Songs for Perri (24 page)

Even on a deck so small, she didn't have time to reach the refuge of the nets. She stopped amidships to wedge herself into the dark, narrow space between the side of the boat and the flat otter boards used to hold the mouth of the trawl nets open. It put her closer to the cabin and actually turned out to be a less exposed position than among the nets.

He walked aft, past her toward the stern, and Perri wiggled her way in deeper, losing some skin as she shoved the boards apart a little further.

The cleanliness of the deck had not found its way here, and the broken bottle Perri cut her hand on was the first good luck she had had.

It was a large, triangular shaped piece of glass, sharp as a knife, and she picked it up gently, careful not to cut herself any more. Her palm was bleeding. Under any other circumstances, she'd run for antiseptic and a bandage, but at the moment she barely noticed it.

The man had been working with the long towing line, untying it so that it now hung straight down from the starboard outrigger, which was still in its upright position.

From the models in the Mazatlan aquarium, Perri knew that the outriggers could be lowered horizontally, and a trawl net towed behind them, one on each side, to catch the shrimp. A line called the warp ran along each outrigger, through a pulley at the end and from there to the nets. The otter boards behind which she crouched were used to hold the mouth of the nets open.

Why then had the man released the warp from the nets so it was hanging freely from the end of the upright outrigger? Like a hangman's rope?

They had cleared the harbor entrance and were out in the open sea. The wave action was no longer broken by the jetty and the little ship pitched and rolled as it breasted the long ocean swells.

How many guarded Walt and Joe? Two dead. But there were at least three more—maybe four if there was an extra man in the wheel house.

The bearded man had adjusted the warp to the length he wanted, and went back inside the cabin, to be joined by the bigger man as he came back from the wheelhouse. Knowing her position by the otter boards was weak, for she couldn't move without attracting attention, Perri raced the short distance across the open deck to the starboard side of the cabin and climbed quietly up a ladder onto the low, flat roof. It was covered with equipment, heaped up in disarray. She slipped into the shadow of an upside-down dory as the two men appeared again, this time dragging Joe with them.

From this angle, she could barely see his head. Perri's heart caught with a cold, sickening flash of anguish; a deep, cruel kick in the innermost parts of her being as she saw the man she loved injured and helpless.

Quickly the two untied his hands, then tied them again to the dangling end of the warp, laughing when the guide turned the trawl winch enough to yank Joe off his feet.

"Gonna cut him some more?" the guide asked, turning it until Joe was suspended three feet above the deck, his body beginning to twirl slightly. He was shoeless, but semi-conscious, still bleeding from the beating they had given him.

"A little," said the big man, drawing out a long knife. "Just enough so the sharks can smell him easily. I don't want him to bleed to death before they have their snack."

The evil hate and revenge in his voice made Perri's stomach heave, while the vivid image of what he planned flooded her mind with horror.

Sharks! Scenes from "Jaws" flashed past. Her flesh chilled with the sweating dread provoked by the mere thought of the flesh-eating fish.

They'd tear Joe to pieces while he dangled on the end of that line...

And all she had was a broken piece of glass.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Suddenly Joe whipped his legs tightly around the neck of the laughing man who had ventured too near; applying pressure so that he screamed and slashed wildly with his knife.

The man at the winch, not knowing what to do, raised Joe even higher...and his friend was carried off his feet, then dropped dead when Joe released him.

Three men down. The blood ran in a red stream down Joe's leg as he dangled from the end of the outrigger, spinning helplessly like a plumb bob at the end of a string.

Never a fan of violent movies, Perri's senses reeled under the impact of the deadly game of life and death she was witnessing. A black cloud swirled around her, filled with tiny white lights. Realizing she was about to faint, she put her head down, forcing herself to breathe deeply.

Recovering, she looked up. Right into Joe's eyes.

She held up the piece of glass for him to see. Her bleeding hand was shaking, as if with high fever, and she knew her face was as white as the dory she lay beside.

Fear flashed in his eyes, though he gave no other acknowledgment than a tightening of his lips.

The guide was talking to himself, swearing. He had told his friend not to go so close, he'd told him to be careful. The idiot! Big men always think they can't be hurt...that they needn't move with care. Well, now it was his turn, and he would show this CIA pig how it felt to die.

Angrily, he turned the winch. It raised Joe halfway up to the outrigger's towing block, his body spinning first one way and then the other.

Another winch lowered the outrigger to a horizontal position, suspending Joe over the water. With each roll of the boat, his legs hit the water, sometimes up to his ankles, sometimes up past his waist, and a few times he went completely under.

"We'll do a little shark fishing now," the man yelled viciously, stopping the winch. He picked up the bodies of the dead men and dumped them over the side, then, facing the cabin, he added, "You'll want to watch. We'll give them a little bite first, then lower him some more."

For a heart-stopping second, Perri thought he had seen her, then Walt's voice answered, "You won't get any information this way." He had been pulled outside and was near the cabin door.

"Then we'll hang you out on the other side. We'll see who catches a shark first."

Incredulously, Perri heard Walt's voice falter, then sink lower still as he capitulated. "Pull him up. I'll tell you what you want to know."

The man laughed sneeringly. "Not him. He killed my comrades."

"Pull him up."

"No! You can't save him, not now."

"Let's go inside then, where I don't have to watch." Bitter with defeat, Walt turned and stumbled back into the cabin.

"Yeah," the man muttered to himself, yet loud enough Perri could hear. "Tell us all, old man. We'll make your death quicker."

Unable to adjust mentally to the nightmare around her, Perri struggled against the numbing effects of horror. There was nothing she could do. Soon they would all be dead. The bearded guide still carried Joe's gun, stuck in the waistband of his trousers.

As he had followed Walt into the cabin, he had called forward to the wheel house. "We're out far enough, the bodies won't float back in if the sharks leave anything." The motor slowed to an low idle. The swaying increased.

Sick and shaking, Perri focused on the thickness of the warp just a few feet from her. The line was cuttable, but even if she succeeded, Joe would fall into the water, hands tied. The sharks would still be fed.

Could she crawl out on the end of the outrigger and slide down the warp to Joe? How could she possibly hang onto the rope and cut him free?

Should she throw the dory overboard? No. It was so heavy, they’d hear her before she got started. What...?

Perri bowed her head and prayed silently for wisdom. If she made the wrong move they were all dead.

Then her questions were answered.

Joe's feet were no longer dipping in and out of the waves. The roll of the boat had dumped him completely under again...and the buoyancy of the water had enabled him to get a grip on the warp and pull himself up to where he could wrap his legs around it. Using his legs and hands he was climbing up to the outrigger block. As she watched, he reached the pulley and began swinging his legs up to where he could pull himself onto the outrigger.

Had Walt sought to remove the crew to give Joe his chance? It seemed likely. He was buying time. But if Joe couldn't get untied...he'd be stuck out at the end of the outrigger until he grew weak from loss of blood and fell back in.

The sharks could still get their meal.

Perri stared fixedly at the shard of glass gripped in her hand. It's sharp edges promised their only hope. As long as Hugo was on the outrigger and not hanging in mid-air, she could cut him free...if she could get to him before the crewmen spotted them and shot them off like tin cans on a fence rail.

It was up to her to carry it out there.

Her mind cleared, her focus fixed on Hugo.

Heart pounding furiously, Perri tiptoed across the roof to the base of the outrigger. Between her and Hugo lay twenty-five feet of cold, swaying metal.

Sweating profusely, she stopped looking at where she had to go and mentally forced herself upward and outward. With the triangle of glass between her teeth, her hands were free to seek the ladder-like projections on the outrigger.

Four feet out and she was over the water. Her hands and legs were shaking so badly she could hardly hold on. Fighting away the sick dizziness that threatened to paralyze her, she battled back her fear. If she fell, she'd drown, but if she stayed on the boat, Joe and Walt would be killed... and so would she. There were no options.

She could close her eyes and crawl out blind; or she could clamp down on her emotions as she'd never done before, fight back the sick paralysis, and beat it...for Joe's sake.

Bracing herself, she put one hand in front of another, pulling herself forward with a fierce determination, not looking beyond her hands. Now fear worked for her, helping her force herself into motion. Fear for Joe's life, not her fear of heights. That fear would have stopped her at the bottom.

Boats made her feel seasick during the most gentle of rides, and riding the outrigger, which was high up one moment and almost in the water the next, was like being in the top of a tree in a gale wind.

To make matters worse, the lines were held apart by round, disk-shaped separators every three feet. There were five separators in all. Each required loosing her leg grip enough to crawl past it. Each time she almost lost her tenuous grip and fell off.

The last two separators were combined with an exaggerated crack-the-whip motion at the end of the outrigger. In the dark, over the water, with the outrigger rising and falling in oblique circles, Perri squeezed her eyes tightly shut as she pushed outward, inch by inch. Only her fear of losing Joe—Hugo kept her going.

The last lurch unseated her and she lost contact with her hands as well as her legs. Even then, falling sideways, she didn't open her mouth to scream.

Joe grabbed her arm, yanking her upwards until she regained her grip. He had been beating his bonds against the metal edge of the last separator, struggling to untie himself.

"You crazy woman," he yelled as she wrapped her legs around the outrigger and took the glass out of her mouth. "I told you to stay behind!"

"You want loose or not?" she yelled back, her temper flaring at his ungrateful statement. The anger overrode her fear and made her more effective.

He scowled, then stuck his hands toward her, hanging onto the lines while she began to cut him free. Even with the cutting edge of the glass, it wasn't an instant task, for Perri had to stop every other second as the outrigger snapped them particularly hard.

"As a carnival ride, it's a little on the rough side, don't you think?" Joe muttered.

"Yes." In between the wild whipping of their precarious perch, she sawed on the ropes, trying not to cut him too. Her hair lashed her face, partially blinding her, but she couldn't do anything about it.

"Think I can sell tickets?"

She chuckled in spite of the fact her teeth were clamped tight in concentration. "Not to me!" There...the rope had parted and he was free.

"Thanks, love. Stay here."

"You have got to be kidding."
Of course he wasn’t.
Perri nodded grimly to herself. People paid good money to ride mechanical bulls; she was riding for free.

"You're safer here. Use the separator as a shield."

He called this safe? "Sure."

"And this time, stay!"

He grabbed the lines and suddenly—unexpectedly—dropped under her. Looking over her shoulder, she could see what he was doing, traveling rapidly hand over hand along the outrigger, but when he had first swung down, her heart dropped with him.

He disappeared into the cabin.

Two shots sounded, their sharp reports making her clutch the snapping end tighter. Then the motor stopped, making the outrigger sway even more.

What was going on? Closing her eyes she wrapped herself into a tight ball and held on, gradually becoming sicker and sicker. Finally she threw up. Nasty, yet it made her feel better.

She'd never buy a ticket for this ride. How was she even going to get off?

The outrigger lurched, then started rising.
Don't you dare take it up to vertical
, she thought, becoming even more panicky. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, afraid to watch, she could feel the distance slowly growing between her and the water.

Higher and higher.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

If they raised the outrigger straight upright, Perri knew she'd never work her way down past all those disk-like separators. But with a steady, inevitable motion, it kept going up, the angle getting steeper and steeper until she was high over the deck.

"Everything's okay. Come on down," Walt called.

"No," she sobbed. Things weren't okay. She was sick, scared and her hands wouldn't loosen their grip. Besides, she couldn't see. Her eyes were closed.

The outrigger jiggled as someone ascended. She felt him behind her, his body shielding her from the frightening drop to the deck, his warm breath on her neck as he reached past her and tried to pry her hands off the lines.

She hung on tighter than ever.

Joe spoke, his arms encircling her. "How did you ever climb this in the first place? I saw you at the Mayan show. And Walt says even ladders make you nervous."