Dark Moon Walking

by R. J. McMillen

  But what he wanted was to see the black ship for himself.

  “Is there an easy way up?” he asked.

  Walker pointed out the trail he had taken and Dan headed up. He slowed as he reached the summit. He didn’t know how close the black ship was or how exposed he might be. Plus, the girl might not be expecting him.

  She was sitting in the shadows, watching his approach.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Dan.” He stopped and waited for her to respond. Considering all she had been through, she was undoubtedly exhausted and scared and maybe near breaking point. There was no need to add to her stress.

  There was a faint rustle as she stood up and stepped out into the light.

  “Thanks so much for coming.” She walked toward him. “I’m Claire.”

  The greeting seemed formal and was at odds with her tousled hair and rumpled clothes. Shadows rimmed her eyes and there were lines of tension drawn around her mouth, but in spite of that, she looked surprisingly healthy. She also looked . . . what? Open? Warm? Maybe both, although neither was exactly right. It was something more than that. Perhaps “real” was the closest he could get, but whatever it was, he found himself drawn to her in a way that he would have had difficulty explaining—or even admitting—to himself. And that smile. It was amazing, especially considering the circumstances. He felt himself respond to it instantly. It was like Susan’s . . . He shut off the thought before it had time to complete.

  “The black ship . . . ?” he asked.

  Her smile dimmed, and she turned to point back at the trees.

  Walker was right, of course. The black ship was still anchored and there was no sign of activity. At least, not that Dan could see. He checked the angle of the sun for possible reflection, then raised the binoculars he had brought with him. They were surveillance binoculars, 20x50 power. He didn’t have a tripod, but there were plenty of rocks scattered along the ridge that he could use to keep them steady. At this distance they wouldn’t let him see much detail, but they would help some.

  He let his eyes drift slowly from bow to stern, then top deck to waterline. There was a forest of antennae. He counted two radar, a couple of satellite phones, a satellite dish, GPS, SSB, VHF. The works. Nothing unusual and nothing useful. A rigid-hull inflatable maybe twenty-five-feet long swung on davits above the upper deck, and two dinghies floated off the stern, just as Walker had described. Nothing special about them either. He couldn’t make out the name or port of registration. Just a faint tracery of lines on the stern. Same thing for the registration number. No flag either. Nothing.

  He was about to turn away when movement caught his eye, and he quickly swung the glasses forward. Someone was coming out of the wheelhouse. Dan was too far away to make out his features, but as he watched the man walk aft along the deck he felt a faint shiver of recognition. There was something familiar there. Nothing specific. Not at that distance. More a combination of shape and movement: top-heavy with an odd mincing twist to his walk. That and a heavy thatch of thick, dark hair. Probably curly from the way it caught the light. He had seen him before. But where?

  The man disappeared into the cabin a few seconds later, and when he failed to reappear Dan slid back down to join Walker and Claire. They had both caught his reaction when he noted the movement and now they were staring at him, waiting to hear if he had seen anything. He shook his head. “Nothing happening. Time to get out of here.” He turned to Walker. “Got the radio handy?”

  Walker passed it over to him. Dan had left the SSB radio open back on Dreamspeaker, as well as the vHF, in the hope that he could hear and speak directly to Hargreaves from the hand-held. He didn’t want to think about what it would cost him when the bill came in, but whatever it was, it would be worth it if it worked. It did—sort of. Hargreaves’s voice faded in and out and sounded weird, but there was enough to make out the gist of what he was saying.

  Hargreaves still had White Hair at Shoal Bay. The guys could see him clearly. He was standing on the wharf, supervising the retrieval operation. The “loggers” had been sorted into teams: three men in each of the two aluminum dinghies that belonged to the crew boat, and one standing up on the wharf. There was another man there too. A heavy-set, swarthy-looking guy with his hair pulled back into a ponytail. The men in one of the boats had pulled up a black metal canister. It was obviously heavy and they had had trouble getting it into their boat, but they had manhandled it in and were in the process of bringing it back to the wharf. The other boat was still pulling chain. They were taking it slow and being very careful.

  “The dark guy has to be White Hair’s pal,” Dan told Hargreaves. “The description’s right on.” He looked over at Walker and Claire. “We’ll be leaving here in about five minutes. Should be back on board in about an hour. I’ll keep in touch.” He slid the radio into his pocket and started down to the shore. “Okay, guys. Follow me.”

  He was about to step into the Zodiac when he realized that Walker hadn’t moved.

  ELEVEN

  “You’ll be a sitting duck out there!” Dan shook his head in frustration as he took in Walker’s imperturbable expression. The man was still perched up on the knoll where he had been when Dan first arrived.

  Walker shrugged. “Who’s going to care about a crippled Indian in a beat-up canoe?”

  A smile masked the cynicism, but Dan heard it. He wasn’t buying.

  “Oh, bullshit! Don’t give me that crap. These guys are serious. We might not know what they’re up to, but we do know they don’t want any witnesses. If they see you out there, they’re going to try to get rid of you.”

  Another shrug. “I’ll wait till dark. Stay in close.”

  “Close to what? There’s a mile of open water out there!” Dan turned to the girl. “Can you talk some sense into him?”

  Claire blinked at him in surprise. “Me?”

  Dan nodded at her, taking in her reaction. Other than a brief acknowledgment when he first saw her, Dan had barely addressed a word to her—the situation they were in didn’t exactly encourage the niceties—so it was hardly fair to expect her to jump in now. But Walker liked her, and he might listen to her reasoning. He watched as she looked back and forth between them, silently urging her to add her encouragements to his. Meanwhile, Walker continued to sit on the rocky outcropping above them, a slight smile playing across his face. He was relaxed, at ease, even comfortable. Dan, on the other hand, was so tense his back felt rigid, his arms and legs frozen, hands clenched at his side.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think I can.” She met his stare full on. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  Dan snorted. “Yeah, right.” He turned away abruptly and let his gaze wander out over the water, trying to reconcile himself to the inevitable. There had been a time when he could simply impose his will on others, Walker included, but it seemed that time had passed. Now he had no choice but to respect the decision this taciturn, solitary man had made. Walker would stay on the island, at least till nightfall, and then leave in his canoe. Dan was not even sure where he would go when he left. Walker hadn’t said he was going back to his home—wherever that was—but he hadn’t agreed to come to Dreamspeaker either.

  Dan turned back to find both of them watching him and threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay. I give up.” He turned and reached down into the Zodiac for the radio he had just taken back.

  “Here. You may as well keep this. At least let me know where you are. Call me if you need help.” He scrambled up a few feet of rock and held it out so Walker could reach it.

  There were a few seconds of hesitation and then it was removed from his hand.

  “Thanks.”

  “Yeah. Make sure you use it. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

  Walker smiled but said nothing.

  Dan, with Claire sitting quietly beside him, made it back to Dreamspeaker in well under an hour. With no radio to keep him informed and no need for a quiet approach, he simply ran full out the whole way. The spee
d and power helped him deal with his frustration and took his mind off Walker.

  He barely glanced at Claire. He knew she was on the edge of exhaustion, her skin wan beneath streaks of dirt, her hair lank, and her eyes ringed with a bruised, bluish tinge. Yet she hadn’t complained, either on the island when he had told her they could not take her kayak with them or here in the dinghy, where she was forced to brace herself against the constant pounding. And she had showed spunk when she stood up for Walker. He wondered whether Walker had told her that her boat had been sunk or whether that would become his job. He hoped not. He was not good at giving bad news and he hated having to do it.

  Back at Dreamspeaker, he helped Claire on board, dug out a towel and a clean T-shirt, and then pointed her to the shower. Once he heard the water running, he returned to the galley, put on a pot of coffee, and made up a couple of sandwiches. He was not sure she would be able to stay awake long enough to eat them, but she needed food. She looked like a starving waif.

  While he was waiting for her to finish her shower, he headed forward to the wheelhouse and called the Lindsay.

  “Any change?” he asked Hargreaves.

  “Nope. It’s starting to get dark so the guys can’t really see well, but it looks like they’re either slowing down or close to finished. They’ve pulled five canisters up so far and they’re working on a sixth. They’ve got them all lined up along the dock.”

  “Have they opened any of them?”

  “Nope. Just put ’em down real careful and left them. Looks like the guy with the ponytail is in charge of that end of things.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  There was a pause and Dan could sense Hargreaves deciding how much he should share.

  “Figuring it out as we go. Technically, we’ve got nothing on them.”

  Dan got the message. He wasn’t going to get much. “Keep me in the loop. I’ve got the girl on board. I don’t want to risk running into trouble.”

  “Yeah. Okay. You got the Indian too?”

  “No. He stayed with his canoe.”

  Hargreaves was quiet for a minute as he considered that, then asked, “Has he got a radio?”

  “Yeah. I gave him my hand-held.”

  “Huh. You keep me informed too, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He headed back toward the galley. The shower had quit and there was no sound coming from the head. He stuck his head around the open stateroom door and saw a pile of clothes on the floor but no sign of the girl. He found her sitting at the table in the galley. She had already finished half of a sandwich and was well on her way to finishing it off. Her hair had been roughly toweled and it stuck up in spikes all over her head. The T-shirt he had given her was at least three sizes too large and the neck hung down over her shoulders, but her eyes had lost some of the bruised look and her color was better.

  She held the half-eaten sandwich up in the air. “I hope this was for me?”

  Dan eased himself in to the other side of the table. “I figured you might be a little hungry.”

  She grimaced. “Hungry? I’m starving! I could eat wood chips and grubs.”

  He smiled and pushed the other sandwich across to her. “Want some coffee?”

  The corners of her mouth lifted in the beginning of a smile, and once again he found himself responding to some unidentifiable magnetism. He felt ridiculously pleased that he could put her at ease, but at the same time he felt perilously close to his own demons. He knew he’d have to be careful.

  “I’d love some, but I think I might fall asleep before I can drink it.”

  He shrugged and stood up to reach the coffee pot. When he turned back to the table, her smile had disappeared again and she was staring up at him, her eyes huge and dark.

  “Will they find us here?”

  He sat down and slid a cup across the table. “No. Not likely. They have no reason to come this way. And even if they do, they won’t know you’re aboard. I talked to them back there at Annie’s boat—you know Annie, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “They think I’m just a guy passing through on my way down south.”

  “You talked to them?” Her voice rose in pitch.

  “Relax. It’s okay. I don’t know how much Walker told you, but I’ll fill in all the details after you’ve caught up on some sleep. You’re just barely keeping your eyes open sitting there.” He reached out a hand and helped her up, then led her down the passageway.

  He thought she might have been asleep before he closed the door to the stateroom.

  Walker didn’t answer until his fourth call, and Dan worked hard to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Where are you?”

  “Heading your way.”

  “You going to make it tonight?”

  “Probably not.”

  Dan shook his head. “Where the hell do you sleep? Under a rock?”

  He didn’t expect an answer and he got none. “I’ll leave the radio on. Be careful. Call me if you need me.”

  He dug a beer out of the refrigerator and turned on the stereo. He figured Claire would probably sleep through a brass band playing a Sousa march on the deck, but he kept it low anyway. Didn’t need volume to let the sweet sounds of Coltrane’s saxophone seep into his soul, and it helped him think. He dragged a notebook out of the drawer and started to make some notes.

  Coltrane had morphed into the plaintive wail of Charlie “Yardbird” Parker’s alto sax and Dan still had nothing. There were too many pieces of the puzzle missing. He needed a place to start. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift with the music. A faint image pulsed and coiled on the inside of his eyelids, gradually coalescing into the shape of the man he had seen on the black ship. A memory feathered through his brain, but it twisted out of reach and he couldn’t grasp it. Who was he?

  The last note of Parker’s “Ornithology” faded into the night and he felt the silence settle over him, quieting his mind and relaxing his body. It was late. Walker obviously wasn’t going to call again. Time to turn in. He pulled a sleeping bag out of a storage locker under the settee and took it up to the wheelhouse. Childhood memories of storm-dark nights and long hours in the wheelhouse watching to make sure the anchor hadn’t dragged, checking that the wind hadn’t shifted, had spurred him into building a bunk behind the chart table. Tonight there was barely a breeze, and the boat was steady as a rock, but the radio would be only a few feet away. He turned the volume up just in case.

  Four hours later, it came to life.

  “You awake?”

  Walker’s voice cut through the layers of sleep like a machete and catapulted Dan off the bunk. He struggled to free his feet from the sleeping bag and fumbled for the microphone.

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t sound it.”

  “Funny guy. What the hell time is it?”

  “White man’s time?”

  “Ah, shit. Never mind.” Dan peered out blindly through the windshield into an ink-dark night. “What’s happening?”

  “I’m in Shoal Bay.”

  A surge of adrenalin brought every nerve cell revving to instant attention. He wasn’t sure he had heard right. “Say again?”

  There was no response, just the faint hiss of the air waves coming from the speaker.

  “Are you nuts? Why? Is the crew boat still there?” The questions tumbled over each other as Dan fought to make sense of what Walker was saying.

  “Nope.”

  “They left?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So there’s no one there?”

  “Couple of guys. They’re up at the old lodge.”

  Dan rubbed his face. Maybe he was having a nightmare. None of this made sense. It was so crazy, it was disorienting.

  “What if they’re armed? Get the hell out of there!”

  “They’re sleeping. I can hear them from here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Down by the float.”

  “Down by the float.” It was ridiculous to simply echo Walker’s wor
ds, but Dan couldn’t find any of his own. “Huh. So now what?”

  “Got a bunch of canisters and a box here.”

  Dan sucked in his breath and his eyes fixed on the microphone as if it were a snake that had come alive in his hand. “They left them there?”

  “Yeah. Guess the sleeping beauties are supposed to be keeping watch.”

  “Walker, leave them alone. You can’t open them, and one slip will wake those guards. Then what happens?”

  He could hear the smile in Walker’s voice. “You got a short memory.”

  “What?”

  “Remember how we met?”

  Dan grimaced. This was not going well. He had to find a way to get Walker out of there.

  “Walker . . .”

  “The box is full of spray cans.”

  “What?”

  “Spray cans. You know. Kinda like paint cans, only little. You got to pull a trigger thing.”

  “Spray cans.” He was back to echoing.

  “Yeah. But they’re plastic.”

  “Okay.” Dan shook his head. This wasn’t a nightmare. It was more like science fiction. Or a scene from Alice in Wonderland. Maybe he had fallen down a rabbit hole.

  “I opened one of the canisters. It’s got a bunch of cooking stuff all packed in foam and plastic.”

  “Cooking stuff.” The repeating thing again. Maybe he was the rabbit. “Wait a minute. You opened a canister? Shit! They’re going to know. Soon as those guys wake up . . .”

  “I closed it again.”

  “Oh. Right. Sure.” Considering what else Walker had done, he supposed that made some kind of sense. Maybe. “So what are you doing now? Are you planning . . .”

  “Gotta go. I can hear those guys moving.”

  The radio went dead, but Dan continued to stand there, staring at the unblinking red light that was the only illumination in the wheelhouse. He was a rational man and his life was based on logic and reason. He remembered taking an aptitude test when he had first applied to the police force. It had been twelve pages of odd, disjointed, seemingly unrelated and irrelevant questions. Crazy stuff. He had thought the whole thing a total waste of time: who cared if he jumped in piles of leaves or rolled up the toothpaste tube? But the next day, when he had been summoned to a meeting with the recruitment-office commander and a staff shrink, they told him more about himself than he had ever thought possible. It was so accurate, so detailed, it was eerie. They knew he was good at math. They knew he liked to work with his hands and was good with tools. They knew he loved puzzles. They even told him he was artistic, although his wood carving was something he had never shared with anyone except Susan. They also told him that he had received the highest score they had ever seen on the deductive reasoning scale. Two days later, he was invited to the police academy.