The Target

by Roger Weston

  Adrenaline filled him, and Jake propelled himself forward with the controlled thrusts of his legs. He favored the right leg as the left felt like a fillet on a barbecue. Despite his adrenaline, he kicked slowly and powerfully. The water was murky, but sea life emerged in though clouds of silt. A yellow starfish clung to a rock. Seals flew through the green water like birds, swooping down by heaps of massive whale bones. Sponges lived on the rocks beneath the kelp forest. All around Jake, the food chain was active. The strong and the lucky survived; the weak and the unlucky perished.

  Jake saw a brown crab with exceptionally long thin legs clawing through seaweed. The crab’s color was identical to the seaweed, and the natural camouflage made it almost invisible. With caution, Jake slowed down and scanned the reaches of the murky water. Staying on a course that paralleled the bubbles he’d seen from the fleeing shooters, he swam past several pulsating white jelly fish and entered a giant patch of kelp that waved in the current. He pushed the kelp aside as he slid through the openings. As he left the kelp patch, he noticed movement on both sides. Glancing left, he got a mental snapshot that jolted him—a face mask and a spear gun sticking out of the kelp.

  In this moment of unexpected terror, Jake violently propelled himself upward. When he looked to the right, he saw another horrible sight—a diver thrashing, the spear lodged in his chest. They’d closed in on him with a classic pincher movement, but thanks to the murky water, one had speared the other.

  Jake looked back the other way, but he didn’t see the shooter anymore, so he swam off in that direction in blind pursuit. For a few minutes he swam through curtains of waving kelp weed. Finally he returned to the doomed diver, who’d drifted fifty yards in the current. Taking the man’s assault rifle, Jake swam back the way he’d come, thankful be alive. He crawled out of the water and up onto the sand. Breathing hard, he pulled off his fins and staggered to the ruins with all his new gear on. Only when he’d found cover did he throw off the buoyancy control vest (BCD) and dry suit. He saw four of the crew over behind a dilapidated processing plant. They were huddled around a person laid out on the ground.

  Jake limped over and recognized the victim, the big-boned scientist who’d pointed out Horace to the group. His fingers were still wrapped around his pistol. “Is he alright?” Immediately he regretted asking that.

  Ava turned away and thrust her arm over her eyes. “He’s D—Dead!” She burst out in a full outpouring of grief.

  Jake put his arm around her. “It’ll be alright.”

  She recoiled shoving him away from her. “How can you say that to me?”

  “They’re gone now. There’s nothing more we can do.”

  “Stay away from me.” She pointed at him. “I wish you’d never joined this cruise.”

  “If it weren’t for him,” Red Mayo said, “you’d probably be dead right now.”

  She shook her finger at Jake. “You—you’re the one.”

  “You’re just scared,” Jake said.

  Her face turned beat red and she stalked off.

  Jake looked at the exit wound in the sailor’s back, then turned the man over. The front was very bloody. Jake frowned and stood up, but only by gritting his teeth.

  “Who else was shooting at the gunman?” Jake said. “Thought I heard two guns.”

  “Don’t know,” Dale Pace said. The prescription bottle in his free hand rattled when he looked around. “Everyone was scattered. I asked, but nobody admitted to it.”

  Jake shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but he knew it did—in a big way. The scientist had been shot from behind and by a small-caliber weapon, not the M-16s of the commandos. He had been shot in the back and fallen forward, shot by someone from the passengers or crew of the Atlas. For all Jake knew, Pace could have done it himself. Either way, someone was going to have a few words with Horace.

  Jake heard a gasp of shock.

  Talia’s eyes were wide open and her fingers pressed on her cheeks.

  “What happened to your leg?” she said.

  “I was glazed by a bullet.”

  “It’s bad. I need to look at it.”

  “I’ll be alright.”

  “It’s worse than you think.”

  CHAPTER 6

  A thick fog was rolling across South Georgia Island and Cumberland East Bay, and Jake couldn’t see the ship anymore. He couldn’t even see all of the station. Long tendrils of cold fog slowly crawled over the landscape at a stalking pace. At Talia’s insistence, Jake followed her into the old manager’s house. The living room had some beat up antiques in it, including a ladder-back chair with two missing rungs. A half-circle commode cabinet rested against the wall. Its panels showed Roman vases and winged-sphinx lyres, but one panel was bashed in. A cement block supported one end of a dirty and faded Chaise-lounge. The cracked harp told the whole story. In the early 1900s, the manager had brought along enough civilization to please his wife, but the antiques were damaged during a stormy voyage, so they were left behind.

  Talia avoided eye contact, and Jake admired her straight black hair and her healthy-looking complexion.

  “Did Mayo find the missing scientists from the research station?” Jake said.

  “No.” Talia shook her head. “Nobody’s seen any sign of them.”

  “Well, they’re probably collecting data out there and camping.”

  “The glacier is dangerous.”

  “I’m guessing they know how to get around.”

  “Take off your pants,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You’re bleeding badly.” She was still avoiding eye contact. She seemed to be looking down at his ankles.

  “It barely even hurts. That’s old blood.”

  “That’s just adrenaline. Wait until later.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “I need to see how bad it is. I can use my turtle neck shirt as a tourniquet.”

  “Thanks, but you may need it. You saw what happened to the crew of the Atlas.” Jake removed his pants and his second-layer shirt, which he handed to her. “Use this.”

  She inspected his bloody thigh carefully. “The bleeding has slowed down,” she said,” but not stopped. You were right about it just being a flesh wound. No major artery or bone was hit. There’s damage to the thigh muscle. You should live, but I’ve got to clean the wound. I’m worried about infection. I’ll send someone out to the ship for the first-aid kit.”

  “Good idea. I’ll go with them.” Jake grabbed his pants.

  “No. You’ve lost blood. You need to elevate your leg.”

  “Thank you,” Jake said. “I appreciate your concern, but someone has to bury the dead.”

  The door flew open, and Len Jackson burst into the room. “Horace is gone; he stole a shore boat.”

  Jake lowered his hand after shoving the pistol under his belt. “How long ago did he leave?”

  “Nobody saw him go. Must have been when you went underwater. He took his two friends with him.”

  Jake took a few sailors out to the Atlas. Most wanted no part of the errand out of fear that the gunboat might return. He rowed through rolling kelp patches and over choppy, black waters, but the current was a river. Swirling fogs boiled offshore as rising winds blew freezing mist in the air. Ice-cold spray numbed his cheeks, and he noticed the other sailor’s faces were flushed red. Ice formed in a sailor’s mustache. Swells were only a few feet high, but in a rowboat, Jake felt his heart racing as fast as the gale. As the boat pounded over the waves, wind punched the skiff and nearly capsized it. If that happened, one sailor would stay warm in any case because Jake had let him use his new drysuit after all the blood was washed out.

  Overhead, a Chilean condor flew against the wind. Jake kept an eye on this bird because it was an astounding sight. The Chilean condor was the largest flying bird in the world. The wing span stretched out ten feet, and white feathers ringed its neck like a fur collar. The bird hovered above the skiff, which was a bad omen because the Chilean condor was relat
ed to the vulture.

  At the Atlas, Jake was the first to climb the boarding ladder, and a grim scene awaited him. Six bodies lay on the deck in various death poses.

  The other sailors gathered around Jake and looked in silence at their fallen shipmates. Jake saw tears in a big guy’s eyes, one of the older sailors, a man named Andreas with graying hair. He pulled out a Bible and crossed himself.

  “We have to bury them now,” Jake said. “We can’t take them ashore because the ground is frozen. We’ll bury them at sea.”

  Anger flashed across a sailor’s face, and his name was Braulio. “What the hell you talking about? They’ll just wash up on the beach.”

  Jake shook his head. “Did you see the others wash up on the beach? No! That’s because there’s a rip tide in the bay. Didn’t you notice it when we were coming out here?”

  Braulio’s face darkened. “What about their families? They’ll want the bodies returned.”

  “These are sailors,” Jake said. “We bury them now. What do you want to do, stack them up on the beach like cord wood so the birds can pick their bones white?”

  Braulio was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “You are right. We have to do it.”

  “The weather’s getting worse,” Jake said. “Going back ashore will be dangerous. Just look at those waves. This is unusual. Normally, the winds are Westerlies. We have to move quickly. Andreas, you have a Bible. Why don’t you say a prayer for these men before we drop them overboard?”

  Andreas nodded. He raised his Bible and flipped through the pages. He found his page, but just stared at it for over a minute. Jake saw that he was shaking.

  “Never mind,” Jake said. “Let me do it.”

  Andreas nodded and passed Jake the Bible. He turned the 23rd Psalm and read it out loud. Then he said a silent prayer, and they all stood in silence for a minute. The only noise was the wind pounding across the decks, the waves sloshing along the hull, and the cable clanging on the flagpole.

  “Alright,” Jake said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Jake and Braulio lifted the first dead sailor. One-by-one, the bodies splashed into the cold bay water. What a way to go, Jake thought. You struggle through life, endure through one set of obstacles after another, one heartbreak after another—and what is the reward? You’re gunned down by some lowlife when you least expect it. He knew it could happen to him. He knew those murderers could speed back into the bay at any moment. They’d killed these sailors with no thought of their families or their right to life. They killed them as easily as they might have swatted flies.

  There were two forces in the world. There was cause, and there was effect. There was crime, and there was justice. Just as the flower was within the seed, so too was justice within the crime. Jake thought about the long history of maritime justice and understood it in a new way.

  He turned to the other sailors. “Okay, get supplies from the galley and put the lifeboats in the water. Don’t overload them.”

  The sailors leaped into action. Jake stayed by the rail for a moment, watching the growing waves that were rolling out of the fog. He was listening for the hum of a gunboat engine, but all he could hear was the wind howling through the rigging and water swishing along the hull.

  In the wheelhouse, he found that the helm wheel had been blasted off, the instruments were smashed, and wind rushed through shattered windows. Salty spray blew against his face as he opened drawers and found a chart that was in fair condition. He folded it and shoved it in his pocket. He kept searching drawers, but didn’t find what he was after. In the captain’s cabin, he rifled through cabinets and discovered the Atlas’s log book in a shelf of maritime books. He also scored when he uncovered the captain’s Satphone. He shoved the map, the log book, and the Satphone into the waterproof bag that he always kept under his jacket, strapped over his shoulder. As he limped out of there, he stopped for one last look. It was fortunate that fires hadn’t ignited and gutted the ship, but for practical purposes, it made little difference. Even though she swung at anchor, the Atlas was a shipwreck.

  On deck he got the bad news from the sailor named Braulio. “Half the supplies in the galley are missing. Horace and his two compadres beat us to the goods. At best we’ve got enough to last a few days.”

  “Nice,” Jake said. “And they’ve left three gunmen over at the science facility, so we can’t go near there for supplies unless we want to get shot.”

  “Why would Horace do it?” A sailor named Jose zipped up his jacket.

  “He and his friends were put ashore for a reason,” Jake answered. “They were new crew members just like you. Unknown. Automatic suspects. But it was worse than that. Anyone paying attention would have been suspicious of them, and they knew it. They split because they were the obvious suspects.”

  “It’s true,” Braulio said. “I heard them talking about jail. They’re prison birds.”

  Jake figured as much. “There may be more to it, though. They must have had some reason to disable the ship in the middle of nowhere.”

  Ten minutes later, the lifeboats were bucking the waves. Five-foot combers now pushed in against crazy, shifting winds, causing some of the swells to stack up and break. Jake rowed for his life to keep clear of the breakers. They were half way ashore when one of the lifeboats capsized, dumping two sailors and a load of crucial supplies into the drink. The sailor, who was wearing Jake’s drysuit, swam for shore. The other one flailed in the water and screamed in terror. Jake had always assumed that you had to know how to swim to be a sailor, but somehow this guy was drowning. Jake rowed toward him furiously, the skiff lunging and leaping over waves as wind shoved him and threatened to overturn his own boat. When he got up close, the panicked sailor grabbed on to the side of the skiff and nearly tipped it.

  To save the supplies, Jake, from a sitting position, lifted his good leg and kicked the sailor in the face to get him away and not tip the boat. This worked, except that the sailor began to sink. Jake stuffed his jacket under the seat and dove into the bay. The freezing water touched him the way a live electrical wire would. Prodded by ice-cold water, Jake swam down and scooped up the drowning man. Fortunately, the victim was unconscious now because otherwise Jake was sure his panic would have killed them both. Jake swam powerfully and aggressively with one arm and pulled the sailor along with the other.

  On the beach, a couple of sailors started for the water to wade out and help Jake with the victim.

  “Stay dry,” Jake yelled. “I’ll bring him to you.”

  Jake dragged the sailor out of the water and laid him on the sand. “Who knows CPR?”

  Talia stepped forward. “I’ll help him.”

  Talia and a couple of sailors went to work on the victim while Jake, with teeth chattering, turned to look for the skiff. Out in the wind-swept bay, it bobbed like a cork as waves lifted and lowered it and breakers threatened to capsize it.

  He swam like his life depended on it. The matches were in the skiff in a sealed bag, and without fire, he and the other wet sailor would risk hypothermia. He almost couldn’t get in the boat because his limbs weren’t functioning right. After climbing in at the stern so that the boat wouldn’t tip, he rowed hard although his hands weren’t functioning well, and he lost his grip on the oars repeatedly. He timed his approach to the beach just right so no breakers flooded the skiff. When he stepped out, his knees gave way beneath him, and he found himself incapable of coordinated movement to stand up. Nobody came to help him, so he crawled up the beach, and by the bowline, pulled the boat clear of the waves. He found the matches in a plastic bag, but his fingers wouldn’t work to pick them up. He looked over and saw Len Jackson. While Talia was working to save the sailor, Len was standing there staring at the drowned sailor, his face as pale as if he were the once at death’s door.

  “Len!” He heard nothing. It looked like he was stricken with horror. “Jackson, get over here.”

  Somehow, Jake’s yell’s pierced the fog of Jackson’s brain. With his a
rms pinned to his sides and his posture as rigid as a board, he hurried over to Jake.

  “Matches,” Jake said, pointing with a shaking finger. “Take them. Start a bonfire in one of those buildings.”

  “What am I supposed to burn?”

  “Any scrap wood you see. Get the log book out of the skiff. It’s in a plastic bag—there.”

  Len snatched it and said, “What if the wood won’t burn?”

  “Use the log book pages to get it going, but only use pages after today’s date. Is that clear?”

  Len looked down the beach. “You saved him. The ocean almost killed him.”

  “Burn something. Do it now!”

  Jake gained his feet and staggered after Len Jackson. By the time he got into the repair shop, Len had a pile of dry planks and was lighting log pages. The flames spread quickly to the seasoned planks.

  “More wood,” Jake said, his teeth chattering. He hovered over the flames and calculated his chances of survival. He was impressed that his heart was still beating. He staggered out of the building and over to the drowned sailor, who was on his stomach and seemed to be breathing.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s alive.”

  “He won’t be for long out here. Jackson built a fire. Carry him in there.” He turned to Ava. “Get the sleeping bags out of the life boat. We have to get our body temperatures up.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone out there in this weather,” Ava said. “You could have gotten him killed.”

  “I’ll get the bags,” Red Mayo said, running for the skiff.

  “Thank you,” Jake said, and then his face hit the sand.

  The crew carried him and the other sailor to the fire, which was growing as Len added bigger boards to the flames. A few of the crew removed Jake and the other survivor’s clothes and hung them by the flames. Jake lay there shivering, partly covered by a blanket, absorbing heat from the fire. What he really needed was a hot bath, but this would do.