It is a good place to rest.
A good place to disappear.
I nosed the Sniper toward shore, into the lee of Lake Ingraham Creek, far enough away to keep the bugs in the mangroves, but close enough so that it would be an easy swim to the desolate beach.
The woman had her back to me, naked and well oiled against the September sun. And when I gave her the word, she dropped the Danforth while I reversed the engines, churning the blue water, setting the hook. And then she turned to face me on the fly bridge; heavy thrust of now tan breasts, sweet glimmer of oil on body hair and perfect thighs.
“You want me to get you something cold to drink?”
She nodded and lay back down on the foredeck to bake in the sun.
Some woman. We had left Key West two weeks before; left to escape and rest and promise each other nothing. A boat trip to the wilderness is better than any hospital. Besides, I had had my fill of hospitals. And she had agreed.
So we had cruised across Florida Bay, stopping when we wanted to stop, swimming when we wanted to swim. She liked sitting on the deck with a book. I liked working on the Sniper: polishing and painting, trying to bully the horror back into hiding through manual labor. For the first week, we had been as shy and awkward together as children. If I saw her coming aft along the port walkway, I would back up and take the starboard walkway forward. When our eyes met unexpectedly, she would turn and look away as if there was something to see on the distant glaze of horizon. But slowly, through soft talk and laughter, the shyness dissipated, replaced by a growing, almost tangible sexuality. Janet, my Janet, was gone . . . and I would have to find a way of going on.
It happened on the eighth day. A twilight dinner of snapper, rice, and fresh lime, anchored in the clear shallows of Florida Bay. Sitting across from me, both of us flushed with the nearness of the other, I had found it impossible to eat.
“You’re not hungry?”
“Guess not.”
And when we both stood to clear the table, we bumped into each other. We turned and collided again. The cabin felt no bigger than a closet. She took me by the shoulders then and looked up into my eyes. I felt like I was on fire.
“Dusky, I . . . ”
Before she had a chance to finish, I had kissed her. It was like the breaking of a dam. She couldn’t get my weathered jeans off fast enough, nor I hers. It was the convalescence we both needed; an affirmation of love.
And God knows I had needed it. After the return from Cuda Key there had been the awful trip to the hospital. And then the meetings with Fizer; meetings and more meetings.
“You’ve done us a great service, Dusky.”
“Sure, Norm. Sure.”
“We’ve got plenty on the Senator—now it’s just a matter of getting him back to the States. The rest of his flunkies are already looking for lawyers. Except for the old caretaker. He was released and given protection. The prosecution will be using him.”
“Fine, Norm. Fine.”
Norm Fizer had looked at me, the concern obvious. “Look, Dusky, it’s over. I know how it is—like back in Nam. But you can’t let it eat away at you. So drop it.”
And I had smiled; a bitter smile. “And you also know how hard it is to ‘just drop it.’ ” And then: “Norm, I stole about twenty thousand bucks from Ellsworth’s stash.”
He nodded. “I know that. I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“And I got a money order and sent all but a thousand of it to Bimini’s folks.”
“I know that, too.” He had stood and clapped me on the shoulder. “As far as I’m concerned, captain, the case is closed. Take a month or so off. Drink some beer; drink a lot of beer. Get roaring drunk and hunt down some big fish with that boat of yours. And I’ll be in touch later—if you’re still interested?”
“Yeah, Norm. I’m still interested.”
So one night the girl had come down to the docks. She wanted a private audience. A two-week private audience. And I had agreed, not even daring to hope it would turn into a healing, loving cruise of hot sun and cold beer and idle, idle days.
I climbed down the ladder from the fly bridge and fetched the lady something tall and cold. And when I took it to her, smiling at the fine nakedness of her, she rolled over, sleepy-eyed, her breasts flattening the tiniest bit beneath their own weight, and she held out her arms to me.
“This girl needs something more than Pepsi, captain. In the mood?”
I was.
I stripped off my shorts without haste, savoring my anticipation, and I lay down beside her, feeling the oiled buttocks lift at my touch, feeling her warm lips, soft, coiling her long silken hair in my hands. And when she slid herself up and onto me, joining us with a low moan of ecstasy, I whispered her name, feeling it sweet on my lips:
“Lisa . . . Lisa . . . Lisa-lee. . . . ”
Here’s an exciting glimpse of the thrilling adventure that awaits you in the next novel of this action-packed series
THE DEEP SIX
Underwater, in the angling tawny light of late afternoon, everything was gold. Flaxen sea fans undulated in the current that swept around the reef, and aureated and jewel-crested reef fish watched the naked woman as she reached beneath a pod of brain coral and pulled out a spiny lobster. It was a big one—enough for her half of the supper we would eat back on my thirty-four-foot cruiser, the Sniper. Drifting above, mask in the water, breathing easily through my snorkel, I watched the naked woman with delight. Even she appeared gold in that strange afternoon light; a tenuous light that seems unique to the open sea, and to the reef islands far, far off Key West. It is a light that does more than illuminate—it seems to melt and liquefy, gilding everything it touches: the Australian pines and coconut palms that leaned in windward strands on nearby Fullmoon Cay; the long sweep of white beach on Marquesas Keys; the blue and then orange expanse of open sea as the sun whirled toward dusk, setting behind the Dry Tortugas. And the woman, too. Drifting above the reef, I watched her slow ascent. Her blond hair streamed behind her in a long veil. After a month on my boat, her body was bronzed and trim, and the bikini strips on chest and hips appeared as pale geometrics upon her golden nakedness. She winked at me as she stroked toward the surface, holding the lobster like a prize.
Gold, gold, gold.
Later, it would return in my memory as a prophecy. An augury of the future. That’s the way our minds work. Something happens, and our brains scan the past for omens. It’s a human compulsion: search for order in a universe that, at times, seems to be anything but orderly. A friend dies and, in our minds, his last words take on portentous significance. We are involved in an accident, and we remember that “something” told us not to take the trip. Now it was golden light on a golden sea and in less than two hours it would take on a whole new meaning.
I watched the girl. She wore only mask, fins and snorkel. Oxygen bubbles, clinging to her blond triangle of body hair, looked like little pearls, and her breasts moved with heavy, liquid weight. Her beauty, the reef, and the afternoon light filled me with a strange yearning.
“Hey! Look what I’ve got!” She pulled the mask off her perfect face, laughing with delight.
“I know what you’ve got—it’s hard to miss.”
She slapped at me with mock outrage. “Oh, you! I’m talking about the lobster. Isn’t he a beauty?”
He was indeed. A beautiful crustacean, the Florida lobster. No claws, but with sharp spines between their eyes that can needle through heavy cotton gloves. And because of that, this woman, Lisa-lee Johnson—Lee, I called her—hadn’t caught one the whole trip. But she wasn’t one to give up. Some afternoons she would come back from diving with her hands perforated, then sneak off to the first-aid kit to doctor herself in private. She never complained and I never let on that I knew. And the next day she would go back down for more. Until now. Finally, she had caught one. And it was a beauty. A two pounder, easy. Her blue eyes gleamed victoriously as she dropped it, squeaking and kicking, into my dive bag, and we swam togeth
er over to the little Boston Whaler I had hauled along behind my Sniper.
“And what about your supper?” She sat naked on the low gunnel of the thirteen-foot boat, her blond hair hanging down in a thick wet rope, dripping water on her upturned breasts.
“Ah . . . supper . . . oh, yeah. . . . ”
“Your mind seems to be someplace else, Dusky.” She grinned bawdily.
“Dressed the way you are, woman, I find that my thoughts are on anything but food.”
The smile left her face, and a new look came into her blue eyes; a heavy, sleepy look with which I had become very familiar over the past month. It had been a good month. A month of sun and fish and clear water; a month of aimless cruising, and then, love. In our own ways, we were both healing. Lee had separated from her domineering husband. And for me, only two eternal months before, the pirates, the ruthless ones, the money-hungry drug runners, had blown my life apart. A little ignition bomb in the trunk of our old blue Chevy. How were they to know that I wouldn’t be the one to start it that awful August night? And why should they care that my beautiful wife, Janet, and my twin boys, Ernest and Honor, had been killed instead?
Well, I had made them care. And the few I had allowed to live would regret it until their own dying day.
So, when I was done with them, I had returned to my dock in Key West to find this woman, Lisa-lee Johnson. I had come to know and admire her when she and her husband chartered me and my Sniper for a day of fishing, and I had welcomed her tearful request to cruise alone for a few weeks. She wanted to cruise to think. And I wanted to get away so I wouldn’t have to think. When we left Key West and headed across Florida Bay, we were two strangers filled with our own private horrors. The first week had been one of nervous laughter and averted glances. Neither of us was interested in love—just companionship. I had seen too much recent death and had done too much killing to want to be alone. And she—well, she seemed to be looking for a man strong enough not to try to hurry her into the sack; a man she could talk to and depend upon while she made up her mind about the husband she had left behind.
But it seemed inevitable that we would become lovers. I had known from our first meeting that there was a strong sexual awareness between us. You know it instinctively, and it has nothing to do with coy exchanges and suggestive remarks. And when we had finally kissed, it was like a dam breaking. We couldn’t get each other’s clothes off fast enough. We couldn’t touch each other enough. We couldn’t satisfy each other enough.
“Oh, Dusky, is it so awful that I want you this way . . . ?”
“No, Lee. No . . . ”
It was an affirmation of the things we had left behind; an affirmation of the new lives each of us would have to find. And afterward, we would talk: long, rambling, self-indulgent conversations, telling each other everything. We didn’t talk like lovers—nothing about our combined plans and hopes for the future. We talked like best friends. We soothed each other and tried to bolster sagging egos and shattered dreams.
It was harder for me to talk than it was for Lee. I find it difficult to stick more than four words into a sentence, and more than one sentence into a paragraph. I’ve always been quiet. Not shy, just quiet. My wife used to kid me by calling me Captain Stoic. But finally, with Lee’s gentle help, the words started pouring out. When someone you love dies, you first feel outrage, then remorse, then guilt. I had been through the remorse and outrage—nearly a dozen men died in the flare of it. And Lee had helped me reason the guilt away.
“I just can’t figure out the why of it. Why did that woman and those two boys have to die?”
“Dusky, you told me once when we first met that for some things there are no reasonable explanations. There is only acceptance. It’s happened. Accept it. And go on.”
So we had worked our way across Florida Bay, up into the Ten Thousand Islands wilderness on the mainland west coast, and then back across open ocean to the Dry Tortugas, and then here, to the Marquesas, working our way along to Key West and the end of the trip. The autumn days were hot and calm; perfect days for slow love and cold beer and talk; golden autumn days.
Golden.
Lee sat on the gunnel of the Boston Whaler, her long legs draping over into the clear water. And when her eyes softened, I leaned and kissed her, tasting the salt on her lips, feeling the warmth of her mix with the warm sea wind that wafted across Fullmoon Cay to the reef over which our little boat was anchored.
“And what about your supper, captain?” She smiled at me impishly. I was close enough to her face to see the little bronze flecks in her blue eyes.
“I’ve got my sling. I’ll go down and shoot a snapper—later.”
“Later?” She smiled and kissed me.
“Later.”
Naked, she stretched back on the mahogany seat of the Whaler, her eyes closed, her arms folded behind her head.
“You’re cold from diving.”
“Hum . . . so I see.”
A bottle of coconut oil sat on the little console, warm from its day in the sun. “This might help.” I began to massage it into her skin, enjoying the scent of it, and the vision of this lovely blond woman.
“You seem to be concentrating on limited areas, captain.”
“Certain parts of you look colder than others.”
She opened one eye, squinting at me. “And parts of you look anything but cold.”
I put down the coconut oil and leaned over her, kissing her body, caressing her outstretched legs, feeling her breasts full against me, and then—and then she pushed me away, giggling vampishly. “Your turn to suffer, MacMorgan!”
“What?”
Oh, she made me suffer. With the coconut oil. And her hands. And her lips. And had she made me suffer a minute more, I would have attacked her then and there. But she didn’t. Instead, she grabbed one of the yellow Dacor scuba tanks, and her mask and, with a short laugh, jumped into the clear water. And I soon followed.
Beside the reef was a pocket of sand. Iridescent blue-and-green parrot fish scurried away at our approach, and the woman lay back in the sand, motioning for me. And there, three fathoms down, we made slow love. Beneath clear water, experimenting with the new weightlessness and the variations it allowed, we coupled in a stream of bubbles, drifting with the sea. Barracuda looked on, stern as maidenly aunts, and yellow-eyed groupers peered at us strangely from their rocky hideaways. I was filled with my passion for Lee and my love of the sea, but I also felt a sweet-sad ache, because I knew that she would be leaving me upon our return to Key West, and that I would probably never see her again.
Afterward, Lee climbed back on the little Whaler to bask in the sun and I took my sling down to the reef alone. I wore no tank. Even after three tours of duty in Nam as a Navy SEAL, I still preferred just mask and fins. No regulator to worry about. No metal fittings to konk you on the back of the head. When I am in the water I love the freedom of unhampered motion. Besides, spearfishing with a tank is one of the most pathetically unfair “sports” imaginable. The poor fish doesn’t have a chance. I dove down to the top of the reef, then worked my way along a shelf of coral in about twenty feet of water. Small snapper and yellowtail moved away from me in perfect, orderly sheets, as if one mind controlled them all. I knew exactly what I wanted for supper, and I moved away from the reef to find it, propelling myself along the bottom with long, smooth leg strokes. A big cuda followed me, drifting alongside effortlessly. He was a five-footer, easy, and mossycolored with age. I didn’t mind. If he wanted the fish I shot, he was welcome to it. I would just get another.
I was after a nice hogfish, and I finally saw one beneath a sea fan in a clearing of coral sand. At first he was a pallid gray in color, but at my approach he flushed a bright nervous crimson, the black spot at the base of the posterior ray vivid. It was a beautiful fish, about a six-pounder, and I took him cleanly with a shot through the head. He fluttered briefly on the free shaft, then fell still—and that’s when I realized something other than the barracuda had been followi
ng me.
Attracted by the death vibration—or the earlier love vibrations—a huge open-water mako shark came slashing across the reef, its massive pointed head swinging back and forth as it vectored in on me and the dying hogfish.
Sharks and I are not exactly strangers. You won’t meet a SEAL who hasn’t had some kind of encounter with one. SEAL—sea, air and land commandos, the toughest of the tough and the roughest of the rough. And we just spend too much time in the water, day and night, to miss. For me, it was a night swim long, long ago on a training mission in the Pacific, one of those freak occurrences: a big dusky shark that wasn’t supposed to be in those waters, and sure as hell wasn’t supposed to attack. He left me with 148 stitches in my side and a new nickname. It was some scar. But strangely, Lee Johnson had come to be fascinated by it, paying it special, tender attention in our lovemaking. At any rate, I didn’t want or need any more scars. I already had more than my share.
That mako was a beautiful creature: bright blue and then cobalt; a massive ten or eleven feet in length and probably weighing half a ton. The smaller species of shark don’t bother me. They really don’t. You learn to live with them. Besides, their instincts tell them to eat fish, not people. Believe me, if sharks ever got a taste for human flesh, there wouldn’t be a saltwater beach on earth that was safe. But this mako was big enough to break all the rules.
The reef that had been alive with fish was suddenly still. They knew. This was more than just another big shark—this was a big shark feeding. He came toward me, his head slicing back and forth like a radar antenna. From the leg sheath, I drew my Randall attack-survival knife—the good-luck charm that had saved my life and had taken others more than once. But against this fish, it would be no more lethal than a bee sting. I drew it only as a prod. If it decided on me as supper, I could only try to jab its pointed snout and hope to scare it away.
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