Hurricane (29 page)

“
You know what I mean. Captain Sanchez went to a lot of trouble to get you that ticket and I was counting on your help.” She was reaching and she knew it. She’d wanted Meiko to go back to the States, she just didn’t plan on Victor being there.

“
Come on, Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I was working up the courage.”

“
Since when do you need courage to talk to me?”

“
Since you don’t like the idea of me and Victor,” Meiko said.

“
If you’re going on the fifteenth,” Julie said, “then we’d better get going.” She put the outboard back into forward and eased up to Fallen Angel, once again biting back her true feelings. All she could do now was hope that when Meiko got to spend a little time with him she’d figure out that he wasn’t the man for her. She turned the dinghy and brought it alongside, just behind the swim ladder.

Meiko cleated off the painter and went up the ladder. Julie cut the engine and followed up. She stepped over the lifelines, and stopped in her tracks. Kurt Schneidler had a hand around Meiko’s mouth and a knife at her throat.

“
Finally,” he said.

“
What do you want, Kurt?” she said, trying to sound indignant.

“
Give me a break,” he said.

“
Are you going to try and take the boat? That’s piracy, you know. You’ll go to jail.”

“
Where’s the key?” he demanded.

“
What are you talking about,” she said, and she gasped as three of the four young men they had breakfasted next to came up through the hatch.

“
No luck, Kurt,” one of them said.

“
We’ve been conducting a little search below,” he said. “Not as neat as the last time I was aboard.”

“
So there was someone aboard that morning.”

“
I suspected you heard me. I would have liked to question you then the way I will later, but I couldn’t have your screams echoing through the yacht club.” He dropped the knife from Meiko’s throat and released her. She moved over next to her mother.

“
Kurt, if I knew what you were looking for, and if I had it, I’d give it to you just so we could be on our way.”

“
You’re never going to be on your way,” he said.

“
You’ll never get away with this.”

“
You stupid bitch, look around you. I’ve already gotten away with it.”

He was right. He had them good. She looked to shore. There would be no help from that quarter. Even if she could scream, nobody would hear. Fallen Angel was the last boat out. No one would notice if she just hauled up her anchor and motored out of the bay.

Two more men came up from below. “How many men to capture two women?” she asked, no pretext at surprise now, just indignation.

“
We are seven. We were eight last night, but we had some problems.”

“
Someone sank your boat and killed your brother,” Meiko said. Kurt slapped her across the face and she almost fell.

“
Hold your tongue, bitch, or I’ll let my men have you, then throw you overboard.”

Meiko started to say something.

“
Shut up, Meiko,” Julie said, and her daughter bit back her words.

“
Smart, Julie, smart, but then Dieter said you were smart. One more time, where’s the key?”

“
If I was so smart would I hold anything back from you? We’re completely at your mercy. Our only hope is cooperation. I don’t have any key. I don’t even know what it is.”

“
Maybe,” he said. “Tell me about Broxton.”

“
Why?”

“
Tell me.”

“
He’s a DEA agent. He thought my husband was a drug smuggler. He was wrong. That’s all I know. He showed up the day I found out about Hideo and tried to ask me questions. Tammy Drake shooed him off.”

“
I’m going to kill him,” Kurt said.

“
I don’t understand,” Julie said, but she was beginning to. “It was him,” she said, “wasn’t it?”

“
The son of a bitch killed my brother and sank our boats. He will die horrible and slow.”

“
Why tell me?” she said, “I don’t know him and could care less what happens to him.”

“
You and him, we’ve been after the both of you. I thought there might be a connection.”

“
I’m just trying to save my boat,” Julie said. “That’s all. Surely you can understand that.”

He looked long and hard at her. He started to say something, stopped, and cocked his head, kind of like a cocker spaniel, and for a moment he looked child-like, almost angelic. He looked lost and hurt. Then his eyes glazed over and he looked away. “Harris, start the engine and lets get out of here.”

A few seconds later Harris shouted from the cockpit, “She won’t start.”

“
Shit,” Kurt said, and he hurried to the cockpit and started depressing the starter button.

“
Go below and see what’s wrong,” he said.

After a few minutes that seemed like eons to Julie, Harris came back on deck. “I don’t know. Starter clicks, but nothing happens.”

“
Any of you idiots know anything about diesels?” he screamed. Julie thought of the childish expression a moment ago and contrasted it with his clenched facial muscles and burning grey eyes and realized that he was crazy as a mad dog. The only way to deal with him would be to put him down.

None of his men spoke up.

“
You’re all fucking worthless!” His face was red, his right hand clenched into a tight knuckled, pumping fist. “All right, we’ll sail off the fucking anchor. Can you at least do that?”

The men scrambled to do his bidding.

“
You two, follow me,” Kurt said and the women followed. Kurt went to the bow and opened the forepeak hatch. “Get in,” he said.

“
You’re kidding,” Julie said. “It’s over a hundred degrees in there.”

“
It’ll be uncomfortable, but you won’t die.” He pointed with the knife.

Julie knew there was no point in arguing, so she climbed down the hatch and Meiko came down after her. Kurt closed the hatch on top of them and Julie and Meiko looked for a way to get comfortable among the diesel jugs, bundled lengths of line, buckets and tools.

It was hot, but not dark. Plenty of light came in through the Plexiglas hatch. The hatch also had latches on the inside. If it got too hot she could open it a little and let in some air, but not if they were sailing, because water coming over the deck would flood down in the hatch and drench them.

“
There are no winch handles,” Julie heard Harris say.

“
God dammit, yes there are, find them.” Kurt was raging and Julie thought that maybe they were better off where they were than up on deck. The crew was silent except for Harris, who seemed to be bearing the brunt of Kurt’s verbal abuse. Kurt became more and more unhinged as the seconds ticked by.

After a few seconds, Julie and Meiko heard Harris say that there were no winch handles anywhere on the boat, and Julie thought that was strange. Fallen Angel was a big race boat, sixteen winches and six handles. The winch handles all had plastic holsters, one on each side of the mast, four in the cockpit. Where could they be?

“
All right,” Kurt screeched. “We’ll sail without the handles.”

“
How can we do that?” Harris tried to reason with him.

“
We have enough men to pull up the main. We’ll set it and cleat it off. We might not be able to tighten it, but it should get us the fuck out of here.”

“
Why don’t I just go ashore to the chandlery and buy a couple of winch handles?”

“
Why don’t you fucking shut up,” Kurt said. Like when she was trapped on the island, she wondered why they weren’t speaking German. Then it hit her. Harris didn’t speak German. He hadn’t been at the table during breakfast when the young men were eating and bantering in German. She’d seen him around the yard, but she’d never had occasion to talk to him. He mostly worked in the office, with Dieter.

And then another thought assailed her. If Harris wasn’t German, was Dieter? He sure sounded American that day out at Five Islands.

Julie heard the sound of the men hoisting the main and felt movement as the boat shifted slightly with the wind and tugged at its anchor.

“
Cleated off,” Harris said, and Julie heard footsteps overhead and then she saw Kurt step over the Plexiglas hatch and step on the windlass button to bring up the anchor. The chain started to fall into the chain locker behind her.

Think, she told herself. The rattling chain echoed throughout the small compartment. Meiko had her hands on her ears. If only she could stop the banging and clanging of the falling chain. Then she grinned, reached overhead and jerked on the DC wires to the windlass, ripping them from their terminals.

Immediately the stuffy compartment went quiet.

“
Mother fuck!” Kurt screamed from above. He was stamping his foot on the windlass button and the sound of his bare foot slamming against the deck above reverberated throughout the compartment, but Julie preferred it to the chain clanging in the locker.

Kurt bent low and Julie saw the river of hatred flowing from his eyes through the glass. He opened the hatch.

“
God dammit, the windlass doesn’t work! What’s going on with this boat?”

“
I don’t know,” she said.

“
Why doesn’t the shit work, where’s the fucking winch handles?”

“
I don’t know. The handles are supposed to be at the mast and in the cockpit.”

“
I fucking know that, they’re not there.”

“
Someone must have stolen them.”

He slammed the hatch shut in a rage, still screaming, “Harris, take the fucking men ashore, get winch handles, an electrician and a diesel mechanic.”

“
We all don’t have to go,” Julie heard Harris say.

“
Yes, yes, yes, all of you, go. I want to be alone with these women.”

Julie didn’t like the idea of being on the boat alone with Kurt. She looked around her prison for a weapon, then she took some half inch line off a hook and started to uncoil it. She tied a small bowline loop in the end of it and fed the line back through it.

“
What are you doing, Mom?” Meiko asked.

“
When he sticks his head down here again I’m going to loop this around his neck and we’re going to pull for all we’re worth.”

“
Mom, that’ll kill him. It’s murder.”

“
He wasn’t kidding when he said his men would use you. When they get tired of us they’ll toss us overboard, probably with our hands tied behind our backs. You heard the man, he’s insane.”

“
But to kill someone?”

“
Him or us,” Julie said, and she heard the sound of the dinghy motoring toward shore. Now they were alone with Kurt.

“
I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can do it.”

“
Okay, honey, just stay back and I’ll do it myself.”

Then without warning the hatch opened, but Kurt was standing and Julie had no chance to get the noose around his neck.

“
Hot down there?” He laughed, then he started squirting them with the salt water hose.

“
Stop it,” Meiko yelled, holding her hands in front of her eyes, but Kurt laughed and kept the hose trained on her.

“
Fucking mongrel child!” He blasted her in the face with the water. Then he moved the hard spray to her breasts, soaking the halter top till he could see through it. “One thing about mongrels,” he said. “They fuck good.”

Meiko backed away from the center of the compartment till she had her back to the chain locker and Kurt couldn’t reach her with the spray, but he was a man possessed. He dropped to his knees, stuck the hose in the hatch and aimed it toward the back of the compartment.

“
Missed me, missed me, you fucking pervert,” Meiko yelled out.

“
You fucking whore!” Kurt stuck his head down the hatch after the hose. “You won’t fucking get away from me so easy.” He saw them cringing against the chain locker and laughed. Like a hyena, Julie thought.

Then she looped the noose around his neck and jerked. Meiko jumped forward, grabbed onto the rope and helped her mother pull. There was a screech out of Kurt, then a crack as his neck broke, followed by a stench as his bowels cut loose as his body flopped into the compartment.. He died quick. He died fast.

“
Shit,” he stinks,” Meiko said.

“
He’s dead,” Julie said.

“
Good,” Meiko said. “I was wrong, I can do it. I just needed the proper motivation.”

“
We have to get out of here,” Julie said.

Meiko scrambled up and out of the hatch. Julie looked at the body slumped at her feet. So Broxton killed his twin, and I killed him. She was bound up with the skin headed DEA agent, but why? It had to be more than just getting her boat so that Dieter could sell it and recover a past dept. People didn’t kill for that kind of money.

“
Better get up here, Mom. Dinghy’s coming,” Meiko said, and Julie climbed through the hatch, taking her time, thinking. She looked out over the bay. The dinghy was headed for them with only Harris and a large black man in it. The German crew was gone.

“
Be right back, honey,” Julie said and she dashed back to the cockpit. She pulled up the starboard cushion and then the locker cover and grabbed a flare gun. Then she hustled back to where her daughter was standing, and together they waited for the rubber boat.