Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller)

by Todd Borg

  With fabric over my head and tape over my mouth, there was no way I could bite at the rope knotted around my wrists.

  Someone lifted me up off the ground and over his shoulder the way a strong dad might with a child. I got a strong whiff of cologne. He took several steps, and pitched me off with substantial forward motion.

  My foot banged against something solid as I fell to a hard, cold, metal surface. Big hands gripped my upper arm, spun me around on a corrugated floor.

  The bed of a cargo van.

  There were noises at the side of the van. The rope at my wrists jerked. I was tied to something inside the van.

  Hands went through my pockets, pulled out the contents.

  A door opened and shut. Engine roared. Another door shut. Two men.

  The van lurched off and went down my mountain road fast enough that I slid around in the back as we raced around corners. The rope tied to my wrists came up short. My arms were jerked one way, then another, and my body spun around.

  For a moment, I’d had the brief thought that despite being hobbled with taped wrists and ankles, I could maybe roll up onto my knees, feel my way to the inside door latch, open it and push myself out to fall at high speed onto the road. But now that I was tied to the inside of the van, jumping out would leave me dragging and bouncing behind the truck. A quicker end, perhaps, than what they planned for me, but death by road rash was right up near the top of the list of bad ways to die. I stayed curled in a fetal position on the hard metal and tried to think away the fog in my brain.

  If I could get one of the knots in the rope untied...

  I pulled on the rope, dragging my sore body across the floor of the van, trying to move slowly so they wouldn’t notice if they looked back. My fingers followed the rope to a knot that went around a horizontal support board that was bolted to each of the van’s ribs. I could feel the heavy knot, but I couldn’t understand how to untie it. It was tight, the rope hard with tension. If the men planned to untie it, there would be a slip tie of some kind. But without vision, I couldn’t tell what it was.

  I sagged back down, my head pounding.

  I could tell when he slowed for the stop sign at the bottom of the mountain. Then came a pull of acceleration as he turned south onto the highway and floored the gas pedal. I noticed the change in sound when he went through the Cave Rock tunnel. A few miles later, I became aware of the van slowing and stopping.

  I heard the side door of the van open. Someone untied the rope that had attached me to the inside of the van. Once again, a man tossed me over his shoulder as if I were a bag of dog food. My gut was squeezed hard as I bounced on his hard deltoid muscle. I could have tried using my elbows or knees against his chest or back, but my brain was still swimming.

  The man carried me a long way. His cologne permeated my brain. I never heard him huff and puff. He dumped me onto soft ground. Snow. But not normal snow. There was sand under the snow. Somewhere nearby was the rumble of a big engine at idle.

  There was a chunking sound as if something had been dropped on the ground by my feet. I felt rope-tying motions at my ankles.

  For a moment there was silence. Then I felt movement on the skin of my left arm, a scratching. Someone was writing on my skin, between the spiraling strips of duct tape.

  “Ready?” said a rough voice. His, I thought. One word wasn’t enough to perceive any accent.

  “Yeah,” came a more distant voice.

  I heard the swish of air, then the smack of something hitting a solid surface. The rope on my wrists went taut. Running footsteps. A big engine revving. Muffled. Gargling with water. A boat with a big inboard engine.

  The rope jerked hard enough to break my arms if I hadn’t been tensing my muscles. I was dragged across the ground. Something heavy pulled on my ankles. The snow turned to thin, hard ice. Then I hit ice water.

  I gagged and choked as water was forced into the cloth bag around my head. But as the boat pulled me out into the lake, it sped up. My body rose, surfing just enough on the water for my head to be in the air even as a heavy weight pulled on my ankles with enough drag that I thought of the torturous dismemberment used as punishment in the Middle Ages. The boat was going fast enough that the water’s surface was firm. The rope dragging on my ankles was a severe strain. It felt like I was being torn in two.

  Some of the water drained from the bag around my head. I concentrated on breathing through my nose. Too fast and I sucked water into my nose. Too slow and my lungs started to pound with desperation.

  Then the boat slowed. I tried to kick with my taped ankles, tried to rise to the surface. But the ankle weight was too heavy, and I was powerless to stop myself from sinking. The ice water was sucking the heat out of my body. Hypothermia was slowing my muscles, robbing me of control. My kicks with taped ankles and my arm strokes with taped wrists weren’t enough to overcome the weight on my ankles. The bag over my head filled with water. I held my breath, but it wasn’t enough air to last thirty seconds. And my futile efforts to swim against the weight pulling me down exhausted my air supply that much faster.

  Just as my consciousness was fading, the rope at my wrists tightened. I felt myself pulled up through the water. My head broke the surface. I was lifted so that I was out of the water from my armpits up. I shook my head, trying to get the water to drain from the bag. As air came in, I sucked through my nose over and over, trying to replenish my air.

  “Is it tied?” a voice said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen up McKenna!”

  I kept focusing on breathing.

  “Time for you to die, McKenna.” The man’s voice was intense and creepy. A slight accent, maybe. Maybe not.

  The rope holding me up by my wrists went slack. I tried to suck one last breath through my nose as I dropped back into the water. Water rushed back into the bag over my head as I tried to kick with my taped feet, fighting the weight that pulled me down into the depths.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I’m not the type to panic. Every time that I’ve faced extreme danger, I’ve done it with a certain calm. I’ve always been able to accept that I’ll die someday. Not knowing when or how has never stressed me.

  But this was a kind of panic-inducing terror unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

  I tried to kick hard. Again and again. But my muscles were weak with hypothermia. As I thrashed my arms, I felt a gentle upward tug on them. They’d attached a small float to my arms to keep me vertical in death, displayed like Amanda Horner for the tourists to see, to send a message to Nadia to pay.

  But the float was not buoyant enough to give me any chance of swimming against the weight tied to my ankles. I was unable to fight the weight, and I was losing control to hypothermia.

  As I sank, I bent at the waist, reached down and felt for the knot that tied my ankles to the anchor weight. The knot was an obvious, hard ball. No way would I get it untied without time and a tool of some kind.

  I stopped struggling. Not because I was giving up, but because I realized that a futile fight goes nowhere. If I burned through my last few seconds of breath doing something that didn’t help, that was foolish no matter what my chance of survival.

  I felt my descent quicken, the ice water flowing past my head as I sank down into the depths. As I dropped, I reached my hands to the side of my head to feel behind my neck for the knot that tied the fabric bag in place. Because my wrists and forearms were lashed together so tightly, it was awkward to even touch my fingertips to the knot. It was there at the back of my neck, a hard little tangle of cord. I pulled at it. Scraped, pinched, gripped. A portion of the cord seemed to move. I tried to get it between my fingernails. Pull again. The cord moved some more. A little loop of looseness. Hook the nails into the loop. Yank on it. Shift up on the cord. Pull again. Faster. Over and over. The loop grew.

  Some part of the cord came free.

  I got my fingers under the edge of the cloth bag, pulled out, stretched it to the maximum circumference, jerked the bag o
ff my head.

  The bag was off, but the world was still black. Without the bag, the ice water swirling past my head was more pronounced as the weight on my ankles pulled me farther into the deep.

  With the fabric gone, I got a fingernail grip on the corner of the tape over my mouth. Tore it off. I felt a tiny bit less constrained. But to breathe was to suck in water and die.

  I don’t know how long I was pulled down toward the bottom. But about the time that I realized this was my end, the weight on my ankles stopped pulling on me. My anchor had hit bottom.

  Reaching down against the gentle upward tug of the float, I felt the line from my ankles. Grabbed it. Pulled myself down to the anchor.

  It was a tire. The twin of the one that pulled Amanda Horner to her death.

  My feet hit the sandy bottom as I lifted up on the tire. It was heavy with concrete.

  But, like Amanda’s tire, the concrete was just in the part of the tire that rested on the bottom. Was it possible that, standing upright on the bottom of the lake, the top of the tire had trapped any air?

  I lifted the tire up higher, put it over my face, tipped my head back, and thrust my nose up into the tire. There was a pocket of air. I inhaled, slowly in case I sucked water. Exhaled. Inhaled again. Exhaled. Repeated.

  The air pocket was small. But it was enough to gather a bit of oxygen and blow off some carbon dioxide. I could prevent carbon dioxide build-up in the air pocket by exhaling into the water, but then the air pocket would shrink and I wouldn’t be able to get my nose up into it. Better to exhale into the tire and maintain the air pocket. But if I continued to breathe it for more than another breath or two, I would exhaust the oxygen, pass out, and drown.

  I took a last breath, then rotated the tire. With my hands and arms still lashed together, I could only rotate it a bit at a time. Eventually, the portion with concrete came around to my hands.

  I reached into the tire space, feeling for the edge of the concrete. It seemed joined to the rubber. I tried to flex the tire rubber, spreading the tire wider, moving the rubber. I got my fingertips under the edge of the concrete. Tried to curl my fingers. The concrete seemed immovable. A fingernail broke off. The ice water was numbing. My muscles were weak. Focus. Bend the fingers. Flex the rubber. Get another fingertip under the concrete. Pull. Jerk.

  My lungs burned. Consciousness was fading. I was standing on the sandy bottom of a dark, freezing, mountain lake, arms taped, ankles taped. The surface was an unknowable distance above me, and the end of my life was assured by a tenacious tire anchor.

  The concrete loosened.

  I got my right fingers under the edge of the concrete. My knuckles abraded against the inner, ribbed rubber of the tire. I put my knee against the inner rim of the tire. Pulled. Jerked harder.

  The concrete came out of the tire and fell away.

  Without the weight of the concrete, the tire became a mild anchor. Still heavier than water, still a bulky weight and difficult to drag through water, but no longer a guarantee of death.

  I pulled down with my arms, kicked with my feet. With wrists and ankles taped, and with my boots on, it was the crudest of swimming motions, a shackled dog paddle. The float tied to my wrists, a plastic bottle filled with air, was not enough to overcome the weight of the tire, but it didn’t hurt.

  Then I thought about the plastic bottle.

  It would have a tiny bit of air, but it might make a difference.

  I pulled it down to me as I continued to kick. By turning it upside down, I was able to unscrew the top without its air escaping. I exhaled a tiny bit of the air in my lungs, then put the end of the bottle in my mouth. Squeezing the bottle very gently as I inhaled, I got most of the air into my lungs, good, I hoped, for another few seconds under water.

  My kicks and strokes were feeble. On each kick, my legs pulled up on the tire, ensuring that I would rise almost not at all in the water. My ascent was torturously slow. My consciousness was almost gone. My lungs felt as if they were going to explode. Or collapse.

  Through my fading thoughts, I had the vague awareness that I was moving up through the water. Toward the surface. Toward air. The thought motivated me a tiny bit more and pushed off my resignation and acceptance of death for another few seconds.

  If I could make a few more strokes and kicks...

  If I could hold my breath a bit longer...

  There was no more point. I was at my end.

  I gave a last, final, death kick.

  My head broke the surface.

  I gasped. Over and over. Sucked air as if it were the essence of existence.

  While consciousness returned, I had to keep making the ineffective kicks and arm strokes. I had to keep breathing.

  After many seconds of rushed breathing while I tread water, I realized that my arms and legs were losing their function to hypothermia. I thought to look around.

  There. To my left. Lights. The shore.

  I tried to swim. Kick. Arm stroke. Kick. My movements were weak from hypothermia. The tape on my wrist and ankles made my movements ineffectual. It was an enormous effort to get my head far enough out of the water to breathe. I was hobbled by the tire dragging my feet down and the empty plastic float interfering with my arm movement.

  The shore seemed to stay distant. The cold became more numbing. My fatigue was overwhelming. I tried counting my kicks and arm strokes to help me focus, to help me keep going. One, two, three...

  At the bottom of each arm stroke, my head lifted up enough to get a small breath.

  Ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred one...

  The black water went on forever. The lights never got closer.

  Four hundred twenty-two, four hundred twenty-three, four...

  The cold took the last of my strength. Once again, it was over. I was sinking for the last time.

  My feet hit bottom. My head was still above water. I hopped forward, sluggish, awkward leaps, dragging the tire with tied ankles. I tried to leap like a tied dog would. It moved me a foot forward. Again. And again.

  An area of white appeared, dimly lit by distant lights. It was a stark contrast to the blackness of water.

  The snow-covered beach.

  I kicked and thrashed. My hands hit ice. I pushed down, pulled forward. My hands broke through the ice. Dug into sand. I pushed. Writhed. Thrashed.

  Eventually, I was half out of the water.

  I tried to shout, “Help!” It was a tiny, meek chirp. I tried again. No sound at all.

  The cold continued to suck my strength until I could no longer move, until I no longer cared.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I never heard any voices or felt anybody move me. My first awareness was of shivering violently while being burned with fire. Gradually, I realized I wasn’t breathing fire, but was inhaling very hot, humid air. That same air seared the exposed skin on my face and neck. I was in a tiny room, lying curled up on a wood bench. There was a dim light in a corner by the ceiling.

  I heard a noise. A door opened. Ice fog swirled in. A man materialized in the fog. He wore a jacket and under it a beige shirt and slacks. He had a gun and radio on his belt.

  “You alive?”

  I tried to say, “Maybe.” It came out as a staccato grunt. My shivering was so violent that my teeth banged hard enough to chip each other.

  “I’m Cory Denell, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. We met.”

  “I ’member.”

  “We got a call, and the caller said a person was lying on Nevada Beach, maybe freezing to death. Hey, it’s some kind of hot in here. Gimme a sec to cool off.” He stepped outside and shut the door. Came back a minute later. The jacket was gone.

  “We were carrying you from the water’s edge up to the street when this homeowner came out and said he had his sauna all fired up. It was snowing pretty good, and it looked like it would take a long time to get you to the ER. So we called the hospital, and a doctor said to go ahead and put you in the sauna but to turn down the heat so it was gentle. Then he sa
id to turn off the heat when you stop shivering, not to let you cook yourself even if you wanted to.”

  “Yes, I want to,” I mumbled.

  “I’m curious about how you ended up in the lake, arms and ankles tied. They tried to drown you like Amanda Horner.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you got away.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We got all the duct tape off.”

  “Thanks. Maybe you should call Diamond. He’ll want to know.”

  “Okay. I’ll do it outside, if you don’t mind. I can’t take this heat.”

  He stepped out and shut the door.

  When my shivering eased a bit, I sat up on the bench. There was a heater in the corner. I was too weak to pull my clothes off, so I stood by the heater. When I felt my pants burning my legs, I turned a quarter turn. In a few minutes, another quarter turn.

  Deputy Denell came back in. “Sarge is on his way. You still okay?”

  “Yeah.” I turned another quarter turn.

  “Like a rotisserie,” he said, pointing at the heater. “I’m gonna wait outside while you get those threads dry.” He went out and shut the door.

  Three full rotations later, I started to sweat. But my clothes still weren’t dry, and I still wanted to bake. I found the switch and turned off the heater. Cracked the door. The sauna would cool, and my clothes could continue to dry.

  The door swung wide and Diamond walked in.

  “You okay?” he asked, looking me up and down.

  I nodded.

  “There’s a group up in Minnesota,” he said. “Town called Duluth. One of the stranger gringo activities. They call themselves the Polar Bears, and their idea of a good time is to use chain saws to cut through the ice in Lake Superior and then jump into the hole to take a swim.”