Devil Sharks

by Chris Jameson

  The floating part was another story.

  “Where do we stand?” Sami asked.

  Alex glanced up. She didn’t like the gray cast of his eyes. He wiped rain from his face and gave her a doubtful look.

  “Five bullet holes. Shouldn’t be a huge problem.”

  Sami stared at him.

  “Okay, yeah,” he said with a shrug, “it’s a huge problem. But we don’t have too far to go. I dried the surface as well as I could and Cat patched one side with duct tape—”

  “Duct tape,” Sami echoed dully.

  “—Then we filled the holes from the other side with Krazy Glue and put another strip of duct tape on that side.”

  “Krazy Glue.”

  Alex fixed her with a hard look. “We’re sinking, Sami. We don’t have time for—”

  “I know,” she said, shivering inside her raincoat. All along she had felt hard and strong. Maybe not brave, but at least determined. Now her left hand rose, shaking, to cover her mouth. It only lasted a moment and then she shook it off. “Duct tape and Krazy Glue. Okay, baby. Okay.”

  Her husband smiled at her. A wild, nothing-left-to-lose smile. “The bullet holes aren’t nearly as much a concern as the damage from the shotgun. Up close, it would’ve blown a big damn hole in the floor of the dinghy. Instead, there are a lot of little holes from the pellets.”

  “But you’re patching them.”

  Cat had been ignoring the conversation. Now her head snapped up and she looked at Sami with a dreadful urgency. “We’re doing what we can. As fast as we can.”

  Sami nodded. She understood what Cat was saying—that they needed to get back to it—so she left them to their labor. She turned and crab-walked across the canted deck to where Isko lay. He’d slid up against the railing. In a short time—ten minutes, maybe twenty—he’d be underwater if they didn’t move him.

  “Hey,” Sami said, shaking his shoulder.

  Isko took a sharp breath and his eyes opened. They were unfocused and roving for a few seconds before his gaze found her. That quick breath, almost a gasp, unsettled her. It was as if he’d already died and she’d called him back to life.

  He said something in Tagalog, but Sami shook her head.

  “English,” she reminded him.

  Isko closed his eyes and exhaled again. “Yes. English. I think I’m dying.”

  Sami didn’t see any reason to sugarcoat it. “You might be. I’m not going to lie to you. But we might all be dying today.”

  A flicker of understanding touched his eyes. “The boat is sinking?”

  “Yes.”

  Isko muttered in his own language again. Sami felt sure it was profanity. Then he switched back to English. “The sharks—”

  “We know. Devil Sharks.”

  Isko nodded. “They’re waiting for a second chance at me.”

  Sami took his hand. The man’s leg had turned septic. The flesh had gone black and rotting and the rot had started to spread upward. He had other wounds, too. Even if they got him to the atoll, there was no telling how long he would survive unless she amputated that leg. Long enough for the Coast Guard to arrive, to give her a place on board a Coast Guard vessel where she could take off the leg in a sterile environment? Did they have an onboard surgeon? Did they have an operating room, or something like it?

  It helped her to wonder those things, to imagine that these were the concerns she needed to worry about instead of worrying about surviving the next half hour.

  “We’re going to get you off this boat,” Sami assured him.

  Isko lifted a hand and gave a weak wave. His eyes closed. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted and she realized he was trying to smile. Even with all he’d been through, and although he knew he would almost certainly die today, he had made a joke. Sami squeezed his hand. Maybe Isko’s courage came from his nearness to death, but still she took it as inspiration.

  She started to scuttle over to the upside-down dinghy, but as she did she glanced up and saw that Patrick had vanished. For a moment his absence alarmed her—it made no sense—and then she remembered their conversation about the flare gun. They’d talked about it just a few minutes ago, but it had already slipped her mind.

  “Shit.”

  She duckwalked up the slanted deck and grabbed hold of the frame of the cockpit door. From here, going up the few steps to the wheelhouse was like climbing a ladder. She called out for Patrick, but he wasn’t in the wheelhouse, so she ducked into the cockpit. The space hadn’t filled with water—that time would not come for a while yet. She moved toward the steps that would bring her below. The smell of the explosion that had put a hole in the boat still lingered. The sounds of the rain on the windows and the thump of waves against the boat seemed almost comforting, the sort of thing it would be easy to fall asleep to. A hypnotic rhythm, if not for the fact that those sounds were hastening them all along to their deaths.

  “Patrick!” she called.

  He ought to have been up in the wheelhouse. Surely the flare gun had been there, so if he’d come in to get it, where the fuck was he?

  “Patrick!”

  A muffled voice called from below. Sami went to start down into the cabin, where she could hear the water sloshing.

  “Are you okay?”

  His head appeared in the opening below. “Of course I’m not okay. I’m shot, remember?”

  “Jesus,” Sami whispered. She shifted out of the way as he started dragging himself, half-limping, stumping, crawling up the steps. “What are you doing down there?”

  “I got you the flare gun. It’s on the desk behind you in that yellow case.”

  Sami turned and saw it there, on the desk in the upper salon area of the cockpit. How she’d missed the case … but of course, she hadn’t been picturing a case. Just the flare gun itself. Now Patrick reached her and she took his hand and helped him limp down the slanted floor and grab hold of the doorframe. The rain grew louder on the windows. The whole boat shifted a few more inches and Sami tightened her grip on the frame.

  “What were you doing down there?” she asked again.

  Holding on with one hand, Patrick reached into his pocket and pulled out a sealed plastic bag. Inside it was a cell phone.

  “If we die … if those pricks murdered us all today … I’m not letting them get away with it. I’m going to take a little video. We’ll give their names and whatever information we can. I’ll tie this to a life preserver. If we die, at least they’ll have something to remember us by.”

  His gaze had turned grim and ferocious.

  Sami kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

  Patrick gave a quick nod. They would live or die together, and they understood each other.

  A scuffing noise made Sami glance back to see Nalani coming down from the wheelhouse. She wore a sweatshirt much too big for her, a faded aqua-blue thing from the Sorbonne in Paris. Sami assumed it had belonged to James, not just from the size but also from the way Nalani tugged it around her as she came out on deck.

  “What are we doing?” Nalani asked. She looked tired and pale. Grief crouched on her shoulder, but she was strong enough to carry it.

  “Hoping,” Patrick replied.

  Nalani nodded, as if this was all the explanation she required. And maybe it was. Shifting sideways, she descended the canted deck like a mountain climber, leaning toward the peak.

  “Alex,” Nalani said. “We need to get off this boat. The cabin’s filling pretty fast. You ever try to float a bucketful of water or sand? You keep adding to it and it’s displacing more and more water, but eventually it just goes down. Sinks in a millisecond. Pretty soon we’re going to take the plunge.”

  Cat and Alex scrambled back to take a better look at the repairs they’d made to the dinghy. Alex still had a roll of duct tape in his hand.

  Nils crouched against the railing. “This is never going to hold. You guys know that, right?”

  Luisa had remained against the cockpit w
all with her head in her hands. Now she cried out in frustration and jumped to her feet. Instantly she was off-balance. She pinwheeled a bit, caught herself, bent toward the deck, and started sliding. Alex reached for her, grabbed her arm as she slid past him, but still she struck the railing a few feet from Nils.

  “Fuck!” she shouted, smashing her palm against the railing. Her eyes were wide and brimming with tears as she slammed her hand onto the metal over and over. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuuck!”

  “Lulu,” Cat said quietly.

  Luisa crumpled into an uncomfortable bundle in the V of the railing and deck. She pointed a finger at Cat. “No. No ‘Lulu.’ Not a single word to try to placate me. There’s no placating this, Catherine.”

  Sami, Patrick, and the rest all stared as Luisa unfolded herself from that awkward V, shifted around, and forced herself to stand, one foot on the deck and one on the railing. The sharks would be ten feet below her now, maybe less, but she seemed to have forgotten about them for the moment.

  “Alex Simmons, you are the reason we don’t have Harry to get us out of this—” Luisa began.

  Sami gaped at her. “Luisa—”

  “That’s insane,” Cat said.

  Luisa underwent a change. Her desperation turned to rage. “It’s not insane, Catherine. If Alex and his precious Samantha were going to be such uptight douchebags on this trip, they should never have come. Harry did everything he could to make them comfortable, to make amends. Then Alex threw him overboard, where our hungry friends are waiting for us!”

  “Jesus, Luisa,” Alex said. “You skipped a few steps in there, don’t you think? Yeah, Harry and I were getting along pretty well. Then—” He turned and pointed at Isko. “That asshole bashed Gabe’s skull in. We all tried to help. Sami tried to help. Harry decided to go after my wife. If you recall, we both went over the side.”

  “Alex didn’t bring the smugglers and he didn’t invite the sharks,” Cat said.

  “You want to blame me, enjoy yourself,” Alex said, “but it’s not going to save any lives.”

  “Oh, you’re trying to save our lives?” Luisa sneered. “My fucking hero.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Nalani asked.

  Luisa rolled her eyes. “Are you serious? Look around, woman. You see anything that might be troubling me?”

  Nalani skated sideways along the deck until she reached the railing, right beside Luisa. “Look at me.”

  Luisa did. With attitude.

  “You remember me, Luisa? Nalani. I held your hair when you puked … nearly every time we went to a party in college. I’m the one you called when you lost your baby. I came to you when your mother was dying. Maybe you never considered me your best friend, but I’ve been the best friend in your life.”

  That seemed to rattle Luisa. She gave Nalani a petulant look. “And?”

  Nalani’s face contorted with anguish. “And today my husband was murdered in front of me.”

  Luisa wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “You think I don’t know that?”

  “I think you’re thinking of yourself. Like you always do. But right now, we … you and I and the rest of the people still on this boat … we’re all we have.”

  Luisa wiped her eyes again. She glanced over at Sami, then at Alex. Finally she flapped a hand dismissively and turned to look at Cat and Nils.

  “Get the dinghy in the water.”

  Nils shook his head. “I don’t think the patches will hold.”

  “Not even long enough to get us to shore?” Patrick asked him.

  Nils glanced at his feet. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe is the best we’ve got,” Cat said.

  She slid her fingers beneath the dinghy and soon the others were helping her to turn it over. Sami figured there had to be an easier way to hoist it into the water, but they didn’t have time to figure that out. And the water was close now. The edge of the deck was only a couple of feet above the water. The rain and wind gusted and a wave crashed across the deck and nearly tore the dinghy out of their hands. Sami slid down and grabbed hold, helping them.

  “So who goes first?”

  They all looked at her.

  Cat started to speak but hesitated.

  Luisa didn’t. “I go first. Anyone want to fight me for it?”

  Nils held on tightly to the dinghy. They all did. The boat rocked and another wave crashed across the deck.

  “Patrick goes first,” he said. “I didn’t fix this thing to have my husband go down with the ship.”

  “He’s been shot,” Sami added. “Patrick should absolutely be in the first group. Worst-case scenario, if some of us have to swim for it, Patrick won’t have a chance in hell.”

  Alex studied her. “What about Isko? He’s in rough shape.”

  “Not a fucking chance,” Luisa said, turning to Cat for support.

  Sami nodded. “I agree with Lulu. Isko can wait. Getting him to the beach first isn’t going to help him.”

  “And if he has to swim for it?” Cat asked, as if Sami needed to be reminded of what she’d just said about Patrick.

  From a dozen feet away, Isko coughed and called to them. When they glanced over, the dying man gave them a thumbs-up.

  “I’m a very good swimmer,” Isko rasped. “You go.”

  Sami smiled thinly and faced the others around her. “He knows his chances are slim. He needs surgery. There’s no operating room on the beach. Without the Coast Guard…”

  She waved a hand through the air. She didn’t need to finish her thought.

  “All right,” Cat said, glancing at Nalani, Sami, and Alex. “I’ll take the dinghy, run Luisa, Nils, and Patrick to shore, and come back for you three. And Isko. Okay?”

  Sami and Alex exchanged a glance. He reached out a hand and she took it, holding tight.

  “We’ll be waiting,” Alex said.

  But the edge of the deck had slipped under the water and out beyond the railing Sami could see at least two fins in the windblown whitecaps, and she wondered if they really would be waiting when Cat made it back.

  They tied the rope to the dinghy and, working together, slid it over the railing. They tried to lower it carefully, but the weight dragged it from their fingers and they dropped the dinghy into the waves.

  It bobbed on the water, banged against the hull, but it stayed afloat—for the moment, at least.

  Nalani looked at Cat.

  “Hurry.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Cat held the throttle on the dinghy. She wanted to twist around and look back at the Kid Galahad, but she didn’t dare. Alex, Sami, and Nalani had all volunteered to wait for her, but she’d wrestled with the decision. They could have tried to pile everyone on board the little motorboat, but they’d have literally been on top of one another, and even if they hadn’t just patched their “lifeboat” up, the risk of tipping or scuttling her would have been strong. Tipping over, dumping them all into the lagoon, was an ending to this story that nobody wanted.

  However, risky as it would’ve been, at least that would have meant only one trip. Leaving her three friends behind meant that she would have to go back for them. She could have chosen to send someone else, but Cat wasn’t wired like that. She had promised she would return and ferry them to shore, and she intended to do just that. If it had just been Isko, she might not have dared. To risk her life for someone who was almost certain to die … she might have a certain amount of courage, but she wasn’t eager to prove it.

  No. She would go back for her friends.

  “Do you see it?” Nils called.

  Cat frowned. Nils pointed over her right shoulder and she turned to see the fin gliding through the water behind them. It vanished beneath a tall wave and then reappeared. Thirty yards farther out, cutting in the other direction so that their trails made a sort of helix pattern, a second shark also seemed to be following.

  “Can’t you go any faster?” Luisa shouted, the wind and rain carrying the words back to Cat.

 
; Luisa sat at the bow of the dinghy, perched next to Patrick, who sat with his leg outstretched. He ought to have been alone, there at the front, but Luisa had bulled her way up beside him—presumably so she could jump out the second they touched the sand. Nils occupied the middle of the boat, sitting on a bench. While Cat ignored Luisa, Nils wasn’t ready to let her off so easily.

  “We’re staying afloat with tape and glue,” he reminded her. “The shotgun blast—”

  “Just say ‘no’!” Luisa snapped. “If the answer is no, just say it.”

  Cat glared at her. “No. We can’t go any faster.”

  As it was, Cat and Nils both kept glancing at the floor of the dinghy. Water had already seeped in. Yes, the rain was coming down hard, but with their speed against the wind the rain seemed to cut almost horizontally. The water in the dinghy wasn’t rain … it had started to seep up through the glue and the duct tape. Not much water—not yet. Cat glanced ahead at the fragment of atoll where they’d picnicked earlier in the day and tried to calculate how long it would take to get there, off-load her passengers, go back for the others, and then reach shore again. How much water in the dinghy would be too much? How much before the saltwater ate away the glue or loosened the tape and the holes just opened up?

  She twisted the throttle. The motor growled. A little faster might be a bad idea, but she couldn’t decide if it was worse than going slowly under the circumstances.

  Luisa glanced back at her. “Thank you! Someone who’s not a fucking idiot.”

  The crispness of the general rebuke cut into all of them, Cat felt sure, but as angry as she wanted to be at Luisa, she was more horrified by the way the woman had snapped. She wanted to tell her old friend to get her shit together, but she had moved past caring very much about Luisa’s demeanor. If anyone had ever needed a slap in the face, it was her.

  Cat glanced over her shoulder again. No sign of the sharks that had seemed to pursue them. Better for her group, yes, but what of those they’d left behind? She didn’t want to think about it.