Night Diver: A Novel (38 page)

The device is a red herring. The real danger is foundering, but Farnsworth expected me to be so fixated on his pretty device that I wouldn’t notice his other sabotage until it was too late.

Abruptly Holden realized that there was water sloshing around his neoprene-covered feet. He bent down quickly, skimmed a finger through the liquid and tasted it, hoping it was simply coming from the machine that converted seawater to drinking water. He touched his fingertip to his tongue.

Salt.

The engine room hadn’t been wet when he entered and the neoprene had prevented him from noticing the slow, inexorable rising of water—water that would kill much less dramatically but just as finally as any explosive devised by man.

Ignoring the pain in his thigh, Holden went outside as fast as he could and checked that the workboat was still tied to the ship. It would need some bailing, but it was safe. Ignoring his twitching thigh, he went up the stairs as fast as the wallowing ship would allow. By the time he opened the main cabin door, he felt like he’d been in a particularly nasty rugby scrum.

“We’re abandoning ship immediately,” he said.

“What?” Kate looked up from tying off a final strip of cloth over her grandfather’s ribs.

“That’s crazy!” Grandpa said over her.

“No,” Holden said flatly. “Crazy is staying aboard a sinking ship. Water is at least a centimeter deep in the engine room and rising as we speak. The bilges are flooded and the pump has packed it in.”

“Sabotage?” Grandpa asked, his face flushed, furious.

“It doesn’t matter.” Holden grabbed his dive knife off the table that was still awash in a pirate’s private hoard and headed for Larry. “The workboat is alongside. The silly sod took the flashy speedboat. Hope it swamps in the following sea on the way to St. Vincent.”

“Let me up,” Grandpa sputtered. “I can save my ship.”

“No time. We could founder in the next big set of waves.” Holden began cutting through Larry’s bindings. “Get your grandfather to the workboat, Kate. I’ll be along with your brother.”

Methodically he set about slapping Larry into consciousness.

More than anything else, the sharp sounds of flesh on flesh told Kate how much trouble they were in. Holden wasn’t the kind to smack around a helpless man.

“Let’s go,” she said Grandpa. “You can lean on me.”

“But—my ship—the treasure.”

“Sod the treasure,” Holden snarled as he sheathed the knife and hauled Larry upright. “The only thing worth saving is our lives.”

The
Golden Bough
staggered as she struggled to meet more black cliffs of seawater rushing toward the bow. Tears ran down the old man’s face as he felt the ship he loved struggling for her life, fighting every wave.

Losing.

“I can make it to the workboat myself,” he said gruffly to Kate. “Help with Larry.” Grandpa stepped through the open door and into the storm.

She turned and grabbed one of her brother’s arms. He was on his feet, responding in the manner of a child wakened from a deep sleep by an adult and guided toward another bed. He could walk when ordered, but he wasn’t truly aware.

“Wait with him near the door,” Holden said to her. He bent and scooped up the safety line that had recently imprisoned him.

“The stairs,” she said.

It was all she said. It was enough.

“I know,” Holden said. “My leg’s too dodgy to carry him.” His hands moved quickly, surely, fashioning a makeshift harness from one end of the safety line.

She saw what he was doing and worked with him to put the harness on Larry. Her brother neither struggled nor helped. She understood the cause of his passivity, but it clawed at her just the same.

“I’ll go down first and belay him on the stairs,” Holden said. “You keep him aimed right.”

She waited until Holden had rigged a rough belay on the stair railing. Larry might get banged around, but he wouldn’t fall and break his neck.

“Belay on!” Holden shouted above the storm.

Kate did what she could to guide her brother on the first step while the deck tilted and swayed crazily. Holden threw his weight against the belay line, allowing Larry to descend in a more or less controlled fall.

The ship rose to another wall of water, but not far enough. A wave broke over the bow and washed in a wild black-and-white river over the lower deck.

“Holden!” she screamed.

Holden kept himself and Larry from washing overboard by leaning against the belay line and hooking one arm through the railing. When he felt the weight of the water falling away, he called up to Kate.

“Down!”

She shot down the stairs with the speed of a child who had grown up on a ship. Together she and Holden held, pushed, and bullied Larry over the deck. Even with its special grip coating, the footing was treacherous, especially during the torrent of the larger waves breaking over the lower deck. Holden used the rough belay to get Larry into the workboat, then all but fell into it himself. Kate came in on his heels.

Grandpa had already started the engines. “Cast off!”

Untying the line despite the jerk and shudder of the boat against the larger ship would take too much time. Holden pulled the dive knife from its sheath and slashed the lines. With a bob and a shake, the workboat sprang free of the slowly sinking ship.

“I programmed a course to Lee Harbor,” Grandpa said to Kate as he guided the workboat away from the
Golden Bough,
his hands sure despite the steady fall of tears down his leathery cheeks. “Take the wheel, Kate. Nobody surfs a small boat better than you do. And that’s what we’ll be doing most of the way in, surfing.”

While they switched places, Holden stuffed Larry into a life jacket and braced his slack body under the dashboard. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was safer than slamming about the boat. Grandpa pulled out more flotation gear and handed it to Holden. He put his on quickly and helped Kate into hers while she kept her attention on timing the swells.

“If you get tired, I’ll take it,” he said against her ear. “I have had some experience.”

“Rest your leg as much as you can. I used to do this for fun.”

But when lightning came, there was no pleasure on her starkly illuminated features. It took attention and skill to catch the following waves that surged up beneath the stern of the boat, lifting and thrusting it forward. Too much throttle and she would overrun the wave and end up burying the bow in the water and flipping the boat. Too little throttle and the next wave would break over the workboat, swamping it.

For a moment Holden watched her, admiring her skill and courage even as he wanted to spare her. If the wind and current had been going in contrary directions, the workboat would have been riding the edge of its design capabilities just staying afloat. As it was, they made good progress toward shore, thanks to Kate’s steady hands.

He took a plastic bailing container off its clip and went to work bailing despite the white-hot star that was eating its way through his flesh.

It will pass. It always does.

So did life, but Holden didn’t dwell on it. Right now, survival took every bit of his will and concentration.

K
ATE LOOKED OUT
the rear window of the old pickup and saw Lee Harbor washed by curtains of rain and wind. She stared for a long, frustrated moment.

“I told you to stay with them,” Holden said.

“The ambulance is on its way,” she said, starting the pickup. “I can’t do anything for Grandpa and Larry, but I can drive a manual shift vehicle more easily than you right now.”

They had already had this argument on the way into the harbor, so Holden saved his energy for what was coming. The sky outside was black with only loose tendrils of clouds showing when inky purple lightning stabbed in the distance. Wind skated across the water, making moored boats toss and rigging wail. Even away from the sea, the taste of brine was in the air.

Or maybe it’s just the salt crust running down from my hair,
he thought, licking his lips.

It took his mind off his thigh, which was settling down more slowly than a spoiled child.

Lightning flashed nearby, bleaching everything white, leaving incandescent afterimages. Simultaneous thunder hammered down, shaking the world. Debris from the streets and then the forests cracked against the truck at unpredictable intervals.

Kate flinched at the most recent hit and told herself she was better off in the truck than she had been in a metal workboat on a wild sea. In either case the visibility was about the same—forward-facing lights revealing quicksilver rain and looming darkness. There was no real scale, nothing to help judge how far away the watery lights that glimmered occasionally really were. There was just rain and wind, night and lightning.

“Are you sure this is still only a tropical storm?” she asked.

“Last time I checked, yes. But some of the gusts are above the upper limit of one hundred and eighteen kilometers. Sustained winds are still below that.”

“Feels like more than seventy miles an hour to me,” she said grimly as she fought to keep the lightweight pickup on the road. “Do you really think that Farnsworth is going to try and fly out in this?”

“He doesn’t have much choice. Even if we all had gone down with the
Golden Bough,
he couldn’t be certain that we didn’t air every bit of his dirty linen by radio or even cell phone before we drowned. He’s an amateur, and I thank God for it. A pro would have killed us, waited for the storm to blow over, then boarded the first plane out with a new identity and a suitcase full of gems.”

“Okay, he’s crazy and an amateur.” She swerved to avoid a flying piece of something unidentifiable. “Apparently he could dive. Is he a pilot, too?”

“I doubt it. From what your grandfather said, Farnsworth learned to dive from a book and a swimming pool. It will take one hell of a good, lucky pilot and plane to fly in this weather.”

“But it could be done?”

“Certainly,” Holden said, thinking of some of the reports he had heard from combat zones. “Necessity is a cruel mistress. If there is a plane and a runway on St. Vincent, we have to assume that Farnsworth is headed for it.”

“I don’t think any of the gypsy strips will be usable,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“The runways carved out of the forest for private—often illegal—use. They aren’t paved. The only public strip that I know of that will be usable is the one we flew in on, but the flights have been shut down.”

“Commercial carriers have. The assumption is that small airplane pilots have enough sense to stay on the ground.” Holden’s grin was more of a grimace. “Farnsworth is desperate. If he can get a kite into the air, he will fly it.”

“We can’t be sure he even made it to shore.”

“And we have had that argument, too, shortly before the one about my driving the truck.”

Kate shut up and concentrated on driving. She knew that Holden somehow felt responsible for what Farnsworth had done, as though being from the same country and working for the same government department meant that he and Farnsworth were equally guilty for what only one of them had done.

As if Holden knew what she was thinking, he said, “I’m sorry, Kate. I should have figured out the game sooner.”

“You’ve done everything you could,” she said.

“Not yet.”

Rain poured over the truck, overwhelming the wipers. Flying palm fronds smacked into the windshield and clung to the glass like giant bats. One wiper quit working before more rain and wind peeled the fronds away. Fortunately, the dead wiper was on the passenger side.

The cry of the wind rose and fell like a caged animal. Lightning turned the world white, and thunder battered everything in its wake. Water on the road became so deep that the wheels fought for traction.

“Hang on, this might get rough,” she said.

“Thank goodness. I was about to expire from boredom.”

Kate would have sworn she had lost the ability to laugh, but she hadn’t. As she laughed, she discovered that it released the pressure growing in her, improved her reflexes, and allowed her to concentrate better.

“Thank you,” she said.

He touched her cheek with fingers that were damp. “My pleasure. One of the first things combat teaches is that laughter keeps you sane.”

The truck plowed through the low spot and kept on going. A faint blur of light in the distance slowly became the airport. As they pulled into the nearly empty lot, curtains of rain gleamed like liquid gold in the parking lot lights. Palm fronds and other unidentifiable debris flew horizontally across pools of light and dove into darkness.

Then the grasp of the wind slowly, slowly eased, as if the storm itself was taking time to draw breath. Through curtains of rain, the headlights picked out a car parked at the far side of the main terminal lot, where there was a smaller building for private planes and passengers. The car appeared black, but the make and model were right.

“Farnsworth rented a screaming red Mustang,” she said.