Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 03 - Dead In The Water

by Dead In The Water(lit)

  Kate gave him her sweetest smile. "I'm on dinner tonight."

  She found the biggest cooking pot in the galley, filled it with water and set it on a burner turned on high, and went below to assemble the ingredients for the rest of the meal. The industrial-size refrigerator and freezer were located in a small room set down into the hull behind the hold and the engine room. She descended the ladder with reluctance. She hated the small, square, walk-in freezer in the storeroom. The door was so heavy, she was always afraid it would swing shut behind her, that the bar across the outside would fall into its bracket and she would be locked inside, left to spend eternity between the prime rib and the pork chops. The thought alone was enough to send a shudder down her spine, and she snatched up a can of lard and scuttled out of the freezer, kicking the door shut behind her with an explosive breath of relief.

  AD armful of salad makings out of the refrigerator and dinner was as good as done.

  She busied herself in the galley as the Avilda beat to windward, and her crew that night sat down to a dinner of boiled king and Dungeness crab, halibut deep-fried in beer batter, a mountain of mashed potatoes and, for Andy, a tossed green salad. Ned, Seth and Harry took one look and fell into their seats. Pawing through the pile of cutlery Kate had stacked in the center of the table, each man found the pair of pliers that suited him best and began cracking crab with gusto. Mayonnaise mustachioed their mouths, melted butter ran down their chins, crab juice ran down their arms and soaked the newspapers Kate had spread on the floor, and the empty shells piled steadily higher in the emptied cooking pot she had placed in the center of the table for just that purpose.

  When they were through, not a leg or a claw or a shoulder of crab was left, nor was a single piece of the halibut. Harry sat back and patted his belly, expressing his feelings with a loud, satisfied belch. This appeared to be the general consensus. "Jesus, that was good," Seth said, and even Ned nodded grudgingly. Overwhelmed by such enthusiastic, unqualified approval, Kate decided she could get to like these guys, given time. Say about a hundred years. She stretched. "Who cleans up?"

  Three thumbs jerked at Andy. Kate grinned at his woebegone expression. "Think I'll turn in. Nighty-night."

  "Me, too," Harry said, yawning. "Ned, you take the first watch; Seth, you take the second. Roust me out if there's trouble."

  Kate hit the rack and fell instantly into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  A thump on the door brought her wide awake. "What?" she croaked. There was another thump and she raised her voice. "What, dammit!"

  Harry's voice was already receding down the hallway.

  "Roll out. We're making ice."

  She groped for her watch and saw that it was barely midnight. Her head fell back on the pillow with a thump.

  "Oh, shit." An instant later she was up and yanking on her clothes. Andy's face peered down at her with a bewildered expression. "What's going on?"

  "We're making ice."

  "What's making ice?"

  "Get up on deck and you'll see. And, Andy?" She met his eyes. "Put on all your clothes."

  A collection of blunt instruments waited for them in the galley. Kate took a baseball bat and, since he looked confused, chose one of the smaller sledgehammers for Andy. "Can you lift that? Show me. Okay. Let's go."

  He followed her, the words of protest dying in his throat when he saw what waited for them on deck.

  The weather, predictably, had worsened while they slept. The Avilda labored sluggishly up and down the swells, crashing into waves twelve to twenty feet high.

  That was nothing new, but the cold was.

  The temperature had dropped as the weather worsened, and in the time it took the salt spray to fly through the air and hit the deck it had frozen into a multitude of tiny pellets that skipped and crackled across the deck, sounding like Rice Krispies after pouring the milk in.

  The spray froze to everything it touched, to the deck itself, to the pots stacked on that deck, to the mast and boom, to the rigging attached to the mast and boom, to the superstructure of the Avilda's cabin. Every inch of the surface of the boat that was above water was encased in a sheet of ice. It was already inches thick on the bow and mast, and thickening rapidly everywhere else.

  "Sweet Jesus H. Christ on a crutch," Andy said, his voice sounding awed even over the storm. It was the first time Kate had ever heard him swear. "We look like the fucking Flying Dutchman."

  Kate cocked her head. It might be her imagination, but she thought she detected a hint of strain in the movement of the Avilda's hull; she seemed to wallow through the next swell, puffing and panting as she went.

  Kate advanced to the boom across a terrifyingly icy deck, braced her feet against the raised lip of the hatch, raised the bat and brought it down as hard as she could.

  Her feet slipped and she felt the strike reverberate back up her arms. Gritting her teeth, she struck again. A large chunk of ice cracked and fell to the deck. A swell passed beneath the hull, the deck slanted and the chunk of ice slid overboard. She slipped again and almost followed it. From the corner of her eye she saw Andy, openmouthed, look from her to Ned, who was hammering at the bow with a sledgehammer twice the size of the one he held, to Seth, who was perched precariously on the catwalk in front of the bridge, trying to beat the windows clear with a three-foot piece of rebar.

  "Beat on it," she growled, and wound up for another swing.

  "Beat on the ice?"

  "Yes. Hammer at it. Break it off and throw it overboard."

  "Why?"

  The bat thumped into the mast again. "Because it's heavy. Because we don't have jack shit in the hold.

  Because if we let the ice build up, we'll get top-heavy, and if we get too top-heavy it'll make the ship roll over and capsize, and if we capsize we'll go in the water, and if we go in the water, we won't have time enough to drown before the hypothermia sets in." Because the Bering Sea's just looking for a reason to give Harry Gault what for, she thought. Kate had four years of college, a year's additional training in the most sophisticated police technology, and she'd worked five years in Anchorage, what passed for a city in Alaska. In spite of it all, her Aleut heritage, generations of living on and from the ocean, told her that the sea itself had risen up in outrage at Harry Gault's mean-spirited, spiteful, venemous revenge on Johansen and the Daisy Mae. She didn't think this, she would have laughed out loud if someone had told it to her, but she was convinced of it on some deep, instinctual, atavistic level. Agudar, Master Hunter, had called down the North Wind and called up the sea to punish them, to bring the forces of nature back into balance. "Beat on it, dammit!" she told Andy through clenched teeth. "Beat on it! Break it off!"

  Her snarl snapped Andy out of his trance. He closed his mouth, raised his sledgehammer and advanced toward the fo'c'sle. Over the roar of the wind, Kate heard a crunching thud, a pause, another thud, another pause.

  Someone swore. The thudding began again and settled into a kind of rhythm, uncertain at first, a little ragged, but maintaining a dogged persistence. After a while Kate ceased to hear anything but the slap of the hull into the sea, the cackle and skitter of freezing spray and the roar of the wind all around.

  The bat rose and fell, rose and fell. Ice shattered and broke and as quickly froze over again. The Avilda groaned through the waves, creaking all the way down her hull under the strain. Kate groaned through the swing of the bat, her shoulders creaking beneath the weight, the strain. This wasn't work, this wasn't making a buck, this was survival, plain and simple. Numbness began in the tips of her fingers and crept up through her hands to her wrists and arms. Behind her came the crash of ice as Seth broke a large piece free from the catwalk.

  Ice shattered from the bow and splashed into the water below. Andy worked his way up one railing and down the other, as behind him a new layer froze and thickened.

  The baseball bat beat its way with monotonous regularity from one side of the fo'c'sle and back again. The wind made the rigging hum, sharp needles of freezing
spray pierced her skin, the deck was icy and treacherous beneath her feet.

  Kate had ceased to care. The bat rose and fell, rose and fell. The ice began to take on personality, to become an animate force, malevolent, vindictive, relentless, maniacal, homicidal. No matter how hard or how often the bat fell, the ice reappeared inexorably, inevitably behind it, enfolding the Avilda in a cold embrace, enveloping the crew in wintry arms, its purpose a deadly seduction whose end was death.

  The ever-increasing weight of this deadly seduction slowed the movement of both ship and crew. With each sluggish list the layer of ice grew thicker and the Avilda took longer to right herself again. With each lift of her arms it seemed to take Kate longer to bring the bat down, harder to exert the force necessary to break off the ice.

  She felt lethargic, torpid, apathetic. She was so tired. All she wanted was to find somewhere to lay down and go to sleep forever. It didn't matter if the bunk was wet or dry or frozen over. She just wanted to close her eyes.

  She came alert with a jerk that pulled her out of her stupor, and blinked her eyes against the ice forming on her lashes. Think, she told herself. Just think for a minute.

  The engine coughed once, hesitated for one eternal moment and again picked up the beat. The vibrations pulsated up through the deck into her feet, a life-giving cadence counting off. Kate refused to think of it as counting down.

  Cadence. Meter. Stress. Poetry. In another life she used to read poetry. What poetry did she used to read? Her Mind was blank, like the engine forgetting how to run for that one terrifying second. Words finally came. "The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around."

  The words of the Ancient Mariner sprang unbidden to mind and Kate shook her head doggedly. What else?

  "Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made." No. Definitely not. "Sunset and evening star, and one clear call for me."

  She stopped the bat in mid-swing, brought it down to rest on the deck and leaned on it, letting her head hang, ignoring the bite of the freezing spray, the icy fingers of the wind, taking long, deep, steadying breaths.

  When she raised the bat again, it was to the four-four, four-three beat of ballads. "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." "A French cocked hat on his forehead and a bunch of lace at his chin."

  "One if by land, and two if by sea; and I on the opposite shore will be." "I sprang to the stirrup and Joris and he, I galloped, Dirk galloped, we all galloped three."

  She wondered why she had never noticed before how so many ballads were written on horseback. The bat was coming down steadily now, in its own asymmetrical rhythm, batting out a tattoo of endurance, a measure of survival. When she got home, if she got home, she could write a ballad of her own. A bat in my hand and ice at my feet, and I in Dutch Harbor will Jack Morgan meet, ready his head into marshmallow beat, sheer satisfaction was never so sweet. She laughed, an involuntary snort of real amusement, surprising herself and astounding Andy, who paused with his sledgehammer in the air to look over at her with incredulous eyes. Longfellow she wasn't. She wasn't even Dr. Seuss.

  Hours later, days later, years later, she felt rather than heard someone shouting. After a moment, she realized they were shouting at her. She looked up, dazed, to see Andy reaching for her. As if from a great distance she saw his hand close on her shoulder. He gave her a hard shake and she couldn't feel it. "Kate?"

  She tried to shrug his hand away. Had to keep swinging.

  Had to beat the ice. Had to keep the Avilda with her head up and her feet down. " 'He would answer to hi or to any loud cry,' " she muttered.

  He peered at her, his young face red and chapped with frostbite. "Kate! Are you all right?"

  "Of course I'm all right," she said petulantly, shrugging again beneath his hand. "What do you want?"

  "We've stopped making ice. You can quit now."

  Like coming out of a trance, Kate woke to the realization of a deck no longer canting so drastically beneath her feet that she had to fear losing her foothold and sliding overboard. There was no noise from the engine, from which she painstakingly formulated the hypothesis that it had been shut down. No spray hit the deck.

  The gusting wind had died to a breeze that barely rippled the surface of the water, as if the Cradle of the Winds were saying, What, me? Hurt you? How could you think such a thing? It was all just a little joke, teehee. You can relax now, catch some Z's. Sleep tight, and don't let those bedbugs bite.

  Kate didn't believe a word of it but she was too tired to express her distrust. "Where are we?"

  "Some island," Andy said, his voice weary. "Some bay on some island. I didn't ask."

  "When killer whales come into a bay it means someone is going to die," Kate said.

  "What?" Andy looked closer at her. "You look like hell, Kate. Hit the rack. I'll stow these." He reached for the bat. She resisted for a moment, and then let go so suddenly he staggered back a step. "Go on," he said, recovering his balance. "Go to bed."

  Her mind searched tiredly for the correct response.

  When she spoke her tongue felt thick in her mouth.

  "Who's on watch?"

  "We're on the hook, Kate," he said patiently. "We're anchored up in a bay on some island."

  "A bay on some island," Kate repeated. "Did I tell you about the killer whales?"

  "Yes, you told me." He turned her firmly in the direction of the galley door. "Go to bed."

  She twisted her mouth into the semblance of a smile and he winced away from it. "Isn't Alaska just the greatest place?"

  In the galley she stumbled into Ned and Seth coming down from the bridge, Harry behind them. As weary as she was the expression on their faces stopped her in her tracks. "What's wrong?"

  The two men exchanged glances. "Another boat got caught in the same storm."

  "Which one?"

  Again that exchange of glances. "The Daisy Mae."

  A sick dread grew inside her. "And?"

  Seth shook his head, his gaze somber. "They were able to get off a distress call, and their Loran numbers. The Coast Guard responded but by the time they got there, there was nothing."

  "They recover the bodies?"

  He shook his head again. "Then we have to go," Kate said. "They might have had time to get into their survival suits. We have to go help look. We have to," she insisted at his disbelieving look. "We have to look for them.

  They'd look for us."

  "We barely made it this far," Harry growled. "The Coasties are on the scene, and half a dozen other boats.

  We go back out there and they're liable to have to come looking for us."

  She couldn't stop the words. "You make a habit of not looking for fishermen lost at sea."

  Suddenly it was very still in the galley. A dark red flush rose up from Harry's collar to flood his face. He stared at her, his lips drawn back from his teeth. She met his look squarely, knowing her contempt was obvious, unable to disguise it. From the corner of one eye she saw him raise one clenched fist, and waited with a curious kind of detachment to see what would happen next.

  Seth caught Harry's elbow. With a growled obscenity Harry whipped around. Their eyes locked and for a moment, just for a moment, Harry froze. Seth said nothing, just looked at him. Breaking the spell, Harry yanked his arm free and shouldered past Seth, leaving Kate standing alone, unanswered, exhausted and sick at heart.

  She shook off her paralysis long enough to wobble down the passageway and fumble the door open to her stateroom. Her rain gear snapped and was easily discarded and she toed her boots off, but for some reason her sweater just wouldn't come over her head. She looked down at her hands. They were curled in imitation of her grip on the baseball bat. She couldn't straighten them, She couldn't even feel them. They were incapable of gripping the hem of her sweater.

  It said much for her state of mind that she was unalarmed. She tucked her hands into her armpits, rolled into her bunk fully dressed, curled up in a ball and fell into a fitful, restle
ss sleep, to dream the same dream over and over and over again, white fog and green water and thickening ice and a sinking boat and drowning crewmen. The last boat to sink was the Avilda, and the last drowning crewman's face was her own.

  Her eyes snapped open and she stared into the darkness.

  She Jay still, listening, trying to figure out what it was that had woken her. She would have bet every dime the Avilda had earned her that nothing short of a nuclear holocaust could have gotten between her and the land of Nod that night.

  As usual on the Chain, the weather had done a volteface and the slight swell was barely perceptible. The wind had died completely. The Avilda rode calmly at anchor in her bay on some island like a car in a parking lot. Kate had just decided that Andy's snoring must have woken her when a thump reverberated down the starboard side of the hull, the side her bunk was on, followed by a distant splash, a splash that sounded exactly like oars hitting water.

  She rose with an effort, her body aching from the bones out. She sidled into the passageway, pausing when she saw that the door to Seth and Ned's room was ajar.

  She pushed it open a bit farther and peered around it.

  Their bunks were empty. She took a chance and opened the skipper's door. He, too, was gone. In stocking feet she padded swiftly to the galley and over to the starboard side door to peer out the window.

  In the faint light of the stars Kate could detect the outline of the island. There was something familiar about its shape, and she studied it, brows puckering, before a movement below drew her gaze down to the water level.

  She stared intently, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, and caught the movement again.

  It was oars, oars attached to the Avilda's skiff, a skiff that should be stowed upside down on the aft cabin roof at this moment. Remembering something Abel had taught her about making out indistinct, distant objects in the dark, she shifted her gaze a fraction to the right. On her peripheral vision the skiff registered clearly. It was heading toward the island, and there were three men in it.