Sail (8 page)
THIS WAS the biggest wave yet, hurtling fast at
The Family Dunne
with a whitecapped curl that wasn’t going to miss. Crashing high above the boom, it practically swallowed Mark whole.
As he disappeared from sight, Katherine involuntarily let go of the wheel. It was a natural impulse but potentially devastating, as she realized right away.
The boat angled sharply to port, knocking her flat on the deck again.
When she finally staggered back to her feet, she still couldn’t see Mark. He’d gone overboard! She was almost sure of it.
“Jake!” she bellowed. “Mark is gone!”
There was no response.
There was no Jake!
The giant wave had apparently flushed him over the railing too.
Katherine didn’t know what to do next. She had no answer. Who would? That’s when she heard a gurgled yell from the ocean.
Mark!
She was only twenty or so feet from his voice, but as another wave slammed the boat, it might as well have been a mile. She could barely stand up, let alone get to Mark.
Getting onto her knees, she began to crawl. It was the only way. “I’m coming!” she yelled. She grabbed anything and everything along the deck, pulling herself forward as fast as she possibly could. Finally she reached the side and looked over.
My God, there he was!
Tethered to the boat by his line, Mark was bobbing amid the enormous swells, struggling just to stay afloat. Even with his life jacket, the force of the waves was way too much.
He was being sucked underwater again and again.
“Mark, hold on!” screamed Katherine. “We’ll get you up.” Somehow.
Katherine knew there was no way Mark could pull himself back to the boat. She’d have to do it for him. But how? And where was Jake?
With both hands she grabbed hold of the line and pulled as hard as she could, using every ounce of her strength. But the line wouldn’t budge more than a couple of feet.
The more she tried, the more it felt like her muscles were going to rip from her bones. It was no use. She couldn’t do it herself.
She needed help.
I’M DEAD MEAT,
thought Jake as he dangled from the side of the bow.
I’m through.
With one hand he’d barely managed to hold on when the wave flipped him over the railing. Now that one hand—four fingers, to be exact—was slipping from the edge.
Portside, stern, starboard—anywhere else and his harness could save him. Not at the bow, though. Not in this kind of storm. Not with the boat seesawing so violently
.
He’d be drawn under the waves the second he dropped. And then crushed by the weight of the hull.
If only he could reach up with his other hand.
But he couldn’t. The reason was simple: he had no leverage. The side of the boat was too slick for his feet to grip, and he couldn’t push himself up.
“Mark!” he screamed futilely. “Katherine!” Where were they? Had they gone overboard? Had they noticed he was missing?
His throat burned as he desperately called out their names. He couldn’t possibly scream any louder, but he was afraid they couldn’t hear him against the crashing waves and thunder. Hell, he could barely hear himself.
Then, like a sick, cruel joke, there
was
something he could hear. As the wind whipped against his cheeks, whistling fiercely in his ears, there came a familiar sound.
His brother, Stuart, laughing again.
“Shut up!” Jake screamed in vain. “I know what I did! That’s why I’m here—trying to put your family back together again.”
Another wave slammed his back and knocked some sense into him. He could feel the boat slipping farther away from his fingers. The pain was shooting down his arm like fire. How crazy was that? Drenched in water, and all he could feel was heat.
Then, out of nowhere, it came to him.
Literally.
There was a momentary break in the crashing waves—the break he was looking for.
Dropping from the last crest, the boat suddenly plunged deep into a swell—so deep that the bow and Jake were submerged completely.
If he could just hold on for a few more seconds, maybe Sir Isaac Newton would save the day.
For every action there was a reaction, equal and opposite.
Hell, yeah!
Like a slingshot, the bow of the boat soared back into the air, giving Jake the momentum he needed. Timing it right, he swung his other hand as high as he could, barely catching the edge but doing it.
Now he had the leverage. Tapping his last bit of strength, Jake pulled himself up and dragged his body onto the deck.
He was safe!
But as he spotted Katherine hanging perilously over the rail portside, he knew right away.
Mark wasn’t.
JAKE SCRAMBLED ACROSS THE DECK, every step treacherously off-balance, the storm threatening to toss him right back into the sea. If that happened, he was finished for sure.
As he ducked under the boom, the force of another wave finally took out his feet. He was about to be swept overboard again when he grabbed a cleat at the last second and hung on, gritting his teeth until his jaw ached.
Sprawled on his stomach, he looked up at Katherine struggling to pull Mark from the water somehow. The line wasn’t budging, but she kept pulling and pulling. Her slender frame was contorted, and she looked like a hunchback. She was something else, wasn’t she? The Dunnes were all turning out to be fighters.
Christ!
thought Jake. He was so spent himself, could he even make a difference? Could the two of them do anything for Mark?
“I’m coming!” he yelled. “Hold on, Katherine!”
He lifted himself off the deck and covered the last ten feet to reach her. Immediately grabbing Mark’s line, he looked out to see him swallowing a wave of water, his head barely staying above the surface.
“Please, Jake,”
said Katherine. It was all she could manage.
Jake looked down at her hands, the blood dripping from her palms. They had been shredded by the rope, but she wasn’t about to let go.
Well, neither was he. With everything he had left, he started to pull. Slowly the line moved, inches at a time.
It wasn’t enough, though, not nearly enough to get Mark back. Jake turned around to scan the deck, his vision one big blur through the sheets of rain. Then he saw something that might help.
“The winch!” said Jake. “The electric winch!”
Only it was too far away.
Unless . . .
Jake bolted toward the helm, using the rail to keep himself from falling. When he came back to Katherine, he had a coil of thick rope in his hands. Quickly he tied a knot around Mark’s line and pushed the knot as far as he could from the edge of the boat.
Next he grabbed Katherine’s hands.
“As I crank in the line, keep pushing the knot toward Mark. Push it out.”
She nodded as he fired up the winch.
It creaked. It moaned.
Slowly but surely, it began to pull Mark up from the storm. Then he was on the deck. He was shivering. But he was alive—and he looked a lot like the little boy he had once been.
Katherine hugged him, holding him as tightly as she did the rope. She wouldn’t let go of her boy, and tears came to Jake’s eyes.
“Catch of the day!” exclaimed Jake, overcome with relief now. “Now let’s get below!”
“What about the anchor?” Katherine asked.
“Forget it—it won’t be any help to us in this weather. We have to ride it out.”
JAKE SETTLED THE LAST PIECE of important business on deck—reefing the mainsail. With it trimmed more than halfway, the winds wouldn’t be able to capsize the boat. At least he hoped not.
The waves, however, were a whole other story. Beyond crossing his fingers, there wasn’t much he could do about the power of the sea.
“Okay, let’s go!” he shouted. “Get behind me and grab the waist in front of you!”
Katherine and Mark nodded agreement, no questions asked, no more arguments.
The three of them navigated their way back to the main cabin looking like a slow-motion conga line—a drunk one, at that. But at least it got the job done. When they reached the safety of the steps, they finally unhooked their harness lines.
“What took you so long?” asked Ernie the second they descended into the galley. He was pale as a ghost, obviously scared out of his mind. But at least he’d had the good sense to stay down here. “We thought we heard somebody screaming,” he continued.
Jake couldn’t help his gallows sense of humor. “Your brother decided to go for a swim.”
“Funny,” replied Mark, removing his life jacket, but even he could smile a little now.
“Whoa,” said Jake. “You’ve got to keep that thing on, even down here.” He looked at Carrie and Ernie. “You too, guys.”
“Are we going to sink, Uncle Jake?” asked Ernie, his voice trembling with little-boy fear.
“No way, sport. We’re all going to be fine. This is the end of the Indiana Jones adventure part of our trip.”
Deep down, though, Jake wasn’t sure.
The Family Dunne
was a big, strong boat, but she’d never really been tested.
And this storm was proving to be the mother of all tests. All the more reason why his next step was toward the radio. He wanted to establish contact with the Coast Guard, give them the boat’s coordinates. It wasn’t a Mayday call, at least not yet. Not that the Coast Guard, or for that matter the Navy, could actually do anything for them at the moment. The Dunnes were on their own.
“Pan-pan, Pan-pan, Pan-pan,” began Jake into the radio. “This is the sailing vessel
The Family Dunne.
”
As he waited for a response, Mark asked him where some extra blankets were. He was still shivering, and he looked a little blue. A blue Popsicle!
Jake pointed to the bin above the galley seating, and the radio crackled with static. The Coast Guard was responding.
“Yes,
Family Dunne
, we copy,” came a voice.
Except Jake didn’t hear it. Instead all his attention had turned to Katherine, who had just finished bandaging her hands and was now helping Mark find a blanket. She was opening the wrong bin, the one with the scuba tanks.
Had Ernie and Carrie checked to see that they were secure?
Just then another wave pummeled the boat, tipping it deep onto its side. Suddenly Jake had visions of heavy metal canisters flying through the air.
“No, Katherine, don’t!” he yelled.
It was too late. The bin door swung open and the two tanks went flying. The first projectile missed Ernie’s head by a couple of inches.
The second, however, found a target, smashing it to bits.
Mayday! Mayday!
The radio was dead.
PETER CARLYLE approached the jury box as humbly as a man wearing a $6,000 custom-made Brioni suit and a hand-folded silk Hermès necktie could.
“What do you call a bus full of lawyers that drives off a cliff?” he asked the prospective jurors right off the bat. As they all stared at him blankly, he broke into a huge, contagious smile. “A good start, that’s what!”
Everyone laughed—even the old, curmudgeonly guy seated at the end of the first row, who looked as if he’d rather be having a double root canal than serving on a jury.
Peter continued: “You hear the one about the lawyer who broke his nose? No? Turns out the ambulance he was chasing stopped short.”
Even more laughter filled the stale air of what was reputedly the oldest and largest courtroom at 100 Centre Street, otherwise known as the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse.
Of course Peter’s self-deprecating warm-up act was just that—an act. He called it the Carlyle Zigzag.
Just when they think you’re going one way, make ’em believe it’s the other.
Beginning with their feelings about him.
His reputation, sealed by numerous newspaper articles and television appearances, was that of a cutthroat defense lawyer who made Attila the Hun look like a big cuddly teddy bear. But if Peter could turn that unflattering reputation on its head, showing these prospective jurors that in person he was really not what they expected, there was no limit to what else he could change their minds about.
Including his client’s guilt or innocence.
This one was a real beaut, too. Candace Kincade, the well-known socialite and former
Vogue
fashion editor, was charged with trying to kill her husband, the real estate magnate Arthur Kincade. Forgoing the usual weapons of choice— a gun, a knife, a hit man, or poison in his scrambled eggs— Candace had opted for a $140,000 Mercedes SL600 Roadster.
All along, though, she’d been willing to swear on a stack of
W
magazines that she hadn’t really intended to run over her husband. She had merely wanted to scare him, to give Arthur a little rise. No more or less than a practical joke. Only when she tried to hit the brakes, she accidentally gunned the accelerator. As Johnny Carson used to say on late-night TV, “That’s some weird, wild stuff.”
Speaking of opening monologues . . .
Peter was about to hit the jury pool with another lawyer joke when the opposing counsel, a supposedly up-and-coming prosecutor whose silver wire-rimmed glasses and cement-gray three-piece suit made him look as if he belonged in a Cleveland courtroom, not here in New York, stood up and objected.
“Your Honor, is this a courtroom or an evening at the Improv?” he asked, arms in the air.
Peter suppressed a smile.
What a rookie! This guy is greener than the back nine at Augusta!
More experienced lawyers never took the bait. They simply let Peter finish his comedy set, as it were. To do otherwise was to draw the ire of the jury pool. They were being mildly entertained, after all, following hours of being bored, bored, bored. Robbing them of a few harmless laughs could only cast the prosecutor as a major stick-in-the-mud, or possibly a loser.
Sure enough, a few of the prospective jurors frowned at the moke and his off-the-rack three-piece suit.
Peter quickly interceded, sparing the judge from having to rule on the objection. “I’m sorry, Your Honor, and I apologize to the prosecution for my attempt at levity. I just figured these people have been waiting around a lot and deserve a laugh. I guess we should get down to work.”
With that, Peter turned his attention to the first potential juror, a young Japanese woman wearing a floral print dress and running shoes. She promptly sat up in her chair, straightening her small shoulders.
Before Peter could even ask her name, though, he was interrupted again. This time by Angelica, his Guatemalan housekeeper.
Huh?
What was Angelica doing here in the courtroom?
Peter did a double take as he heard her high-pitched voice from the back of the courtroom. “Excuse me, excuse me,” she was saying. “I have very urgent message for Mr. Carlyle.”
She hurried down the aisle, making a beeline for Peter.
“I apologize, Your Honor,” said Peter smoothly, backing it up with a quick smile. “Obviously this has something to do with my
American Idol
submission tape.”
That got his biggest laugh yet from the would-be jurors. Even the judge smirked.
But as Peter met Angelica halfway, with the eyes of the entire courtroom fixed upon them, it became clear there was nothing funny about what she was whispering into his ear.