by Jay Giles
Wild Eyes straightened his arm, laughed crazily, fired twice.
Chapter 28
After the second shot, I knew I was still alive. I dared open my eyes and saw Ollie and Nestor crumpled on the deck. There was a bullet hole in Ollie’s forehead, blood running down to his ear and dripping off the lobe. I couldn’t see Nestor, his body hidden by Ollie’s. Su, still sprawled on the deck, was sobbing.
Wild Eyes grabbed the front lock of my hair, forcing my gaze to meet his. “You killed two of my mates,” he snarled, “now I’ve killed two of yours. An eye for an eye. The oldest justice.” He jabbed me in the neck with his gun barrel. “Their deaths are on your head. Think about that for the short time you have left.”
He strode to the rail, cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted to the boat below. A red gasoline can was tossed to him. He held it up tauntingly, carried it into the salon, and began dumping the contents around the room. When he emerged from the doorway, he tossed in a match and flames did a quick step around the room.
He strode over to me, a smile on his face, clearly pleased with himself. “Well, American big-shot, burn or drown. Your choice.”
His men went over the rail to their boats. Wild Eyes went last. “Adios,” he said with a wave.
As soon as their boats pulled away, I started moving. I felt Nestor’s neck for a pulse, found none, helped Su to her feet. Blood was oozing from a gash behind her ear, her left eye was swollen to a slit. There was no time for that. “There’s a fire extinguisher in the galley,” I yelled. “Get it. I’ll get the one in the engine room.”
She didn’t look good. The one eye I could see looked glassy, but she nodded okay.
I headed into the salon—burning or not, it was the quickest way to the extinguishers. At the doorway, I sensed Su wasn’t with me and turned to find her. The look she gave me said Are you crazy?
I grabbed her hand. “Take a big breath.” We raced through the salon’s smoke and flames to the galley. The air there was only marginally better. Su had her hand over her mouth, coughing as she opened the cabinet for the extinguisher. I handed her a dishtowel. “Soak it in water and put it over your nose and mouth.”
I did the same and raced down the hall and stairs to the engine room. The extinguisher was mounted on the wall just inside the door. I yanked the canister off the wall, lugged it upstairs and found Su standing in the hallway shooting a wimpy stream of carbon dioxide into the salon now fully engulfed in flames.
I felt the force of the heat. Flames were crackling and spitting. Even with the washcloth, smoke made my throat raspy. My eyes were irritated and itching. It had only been burning a minute or two. How fast was this fire accelerating?
I yanked the pin on my extinguisher, aimed at the fire closest to the door and squeezed the lever. Mine was a dry chemical extinguisher shooting out a pressurized yellow powder—probably some kind of phosphate-based retardant. Whatever it was, one squirt and the nearest flames disappeared, allowing me to step inside the salon. In the thick smoke, flames appeared as blobs of light. Squinting to protect my eyes, I pointed the extinguisher and shot blobs. It was like whack-a-mole. One by one I knocked them down.
Behind me, Su yelled, “I’m empty.”
“Get bath towels, soak them in water,” I yelled over the roar of the fire. “Beat back—” Spasms of coughing kept me from telling her more.
Three blobs flared to my right. Could have been chairs and a table. I let fly with the yellow sticky stuff. It worked but I had another problem. The fire had re-ignited behind me. I was trapped.
A moment of panic caused me squirt too much on the fire behind me. The flames went out, but the stream from my extinguisher diminished to spitting. I shook the canister hoping there was more in the tank. Even the spitting stopped. Cursing, I threw the empty canister on the floor and, in desperation, used my feet to stamp out smaller spots on the carpet. Swiveling about, stomping on whatever was closest, I grew frantic. I no longer knew where the doorway was. I worked my way to where I thought it should be only to stumble over a wooden coffee table that miraculously wasn’t burning. Picking it up long ways, I used the legs as hooks to pull down a set of burning drapes. I’d torn down a second set of drapes when something struck me in the side of the head.
Reaching down, I felt for the wet towel that had hit me. I had a weapon again. But before I used it, I held it over my face and let the cooling moisture work its magic. I gloried in it for a moment then got to work swinging that towel, swatting flames. I worked like a banshee, but it was frustrating work. As soon as I had a spot out and moved on to another area, poof, the old spot would re-ignite. All I could do was keep smacking anything that flamed, glowed, or put off sparks. I swung my towel so much my arms went dead.
Through the haze I could see Su coughing, swinging her towel without much force. She looked wobbly, as if she’d keel over any second.
My gaze darted around the room. The fire seemed worse, the smoke thicker. Towels weren’t cutting it. We were losing the battle.
I put the towel over my head and held my arm in front of my face to protect it from the heat as I made my way to what I thought was the doorway to the galley. Realizing I was wrong, I turned and crossed the room, skirting a sofa engulfed in flame, to reach the doorway.
In the galley, I began filling a bucket in the sink. When it was full, I put a second bucket in to fill, ran the first bucket of water to the salon and threw it on the burning sofa. The flames disappeared in a loud hiss and a cloud of steam. Encouraged, I became a one-man bucket brigade. After finishing off the sofa, I went to work on a love seat and two of side chairs. Bucket by bucket, I got control of the fire.
With the last of it snuffed out, I stood in the center of the smoky, soot-covered room, my gaze darting back and forth among charred and blackened upholstered pieces, wondering which would be the first to reignite.
Why chance it? “Help me throw this chair over the side,” I said to Su and together we carried the worst offender out on the deck and pushed it over the rail. It hit the water, floated hissing for a few moments, and sank. Another chair, the drapes, two end tables, a coffee table, and two sofas quickly followed. With the furniture out, we rolled the carpet up, drug it outside, got it up on the railing, and let it fall into the sea.
Finished with the heavy rug, we collapsed from exhaustion on the aft deck. My eyes were gritty, throat raw, shoulders sore, and I kept coughing-up smoke. I was sure Su felt the same way. My mind, however, knew we were wasting precious seconds.
I forced myself to my feet. “C’mon,” I said and gave Su a hand up.
Nestor and Ollie’s bodies needed moving inside where they’d be more protected. We moved Ollie first because he was the heaviest. With his bulk, there was no polite way to move him. I took one foot, Su the other. Each tug got him closer to the salon. It wasn’t the way you wanted to treat a friend, and it certainly wasn’t pretty, but we made it. Nestor was easier to move but harder to look at. His face was frozen in pain, made more horrifying by one eye bulging out, the other socket empty and bleeding. We put the two bodies side by side. I got a top sheet from the linen closet in the master stateroom and said a prayer as I spread it over them.
“Why?” Su sobbed into my shoulder. “Why did they have to die that way?”
I held her, tried to comfort her. “It never feels right when bad things happen to goo—”
“I stabbed Francois. I shot JaMarcus,” she wailed. “Why wasn’t it me? Why didn’t he shoot me?”
The moment he pulled the trigger, I’d wondered why it hadn’t been me. He’d pressed that gun against my forehead. My guess was, to him, a quick death was too painless. “He wanted us to die in agony. He thought we’d be burned to death or drown swimming to shore.” I put my hands on her shoulders and forced her to meet my gaze. The eye that wasn’t swollen shut was red and filled with tears. Her face was two-tone, white where she’d had the towel over her nose and mouth, sooty black elsewhere. I was sure I looked the same. “We survived. A
nd I’d like to keep living, so we’ve got to get out of here. Once they realize the boat didn’t burn and sink, they’ll be back.”
She nodded that she understood, rubbed her hand across her nose, sniffed a couple of times.
“If we can make Maceio, we’ll be safe. I’m going to get us going.” I took her hand and started for the bridge. “You keep—” She didn’t move. Our hands pulled apart. “What?” I asked looking back at her.
“We can’t.” She sobbed harder. “They fouled the screws.”
“How?”
“They threw something in the water. Didn’t you feel it when they locked up?”
Had to be what had thrown me off the stairs.
“Ollie shut off the engines immediately,” she said between sobs. “If he didn’t, he said they’d be wrecked.”
Swell. Sitting ducks. Just waiting for the pirates to return.
“Crap.” I knew what had to be done. Double crap. “I’ve got to clear them.”
“Maybe...maybe it won’t be so bad,” Su offered, but her voice said just the opposite.
I wished I’d had a look at the boat out of the water. It would have helped to know the location of the screws, how far under I’d have to go to reach them. I walked over to the stern rail and looked over. The water that had so often looked picturesque looked forbidding now. It was dark greenish black, rising and falling in a moderate chop, slip slopping noisily against the hull. A little sunlight would have brightened it, but I didn’t even have that going for me. Clouds obscured the sun. It felt gloomy. No, it felt worse. It felt doomed.
As a kid, I’d had the obligatory couple of swimming lessons. After that, my time in the water had been quick jumps in somebody’s chlorinated pool or snorkeling in shallow water searching for shells. I’d never been in water this deep or this treacherous.
I looked at Su. “Did you see a snorkel mask anywhere?”
“A what?”
“Snorkel mask. You know, so you can see under water.”
She shook her head. “No.”
I looked down at the water again. Jeez, I didn’t want to go in that without a mask. I’d be blind. Forced to feel my way with my hands. I’d also be a sitting duck. Sharks could make a run at me, I wouldn’t see them coming. Wouldn’t see other creatures either—eel, jellyfish, barracuda.
To Su: “You’re sure you haven’t seen a mask?”
“No.”
I worried about undertows, too. Caught in one, I could be dragged under the water or carried away from the boat. “How about rope? See if you can find me a long rope.”
“Sure.” She went searching, returned with a coiled length of half-inch rope. I took it from her, tied it tightly to a rail post, started to tie it around my waist and realized I had too many clothes on. I glanced at Su. This wasn’t the time for modesty. I pulled my t-shirt over my head, kicked off sandals, unsnapped my cargo shorts and let them fall to my ankles. Wearing only blue-plaid boxers, I tied the rope around my waist and climbed over the rail.
“Be careful,” Su called as I leapt away from the boat.
My jump carried me under, the rope scraping my skin as it pulled up on my chest. The water was startling cold. Shivering, I bobbed to the surface, wiped water out of my eyes, and with a couple of crawl strokes centered myself at the stern of the boat. I sucked in a couple of deep breaths, closed my eyes, went head down, frog kicking as hard as I could to force myself downward, I kept one hand on the hull and one hand out in front of me. Operating blind, the descent was nightmarish. I was terrified my hand would lose contact with the hull, so I had to stay close, which interfered with my kicks. As my hand ran down the hull, sharp spots cut my fingertips.
I kept kicking. Kept forcing myself lower. Kept waving my right hand in front of me the way a blind person taps a walking stick. When my hand bumped something hard and slimy, it startled me. I jerked my hand back in a moment of panic, before realizing I’d touched a propeller. I could have reached back for it, but that moment of panic had my heart beating faster and my lungs burning. I kicked myself up as fast as I could, broke the surface, and gulped big mouthfuls of air.
“How bad is it?”
I looked up to see Su’s looking at me over the rail. “Not sure yet,” I gasped. “This is going to take a while.”
“What can I do?”
“Don’t know yet.”
I was tiring myself out dog paddling in place. I took more deep breaths to expand my lung capacity and dove again. This time I had a better sense of what to expect. The metal still felt slimy to my touch, but it didn’t freak me out. I held on with one hand, reached behind the blade to the shaft with my other hand and felt the course strands of a heavy rope, maybe two inches in diameter. I managed to give it a couple of good tugs—nothing moved—before I had to surface.
On dive three, I determined the rope was stretched from one screw to the other.
On dive four, I checked for loose ends. I found one and thought maybe I could unwind this mess, but after six inches, it was held tight to the shaft by a turn of the rope. Disgusted, I surfaced, swam for the ladder and climbed out. I was exhausted and needed to think.
I flopped on one of the outside lounge chairs, eyes closed, mouth open, chest heaving. Water puddled on the deck under me.
Su hovered over me. “How bad is it? What did you see?”
“Rope doesn’t want to budge,” I said between gasps of breath.
“What are we—”
I held up a weary hand. “Let me think.” I tried to visualize what my hands had felt. The rope was stretched taunt between the two shafts and wound tightly around each individual shaft. I’d never be able to unwind either one. My best opportunity was between the two.
“Su?”
“Yes.”
I opened my eyes. “Check in the engine room. See if you can find a saw and another rope like this.”
“Got it.”
She returned smiling a few minutes later. “I found this.” She held out a hacksaw. “Will it work? I couldn’t find any rope.”
The hacksaw was old, wobbly, with a rusty blade. I was hoping for a saw with larger teeth. “Any other ones down there?”
“Not that I could find.”
It would have to do and I’d have to make sure I didn’t lose it. I untied the rope from my waist and tied it around the metal top of the hacksaw. Finished, I stood-up and realized how much those dives had sapped my energy. My legs were rubbery. Arms weary.
I handed her the saw. “When I’m in the water, lower this to me, okay?’
“Sure.”
I didn’t leap in this time; that would have taken too much energy. I went down the ladder slowly and eased myself back in. Water sloshed me in the face as I did the breaststroke to the stern. “Lower it,” I called up.
I got the saw, got myself in position, took deep breaths, and once again dove. This time I didn’t worry with the screws, I grabbed the rope between them with my left hand and began sawing with my right. I stayed sawing until I was light headed and my lungs wanted to pop. I surfaced knowing I hadn’t made that much of cut in the rope.
Second dive, I had trouble finding the cut I’d started so that wasn’t a very productive trip. Dive three, I made more progress and after dive four, I might have cut it halfway through.
On dives five and six, the cut deepened. But on dive seven, luck failed me.
The blade broke.
As the two broken pieces floated away, I grabbed for them, even opened my eyes thinking I might be able to see them. The salt water stung painfully and it was a wasted effort. The water was so murky I couldn’t see anything. I surfaced, disgusted.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” Su must have seen the displeasure on my face as I climbed out of the water.
“Blade broke,” I said simply. “You’re sure there’s—“
“I’ll look again,” she said and was gone. She returned, a discouraged look on her face, her box of chef’s knives held out in front of her. “How about a knife?
”
I studied what she had. “You don’t have one with a serrated blade?”
“I had one, but couldn’t keep it sharp.” Her face turned dismissive. “Useless.”
The hacksaw had had a tough time cutting that thick rope. I couldn’t imagine any of these straight edge blades, even her big carving knife, working. And, anyway, I was exhausted. I didn’t have it in me to make another dive.
How far had I cut that rope? It would have helped if I’d been able to see my progress. I was relying on how it had felt. Maybe—maybe—I’d cut three-fourths of the way through.
Maybe that was enough.
I explained what I wanted to try as Su and I climbed the aft ladder to the upper deck and the bridge. “You’re crazy,” she said, eyes wide, following right behind me. “You’ll ruin the engines.”
“I think it’ll work.” The way I figured it, I’d weakened the rope enough that the engines should be able to break it apart.
“Think?” She asked skeptically.
I shrugged, turned the key the ignition, and heard the muted rumble of the engines.
“Will, stop,” she pleaded. “Don’t.”
There was no stopping. I put the boat in gear and pushed the throttles down.
As the engine vibration and noise ratcheted up, our gazes met. Su looked terrified. The boat felt like it was tearing apart.
Chapter 29
Fearful my gamble hadn’t worked, I grabbed for the throttles, but before I could shut down the engines, the Venetian surged forward, throwing both of us to the floor.
Fast as possible, I got up, turned the engines off.
Su, still on her back on the floor, looked up at me like I was crazy. “It worked. Why you stopping?”
We’d broken the rope, but it was still tangled around the propeller shafts and that worried me. Much as I didn’t want to, it’d be wise to make a couple of dives to get that rope completely off. I explained that to Su who shook her head.
“You loony.”
In the water, it dawned on me she was right. Those screws were now free to turn. If the engines started, I’d be chewed to death. Fear made me fast and efficient. I found the rope’s loose ends, unwrapped the shafts, and got myself out of that water. Su had a towel waiting for me when I climbed out. “Thank you,” I said gratefully as she draped it around my shoulders. “Get us going for Maceio.” I added wearily. “I’ll be up as soon as I get some clothes on.”