a wonderful surprise to have his darling Kate back that he gave her away. If only he weren't so young.

If only Jack were on board in his place. But if Jack had been on board she would have brained him with her Louisville ice breaker long ago.

She drew back and hoisted a cautious eye over the edge of the porthole in the galley door. It was empty.

Swiftly, silently, she opened it and slipped inside. The warmth hit her like a blow and she staggered beneath it. She steadied herself and made for the passageway.

A movement caught the corner of her eye and she saw Seth gaping at her through the opposite door.

"Shit!" She dived through the entry into the passageway, hearing the starboard side door to the galley bang open and thumping footsteps behind her. She ran past the doors leading to the staterooms and out the door that led to the aft deck. She launched herself down the stairs and into the storeroom. She cast about desperately for some kind of defense among the stacked cases of canned goods, the burlap sacks of onions and potatoes, the industrial-size refrigerator and the hated walk-in freezer.

There was nothing, not so much as a butcher knife or an AK-47. She had time for one longing thought of the baseball bat stacked next to the sledgehammers in the fo'c'sle before she heard a footstep on the stairs. Fear at being caught unprepared sharpened her wits, and she improvised.

He came down the stairs slowly, one cautious foot at a time. Somewhere during the chase he'd picked up a very large monkey wrench and he was carrying it ready to swing. Any liking Kate Shugak had felt for Seth Skinner vanished in that moment.

"Kate?" he said in a low voice. "Come on out. Come on, you know there's no place to go. Don't make this any harder than it has to be."

She crouched behind the Elberta Freestone Peach Halves in Light Syrup, not moving.

The footsteps halted on the other side of her canned goods revetment. Her heart was banging so loudly in her ears she was afraid he could hear it. A drop of seawater, mixed with sweat, gathered on her forehead and rolled down her nose to splash onto the floor, and to Kate the 1964 earthquake and tidal wave combined had made less noise.

"Kate," Seth said sternly, sounding for all the world like a strict, no-nonsense father chastising a recalcitrant child, "I know you're in the freezer, you left the door open. Come on out now."

By then Kate was so conditioned to failure she almost got up. His voice stilled her.

"You've just come out of the water. You must be freezing in there, literally. Come on out. The game's over. Hey, I haven't even told the rest of them you're back on board. It's just me here. Come on.'"

The creak of the freezer door sounded loud and joyously in Kate's ears and she tensed in every muscle of her quivering body. She heard him take one step, another, and with every ounce of strength she possessed hurled herself forward, knocking the boxes into him and him into the freezer.

There was a yell and a flash of light; he'd been reaching for the string that dangled from the single bulb in the middle of the freezer just as she'd hit him from behind and had pulled it on his way down. She didn't stop to question her good fortune, she kicked boxes out of the way of the door while he was scrambling to his feet and slammed the door shut in his face.

The latch clicked and Kate banged the locking bar down into its bracket with a feral cry. The thud of his body against the door one second too late made it vibrate beneath her cheek. She heard yells and curses and after a moment he began to bang on the door with the monkey wrench. The noise was muffled by the sound of the engine and by the thickness of the door itself, but she leaned up against the door anyway, ear pressed against it, trembling from cold and relief and elation, drinking in the sounds.

Straightening, she turned toward the stairs. One down.

Two to go. She wondered if he'd been telling the truth.

She hadn't heard him yell out when he'd seen her. If he'd been lying, Andy- she couldn't think about Andy now.

The passageway was still and silent, and she mounted the stairs. The beat of the engine through the walls of the engine room didn't falter. It was warm and dark in the stairwell, and the beat of the engine was hypnotic, a steady chant enticing her to rest, to sit down and relax for just a second. She tried and failed to remember what relaxing felt like, and shied away from the seductive temptation to sit down and find out. She opened the door to the deck. Her teeth were beginning to chatter and she was reluctant to leave the cozy stairwell for the cold, open air.

Her reluctance abated when she realized she'd forgotten the boat hook racked next to that door, as well as the ladder leading to the catwalk, the catwalk that circled all the way around the cabin's second story to the bridge itself. The bridge where Harry Gault stood before a large, spoked wooden wheel, steering his ship into harbor, no doubt smug as all get out in his sense of self-satisfaction over a difficult job well done.

She was about to mount the ladder when a gasp startled her. She jerked around, boat hook at the ready.

Andy was standing there, blue eyes enormous in his white face. "Kate?" He took one faltering step forward.

"Kate! You're alive!"

She let go the ladder and leapt forward to slap one hand over his mouth. "Shut up!"

Ignoring her, he folded her in his arms and hugged her unself-consciously, his head buried in her soaking hair, muttering over and over again, "Thank God, thank God, thank God. I thought you were drowned. We all did. Thank God you weren't! How did you get back on board? When did you get back on board? Why didn't you-"

"Andy," she said, shaking him, "hush up. Dammit, I said be quiet!"

Her hissed words finally penetrated his consciousness and he pulled back to stare down at her, his expression confused.

"Never mind how, but my going overboard was no accident."

He stared down at her, his hands lax on her arms.

"It's true, dammit!" she said fiercely, her teeth beginning to chatter again. "N-Ned signaled t-to H-Harry to throw the b-boat on a sh-sharp tack wh-while hhe ]-launched the pot. Th-they w-waited until I was h-hanging the b-bait jar."

"Why?" he said simply.

"Th-they're sm-smuggling dope." His face changed.

"C-cocaine. Th-they land it on A-Anua and s-sell it in D-Dutch."

His face changed again, to something older and harder.

Looking at her through narrowed eyes, he said, "What are you, really? A cop?"

She was surprised at his quickness, and immediately ashamed of her surprise. She wouldn't have liked him so much if he was just another dumb blond. "N-no."

She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to control the shudders rippling through her body. "N-never mind that now. Seth's locked in the meat freezer in the storeroom.

"What!"

"But there's still Ned and Harry. I don't think they know I'm back on board yet. I want you to lock yourself in our stateroom and stay there until I come to get you."

He stared at her. "Lock myself in our room?" He drew himself up, seeming to grow a foot and age twenty years in a single instant. When he spoke his voice was deep and certain. "I won't go to my stateroom like a good little boy, Kate. I'm not a good little boy."

"Keep your voice down!" She had pulled him against the bulkhead of the aft cabin and they crouched there together, speaking in furious whispers.