Overfall sw-1

by David Dun

  Four

  While fidgeting for the want of another smoke and on the verge of surrendering to Anna temporarily, Sam heard the splash-a body hitting the water? He ran to the stateroom and tried the door. Locked.

  Damn it. She had climbed out of the hatch.

  Harry barked and ran to the companionway. Sam jumped over Harry and hit the third stair and one other before making the top. He dashed through the wheelhouse and made the aft deck in three strides.

  No rubber boat.

  “It leaks!” he shouted. “Come back. It’s dangerous.”

  “Help me.” In the wind he heard nothing more. With only a piece of his rudder it would be difficult to drive the boat after her and there was no time to pull anchor or don a dry suit. He had seconds to decide. He could feel himself drawn into the old life as surely as his boat had been drawn into that wave. His mind sat on a high wire, contemplating the possible opposing forces, the risk of falling and losing what little peace he had left. His son was dead. His hero days were over. On the other hand, dying might just be easier than living.

  “Damn her.”

  Reaching under a hinged seat, he grabbed a life jacket. For a second he rummaged around until he found a large waterproof light that he snapped to a ring on the jacket. Then he thought about the drag and figured he could make shore without the jacket, so he snapped the light to a belt loop instead. He had to move fast and catch her before she got headed in the wrong direction. If she missed the point, about two hundred yards off, she would no doubt drown. Dumb woman.

  Harry whined.

  He needed waterproof matches. She was getting too far away. Taking off his topsiders, he tied the rawhide laces into his belt loops so he could swim with bare feet. “Stay, Harry.” Then he dived neatly over the lifelines and as his head emerged, gasped from the frigid water. He forced himself to focus, creating a perfect rhythm to his stroke that melded with his breathing, losing himself in motion. He imagined himself in a pool and thought of his mind as a warm light that retreated deep within. Soon the cold was far away. Clouds drifted, but he was sure he found the North Star and kept it a bit to his right.

  Every third stroke he saw the trees of the ridge against the stars and kept himself straight. After a time he slowed to hear the splashes of her paddle, and with the thought of it came the cold, driven away only by reclaiming the rhythm. The current was running enough that he knew they would be swept up Heron Bay. It appeared she would miss the point. He had to catch her. Once more the barely audible splash of her stroke drew him on and once more the cold invaded his mind. He was a powerful swimmer in superb shape. Steadily he gained until he saw her-nearly sunk.

  “Get out. It leaks. You’re barely moving. Wrong direction.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Tie your shoelaces to your belt.”

  She also swam well. It took him minutes to guide them to the point and the shore. It was too far even to think about getting her to swim back. His foot touched bottom and he grabbed her around the waist. She was very weak from two major dunkings in the frigid water. The last fifty feet he carried her. On dry land he put her down and they put on their shoes.

  “Come on,” she said, wobbly but obviously determined to go someplace. He caught her and grabbed her shoulder.

  She turned.

  “What are you-” he began.

  “Took you a while,” she said through ragged breaths. Turning back toward the trees, she kept going.

  He followed. “You could have killed yourself.”

  “Thanks to you once again, I didn’t, though, did I?”

  “What the hell does that mean? You are one frustrating-”

  “Frustrating what?”

  “Just how were you gonna keep from freezing to death?”

  “That was your department.”

  “What made you think I’d be stupid enough to follow you?”

  Astounded at her grit, he trudged with her down the beach next to the trees. He had no dry matches, no smokes, and he would have to make a fire.

  “There’s a cabin inland over on Greene’s Bay,” she said. “It’s almost two miles. We can break in.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw it a couple days ago. Jason and I crossed over to Sonoma with Nutka and went for a walk. She’s a native.”

  He filed away the names for future consideration. “Are we looking for a trail?” He snapped on the waterproof light.

  “Turn it off!” she said. “Wait until we’re out of sight of the Windham Island shore.”

  “Who’s on the Windham shore?”

  “If we walk along this beach there is a tiny creek. I’ll recognize it. If we go up the channel about three-quarters of a mile, we’ll come to this concrete box with a pump at a spring with a plastic pipe going into it. We follow the pipe.”

  “They have a generator?”

  “I guess they must. They have a pump.”

  Just then an eerie rushing sound echoed across the channel. He turned toward the boat as it erupted in a ball of fire.

  “You can thank me later,” she said.

  “You should have said something.”

  Neither spoke for a moment as they stood with the heat of adrenaline moving through their bodies.

  “Give me a break,” she said. “You weren’t listening.”

  “You weren’t talking.”

  “Why are we arguing? You would have been dead.”

  “I liked the damned boat,” he said. “And I loved the dog.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Not as sorry as the guy with the rocket launcher.”

  Within two minutes the boat was gone to the bottom.

  “Who did it?”

  “We’ll discuss it. I’ll make everything right. Better boat, everything.”

  “You can’t give me what I lost!”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know they’d do this.”

  “Do they have a boat?”

  “Yes.”

  The words weren’t out of her mouth before they heard the sound of whirling rotors, the thump of metal beating air, and saw a brilliant light skimming the water.

  “Do they have a chopper?”

  “They have one. I didn’t know it was here now.”

  “So you don’t know if the chopper is friend or foe.”

  “I don’t know who is friend or foe.”

  “Move,” he said in a harsh whisper as they ran up the beach and into the trees.

  For a moment they watched as the brilliant beam of an incandescent light skated over the wind-crinkled black surface to the spot where the boat had been lying at anchor. Like a mad mosquito the copter searched the area.

  He noticed that in addition to the shaking, Anna was starting to lose her balance.

  “So now do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  She stood silent, with her teeth chattering while she rubbed her arms.

  “Let’s go,” he said, frustrated that she still wasn’t talking.

  Until they heard the copter leave they walked just inside the trees with no light. By the time they found the creek, they were turning blue around the lips and she was shaking to the point that speech was difficult. He had been similarly cold before and had a few layers of muscle to help. Anna had very little womanly fat. If she was right about the distance, they had a long way to go.

  They clawed their way through low-hanging branches and walked hard for what seemed like nearly half an hour until they found the spring. As she had said, the water pipe led right to the cabin some fifteen hundred yards overland on a small saltwater bay. In the circle of the flashlight the board siding was weathered gray but appeared intact. The tarpaper roof looked in good repair. On the door there was a sizable padlock and there were shutters over the windows.

  “How do we get in?” She slurred her words as if drunk. Any minute he was afraid she would fall over and go permanently to sleep. He had to get her warm fast.

  “Ho
w were you going to get in?” he asked.

  “I was going to let you figure it out.”

  Surveying the door, he realized that ramming it with his shoulder would likely break his collarbone if they had a hearty bolt on the inside. Everything about the place seemed pretty beefy; he supposed they’d have a door latch to match. Maybe even a crossbar.

  “And how the hell did you know I would be here?” he said, fumbling with a window sash.

  “You didn’t let me drown the first time.”

  “Don’t tempt me again.”

  She was almost smiling when she patted him on the shoulder and kissed his cheek.

  On the second window, he found enough purchase to yank it open. After that it was simply a matter of breaking the window and unlocking it. They both crawled through the open window and found a spartan cabin interior.

  “Aim the light at the wall. And if you plan to leave before I get back, let me know.”

  “I love you for saving me. But otherwise go to hell.”

  “It’d be a lot warmer.”

  Sam unbolted the door and went out front. With the shutters and door closed, only the tiniest crack of light shone through at one window. It was easily fixed by propping a discarded board. Satisfied, he went back into the cabin and took a more careful look around. It was lined with some type of pressed board that retained a golden brown mottled surface. There were two hanging lights with frosted glass shades. The floor was painted concrete. When the place was occupied there would be a generator to run the meager electrical service, the few lights, and the water pump. On the lone table sat a gas lantern. They verified that the place had no food or matches.

  “Search for lighters, blankets, matches, and clothes,” Sam muttered. There was an old woodstove and a little kindling beside some hardwood logs. They rifled through more cupboards and drawers, desperate to find matches. She started to sit down.

  “No.” Sam stopped her and made her lean against the wall. “You can’t go to sleep. You’ll die on me. And then there would be a police report and they’d want my last name.” He started rummaging through cabinets. Although she was barely able to move, he watched her emulating him, trying to help. In a closet they found two threadbare sleeping bags, a folded-up rusty three-burner Coleman stove that looked about twenty years old, and a blanket worn thin and barely green, with a few holes and sun-faded with age.

  “I thought, given the antenna outside, that there would be a radio in here,” she said.

  “Well, there isn’t.”

  “We need to get you a new boat and we need to get back to civilization.”

  “I’ve got to find the men who sunk my home.”

  “On the other end of this island… someone is building. An oyster farm, I think.”

  “It’s not on the chart. Even if you’re right, it must be at least four miles down this island through a brush-filled forest.”

  “We can go in the morning. First thing.”

  It was about forty-two degrees, near as he could guess.

  “Dry off and crawl into the bag,” he said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Take care of things.”

  “Turn off the light,” she said.

  “In just a minute.” He unfolded the Coleman stove. “Yes!” he said, finding a box of wooden matches. She turned her back. He grabbed the paper towels, put them beside her, and doused the light. Quickly he stripped and dried off. He felt for his sleeping bag.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  Sam crawled into his and could detect only a slight barrier to the cold. It had been a lightweight bag maybe five years ago. Now it wasn’t worthy of the name.

  “This won’t work.” Sam turned on the light. He went to the woodstove, took the small amount of remaining kindling, and placed it on a loose wad of paper towels. It burned nicely; he added more kindling. When it flamed he added a thick piece of branch. He was breathing hard and shaking slightly, but at least there was warmth on the palms of his hands. The sleeping bag over his shoulders wasn’t doing him much good. Soon the branch had ignited and he added a larger piece of wood, leaving the stove door ajar for maximum draft. Anna hopped over in her bag and sat down against the stove. After the flame was established, Sam went out in front of the cabin and studied the stovepipe. There was no visible light, nor were there sparks. Uneasy, but satisfied that the fire was not a dead giveaway, he went back inside.

  He lay on his back next to the stove with the bag over him, put his hands on the floor, and raised his abdomen so that his body was arched with only his feet and hands touching the Doug-fir planks. He began taking deep breaths.

  “That’s a very good Urdhva Dhanura.”

  “So you do yoga too. It’s hard to be original anymore.”

  “Control the breathing, slow the heart, the body will warm from the quiet exertion. Defeats the cold. I know what you’re trying, but if you’re that good I’ll be jealous, and you probably aren’t that good, so either way let’s huddle close to the stove.”

  “Yoga is a way to stretch. I think it’s nothing more.”

  After a full minute of stretching he crawled into his bag and they sat close.

  “I’m still freezing,” she said.

  “We could put one bag inside the other, then wrap you in a blanket and both get in.”

  “Only in the movies.”

  Five

  Jason lay on his desk, facing the ceiling, the fear still there. Always there. Every morning he woke and knew that there was something wrong and that it would not go away.

  When he smelled breakfast cooking and opened his eyes to look from the window by the bed, he might try to find something bright, perhaps the sunlight as described by a bard who knew the look of a tree with its tufts of moss-life and the speckling of bark, the sap in the white wood, the bursting of crinkled green shoots, the tireless withering of old leaves before the new. But each time Jason found the bright it was bounded by shadows, dark spots in the crooks of the branches. The darkness ate at him, turned his stomach sour even before he rose. Maybe a bird would flit by, but he knew it would die in winter with little things crawling over its skin, rotting it, smelling like yesterday’s fish. Wind harbored soulless ghosts, the mountain was cruel, and everything on it died, and nothing lived that hadn’t risen from the ashes of another’s death.

  Fear lived in his chest as if a barbed hook were stuck fast in the wall of his gullet He couldn’t swallow his spit, let alone sing, without knowing the fear.

  They said that without hope you die, and he realized his hope was so dim it barely lit the back rooms of his conscious thought. It helped being naked, especially when he got his massage. Before he picked up a three-ring notebook and walked over to the Principia Mathematica, he sat on the floor and stripped himself of every stitch of clothing. It felt better, but only a little.

  Roberto walked in through the kitchen and startled him.

  “Relax, Jason. Everything is fine.”

  “I understood it was a plaything.”

  “Oh, no, Jason, you wondered.” He punched Jason gently in the shoulder. “You always wonder and you never know for sure, do you? But it’s at the bottom of Heron Bay now. Right now I need you to tell me where the CD is. You had two CD-ROMs, the regular and the backup. Did you give the backup to Anna?”

  “No. It’s around. If the Nannites didn’t take it we’ll find it.”

  “There are no Nannites. You know that. Now where is the CD?”

  Jason did not reply.

  “We’re counting on you,” Roberto said before he turned around and left the room.

  Jason detested those words. He turned back to his office. Down both sides of the room ran bookshelves lined with math treatises. Set apart from its companion volumes, in the center, was Bertrand Russell’s five-volume work, Principia Mathematica. It was a signed edition. Also set apart in their own special slot were Einstein’s initial publications, papers really, on the general theory of relativity.

  Most of
his library comprised texts on quantum mechanics and quantum math.

  There were two photographs in his office, one of Anna, another of his daughter, Grady. Memories of his life before moving to this island were disturbing. Memories of his life before France were even more disturbing, and hence seemed to have washed away, like sand castles on an incoming tide. He had had several girlfriends, but only one of note, and she had borne him a daughter when he was a nineteen-year-old prodigy at Georgia Tech and about to transfer to MIT.

  There had been a court order before he went to France to work for Grace Technologies, and he was not able to keep his daughter. Grady’s mother had wanted no part of him. Although she had given the girl her own last name, Lasky, Grady so despised her mother that upon turning eighteen she had changed it to Wade. Jason knew that his daughter cared little for him either, but he wasn’t sure how he had come to that realization.

  The picture of Grady had come from Anna; without it he wouldn’t know his daughter if he met her on the street. But he thought about her, and he used to dream that one day he might shake the Nannites and go find her. Now such a thing seemed impossible-it would be dangerous for Grady-and he wanted more than anything to believe that she was safe. Anna, for whatever reason, wouldn’t talk about Grady, so he let his daughter rest as a picture on his side table.

  There was a phrase that he had heard somewhere about a millstone around the neck. Life was becoming like that, a steady weight of worry and fear. Any little thing could seize his mind. Only one small focus for his hope had not yet been extinguished. He had hacked his way into the Kuching sections of the Grace computers. It had taken him months of playing to breach the firewalls.

  Within the Kuching laboratory files he had discovered encrypted file folders. He did not have the software to break the code, although slowly but surely he was developing software that might do the job. But it could take years. Although he couldn’t open the files, he had developed a program that would download them. Those files were on the CD he had given Anna, and they might hold secrets of the Nannites. Curious minds would not rest until they opened them. Of that he was certain.