Bermuda Schwartz (31 page)

I wonder: How did the
Santa Helena
meet its end? Did it crash into the rock and rebuff itself, only for brutal waves to drive it into the seamount again and again? Or was it impaled atop the spire, a mighty hole that sent it quickly to the bottom, alone there for some 350 years, until the
Victory's
doomed visitation?

Again, I offer silent tribute to those who met their fate here, then fin onward to whatever fate lies waiting for me.

I round the seamount, swim toward the ledge under which the paddle wheel rests. Fifty feet below me, two dark figures poke around in the timbers that lie on the seafloor—Fiona McHugh and Michael Frazer. They don't see me.

I swim over the ledge and down to the sandy lip of the cavern. The rising sea has created a considerable surge. It intensifies as I near the ghostly remains of the paddle wheel. Tiny cyclones of sand and sediment swirl around the broken spokes. Purple sea fans sway back and forth with the upwellings. Broken bits of this and that flutter about like flakes in a snowdome.

I head toward the hub of the paddle wheel, grab hold of a spoke to fight off the outflow, gather new purchase as the surge flows in. I reach under the rusty nexus, fumble around with a hand, find nothing. The seaflow sucks me out. I hold on and wait. And when it sends me back in again, I reach behind the hub, put my hand on something made of metal. I root blindly, pry it loose and pull it free.

Had Teddy Schwartz not told me it was a replica, placed there only a few days earlier, I most surely would have believed I was holding something ancient. The silver reliquary in my hands is a ringer for the one in the sketch, its imperfections making it even more authentic. One arm of the Greek cross is broken off near the juncture. Another is badly battered. The whole piece is worn in a way that could only come from more
than five hundred years under the sea. Or so it would appear to anyone who didn't know better.

I open the dive bag, stuff the faux reliquary inside. I swim out to the lip of the cavern and look down.

Fiona and Frazer have left the wreckage on the bottom and are finning upward, not twenty feet away. The sight of me startles both of them. Fiona grabs Frazer's arm. He windmills backward in alarm.

I see wide eyes behind their masks. I raise a hand, give them the OK sign. They recognize me and relax.

Frazer holds back while Fiona kicks and heads my way. She turns up her hands, questioning me. It's a “What the fuck?” moment.

I give her another OK sign, hold up the dive bag, and point to it. She reaches for it, wants to look inside. But I pull the bag away.

I make the hatchet sign: Back to the boat.

I roll away, kick, and angle upward. The two of them fall in behind.

 

I surface a few yards astern of
Miss Peg.
I look for Boggy on the boat. I don't see him. That's OK—part of our plan.

But now I recognize a gaping hole in that plan: I forgot to hang a ladder off
Miss Peg
so we could climb aboard.

For everything to fall into place, we all need to be on
Miss Peg.
That way, Boggy and I will have a slightly better chance of controlling the situation. But the sea is so rough, there's no way I can scramble over
Miss Peg's
transom without getting beat all to hell.

A ladder hangs down from Frazer's boat. I paddle to it. I take off my fins, sling them onto the boat, then climb up the ladder. I slip out of my vest and rest it on the floor with the tank still attached.

Fiona is next up. I take her fins, give her a hand. As she reaches the top rung, a swell lifts the boat. She loses her grip and tumbles backward, narrowly missing Frazer on the way down.

“You OK?” I yell to her. Frazer climbs up the ladder and moves past me onto the boat, shrugging off gear as he goes.

Fiona coughs. She's swallowed water, but she's all right. She makes her way back to the ladder.

Frazer says, “You scared hell out of us down there, you know that?”

He's smiling, playing it loose and easy. He moves to the console. He finds his keys, unlocks a compartment, rummages around inside. Then he grabs a towel and starts drying off.

I don't say anything. I turn back to Fiona. She struggles to get a grip on the ladder, but it is banging against the transom, hard to hold. I lean down, try to give her a hand. Too far to reach.

I turn and look at Frazer. He watches me. The towel is draped over a hand now.

He says, “So what did you find down there?”

“See for yourself,” I say.

I look down at Fiona. She's still having a hard time with the ladder.

I tell her, “Take off your vest, hand it up to me. That'll make it easier for you to climb.”

Frazer puts down the towel and opens the dive bag. He pulls out the reliquary. He turns it over, admiring it, carefully, gently.

I say, “Is that what you've been looking for, Frazer?”

He doesn't say anything. He sets down the reliquary and picks up the towel. There's a gun underneath. He levels it at me.

He says, “How did you know where to find it?”

“Had a little inside information,” I say.

“From who?”

“Teddy Schwartz. He's the one who made it.”

“Made it? What are you talking about?”

“It's a fake.”

Frazer looks at the reliquary, then back at me.

“I don't believe you,” he says.

I shrug.

“Suit yourself. But if you'd looked around his boathouse a little more closely when you broke in, you'd have seen it on his workbench. You must have been in a big hurry, huh? You put the ice pick and the pliers in that pile of rags by the door. And then you got out of there.”

Behind Frazer, I see movement in
Miss Peg's
cabin. OK, Boggy. Now's the time. Frazer has laid down his hand. It's what we were waiting for. Rush him from behind.

But my glance gives it away. Frazer takes a step back from me, shoots a look at
Miss Peg.

He says, “Who's with you?”

I don't answer him.

“Is there anyone else on that boat?”

“Yeah, Boggy is on it. He's got a rifle trained on you right now. Put down the gun.”

Frazer shoots another look at
Miss Peg.

“Yeah, right. I don't believe that either.”

Still, he moves to the other side of his boat, all the better for keeping an eye on me and
Miss Peg
at the same time.

Down in the water, Fiona can't see what's going on.

She calls up, “Zack, are you going to come get my vest or what?”

I look at Frazer.

“I'm going to help her up, OK?”

He nods.

I turn my back to him as I move to the ladder, burn an image in my mind of exactly where he is—about fifteen feet away, a bit forward, near the port gunwale. I look down the ladder. Fiona holds the vest up to me. I reach for the steel tank that is strapped on the back, grab it by the K-valve on top. I adjust the weight in my hand, all forty pounds of it.

I raise up slowly, and then I pivot, grabbing the tank with both hands and hurling it across the boat at Frazer. It's a lousy shot, high and to the side. Frazer deflects it into the water.

And as I charge, I see him raise the pistol, fire …

 

I've never been shot before, never even come close. And all I can think as the bullet strikes my left thigh and sends me spinning is: Thought it would hurt more than that.

I land facedown by the hatchway and as I roll onto my back I see Fiona come up the ladder. Frazer is on her in an instant, yanking her onto the boat, then shoving her toward me, keeping his gun trained on us.

“On the floor, next to him!” he shouts at Fiona.

Fiona looks down at me. A hand goes to her mouth.

“Omigod!”

She reaches for a towel, kneels beside me, and applies pressure to the wound. It's on the outside of my thigh, about halfway between my knee and hipbone. A small hole in the front, a bigger hole in the back. And a lot of ripped flesh in between. I don't think it got the bone. But blood, lots of blood. And now the hurt sets in.

Frazer looks down at us, smirks.

“It's not going to make any difference,” he says. “A few minutes and you'll both be dead.”

Fiona looks at me.

“He killed Ned?”

I nod.

She doesn't react. She ties off the towel around my thigh. Then finds another towel, hands it to me.

“Keep applying pressure,” she says.

I take the towel from her, and as I do, she lunges for Frazer, going in low toward his knees. He steps back, kicks, and catches her in the jaw. She falls back, beside me.

Frazer waves the gun at Fiona.

“I want you to reach up under the console, get the roll of duct tape,” he says.

Fiona doesn't move.

“Do it, bitch!”

Fiona moves to the console, finds the duct tape. Frazer waves the gun at me.

“Now help him get up on his feet,” he says.

Fiona gets an arm around me, helps me stand. And now the pain in my thigh really sets in, throbbing, throbbing.

Frazer steps to the console, turns the key. The engines rumble and catch. He lets it run in neutral.

“Now get on the other boat,” Frazer says.

“What for?”

“Just do it,” he says.

He moves close to us now, prods the pistol into my back as Fiona helps me hobble toward the gunwales where the boats are lashed together. She steps onto
Miss Peg
first, then helps me aboard.

Frazer steps on behind us.

“Now sit him down in the captain's chair,” Frazer says. “Lash the tape around him. Make it tight. Put it over his mouth, too.”

Fiona does as she's told. As she does, I look in the cabin. No sign of Boggy.

When Fiona's done, Frazer checks the tape, makes sure it's tight, says: “OK, now you get in the other chair.”

Fiona sits down. Frazer peels off some tape with his teeth. He slaps it onto her mouth and begins wrapping it around her with one hand, keeping the other on the gun.

When he's finished lashing her to the chair, Frazer looks at what's left of the duct tape. Not much. He tosses it into the cabin and backs toward the transom.

And as he does, the roll of duct tape sails out of the cabin, hits the floor, and skids to a stop at Frazer's feet.

Frazer looks at it in disbelief. He looks at the cabin.

“Who's in there?”

No answer.

“Come out. Now!”

No answer. No movement in the cabin.

Frazer takes a step toward the cabin. Then another, holding the gun with both hands in front of him.

As he nears the cabin—a gusher of white foam shoots out, spraying Frazer across the face. He lurches back and out comes Boggy, ramming forward with the fire extinguisher, knocking Frazer back.

I strain to see what's going on, but can't turn in the chair. Neither can Fiona.

They struggle at the aft of the boat, body crashing against body.

Then a shot. And another.

A splash—the sound of someone going into water.

Then three more shots.

A long moment.

Then Frazer's voice: “I got the son of a bitch.”

 

Frazer moves within my line of vision. He stands by the gunwale, pistol aimed at the water. Then he moves aft again, to a point where I can't see him.

I look ahead. No other boats on the horizon.

We are pointing west. The sun is low now. No more than an hour until dark.

Three or four minutes go by. I hear Frazer pacing around the boat, presume he is looking for Boggy.

And then he says: “Well, I guess that's that, eh?”

I hear him rustling around in the transom. And then I smell the gas.

I don't have to see him to know what he's doing: The auxiliary motor's gas can. He's emptying it onto the boat.

Frazer steps forward. He looks at Fiona and me.

“Don't want it to go up in flames all at once,” he says. “I need a few minutes running room.”

He steps back aboard his boat, unlashes the lines. He reaches under the console, pulls out an emergency kit. He steps to the side of his boat, a flare gun in hand.

“At least you'll go out with a bang,” he says.

Frazer aims the flare gun, fires. A small thud as the ball of sparks hits
Miss Peg's
transom. And then a frightening whoosh as the gas ignites.

I feel the heat. The fire sizzles and feeds off itself. This is not going to take nearly as long as Frazer thought.

And sensing the same thing, Frazer guns the engines, throwing up a rooster-tail of water as his boat speeds away.

I turn, look at Fiona. I see terror in her eyes, the same terror I'm sure she sees in mine.

The heat grows more intense and I can see flames reflected by the windshield in front of me, a deadly orange dance that seems to have already consumed
Miss Peg's
rear quarter. The air is heavy with the sickening smell of molten fiberglass.

I struggle against the duct tape and can see that Fiona is doing the same thing. But every move unleashes a new wave of pain from my thigh. I think: Maybe as the flames move closer they will catch the duct tape around my feet on fire and I can kick free …

Then I think: You'll be a crispy critter by the time that happens.

I look at Fiona. She struggles against her bindings, in full panic mode now. And just as I am ready to yield myself to the inevitable, the boat lists to port and I see Boggy pulling himself aboard near the bow.

He runs our way, one arm limp at his side, a bloody wound in the shoulder. And then he's beside us, yanking out drawers, finding a knife.

He cuts Fiona free first, shouts: “Grab the bench cushions. Jump!”

She leaps up and darts away.

As Boggy moves toward me, there's a new blast of heat from the rear of the boat. Above me, the cockpit roof begins to smolder. Along the gunwales, the stanchion lines are aflame.