Tested by Fire

by Pat Patterson

  Whoosh!

  The mouth of the gas can burst into flame.

  Jim didn’t waste a second. He dove over the side, hitting the water hard. A million tiny needles stabbed his skin at once. He kicked down and away as fast as his cramping legs would take him, away from the impending blast. And the explosion was magnificent. Even from twenty feet below the surface, he felt the shock wave. He saw a bright flash of light, clear green at the depths, but brilliant orange, he knew, above water. He turned around and kicked toward the nighttime sky praying his plan had worked.

  He broke the surface in the crest of a tall wave. He glanced around. Speedy was nothing but a memory. Her remains burned brightly against the nighttime sky, popping and sizzling as the shattered pieces sank into the dark featureless waves.

  Chapter 55

  Jim felt as if he had fallen into a vat of ice water. His muscles quivered. His teeth chattered. And his cast soaked up the churning saltwater and quickly turned to mush. His broken arm bone began to wiggle and twist. He wanted to scream so intense was the pain. He saw stars. Felt as if he would soon pass out. But his thoughts quickly returned to Valerie. He tucked his arm against his side and started swimming. He pulled and kicked and used the currents to float himself directly over Iron Shoal, past the buoy, right to the stern of the houseboat. He fought the waves and pulled himself onto the dive platform, and then ever so quietly slipped over the transom and fell onto the deck.

  He pulled himself into a tight fetal position. He gasped and took a deep breath to hold back a scream. He suddenly realized a new threshold for pain. His broken arm ached and throbbed, his insides felt like burning coals, and his back felt as if someone had leaned him over backward until his vertebrae had snapped. He lay half-freezing on the pitching deck in a state of semi-consciousness until his vision cleared and the pain began to ease. “Oh, God,” he whispered testing his tingling legs. “Oh, no...” He panted and gasped and rolled into a kneeling position half doubled over from the pain. “Valerie, I’ve got to get to Valerie…” He clutched his arm tightly and rose, then gazed toward the front of the boat and stared dumbfounded at the sight. To his amazement J-Rock stood against the port rail watching the debris from the little boat burn.

  Jim hurried across the deck and ducked behind the cabin just long enough to catch his breath. He saw a light burning inside the cabin. Wanted to open the sliding glass door and rush in. Find Valerie and get her off the boat and safely home. But he knew that wasn’t possible, not as long as J-Rock was alive. He inched along the glass door and peeked around the corner. J-Rock hadn’t moved. He stood against the port rail with his gun aimed at the water as if searching the waves for a target.

  Jim realized it was now or never. He turned the corner and charged. J-Rock spun around. The whites of his eyes beamed with surprise. Jim threw a pulverizing punch. He felt his fist strike bone. Blood spurted from J-Rock’s busted cheek and spilled across the deck. Jim didn’t stop. He continued to punch and kick and maul, fighting for his life, fighting for Valerie’s, swinging with his cast and punching with his one good hand, until his strength was drained, until every last neuron in his brain screamed for relief. Then with one last burst of strength he grabbed J-Rock around the neck and pulled him over the railing and into the freezing water.

  Jim locked his arm around J-Rock’s throat and started kicking—down, down, down…against the current…into the darkness of the inlet…pulling his enemy down into the relentless depths, deeper and deeper until his own ears began to pop.

  J-Rock kicked frantically, even underwater, screaming like a demon. He thrashed madly but Jim held tight, his own lungs screaming for air. He ignored the increasing pressure in his throat and chest and squeezed tighter. J-Rock struggled and fought, pulled at Jim’s fingers, kicked at his feet and shins, but he was no match for the former rescue swimmer. Jim used every remaining ounce of adrenaline and continued to kick…down, down, down, against the current, into the freezing depths of the channel until he heard a strange gargling sound. He felt a convulsive jerk. Then another. Then J-Rock’s arms twitched, and then, as if someone had literally sucked the life from his body, he went limp.

  Jim couldn’t see his enemy, but he knew that he was dead. He held on for another few seconds then let go and kicked with all he had left. No guilt, no fear, just an intense desire to stay alive. And to save his beloved Valerie.

  He broke the surface gasping. He sucked in a few gulps of air then lowered his head and shoulder and started swimming. He pulled with his one good arm, willing himself forward, scissor kicking as hard as his weakened legs would allow until he reached the back of the boat where the low, flat dive platform projected over the water.

  The platform seemed to come alive in the waves. It jumped up and down like a large flat paddle, slapping the water, threatening to crush him with each downward stroke. He looked around for another way aboard. He spotted a small aluminum ladder to one side of the platform and swam for it. He waited for the boat’s stern to drop low in the water then reached out and grabbed the ladder. He held on with all his might, his body screaming with pain. A large wave lifted the boat and dropped it into the trough on the other side. Jim pulled himself over the last rung and collapsed onto the platform just in time. Another wave came. The boat pitched again, rolled madly, rose up and over the crest, and then slid down the backside like a toy.

  Fiberglass had never felt so wonderful, so marvelously cold and hard. Jim crawled over the transom, stumbled wearily across the afterdeck, then slid open the sliding glass door and entered the cabin. “Valerie!”

  “Jim, I’m up here,” a distant voice shouted. “Hurry!”

  Jim ran across the lounge and down a narrow hallway that led to the front of the boat. The rooms were dark, the passageway unlit.

  “Where are you?” he shouted.

  “In here!”

  Jim followed Val’s voice into the forward berth. He stared into the darkness. “Val?”

  “Jim!”

  He groped around and found a switch. The cabin lit up. Valerie lay supine on the starboard bunk, her hands lashed together above her head, her feet tied to the rail at the foot of the bed.

  Jim’s heart leapt with renewed anger. Valerie’s beautiful legs were bruised and battered, barely covered by a ripped red skirt. Her blouse had been ripped from top to bottom, partially exposing her breasts. Jim jumped toward the bunk and began tearing at the ropes with one hand. He tried to ignore the excruciating pain in his arm. He tucked it against his ribcage and continued.

  “My God, Val, are you okay? Did he—”

  “No! No, thank God, Jim, no! Just get me out of here. Get me out of here!”

  “I’ve got you. I’ve got you now.” He pulled feverishly at the tangled knots. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

  He almost had her hands loose when the boat pitched and rolled sharply to port as if being ripped from its mooring. He fell to the floor. Two green camp stoves slid from another bunk and crashed to the floor by his side. He waited until the boat righted and then stood and steadied himself.

  “No! I think the bowline just broke.”

  “Jim, get me out of here!”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “No! No, Jim!”

  Jim ignored Valerie’s pleas and moved back down the hallway and through the lounge onto the afterdeck. The houseboat was indeed free, pulling away from the Iron Shoal buoy and rocking furiously in the ever-building waves that drew them closer to the inlet.

  The boat spun as a large wave hit the side and crashed over the deck. Jim stumbled and fell. Another wave, larger than the first, swept over the railing, smashed against the door and poured into the cabin.

  Jim heard Valerie screaming. He grabbed the topside ladder, righted himself and climbed to the upper deck, barely able to hang on as the pitching and rolling motion increased. He grabbed the steering wheel and held tight as he studied the panel. The controls were lit, but the ignition switch key was nowhere in sight. He banged the
controls with his fist.

  “J-Rock!”

  He spotted a microphone and grabbed it.

  “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”

  He released the key, paused to take a breath, and keyed up again.

  “This is the houseboat…oh, I don’t know the name, but we’re sinking…I repeat, sinking. We have no power. Taking on water at this time in the Beaufort Inlet just beyond Iron Shoal. I repeat…taking on water at this time. If anyone can hear me, please send help. Mayday! Mayday!”

  Sonny Cay jumped up from his heater, pulled on his weatherproof coveralls and a pair of rubber boots, then grabbed his wool pea coat and headed for the door. He grabbed the handle and held it for a moment, his heart pounding, his breath coming in short, shallow spurts. He thought of Annie and Jack, and the terrible night he had lost them so many years ago, and for a moment fear paralyzed him. But then the mayday came again, and Sonny could hear Jim’s words echo in the back of his mind…

  You’ve got to let them go.

  The Radio-Shack scanner mounted to the wall beside Sonny’s easy chair came to life with a volley of calls responding to the anonymous “Mayday!” issued from the Beaufort Inlet—but Sonny never heard them. He was already out the door.

  Chapter 56

  Jim climbed down the ladder, re-entered the cabin, and sloshed furiously toward the bow. The effort seemed to take forever. Each wave tossed the boat more furiously than the last. He could hear Valerie screaming. The bulkheads creaked under the strain.

  He made his way to the end of the hall and into the forward cabin. The boat slid to one side, leaning so fiercely that Jim felt certain they were about to roll. He held on for all he was worth. The boat flattened out for just a moment and then started up the next wave.

  “Jim,” Valerie screamed. “Hurry!”

  Jim knew he was out of time. Water sloshed around the cabin. The wooden frame creaked and moaned.

  He climbed onto the bunk and attacked the knots, tearing at the strands until his fingertips began to bleed. He even bit at the rope. Nothing worked.

  “Val,” he said trying to remain calm. “You’ve got to help me, I can’t get it.”

  “Jim!” Valerie screamed jerking and pulling at her bindings. “I don’t want to die.”

  Jim didn’t want to die either. He glanced around for a tool, a pry bar, something sharp. Then suddenly he remembered something. A memento. Something he’d been told might come in “handy” one day.

  He dug into his pocket and pulled out the Microtech Urban Shadow Scarab—J-Rock’s knife. With a click, the blade was out. It was a dangerous weapon under normal circumstances, but in the hands of a physically battered man in the cabin of a wildly dancing boat, it was entirely lethal. Jim sawed at the ropes, struggling to protect Valerie’s flesh while desperately fighting the violent motion of the boat.

  “Don’t move!”

  Valerie didn’t. She remained motionless, but the boat didn’t. It pitched with increased vigor, rolled madly, thrashing Jim about like a helpless doll in a tumbling cradle.

  Jim sawed and sliced at the rope, finally freeing one of Valerie’s hands from the bindings, then the other. He jumped on her torso, pulled his injured arm in close to his side, and then sawed the leg bindings free and pulled her from the bunk. Valerie grabbed him by the neck and hugged him like a drowning child.

  “We’re not out of this yet,” Jim said. “C’mon!”

  Jim started astern with Valerie in tow, only to be thrown up against the passageway wall by the powerful rolling motion of a wave. Together, they fell to the floor, clinging to one another until the boat righted and flattened out.

  “She’s going over,” Jim shouted. “We’ve got to get out!”

  Jim led Valerie down the flooded hallway and across the sundeck to the houseboat’s stern. He knew he didn’t have a moment to lose. The boat lifted up, leaned 60-degrees to port and started to roll. Jim shoved Valerie off the back of the boat and jumped in after her. He went under, felt himself pulled down, then to the side, then tossed and turned and rolled over and over, and then finally released by the mighty wave. He pulled himself to the surface, drew a breath of air and shouted, “Valerie!”

  “Here!”

  “Grab me,” he shouted. “Hang on!”

  Valerie grabbed his neck. Jim kicked and pulled as hard as he could.

  “Kick!” he shouted. “Swim!”

  “I’m trying.”

  The next wave was colossal. The houseboat lifted up before them, slid down the other side and took the following wave broadside. Her decks disappeared. The huge wave washed over her.

  “There she goes.”

  Jim heard the crashing sound of splintering wood as the vessel’s walls and bulkheads popped and caved in. He watched with amazement. The old wooden vessel turned hull up in the water, shifted and raised her stern into the air, and then dropped like a stone into the depths of the channel.

  “Well, that’s it.”

  “Jim, I’m freezing,” Valerie cried. “What do we do now? How do we get in?”

  Jim glanced about them as they rose and fell on the waves, each minute taking them further out to sea. He hoped to see the lights of a boat, or a nearby buoy maybe, something, anything to grab hold of and hang onto until help arrived, but there was nothing. The eastern tip of Atlantic Beach was so close Jim felt he should be able to reach out and grab it, but land was unreachable. They might as well have been a thousand miles from shore.

  “I guess we’ll have to swim for it.”

  “S-s-schwim?” Valerie’s teeth chattered. Her jaw trembled. “Th-th-through th-this?”

  “We have to try, Val. We have to stay alive.”

  Valerie started pulling at the waves. Kicking. The look of panic whitewashed her beautiful face. Jim swam too, but he knew they were finished. He had nothing left. There was no way they could swim a half-mile against the tide and wind, in ten-foot seas, in water as cold as ice. His legs felt weighted down. His right arm was useless. Keeping his head above water became a seemingly impossible task.

  “Keep trying, Val. Don’t g-g-give up.”

  Jim felt himself becoming dull and listless. They were making no progress at all, if anything, they were moving farther out. He noticed Valerie had stopped kicking. He could still feel her shivering, but even that had eased.

  “Kick, Val. Try to kick.”

  Valerie didn’t answer. Her chin dropped forward. Her breathing slowed.

  “No!”

  Jim stopped swimming and focused entirely on keeping her afloat.

  “Val, stay awake! Stay awake! I love you,” he shouted, his own teeth chattering out of control.

  Physically and emotionally Jim was totally spent. He clutched Valerie’s arm, pulled her onto her back, and ran his arm up under her neck for support. He felt himself being pushed under by her weight. He kicked with all his might and gasped for a breath of air.

  “God,” he shouted. “Save us!”

  Jim kicked them up and over a tremendous wave. He hung his head back.

  He cried.

  He thought he was hallucinating when he first saw the lights—a red one, then a green one, then both red and green together, bouncing across the water to the sound of a distant hum.

  What is it? He wondered. Am I seeing things? An angel maybe?

  But as the noise grew louder, and the lights brighter, Jim suddenly realized he wasn’t dreaming at all, and it wasn’t an angel he was seeing…because he wasn’t dead.

  “Oh, hey!” He ducked beneath a slapping wave crest and peered at the approaching lights. The hum became a roar. “A boat! Here! We’re over here!”

  The boat slowed fifty feet away. A spotlight appeared. A bright piercing beam bounced across the wave tops, here, there, toward them, away again.

  “Help,” Jim shouted. “Over here!”

  The beam continued to move, flashed across his face, moved on.

  “They can’t see us,” he shouted.

  The boat engines revved
. The boat started moving again, then turned away, showed her stern light, her spotlight searching in the other direction.

  “No,” Jim shouted rising and falling on a wave. “You’re going the wrong way. Come back!”

  The boat made a slow sweeping turn around Iron Shoal Buoy and then started back into the inlet.

  “Here! Over here!”

  The spotlight danced about, teasing Jim, so close to finding them and yet so far off the mark. He let go of Valerie for an instant and slapped at the water. He shouted as loud as his trembling lips would allow. He kicked to rise high out of the water and waved his arm high into the air. He suddenly realized Valerie was sinking. He pulled her back up and continued to shout.

  “Hey! Heeey! Over here!”

  Finally, the beam started back in his direction. The boat turned, the running lights reappeared, one red, one green, heading straight for them. Jim felt the flash of white light sweep across his face.

  “Here,” he shouted. “We’re here!”

  The beam stopped, came back, swept his face again, then stopped and zeroed in.

  “Oh, God!”

  Light had never felt so wonderful. Jim heard the sound of racing engines. He held his thumb high, high above his head—the rescue swimmer’s sign.

  “We’re okay, Val. Oh thank God, we’re okay.”

  Engines roared. A large vessel suddenly appeared. Slowed. A sharp, white V-shaped bow dropped in the water. The boat veered 45-degrees and stopped no more than three feet from his side, bouncing and rocking in the relentless currents. A blinding spotlight hit him directly in the face, so bright he could feel the heat emanating from the silver-coated reflector. He bobbed helplessly clinging desperately to Valerie.

  “Please,” Jim said, his words barely audible. “Take her.”