Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (85 page)

Casey nodded in approval; it looked like any other evening aboard the
Maidstone.
Not a thing appeared unusual or awry.

He gave the sign to Matty and a minute later the five of them were stripped down to their undershorts, faces blacked and buttered to match their bodies. The skiffle group took the music up a notch, all of them singing
The Rising of the Moon
at the top of their lungs.

Roland was already sawing away at the bar, tongue stuck out between his teeth in exertion.

Casey took a last look at his wee group. A pathetic looking bunch, near naked and filthy with boot polish, white patches glowing with butter. Roland and Declan on the verge of yet another of their series of unending arguments. Matty, looking for all the world like a contented garden gnome, with nothing more pressing than a stroll about the fields on his mind. Shane no longer able to swallow his nerves, jittering like a flea in a fry pan. Aye, pathetic as a picture, but he’d trust his life to any one of them.

Roland had stopped sawing, he gave the bar a push and to everyone’s delight it snapped clean through on the top weld.

“Christ that’s luck,” Declan said, white smile cutting a gleaming swathe in his boot blacked face.

Casey took the first decent breath he’d had in several hours. This bit of good fortune would buy them back ten of the twenty minutes they’d lost.

The porthole was open now to the dark and the freezing expanse of water beyond. He nodded. “Let’s go, men.”

Roland slipped through the porthole first, scrambling nimbly onto the hawser and then dropping swiftly out of sight. Declan followed, atypically silent, and grim looking.

Shane was next. Casey patted his shoulder. “Don’t look back an’ don’t turn back unless they start shootin’ at ye.”

Shane nodded, eyes as big as saucers. They helped him through the porthole, keeping a grip on him until he’d a firm hold of the hawser. Casey peered down after him. “Christ ye could see the head of a pin out there, it’s like high noon at the OK corral.”

“Then get off with ye Gary Cooper,” Matty said.

“No I’ll go last, bring up the rear,” Casey said, voice hoarse from all the whispering he’d been doing. The skiffle group had launched into a raucous version of
The Boys of the Old Brigade.

“I’m goin’ last, an’ that’s final,” Matty said firmly. “I couldn’t face yer da’ if I left ye to bring up the rear. I’ve got yer back, son—now go.”

“My da’ is dead,” Casey said in whisper, wondering if the man had taken leave of his senses at this crucial moment.

“Aye,” Matty replied imperturbably, “but if I don’t make it through this, I’ll have to face the man at the pearly gates, an’ I’d just as soon not have ye on my conscience should it come to that.”

Casey knew to waste any more time arguing would be suicidal to the escape at this point, so he seized the hawser rope and swung himself out over the sea. The rope was surprisingly smooth and his journey down swift. He gasped when he hit the water—it was purely desperate. He felt as though he’d fallen into a patch of stinging nettles. The salt immediately stung his eyes and flooded up his nose. He stripped the sodden socks off his hands and abandoned them to their fate.

Matty had negotiated the steel rope and was in the water now, with only a small splash to remark upon his entry.

Casey took a deep breath and slid through the water, praying that none of them would get caught in the barbed wire. He negotiated his head and shoulders through without incident, grazed his chest on a barb and thought he’d made it free when a sharp stab to his leg told him he’d caught his thigh on the wire. It pulled him down, head just below the surface. He fought the desire to panic, the five of them had made a deal that if any of them tired or even began to drown the others would not turn back to help, as it would destroy everyone’s chance at escape. He was on his own.

He needed to breathe soon, the pressure in his lungs was already next to unbearable. He’d have to risk the injury to his leg. He kicked hard at the wire and felt the barb pull loose, leaving a throbbing trail in its wake. Then suddenly he was free and swimming, the back of Declan’s head bobbing up and down ahead of him, outlined by the searchlights that swept the dark water. It would be a miracle if they weren’t caught; the stretch of water was as bright as a floodlit football pitch. The only thing they could hope for was that the guards had taken shelter from the rain and wouldn’t be able to see clearly over the water. Or better yet, would believe the Army’s contention that the Maidstone was inescapable, and wouldn’t be paying attention at all.

Behind him he heard Matty clear the barbed wire, though not without injury from the sound of the soft expletives coming from him. That was the last of them then, they’d all cleared the wire and were on their way.

He swam forward expecting the sound of gunfire to explode around them, or for the alarm to sound, putting an end to the freedom that he could now taste in his mouth.

Each time his head came up he looked for the other men. Declan was about fifteen yards ahead swimming steadily, Roland just beyond him, head popping up and down like a cork on the waves, and Matty’s breathing was audible behind him. Shane was unaccounted for.

Casey maintained a firm grip on his calm; he blinked the salt from his eyes and looked left on the first stroke, right on the second. Then he saw him, twenty yards out on the right. He was struggling, head going under for several seconds before emerging weakly and going directly back under. Despite Casey’s dire threats to the rest of the men, he didn’t hesitate, cutting cleanly through the water. When he arrived at the last spot he’d seen the boy’s head go under he paddled in place. He was ready when the head emerged, barely breaking the surface.

He dove under, locked a forearm around Shane’s chest, and pulled him to the surface. The lad started coughing immediately, spitting seawater out. Casey flipped him onto his back, floating him on the skin of the water.

“Can ye hear me, man? Yer goin’ to have to float for a minute, get yer strength back an’ then get on yer stroke again. Do ye hear me?”

He shook the boy’s arm, panic making him angry, knowing that every second upped the odds of being caught and foiling the escape for everyone. Finally, though, he got a weak ‘yes’ from Shane’s lips. He paddled beside him, the water around them lit up so bright it pained his eyes. He ought to go and leave the boy to his own devices, but knew he couldn’t live with himself if the lad drowned.

He floated on his own back, knowing he needed to conserve his energy. The cold would sap it quickly and they were still a long way out from shore.

The water lapped across his face, the night sky above dark and starless. A strange lethargy crept over him. The temptation to let go, to slip his hold on life and let the current take him, swept through him. His mind was drifting down through the layers of water below him, to a place where darkness was not the mere absence of light, but an absolution all its own. Where sunrise and sunset had never been and neither time nor tide had meaning. And for a moment he felt it, the lure his wife knew in the sea’s embrace. The dark call to salt-matched blood, the return to a timeless origin. A mother that would rock you in the cradle of ancient leviathans and give your bones a soft bed of fine white privacy, undisturbed by the grasses of the upper world.

Sound exploded in his ear and he started, the water forming a shroud over his face. He came up sputtering to see Shane, wide-eyed above the canary diamonds the searchlights scattered over the wide water.

“What the hell—” he coughed, words tangled on a sputter of saltwater from his lungs.

“Was a seal,” Shane said, “ye were goin’ under an’ he barked straight in yer ear. I could swear he knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That ye were tryin’ to drown,” Shane replied, a queer look on his face, as though he were suddenly afraid.

Casey shook his head, clearing the salt pools from his eyes. “On yer stroke man, we’ve lost time.”

He struck out, the shore lights a distant beacon. His muscles tremored with the fear of what they’d sensed in him. Beneath him, something slid slick as oil against his belly but solid with speed. The seal.

“Ye’ve an odd notion of guardian angels,” he muttered to the sky, as the seal slid past him once more, a quiver of muscle and sleek hide against his leg.

He forced himself to keep his stroke even and measured, knowing a burst of speed might well sink him at this point. The seal stayed with him, its head appearing out of the waves every few strokes, never more than a few feet away. He focused on it instead of the ache in his muscles and the cold that now insisted itself through the wax of butter and shoe polish.

The seal didn’t leave him until the pier loomed up in his vision. His muscles were dense as cement with exhaustion, the small distance seemingly insurmountable. He heaved a breath and put on one last burst of strength. A dozen more yards—eight—then six—then four and he was there, hands slicing on barnacles, weary beyond caring for pain. Then other hands reached for his own, and fastened his grip to land.

He glanced back once, before Declan and Roland pulled him up and onto the pier.

The seal was floating in the current, head a chimera in the confusion of light and dark. He’d the strong impression, however, of unblinking black eyes meeting his unwaveringly. Maybe then only a trick of the moving water, for a second later the waves were empty other than Shane coming up, white arms churning the water.

For a moment Casey lay on the pier, letting the rain fall in his mouth, merely grateful to be alive and to have made it this far. They’d lost close to half an hour due to the screwed up head count, but gained ten on the porthole. Which still put them twenty minutes out, and after seven o’clock. Their pickup would have left thinking they weren’t coming, that for one reason or another the escape hadn’t come off.

“Christ where are they?” Declan echoed his thoughts, arms wrapped tightly around his chest, entire body shaking like a leaf.

“If they’re wise, they’re well clear of here by now,” Casey said, feeling his heart sink to the vicinity of his toes. The dark would help them hide, but it was also going to make it harder for them to find their way. Especially now that they were going to have to find alternative transport into the city.

“What’s the contingency plan, lad?” Matty asked, as all heads swiveled toward Casey.

He bought himself a bit of time by sneezing, for there was no contingency plan. He cast an eye about their surroundings. The Queens Road terminus was in the near vicinity. It seemed madness to emerge from cover, but the chance would have to be taken. It was all they had at present, unless they walked all the way back to Belfast, which didn’t appeal greatly and would leave them open to being scooped up by the security forces.

“We’ll have to get on a bus,” he said. “The lads are long gone by now, it’s the only option we’ve left.”

“Are ye mad? With the five of us in shorts and pyjamas, an’ soaked to boot,” Declan said. “They may have heard of the escape by now, the Army’ll be on our heads in about five minutes flat.”

“Do ye have a better idea, Declan?” Casey asked mildly.

“No.”

“Anybody else have objections?”

The polish smeared faces gathered around him remained mute.

“Right then,” Casey strove for a resolute tone, “best if one of us goes first an’ takes the lay of the land.” He sighed. “I suppose it might as well be me.”

Before he could think better of what he was doing, he stepped out from cover and strode across the tarmac toward the bus terminus. A bus was just pulling in as he approached. He hesitated a moment, then walked over to the opening door. He knew he was a hell of a sight, hair plastered to his head, body covered with long streaks of boot polish and only a pair of undershorts between him and the big, cold world.

“Hello there,” he called out. “Are ye headin’ back into the city?”

The bus driver standing at the top of the stairs was short, bewhiskered, balding, and apparently unflappable. He eyed Casey dispassionately.

“Well laddie, ye’ll have to wait as I’m just off on my tea break.”

“Oh,” said Casey, barely able to hear above the chattering of his teeth.

The bus driver removed his coat, and laid it neatly over the back of his seat before descending the bus stairs with a smile and a tip of his hat.

“Good day to ye lad, I’ll be fifteen minutes or so if ye care to wait, though perhaps yer in too much of a hurry to,” he said and walked, without haste, to the small hut where the drivers took their tea.

Casey blinked dazedly at him before turning back to the bus, where the keys, bright and swaying a bit from the wind whipping in the open door, sat snugly in the ignition.

Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth Casey leaped up the stairs, seating himself swiftly behind the steering wheel. His hands were shaking so badly that it took three tries to turn the ignition.

He jumped up from the seat when the bus roared to life, certain he was done for, even if the man had meant for him to take the bus. Odds were there was a supervisor in the offices that wouldn’t be quite so sympathetic to the plight of a half-naked, butter smeared escapee. He dared a glance at the small hut and saw that there was no sign of any furious office clerk coming to save the city’s property. Now he could only hope there was enough air built up in the brakes for the engine to engage.

He thrust the clutch in, shifted gears and the bus lurched forward hard enough to jar the teeth in his head. Ahead of him, the gates swung to and fro in the wind, the drizzle of rain coming down harder now. He punched the gas to the floor, hands gripping the steering wheel with every ounce of forbearance he possessed.

The bus gave a clanging wheeze, sputtered a bit and then shot through the gates with the ease of sliced butter. Casey only had a disturbing impression of an open-mouthed guard with tea slopping out of his cup, shaking a fist at him and yelling what were no doubt great streams of obscenity and then he was on the road, gravel kicking out from beneath the back end as it fishtailed onto the narrow strip of pavement. He eyed the road ahead; there were no cars in sight.