Dark Moon Walking

by R. J. McMillen

  None of it made sense. Claire would have had the engine running and the switches on if she had been fighting the storm. And if she was losing the battle, she would have tried to anchor. Unless she had not been aboard and the boat had come adrift from the dock. He glanced down to where the mooring lines floated in the water, undulating like seaweed in the waves. Maybe that was it. But where was the dinghy? And the kayak?

  He pushed the canoe to shore, slipped behind a fringe of branches, and slid up on the rocky beach. He needed time to think, to absorb whatever information the boat could give him. As he clambered out over the rocks, one of his questions was quickly answered. Behind a mound of jumbled logs and flotsam, a small, bright-blue boat lay wedged tightly under an overhang, a gaping hole in its bottom. He had found the dinghy. Claire was not in it.

  Much later, he let the canoe drift back out into the current and turned it toward the pass. He would take the long route to Shoal Bay. It would take him past the coves where Claire and Island Girl might have been seen if she had headed up to the big pass. It would also let him arrive after dark, and some instinct told him that might be a good thing.

  By dusk he had covered more than twenty miles. He was tired and hungry, even though Annie had shared her meal of oysters with him when he had stopped to talk to her, and Old Tom had given him a handful of dried berries. He had told them that Claire was missing but not that he had found her boat. He didn’t know why he had withheld that information. At first he told himself that he didn’t want to frighten them. There was truth in that, but it wasn’t the whole reason. That was something more personal. More raw. His grandmother would have said that his spirit was linked with Claire’s. That perhaps held more truth, although he did not understand how that could be.

  He had never really believed in the world of totems and spirits he had been born into, never called on the powers his membership in the Salmon and Raven clans gave him. Yet he knew the meaning that that world held for his people. Knew the beliefs that sustained them. He had seen the ceremonies, heard the stories, even danced the dances, but he had been too cynical, too hungry, too restless to listen. Now he wished he had. Now he wished he could turn into a raven and fly.

  None of the water folk had seen anything of Claire, but he knew they would search for her. He had wanted to warn them to be careful but didn’t know how to put into words what was only a gut feeling. Instead, he pointed them north and east, reserving the southwest for himself. There was something happening that had nothing to do with the storm. He could feel it. It was man-made and it was evil and somehow it involved the black ship.

  Long after the sun had set he rounded the point of Benjamin Island, across the channel from Shoal Bay. He kept close to shore, steering the canoe gently among the rocks. Even before Shoal Bay opened up, he could see movement on the water. Three small boats moved back and forth, the narrow beams of spotlights focused on the water ahead of their bows. The sound of voices occasionally reached him above the sound of the motors, but he could not make out the words. Above it all, he could hear the rattle of chains and the harsh sound of metal striking metal. The sounds were punctuated by loud splashes.

  Slowly he edged the canoe forward, using the rocks to propel himself so that the splash of his paddle would not draw attention. The black ship lay alongside the wharf. It was no longer silent. Bright lights lit the deck, where several men were maneuvering some kind of metallic cylinder over the railing using one of the davit cranes. As each dinghy approached, the crane swung a cylinder out and lowered it gently to the waiting boat. Two men in the dinghy then carefully settled the metal tube into some kind of device set near the bow before releasing the crane hook and heading over to the east shore of the bay, where they disappeared from view behind the point. The process was repeated for the next dinghy. And the next. Supervising it all was a man with hair so pale it seemed to be alight with its own luminescence.

  Walker stayed motionless against the rocks. It was almost midnight when the activity in the bay ceased and the three dinghies were winched back aboard. An hour later the black ship was quiet again. Still Walker remained. He felt the current slow and then reverse, gently tugging him backward. Several times he thought about moving, but the occasional glow of a cigarette tip high up on the western point of the bay held him. Finally, his patience was rewarded as the thin beam of a flashlight pierced the darkness, moving slowly back down toward the ship.

  Cautiously, he let the canoe float free, guiding it gently with his hands until he felt safe enough to dig the paddle into the water. Grimacing as the muscles in his shoulders protested, he steered back toward the bays he had visited earlier. He was exhausted. He had been on or in the water for almost eighteen hours, and he had long ago lost most of the feeling in his legs. Mind you, that was probably a good thing, he thought grimly, as a shaft of pain shot through his hip. The rest of him hurt more than enough to make up for it. Not that it mattered. There was the girl to find, and his gut told him that there was very little time to find her.

  Annie’s boat rocked gently in the shallows, lifting slowly with the waves. Its dark hull loomed a solid black against the night sky, forbidding and silent. Walker hesitated for a moment before reaching out and rapping the hull with his paddle. Annie was quick with her shotgun, and he had no desire to test either her accuracy or her temper. He craned his head back to look up at the railing as he rapped a second time, a little harder.

  “Annie! Annie, it’s Walker.”

  He waited a couple of minutes and was about to try again when her harsh voice screamed down at him.

  “What the hell do you want?” she yelled as she leaned out over the rail. “It ain’t even light yet!”

  He heard the sound of metal scraping against metal and caught the glint of a barrel sliding down toward him.

  “Come on out where I can see you,” she rasped. “You ain’t Walker. He was here yesterday.”

  “It’s me, Annie.” He slid out cautiously from under the curve of the hull. “I need your help.”

  “Walker? That you?”

  He couldn’t make out her expression, but he thought she might have relaxed her grip on the shotgun.

  “Goddamn it. You scared the shit out of me. What the hell are you doing here in the middle of the fuckin’ night?” She peered down at him for a few more seconds, then moved away from the rail. He heard her clumping heavily along the deck as she headed toward the bow. She was muttering as she went, and then came the sound of a door slamming. A light appeared in the cabin.

  It took Walker a long time to get out of the canoe. He had moved around to the beach behind the boat, but he was so cold and stiff he wasn’t sure if he would ever get his legs moving. Finally he managed to twist himself upright using a rusty ladder that hung down the side of the hull. Staggering over the rough ground, he slowly made his way over to the narrow boards that formed a path up from the shore to the deck. He used his hands to pull himself up them.

  Inside the cabin, Annie was bent over a cast-iron stove, angrily stirring the embers with a poker. She kept her back to him, pointedly ignoring him as he slid awkwardly past two large black cats and onto the bench of the dinette.

  He leaned his head back tiredly against the cabin wall and closed his eyes. “Thank you,” he rasped, his voice sounding as rusty as the rest of him felt.

  There was no response, but he heard the sound of the kettle sliding across the grate and water being poured. Minutes later a cup landed on the table in front him and the smell of coffee filled his nostrils.

  “Find her?” Annie’s voice was still harsh, but underneath he could hear her concern. She too had grown fond of the girl over the summer.

  He pushed himself up and shook his head. “Nope. Found her boat though.”

  Annie’s gaze sharpened. “Where?”

  “Over in Half Moon Cove.”

  He heard her sharply inhaled breath, but she didn’t speak. He turned to look blindly out the dark window.

  “Lying in five feet of w
ater.” His voice roughened with sudden anger. “Looks like someone towed it there and sank it.” He looked back at Annie, his dark eyes burning with a flat, black fury. “The dinghy’s there too, thrown up on the rocks. They holed that too.”

  “Holed it?” Her weathered face took on a look of complete puzzlement. “What the hell are you talking about? You crazy or something?”

  She turned away from him to poke more wood into the stove, then reached over to pick up one of the cats. It nuzzled into her neck, purring loudly as she gently stroked its back.

  He watched her, drawn by the tenderness he saw in the action. She was a big woman, perhaps six feet tall, with rough, calloused hands and feet that were perpetually stuffed into caulk logger’s boots. He had never seen her in anything but a torn flannel shirt and stained work pants held up by red suspenders. Now she was wrapped in a threadbare robe, the hem of a flannel nightgown brushing the toes of a pair of worn fleece slippers. The long iron-gray hair she usually wore in a braid hung in wisps over her shoulders, giving her a look of vulnerability he had never noticed before.

  “Why the hell would anyone put a hole in it?” she continued, staring at him as she tried to make sense of his words and obviously failing. It was a rhetorical question, and they sat in silence as they both considered the implications.

  “So where’s the girl?” she asked finally. “She get blown ashore or what?”

  He shook his head, still staring out into the darkness. “No. I don’t know what happened, but the boat was sunk deliberately. I think maybe Claire got away in the kayak. It’s not there.”

  Silence fell again. There was nothing to say.

  It was Walker who woke first. The warmth of the cabin had wrapped around him, relaxing tired muscles and bringing a deep and dreamless sleep, but the first pale hint of daylight brought him instantly alert. He was alone. Annie had covered him with a blanket before returning to her bed. He could hear her steady snoring coming from the forward cabin.

  He pushed himself upright and looked around. He had only been inside Annie’s boat a couple of times before, and he remembered his amazement the first time he saw it. It was certainly not what he had expected. The outside matched the woman who owned it: large and rough. The inside was an entirely different matter. Simple padded benches surrounded a wooden table, a cast-iron stove gleamed against the bulkhead, and a heavy black kettle issued a welcoming wisp of steam. China cups swung from hooks below the cupboards. Colorful prints filled the open spaces on the walls, most of them scenes of thatched cottages and gardens, and the oiled wood floor was covered with a scattering of faded rugs. It wasn’t opulent, but it was neat and clean.

  Even more surprising were a small refrigerator he found humming softly in the galley and the speakers that were almost hidden behind shelves of books in the salon. As his eyes took it all in he came to the understanding that this was a home, warm and comfortable and well cared for. By the time he had reached the bridge and seen the gleaming array of instruments sitting on the wide ledge in front of the windshield, his face had taken on the bemused expression of a child at a magic show. Annie had laughed at his look of amazement.

  “Bit more than you expected?” she had cackled loudly as she proudly showed him the generator that kept the batteries charged.

  Now he stood up and moved forward to the wheelhouse. The dial on the radio glowed green and the power light blinked reassuringly. He picked up the microphone, feeling awkward and uncomfortable with it in his hand. It was a reminder of another life, an alien technology he had thought he would never need again. He didn’t want to use it. It was the one link he had to the man he had once hated. The man who had put him in jail. The man who had helped give him his life back. The man who might be able to help him find the girl.

  He pressed the switch. “Dreamspeaker. Dreamspeaker. Dreamspeaker. Walker calling.”

  FIVE

  The black ship floated gently at anchor at the head of a small inlet, her name, Snow Queen, inscribed in pale charcoal-gray script across her stern. Someone, Harry couldn’t remember who, had come up with it as a joke, but Harry had liked it.

  On deck, Javier Fernandez sat quietly, his lean frame draped easily over an upholstered teak chaise. It was not the kind of quiet that Harry Coombs liked. He had seen Fernandez like this before and two men had died in the fury that erupted when the quiet ended. He did not want that to happen here. Not only would he be one of the ones in the line of fire, but if he survived the tempest, he would have bodies to dispose of and a boat to clean. Neither was easy.

  Harry glanced down at his empty glass and gestured to the man behind the bar. If this had been his regular crew, he would not have needed to ask, but Fernandez had insisted that his own men staff the yacht and Harry had reluctantly agreed. Only Harry’s captain remained aboard, and Harry shuddered to think what it would have been like had he also been replaced.

  Harry Coombs was sixty-five, shorter and heavier than he liked to pretend, with the engaging look of an aging leprechaun. His florid cheeks and unruly shock of black hair had served him well and, combined with brilliant blue eyes and an impish smile, had helped him amass a fortune exporting used heavy equipment to war-ravaged countries in Asia and Africa. When the iron curtain fell, Harry easily switched to buying and selling other things: surplus tanks, rocket launchers, and machine guns were followed by bombs, land mines, and all kinds of electronic devices. There was never a shortage of either sellers or buyers, and while trade in weapons was frowned upon by authorities at home, it was still legal if you followed all the rules. Harry didn’t, but he paid his lawyers enough to ensure that it looked as if he did. Other things he had more recently added to his inventory were even less acceptable. The occasional shipment of opium or heroin. Carefully wrapped bricks of hashish. Blocks of pressed marijuana. Boxes of oddly colored pills. Even occasional passengers who used only a first name and had no papers to identify them. Harry was not fussy as long as it paid well.

  Fernandez was his best customer. He provided an endless supply of goods of one kind or another, all of them packaged in such a way as to pass inspection and all of them complete with documentation that eased the task of the carefully nurtured and amply rewarded customs officials at the destination.

  The barman finally arrived with his drink and slid it carelessly across the table, ignoring the two empty glasses already there. Both belonged to Harry; Fernandez had yet to touch his brandy, although his long slim fingers tapped slowly and rhythmically on the snifter.

  “It’s not going to be a problem.” Harry spoke into the silence. “She’ll come back and find her boat gone and figure it went adrift in the storm.”

  The figure across from him remained silent, and Harry’s unease grew. “We need to move,” he continued. “If we’re seen here, it will look odd. There’s nothing here, no reason to be here. We’re supposed to be taking a quick trip along the coast to test the new engines and show you the wondrous sights.” He laughed at his own wit as he let his glance wander around the gloomy bay that surrounded them.

  Still Fernandez remained silent, and Harry finally stood up and wandered back to the wheelhouse.

  Fernandez followed his passage with half-closed eyes, his fingers maintaining their hypnotic rhythm on his glass. Harry was fast becoming a nuisance. He had good instincts where his business was concerned, but he was becoming too fond of the rewards. In a year or two he would simply be another aging playboy, uncaring and incautious, totally immersed in living the high life. That trait served Fernandez well right now, but once this was over, Harry would have to go. In any case, he was wrong about the girl, although he was right about moving. It was time.

  Their passage up here had been carefully plotted to appear casual: a business associate taking a break on board a friend’s yacht. Fernandez had flown in early in order to ensure their departure appeared leisurely. There had been a couple of lunches at which Harry introduced him as a business colleague. Dinner with a group of lawyers and accountants. A night at
the theater with an investment banker and his wife, who had sported a stunning display of jewelry and spent the evening alternately stroking her husband’s coat sleeve and looking at Fernandez from under her false eyelashes. They had even hosted a party aboard the yacht the evening before their departure, lavishly catered and attended by an eclectic mix of neighboring yacht owners and the artistic types that Harry loved to mingle with.

  They loaded crates of food and wine, which delivery boys placed on waiting palettes to be winched aboard. Fishing rods, encased in graphite tubes, were delivered by a UPS truck. New electronic gear, sealed in original cardboard boxes, arrived in a black van emblazoned with the name of a marine electronics company and were carried aboard by two tradesmen dressed in shirts embroidered with the company logo.

  Alex and Gunter came aboard separately. Harry greeted each of them warmly and publicly and later took them all on a tour of the harbor in the big runabout that now hung on davits above the top deck. A van brought a mountain of luggage and disgorged it onto the dock. Four more of Fernandez’s men, all wearing the navy-blue shorts and monogrammed T-shirt that Harry provided to his crew, carried it aboard and stowed it in the cabins. Meanwhile, Harry and Fernandez wandered the decks with binoculars and cameras or relaxed on the aft deck, drinks in hand.

  They left on schedule and without a hitch. Fernandez had expected none. The goods had arrived weeks before, each shipped separately in small, carefully hidden containers. They had been received, re-packaged, and carefully placed in the cartons and crates that had been delivered and loaded on board Snow Queen. Fuses coiled in fishing rods. Timers stowed inside electronics. Explosives inserted into cereal boxes. Small canisters of gas mixed in with the kitchen supplies.

  If there was going to be a problem, it would have been at customs when the items first arrived, not now, when they were simply being loaded aboard a yacht at a marina.