Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (31 page)

I held on with one hand, and pulled out the unit with the other, and thumbed it on. Iverson glanced at it for maybe half a second, and then lifted his eyes forward and kept them there, steering the launch.
He cut the engines back to idle and we drifted, just a hundred yards or so from the
Superior Rose
. Iverson started intently at the waves and the freighter.
I continued to hold the GPS for him, though he didn’t look at it. Finally, he glanced at me and said, “Got it, thanks.
I heard you when you gave it to the Coasties. Just wanted to double-check.
” I guess the U
.
S
.
Navy still trained them pretty well.

“Listen up,” he said to Jones, Felix and me. “We need to do this quietly, which means with the engine off, so we’re only going to have one shot at this. We’ll get ahead of the sailboat, and upwind a little. I’ll try to time it so we can cut the engine and drift across their path. If we can get close enough, Borden will jump. If not, we throw a hook into the rigging, tie him on and it’s up to him. You two need to be ready to push us off – quietly – if I miss the mark.”

“He’s kidding,” said Felix to me. “Navy never misses.”

“I heard that
,
Felix,” said Iverson.

“Just
bolstering
your confidence sir,” said Felix without a trace of a smile.

Iverson pushed the accelerator forward, and we roared north into the night.

“C’mere,” said Jones to me. I scooted over to him. He wrapped a rope around my wai
s
t and tied a bowline.

“Gotta knife?” Some
how
in all the fuss I’d lost the one Stone gave me. It was probably adrift somewhere miles from
here
, in the abandoned lifeboat. I shook my head.

Jones pulled a clasp knife out of his pocket. It was spring
-
loaded with
a
four
-
inch blade. About an inch and a half of
the
blade was serrated.

“The other end of this line is a fifteen
-
pound spider anchor.” He picked it up from the bottom of the boat. It was a cylinder about eighteen inches long. The rope was attached to one end. The other end sprouted eight or ten thin steel spines that curved up and out.

“If this ends up in the water, and you are on the other end of it, you’ll go down. Cut the rope.”

“How about a life vest?” I asked.

“Might help,” said Jones. “I’d still cut the rope.” He dug around under the bow and brought back a life vest. It was stamped with the name of the freighter. I put it on.

After an extremely rough half-
hour, Iverson cut the engine to idle again. He looked at me. “GPS,” he said succinctly. I
gave
it to him. He thumbed through some screens and looked at it for a minute. He looked at the waves and then back at the GPS, and nodded in satisfaction.

“If you were right about their speed, it’ll be about ten minutes.”

We drifted. I looked at Iverson. “Aren’t we going to get into position?”

“If you were right about their speed, we
are
in position.”

Jones slapped both of my shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said. “First is the best officer on the
G
reat
L
akes. He’ll get you there.”

“He’s not lying,” said Felix.

I glanced at Iverson. He was grinning. “Aw shucks
,
fellas,” he said, wiping the corners of his eyes with the back of one hand. “You’re making me tear up.”

“If you tell anyone I said that, I’ll deny it,” said Jones grimly.

“Me too,” added Felix.

Iverson’s grin got wider, but he said nothing. He watched the wave
s
and glanced back at the GPS from time to time. He nodded in apparent satisfaction, probably for my benefit.

“Sure we can’t just storm the boat, take ‘em by surprise?” asked Jones.

“We went over this, Jones,” said Iverson, never breaking the rhythm of his eyes
,
which rested first on the waves and then the GPS, and then back to the waves. “They have hostages and firearms, and they’ve already used them.” For a moment he pulled his eyes out of their rotating vigil and looked at me. “Speaking of that, do you want a gun?”

I thought for a moment. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I could really blow it, and if they found it on me before I was ready to use it, I don’t know what they might do.”

He nodded, his eyes back to their flicking rotation. “Good choice. But I thought I ought to ask.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Iverson glanced quickly at the watch on his wrist, and then reached forward and cut off the idling engine.
“Any minute now,” he said.

We drifted silent, four pairs of eyes straining through the darkness and spray. The minutes passed
,
and we saw nothing. Iverson glanced back at the GPS. Time slowed down. Babies grew up and had babies of their own while we waited. It seemed like nothing had ever come before or after the moment we waited in the wet
,
cold darkness.

Finally, faintly, I thought I heard a splashing and murmuring of water that didn’t quite fit with the random sounds of the storm. Jones and Felix tensed. “There she is,” said Felix in a hoarse whisper. Iverson visibly relaxed, though I wasn’t aware that he had been tense. A few seconds later
,
I saw it too, the ghostly graceful shape of the
Tiny Dancer
plowing doggedly through the icy waves.

“A little behind schedule,” muttered Iverson, calmly. “We’re going to pass in front of her.
Jones, get that hook ready.”

Jones grabbed the hook and climbed out the cockpit, holding on to the roof with one hand, the hook in the other. Iverson was right, we drifted in front of the Tiny Dancer, about ten yards before she crossed our path. Felix swore in admiration
,
and Iverson gave a tight grin. As a feat of seamanship, it was like breaking a world record at the Olympic Games
not by seconds, but by minutes
. To navigate through the storm and dark and time it so that we drifted so close was almost miraculous. The Navy still trained them well
,
all right.

“Now,” said Iverson in a low voice.

Jones heaved the hook, and then pulled it back quickly. The rope tightened, angling up into the darkness of the
Tiny Dancer’s
rigging.

“Go!” said Jones.

There was no time to thank them, to express my swelling admiration for their skill and daring and sheer luck. Felix grabbed my life vest and rolled me out of the boat.

I had been in the water a few hours ago, but the mind tends to blur the most unpleasant and dangerous experi
ences
. The first shock of the cold stole my breath and never gave it back. I gasped and wheezed. My muscles locked up as they had before, and it was difficult to move. Sometimes, on a hot summer day, you can get used to cold water. But this water was far too cold to become used to. Almost immediately
,
my feet and hands began to ache.

Before I could gather my wits, the rope around my waist tightened and I was jerked forward, face down, and towed through the water like a buoyant sack of potatoes. I inhaled water, and panic imparted
a
strength to my limbs that nothing else could
. I flung my arms in front of me and got hold of the rope.
Twisting and flailing, I
managed to get on my back, and coughed and hacked while I plowed through the water like a giant
G
reat-
L
akes Atlantic salmon on the end of a line.

I knew I wouldn’t last long like this. Unless I got out of the water quickly, I would freeze to death on the end of the line.
Still on my back, I reached
above my head as far as I could
and grabbed the rope. I twisted it around my wrist and pulled myself
backwards toward the boat,
against the rush of water caused by our passage through the waves.

I could
n’t
feel my feet anymore
,
and my thighs were aching with the cold. Holding the loop of rope down by my waist, I reached up and pulled myself toward the boat again. A big wave flung me upwards, and abruptly the upper half of my body was out of the water. Just as quickly I was slammed back down into the trough, and for a moment my entire body was submerged, even my face.
This continued to happen periodically.

Slowly
,
I
pulled
myself toward the boat. My arms were shaking with the cold and effort. Twice
,
I looped the rope around my wrists and held on, unable to
keep going
. But both times I thought about the alternative, and once more reached above my head to pull myself along.

At last
,
I saw the boat out of the corner of my eye. The rope I was on went
up
to the hook that was caught in the rigging of the mast cross-tree. That
meant that
the closer I got, the further to starboard I was swin
ging. I wasn’t going to be able to
scramble up the stern – I would meet the boat on the side, where the starboard
rail met the
water.

There wasn’t much I could do about it, so I kept hauling myself
toward the boat. I couldn’t
feel the lower half of my body, and I shook uncontrollably. I no longer reached as far behind me as
far as
I could, but settled instead for smaller, easier pulls. Finally
,
I was up against the starboard side. The
Tiny Dancer
was receiving wind from port, so as it met the waves it dipped down to starboard. It
rolled
right on top of me, pushing me under water, and then releasing me as it climbed the next wave. Just as I recovered, it
did
the same thing again. I
held the rope with my left hand
and flailed desperately with my right hand for the
starboard rail. I couldn’t reach it.
I trie
d again, timing it as the hull heeled over to bury me again. I vaguely felt my numb fingers contact the steel cable of the
lifeline
, but I couldn’t clench my hand fast enough. It slipped away, and I realized that in my focus on the rail, I had let go of my rope. I began to slide quickly
a
stern. With my left hand
,
I tried to grab the rope as far up as I could while I continued to
try to grab something
along the hull with my right.

I could
n’t
find the rope,
and
my
right
hand was
now
slipping off the corner of the stern. In a moment I would have to start the entire exhausting process aga
in. I wasn’t sure I could do it;
I had almost no feeling anywhere in my body anymore. In fact
,
I was beginning to imagine that I was warm, which I knew
w
as a very bad sign. In
desperation
,
I twisted over to my stomach and flung both hands at the stern.

I missed.

Just as I slid away into despair and darkness
,
a hand locked onto my right wrist.
For a moment I blacked out, but then I realized that I wasn’t dead, and I wasn’t even back to my starting point at the end of the rope. The
first hand was joined by a second,
further up my arm. I tried vainly to kick my legs and
assist by
mov
ing
myself forward through the water, but I couldn’t do it. The hands pulled me closer, and then my left hand found the rail and I began to pull too. I’ll never know where I found the strength for the last heave that brought me flopping into the cockpit like a confused lake trout.

I lay there gasping and shivering, black clouds pulsing like blood in front of my vision. At last
, when my body calmed down to the point of
merely shivering uncontrollably. I sat up.

“Hello
,
Jonah,” said a voice. “You’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you?”

It was Jasmine.

I fumbled with the zipper of my soaked coat pocket while Jasmine watched patiently. I dug my hand in and came out with Jones’ knife and flicked it open. Jasmine reached out gently and took it away from my weak and trembling hand.

“You don’t need that for me anyway,” she said.
She folded it up and handed it back to me. My numb fingers dropped it to the floor of the cockpit. I picked it up again, looked at her,
hesitated
,
and then put
the knife
back in my pocket.