Stranded (3 page)

Hunched on her seat toward the back of the lighter, Betty hugged Crystal to her side. Other passengers crowded the bow. Several cried out at the growing distance between the lighter and the cruise ship. A young couple ran to the stern and searched the outboard motor for ignition keys. Eve and three others hunted for life vests. They opened the storage lockers under the seats, but the promised vests were not there. Only a small, telescoping mast, a sail and its rigging, and a pair of oars. Two men nabbed the oars and shoved them into brackets on either side of the boat. The vessel rocked under their efforts to synchronize.

Crystal’s chest jerked. She gagged and spewed the contents of her stomach onto her life vest and Betty’s. The foul odor swept into Betty’s nostrils. She whisked Crystal around and held her while the child vomited over the edge of the lighter.

“Poor baby, you done?” She touched Crystal’s forehead. It was clammy with sweat. Vomit clung to strands of Crystal’s hair and smeared her chin and the back of her hands. The stench from both life vests curled Betty’s toes. “Here, let’s clean you off.” She kneeled on the seat and stretched for a handful of water from the choppy waves.

Before Betty could stop her, Crystal shrugged out of her life vest.

“No, don’t take it off.”

“But it stinks!” Crystal shoved the vest at Betty.

The push threw Betty off balance. She grabbed at the life vest. For a moment the weight of Crystal’s clutch on it steadied her. Then the edge of the boat slammed against her stomach, catapulting her headfirst over the side. She snatched a lungful of air just before she hit the ocean.

The cold water invaded her pores and chilled her bone-deep. She kicked to the surface, heart thudding at something far worse. Her right hand still held Crystal’s life vest. She hadn’t let go, and she was certain Crystal hadn’t either.

“Crystal!” Her cry was a tiny mew against the vastness of ocean and sky. She caught her breath. Crystal didn’t know how to swim.

The water churned next to her, and Crysta
l―
choking, arms flailin
g―
crashed to the surface. She spotted Betty and lunged at her. Fingers of steel grasped Betty’s shoulders, plunging her head beneath the water. She kicked frantically toward the surface, but Crystal’s weight bore her down. The air in her lungs pushed for releas
e
until her face felt like it was going to po
p
.

Suddenly Crystal let go. Betty opened her eyes and looked up. Crystal’s arms and legs were lashing the water, propelling her toward the surface. Of course—once Crystal’s own head dipped beneath the water, she gave up on using Betty as a life raft.

The empty life vest was still in Betty’s hand. She slipped her hand through an armhole and jerked it to her shoulder. No matter what, she couldn’t lose the vest. Without it, Crystal would drown.

The pressure in Betty’s lungs leaked air bubbles out her nose. She thrashed to the surface, gasping for air. She got in one lungful before Crystal’s fingers grabbed her left arm. Hating herself for it, Betty shoved the child away.

She gulped in another lungful of air. “Put this on.” She thrust Crystal’s life vest at the girl. “Put it on.”

Crystal ignored the vest and clawed at the water. Her eyes were wide, the whites around her irises showing.

Betty rammed
the vest into Crystal’s chest. “Hold onto it!”

This time Crystal obeyed, bobbing, coughing out water.

The lighter. Somebody needed to haul them in before Crystal let go. Betty rotated toward the boat. “Help!”

The lighter was moving away from them, oars flipping up sprays of foam. Her insides crowded into her throat. Where was everybody? Had no one seen them fall? She screamed louder.

A face appeared at the stern, hands gripping the side of the boat. Eva Gray peered across the water at her, a stunned expression on her face.

“Help!” Betty yelled.

Eva disappeared.
Her voice rose in a piercing shriek. “Stop! Man overboard! Turn the boat!”

Betty spun back to Crystal. Her niece’s pale face barely hovered above the water. “They’re coming to get us. You see that?” Did Crystal’s head nod in assent, or was it simply the bob of a wave? “Feel around and find an armhole in your life vest, sweetie. We need to get you into it.”

Crystal didn’t move.

“Put your arms through both armholes. I’ll come fasten you in back. It won’t matter that you have the vest on backward.” She waited. She wasn’t going to get close enough for Crystal to grab
her again.

“Crystal, put the vest on!"

The corners of Crystal’s mouth turned down and her lower lip trembled. A groan tumbled out of her mouth and quavered into a hiccupping sob. Her shoulders stirred, and the yellow material of the life vest peeked above the surface of the ocean, disappeared, and bobbed up again tight against her.

“Good girl. You got it on? Both arms through?”

Crystal clearly nodded her head this time.

“Okay, I’m going to your back now. The vest will hold you up. Just relax and breathe. I’ll fasten it and then we can hold hands. Would you like that?”

Betty dog-paddled just out of reach to Crystal’s back. “Don’t turn around now, or I can’t help you.” She pulled the edges of the vest together and overlapped the Velcro straps so the vest fit as tight as possible. She groped for Crystal’s arm and slid her fingers down to the child’s. Crystal’s skin felt like cold rawhide.

“I’ve got your hand. See?” She raised Crystal’s fist out of the water. Goose bumps prickled the white flesh of the child’s forearm. Betty rubbed it with her other hand. “Move your arms and legs, sweetie. Don’t let them get cold.”

Her own energy was down to a trickle. She was sixty-nine years old. What was she doing out here in the middle of the ocean, grappling for her grandniece’s life? Shouldn’t someone be saving them instead?

She twisted around to look at the lighter. The oarsmen were making an awkward half-circle in the water. The boat was even farther away than before.

“Here, over here!” she hollered.

The tall, slender figure of a woman wearing a life vest climbed onto the seating. For a moment she stood, one hand shading her eyes, facing Betty. Then she bent her knees, swung her arms back, then forward into a dive that hurtled her over the side of the boat and into the water.

Betty choked back a sob. Someone was coming for them. The gaping mouth of the ocean wouldn’t swallow them after all.

The deck of the bridge squeaked under the penny loafers Jake had shoved onto his bare feet. He halted, planting himself in front of the captain. The man reeked of sweat. “Your crewman said you wanted to see me.”

Captain Emilio’s eyebrows flicked up. He looked surprised for someone who’d sent for him.

“We have a problem, Mr. Chalmers. I need your help.” The captain grabbed a pistol out of a drawer, beckoned Jake with it to follow him, and sped out of the room.

Sparks crackled across Jake’s nerves. He ran after the captain. What kind of trouble required a pistol? His heart beat faster. Ginny. Where was she? He scanned the decks. Where were the passengers? Weren’t they supposed to be at a drawing on the lower deck?

They arrived at the fantail of the ship. Captain Emilio stopped and pointed to two white lighters bobbing on the ocean. The closer one was a hundred yards off.

“We had a problem we needed to deal with. See the boats out there?” Captain Emilio stepped back, as if to give Jake an unobstructed view of the ocean. “All the passengers, including your wife, are on those lighters.”

Jake gripped the railing. Ginny was out there? He whirled around to face the captain. “What problem?”

Captain Emilio aimed the pistol straight at Jake. A corner of his mouth crooked into a smile. “I want you to join them, Chalmers.” He nodded at the railing. “Jump.”

Jake scowled and turned back to the railing. He raised his left knee as if to climb over, but instead wheeled around and with his right fist struck the captain’s hand, followed by a slam with his left fist to the captain’s head.

Emilio staggered backward but held onto the pistol. He straightened and pointed it at Jake. “Marines. Always thinking they can outsmart a Navy man.” Without delay, he fired the pistol.

The turbulence of the bullet licked Jake’s cheek with a hot tongue as it skittered past. His left ear rang.

“The next one’s coming between your eyes, Chalmers. Jump.”

This time, Jake ceded. He climbed over the railing and pushed off in a wide dive. His backbone prickled, expecting a second bullet.

He hit the ocean and sliced in. No pain, no sting of salt on an open wound. Was the captain waiting to shoot until he surfaced? He arched his back and kicked up.

He surfaced next to the
Gateway
, out of reach of the ship’s churning propellers. Emilio stood at the railing, his gaze fixed on Jake. Instead of holding the pistol, the captain pointed at the lighters. He locked onto Jake’s eyes and raised his other hand until it was high over his head. Then, in one swift movement, he swung his arm straight down.

A blast, then almost simultaneously another, roared from the direction of the two lighters. Jake whipped around in time to see water, wreckage, and human bodies thrown high into the air. For a moment he couldn’t move, couldn’t shove what he’d seen and heard into his brain. Couldn’t grasp the sense of it.

He rotated back to Captain Emilio. The captain leaned against the handrail, eyebrows lifted, eyes probing Jake’s as the ship pulled away.

Then it hit him. The explosions were deliberate.

“Ginny!” He took off for the lighters.

Eve reached Betty and Crystal just as a loud explosion cracked the air behind her. She spun around. Hot pain stabbed her ears and she screamed. Screamed louder as passengers and pieces of the lighter hurtled into the air. A foggy mist enveloped the boat and raced to engulf her, Betty, and Crystal. Debris smacked their bodies and plopped into the water. They shrieked and grabbed each other. A huge wave inundated them. They resurfaced, still clutching one another, coughing out water, gasping in air. Eve gripped Betty and Crystal as hard as she could, afraid she would lose them in the aftershock ripples.

The mist cleared, and she cried out. The bodies of passengers and fragments of the lighter lay scattered across the rocking sea. Hovering over the wreckage like an anxious hen over her chicks was the lighter itself, still intact except for the stern. An eerie silence prevailed where only minutes ago a frightened group of passengers had chattered. Neither the cruise ship nor the second lighter was anywhere in sight.

Jake stopped to get his bearings. His chest heaved from swimming so fast. He treaded water, fighting to wheeze in air and spit out ocean. The vapor caused by the blast had settled. He scanned the dark water for white boat fragments.

Suddenly the lighter itself rose like a pale ghost on the crest of a swell. He inhaled sharply. What was this? The lighter had survived the explosion?

Then he saw the bodies. They floated aimlessly in the debris surrounding the boat. None moved; none attempted to swim; none struggled to keep their heads above water. He shouted Ginny’s name and took off. Over and over, with each stroke forward, he pleaded the same three words:
Please, God, please!

He reached the bodies and searched for Ginny. Some of the bodies were submerged below the surface. Some were more body parts than bodies. Retrieving and inspecting them churned his stomach.
Please, not Ginny!

She’s not here. She’s on the other lighter—he’d only imagined a second explosion. The hope lifted him, and he paused to look for the second lighter. In the distance, the cruise ship marked a fading speck on the horizon. He spun around to scour the opposite direction. Nothing. He clenched his teeth and continued his hunt for Ginny.

Several torn life vests floated on the water. Jake grabbed one and strapped it on. Why weren’t the passengers wearing them? His mouth tightened at the only rational conclusion—they’d never had the chance.

A yellow life vest supporting a body caught his attention. He swam toward it. Strawberry-blonde hair, darkened to a deeper red by the water, swirled around the head. Dread snatched the air from his lungs. Trembling, already knowing, he rotated the body toward him.

“What happened?” The child’s bewildered voice pierced Eve’s stupor.

She answered, overwhelmed even as she spoke, by the simple explanation. “There was an explosion. Everyone’s gone.” 

“Two explosions,” Betty said. “The other lighter blew up too."

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Betty asked, “Can we get to our lighter?”

The practicality of the question grabbed Eve. The wave had deposited them even farther from the broken vessel. If it floated out of their reach, their chances of survival disappeared with it. The distance was most likely too far for the old lady and kid to make by themselves.

“I’m going to tow you two like I’m the engine of a train. Hold on and kick your legs to help us move.” She took hold of Betty’s life vest and pulled Betty, who in turn pulled Crystal in tandem. Twice, Eve had to push away bodies. She recoiled at having to touch them, even more at shoving them aside as if their lives meant nothing and their deaths were only a hindrance to getting to the lighter. She wept for them in a ragged, low moan, her body shivering at the horror that had taken twenty lives and left three behind.

They reached the boat and clung to its side, out of breath and coughing up a nasty bile of brown seawater. Crystal shattered the ocean’s hush with loud sobs. Everything in Eve screamed to join her, but instead she said, “Stay here while I take a look.”

She edged herself to the rear of the lighter. A gaping hole designated where the outboard motor and back panel had blown away. She peered inside. Chunks of scarlet flesh and tattered cloth dotted the boat. Her stomach heaved and she gripped the side harder.

“Can we come now?” Crystal pleaded.

“Betty, it . . . it needs cleaning.”

“We can’t hold on any longer. Crystal can close her eyes, can’t you, sweetie?”

“I just want to go hooooome.”

The two appeared around the corner of the lighter, and Eve helped them board. Since there was no rear panel to climb over, she was able to push Crystal and then Betty straight onto the floor and climb in after them. The child collapsed in a heap, but Betty looked around at the carnage.

“Oh, Lord, no!”

“How about if you two close your eyes and hug each other to get warm. While you do that, I’ll clean things up a little.”

“I’ll help you.” But before Betty could get up, Crystal slipped into her arms. With a glance of apology at Eve, Betty began to hum and rock the sobbing child.

“That’s okay, stay where you are.” But inside, from far back in a childhood long abandoned, Eve ached for a mother’s arms around her.

Time stood still while at the same instant it expanded into all of eternity. Jake hugged Ginny’s lifeless body to him. Ginny was dead. His throat quivered.

No.

She couldn’t be.

This trip, their second honeymoon—he’d planned all kinds of delights for her. Things she loved. He wanted to see her eyes jump to his, catch the corners of her mouth twitch up, hear her laugh and look at him like he was her hero. See her eyes soften, know he was telling her he loved her.

A tremor spread down his nerves, and his chest began to quake. Anguish ripped through his guts and tore his lungs open in great, wrenching sobs. He clasped Ginny’s body to him, not wanting to let go. Not wanting to be left behind.

Ginny was gone.

She couldn’t be, but she was.

He closed her eyes and kissed them, cold and salty against his lips. There had been no chance to say good-bye. He’d meant to be there for her until the end, to hold her hand, keep it warm for that split second of time when she transferred from this life to the next.

He swam toward the lighter, bringing Ginny with him. The vessel floated sideways in a trough of water, revealing both ends damaged by blasts. The distinctive odor of detonated C-4 permeated the air as he got closer. He recognized the military explosive and shuddered at the memory of bodies flung into the air. Ginny had died instantaneously—the overpressure of the blast would have collapsed her lungs. Anger blazed red-hot in him. She’d never stood a chance.

He swam to the stern and slid Ginny’s body directly onto the floor and pulled himself in. The craft held, in spite of the damage fore and aft. He examined the blast areas. Whoever had placed the explosives obviously hadn’t thought about the sealed air compartments under the seats. The blasts on each end of the boat had mostly expanded into the air and done little structural damage. Except, he thought grimly, for the passengers.

He sat and pulled Ginny into his arms, cradling her as if she were the one holding back tears. There were things he needed to say.

He took a deep breath to steady his voice. “Ginny, I love you. I should have told you how special you are to me. Every day I should have told you. How you made my life full, my days happy. I didn’t know . . .” Tears streaked down his face and the words began to come in gasps. “You’ve been God’s precious gift to me—you know that, don’t you?” He stopped, his throat too tight to go on.

How would he tell their two children? He and Ginny had left the twins at West Point Military Academy two weeks ago to begin college. Ginny had been a devoted mother. She had stayed home full time to take care of them, to immerse herself in their lives. He tried again to talk to her, to tell her how dear she was to the three of them. But all he could think of was how devastated they would be without her.

The water lapped against the boat, rocking them with the gentle hand of a mother tending her newborn. He looked up at the deep dome of the sky. He had assumed he and Ginny would finish out the year together. The oncologist had promised the chemo would give them up to six months. But God in His sovereignty had let it be otherwise. Ginny was in Heaven; he was left behind on earth.

He hugged Ginny’s empty body to his chest and wept.