The New Madrid Run (10 page)

Carlos removed the lure from the fish’s mouth. Holding it aloft, he congratulated the boy. “A hot-damned
bueno pescado, muchacho
! Tonight I make my famous
Pescado Cubano
. Once I even make
Pescado Cubano
for that pig, Fidel, himself, when he come to the hotel
restaurante
, but before I serve it to him, I spit on it.” Carlos laughed. “He come to me afterwards and say, ’Carlos,’—he call me Carlos—he say, ’I never have
pescado
that good in my life.’ I tell him I put some special seasoning on it, just for him only.” Carlos was still laughing at his own joke as he took the fish forward to clean it.

Travis raised the sail once more, having dropped it while the boy fought the fish. A brisk wind filled the canvas, and the ship knifed through the water as they sped northward. The sensei moved to the bow, and Jan and Christina settled into the cockpit with Travis.

“Lord, a little rest in something that isn’t sinking does wonders for a man,” Jan said as he sat down and scrutinized the sails, looking for any luff. Travis took satisfaction in knowing there was none.

Jan looked at Travis. “Tell me, what’s the story with the navigational equipment and the radios below. Anything working?”

Travis shook his head. “The ship took quite a beating, and with the exception of the VHF, most of the equipment was literally torn from the brackets. The VHF radio is still in place, but there’s nothing but static on it. Carlos says if it can be made to work, he’ll fix it. Unfortunately, we only have part of an antenna left topside, but he said he might be able to rig that, too. He’s going to look at it tonight.”

“Excellent,” Jan said. “That is good news. I’d love to know what the hell’s going on out there.”

“That makes two of us,” Travis agreed.

Christina sat back, her head against the rail, her arms up resting on the sides of the cockpit. “God,” she breathed, “it feels good just to be safe.”

“It does, indeed,” echoed Jan, “considering our predicament only hours ago. If we haven’t mentioned it before, Travis, thanks.”

“No problem. Works out well. We’d been looking for a couple more players for our nightly game of Yahtzee.”

Christina looked over with a smile. “You’re in trouble, mister. That game practically paid for my room and board in college.”

Travis feigned a grimace. “God, a gambling fool trapped on a sailboat with a Yahtzee hustler. You’ll own everything but my shoes by the time we find the mainland.”

“Depends,” Chistina said, arching an eyebrow with a touch of mischief. “Are they nice shoes?”

“Ooooh, that’s cold,” chuckled Travis. After a pause, he said, “So, what’s the story with you two—just professional day sailors?

“I wish,” Jan replied. “Investment broker out of Fort Lauderdale. Chris is an attorney for the Department of Human Services in Miami.”

Travis looked at Christina quizzically. She shrugged.

“I take money from the fat cats and give it to the skinny cats.”

“Truth is,” Jan said. “She’s the poor little rich girl trying to atone for her lofty birth—graduated with honors from Harvard, speaks fluent French and Spanish, and her parents owned half of Boca Raton.”

Chris shot Jan an exasperated look.

Travis raised his eyebrows. “Harvard, the state department, and Boca Raton, huh? Pretty lofty résumé.”

“Let’s drop the story down a notch,” Chistina said. “After college I worked for the Peace Corps for three years in Guatemala. I came back to the states when my parents were killed in an airplane crash.” There was a pause for a moment, then she cocked her head slightly, looking at Travis. “Okay, what about you?”

As Travis was telling them a little about his charter service, the wave, and his finding the sailboat, Carlos popped his head out the cabin. “Dinner
es
ready!”

As the sun fizzled into the dark-green ocean, they anchored, and Carlos served dinner. He had grilled great slabs of fish, added several cans of black beans with spices he had discovered onboard, then baked the whole thing on the hibachi. It was one of the first hot meals any of them had eaten in days and it was wonderful. The little Cuban fairly glowed while basking in praise.

While Carlos and the boy drew saltwater for cleaning the dishes, the others sat in the cockpit, under the yellow glow of an oil lamp, and talked of the past and the future. The concept of the world having shifted on its axis was discussed at length. The general consensus was that it seemed a distinct possibility, though Jan had more reservations about that theory than anyone else.

Travis told them of Cody’s theories concerning the damages the Americas would, or could possibly, sustain; the loss of the east and west coasts due to the faults and, most dramatically, the creation of an enormous inland waterway from the Great Lakes through the Mississippi Valley and out into the Gulf of Mexico. As Cody told it, the shifting of the poles would cause a dramatic expansion of a major fault, the New Madrid Fault, in the central United States. A combination of these two devastating occurrences would cause the waters of Lake Michigan to be thrown violently northward. When the merger of gravity and topography stopped the monumental flow, it would turn southward in one gigantic wall of water that would plunge through, and gouge out, the Mississippi Valley, expelling itself into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a new inland sea.

When Travis had finished, Jan said, “Sounds all too incredulous to me. My bet is, there may have been a good-sized meteor strike somewhere, and if there’s even been a shift of the earth, the damage has been minimal in the States. Maybe coastlines and such.”

Travis gazed out at the stars. They looked like pinholes in a black blanket being held against a brilliant light, and the constellations seemed out of place. “I hope you’re right, Jan, but my gut tells me that something powerful, something tumultuous, has taken place, and I won’t rest easy until I know for sure.”

Moments later, the unusually cold night air drove them into the cabin, where sleeping arrangements were decided. The ship had more than ample bunks for everyone. Jan and Christina took the forward berth. Travis and the sensei took berths near the stern to facilitate the operation of the boat. The youngster was still suffering from terrible nightmares, thrashing and moaning at night, so Travis placed the lad between his bunk and Carlos’, allowing one or the other to watch over him.

Travis had explained the boy’s condition to Jan and Christina, and she had taken the time to sit with him and introduce herself during the day. The boy seemed taken with her. Travis hoped that she might help the lad through his trauma.

During the evening, Carlos had taken apart the VHF radio and, having found a couple of loose connections, repaired them. When it was reassembled, the radio no longer produced the continuous static it had before, but without an antenna, they still received nothing in the way of broadcasts. Carlos said he would attempt to rig one the next day.

Everyone prepared to retire. Travis went topside to check the ship once more before turning in. The dark waters rhythmically slapped the side of the hull and the wind gently rattled the rigging as he stood on deck gazing at the pale moon. If he was correct in his calculations, they should reach the mainland by tomorrow evening or the following morning—if, of course, the mainland was still there.

He was dealing with something else, as well—something he hadn’t yet mentioned to anyone else, not even the sensei. He was beginning to get that old gut-level premonition of danger again. It wasn’t all-consuming, as before, but he was starting to feel it just the same.

“Is something bothering you, Travis?” asked a voice from the shadows next to him. Travis started as the sensei appeared. “Forgive me if I startled you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Travis exclaimed. “Don’t you ever make any noise when you move? I’m gonna have to tie bells on your ankles just so you don’t scare the hell out of me every time you show up when I think I’m alone.”

The sensei chuckled. “You must learn to hear with more than your ears.”

“Forgive me for being so Western, Sensei, but I’ve been using my ears to hear with all my life. As far as I know, they’re the best I’ve got for that.”

“They are good, yes,” replied the sensei, “but they are not all you have, Travis-san. You can learn to identify by vibration, exercise sense of smell and, most of all, learn to feel the presence of others. It can be done with patience and practice. They can become valuable assets in times like these.” The corners of his mouth turned in a small distant smile as he gazed out over the water. “I tell my students, he who sweats much in practice will bleed less in war.”

“An old Japanese saying?”

“No,” replied the sensei, “coach of Dallas Cowboys. Now tell me, what were you thinking about when I shattered your concentration?”

Travis grinned, beginning to recognize an adroit sense of humor in his stoic companion. “Well, Sensei, this may sound strange, but I sometimes get these premonitions of danger, and I’m starting to get one again. I think we need to pay close attention to what we do for the next few days; we might be in for some trouble.”

“It is wise to listen to the voices of your ancestors,” the sensei acknowledged. “If it is as you expect, and civilization has changed, the times may lend themselves to those who have no conscience about taking what they want from others. Let us prepare, and proceed cautiously. It is better to have the arrow notched and not need it, than to find you are too late to the quiver.”

Travis just looked at him. “I’m not even going to ask.” A moment later Travis yawned. “Well, I feel better having told you. I’m going to hit the sack. We’ve got another long day tomorrow.”

An hour after daybreak the next morning, they were once again underway. The rising sun had yet to drive the cold from the air and Travis, at the helm, was thankful for the sweater he had found among the clothes in the forward cabin. There was a light, quartering tailwind, and the seas were relatively calm.
Nice day for a sail on a normal day
, Travis thought.
Only this isn’t just a sail, and nothing is normal anymore.
That disquieting feeling was still dancing around on the periphery of his consciousness, as unsettling as an anonymous, threatening letter.

Christina came up from below, bringing a couple of cups of instant coffee, one of his most valuable acquisitions from the dive a few days before. “Just a wee bit chilly today, huh?” she said as she passed him a mug and sat next to him.

“Yeah, it is, but it’ll warm up as soon as the sun gets a little higher. Still, it’s nowhere what it should be for early April.”

“Could be just a cold winter.”

“Yeah, it’s possible,” Travis said as he tightened the lines on the main. “But the air feels different. There’s less humidity than there should be. It’s like sailing on the Great Lakes in late spring.”

“Do you think we’ll reach the mainland today?” she asked.

“I think we’ll reach where the mainland used to be, but it stands to reason that if the Keys are thirty feet under the ocean, the better part of South Florida is going to be treading water.”

She lifted her head, the wind rippling her hair like water as she turned to watch the gulls darting downward at a school of baitfish off the bow. “It’s so peaceful and pretty today,” she said. “Sitting here, it doesn’t seem possible that the world . . . has changed.”

“The thought pleases me no more than it does you. But I suspect that some of our world has.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” she said, turning to look at him. For a moment their eyes locked, and in that split second, like the instantaneous green flash that sometimes seen with the setting of the sun over water, something passed between them. Christina broke the gaze, turning back to the silver shoals of baitfish. “I guess we’ll know soon enough.”

Moments later, Jan came through the hatch. “Sensei wants to see you down below—something about our course. I’ll take the wheel for a while. I promise not to get too far off.”

Travis found the sensei at the chart table. As he approached, the Japanese turned and bowed ever so slightly. The American returned the bow. It was a courtesy to the man, he told himself. But quite frankly, it just seemed like the right thing to do around him.

The sensei grinned with that half smile of his. “If I had time, I could make you a good Japanese.”

“I’m barely managing to be a good American. Don’t confuse me.”

The sensei gestured to the chart. “Come, let me show you where I believe we are. I estimate us to be here, forty miles south-southwest of Miami.”

“Okay,” Travis said. “I think you’re right about that. Now what do we do? With the water depth we’re anticipating, we could practically sail into downtown Miami.”

The older man frowned and started to speak. Travis raised his hand and stopped him. “I’m only kidding. That would be like trying to sail the Bahamas without charts. We’d lose the bottom of our boat on the roof of somebody’s house.”

The sensei nodded. “There are a number of things to be considered—” Shouts from the deck interrupted him.

As Travis reached the deck, he saw the focus of the commotion. A sailboat floated perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Jan set a course for it while Travis prepared to board. As they neared the boat, they could see it was sinking, but not from damage by nature alone—along the water line were two neat rows of holes. Travis had seen that many times in Vietnam—automatic rifle fire. The breaches in the hull and the shattered portholes indicated some sort of firefight.
Who
, thought Travis, as they slid up beside the craft,
and why?

Before boarding the other boat, Travis went back down to his cabin and pulled out the nine-millimeter pistol from under his mattress. He checked the magazine, shoved it back in with a satisfying snap, put the gun in his belt at the small of his back, and went topside.

“Everybody hold tight,” he said to the excited group as he came out. “I’m going over and check it out. Everyone else stays right here.” Before anyone could argue, he moved to the rail and jumped across to the other boat. His sense of self-preservation was jammed into high gear when he got to the cockpit and saw all the blood: The Fiberglass siding was splashed dark red; there was a quarter-inch of dried, black blood on the floor.