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Authors: Gloria Skurzynski

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BOOK: Out of the Deep
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“I'm getting in,” Jack cried. “Leave my sister alone.”

“Do exactly what you're told. We're going for a ride.”

Jack felt helpless—totally and completely helpless. No one could see them from where they were, no boats were in the marina, no people sauntered along the beach, no police had come to save them. There was nothing to do but obey orders. Stepping into the boat, he felt it rock beneath him. The man maneuvered himself on board with Ashley still clamped to his side. When a wave swelled, the boat thrust up and then down again.

“Sit,” the man ordered Jack. “There.” He pointed to a seat with a red cushion. Jack sat, his spine as straight as if it had been lined with steel. He looked around but saw nothing he could use as a weapon.

“Put your hand on that rail. Do it!”

The metal of the boat's railing felt cold against Jack's wrist as he laid his hand on it. From a pocket the man took handcuffs that he snapped first onto Jack's wrist, then onto the railing, tethering Jack to the boat. The vessel itself was his anchor now, and there was no way out. If it sinks, he thought, I'll drown.

Moments later, as the motor roared to life, Ashley sprawled onto the floor, sliding on her stomach toward the back of the boat. The man had secured the suitcase so it wouldn't slide, but he didn't care about Ashley.

As they sped into the waves, wind churned against them, making Jack's eyes blur with tears. He could make out Ashley crawling toward him on all fours, her hair whipping into a black cloud, her shirt puffed out like a sail. The motel shrank in the distance to the size of a child's toy, then to a dime, then to a single piece of confetti. The wake sprayed into his face, chilling him. Turning in a wide arc, the boat headed for the open sea, and the man, shielded by glass, lit a cigarette. Jack felt hate surge through him as he frantically pulled against the handcuff. The metal bit into his skin.

Ashley rocked to her knees, grabbed Jack's waist, caught her balance, then placed her mouth as close as she could to Jack's ear. “What are we going to do?” she cried. Her eyes looked terrified.

“You need to—”

“What?”

The noise was deafening. There was no way the man could hear them over the motor's roar. Louder this time, Jack yelled, “Take this cushion and jump overboard. It'll float.” The words seemed to fly back into his throat as the wind beat against him.

“No—no way. Anyway, he'd just come after me.”

They were moving so fast the nose of the boat rose above the water until it pointed to the sky. Ashley held on to Jack with a viselike grip. “I'm so scared.”

“Me too. But there's—” Even with the noise of the motor and the wind, he didn't want to say the name out loud, so he mouthed “Bindy.” “She'll call the police. She heard. She knows!”

“Jack—they might not believe her!”

The thought chilled him more than the spray from the wake, slamming into him like a fist. It was true. Bindy had told so many fantastic tales in the past! He knew how unbelievable the story would sound to his parents, to the police, to anyone who would listen as Bindy tried to convince them:
The three of us stole a case full of secret sonar equipment, part of the government conspiracy that hurt the whales, and a strange man in black kidnapped Jack and Ashley and made them get into a boat.

It sounded utterly preposterous. Just another one of Bindy's lies added to the pile.

Jack closed his eyes, and in the darkness behind his lids, thought of what lay ahead. Their only hope rested on Bindy.

CHAPTER TEN

W
ind cut against Jack, salt stung his cheeks, and the roar of the motor nearly deafened him. When would this ride be over? Still kneeling, Ashley clung to him, burying her face against his arm. Whenever the boat lurched, tossed by a wave, she hung on him even tighter. His left wrist, handcuffed to the rail, grew numb; his right arm, clutched by Ashley, began to ache. How much longer? And where were they being taken?

Jack squinted at the sky. In Maine in the month of May the sun didn't set until around 8:00, he had noticed the night before. Jack tried to read his watch, but the face of it was so covered with moisture from ocean spray that he couldn't make out the digital numbers. The sun was behind him, which meant they were heading east. He couldn't turn around to get a look at the sun's position because the handcuff, as well as Ashley's clinging, trapped him into a cramped position. Taking a guess, he figured it must be somewhere around six in the evening now, a full hour since the man—whose name Jack still didn't know—had come bursting into their room.

The roar of the motor suddenly changed pitch, dropping lower as the boat began to slow down. A thousand feet ahead of them, a much bigger boat sat at anchor—they were heading straight toward it! The pilothouse on the top deck had been painted white, but a dull red covered the walls of the cabin on the lower deck. Attached to that deck was a huge spool wound with cable, probably used to raise and lower the anchor, or maybe it had something to do with sonar.

As they got closer, Jack estimated that the boat had to be about a hundred feet long. It dwarfed the speedboat they were riding in. When they pulled alongside, the man secured the boat then jerked Ashley roughly by the arm and forced her to climb ten feet up a rope-and-wood ladder to the boat deck. Next, he hurried back down to grab the suitcase, leaving Jack behind, still handcuffed to the railing.

Scared, Jack wondered how long he was going to be left there, a captive in the speedboat. After what seemed a long time but was probably only a few minutes, the man returned for Jack. “Now you,” he said, after unlocking the handcuff. “Get up there with your sister.”

Jack quickly climbed the ladder because the man was right behind him, prodding him hard on the back. When he reached the deck, he found Ashley shivering there, all alone, looking cold and small and fragile.

Suddenly a voice assaulted them over a loudspeaker. “Scully, what the crud have you done? Where'd you get these kids? What are they doing here?”

Scully! So that was the name of the man who'd kidnapped them! Scully looked up toward the pilothouse and called back, “I'll explain everything when you get down here, Alex.”

In seconds a door burst open above them. Descending as nimbly as a monkey, Alex clattered down a ladder and dropped to the deck, saying, “OK, Scully, start talking.” Thin, wearing black pants, a short black jacket, and a black stocking cap, Alex had a high voice for a man almost six feet tall. “Explain this to me, and it better be good if you expect to get the rest of your money.” In a gesture of angry frustration, off came the black stocking cap, revealing spiked blond hair and a smooth pale forehead. Jack noticed long, thick lashes and—he couldn't believe his eyes! Alex was a woman! A pretty woman, who looked younger than his mother!

“Did you bring the device?” she demanded.

“It's over there.” Scully pointed to the suitcase. “About the kids, it's a long story, Alex. To make it short, they found out about the sonar.”

“How? How could they possibly find out?”

“Like I said, it's a long story.”

“You!” She strode toward Scully, her finger pointing accusingly. “You screwed up big, and your timing stinks.

 

I don't know what we're going to do with these kids because Hashim's on board, demanding to witness one more test.”

“Where is he?”

“In the galley with the crew, eating supper, but he'll be up here soon. Give me the key to the suitcase.”

Scully mumbled, “I don't have it.”

“What!
Oh, for crud—” Crouching down so that her feet stayed flat on the deck while her long legs bent completely in half, Alex yanked a screwdriver from her pocket and forced open the suitcase. “We need to do a test as soon as I install this, because a chopper will pick up Hashim in a couple of hours. We gotta prove to him that this new sonar will work in the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf.”

Jack kept his face perfectly still, trying not to react to the words “Hashim” and “Persian Gulf.” He was smart enough to know that learning names and places could be dangerous. How many times had he heard on TV, “If I tell you that, I'll have to kill you!” And there he stood, getting an earful of what surely must be secret information.

Ashley had no such concerns—she spoke right up. “You're not going to test that sonar again! You've already killed too many whales with it. You promised you wouldn't do it again.”

Surprised, Alex asked, “Who promised?”

“You! The U.S. Navy!”

Scully guffawed, while Alex shot him a dirty look.

“Ashley,” Jack muttered, “these people aren't part of the U.S. Navy.”

Still scowling, Alex said, “Well, I was once. I worked on sonar technology.”

“Yeah, until she got kicked out,” Scully said, still grinning. “Dishonorably discharged for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”

“Gentleman!” Alex spat. “That's what's wrong with—hey, I don't have time to deal with garbage right now, so just shut up, Scully!” She turned her attention to the suitcase, lifting the lid.

At last Jack got to see what was inside. At first all he noticed was thick Styrofoam, layered to hold tight whatever the object was so it wouldn't shift around.

Alex tore off the Styrofoam and threw it on the deck. Then, bending forward, she lifted—a plate?

It looked like a plate, but as she picked it up Jack saw that it was a heavy steel rim painted yellow, with bolts all around the edge and in the center, a sheet of thin, shiny, crinkled black metal. The whole thing measured about 18 inches in diameter. What it might be was impossible to guess.

“It ticks me off that those geeks charged me a quarter of a million to rebuild this part after the experimental one broke,” Alex was complaining. “That's as much as I paid for my whole boat.”

Scully answered, “Yeah, but this boat is an old tug from back when they shoveled coal into the boilers in the engine room.”

“Right, and why'd I buy an old tug? Guess! Because it doesn't arouse suspicion. A year ago, this ‘old tug' was fitted with an 800-horsepower diesel engine, get the picture? And now it'll have a phenomenal sonar system, once I ditch the defective part and install this state-of-the-art acoustics transducer. Nobody else will have anything this good for the next five years. Anyway, I gotta go tell Hashim the part's here,” she said, hoisting it. “So what do you plan to do with these two kids, Scully?”

“Throw them overboard.”

Ashley gasped and Jack jerked backward, ready to run, but where could he run to? It was like being on a tiny island, with no escape.

“You're joking, right?” Alex asked Scully.

Coldly, he answered, “I'm not gonna screw up a ten-million-dollar operation because of a couple of nosy brats. You got any better ideas?”

“Me?” she cried. “Hey man, they're your problem, not mine. But let me tell you, I'd prefer not to have any kids murdered on my boat.” Alex spoke calmly, as though she were discussing a maintenance problem. “So whatever you do with them, I don't wanna know about it.”

What did that mean? If Scully murdered Jack and Ashley on the boat, it would be OK as long as Alex didn't find out?

Trust Ashley to always spout off at the wrong time. “I guess if you're the kind of person who murders whales, Alex, you won't worry about killing
us
. But, listen, if you let us go, I promise we won't tell anything.” She held up her right hand as though taking an oath in court.

“Like I believe that,” Alex scoffed. “I can't waste any more time on this, Scully. Do whatever you have to.” Cradling the sonar device in her arms as if it were a baby, Alex turned her back on them and walked through the cabin door.

Jack and Scully eyed each other. Ten feet of deck separated them, enough to give Jack and Ashley a slight head start if they ran. Jack had no intention of standing still and letting Scully kill them—not without a fight. They'd run first, and maybe find someplace to hide.

As Scully reached for his knife, Jack yelled, “Go,” as he shoved Ashley away from him; whatever direction she ran, he'd move the opposite way, hoping Scully would chase him and not Ashley.

She sprinted toward a ladder that reached from the deck they were on to an upper deck behind the pilothouse. Jack hesitated for a split second until he was sure Scully was focusing on him, then ran toward the giant spool wound with inch-thick cable, scrambling behind it and crouching down. He heard Scully's heavy boots slamming on the deck, then a few seconds of silence while Scully tried to see where Jack had gone. Those seconds would give Ashley time to locate a hiding place on the upper deck, he hoped.

When Scully spotted him, Jack leaped to the top of the huge spool, grabbed the base of the flagpole, and hoisted himself onto the upper deck. He couldn't see Ashley, but that was good. It meant she'd found shelter.

Swearing, because he was too big and heavy to swing himself up the way Jack had done, Scully ran back around the deck to the ladder and started to climb. Looking around, Jack saw two freestanding structures, one of them a shed about the size of his bedroom closet, and the other one was—a smokestack! Left over from when this old boat burned coal in its engine room.

He heard her then, a soft call, “Jack! Up here.”

It was Ashley,
inside the smokestack,
clutching the edge of it, white-knuckled, with both hands. Ashley, always nimble, had somehow scaled the smokestack, even though its top stood a good ten feet above the deck. How did she do it? Jack realized she must have climbed to the top of the shed and from there jumped over to the smokestack, slithering inside it.

Scully's swearing sounded closer, so Jack thought he'd better try the same escape. Looking for toeholds in the rough wood, he dug in with the rubber tips of his sneakers and made it onto the shed's roof, but not before Scully saw him. Knowing that Scully, who was already panting, couldn't climb up there very fast, if at all, Jack stood poised to jump—but not to the smokestack. That would show Scully where Ashley was hiding. Instead, if Scully started to climb, Jack would jump straight down on him, hoping to knock the big man onto the deck and kick the knife out of his hand.

“Jack, look!” Ashley screamed. That was when Jack heard it—the thump of rotor blades on a helicopter. Alex had said a chopper would be coming to pick up Hashim—that must be it. Jack wondered where it was going to land, since it looked too big for the deck. It was about half as long as the whole hull of the boat.

And then he spotted the most beautiful words he'd ever seen: “U.S. Coast Guard.”

Painted bright red, with a broad white stripe near the tail, the helicopter hovered over Jack like an angel. He stood up and raised his arms, waving wildly. Beneath him, he saw Scully running, probably to warn Alex. In the distance, two Coast Guard vessels skimmed the waves, moving fast toward the boat.

While the chopper hung overhead, wind from its rotor nearly blew Jack off the roof of the shed. Then, amazingly, the door of the chopper opened and a man wearing a helmet and a harness was lowered on a hoist. Toward Jack!

“Get my sister!” Jack yelled as loudly as he could to be heard above the roar of the rotors. He gestured to the smokestack where Ashley was hiding, her head now poking out like a jack-in-the-box. The man gave Jack a thumbs-up, then maneuvered the hoist toward Ashley. After he reached down to grab her around the waist, he slipped a rescue sling over her head and under her arms, then signaled someone in the helicopter to raise the hoist. With her rescuer hanging beside her on the hoist, they were safely inside the chopper in less than a minute.

The helmeted man, still on the hoist, pointed to Jack and then pointed to one of the Coast Guard vessels that had almost reached the tug. So Jack was going to be picked up by boat! As thrilled as he felt about the arrival of rescuers, he also felt a pang of disappointment. Ashley got lifted on a hoist into a helicopter, while Jack would be rescued by boat. It wasn't fair.

Suddenly an amplified voice boomed at Jack, “Wanna do it her way?”

Jack nodded furiously. Immediately the hoist snaked down toward him, with the helmeted man soon dangling above Jack's head. Thrusting his arms quickly through the rescue sling, Jack felt the hoist move upward, and then he was flying! Instead of pulling him up into the chopper, the pilot moved slowly over the nearest Coast Guard vessel. Gently, as though Jack were a spider on a strand of silk, the chopper lowered him to the deck, where waiting arms caught him.

BOOK: Out of the Deep
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