Seize the Storm (3 page)

He was in love with everything about the ocean, and Susannah envied him his joy. Getting Martin's mind off a recent tragic incident he had witnessed was one of the main reasons for the voyage, aside from giving Leonard one more chance to skipper the yacht he and his wife could no longer afford.

It wasn't easy to climb up from belowdecks carrying hot drinks, the deck canting and shifting every moment—even under engine power she was a frisky vessel. It was like Martin to show up with something people wanted, at just the right moment. Now he carried two blue mugs of Leonard's cocoa. There was the smell of frying fish in the air from the galley.

“Thank you, Martin,” Claudette said, and you could hear in her voice how glad she was to be talking to someone who was not a problem, and not a messenger of trouble. Just a pleasant, agreeable person, someone Mom was glad to have in the family.

“Martin, I collected a specimen for you,” Susannah said.

She said this as though she was offhand, but the truth was she was excited.

“Another bird picture?” he inquired eagerly.

She had gotten pretty good at snapping pictures of the albatross that had winged along in their wake until this morning.

“You were telling me you'd never seen one before.”

“One what?” asked Martin, enjoying this, wanting to make a game of it.

“Does the word
exocoetidae
mean anything to you?” she asked.

“Really!” he exclaimed.

She liked to spring scientific words on Martin, to confound him, even if she had to more or less make them up. She referred to Leonard's chronic back trouble mock seriously as “vertebral vertebratis,” and when a movie made her teary she called it “cinematic lachrymosis.”

“Take a look in the collecting bucket.”

She had hoped to see him pleased, and she was not disappointed.

Even though they were both seventeen and shared a quality of family good looks and intelligence, she felt very much more likely to succeed than Martin. Succeed—but not find happiness. She saw herself running a veterinary clinic in Mill Valley or Orinda in a few years, the sort of vet who cured feline leukemia before lunch and then drove out to a horse ranch to see how that new thoroughbred foal was coming along.

She expected Martin to be caught up in some sort of marine discipline, studying the life cycle of the sea cucumber. But he would be loved and admired by his colleagues and have many friends. Susannah knew she was the sort of reasonably good-looking person who would have trouble getting dates, except with guys like Axel.

She wanted to change all that.

“There was a school of them,” said Susannah. “Escaping a hungry tuna, I suppose. This one hopped up on deck.”

“A black-winged flying fish,” said Martin.

“A lot of people,” said Susannah, “are disappointed how small they are.”

“He's enormous,” said Martin.

He gave her his smile and she felt it all the way through.

She made up songs. Nobody knew this about her. She talked without hesitation and was free with her tartest opinions. But her songwriting was strictly private, music in her own head. This was what she would like to put into a song right then: the sunlight on the water, the way Martin gave his silent laugh.

The fish was aware of Martin's shadow and splashed, not frightened so much as showing off, discouraging a prospective predator from assuming he would make an easy breakfast.

He gave the fish an appreciative moment, admiring the animal as it scouted around and around in the interior of the plastic bucket. Then Martin picked up the container and tossed the fish into the ocean.

He was rewarded by the sight of the fish leaping and skittering across the waves, looking like a dragonfly granted superpowers, thought Susannah, or a sparrow that had adapted to a watery existence.

She sipped her cocoa and thought that instant into a song, too, privately, the tune in her head
. I'm free again, but I'm yours.

I'm yours forever.

You could use
forever
in a song, she knew, a word too sentimental to break into everyday speech.

The cocoa was delicious, served up in the appealing, heavy-duty mugs. The mugs were part of the set that Leonard had ordered especially designed by a studio in Copenhagen, back when he had money to burn. They were light blue in color, and on the side of each mug was a picture of the yacht that they were sailing on,
Athena's Secret
, with her sails set, the artwork cobalt blue, with dark blue waves parting around the prow.

“I'm afraid a storm's coming, Martin,” Susannah said.

Martin looked upward at the blue sky. Then he gave her a glance of friendly skepticism.

“Believe me,” said Susannah.

Martin headed back below again. He returned at once, with his Sony notebook computer, and found a place under the flat canvas awning that shaded the helm and where the flip-up screen didn't have to compete with the glare off the sea. In addition to the classic spoked wheel, the helm was equipped with padded benches, running forward and aft, and side tables for beverages and snacks.

The yacht had shipboard Wi-Fi through a small gray dish on the foremast, and they got communication by digital telephone through the same technology. If the dish got knocked down or the generator blew, they'd have trouble, but for now the entire world was just a power button away.

Leonard joined them right then, smelling of aftershave and beaming at life in general, a forceful, genial man. He was dressed in his customary fair-weather outfit—a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, seersucker pants, and a pair of well-worn Dubarry deck shoes. His short hair was dark, just flecked with gray, and he had profound dark eyebrows. His face and arms gleamed with sunblock lotion. His dermatologist had burned off a basal cell carcinoma from his forearm the winter before.

In years gone by, Leonard Burgess had been on the Coastal Commission appointed by the governor, honored for his business success and campaign contributions. Susannah knew that those days were over.

“Kippers!” he exclaimed. “I've fried us all a batch of delicious smoked herring.”

Her father was a generous man, and he liked people to be happy. But sometimes his choice of menus left something to be desired. Martin and Susannah gave each other a glance of mock horror.
Kippers,
Martin echoed in silent dismay.

“Susannah's right,” said Martin.

“About what?” asked Leonard.

Martin turned his computer so they could all look at the lurid squiggles of the isobars across a map of the Pacific, the scarlet outline of tempest.

“That,” said Leonard, “looks like fun.”

M
ARTIN WAS HAPPY.

He loved stepping out on deck and seeing how much bigger the sky always was—every time—than you could imagine it in your mind.

He liked talking with Susannah, and he liked the way she sipped her cocoa, daintily, finding it too hot and then not too hot—just right.

But despite the cocoa and the breathtaking disclosure of the flying fish, things were not as they should be.

Claudette went below shortly, taking her mug of hot cocoa. You could hear her cabin door, feel it shut hard under your feet. She was both tough and stylish, and wore sunny pastels, oversize shirts with sleeves she rolled up, summery pants that fit her perfectly. When Claudette showed up, people acted and thought a little bit smarter, and when she left everyone slouched.

Maybe the smell of frying kippers that wafted out from belowdecks was not the best scent in the world just then.

Leonard gave his daughter a questioning glance.

“She OK?”

Susannah offered up a shrug of incomprehension that satisfied Dad. Martin, though, could see that Susannah was going out of her way to avoid admitting that Claudette was not OK.

Susannah was thin and pretty, with hair that looked sable in morning light, butterscotch in the afternoon. She kept her hair in low-maintenance tails—pigtails, ponytails, multiple extensions that stuck out where they would. His cousin was fond of clothes with single bold stripes up and down the sleeve and along the pant leg. Now she was wearing a blouse that made her look like a crossing guard, a yellow stripe across her body.

“We'll all feel better,” Uncle Leonard was saying, “when we get nutrified.”

When they ate, he meant.

Leonard coined words like this, his version of being funny. Taking the helm was making sure that the yacht was fully helm-itized, and polishing the brass fittings throughout the vessel he called brass-imization.

Martin had to concede that some mature person might find Leonard just a little tedious, but to a young nephew he was a joy. Leonard liked himself, and because he thought most people resembled him in some way, he liked most people, too.

“Hey, it's our first mate,” said Leonard as Axel made his appearance on deck.

Axel Owen used a towel to rub the top of his close-cropped head. Axel wasn't the sort of guy who bothered with
good morning
or even
hi
, but he gave a nod to Martin.

Axel was wearing a pair of Diesel denims and a blue Tommy Bahamas half-zip sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and left artfully ragged. He radiated a quality of masculine self-assurance so keen that even Uncle Leonard wanted to impress him.

Axel said, “Morning, Skipper.”

Martin knew a lot of men like Axel, and you could read them like the ingredients on the back of a bottle. But Axel knew boats, and he was physically tough. Martin liked Axel well enough, but if he had to fight Axel, he would find something to hit him with.

Leonard was the owner and the captain, but he wasn't really a hands-on guy. That fell to Axel and to Martin, because Leonard, for all his enthusiasm and experience, had a bad back, injured moving a pot of sago palms around his patio ten years earlier—although he liked to say he hurt it playing free safety for Cal football. Leonard had actually played practice-squad football for Cal—Martin had looked him up on the University of California Golden Bear Web site.

“It was a quiet night,” said Susannah, but she made no move to go below, drinking her cocoa and watching Axel take the helm and up the throttle to fifteen knots. Susannah hated to so much as glance in Axel's direction, but sometimes she couldn't help it.

“Any luck?” asked Leonard.

By
any luck
he meant: had they found anything valuable?

“There was an airplane,” added Susannah. “I think it was looking for something.”

“Did you check the emergency channel?” asked Axel.

“Mom did,” answered Susannah.

“What kind of plane was it?” asked Leonard.

“Seaplane, fairly large, twin engines,” said Susannah.

“What kind of weapons do we have on board?” asked Axel.

“I took care of us,” said Leonard. “No need to worry.”

“We have a Remington twelve-gauge,” said Susannah. “But Leonard is so cautious about guns that he keeps the Remington hidden in one overhead bin and the ammo in another, and he hides the keys, too.”

Leonard nodded his head.

“Besides,” said Susannah, “Leonard's preferred weapons would be brass cannons and harpoons.”

“Maybe cutlasses,” agreed Leonard with a laugh.

“But I wonder,” said Axel.

“Yes,” said Susannah. “I'm nervous, too.”

She meant to prick Axel a little about feeling apprehensive. But it was true.

M
ARTIN SHIELDED HIS EYES
and looked north. There was no sign of any aircraft now.

On the first day out of San Francisco they had hoisted the genoa—the big foresail—and the sail had torn, flapping and fluttering noisily, until the huge quantity of Dacron canvas had been hauled in by Martin and Axel while Susannah mastered the helm.

Axel was supposedly skilled at stitching canvas, but he had made no move to repair the sail, and when Leonard questioned this, he had said, simply, “When we reach the trade winds, we can sail.”

This was reasonable. The prevailing winds they had faced up until now were out of the west. Engine power was easier. That and Leonard's preference for a steady speed, right into the wind, and ample fuel supplies for the engines made this the choice. The engine could not be run at top speed for any length of time, however, and needed frequent transfusions of Pennzoil Marine motor oil to keep from overheating.

But Martin felt that some of the romance of sail was missing, and he knew that Leonard felt this, too, despite himself, and when the prevailing winds began to come out of the east, Martin looked forward to a mainsail bellying in the breeze.

Now Axel turned up the marine scanner so he could get a dose of chitchat—Martin caught the phrase
they got berthing issues big-time.
Axel had a tattoo of a fist on his upper right arm, and Martin thought that was a pretty stupid image to have tattooed on your body. Especially a bunched, angry-looking fist like the one Axel had, with his T-shirts all carefully shorn of their sleeves so you could not avoid seeing it.

“That shark still wants to take a bite out of you,” said Susannah, looking right at Axel.

Axel didn't even bother to smile, using a pink rag to wipe down the wooden spokes of the helm. He had complained that Claudette and Susannah left hand cream and sunscreen on the wood.

“I'd choke it,” said Axel, “going down.”

Then Susannah went below.

“Maybe you could cast a line for the shark, Martin,” said Leonard. “Put a New York steak on a four-inch hook. We've got some four-hundred-pound monofilament line—what do you think?” He glanced around, a guy seeking approval from other guys. “Give it a surprise, use the gaff hooks on it, get him on deck and—”

He made a motion, smiting an invisible shark.

He opened the lazarette, the storage compartment on deck where the first aid kit and other emergency gear were kept. The bright yellow raincoats were rolled tightly, and Leonard shook one out. The hooded fluorescent garment had a heavy-duty black zipper, several straps and pockets, and a waterproof transmitter—someone lost overboard in poor visibility might be easily found again.