Snapper (24 page)

Plunged back into darkness, Judd lifted his head and cried. “I’m here!” he shouted. “I’m here!”

He couldn’t believe that a rescue team had been sent out – and that it had found him.

August had seen Judd, but holding the sub steady on the choppy surface was impossible. August couldn’t keep the beams of his headlamps trained on anything for more than a second.

At least August knew he had come to the right place. But now the waves that had pounded Judd’s kayak against the rock were doing the same to his sub. Each time it banged against the rock, it clanged like a channel gong. Inside the sub, August was being thrown about from side to side.

There was no way for August to steady it. He’d just have to do the best he could under the worst possible conditions.

“Here goes nothing,” he said, unlatching the hatch. When he stood, he gripped the rim of the hatch with one hand, while extending the other toward Judd.

“Give me your hand!” he shouted.

Judd began inching toward August’s outstretched hand. The sides of the rock were sloped and slippery. One false move and Judd could slide right back into the water. And the sub was banging against the rock with loud metallic clangs. If Judd lost his grip, he could easily get crushed between the sub and the rock.

“Keep coming!” August shouted.

Judd kept inching down, trembling from cold and fear. But the closer he came to August’s hand, the steeper the sides were pitched. Suddenly, he began to slide. There was nothing to stop him. As his lower body plunged down into the lake, his arms shot up. August reached out, gripping Judd’s wrist like a vise. From the neck down, Judd was in the water, and August was hanging far out over the side of the sub.

A sudden wave slammed the sub against the rock. Judd’s body was caught between. He cried out. Bones inside him cracked and broke. But still, August’s grip held. He didn’t let go. And now, with strength he didn’t know he had, he began hauling Judd up the side of the sub.

Judd tried to find toeholds for his feet. There were rivets, rungs, and recesses. Ignoring his pain, Judd scrambled up the side of the sub as fast as he could. He knew that at any second he might be crushed again between the sub and the rock. All the while, August gripped his wrist and pulled, dragging Judd toward the open hatch. Judd was now draped like a wet towel across the side of the sub.

“Climb in!” cried August.

“I can’t!” said Judd. “I can’t go any further.”

“Oh God!” thought August. “Here goes.”

August hoisted himself out of the sub and climbed down alongside Judd. Clutching a rung with one hand, August got his shoulder under Judd’s body and pushed. Judd slid upwards onto the top of the sub. When his body was halfway into the hatch, he fell forward headfirst. August peered down into the hatch. Judd was upside down and bloody, but he was in.

With Judd safely inside, August began climbing back in himself. But then the sub lurched violently. August slipped. He was in the lake up to his neck, but his hand snagged hold of a handle as he fell. He’d have to pull himself up.

“Here goes nothing,” he said.

And then, his brain flashed bright white with searing pain from his right leg. But it didn’t matter. He still had to pull himself up – and he did. With his left foot, Judd found a toehold. He pulled up his right leg. He looked down, fearing there would be no foot at the end of it. But there was.

The craft had lurched just as Grundel’s jaw snapped shut. He had missed his mark by a fraction of an inch and a tenth of a second.

August climbed into the hatch. Blood streamed from a gash across the back of his right calf. It splattered onto Judd. Though almost unconscious, Judd knew it wasn’t rain or lake water. It was too warm and had too much body.

August closed the hatch and secured the clasps. In the seat next to him, Judd Clayton was slumped and curled. It was too much to ask him to sit up straight. With his left foot, August pressed the throttle. Somehow the engine had stayed on. The sub moved away from the rock. August dipped the craft’s nose and the sub slid under the surface.

Twenty feet down, the water was strangely calm and unperturbed. It was as though no storm existed here. August peered into the liquid blackness – only one headlamp had survived the pummeling against Turtleback Rock – then he reached over and grabbed a wad of the drenched robe plastered to Judd’s back. He let go of the steering wheel and then, with two hands, he tore off a long strip of terry cloth. He wrapped it around his right leg just below the knee then started twisting the two ends round and round, like someone turning off a valve. The flow of blood from the gash above his ankle slowed to a trickle. It had been more than forty years since August’s father had taught him how to tie a tourniquet.

“You never know when you’ll need one,” he had told August. “I’ve seen them come in handy myself.”

*

Like a raging beast calmed by a powerful tranquilizer, the storm abruptly died down. Everything became strangely calm. Within minutes, the surface of the lake became eerily still and flat. From up in the sky, the moon looked down in
t
o the valley like a government official called in to assess the extent of the damage.

When the rain stopped, JJ and Dr. Goode stepped outside the cabin. They walked down to the edge of the lake. The low rumble of a motor began to drown out the sound of water lapping against the shore. Soon a bright beam shone across the surface.

“It’s Chief Rudolph!” JJ said to Dr. Goode.

They waited till the boat was within shouting distance.

“Did you find my dad?” JJ cried out.

Chief Rudolph was slow to answer. Saying ‘no’ wasn’t always so easy.

“Not yet, JJ,” he called back. “But now that the storm’s subsided, maybe we’ll have better luck.”

JJ felt sick to his stomach.

Dr. Goode put an arm around his shoulders.

“There’s still hope, JJ,” she said.

Then, suddenly, a curved shell began to break the surface. Deena saw it first. “Look out, Chief!” she cried.

Chief Rudolph spun and reached for his rifle. He quickly shouldered it and was taking aim when JJ shouted, “Stop! Don’t shoot – it’s the sub!”

The sub had popped up like a fisherman’s bobber, its curved metal surface glinting in the moonlight. Its one remaining headlamp threw a weak path of light across the water.

On land and on the lake, nobody spoke. They waited in silence for the hatch to open. Twenty, thirty seconds passed. JJ couldn’t bear it.

“Something’s wrong!” he cried. “Do something, Chief!”

Chief Rudolph piloted his boat closer to the pulverized vessel. The bobbing sub looked like an oversized beer can that Jack Sully might have crushed in his fist before tossing overboard. Deputy Rhodes aimed a flashlight through the sub’s windshield.

“They’re both in there!” he cried.

“Both?” said Chief Rudolph.

“Andersen and Clayton,” said Rhodes. “But they look in pretty bad shape.”

Chief Rudolph positioned the police boat right alongside the sub. Deputy Rhodes climbed down and straddled the sub’s curved top. He rapped on the windshield. The two men inside didn’t respond.

“Release the latch!” shouted Rhodes, hammering on the glass panel with his fist.

August looked up, dazed. Just raising his arms required strength he wasn’t sure he had. He fumbled with the latch above his head. Suddenly, the hatch cracked open. Deputy Rhodes reached down and swung it wide. He looked at the two men crammed in the space below.

“
Jeezus
, Andersen – what happened?”

August was sitting in a pool of red that sloshed up past his ankles. If it had all been blood, August would’ve been dead. But it wasn’t. It was a mix – of blood, lake, and rain.

“Chief!” said deputy Rhodes. “We’re going to need an ambulance!”

Deputy Rhodes looked at August again. The expression on his face had changed. Suddenly, August looked completely alert – and alarmed.

“He’s coming!” he said.

“Who’s coming?” asked Rhodes.

“The snapper,” said August.

“How do you know?”

“I can feel it,” said August. “In my gut.”

“Just calm down now, August. You’re probably just in shock.”

“I’m not in shock!” cried August. “I’m telling you, it’s coming – fast. For God’s sake, Rhodes, we’ve got to –”

*

Grundel had followed the strange metal tube with the spinning pinwheel on its tail. He had felt the vibrations it made as it bore through the water. Grundel had lagged well behind, lurking in the wake of bubbles that trailed behind the thing. Grundel did not want to be seen by the thing’s one shining eye.

The thing was not small, and on either side it had long barbed prongs that looked formidable. Grundel would be patient. Inside the thing were men whose arms and legs were meant for him.

Grundel watched the thing rise to the surface. Now it was bobbing above him, as oblivious as a duck. Another boat, making even louder vibrations, pulled alongside the tube. He heard the voices of men. The moon had called him out for something special after all. He was going to have a field day.

Grundel poked his head above the surface. There were too many shining lights – they bothered his sensitive yellow eyes. He moved back into the shadows of the floating tube. He looked up. A man in a uniform was straddling the tube.

Grundel looked around. He saw two handles he could reach. He paddled in closer and then, with his right claw, he reached up and grabbed one handle. Then with his left claw, he grabbed the other. Then Grundel did a pull up. The whole metal cylinder rolled toward him. For a brief instant, the eyes of the man straddling the tube looked into Grundel’s. Then he slipped from his mount and fell into the water with a muffled cry.

The frigid water was a shock. For a second or two, deputy Rhodes was too stunned to do anything. In the water below, Grundel circled languidly. He wanted to strike at just the right angle. How you came in was key.

Deputy Rhodes had to make a quick decision. Try to climb back up onto the sub – or swim to shore.

When he was a teenager, Donnie Rhodes had been on the Turtleback Lake swim team. But that had been twenty-five years ago. Without time to think, Donnie unconsciously assumed that he could still swim now as he had then. He started swimming. It was only forty yards to shore. Back in his prime he could do that in – what – twenty, twenty-five seconds? But Donnie wasn’t in his prime and he wasn’t in a Speedo. He was out-of-shape and he was weighed down with wet clothes and boots.

Still, wet clothes and all, he was now more than halfway to shore. Just another fifteen, twenty yards. But this wasn’t a race Deputy Rhodes was going to win – even if he’d still been in his prime. Deputy Rhodes was racing Grundel. And Grundel was going to win.

Dr. Goode screamed, “Hurry – he’s right behind you!”

Chief Rudolph raised his rifle, a .30-30 Winchester, to his shoulder. He aimed at the water just behind his partner. He waited, patiently tracking Rhodes’s progress. Grundel was right behind him, just beneath the lake’s surface.

Seeing land so close, Deputy Rhodes gave in to another misguided instinct. He stopped swimming and reached for the bottom of the lake with his feet. From here, he thought, it would be faster to run. It was another mistake. Donny’s first step slipped on the lake’s slippery bottom. Rhodes floundered. Now he was all Grundel’s. The great snapper opened his jaw wide. He would take the man’s leg just below the thigh. He tilted his body for a better angle. As the edge of his shell broke the surface, Chief Rudolph squeezed the trigger. The echo of the blast, caroming through the valley, made the one shot sound like five or six.

Grundel’s jaw snapped shut like a trap as the bullet bore through his shell. His armor slowed the bullet, but it couldn’t stop it. Fired from such close range, the bullet penetrated deep into Grundel’s body. Grundel banked sharply to the left, seeking the refuge of deeper water. Chief Rudolph saw him clearly. He took aim and fired again. More blasts resounded through the valley.

Chief Rudolph thought his second shot hit the snapper squarely in the back, but he was wrong. The second bullet merely grazed Grundel’s shell. Then, after skimming across the lake’s dark surface, it started to sink to the bottom. As it sank, the bullet was swallowed in a single gulp by a ravenous pickerel attracted by the allure of its shiny surface.

Deputy Rhodes scrambled onto shore, dripping, gasping and shivering. JJ and Dr. Goode helped him to his feet as an ambulance screeched to a halt in the clearing by the cabin.

Paramedics ran down the slope toward deputy Rhodes.

“I’m OK,” said Deputy Rhodes, as they wrapped a blanket around him. “It’s the guys in the sub who need help!”

The beams from the ambulance’s headlights lit up the whole scene: Chief Rudolph lowering the Winchester from his shoulder, the sub bobbing alongside the police boat, and the blood red waters that Grundel had left in his wake.

Chief Rudolph looped a line onto the deck of the sub. He flung the other end to JJ and the paramedics on shore. In just minutes, the sub was out of the water and up on land. The paramedics lifted the two men out and quickly laid them on stretchers.