The Raft (24 page)

“Rachael, can you hold on to this?” he asked,
holding out an envelope in his hand. When Rachael didn't respond,
he placed the envelope on the control panel by the helm. “I'll just
leave it here. Can you at least make sure it doesn't blow
away?”

And he started to climb. Maggie was many feet
above him, struggling in the wind to climb up the slick iron side
of the cutter. Gandalf climbed hand over hand, moving with an
energy that seemed incongruous with his age.

Rachael slumped down on the cockpit bench and
rested her forehead against the cold, wet grab rail. She felt
horrible, the dry heaves were worse than actually being sick. If
only she could throw something up she might feel better, she
contemplated. The cramps in her belly were twisting and
turning.

What was she doing here? she asked herself.
She hated boats. She hated sailing, she hated the rain, she hated
being wet. And she'd found herself neck-deep in all of the above.
And there Maggie and Gandalf were, vanishing up and onto the deck
of the immense cutter. She had to get off her ass and help, it was
the whole reason she'd come along. She was no good to anyone
sitting down there, bobbing like a cork, puking up nothing over and
over. Perhaps the movement of the water would be felt less on the
deck of a bigger ship...

She tried to pull herself to her feet, but
her knees felt like rubber. Just five more minutes, she told
herself, and then she'd attack that rope ladder.

Ugh, climbing rope ladders, she hated that,
too. She should have stayed onshore. At home. In the warm.

A shot rang out above. Then another, and then
a cluster of louder, faster shots. Rachael leapt to her feet as a
bolt of terror shot down her spine.

“Maggie!” she screamed, but the rain and the
lapping waves drowned out her cry. “Maggie!” she bellowed through
her tears. She leapt at the rope ladder, but her hands were slick.
She slipped back and fell, smacking her head against the helm's
control panel.

“Maggie!” The pain, the nausea, the terror
all mixed in her head. She was blind with panic, the
Soft
Cell
all around her moving and blurry. Some part of her brain
came into focus and she remembered the small black gun she'd
confiscated from Maggie. Oh God! She'd taken Maggie's gun and
they'd shot her anyway! Bitter remorse mixed in with the cramps in
her belly. Rachael slid across the slick cockpit and opened the
storage compartment where she'd stowed Maggie's gun. She fished it
out and tucked it into the waist band of her pants.

Hectically, she turned and started up the
rope ladder. It danced and shuffled in her grasp, but she climbed
undaunted.

Twice she lost her footing, scrambling to
climb the ladder faster than was reasonable. As the rain blinded
her vision, she pulled herself over the gunwale of the cutter and
collapsed in a ball on the deck of the
James,
exhausted.
Painfully, she attempted to find her feet, reaching for the pistol
in her belt.

From the blurry streaming haze that fogged
her vision, the butt of a gun swung out and connected with her
chin.

Two or three teeth gave way and Rachael fell
hard up against the gunwale. Again, her head smacked hard against
something solid and the world around her faded in and out of
darkness.

Hands were on her, feeling at her stomach.
One hand found the handle of the pistol and it was wrenched out of
her clothing.

Then the hands were pulling her up to her
feet as she coughed forth a stream of blood from her mouth. She
gagged, sobbed, then tried to open her eyes.

The deck was full of many armed men running,
panicked, to and fro. Two had her hoisted by the arms, her limp
body suspended between them. As Rachael began to focus, the outline
of a body on the deck resolved before her.

It was Gandalf, surrounded by a pool of red.
Blood was gushing forth from a wound in his neck as he clawed at it
in a futile attempt to check the flow.

He gurgled, choking on a mouthful of blood,
and then coughed it up. Then, as if the air was suddenly let out of
him, Gandalf deflated. He relaxed, letting his arms fall away from
his throat. He sprawled out, almost peacefully, taking his last
pained breath.

“Maggie!” Rachael screamed. But Maggie was
nowhere to be seen. Men with guns, men in body armor, the dead body
of Gandalf on the cold, wet deck. All this, Rachael could see. But
no sign of Maggie.

“Maggie!” Rachael tried one last time
futilely. But the men were bustling her off, dragging her useless
legs behind them.

Her bare feet passed through the pool of
Gandalf's blood, leaving a slick trail of red in Rachael's wake.
They were carrying her below decks. She faded back into
unconsciousness.

#

Rachael awoke in a ten-by-ten gray-walled
room. She'd been tossed onto a bare cot, left to bleed quietly on
her own. The blood from her mouth had stained through the canvas of
the cot, drying and turning brown. Her mouth tasted foul and her
head throbbed. She pulled herself up and the room began to
spin.

“Maggie?” Rachael said hoarsely, trying to
stand on unsteady legs. She flopped over to the door and tested the
handle. It was locked, of course, Rachael had expected no
different. But she rattled the iron handle regardless and gave the
door a shove with her shoulder anyway. She had to at least
check.

She slid down against the door's cold steel
and began to cry. She let a wave of despair wash over her. Gandalf
was dead, and for all Rachael knew, Maggie was, too. She hadn't
seen her body, but...

She let her aching head fall into her hands
and she sobbed. It was all her fault, there was no one else to
blame. She'd been such a fool. She'd come out to the Raft with the
express purpose of keeping Maggie safe, and she'd led her straight
into danger. She'd taken Maggie's gun from her at the moment when
she possibly needed it the most.

And the Coast Guard, the FBI, had gunned her
down.

Why had Rachael agreed to come back? She'd
been safe onshore, there'd been no reason to return. If she'd
refused to help Maggie, perhaps she wouldn't have attempted this
reckless plan.

It was all Rachael's fault, she sobbed. She'd
killed Maggie, she'd killed Gandalf. The Rafters would have
invariably heard the shooting. It was only a matter of time now
before they attempted to run the blockade. And it was all Rachael's
fault. It would be like the Branch Davidians all over again.

Rachael took in a deep breath of cold, stale
air and tried to get a hold of herself. She was hysterical. It was
doing her no good. What had happened had happened, she couldn't
change that. She needed to focus, think like Maggie. What would
Maggie do in a situation like this? She wouldn't be crying into her
hands, Rachael reasoned, not now, not the Maggie who lived aboard
the Raft. The old Maggie perhaps would have just quit, but not the
new Maggie. No, she'd be planning, plotting some sort of escape.
Rachael had to think like that Maggie – the new Maggie. If Maggie
could change her stripes, then Rachael could attempt something
similar. She just had to toughen up and stop sobbing like a baby.
There was no one coming to help her, she had to help herself.
That's what Maggie would do. Pull herself up by her bootstraps – or
some other folksy piece of wisdom. Rachael pulled herself to her
feet and looked over the large, watertight steel door.

“Hello?” Rachael called out. She rapped hard
three times on the door. Her fist falls echoed in the ship beyond.
“Hello!” Rachael yelled. “I want to talk to Galahad! Special Agent
Galahad! My name is Rachael Bigallo and I'm with the
Seattle
Times
! Do you hear me? Private? Or Corporal? Or whatever you
are! Whoever was left to watch the brig! You've locked away a
member of the press! You might want to talk to your Captain! This
is not going to look good in print in tomorrow's paper!”

Rachael's voice reverberated off the walls of
the small cell, but there was no answer.

After standing and listening intently for
even the slightest sound from outside her cell, Rachael dropped
herself heavily back onto her bunk. The pain in her head was
overwhelming and she lay back down in her own bloodstain, closing
her eyes. If she slept it didn't feel like it, the sound of the
water beyond the hull like static in her ears.

Then, without warning, the ship became alive
with noise. Heavy footfalls in the corridor beyond her cell. Low
voices, murmuring. Rachael sat up in anticipation. The latches of
the heavy hatch turned and the door swung open. Two men in heavy
body armor with black rifles slung from their necks stepped into
the room.

“Where's Maggie?” Rachael asked, standing and
unconsciously taking a defensive stance.

The men gave no reply. One took her roughly
by the shoulder and pulled her towards the door.

Rachael pulled her arm angrily from his
grasp. “Where's Maggie?” she repeated. “What have you done to
her?”

Both men took a firm hold of her arms and
hurried her through the door. She struggled, but there'd be no
breaking free from their iron grips. They led her back and forth,
down gray corridor after gray corridor, up a flight of steep steps
and through a room of heavily armed men milling and talking. At
another hatch, identical to the one that had kept Rachael in her
cell, the men paused. One opened the latch and swung open the
door.

They pushed Rachael roughly inside, sending
her tripping over the threshold of the hatch. “Bastards!” Rachael
cursed as she pulled herself to her feet. The door swung closed
behind her, slamming with an earsplitting certainty. She flipped
the closed door a self-satisfied finger.

“Rachael?” a relieved voice said behind
her.

Rachael turned and almost leapt free of her
own skin. “Maggie!” she screamed and jumped forward.

She'd never been so happy to see another
human being in her life.

Chapter 28

“Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!” Rachael repeated,
peppering Maggie's bruised face with kisses. Square in the center
of the room, sitting behind a cast iron table, Maggie's hands were
in cuffs. The cuffs were threaded through a loop on the top surface
of the table. She could hardly rise from her seat, much less
embrace Rachael, and she recoiled like a henpecked child under
Rachael's barrage of affection.

“Okay, okay.” Maggie struggled to maintain
some composure. Rachael satisfied herself with one final kiss on
Maggie's lips and then let her be.

“I thought you were dead,” Rachael gasped.
“Gandalf...”

“And I would have been if you hadn't taken my
gun,” Maggie said with no small amount of honest relief. “Goddamn
crazy son of a bitch pulled out his hog leg the second we got up on
deck. I don't think he got off a shot.”

“Are you hurt? Did you get hit?”

“No, no. I reached for the pistol, but it
wasn't there. Good thing, too, or they'd have shot me down like an
animal. But you're hurt.” Maggie nodded at Rachael's face.

“I panicked. I got your gun and came up the
ladder after you. I got the butt of a rifle to the teeth. I think I
broke some.”

“And Gandalf?”

“He died. I saw him take his last
breath.”

“Shit,” Maggie nodded her head forward.

“What was he thinking?”

“I don't know,” Maggie shook her head as it
lolled forward. “I don't know, he went...” She snapped her head up.
“He went ape shit.”

“Ape shit? This whole situation is ape shit,
Maggie. They must have heard the shooting back on the Raft. It'll
only be a matter of minutes and they'll come storming through the
blockade.”

“Mmm,” Maggie murmured.

“Maggie? Gandalf is not going to be the last
person to get shot today. This whole situation is going to explode,
and all you can say is 'Mmm'?”

“I think I understand it now,” Maggie said,
raising her head.

“Understand what?”

“Who killed Meerkat.”

“What?” Rachael had to quickly rearrange her
mental furniture. That's right, the murder. She'd almost completely
forgotten. And now Gandalf was dead, too. “How? Who?” Rachael
couldn't decide which was the more critical question.

Maggie's eyes suddenly grew wide. The sound
of feet in the corridor beyond grabbed her attention. “This is
going to go by fast, Rachael, but I need your support. No matter
how crazy the shit I say sounds, you've got to back me up, okay?
I've still got a chance at this – a chance to make the FBI back
down, but I'm going to have to play it fast and furious, you got
me?”

“No, I -”

“Just...” Maggie grunted in desperation.
“Gandalf killed Meerkat, okay?”

“What?” The accusation hit Rachael like a
locomotive.

“Just -”

But the door to the room was swinging
open.

“Alright, Ms. Straight,” Special Agent
Galahad said as he stepped into the room. He was still wearing his
blue and white BDUs, as he had been earlier that morning in the
Salmon Bay Café
. Flanking him were the two armed men who'd
escorted Rachael out of her cell. “Here's Ms. Bigallo, alive and
well, standing right in front of you. Are you ready to talk
now?”

“Yes,” was all Maggie said.

Galahad, as always boyish and handsome, took
the chair across the table from Maggie. The two goons remained
standing.

“Good. Now, Ms. Bigallo called me to say that
you had critical information in the case of Joanna Church's murder,
and that this information can only be relayed to me in person. And
then you show up and start a gunfight before anyone's had a chance
to even open their mouths. What the hell is going on here, Maggie?
You were almost killed. Ms. Bigallo, for her part, was, too. Was
that really your plan? To shoot away your troubles? These men are
the US Coast Guard,” Galahad said, nodding back at the two men with
rifles. “Members of the Armed Forces of the United States. You
couldn't have possibly thought you'd win in a gunfight with these
guys, did you?”