Ocean Burning (12 page)

“This is their territory,” I said. “They probably don’t venture into the cove—it drains at low tide—but out here in the shallow water, this is a perfect place to hunt.”

“Indeed. And they are very, very territorial, mate.”

We watched them circle, swooping far out into the sea, then turning and slicing by us, watchful and patient. There were far fewer fins than in the movies. Mostly they stayed just below the surface, waiting. Rigger offered the bottle, and I took a pull, handed it back.

Movement up at the wheel—quick, barely there—caught my eye. It was an effort not to turn my head and look. In fact, I did start to swing around a bit, but made as though I was tracking one of the sharks as it came in for another pass. Even without looking, I knew exactly what I had seen. Only one person on board wore bikini swimsuits colored in pastel reds.

I made my goodbyes to Rigger, made my way around the superstructure, and sneaked up the ladder. Carmen sat up straight in the captain’s chair, the drink in her hand covered in icy condensation.

“Knew I’d get you attention,” she said.

“This boat is getting smaller by the minute. I’d say we’ve got about three or four minutes before someone wanders up here, so start talking.”

“First thing’s first,” she said, and stood up, graceful and lithe. Her longs legs floated her across the deck. I wrapped my arms around her, let her hot tongue explore my mouth and soothe my wounds.

“Have you tried the radio?” she asked, after we peeled ourselves apart.

“Of course. But we’re too far from shore. Nothing but static.”

“And no settlements on the island.”

“There are, on the far side. But we’re too close the island. It’s a mountain of rock, and at this angle we’ll never get a signal over the top and down again.”

“Then we’re on our own,” she said. “Really, truly.”

I reached out and held her in my arms. It felt good to comfort her, felt even better to know I had her back after five long years. “Yes, I’m afraid we are.”

She looked up at me, her eyes narrowing in determination. “Then we’ve got to do something.”

“You’re the one with the plan.”

“Three words: divide and conquer.”

I took a step back and leaned against the helm. “Go on.”

“Think about it—we know Ben put this thing together. We know they agreed to meet out here via boat. It’s a fair guess sinking their own boat wasn’t part of the plan.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“So the plan is in flux. They are biding their time, trying to figure out what to do, same as us.”

“Sure, but it isn’t like a negotiation: going second isn’t an advantage. The opposite, I think. Whoever moves first might just win this thing.”

“Exactly. And here’s the kicker: they don’t know we know. Ben thinks I’m a clueless floozy; Rigger and Carlos think you’re just a charter boat captain in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“I am that.”

She elbowed me in the ribs. “The Frank Conway I know is a bit more than that.”

I grinned, then felt my expression go sour. “Actually, I was starting to think they’re on to me.”

“Lying always feels like that,” she said, “like everyone can see right through you. But it’s not true.”

“You’re sure?”

She ran a finger down my bicep. “No one suspects me, do they?”

“No way,” I said.

“Then I’ve got the best perspective on everyone else. No one thinks you’re anything other than a guy who owns a boat.”

I said nothing. Privately, I was ashamed at just how far I had manged to mind-fuck myself.

“What we have,” she said, “is the element of surprise. We need to shake things up.”

“That’s not a plan, Carmen. That’s a strategy. A very general strategy.”

“The plan is to divide and conquer. Tonight, we crack the water tank.”

“You mean the tank with all our drinking water in it?”

“Yep. Tomorrow morning, you discover the accident and we’ll have no choice but to send the emergency raft to shore for fresh water. You’ll go as captain, of course. And you’ll take Ben with you.”

“What makes you think he’ll go?”

“Leave that to me. You and I know that naive, never-been-in-the-outdoors vibe he puts out is total bullshit. Hell, he probably even knows how to swim. I’ll just play the dutiful bride-to-be, come to him worried, oh-so scared about the water. Won’t he please make sure we get some.” She rubbed her hands together with glee.

“And you think he’ll go for it?”

“Like I said, leave it to me. But yeah, as long as they think we’re in the dark, they’ll keep playing their roles.”

“Thinking of you, with him—it tears me up. I can’t take it.”

“You only have to take it for a little while longer, but we need to keep him unsuspecting.”

“And I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone with those two…whatever they are.”

“They’ll want water as much as anyone else, and they want to keep control of the situation. They’ll act normal, because that’s all part of their plan.” She crossed her arms across her chest. “That’s the beauty of it, Frank—their plan feeds ours.”

I flopped down on the chair, closed my eyes, rubbed my face, and thought it through. It all added up.

Right up until the end, at least.

My lids popped open. “And then?” I asked.

Carmen’s face hardened. She went cold, a look I couldn’t remember seeing on her before. But she said nothing.

“Ben and I get onto the island. We’re alone. And then what?”

“You do what you have to do,” she said.

“You mean kill him,” I said slowly.

“I mean use your best judgment. Just leave him there, if you can manage it.”

“He’d starve, most likely.”

“Who cares?”

“God, the man was your finance.”

“You think there’s any chance his bank robbery plan included me coming back from this trip alive?”

I said nothing.

”No? Well then what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

I looked at her with new eyes.

“Let me put it another way: fuck him, Frank.”

She had a point. “Fair enough,” I said.

“And when you get back, it’ll be two-on-two, and we’ll have cut the head off the snake. This little gang is about to get the surprise of their lives.”

There was nothing to say. All I could do was nod.

Chapter 12

AT THREE IN the morning I forced a chisel into the edge of the water tank and hit it once with a hammer. The plastic gave and the tank sprayed lightly across the tools and the front of my shirt. After a few seconds the spray stopped, replaced by a steady drip. I hid the tools and went back to bed.

The door to the captain’s state room had a good lock on it, but I didn’t kid myself. Any higher than average persistence and the lock would break. I turned off the light, lay in the darkness, and tried not to think about the door being kicked in by angry men bent on my demise.

Two sharp bangs on my door woke me. The angle of the light made thin, dust-filled shafts parallel to the floor. I made it perhaps two hours after dawn. The lock popped easily, and I pulled back the door to reveal Carlos’s brown face, lined with concern.

“We have a problem, Senor Conway.”

I tried my best to look angry and confused, and followed him up on deck. He led me to the starboard side walkway, to the recess there in the fiberglass bulkhead that housed the water tank. The white, translucent plastic shown through with more light than it should have. A tiny stream from the corner made its way down the bulkhead, across the deck, and through a scupper, one of the narrow holes at deck height designed to let water back out if, for example, a wave crashed over us.

The scupper had done its job—almost the entire tank of drinking water had drained into the sea.

“It never rains but it pours, eh?” I said.

Carlos looked at me quizzically. “I don’t understand.”

“It means we’re having some very bad luck.”

He nodded, non-committal, but didn’t seem convinced of the accidental nature of the cracked tank. But then again, his face was calm and unreadable. I reminded myself not to project my own nervousness onto him.

Over the next ten minutes, everyone got up and gathered at the bow. I didn’t mince words.

“We’re out of water.”

“The fuck we are,” Rigger said. “I checked that tank myself not an hour before we left.”

“And it was full then. But there’s been a leak.”

“Well, this just keeps getting better and better.” Rigger scratched himself, pulled at his collar.

“I know it’s not ideal. As I see it, we have exactly one solution: we need to go back to the island and collect water. There’s a stream not far back from the cove.”

“You can fix the engine now?” Carlos asked.

“No,” I said, “and you’re right—without the engine we can’t possibly get the
Purple
back to shore. But we can use the emergency raft. It will inflate itself, and it has a very small outboard motor, enough to push two people around with fair efficiency.”

“You know there are sharks out there,” Carmen said. I supposed she was trying to seem impartial.

“There are no sharks that attack boats, even rafts. There only circling us because we’re sitting here, floating in their territory. They don’t know what to make of us, and I suspect the motor may even scare them off. As long as we’re careful, no one will get hurt.”

“As long as no one ends up in the drink flopping around like a damn seal, that’s what you mean,” Rigger said.

“Who’s going?” Ben asked.

“As captain, I’ll be going. But I need another set of hands, so please, everyone take a few minutes to think. I’m hoping for a volunteer.” With that, I threaded my way through them and climbed back to the controls. From up here I could get a good vantage on most parts of the boat. I saw Carmen lead Ben below and decided I didn’t want to think about exactly which of her charms she was using on him down there.

Staring at the sea, the occasional dark shape slid under my keel. I drank a bit to keep myself sane. The sound of steps came ringing up the ladder, and somehow I could tell just from the sound that it was Ben Hawking. Carmen had been as good as her word. I reminded myself it would all be worth it if we could be together, then made my face neutral before turning around in my chair.

“I’ll go with you,” Ben said.

I took another swig from my little bottle and studied him. His arms crossed his chest, and his brow came down so far it nearly covered his eyes. It made his forehead smooth, and I stared at that. Something different emanated from him, a strange kind of energy, and I toyed with the idea that he suspected this trip was a ploy. Not that it made a difference.

“Good man. We leave in five minutes,” I said, and smiled at him.

I slid down the ladder, caught Carmen’s eye on my way past. She nodded, and I was reassured. The red button to inflate the raft seemed stiff under my hand, but of course I’d never used it before. It resisted my simple push so I pulled back, made a fist, and gave it a smack.

The raft belched and hissed and unfurled itself before my eyes. Within seconds it had gone from suitcase-sized to full-sized, just folded in half. The gases squirting into it strained to lift that last half and it expanded until it opened completely. The outside half flopped over the rail and touched the water.

The raft connected to the bulkhead with a cord so that there was no danger of it floating off. I opened a small recess in the storage space, pulled out the small motor, and attached it securely to the grommets at the raft’s rear. Then I untied the cord, lowered the raft all the way into the water, retied the cord to the rail, and lowered myself down.

The raft swayed side to side from my weight, and bulged up from the bottom as waves passed underneath it. It had cylindrical gray rubber sides and was a rectangle mostly, but with a pointed, triangular front to help cut through the waves. My grandfather had been in the navy and always referred to these kinds of rafts as Kodiaks.

It was a small one, though—even smaller than I remembered. Sitting in it now, surrounded by sharks, I was kicking myself. This had been the absolute cheapest one available for purchase, and even then I had shopped around until I found it used.

“At least I charged the inflater,” I muttered under my breath.

“What was that?” Hawking stood at the rail, inexplicably wearing a jacket in the tropical heat.

“I said get down here. What’s with the coat?”

“For the spray,” he said, and lay on the rail on his belly, turned himself, and lowered his legs down. My hand tightened on a boat bumper, and I tried to keep us stable.

Ben let go of the rail, balanced himself back and forth, rocking us, then fell onto the small bench seat. He curled into a little ball there. I knew the feeling, that desperate urge to lower your center of gravity any way you could. Carlos and Rigger handed over two cubical, five-gallon water jugs each. They crowded Ben and I to either end of the small raft, with the jugs stacked in the middle. Once filled, I wouldn’t stack the jugs. Another example of the importance of a low center of gravity. It would be a tight fit coming back.

“Be careful,” Carmen said. She was looking at Ben, but I had a feeling I was the one supposed to hear it.

The starter cord seemed caught on something, but I decided it must just be stiff from disuse. Hopefully the engine wasn’t in the same condition. I ripped the cord off the crank, hard and fast, and the little two-stoke motor fired right up. It had the combined throttle/steering shaft, and I turned forward again and twisted the handle. Sluggishly, we pulled away. As the raft picked up speed it started to plane out across the waves. It felt a lot more stable, and I gunned the engine.

Hawking was perched at the very front, facing backwards. He couldn’t see where we were going, but he could watch me, and that’s exactly what he did. I glanced over my shoulder. The
Purple
dwindled in size behind us. The people on the deck stood thumb-high in the distance. The orange-looking one had to be Carmen.

We were sitting in a cheap rubber raft, where any disturbance could flip us, skimming over shark-waters. Yet here, of all places, my back was finally protected. The roar of the engine made good white noise and I figured I had time to think, to size up the situation and decide the best thing to do. No one, I thought, would do anything to rock the boat. No one would be crazy enough.