Hell's Bay (38 page)

It worked sometimes, but not tonight. He was not picking up anything.

 

* * *

Sasha slid into the ink.

Going swimming with the crocs, the gators, the cotton-mouths. Just another killer naked in the silky water.

She lazed on her back, floated, looking up at the godless night. Her hair brushed along her back. She swam toward the houseboat, the only direction Thorn could use to reach her.

She knew nothing about him except he was one of them, a kin to Bates or Milligan. She knew his face from earlier in the day but had formed no opinion. She could have slain him and Milligan this morning along the Wood River except for Griffin sleeping on the deck. Knowing Milligan was armed, she didn't want to risk a gunfight that might injure the boy, shorten his life by so much as an hour.

On that pass she'd seen nothing in Thorn's face that troubled her. One enemy was no different from the next. She'd never been one to scout the opposition, to put much stock in the pre-ops in Iraq, or back in wrestling days when the coach warned of an opponent's dirty tricks. The best things she'd ever done required no thinking. Her finest moments were to-tally unplanned.

She coasted backward through the dark. The water was thick as motor oil. Raising her head from time to time so she could listen, Sasha Olsen rode the tide, doing just enough to stay afloat. Waiting like the other killers, the crocs, the gators, the sharks, the spiders in their perfect webs, with patience that knew no end. Waiting for the twitch, the slightest quiver.

 

I knew damn well it had been thirty minutes. No wristwatch required. Maybe forty-five. I was sweating from the short, hacking strokes, taking painful care to make no noise. More paddling in one day than I'd done in years had knotted the muscles in my shoulders and back.

I'd always wondered how a pilot could lose his place so badly that he didn't know an upturn from a dive. Now I understood. No sky, no earth. Only the wind and gravity.

Ever-faithful gravity. The same planetary pull that weighted a body, kept the moon in flight. Unseen, it tugged at us, every atom, every second. And though I had tried and tried again to defy its authority, any act of revolt was a joke. Gravity wrote the rules. The best I could do was paddle, stroke by stroke, move forward through the dark.

A minute or two later, I set the paddle across my knees. Listened to the slosh inside nearby mangrove roots, though I couldn't see them, and couldn't tell if I was about to ram into their midst or was gliding past. I touched the Maglite in my pocket and was tempted. Just one quick blink to get my bearings. But I resisted. Even a flicker might be fatal.

I bent forward and felt between my legs for the reciprocating saw. It was a stupid idea to bring it. No idea at all.

A saw. A battery-driven saw. It would short out with the first splash of water. It was useless weight. But I'd brought it with a single scenario playing in my mind, a plan that might work if the little ball fell exactly in the right spinning slot. I liked the other scheme better. Rusty in the kayak, me towed behind. A flanking move, a two-on-one pincer attack. But that choice was gone. Now I had the saw. A reciprocating saw with a six-inch blade. Good for plunge-cutting holes in a wall, but little else.

A kayak. The dark. A woman with a rifle and a handgun. And me with a saw. In my haste and confusion, I hadn't thought to grab the dive knife or a steak knife or even a but-ter knife. I had brought the fucking saw.

I scanned the gloom and could distinguish nothing. I knew I'd traveled east at least that same mile I covered earlier in the day. It was possible I'd gone too far and passed by the inlet entirely. It was also possible I'd been betrayed by the wind—a slight shift might have steered me north of where I wanted to be, out into the open bay. Hell, it was possible I'd paddled right up to the edge of Sasha Olsen's bass boat and at just that moment she was reaching out to stroke my cheek.

I was lost.

So I did what anyone who's lost is warned never to do: I forged on.

Five minutes, ten. I was stopping to take another breather when somewhere off to my left I heard an unnatural squawk. So dim I could barely separate it from the other night sounds. I held still.

Then out of the blackness I heard my name. I sunk the paddle in and turned the kayak on a swivel and began to push myself toward the human noise. Fifty yards, a hundred? The voice was so faint, nearly impossible to pinpoint in the void.

My name again. My name one more time. It was the handheld radio, the transmission so scratchy it sounded like the batteries might be going.

Again my name. And I adjusted my direction, homing in on the word.
Thorn
,
Thorn
. That family name, inherited from a long line of people who each in their own way had conspired to bring me to this exact place and moment. And again my name.
Thorn
, coming through the darkness.

This time when I heard her voice, it was distinct. Rusty. Rusty Stabler was calling out to me from nowhere I could see.

Arrangements had changed on the Mothership, some radical shift.

Athe saw thumping and
my name and I paddled toward it, toward Rusty's fragile voice.

Closing in, gliding, then lifting the paddle from the water, listening.

“Thorn? Can you hear me, Thorn?”

Oh, yes, I could and what I heard sent a dance of prickles across my back. She was weaker than when I'd left her. So weak it sounded like she was about to wilt away.

“She knows you're coming, Thorn. She's waiting for you. Watch out, Thorn. Watch out.”

I was close to the bass boat but could not see it. Maybe twenty feet, maybe slightly more. The wind and water made estimates of sound all but impossible—increasing its volume, muting it. Bouncing it away from its source. But I was close. I was certain of that. Very very close.

I picked up the reciprocating saw, the fucking saw, and pushed the trigger, then let it go. A satisfying purr.

I floated, leaning forward, trying to peer through the black curtain, but could see nothing, not a gleam.

“Thorn.” Rusty's voice was forlorn. Somewhere off my starboard side.

The saw required finger pressure to keep it running. Or some other pressure. I unwrapped the gauze from my throat, and felt the trickle of blood resume. I slid the paddle onto the floor of the kayak and made three quick wraps of the gauze around the reciprocating saw, tightening the bands down across the trigger, then making a hard knot. Keeping the saw lifted high in one hand, I drew myself up from the seat and slid overboard, and set the humming tool on the kayak floor.

The saw bounced nicely against the hard shell of the boat, and its noisy chatter would carry a hundred yards in every direction. I held on to the kayak's stern and flutter-kicked beneath the surface, pushing my simple decoy ahead of me. Then gave it a decent shove.

What Sasha would make of such a noise, I didn't know. I hoped it spooked her, hoped it drew her fire, or at least the beam of her flashlight. In either case, I didn't want to be nearby.

It coasted ahead into the night, the saw thumping and rattling.

“Thorn,” Rusty called again. “She knows you're coming for her.”

Why had Sasha Olsen left the radio on? Had she abandoned it? Was she dead or dying? Or was she using it to lure me to her?

Didn't really matter. I had no choice.

I swam toward Rusty's voice. Breaststroking, listening, careful to make no noise. I covered at least twenty yards before I sensed the bulk of the boat a half second before I saw it.

I extended my arms, dropped below the surface, reached out to touch its slick hull, then patted my way around to the stern. I couldn't recall the exact design of the craft, how high I'd have to heave myself to grab the gunwale and pull aboard.

I pushed myself under, went down feetfirst as far as I could manage, then swept the water past me, kicked hard, and breached with a burst of air—a war whoop meant to stagger her and jolt my own adrenaline as I went up and over the side.

I clawed for purchase on the slick fiberglass. It took longer than I wanted, far too long. Expecting the bullet in the brain, the white blast of death, I got nothing. I scrabbled up and over, coming down hard and clumsy on my hip and ribs, flopping on the deck like a foul-hooked trout.

“Thorn?”

I rose and banged into the console, made a quick circuit of the boat, swatting and punching at the empty air. I made another circuit to be sure.

She was gone.

She'd taken refuge out there somewhere in all that blackness. I heard the clack and clatter of the reciprocating saw bouncing around inside the kayak's hull thirty-odd feet away. Maybe she was tracking that, or maybe, goddammit, she was swimming to the houseboat.

Back behind the console, I located the golden screen of the walkie-talkie. It was sitting upright in a cup holder.

I squatted down behind the console. Keeping my voice to a murmur, I said, “It's me, Rusty. What's going on?”

“Thorn?”

“I'm here.”

“You're okay?”

“I'm good. What's happened, Rusty?”

“Mona radioed her. Warned her you were coming.”

I bit down hard on that, and couldn't speak for a moment.

“Thorn?”

“And after Mona called, what then?”

“Where's Sasha, Thorn? Did you get her?”

“She's not here. She's not on the boat.”

I began patting the console, searching for the ignition.

“Mona's got a knife,” Rusty said. “One of Teeter's ceramics.”

“Are you safe?”

“I don't know. I don't where she is. I can't see a goddamn thing.”

“But she has a knife, you're sure of that?”

“Oh, yeah. I'm sure. I bashed her with my flashlight, got the radio away from her, then she found the knife somewhere and came back and slashed me once just out of pure spite, then disappeared. She's a twisted fuck.”

“Aw, shit, Rusty.”

“I'm okay. I'll make it.”

“Listen, Rusty. Sasha could be coming. She could be on her way. I'll be there as quick as I can. Use the flashlight on her. Shine it in her eyes, then hit her.”

I saw the glow fading in my hand.

“Rusty, can you hear me?”

Then the glow was gone. Quick as that. Back into darkness.

I patted down the console and found the ignition just where it was supposed to be. But no key. No key on the top panel. No key in the side pockets. No key.

I rose and looked out at the impenetrable night. I drew out the Maglite. I'd submerged it for a minute and doubted it still functioned. I flicked it on. Bright as ever. And remembered as I did it that Rusty's skiff was still unaccounted for. That's where Sasha could be. Set up her shooting blind somewhere nearby, just waiting for a target to appear.

Fuck it. I swept the light across the boat, found the front storage locker, and dragged it open. I stayed low and searched with short bursts of light, but the compartment was empty. No flares, no supplies of any kind. A brand-new boat, as yet unstocked with Coast Guard equipment. I checked the locker in the stern, the bait well. Nothing.

I listened but heard only the jangle of the saw using up its juice.

I dropped the Maglite into the pocket of my pants, then slipped over the side and began to swim. The kayak sounded like it was close by, maybe twenty feet, thirty. I kept my stroke quiet. Thinking of the bull shark, the croc, the gators. Thinking of Rusty, her exploded knee. And now a knife wound. Mona had been working all along with Sasha. A traitorous alliance I hadn't time to consider. Two twisted fucks.

I reached the kayak, pulled myself up, and slithered back into the seat.

I unwrapped the gauze from the trigger of the reciprocating saw and set it between my legs, then stooped forward and felt around for the paddle. Then felt around some more.

It wasn't there. The paddle was gone.

I drew out the Maglite and flashed it across the water, made a circle five feet out, another circle farther out. Saw nothing. Then the little flashlight dimmed and went dead in my hand. Everything I touched was dying.

A mile west the black night exploded with radiance.

The big bruiser. Its eighteen-million-candlepower beam was pointed directly toward the sky. The dazzling shaft of light shot straight up into the low swarm of clouds like the memorial to those skyscrapers no longer there.

A come-hither beacon for Sasha.

I plunged back into the bay and swam. Flutter-kicked as hard as I knew how and knifed toward the Mothership, churning the water behind me. Bull sharks be damned.

 

 

 

 

Wing-embedded landing lights, and a single headlight under the prop spinner, that's all the Cessna had. Barely making a dent in the dark.

“I can't do this,” Mosley said. His voice frail inside the headset. “A night landing on water. Never done it. My night vision is terrible.”

“You're going to do it now,” Sugarman said. “Put it down.”

Sugar saw the single light ahead, looked to be that massive sixty-watt spotlight Thorn and he had picked out at West Marine a few months ago. The biggest baddest spotlight on their shelves. Natural daylight illumination, color temperature of 4,300 Kelvin. Rechargeable battery could go for eighty minutes, producing 1,100 lumens. Mother of all spotlights aimed straight up into the sky.

“Land this plane,” Sugarman said. “Land it now.”

Carter Mosley made another pass, dropping to less than fifty feet, then, panicked by the sight of mangroves rushing toward them, pulled up.

Sugarman leaned to his window and saw the Mothership was half sunk. Just as they passed, the spotlight on the houseboat's roof switched off and the shock of the sudden blackness pressed Sugarman back into the seat.

“Land it,” he shouted into the tiny mike. “Circle back and land this goddamn plane.”