Hatteras Blue (32 page)

At last she picked up the gun. She poised it at her shoulder and tried to aim. It was awkward and heavy and she lowered it to her lap. She turned it over and found the safety. She pushed it in and then out again, then laid the gun aside gingerly on the deck.

That left only one thing to do. She slid down the ladder and went below to the galley. In its lockers she found kippered snacks, granola bars, canned creamed corn, Keyes's tofu, canned ham, a dried-up onion, two full bottles of bourbon, and half a loaf of nearly stale pumpernickel. She picked up the Hormel, then paused. At last she put it back. Instead she made a kipper sandwich and ate it slowly, wiping the oil from her chin.

Now what. She went into the head and washed her face. She changed the sweatshirt, which was growing hot, for a blue halter, then went up on deck again. She closed her eyes for a moment before she looked out at the sea, hoping for a gunboat. Or perhaps a rusty freighter would be more realistic. But when she opened them there was no ship in sight at all. Except for a pod of porpoises far away, sending up white splashes as their backs arched from wave to wave, the sea was completely empty.

For the first time she wondered if they were going to come at all.

Their contact had been so brief. The engine room had been hot and close. The smell of rot and gasoline had made her feel sick. She'd turned the thing on, she remembered, and called three times, at one-minute intervals, as the old man had instructed. She'd had to keep her voice low—
he
was fifteen feet away, behind one thin bulkhead—but on the third call someone had replied. The voice was so distorted with static or distance that she could not tell if it was Ruderman or someone else.

"Can you hear me?" she muttered.

'Yes. Go ahead." The voice was tiny and remote.

"I'm here. We found it, I think."

"Is it aboard yet?"

"No. They're going to try to bring it up tomorrow, at dawn."

"Good. Very good! We will be there soon," Ruderman, or someone, had said, satisfaction evident even in the distant whisper.

And then Keyes had stepped through the hatch, and she'd frozen, unable to move or speak as he sauntered toward her, till he saw what was in her hands and his eyes widened and his fist split her lips into a scream that still echoed in her mind.

She leaned over the rail. The teak was still night-cool against her arms. She looked down, into deep blue water. Ten feet of it was crystal. Thirty was smoky. A hundred and eighty was opaque as concrete. She wanted to dive in, feel the sea flow and part before her eyes. What was happening down there?

She raised her head suddenly. Off to the right—had there been a ripple at the corner of her vision? She stared till her eyes burned, but whatever it was did not repeat itself. The dolphins, she thought. For a moment she'd hoped it was
Charlene
breaking the surface.

She clicked her fingernails on the rail, then turned abruptly and went into the pilothouse to look at the clock. Only seven-ten. But it seemed as if they'd been down all morning. She looked at the starter switch. She thought of turning it and taking
Victory
miles away. Galloway's key dangled, the chain swaying with the roll of the boat. At last she shook her head. She couldn't leave the two of them out here. The third one, yes. She would leave him to the sharks with pleasure.

She remembered then what Caffey had told her about Aydlett.

The waterman looked up when she appeared at the engine room door. They stared at each other for a moment. Hirsch thought: He's so huge. She felt afraid of him too, now. But he should be safe as long as she didn't get too close. She took another step inside.

"Are you all right, Shad?"

"Not too bad."

"I thought I'd check and see if you wanted some breakfast. We have instant coffee, and I could make you a sandwich."

"Be hard for me to eat it," said Aydlett. He shifted a bit on the floorboards and she saw that his wrists, behind him, were tied to part of the engine. "Think you could loosen up one of these?"

"I don't think I'd better. I like you personally. But if you're on Keyes's side, forget it."

"Well then—"

"But I'll bring it. I guess I could feed it to you."

He looked at her steadily, then shrugged.

When she came back from the galley he ate from her hands, his breath warm on her fingers, the dark eyes flashing up at her but neither in hatred nor gratitude as far as she could tell. When he'd finished the coffee she asked him if he needed anything else.

"Kind of like to take a leak."

"You'll have to handle that yourself."

"Just joking you, Miz Hirsch. I do thank you for breakfast."

"Fine," she said coolly, and left.

On deck again she sat on one of the lockers, banging her bare heel against it, and looked at the sky. A few low clouds, wispy, more a prediction of good weather than a threat of bad, shone orange abbve the lifting sun. The wind was slight. Even the waves seemed lazy, as if on a day like this they felt it too much work to rock the boat. It was good weather, especially considering where they were.

She climbed the ladder again and searched the horizon. Still nothing. Ants crawled down her legs; when she slapped at them they turned to sweat. She rubbed her face and sighed, thinking vaguely about a cover cream for the bruises.

A splash came from behind her and she whirled. It was the little vehicle, orange nose pushing the sea aside as it headed toward its mother boat.

For a moment she was relieved. Anything was better than this waiting. But then she saw that only one .hooded head showed above the low hull. She ran to the edge of the flying bridge and leaned, staring down.

"Tiller?"

He didn't look up. Didn't hear me, she thought.
Charlene
turned to come alongside and she heard the whir of the motor only when it stopped. Sun flashed from the man's mask as he glanced up at her. She still could not see who it was. She looked from his face to the water beyond. The top of a lift bag broke the surface a few dozen yards off, but there was nothing else. No other divers. No bubbles. He was alone.

When he pushed up his mask she saw that it was Keyes.

He dropped the mask over the side, then shrugged his tanks into the water. They sank, the regulator storming bubbles for a second before water pressure closed it. He looked up then, and saw her.

"Throw me a line."

She didn't move. The voice was low, precise, without inflection or color. She had heard it before. In the engine room. It was the voice of the other. The voice of the thing that had hidden for so long beneath the smooth, agreeable, at times even attractive man who called himself Richard Keyes.

"No."

He looked from her to the boat's side, and kicked his fins off into the water. His weight belt fell free. They too slipped from sight. He eyed the distance, swung his arms back, and vaulted aboard over the gunwale. The little vehicle drifted slowly away.

Keyes watched it for a moment and then looked out toward the bag. It had moved a few feet past the boat, carried by the current. He stripped off hood and vest and threw them too over the side.

He came to the foot of the ladder and stood looking up. At last he smiled and said, "Come down here."

She shook her head.

"All right. Then I'll come up."

He started up the ladder. She backed away. Her hands shook as she picked up the carbine and steadied it at waist level.

"Don't come any closer," she said then.

"What?"

"I said I've got a gun. Stay down there! Where are Tiller and Jack?"

His head came above the level of the deck. He was grinning.

"Oh, they're dead," he said.

She pulled the trigger. His grin flickered as he saw what she held. But he kept climbing. Then, as she struggled with the weapon, the smile came back. It was wider now, but even less human. He stepped off the ladder. As his hand closed on her wrist he began to laugh.

At the same instant her finger remembered the

safety.

Smiling stupidly, Galloway followed his bubbles upward.

Silver mushrooms, he thought, bright dancing bubbles, mercury jellyfish. A passing yellowtail swerved and he saluted it gaily with his free hand.

His other was knotted in the inflated vest around a thin body. Galloway giggled into his slackening hiss of air as they lifted gracefully toward the light.

He could not remember much about the past few minutes. Another part of his mind had taken over. A part that operated without consciousness, that functioned as faultlessly, automatically, and mindlessly as an electronic circuit. Only flashes came through from time to time to his waking self. And most of them were not thoughts but simply images, so that he saw what went on without acting or willing; the tiny ever-observing point that each man considers most truly himself was only a dazed passenger.

Tliis was how he remembered opening the hatch at the far end of the compartment, leading forward, deeper into the wreck. He remembered vaguely a cave-dim charnel house of silt-strewn bones and skulls, and here and there among them the scattered lethal ogives of 88-mm shells. A huge moray eel slid uneasily behind racked cylinders. Torpedoes. One lay half-inserted into a tube, its rails still in place. A bare ulna glimmered ghost-pale where the massive weapon had rolled sideways to crush a man. He'd looked up at the trunk to the forward hatch, seeing the loose-hanging wire now from below. You can take this route now, that part of his mind that now had control had told him quietly. It does not matter now if it explodes.

And he remembered dragging Caffey behind him all this time.

The intoxication dropped away suddenly fifty feet from the surface, leaving him with the worst headache he'd ever had. He sucked a shallow breath from the boy's tank, blinking warily around. He'd been sober enough to leave the knife in, but a thin scarlet smoke still marked their path upward. Blood in the sea ... if a shark hit that scent trail he might have to abandon his cousin as toll for his own escape.

But not until. He wound his hand into the harness till it hurt and reached up to valve air, stopping their ascent. He was already on reserve; he breathed as slowly as he could as the minutes of decompression ticked by. They would be dangerously abbreviated. But still he had plenty of time to remember that it was Tiller Galloway who had thought, not that he could trust Keyes, but that he would cooperate, because cooperation would help them all.

Now Keyes had the gold. And Jack had death. He stared upward, searching for the dark vee of the hull against the sky.

He wondered what he would do when he saw it.
^N

His air gave out then. Galloway lifted his watch. It hadn't been long enough. His blood was
still
full of nitrogen. But there was no choice.

He went up.

He broke the surface gasping, lifting his head for real air. He sucked it in greedily. It was rich with water vapor, incredibly delicious. Panting, he glanced around as a crest lofted him.

There. At sea level his horizon was minimal, but he caught
Victory's
truncated upperworks half a mile distant. He turned on his back and began to swim. He felt naked, like a trout fly being slowly played across the water. Like shark bait, waiting for iceth to close on his pumping legs...

It was a long time before he saw progress. Swimming in full gear was work, especially towing a body. But gradually the boat's cabin and then her hull rose slowly above the choppy sea She seemed to be stern to him. Simultaneously he heard the rumble of her engines.

"Come on, kid," he said to Jack. "Come on, son. Only a couple hundred yards more. You can make it. You're a surfer, aren't you?"

But his partner didn't answer.

At last he could see the waterline. He was beginning to think he might make it when something smacked the water and went buzzing away over the sea.

I must really be tired, he thought a second later. She's shooting at me and I'm still up here waiting for it.

He dived, dragging Caffey down with him. He found the boy's dangling mouthpiece. There'd been no more air on the bottom, but up here, against the reduced pressure, he might be able to coax a few more breaths out of it.

The sea heaved above their heads. He swam in as straight a line as he could judge for fifty kicks, then stuck his head up for a fix. The pilothouse showed white to their right and he corrected course. Two more bullets whacked near his head as he surface-dived. A spent slug spiraled past, glinting copper. Jesus, he thought, that's good shooting.

Why the hell was Bernie firing at them? For a gun-shy woman she was shooting too goddamned close for his liking. The little carbine was a short-ranged weapon. Its sights were only graduated to 300 yards, and the cartridge had just enough poop to get there before it lay down.

But it was deadly at close range. And he was getting closer by the minute.

He broke water again, hardly letting the sea roll off his mask before he was back under. But this time the sea erupted around him, boiling with streaks of lead. The water turned into bubbly trails, each tipped with ten grams of heavy metal. He finned downward in near panic.