Ocean's Hammer

by D. J. Goodman

  “Oh thank God,” Boleau said as she joined the two of them. “About time the Navy arrived.”

  Except something about the ship seemed wrong to Maria. After some rummaging around for their equipment – it had been scattered as everyone moved everything around looking for additional first aid supplies – Maria found the binoculars again and focused on the speck. It was definitely a marine vessel, but she didn’t think it was quite the right shape to be the Mexican Navy. She also didn’t think that the Navy would have sent just a single ship, given that the sinking of a Japanese vessel now made this whole thing an international incident they had to take seriously.

  “Huh,” Maria said. “Well I’ll be damned.”

  “What?” Cindy asked.

  “I don’t think that’s our rescue.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I think it’s Mercer’s rescue.”

  12

  While the Japanese crew, and even Vandergraf and Gary, stood up and started waving their arms in an attempt to get the attention of a ship that was obviously still too far away for it to see them, Maria got Mercer and had her look through the binoculars at the approaching ship.

  “Well?” Maria asked. “Is that it?”

  Mercer put the binoculars down and bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what the ship that was supposed to pick you up even looked like?”

  “No. They just told us someone would come for us shortly after they confirmed that we’d done our job. I didn’t even know how they were supposed to confirm it.”

  “That didn’t bother you in the slightest?” Maria asked. “Not a single red flag?”

  “No! Okay, I’m starting to realize just how stupid we really were, but we trusted what they were saying. The guy had all the right words to reassure us. We just thought the lack of extra information was in case we got caught, so we couldn’t give anyone away. Which I guess is working.”

  Maria cussed quietly to herself. While everyone else was convinced that help was on the way, she herself was doubtful. Nothing about the man Mercer had described made her think they were dealing with the kind of people that would save a bunch of people out of the goodness of their hearts. If anything, she was beginning to think they needed to keep that ship away at all costs. She said as much to Cindy and Mercer.

  “But why?” Cindy asked. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re kind of sort of in deep shit here.”

  “And I think we’re going to be in it even worse if that ship reaches us,” Maria said. She turned to Mercer. “You don’t really think they were going to let you live, do you?”

  “What? Of course they were. There was a plan.”

  “Diane, whoever the hell in on that boat has nothing to do with One Planet. They were willing to frame the group and kill a whole lot of people in the process. They wouldn’t have let some naïve young blonde get away when she had any kind of information that could link them to what happened today. Anyone who knew too much was going to go into the ocean and not come back out.”

  “Are you sure you’re not just being paranoid?” Cindy asked. Her tone of voice was distinctly worried, however.

  “Given the events of the last hour or so, I’d say staying paranoid is the healthy option for the moment,” Maria said.

  “So you’re saying you’re actually hoping these people don’t come to help us?” Cindy asked.

  “Given the fact that we’re dead in the water and unable to get away from them, it doesn’t really matter what I’m hoping. They seem to be heading this direction one way or the other. My only suggestion is that we be prepared for their intentions to be less than altruistic.”

  “Maria, sometimes I have to wonder about you,” Cindy said. Yet at the same time she found a bag of emergency supplies nearby and grabbed the flare gun from it. For a moment Maria thought she would waste it by signaling the oncoming ship. Instead she just kept it in her hand like it was a more conventional gun. Maria herself grabbed the nearest prod and wished they had somehow been able to rescue Mercer’s pistol before it had gone in the drink.

  The closer the boat got the better Maria could get an idea of its size. It was significantly smaller than the Tetsuo Maru but still larger than the Cameron, about the size of a typical Coast Guard vessel. It didn’t have any markings of the Coast Guard, however. In fact, Maria was hard pressed to find any markings on it at all, not even the boat’s name or number painted on the side. If that wasn’t an ominous detail, she didn’t know what was.

  “Can you see any of the people on board?” Cindy asked. Maria looked through the binoculars again and shook her head.

  “Nobody. No one on the deck and it looks like all the windows are tinted.”

  “Seriously?” Maria handed her the binoculars so she could see for herself. “Aw shit. Mercer, what in God’s good name have you gotten all of us into?”

  Mercer didn’t respond. Maria was happy about that, as she couldn’t imagine anything coming out of the girl’s mouth that could possibly be useful.

  “Cindy, go around to anyone who’ll listen and see what they can do about arming themselves,” Maria said. She didn’t add that she didn’t think any preparations they made would make a difference. The more she looked at the oncoming boat the more she believed that Murphy and Mercer would have never been pulled out of the sea. And now that they hadn’t found the couple where they were supposed to be, the boat was coming to make sure no one could point a finger at anyone for this disaster besides One Planet and their little group on the Cameron.

  Kevin came out and joined them on the crowded deck. The Japanese crew was celebrating their impending rescue even as Cindy whispered in Simon’s ear, who in turn went to find Monica.

  “What’s going on?” Kevin asked, and Maria filled him in on her theory with as few words as possible. Although it startled Kevin, he looked much more concerned about what was going on in the water. He pointed, and Maria realized she’d been so focused on the boat that she’d stopped giving any mind to the sharks. Although they stayed far enough under water that their fins didn’t break the surface, she could still see that they were agitated again, swimming close enough to the surface that their forms could clearly be seen in the hundreds.

  “Everyone get away from the sides,” Maria yelled. Only a few of the Japanese crewmen heard her over their own celebrating, and those few that did, didn’t seem to understand what she was saying. She had to physically pull several of them away and indicate the shapes in the water before any of them realized they weren’t as safe as they had hoped. After half a minute, they’d gotten most of the people crowded together on the center of the already too small deck. If they got out of this alive she needed to see if Kevin would be amenable to getting a bigger trimaran.

  All of the Cameron’s crew and several of the Japanese men had found something to arm themselves with, ranging from one or two flare guns on down to oars, but the few armed crewmen from the Tetsuo Maru still didn’t seem to understand why they needed them. Several of them waved their makeshift weapons at the water, which Maria supposed was a smart enough move on its own yet not quite what she was really worried about.

  “So now what?” Vandergraf asked. He himself had found one of the prods that had been in the Gutsdorfs’ Zodiac. It was a better weapon than the oars, yet if Maria’s theory was correct and whoever was in that boat would be trying to kill them, she suspected it would be with guns. Prods wouldn’t do much to stop a bullet.

  “I… I don’t really know,” Maria said. She’d spent enough time on the water that she knew how to handle all kinds of emergencies, but the approach of a ship full of people who may or may not want to kill them was new to her. The boat was close enough now that she no longer needed binoculars to see the suspicious lack of a name or any identifying markings. “Mercer, please. If there’s anything else you can tell us about these people, anything at all…”

  “I don’t know!” Mercer said. “I wasn’t ever thinking that they might try to come
kill me.”

  Maria looked down at the water again. The water was growing choppier with the volume of movement below the surface, although she noticed that there was nothing immediately surrounding the approaching boat. The hammerheads looked like they were avoiding it, but Maria had no idea why they would. They certainly hadn’t tried to avoid the Cameron up until now or the Zodiacs. It was almost as if they were…

  Wait, could that really be it? It seemed impossible, yet Maria had already seen three or four things today that she would have thought impossible at breakfast, so it no longer felt like such a leap in logic.

  “This is going to sound crazy, but I think all we need to do is buy some time,” Maria whispered to Kevin.

  “Why?” he asked. “What do you have planned?”

  “I don’t have anything planned. However, I think the sharks do.”

  “Maria, that’s crazy. They can’t make complex plans.”

  “They also can’t grow to the size of a small house or spontaneously reappear in a place where they were starting to look like they were extinct.”

  “That’s true enough, but it’s a logic leap nonetheless.”

  “Maybe it is, but it’s the only thing we have right now. Unless you’ve got a better plan to get us out of this alive?”

  Kevin sighed. “I can’t say that I do.”

  “Then play along with me. Trust me, I know this is going to seem horrible, but I know what I’m doing.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No, not even slightly. Quick, go grab the bullhorn before that boat gets within shooting range.” She turned to Mercer and Vandergraf, neither of whom had been listening in on her conversation. Good. This would be easier to sell if Mercer thought it was real. “Vandergraf? Take Mercer so she’s just inside the cabin, but keep a hold on her and be ready to bring her out when I say.”

  “Huh?” Vandergraf asked.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Mercer asked.

  “Turning you over to them. You’re the only one who really knows anything. Maybe if they have you they won’t do anything to the rest of us.” In truth Maria didn’t believe that for a second. If the people on this boat had wanted the world to believe that rogue members of One Planet were really the ones responsible for the sinking of the Tetsuo Maru, then it wouldn’t do any good for them to leave behind people that Mercer might have told the truth to.

  “Wait, you can’t do that!” Mercer said. “You’re not serious, right? That’s not the kind of person you are.”

  “Gary, can you get over here and give Vandergraf a hand?” Maria said. Gary came over with a clearly disturbed look on his face. He must have heard what they were saying.

  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this,” Gary said.

  I’m not either, Maria thought as she directed the two of them to take Mercer by the arms. She didn’t exactly feel much sympathy for Mercer right now, except she did feel wrong about telling two men she didn’t entirely trust anyway to manhandle a woman. If they do anything more to her than hold her steady I will neuter them both with my bare hands.

  They dragged her out of sight of the approaching ship just as Kevin came back with the bullhorn. It was standard equipment for these kind of trips where they might need to communicate with any offending ships in any manner of ways. Maria turned it on once she thought the ship was within hearing distance but maybe, she hoped, not quite close enough that anyone on board would easily be able to shoot them.

  “This is a message for whoever’s on that boat,” she shouted. “We’d like to make a deal.”

  For several seconds, the boat continued to approach. Then it stopped rather abruptly. She still couldn’t see any movement on the deck, and the windows to the bridge were tinted dark enough that she couldn’t see inside. That was hardly standard.

  “Maybe it would be better if we tried to communicate with them over the radio,” Kevin whispered in her ear. Maria shook her head and turned the bullhorn off just long enough so the other ship wouldn’t be able to hear her.

  “No, I want to try getting someone out on the deck. We’ll just pretend the radio is a busted as the engines.” She turned the bullhorn back on. Now was the time to test her bullshit skills. “We have Diane Mercer, or whatever the hell her real name might be. We’re willing to give her to you, but we want to talk terms first.” She thought for a second and then added, “We have plenty of guns. If you try to get to close without our say so we will shoot.”

  “That’s a bit ballsy,” Kevin said in her ear. His voice had an interesting combination of worry, amusement, and perhaps a little bit of love. There was a reason he liked her, after all.

  She lowered the bullhorn. “I want them to at least pause before they start shooting us.”

  “If that’s really what they want to do,” Kevin said. “We still don’t know.”

  Maria shook her head. “At this point I truly doubt they’re only here to bake us a cake.”

  Now they had no choice but to wait.

  13

  There were several minutes before anything else happened. The Tetsuo Maru crew was finally realizing that something was terribly wrong, and although Maria didn’t understand what they were muttering, Kevin assured her it wasn’t happy. Then there was movement on the deck as a gentleman came out and stood near the bow. He also had a bullhorn, although he fumbled with it for several seconds as though he had never used one before and wasn’t sure how to turn it on. In her mind, Maria had almost expected a mysterious man in a black suit and mirrored sunglasses, but his appearance was much more mundane. He wore blue jeans, although they were a little too clean and crisp to be anything other than new. He also had on a plain red t-shirt with a pocket full of cigarettes over his heart. He did wear a life vest but it wasn’t buckled. It didn’t even look like he’d bothered adjusting the straps so it fit him, giving him the appearance that he was too big for his clothes even though he was rather short and skinny. This was not a man who was used to being on the open water, and he had trouble staying straight as the boat rocked beneath him. Maria noticed that the water underneath his boat was getting choppier by the minute even while the water around the Cameron calmed down.

  Finally, the man got the bullhorn turned on. Even over the megaphone, his raspy voice somehow managed to sound soft-spoken. “Can I please speak to whoever’s in charge?” he asked.

  Maria paused long enough to look over at Kevin. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod. This might have been his boat and his mission, but in this he was giving her all his trust. She hoped she wasn’t about to waste it.

  “That would be me,” she responded back through her own bullhorn.

  Although there was just enough distance between them that it was hard for her to tell for sure, Maria thought the man looked surprised. That little flinch was a mistake. It told her that he knew she wasn’t supposed to be the one in command. And if he knew that much, he probably knew exactly who was on this boat. A random ship floating through the middle of nowhere wouldn’t have known that. Through that small movement he’d given up any chance of pretending he was not, in fact, here to pick up a fugitive saboteur.

  She couldn’t quite tell if he realized that, though, or if that had ever been his plan at all. He looked long and hard at the motley crew on the deck before responding. “You said you were armed. I don’t see much in the way of guns.”

  “Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there,” she said. While she tried not to look away from the man, she was also trying to keep an eye on whatever might be happening in the water. Although she could see the tips of numerous dorsal fins now, there was nothing to exactly support her hypothesis that the sharks were actively planning something. Suddenly that entire line of thought seemed utterly ridiculous. She might just be gambling all their lives on a possibility that no self-respecting scientist would have ever entertained.

  “I’m sure,” the man said. She didn’t even need to see him up close to hear the way his smug smile came t
hrough in his voice. “You said you have Diane Mercer. What about Kirk Murphy?”

  Maria had almost forgot that they were supposed to pick up both of them. She saw an opportunity for a little more negotiating room. “He’s not here, but we know where he is.”

  The man paused. Maria wished they were able to do this closer together. From this distance, she had some trouble reading his reactions. She supposed it worked in her favor, though. If she couldn’t be sure about him then he couldn’t be sure about her either. “Can you show her to me?” he asked.

  Maria stopped to think about it just long enough to look at his ship and make sure there were no obvious places where a sniper or something might be. She gestured to Gary and Vandergraf standing just out of sight and had them bring out Mercer for just a moment. Once she was sure the man had seen her she waved them away. Mercer struggled against them as they pulled her back out of sight. She really was a dumb one, Maria realized. The last place she wanted to be right now was in the open.

  “I do have to say, ma’am…” He thought for a moment then shrugged. “I mean, Miss Quintero. I have to say that this is not how I expected this to go today.”

  Oh you have no idea, Maria thought. She risked a glance at the water and saw a large number of dorsal fins openly circling the man’s boat. She still wasn’t one hundred percent certain what that meant, but she hoped it was a good sign.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t,” Maria said. “You seem to have me at a disadvantage. You know my name. Can I have something to call you?”

  “Smith, I suppose.”

  “Seriously?”

  “What did you expect, my real name?”

  “No, I guess not.”