Seize the Storm (17 page)

She gazed back at their wake, a long laceration across the water. When she used the binoculars to study the urgent prow of the following vessel, she said, “They are going to catch us.”

Leonard asked, “Why do you say that?”

“It's simple math,” she said. “Our top speed is almost one-third less than theirs.” She handed the binoculars to Claudette and added, “And I think I know what kind of people they are.”

“What kind?” asked Claudette.

“Let me know, Leonard,” said Susannah, not responding to the question, “if you need another shot of morphine.”

He did. Susannah gave it to him, and for several minutes afterward Leonard closed his eyes, like a man dreaming his body back to well-being.

*   *   *

The starboard engine began to labor, and diesel smoke rose up, only to be quickly dispersed by the wind.

The yacht slowed, and their pursuers continued to grow closer, as though they sailed on an entirely different ocean, one that offered no impediment but simply powered them forward.

Martin could see Leonard about to make a decision, looking at his wife, and his wife looking right back, the two of them sharing a telepathic grasp of events. Claudette had a new way of field-stripping her cigarettes, tearing the paper away and letting the tobacco remnants vanish into the wind. This was not the way she usually smoked. She finished another cigarette in this manner now, and when she caught Martin's eye she said, “It was a mistake.”

Martin knew exactly what she meant.

“Taking the money,” she added, “was a bad idea.”

Martin knew she was right.

“Ahead one-third, Axel,” Leonard said.

Axel made no move to obey his instruction.

“Axel,” said Leonard, “that was not a suggestion.”

Dark smoke was now trailing out of the port engine, too.

“Axel,” said Leonard, “I want you to slow to ahead one-third, in preparation for a complete stop.”

Axel turned back to argue. “We can outrun them.”

“You're going to burn her up,” said Leonard.

Axel shook his head. “If we slow down, we're finished.” He spoke in the simple, plank-like sentences Martin had come to recognize as the way he thought, too, every notion a nail to be hammered flat. “We stop, we die.”

Claudette spoke to Axel for the first time in a long while.

“Axel,” she said, “we're going to damage the yacht if we keep going like this.”

The vessel slowed, pitching the crew forward with the change in momentum. Martin stepped across the deck to speak with his uncle.

Martin said, “I have a plan.”

Uncle Leonard was in more pain than he admitted, Martin could see that. And he was more worried than he wanted anyone to know.

But his eyes brightened when Martin approached, and Martin felt again how much his uncle meant to him.

“I'm nowhere near out of ideas,” said Leonard.

“I didn't say you were.”

Leonard gave him a playful punch on the arm and then caught himself, the pain kicking in again.

“You remind me of your dad right now,” said Leonard. “Like the time he had to get me out of jail.”

“I never heard about that.”

“You did, too,” said Leonard. “I tried to climb the Tribune building.”

“Yeah, I did hear about that.” It was a family chestnut, but not the part about getting arrested.

“The Oakland cops,” said Leonard, “took a good-humored approach, and didn't book me. But your dad had the most serious look when he came down to the jail. Like all he could think was what was he going to do with a brother like me.”

“What did he do?” asked Martin, sensing that as long as he kept Leonard talking the pain was not so bad.

“My brother,” said Leonard with a twinkle, “gave me a smart nephew.”

L
EONARD LIKED
M
ARTIN'S PLAN
when he heard it.

“That's more than a plan, Martin,” he said. “That's a strategy.”

Martin opened the lazarette and set to rummaging among the emergency supplies. Sometimes, Martin felt, you had to act. He could even see the word in his mind, the way an instructing hand might write it out in red Magic Marker on a white, squeaky surface.

Now.

“We can outrun them,” said Axel again, speaking to no one in particular. “We can break out the sails. We'll use canvas, and tack like real sailors.”

“I always liked that about you, Axel,” said Leonard. “You have a genuine fighting spirit.” But he used the phrase
fighting spirit
like it was a characteristic you could live without.

“You need to believe, Mr. Burgess,” said Axel, “I can make this happen.”

Leonard waved off this remark, laughing forlornly, but Claudette came to him and put her hand out, taking Leonard's hand in hers.

“Leonard,” she said, “what is Martin's plan?”

“If they want the money,” said Leonard calmly, “they can have it.”

“So you want to wait for them to catch us? And then what?” asked Claudette. Her tone implied confidence that her husband had a strategy, but she wanted to know what it was.

“That bag of cash,” argued Leonard, in a tone of quiet reason, “may be all we have to exchange for our lives.”

“Sometimes,” said Axel insistently, “you have to gamble.”

But his voice was losing its power, and he was beginning to sound defeated. The yacht's forward movement had very nearly ceased.

“We made a good try,” said Leonard with a sympathetic smile. “We have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Martin worked fast as the others spoke. He spread a polyethylene sack on the deck and set the gym bag on it, working quickly and deftly, binding the container of money securely with duct tape. He threw in a handful of mooring swivels and other hardware to act as weights. He made sure he tossed in a working transmitter. He tied a loop through a life jacket and fastened the entire package to a length of polyester rope.

Martin could sense Axel's attention shift from Leonard, to where he was working.

“What are you doing?” asked Axel incredulously.

Martin said nothing. He strode to the rail, pulling the bag of money, shrouded and wrapped tightly, after him across the deck.

“Martin,” said Axel in a tone of surprise and anger, “what do you think you are trying to do?”

“He's right,” called Leonard. “Axel, let him do it.”

“Do what?” asked Axel.

“I'm throwing the money into the ocean,” said Martin. “They'll have to stop to gather it in, and that'll give us a chance to escape.”

Axel looked stunned.

“And if they can't fish it out of the water,” Martin continued, “we can find it later by our own transmitter signal.”

Without any warning, Axel hit Martin.

He led with his elbow, and used it to strike Martin on the chin. It was an instantly calculated blow, and Martin felt it all the way down his legs, but he did not fall. Axel changed tactics and blocked him with his body, seizing the bulky bundle from the deck.

Martin was quick, and he hit him in return, hard, in the ribs. The blow did not hurt Axel very much, nor did it get his attention.

Martin hit him again, one blow to the side of Axel's neck. The effort hurt his fist, but Axel grunted and let the package drop. It struck off the wooden surface with a brittle, plastic, muted thud, and Martin wasted no time in seizing it from the deck.

Up until then, there had been a quality of angry horseplay about their fight, two friends who could struggle and recover with no permanent harm. That changed in an instant.

Axel pulled the Glock from his pants and pressed the muzzle to Martin's head.

Martin let the burden of the money fall, but otherwise stood perfectly still.

Leonard called Axel's name, and Claudette put her hands out, reaching for Axel and Martin but afraid to touch them.

“So what, Axel?” asked Martin.

He asked that single most nagging question, that open rebuke to any statement, however wise and conclusive. He had heard it in school hallways and locker room disagreements, the perfect retort. Martin had always disliked the obnoxious rejoinder, but now it was just right.

Martin said it again. “So what?”

T
HE QUERY BROUGHT FORTH
embarrassed astonishment in Axel's eyes, but the gun stayed right where it was, pressed against Martin's head. The muzzle of the weapon had an iron, angry weight, and he very much disliked feeling it there, metal on scalp.

And yet, Martin felt unafraid. He had never experienced such clarity of mind.

Because he knew that he was either going to die, or he wasn't. His life had become very simple.

And with every heartbeat he was not dead yet.

“Guns are like money,” said Martin.

Axel said nothing.

Martin added, “They give us bad ideas.”

He slowly reached up for the Glock, although Axel's grip was strong. Martin squeezed Axel's wrist, and, inch by inch, he lowered the gun, levering Axel's arm downward as though he had turned into a bronze statue, frozen in dismay at his own violent intentions.

Axel's arm was heavily muscled, and he was stronger than Martin. But Martin had the edge that came from being in the right, and at last the pistol had been forced down across Axel's chest, pressed between them. Even then Axel would not release it. The two stayed eye to eye, locked together, and Martin was concerned that the pistol might fire—accidentally or not—and do bloody injury to one or both of them.

At that instant a physical shock, an impact from an unknown direction, made Axel jump, and his features twisted in pain. He remained upright, but he called out, “Stop that!”

This sudden, unknown force struck him again, and he staggered.

Susannah stood with the boat hook, and she swung it again at the back of his knees, knocking him down like a field hand with a scythe. He fell hard, and a bone or a joint snapped, a meaty pop.

She stood over Axel and hit him again with the butt of the tool, striking him on his chest. Axel's pain caused him to writhe, and that movement made him hard to hit.

“I wasn't going to hurt Martin,” said Axel, reaching for the boat hook with one hand, kicking, trying to defend himself, and catching the hook in the face instead. “I was joking,” he protested.

“You don't have to hit Axel anymore, Susannah,” said Claudette quietly.

Susannah relented, but stood over Axel as a continuing threat. His nose began to bleed. He tried to sit up and fell back.

“I wasn't serious,” said Axel.

“Go ahead, Martin,” Leonard called. “Let's see how far you can throw that bundle.”

The money was heavier than ever. Martin swung the weight on the end of the rope, in ever-wider circles, the bundle humming around and around through the air as he gave the effort all his strength.

Then he let the burden fly.

“That'll slow them down,” said Leonard.

Distracted by the departure of the money, they all made an important mistake: no one took the Glock away from Axel.

He kept the pistol, tucked back into the top of his Diesel denims.

T
HE POWERBOAT CAME ON
, breasting the swells.

Ahead of it, drifting like two connected chunks of sea refuse, were the life jacket and the translucent packet.

The money drifted, and so did the yacht, under minimal power, so that soon the cache of currency and the highly visible improvised buoy were far off, bobbing along on the swells. Martin felt very emotionally attached to this packet, and seeing the increasing distance between his person and the floating treasure gave him no happiness.

The figures in the pilot house evidently perceived this floating offering as they came on, like actors obeying a pantomime script. One of them leaned out from the helm and pointed, with nearly comical surprise, and it was easy to follow the stages of discussion, disbelief, excited hopefulness, then an increasing fear that this might be a ruse.

The vessel slowed down, the descending pitch of her engines audible all the way across the water.

The big man hurried down the steps, onto the main deck, leaned over the side with a boat hook, and he made short work of snagging the floating package and hauling it in.

*   *   *

Martin looked on, feeling desolate.

The powerboat was no more than a kilometer away. He had envisioned getting his own hands on the money again, or at the least escaping safely. He had expected that the powerboat would spend long minutes hooking the find, and even longer minutes establishing what it was, allowing the yacht to break out her sails and set a new course.

Claudette shared the binoculars as Susannah returned to the cabin to care for the dog.

There were three men on board
Witch Grass
—a tall, older man in the baseball cap, and two younger men, and they all busied themselves in the pilot house, not talking to each other, intent on what was before them.

The big man had a compact machine gun, the kind Martin had seen police SWAT teams use on the news. The big man moved easily, from the wheel over to the side of the pilot house and back again. The younger men mostly kept out of the big guy's way.

Martin felt empty and afraid at the sight of these armed men, and he looked to Leonard to offer further guidance. Leonard's expression was hard to read—he looked meditative, a coach running through his mental playbook. He did not look particularly afraid, and neither did Claudette. Maybe shooting pigeons on your own land, thought Martin, was good preparation for confronting people who could kill you.

Axel looked like a man ready to be hanged, his eyes narrowed to slits, one fist on the wheel, the other hand at his side. He limped when he moved, his knee badly sprained, or even dislocated. Susannah had really damaged him, but he rejected an ice pack, preferring to make a show of manly stoicism. His nose continued to bleed.