Seize the Storm (9 page)

“I have some bad news,” said Elwood.

Jeremy knew what this news was, and he did not want to hear it.

“If we don't locate them in forty-five more minutes,” said Elwood, “we have to start to head back.”

Back to Kauai, he meant, all the way home, hundreds of miles—defeated and without anything to show for their effort.

“No way, Elwood,” said Jeremy.

Elwood put his fingers to the bill of his cap and settled the cap more firmly on his head. Jeremy added, “This is not a subject open to debate.”

His dad said things like that, dealing with crooks and crooked art dealers, ex-cons and men who had murdered people. “This is not an option,” he'd say, and a felon who had served twenty years for murder would back off.

Elwood looked over at him and looked away: the silent rebuke.

You didn't want to try to intimidate someone like Elwood. The truth was that Jeremy knew very little about violent death or, for that matter, plane crashes.

Although he had a pretty good feel for normal death.

His mother had drowned near Hanalei when Jeremy had been two years old. She and Ted had been drinking mai tais at the Hyatt overlooking the ocean there, leaving Jeremy with the babysitter, who eventually told him the entire story—his father never talked about it. Louise Tygart went skinny-dipping with a blood alcohol content of point one nine, took a long swim under the surf and never came back.

Jeremy had no memory of his mother, but he had more or less invented a memory. She smiled at him often, in his fictional remembrance, but she was preoccupied, wanting to go out and rake the bougainvillea or prune the hibiscus, or feed the wild mynahs, anything but endure the brisk monotony of her husband's paperwork.

Her absence had made death seem not so frightening. If the lovely, smart-looking woman in the photos around his family home could die as the result of a Saturday night frolic, then death was not only the stuff of hangmen and battlefields. Death was like those colorful coasters you put under cold drinks, or the paper you put around cupcakes, the kind you peel off, that leave a corrugated imprint.

Jeremy wondered what his mother would think of her husband's current way of life. With Ted Tygart, crime was a matter of backing up his hard drive, keeping appointments—just another business.

“It's not open to debate?” Elwood was asking amiably.

Jeremy shook his head.

“Then,” Elwood said, “I guess we better find them.”

Jeremy had a dreadful idea he could not shake.

He might be one of those people who are mentally challenged and don't know it. He might be one of these handicapped individuals, like those drugged-out shells who walked up and down the irrigation pipes near Hanapepe, out of their minds but not knowing it. There was no way of recognizing that you were hopeless. Hopeless people justified their lives in their own minds. He might be a fool and not know the truth about himself.

Don't come back without the money.

M
ARTIN REALIZED
that he had made a big mistake as soon as he entered the water.

He would have been much wiser to jump, feetfirst, or to roll over the rail onto his back, as his scuba diving instructors had taught him to do. But he had plummeted headfirst, with a vigorous thrust of his legs, and this was proving awkward. Martin was helpless to direct what he did next, because he had dived into the water with such force that his downward momentum was taking a long time to lose effect.

If a frigate bird had endured the storm and had shown up to greet the afternoon sunlight, surely the loyal blue shark would not be long to make his appearance, too. If a shark, or any other hunter, wanted him, he was helpless, spinning away from the light and into the shivering darkness.

The dog would be helpless, too. The two of them would make a banquet for a starving hunter. How were you supposed to fend off a shark? Hit it on the point of its nose?

At last, several meters under the surface, he got his body turned around so that his head was uppermost. But even then, when he stopped descending, there was a long pause before the buoyancy of his life jacket began to lift him back toward the surface. And at the same time another force, his sodden denim cutoffs and the thick, surprisingly chilly water, held him down, anchored him, and made him grow even more heavy.

A stream of bubbles broke from his lips and spun upward, and then the flotation powers of the garment hoisted Martin, and he felt like a parachutist in the first, body-wrenching tug of the harness, downward progress more than halted—roughly forbidden.

He rose through the water.

The surface of the ocean still far above was a wrinkled, pulsing ceiling. Across this glaring transparency, the shape of a four-legged beast kicked, failing, its four limbs slowing down.

Martin spun upward toward the silhouette of the dog, not swimming so much as being pulled along by the life jacket, and when he broke through the ceiling of light, the air around him was alive, sea spray and the sound of wind loud in his ears.

There was no sign of the dog.

Martin sputtered, caught his breath, and called out.

“I'm over here!” he cried.

It was as though he and the dog had both kept a long-standing appointment, one that found Martin almost tardy, just barely in time. But with the waves splashing and sawing in all directions, Martin could not see the animal.

Martin waved his arms over his head, calling out again, and tried to convince himself that things were not as bad as they looked. For starters, the water was not as cold as it had felt at first. A quality of semitropical balm made the seas almost comfortable, and Martin kicked his body in the general direction of where he estimated the dog surely must be.

“Over here!” Martin called again, although there was no evident, concrete
here
in this wash of instant peaks and valleys.

And then the animal was close, a wet-spiked, wild-eyed apparition.

Martin held out his arms.

The dog rested, breathing heavily in Martin's embrace. The breath groaned in and out of the animal, and Martin could feel the creature's exhaustion. Martin could also feel his own strength striving to compensate for this new burden.

Not too heavy, Martin thought.

Not too heavy to carry to the outline of the yacht.

The vessel loomed, and the shadow of the craft fell over Martin as hands reached, and strong arms lifted both the dog and the human from the sea.

S
USANNAH SHOUTED AND WAVED
encouragement along with everyone else to get the big black and tan dog out of the ocean and into the yacht. She was overwhelmed by Martin, and gave him a hug once he was back on board, despite the fact that he was soaked through with cold.

Axel was putting his arm around Martin next, not exactly a hug, but a sweeping, one-armed embrace. Axel waved Claudette off, as though to say that a person this spontaneously heroic could only be praised by a truly masculine person like himself.

“Martin,” Claudette said, “please don't risk your life like that ever again.”

Martin shivered and laughed, and agreed that he wouldn't rescue any more dogs from the Pacific Ocean without permission.

The large dog was the wettest and most exhausted-looking animal Susannah had ever seen, and it hurt her heart to recognize the untold story the dog represented.

Because when Susannah thought about it, the dog was an absolute mystery. The big German shepherd was stretched out on his side, his four legs out, and he did not look like a creature who was going to live. A puddle of water flowed out of the dog's fur, and the animal's flanks pulsed in and out with the effort of breathing.

The animal wore tags that dangled from a linked-steel choke collar, a dog license from the county of Kauai and a brass disk imprinted
Laser.

She said the name. It was all the creature could do to open and shut his eyes, giving a thankful, companionable look toward the people gathered around him, but his tail was not wagging and his tongue lolled out like a lifeless accessory.

Susannah knelt over the animal, the dog rolling his eye toward his helper appreciatively. As Susannah examined the dog's ear, her hand came away streaked with scarlet fluid.

“Laser has been hurt,” she said.

Susannah leaned to get a closer look.

“Worse than that,” she added. “He's been shot.”

There was a round hole just below the point of the dog's right ear, a bullet hole, maybe a nine-millimeter, a through-and-through bullet wound.

Axel brought out the backup radio scanner, a weathered Magnavox with a bent antenna. He dialed the ship-to-ship channel and asked for anyone within hearing to respond.

He got no answer. Static and hiss—but nothing else. Claudette had the binoculars up to her eyes again and swept the horizon.

Susannah felt along the dog's body, carefully, making gentle, sympathetic clucks with her mouth.

“I see the boat,” said Claudette at last.

Susannah stood and gazed out across the water.

The vessel had no masts—a long, sleek-looking prow, turned away from them as the swells swept under the craft, compelling her in a northeasterly direction. The unfamiliar seacraft was a light gray hue, not that easy to distinguish from the ocean. Her entire appearance spelled trouble.

Claudette handed Susannah the binoculars.

“A powerboat,” said Claudette. “What some people would call a good-sized cabin cruiser. I knew someone with a boat like that, before I knew anything about sailing.”

“See anyone on board?” asked Axel.

Claudette said, “She's a ghost ship.”

S
USANNAH FELT
L
ASER'S HEARTBEAT
, and she listened to the dog's weak, unsteady breathing.

The animal was aware of her and lifted his snout to give her cheek one warm lick. He laid his head down then and let out a long breath through his nostrils, and she thought: That's it. He's dead.

But he was still alive, to her great relief, and in his exhaustion he apparently still dreamed of swimming—his forepaws twitched, seeming to paddle even as he slept.

A dog's normal body temperature is one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, Susannah knew, and this dog still registered a temperature of just over ninety-five degrees. This was dangerously low, and even with all the attention she was giving it, the dog was by no means sure to survive.

Her hands were trembling with concern and outrage. Laser was suffering from hypothermia and exhaustion, and then there was the nagging loss of blood from the bullet wound. And if the dog survived the next few hours, there was the danger of pneumonia.

Axel remaining at the helm, they worked a blanket under the dog's weight and carried the animal in this makeshift sling down into the saloon. Claudette heated beef broth—the can said
gourmet bouillon
—and Susannah set the broth beside the dog.

Martin retreated to his cabin and returned wearing a pair of khaki pants and a blue polo shirt, and he kept a towel around his shoulders, looking worried. He smiled at the dog hopefully, and looked relieved when the animal swayed to his feet, tottering on his four legs, and lapped up some of the warm broth.

Laser lay down again, heavily, and exhaled loudly. Susannah covered him with several blankets, and Claudette set out a space heater, a metal cube that radiated heat from scarlet coils.

Martin drank down the last of his own beef broth, and he asked, “Is he going to survive?”

Susannah wished that she could give Martin some good news. But at the same time he could see how she felt, how justly bitter she was. She loved Martin, and she would always admire him and be grateful to him for rescuing the dog.

But even Martin was lost in his own human nature, talkative, preoccupied, brave, and selfish. Even Martin was a human being. And for now Susannah was sick of the entire human race.

She wanted to give him a gift, reassurance that he could take in and believe, but right now there wasn't much she could offer. She wanted to be generous to Martin, and to be giving now, she had to say what she did not really feel.

“Dogs are very sturdy,” Susannah said. “They are stronger than we are, and more forgiving.” Then she spoke the lie, the outright untruth, “I'm sure he'll be all right.”

She could see the relief in Martin's eyes. “I sure hope so,” he breathed.

Then she added something she deeply did believe.

“But someone has to be punished for this.”

I
N THE AFTERMATH OF THE STORM
, the water had a new character, plain, wide openness that rolled outward, and then continued to gradually spread, with an apparent endlessness, toward the horizon. Martin found this hypnotic and unlike anything in his experience.

At the same time this outbound spaciousness inched upward, toward the sky. The progress of this expanse toward the zenith was slow, and the upward slope was not easy to notice. But if he glanced away for a split second and then looked back, he could perceive that the gray prairie of water had unmistakably ascended, making the sky that much less, and still less, as the climbing seascape continued to progress, until it grew entirely unmoving.

The air was all but still. But as Martin looked on, this wide moorland of water fumed, wraiths of vapor torn off by breezes that no human could sense. The spacious mesa began to shift downward, slowly, a patience-mocking process so gradual that the eye perceived it as stasis.

The unknown vessel occupied the gray-blue plain like a sharp-angled dwelling. Quiet like this, and carried by the plateau of water, the unfamiliar craft was forbidding.

Martin had more than a bad feeling.

He was fearful, and he regretted the fact that the dangling satellite dish would make a call to his parents and the rest of the world impossible.

Claudette joined Martin at the rail.

“My first boyfriend,” she said, “had a boat very much like that. A Bluewater twin-diesel motor yacht. I thought Clive was the most dashing man ever born, powering around Catalina Island, using a shotgun on all the seagulls he could.”