“Go to port!” Tagliabue yelled into his mouthpiece. Carlos did, almost broaching the boat with the rapid maneuver, but the next round missed wide. Three more rapid-fire rounds were far from the boat. Tagliabue realized the Russian radar had lost the small plastic vessel. With the mist still floating around they probably had no visual contact either.
“Head for the barn, Carlos. They can’t see you any longer.”
“Gottcha, Antonio. You’re next.”
Tagliabue had Maven at flank speed. He cut hard left. A three-inch naval explosive round hit on the fantail, high but with enough charge to blow away the rigging there and set on fire the small stable he had built to house Francine weeks ago. Now he was a clear target for the gunners on Leonov. He turned hard right, but the Maven was a beamy workboat and could maneuver only slowly, even at full speed and full rudder. She rolled so that Tagliabue had to hang on to his chair. The stable fire raged aft. He’d have to put it out soon. The next round hit her above the waterline amidships and lifted her partly out of the water. She was badly holed. Cold seawater rushed in.
He turned for land, knowing he was not going to make it. His only hope was to hide in the fog among the fishing fleet. He heard excited chatter on the radio, fishermen wondering what was happening out to sea. A quick radar check revealed no sign of Carlos’s boat. The big bogie, Leonov, was still steaming north. Smudges of contacts, the fleet, were beginning to appear. Surely the Russians would not continue to fire their big gun with the trawlers so close. He snatched the mic from the PRC-25 and clicked on.
“Mayday, mayday. Navy ship firing cannon at Georges Bank.”
The Leonov did fire one more round but she was at the end of her effective range. It splashed down far from the crippled Maven. Tagliabue went below to the cabin.
As he was fitting his big Glock into a plastic bag that also held his phone under the safety vest he’d put on, the starboard engine froze up with a gasp of steam that enveloped the fantail of his boat. Maven wallowed, even though she had reached the calmer waters of the gulf, and her steering was sluggish. He recognized that she was in her death throes. His goal was his own safety. It was too late to save his boat. She was badly damaged and the sea still rolled into her side. The pumps had given up along with electricity. Tagliabue’s cell worked but he could not raise Carlos from the dark of the cabin. He went topside with flares and shot off three of them. They were hard to see in the fog even from the conning deck.
The one engine on-line was barely able to make headway as Maven began to founder. When that diesel expired, Tagliabue left the wheel and released the kapok lifeboat. He went over the side after it, landing next to it and pulling himself aboard. He unclipped the single paddle and worked the tiny raft away from his dying boat. Maven rolled, didn’t come back, and went on her side. A minute later, her stern went under. The whole craft followed quietly, swallowed so completely by the sea that it was as if she had never existed.
In the sudden misty silence, he sat in the raft and let it drift. It was too far to land for him to paddle there, so he did little more to navigate than keep its nose pointed toward land. He looked and listened hard, hoping to be rescued. Someone should respond to his distress calls. His wet clothes chafed at him in places but the evening was balmy despite the wet fog, so he wasn’t yet cold. After twenty minutes of feeling alone in a nest of vapor and darkness, he heard something to his left, a motor perhaps. When he saw running lights winking in and out through the mist, he lit off another flare. A boat loomed out of the fog bank. It was a shiny white Hatteras sportfisherman.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He handed the painter of the life raft to the sailor who helped him aboard the Hatteras. Rather than tie it off, the man let it drop into the water. Tagliabue snapped a look at the man, but he faded into the shadow of the flying bridge without returning the look. Another person walked into Tagliabue’s line of sight: Jack Brunson.
“That life raft saved my life and has a certain value in its own right, Jack. Your minion shouldn’t treat it so cavalierly.”
Brunson laughed, looking at home and thoroughly comfortable on a luxury boat on a foggy night when mayday calls and artillery shells had both been flying through space with abandon.
“He was not being cavalier. He’s nervous in this environment and would just like to disappear, if he could. But he did hire on, so he’s obligated.”
“Obligated for what?”
“Obligated to disrupt your little scheme, Anthony. What the fuck are you playing at, anyway? I take it that this guy defected from the Leonov, which just passed by, eh?”
He stepped to one side so that Tagliabue could see two figures, one tied into the fighting chair and the other slumped to the deck next to it. The guy in the chair was someone Tagliabue had never seen, youngish despite a head of gray, curly hair and a face with the pallor of an ancient man. His eyes seemed to bulge as he watched the two men on the open afterdeck. Crumpled next to him with blood running from a wound on his head was Carlos.
“What have you done to those guys, Jack?”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know. Look here, pal. My boat was just blown out from under me while I was cruising inside the three-mile limit. I’ve reported it to the Coast Guard and I need to follow up with them. Let me use your radio.”
Brunson smiled at that, but Tagliabue thought he could detect some uncertainty on his face. He might have discovered somehow that Carlos was going to rescue the Russian sailor, but he had no way of knowing that Maven was also involved. He knew nothing of Tagliabue’s connection with Giselle and her agency, so he couldn’t place him in the context of the defector rescue. Yet Tagliabue was out there on his old boat when the fireworks went down, so he had to be involved somehow. Brunson must have been thinking all that; his face betrayed his ignorance. What had he gotten involved in? Jack Brunson might be into something that had become bigger than he anticipated.
What was Brunson doing out there? Perhaps there was an innocent explanation for the man tied in the chair and the badly injured one on the deck of the luxury sportfisherman Brunson was riding, but Tagliabue could think of nothing that might explain it except that Brunson knew somehow that the Russian was defecting and had interfered.
“Where did these men come from, Jack? Why are they tied up? And what happened to them?” His voice was tight, maybe even aggressive. Before Brunson could answer, another figure climbed down from the bridge. It was the older man Tagliabue had seen with Carlos earlier, the man who had chatted up Carlos in the bar at the Pelham Island. He no longer had a gun at his belt; it was in his right hand.
He spoke to Brunson in a voice that sounded like a fish swimming in gravel.
“Tie the big fucker opposite the Mexican.”
Tagliabue didn’t resist. Once he was roped to the base of the fighting chair, the older man went back up to the bridge and Jack Brunson went into the cabin. Huge diesels took up a roar from below and the Hatteras headed north, shattering the waves as she blasted along at high speed. Tagliabue tried to rouse Carlos but it was too noisy on the fantail to hear any response. The Russian defector’s mouth was wrapped in duct tape so he didn’t try to talk with him.
After thirty minutes of running hard, the boat slowed. Whoever was driving turned the bows into the wave set just as she lost way. Three people came down from the bridge, the last one the older man with the gun in his hand again. The crewman lowered the dinghy and tied it off on a starboard cleat. He opened the railing and lowered an aluminum ladder. The other two watched him without speaking. The crewman and the man Tagliabue assumed was the captain climbed down into the small boat. The older man let the line go from the cleat. Just then, Brunson came out of the cabin with a shotgun in both hands. He fired a round into the dinghy.
Carlos spasmed at the blast but didn’t speak. His eyes were rolled up in his head.
Tagliabue didn’t speak either. He saw the shotgun load smash a hole in the bottom of the dinghy but knew that it wouldn�
�t sink completely because it was built of air pockets like the Hatteras itself. The water that came in through the burst fiberglass would make forward progress slow for the men in the tiny craft. They would not make it ashore before daylight. If the waves grew and the winds blew, they could spend a long uncomfortable time at sea before someone found them. Turning his back to the two sailors adrift in the holed boat, the older man went up and got the yacht underway again. It was still heading up the coast, at moderate speed, in the direction of the Bay of Fundy.
“You awake, amigo?”
Brunson had done a hurried job of tying Tagliabue and he had been able to work his head close to Carlos. He spoke softly and heard Carlos grunt in return.
“Who’s the older guy?”
Carlos licked his lips without opening his eyes. His skin was gray, his eyelids dark, almost purple. Blood had crusted on his face and a bright trickle still ran from the matted hair of his head and, alarmingly to Tagliabue, from his nose. He wasn’t bound, but he didn’t move.
“That L. P. Cuthbert . . .”
Carlos stopped talking after that, groaning, little dark bubbles forming on his lips. As Tagliabue figured, Carlos now knew the driver of the Hatteras as L. P. Cuthbert, the man he’d drunk with at the Island Pelham, the same one Timmy O’Brien had seen with Brunson and his bodyguard riding in the stern as he was fishing with his children. Cuthbert and Brunson must have known about the defection and the rescue by monitoring Carlos’s radio blips with the Russian. He didn’t try to figure out what that meant or what role Cuthbert played in this operation. Carlos was severely wounded and would not be easy to move. Tagliabue had to figure out a way to live through the night.
Tagliabue tried to engage Carlos again but the man didn’t respond. He didn’t move. Tagliabue couldn’t tell if his friend was breathing.
He worked the nylon line that Brunson had tied him with. The knots were simple double hitches, tight but not permanent, and the lines were loose enough for him to move. As he twisted and pulled to loosen the line further, the boat swept into a wide turn toward land. Within minutes he had freed one wrist. The rest was easy. He sat up against the chair and began taking off his clothes and placing his valuables in his waterproof belly-bag. As they passed within sight of the lighted fishing markers again, he brought his mouth close to the Russian’s ear.
“I’ll get help.”
Then Anthony Tagliabue dove over the stern sheets and into the ocean, leaving his clothes in a pile on the deck of the Hatteras.
The water was colder than expected, even in the middle of summer, so he was glad enough to stretch into long smooth strokes and steady kicks. He swam and stopped thinking of time. His muscles worked in rhythm, adapting to his strokes. Concentrating on breathing and kicking, he swam until he began to flag. When he looked up, the misted buoys seemed as far away as they had to begin with. Maybe he had underestimated his goal. He turned on his back and floated, kicking easily and breathing in deep draughts. The water was calm so he figured he must be inshore from Georges Bank and probably already in the Bay.
When a bout of shivers took him, he turned over again and swam. The waterproof bag around his waist pulled at him, slowed his progress, and tired his arms. Tiny waves broke over his head. He had to spew water from his mouth almost every breath now. He could no longer breathe only through his nose, but he pushed on, losing track of time, until he tired badly. His breathing turned ragged, and he knew he had made a mistake.
I should have stayed on board the Hatteras and taken my chances with Cuthbert and Brunson. Jumping overboard was a stupid move. That’s what comes from relying on my body for so long, and now I’m going to drown out here on the ocean that has sustained me all my life.
His dark thoughts were interrupted when he spotted a light, faint but clear. He must have made it to the fishing fleet. That also meant animals in the area, predator fish along with the flounder and hake the boats were netting. Closing his mind to the idea of beasts in the black depths beneath him, he struck out again, willing his tired arms to pull his weight through the water. His legs felt rubbery and he knew he was no longer kicking with any rhythm. He could hear his breath and felt his heart pumping blood like a two-stroke engine at speed. His strokes slowed. Something brushed against his arm and he slapped at the water before he caught himself. He took advantage of the adrenaline jolt to set out hard for another minute. He felt something in the water again. This time he was too tired to react. He started to go under. Reaching up in desperation, he was shocked to feel something touch his hand. He grabbed at it. His hand wrapped around rough, wire-hard cord, a cord that pulled him. Big lights lit up the night suddenly as he burst out of the water.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The timing was perfect. Adao Naňos had just begun working the winch when his cousin Nicolao lit off the flood lights. The hard work of boating the net full of fish was about to begin and Adao was glad to have it begin with efficiency. The other two crewmen were coming aft then, one rubbing sleep from his eyes, the other honing his filleting knife. None was too curious about what the Mary May had netted; they would have to separate out the non-keepers anyway and clean the catch before icing it down. It didn’t matter what was in the net, since it would all be flopping on the deck in seconds, hundreds of pounds of sea creatures desperate to escape back into the deep.
This was the last pull of the two-night voyage, though, and they would be back in port for breakfast with their families. Adao smiled at the thought as he watched the warps wind smoothly through the gantry and heard the steady power of the winch as it pulled the otter net over the stern.
“Que diablos?” he cried when he saw a naked human body entangled in the net. Nicolao jumped and ran to the back. Adao never spoke in the language of their fathers unless it was something serious. When Nicolao saw what his cousin was staring at, he killed the winch and yelled for the captain, waving his arms and pointing at the net. Everyone ran to see what the great ocean had brought up for them this time. When they saw the body they quieted, then burst into excited chatter when Anthony Tagliabue raised an arm.
They grabbed at him and pulled him to the deck. The feat required some effort, since he was bigger even than Big Horse Hardiman, the largest fisherman working the Eastport fleet. Tagliabue’s body was puckered and pale from his time in the sea. It shivered violently. His scrotum was shriveled and wrinkled. The belly-bag left deep red creases in his skin.
The crew helped him up and walked him to the cabin. They wrapped him in blankets that smelled of fish slime and the captain gave him a splash of one-hundred-proof rum in a tin cup. It burned all the way to his gut. As they laid him on a damp and sagging bunk, he smiled. He was asleep before the net was aboard and the Mary May began motoring to shore. His waterproof bag was still strapped around his waist.
Tagliabue awoke when he heard the boat’s engines working their way to its berth at the commercial fishing docks at Eastport. He was so tired he stayed on the cot. Ten minutes after the engines had shut down, Adao came to Tagliabue with a sweatshirt and a pair of cargo shorts.
“I borrowed these from Big Horse’s wife. I hope they fit.”
Tagliabue smiled his thanks and rolled from the bunk to dress. He groaned with the effort, wishing he could lie back down for another hour of rest. But he had things to do, and rest was not one of those things.
The men looked up from their work loading wooden boxes with their catch as Tagliabue walked topside, his legs a bit shaky and his arms hanging from the cut-off holes in the shirt like logs of driftwood. He sketched a salute to the men and went ashore. By the time he’d finished a piece of fried flounder with scrambled eggs and hash browns in a diner along the waterfront, the Fishermen’s United Bank was open for business. He withdrew $5,000 in hundreds, asking the teller to put five of the bills in each of five pay envelopes. He taxied into Eastport proper and bought some clothes. Properly attired and looking reasonably prosperous, he rented a car, happy enough that it had an automatic transmission and di
d not require too much in the way of a coordinated effort to drive. Tagliabue moved cautiously during all these transactions, feeling his blood cells plumping with sugar as he slowly gained his health back. It was three hours since he’d come ashore.
When he got back to the docks, the crew of Mary May was sitting on boxes and bollards, sweat staining their shirts in the midmorning sun, faces shiny. Some of their families had joined them as they waited for the fish broker to bring them the cash for their harvest. Two of the men were sipping from brown bottles of beer. They all applauded when Tagliabue stepped out of the Camry and walked down to the dock, happy enough to welcome back a man who had escaped Davy Jones’s locker, a fate they all feared deep in their hearts.
Tagliabue handed one of his pay envelopes to the captain, a wizened man whose face was darkened by the sun and scoured by the wind. He reminded Tagliabue of Joshua White.
“Thank you for your kindness to me, Skip.”
“Y’know you ain’t got to do this, mate. You’d do the same for us, more’n likely.”
“I know, but it makes me feel good.”
The skipper shrugged with his mouth and stuffed the envelope into a back pocket. The men slapped him on the shoulder as Tagliabue gave them theirs, smiling and wishing him luck. Children looked up at him with big eyes. He went back to his rental and drove off.
It was the next day before Tagliabue made it home to Bath. He had reported in Eastport that he went accidentally overboard from a big Hatteras sportfisherman, but the boat could not be located. The USCG assumed she was still out looking for her missing passenger and sent out a cutter to look for the boat. The lieutenant commander in charge of the station wondered aloud why the Hatteras had not called in a position or a request for assistance. Tagliabue didn’t wonder about that at all. Instead he went to his apartment building, showered, and called Agnes Ann.
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