Shipwreck (7 page)

“In a crisis,” lectured Ian, “it’s always best to keep busy to prevent the onset of panic.”

Luke stared at the boy who spoke so seldom that they often had to remind themselves he was aboard. “Since when did you become ship’s counselor?”

Ian flushed. “I saw it on a documentary once.”

Luke sighed. “Ian, did anyone ever tell you that you watch too much TV?”

“My parents.” Ian nodded sadly. “Right before they put me on this trip.”

Luke sent Ian below to the navigation room to see if he could find any maps —charts , the captain had always called them. In open ocean there were no landmarks. But it might be helpful to know the course thePhoenix had been following before disaster struck.

He watched the younger boy’s careful footsteps. The schooner’s deck now sloped dangerously down toward the bow. This was because both pumps were working in the engine room near the stern. For the time being, anyway, they were letting the forward compartments fill up with water. It was a big risk, no question about it. If thePhoenix got too far out of balance, Luke reflected, it could take a diagonal dive just like theTitanic .

But tough times called for tough choices. They needed the engine, and Lyssa couldn’t fix it if the thing was underwater.

Luke looked up, squinting in the sunlight. He could barely make out Charla perched atop the foremast. She was scanning the horizon for signs of other ships, ready to fire off distress flares if she spotted anything. The job had fallen to her mostly because she was the only one with the guts to climb up the ratlines — her and J.J. But Luke doubted J.J., the daredevil, would be interested unless there was a reasonable chance of killing himself. And besides, the actor’s son was boycotting the effort to be rescued, still convinced that their current peril was all part of CNC’s plan.

Lyssa had already started taking apart the motor, even though the engine room was still under two feet of water. She was working by snorkel mask. Every few minutes she would surface like a submarine, and another wet part would hit the drying towel with a dull clink.

Will’s official job was pumper, but he doubled as a nervous nag. “You remember where that piece goes, right?” he kibitzed down the open engine hatch. “You’ll know how to put it back together?”

“No,” she said sarcastically. “I’m busting it up just to get you killed.”

Will couldn’t decide what made him more uneasy — their current danger, or the fact that Lyssa was emerging as the big hero.

Ian came running up the companionway, waving a thick folder with the CNC logo on the cover.

“You found the maps?” Luke asked.

Ian shook his head. “Files.”

“Files?” Luke repeated.

“On us.”

Luke gave Ian the wheel and fished through his own folder. Now that he thought about it, of course Charting a New Course would need information on its charges. Still, it was eerie to see his whole life between the covers — almost like the FBI had been keeping tabs on him. But this stuff must have come from his parents. There were school pictures and report cards; medical records — it said he’d been allergic to milk as a baby. Was that true? No one had ever mentioned anything to him.

All the court documents were in there, along with the arrest report and his suspension papers from school. And — what was this?

Luke recognized his mother’s handwriting on the letter:

Luke is a good boy, buflately he’s beenrunning with a tough crowd/ including a boy named Reese, who hashad frouble wifhthe low before. We wanf tobelieve him when he says fhaf fhe gun wasn’fhis, but we don’t want to be naiveeither— not where Luke’sfuture is concerned. We can’f take fhe chance fhatthis Reesehas gotten him involved with a gang . Wethink it might be a good idea to gef him away fromhere for a while. Therefore, we’re accepting the court’s proposal to send him to you

Luke put the letter down, blinking hard. “Theysaid they believed me.”

By this time, all pumping work had stopped for the crew members to dig into their files. Lyssa emerged from the engine room and Charla abandoned her lookout post to join them. Even J.J. interrupted his tanning to flip quickly through his folder.

He was unimpressed. “Big deal. So I’m a flake. What else is new?” He peered over lan’s shoulder. “Couch potato. No friends. What a surprise.”

“Lay off,” Luke warned.

But JJ. had already moved on to Will and Lyssa. “Whoa, what are you guys, hit men? There isn’t this much violence in the James Bond movies!”

Will flushed. “I don’t know how it happens. One minute we’re just arguing — “

Lyssa cut him off. “Shut up, Will! We don’t have to explain anything. Mind your own business, rich boy.”

JJ. shrugged. “I don’t see any of you guys in the poorhouse. CNC doesn’t come cheap, you know.”

“You find the money,” Luke put in grimly, “when your two choices are either here or jail.”

“Or you borrow it,” Charla added bitterly. “Not all of us live in Beverly Hills.”

“Yeah, what’s your story?” asked J.J., snatching the folder from her hands.

She reacted like a wildcat. “Give that back!”

J.J. held the file up out of her reach and kept on reading over his head.

Charla leaped like a basketball player, grabbed the papers from his hand, and fixed him with a withering glare. “Moron,” she muttered.

He looked bewildered. “What’d I do?”

“That’s private!” she raged.

“You know what it says? That you’re world-class at, like, fifteen sports. What a deep, dark secret! My own father sends me halfway around the world just so he won’t have to look at me, but you don’t want anyone to find out you’re a star!”

“You didn’t get to the part where it says what a head case I am,” she mumbled.

“We’re all head cases,” J.J. told her. “This is a trip for head cases. That’s why we’re here.”

Lyssa pushed her snorkel mask back down over her face. “Well, this was fun —” She stepped into the engine hatch.

J.J. regarded the pile of folders. “What are we going to do with these?”

Luke glared at him. “You really want to hear my suggestion?”

J.J. picked up the files and walked to the gunwale. With the exaggerated windup of a major league pitcher, he flung them into the sea.

“How’s the environment now?” he asked Charla.

“It’ll live,” she replied, tight-lipped.

“Well, let’s get back to work,” said J.J.

Luke raised an eyebrow. “Look who’s admitting that we might be in trouble.”

“I’m bored, that’s all,” JJ. insisted. “Gotta have something to do till the cavalry arrives. Which pump is mine?”

Monday, July 17, 1640 hours

As the day wore on, Luke watched the bow of thePhoenix sink lower and lower into the sea. At least a dozen times he was tempted to send the pumpers forward to try to even out the schooner’s balance.

No. If they had a chance, it was with the motor. They had to pump out the engine room first.

It was an agonizing decision. If they took a nosedive to the bottom, it would be all his fault.

Even in a glassy calm, sleepy waves broke over the gunwale. The water puddled for only a moment before rolling down a deck that was sloped like a parking ramp. If another storm blew through, thePhoenix wouldn’t last five minutes.

In the crew cabins, even the upper bunks were swamped now. Where the crew members were supposed to sleep was anybody’s guess. Probably they just wouldn’t sleep anymore. Luke thought back to the night before, crammed next to J.J. in the narrow berth. That misery might go down as his final night of sleep ever. The thought coaxed a nervous chuckle from him, but beneath the surface lingered a feeling so awful he didn’t dare dwell on it.

By five o’clock the entire engine was spread across two beach towels in the stern.

Will surveyed the scene with a frown. “I hope you can look at this stuff and see a motor, because all I see is a huge pile of junk.”

Lyssa looked preoccupied. “I’ve got it straight in my mind. Don’t bug me.”

It took another hour to get the last few inches of thick murky slime off the floor of the engine room. Then Lyssa eased herself down the hatch to start the long task of reassembly. The pumpers rushed forward to work on the crew cabins and the fo’c’sle — the area belowdecks directly under the bow. They were exhausted, but there was no time for a break. As Luke put it, their next break could be spent on the ocean floor.

The sun was setting when Will stepped into the cockpit and joined Luke at the wheel. He checked their direction — still west-southwest. “How do we know that’s right?” he asked uneasily. “Maybe the compass is broken like everything else on this tub.”

Luke shrugged. “You can’t be off-course when you don’t know where you’re going in the first place.” He regarded the foresail. “Wind’s pick-ing up. We should probably let out the sheet a little.”

Will groaned. “If you’re turning into a real sailor, I’m going to have to start treating you like Radford.”

Lukeshot Will a look. “Don’t mention that name, not even as a joke.”

Will shook his head. “How could anybody do what he did? I mean, we’re talking aboutdying here! Are we so worthless to him?”

Luke looked at him sharply. “We’re not worthless; Ratface is worthless. If there’s any justice in this world, he’ll get his.”

“Unless — ” Will frowned. “You don’t think J.J. could be right? That all this is part of the CNC thing?”

“It’s pretty crazy,” said Luke. “They’d have to trash their own boat, wash the captain into the sea on purpose. Anything’s possible, I guess. I’d love to believe that the captain’s okay.”

“Me too,” Will agreed fervently. “That’s probably what’s in JJ.‘s head. He feels responsible.”

“He is responsible,” Luke said flatly. “He was born with a dream life. He gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it. And he’s still the biggest screwup I’ve ever met.”

Lyssa heaved herself through the engine room hatch, dusting ineffectually at the caked muck on her knees.

Will looked at his sister anxiously but couldn’t read her expression. “Tell me it’s good news.”

“It’s back together,” she replied. “That’s all I know for sure.”

“The captain said never to start the engine without the blower,” Luke reminded her.

“The blower’s electric,” Lyssa explained. “If we run it before the engine’s on, we could drain the battery charge — “

“English, Lyss,” Will interrupted impatiently.

“We’ll have to improvise.” She picked up the grease-spattered beach towels that had been used to dry off the engine parts and tossed one to Luke and one to Will. “When I give the word, you guys stand over the hatch and fan like crazy.”

Luke was amazed. “And that’s safe?”

“She knows this stuff,” Will said fervently. “She got an A on that science project.”

Lyssa replaced Luke at the wheel and waited for the two boys to establish themselves above the hatch. “Okay — now!”

Like palace guards fanning the sultan, Luke and Will began waving their towels up and down, ventilating the engine room. Lyssa hit the starter button. The motor turned over, choked once, and died.

Will cursed and threw his towel to the deck.

“Don’t stop!” she ordered briskly.

They resumed fanning and she tried again. This time the engineput-putted itself to life.

“All right, Lyss!” shouted Will.

His sister looked at him sharply but found no sarcasm in his praise.

Cheering and applause came from the pumpers above the crew cabins. Charla flashed them thumbs-up from her spot atop the foremast.

“Okay,” exclaimed Luke, “put ‘er in gear!”

Lyssa pushed forward on the throttle. The motor coughed and sputtered out.

“Aw, man!” moaned Will.

So the whole process began again. Luke and Will fanned while Lyssa tried to nurse the starter along.

“It’s not easy, you know!” Will protested as the motor roared to life only to die with a wheeze and a hiccup of machinery. “It’s murder on your shoulders!”

“You’re such a crab,” Lyssa sneered.

Luke rolled his eyes. What was with these two? They were on a sinking boat; this could be their last conversation. Why did it have to be fighting words?

As they continued to work and bicker, Luke noticed in alarm that the roar of the motor was becoming less and less frequent. After a few more minutes, the engine wouldn’t even turn over.

Will was worried too. “Aw, Lyss, I knew you’d bust it!”

“Probably just flooded the carburetor,” said Lyssa, grabbing the toolbox. “I can smell the gas.” Once again, she lowered herself into the engine hatch.

“What’s the problem?” Charla called.

Luke could only shrug. “You should come down. It’s getting dark.”

“Give me another half hour,” came the reply. “I can still see a little.”

After a few minutes, Lyssa emerged, reeking of fuel. “I think I’ve got it this time.” She climbed into the cockpit and reached for the starter.

Luke and Will resumed fanning.

“My arm’s falling off!” Will complained. He only let go for a second to rest his aching shoulder. But at that moment, a gust of wind snatched the greasy terry cloth from his other hand. The towel spread open like a full sail and floated slowly down over the engine hatch.

“Hey, wait—“Will began.

But Lyssa’s oil-stained finger was already pressing the button.

The spark from the starter ignited the trapped fumes in the engine room. It made a phoom, like the lighting of a propane barbecue, only a lot louder. This was followed by a split-second pause as the fire shot up the fuel lines to thePhoenix’s ninety-gallon gas tanks.

“Get down!” howled Lyssa, hurling herself to the deck of the cockpit.

A mammoth explosion rocked the schooner, and for a moment, dusk was bright as day. Suddenly, the main cabin and galley were gone, replaced by a pillar of flame. The force of the blast threw Luke, Will, and Lyssa out over the transom, clear into the sea. Luke tasted salt water for a moment and then resurfaced into a burning hailstorm. Bits of cabin, deck, and galley — all on fire — pelted down on him, forcing him to dive. The blazing cookstove of the Phoenix hit the waves right where he had been a split second before.

On the foredeck, the shock wave knocked J.J. and Ian off their feet. When they recovered, they found themselves facing a wall of fire that engulfed two-thirds of the boat.