“You’re not,” said Susannah brightly.
“Susannah,” said Claudette, “this is intolerable.”
Axel was the only one who did not understand what was happening. “What’s wrong? What is she doing?”
“I thought it might be the most excellent solution,” said Susannah. She was in a mood of cheerful command—of herself, and her parents.
At last Axel got the point. He pressed a hand against his head, speechless.
She realized that perhaps the most punishing act she could commit was to let her parents keep the money and suffer the consequences. Besides, actually setting the money on fire would prove a challenge. The slight wind was enough to extinguish an entire booklet of matches—there were good reasons her mother used a cigarette lighter.
But she liked the attention, Martin getting so close and everyone looking right at her.
“Yes, it would solve some problems,” said Leonard. His voice was just slightly ironic. “But then we couldn’t donate the money to AIDS research. Or to help stamp out malaria.”
But Martin’s dismay convinced her—her plan was not such a great idea. She opened the lazarette and put the jar inside.
The drone of the aircraft was audible again.
The sound of the airplane did not please Martin, and there was new anxiety in Leonard’s eyes as he motioned for everyone to be quiet. He listened to the approaching sound of the skyborne engine, and then he shot Claudette a silent questioning glance, not frightened, but measuring.
From the cabin, Laser gave a doleful howl.
“The noise of the plane,” suggested Martin, “bothers his ears—the way sirens bother dogs.”
“He’s like a weird oracle,” said Leonard with a breathy, unsteady laugh.
Martin was not comfortable with this talk of foretold harm, but he thought his uncle might be right.
“What do you think, Martin?” asked Leonard. “What should we do?”
“That’s right, Martin,” said Susannah. “We could put the money back where we found it.”
BUT THE MONEY had mesmerized Martin.
He knew this, and yet he was powerless. He felt its hold on him as he reckoned what his share of so much money would be, and how amazed his parents would be to see him set the cash down on the family table.
So instead of disagreeing with Leonard, he asked, “You want to run with the money, don’t you?”
Leonard looked at Martin with his head cocked sideways, like a creature looking with rapt interest. Maybe Leonard was surprised that his nephew understood him so well.
“All this argument,” Martin continued, “is just so you can say we looked at every side of the problem. You crave this money.”
“Yes, of course I do,” Leonard said. “When I first realized what was happening I was worried, but now I think—eight hundred thousand dollars. Even if we share and share alike, that is a whole lot of cash.”
If, thought Martin.
Leonard was even, in one part of his mind, thinking of keeping all of the money. He was probably not even conscious of the greed. It was a force in him, like the gravity that made planets go in orbit around the sun.
“He’s right,” said Claudette.
It was not too late, Martin knew. He could still insist that they should throw the money into the sea, or carry it back on board Witch Grass.
“Leonard’s exactly right,” Claudette added. “Fortune brought us this money, and we should fight to keep it.”
“We might get away with it,” Martin said. His voice came out of his mouth like crude overdubbing, his own words like some other actor’s.
“Throw off the towline, Martin,” said Leonard with a confident laugh. “We won’t be towing Witch Grass. If they want their money, they’ll have to catch us.”
* * *
Martin had kept his mouth shut when he had the opportunity to tell Leonard that this was a bad idea. He had even offered that they might be able to succeed, support that he instantly despised himself for offering. Martin was struck by his duplicity and at how easy it had been to betray his own nature.
Now that the yacht was starting up, the propellers sputtering and churning, he perceived the determined slant of Axel’s shoulders as he turned the wheel. It was too late to change Leonard’s mind, Martin feared, and Axel would be adamant.
And they might, after all, get away with it.
Martin watched his hands perform their duty. He untied the white line from around a cleat in the deck of Athena’s Secret, and the length of high-quality, three-strand polypropylene stretched out into the air and drifted as the yacht found its power.
The line fell into the water as Witch Grass fell back, retreating from the yacht. Martin had to set his feet against the lurch of the yacht as the engines coughed again and gradually found their true timbre.
The wake widened and the powerboat declined into the various stages she had taken on, in Martin’s eyes, earlier that afternoon. She declined from a crime scene to a menacing nautical shape, and then to the angled outline of a dwelling on the blue-gray prairie.
Axel set both engines at full throttle, and soon Athena’s Secret was heading northwest at twenty knots, far faster than Martin had ever known her to travel before. The yacht caught the swells and rocked like a speedboat, the spray in the air sharp and fast.
Martin watched the aircraft as it grew closer.
THE WHITE AND RED WINGS banked over the distant outline of the power cruiser, and if there was any doubt that the airplane had been seeking the vessel and her crew that doubt faded as the airplane swept low to circle the unmoving vessel, cutting in wide circuits, the wings sweeping upward, only to slice downward again.
Then, with a swiftness and deliberateness that took Martin’s breath, the airplane set a path directly along the wake of Athena’s Secret.
“They’re coming after us,” said Claudette.
Axel was skillful, setting the yacht along a zigzag route so that the aircraft would not be able to glide to a landing anywhere close. The aircraft banked and climbed and circled far ahead of the yacht, as though the pilot was showing off his ability to predict where the yacht would be before she actually cut across the invisible point in the water.
Axel eluded this expectation, shifting the yacht’s course.
The pilot was not to be deterred. This time the airplane was even closer, so near that as the aircraft circled Martin could make out at least two silhouettes in the cockpit. The aircraft’s name was lettered jauntily along the cockpit door, Red Bird.
Martin waved, supposing that if the aircraft had friendly intentions, greeting it with a friendly gesture was polite and appropriate. And there was no need to completely abandon the charade that the yacht had only innocent aims, so Martin forced himself to smile. Claudette took Martin’s example and gave a wave, too, voyagers out enjoying the Pacific sunshine.
A hand waved back from within the cockpit, and it was hard to read from this simple, back-and-forth waggle of a hand any of the pilot’s objectives. But Martin could not help finding this gesture subtly mocking, like a fake laugh.
“You see, he’s friendly,” said Leonard, lifting his arm in the universal symbol of greeting, palm out, his hand empty of any instrument of harm.
* * *
The aircraft continued to bank and circle. The pilot looked down at them from beneath the bill of a baseball cap, studying the yacht during each passage, and the noise of the aircraft’s engine was loud as it grew near, sounding very much like a chain saw.
As the airplane passed overhead, the pitch of the engine altered, a high-note, low-note effect that was almost pleasing to the ear, except that the aircraft now made Martin extremely uneasy. The shadow of Red Bird passed over the yacht.
After several circuits, the pilot released the yacht from his attention and glided away, flying close to the silken surface of the water, all the way back to the distant power cruiser.
There the airplane maneuvered, gliding and gunning its engine, descri
bing a wide oval, a graceful geometry that made the aircraft look peaceful. It remained there, not ascending, and not beginning its descent, a shape like a fragment of porcelain against the blue.
As it landed, the airplane came down unsteadily, its wings inclining one way and then the other, as though a new pair of hands piloted the craft.
The pontoons touched down with a shower of white, feathery spray. The aircraft touched the water again, rebounding gently, and then glided to a gentle stop, right beside Witch Grass.
“We did it!” said Leonard.
Axel gave a laugh, his hands on the wheel.
“We got away!” said Leonard.
Claudette smoked without saying a word, and Martin could sense her doubt. He shared it, all of this too real, now that they had counted the money and seen the pilot, actually observed him, a red-complexioned, craggy countenance, white teeth flashing in a smile.
Martin did not like that smile.
THE PLANE WAS DESCENDING.
Jeremy took the controls at Elwood’s urging encouragement. “You can do this with your eyes closed.”
Shako felt proud of Jeremy.
The two of them would go flying together when this was all over and Elwood gave Shako flying lessons, too. But they would have more fun than just flying. They would go spear-fishing, off the craggy Na Pali coast of Kauai, down where the stingrays and the parrot fish held court among the reefs, like in the PBS shows Shako had watched. He had never been so much as snorkeling himself, and he couldn’t actually swim. But he understood that there was more to life than he knew.
Shako loosened the laces on his Nikes and retied them. He cracked his knuckles and did an exercise he had learned from watching wrestlers, big men with way more muscle than Shako possessed, stretching and relaxing, moving from side to side, getting ready.
This was going to be Shako’s day. Everything would be different after this. It was not simply a matter of becoming Jeremy Tygart’s brother, with all that brotherhood implied.
Shako knew that he had committed crimes, and he had watched enough TV to be able to imagine phrases like tried as an adult. But he could picture an official at the Pentagon thinking that what they really needed was a quick young man, someone with specific weapons training. The Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Secretary of Defense would read about Shako somehow, and the generals would tell the cops to keep Shako safe, give him what he wanted.
“Jeremy,” said Elwood, “you are doing great.”
Jeremy was not so sure.
He was going to pilot the aircraft down to the sea surface himself, and he was apprehensive. Landing the plane was not like flying around. Not at all. Flying in the open sky you could survive even a collision with a bird. But approaching the planet’s surface—that was different.
He was wary. He was giving the boat ahead on the water a wide space, not wanting to approach too closely, but even so he was certain that he would make a serious mistake.
A successful landing, Elwood had once told him, is basically a controlled stall. You fly so slowly, so very slowly, that the engine loses all thrust and the plane comes down. Right where you want it.
The sea was coming on too quickly.
“Witch Grass is riding high in the water,” Elwood was saying. “So we know she delivered her cargo.”
“What sort of cargo was it?” Shako asked, a rare direct question from him.
And it was a question only a very assertive or a very naïve person would ask.
“Mint AK’s this time,” said Elwood after what Jeremy thought might be the briefest of hesitations. No one actually spelled out information about what was being transported, or where it was going. “And rocket launchers. The shoulder-mounted kind, antitank, antipersonnel. Pirates confiscated the shipment out of North Korea, sold them to Mr. Tygart, and he shipped them to the California coast, or maybe Baja. Only Mr. Tygart knows all the details. His pumped-up deep-sea craft are a perfect cover—pleasure boats with a lot of capacity.”
Jeremy had never heard his dad’s line of work expressed so succinctly. He felt a mixture of pride and uneasiness. His father’s business dealt in instruments of destruction, along with illegal drugs. The dealings were illegitimate and in some ways shameful. But if his dad quit, Jeremy rationalized, someone else would make money the same way. And they would not be as efficient, or as generous with bribes. More people would be hurt.
Jeremy let the airspeed continue to decline, sixty miles per hour, fifty-five, and still he knew that they were going too fast, the blue water a smear of reflected daylight beneath the pontoons. Witch Grass came on fast, too. Surely there would be a crash, the aircraft pitching forward and tumbling. He should abort the landing and try again.
But he let the aircraft descend, the altimeter showing fifty feet, forty—the sky, which had been a protective sanctuary for so many hours, unexpectedly letting go.
The last twenty feet took no time at all. The pontoons hit the water with a sound like crowd applause, an instant of ovation cut off as the pontoons kicked back off the smooth water.
Then the applause continued as the pontoons touched the water again and ran steadily through the surface. The aircraft slowed down, so hard that Jeremy was thrown forward against the restraints of his seat belt.
“Perfect,” said Elwood.
He patted Jeremy on the arm and Jeremy was grateful, even as he knew that he was being cheated of something—he wasn’t sure what.
The sensation of being on the surface of the water was strange. The pontoons had been appendages without any power—if anything they had been a drag on the aircraft as it sliced through the atmosphere.
But now they came alive, struts creaking, the sea working at an aircraft that was now transformed into a boat, and the shifting, uneasy, sideways movement, the constant slop of water and its swells and declivities was immediately impressive to Jeremy.
Elwood took the controls and taxied the plane, bringing them closer to the cruiser. Then he switched off the engines, a single act, but one that made a profound change.
With the engines silent, the propellers spun with a windy whirling sound and then slowed into a series of strobe-frozen images. Then the propellers stopped entirely. The engines had been running so long, and at such a constant, ear-punishing pitch, and the first thing Jeremy noticed was the deep quiet.
The hush was not faultless—water splashed and surged around the pontoons and under the aircraft, and the structure, airborne for so long, made even louder creaking, cooling sounds, as the engines, the wings, and the fuselage adjusted to this new edgy stasis.
Elwood opened the cockpit door, moving slowly. The door made a loud squeak, and the hinges shrilled as Elwood pushed it. He grunted, unused to such freedom of movement after hours of sitting. The rush of sea air into the cockpit was thrilling, tasting of fresh wind and sunlight.
Elwood climbed stiffly out onto the pontoon and held on to the wing strut, taking cautious steps. The big man swung his arms, stretching. He unfastened his fly and peed, as Jeremy glanced away, giving the man some privacy.
Then Elwood turned and looked back at Jeremy. He buttoned his fly and when he put a hand on the wing, supporting his weight, the aircraft shifted very slightly. He didn’t speak, listening.
“I don’t hear anything,” he said.
He was right.
Witch Grass was too quiet.
“I don’t hear the dog,” he said. Then he added, “Both of you come on out, and bring the guns.”
THE WEAPONS WERE HEAVY in the bag that Jeremy hefted down into the sunlight, hanging on to the wing struts to keep from falling, seawater slapping and bursting diamonds of sunlight. His feet squeaked on the fabric of the aircraft and the weapons bag was awkward, the guns stirring, shifting, heavy entities that wanted their freedom.
“Quick and quiet,” said Elwood.
Jeremy, too, peed, and stood there breathing the salty air, a smell of hot aircraft engine and body sweat, the three of them out in the open after long confinem
ent.
“Give Shako the Ingram,” directed Elwood.
The Ingram MAC-10 was a large pistol, basically—nothing to look at. Jeremy had trouble fitting the ammo clip for a moment, but then the weapon accepted the attachment like a mechanism that had been to school and knew what was expected.
What Jeremy held in his grasp was a heavy T-square, ammo clip fastening into the ridged stock. The weapon was matte black, made for night work, and dull so sunlight did not reflect. A shoulder support could be fitted to the weapon, and in movies Jeremy had seen a noise suppressor on the barrel, but the essential weapon was what he held now, heavy and beyond menacing. Jeremy was fascinated by the firearm, but he did not enjoy having the death-ready thing in his hands.
“Give him the gun.” Elwood was prompting with an air of genial impatience, but Jeremy did not release the weapon right away.
Shako was in the sunlight now, and he did that little wrestler loosen-up with his upper body, made a kickboxer strike at the air, and then another, warming up his legs. Jeremy admired his moves, a short- to medium-sized guy, compact, like a figure a computer artist would design and animate, Shako the Hit Man, not suitable for under eighteen.
Shako put out his hands and made that impatient flex of his fingers. Jeremy gave him the gun at last. Elwood had reached into the weapons bag and helped himself to the larger firearm, the Heckler & Koch, and now he put out one hand to the vessel and with an air of gracefulness swung his body up and over the gunwales of the powerboat.
Jeremy was alone with Shako. This shared solitude was a joy after being in the encompassing presence of Elwood for so many hours.
“I have to think of a way,” said Shako.
He said nothing more for a moment.
“A way what?” asked Jeremy.
Shako had something to say—something urgent.
But the moment didn’t last. Elwood was motioning, hurry.
* * *
Jeremy gave Shako a hand as they climbed up onto Witch Grass, and Jeremy was surprised at the smooth uncallused feel of Shako’s grasp.
Seize the Storm Page 11