The MishMasher was behind her, nearly on its side in the water, cast in muted light by the full moon. It was surreal to see the benches where’d she just sat and the deck she’d just stood on, now nearly vertical.
She vaguely remembered the boat crashing into—and then through—something, and then she’d been pitched into the air like a rock from a catapult. A good twenty feet separated her from the ship. If she’d been thrown this far in a car wreck, she’d be dead, nothing more than a smear on the asphalt. Even as it was, she felt bruised and sore along her right side from impacting on the water.
The screamer turned out to be the huge pirate Eric had shot. He clung to the guardrail of the yacht, working his way up as more and more of it sank beneath the water, and bellowed for help. Probably couldn’t swim with that wounded leg.
“Justin!” she yelled, her cries competing with the pirate’s. The water around her was full of floating debris from the yacht; one of her textbooks bobbed past. “Anybody!”
Something breached the surface like a rocket a few feet away. Amber almost shrieked until she spotted blonde hair. Cherrywine gasped and slapped at the water, flinging seaweed everywhere. Amber grabbed her arm to steady her. “It’s okay, you’re all right!”
“Ew, ew, this stuff is gross!”
Amber agreed. The slimy vegetation clung to her everywhere. She was already getting exhausted from trying to swim with it on her.
“Fuuuuck! Fuck, shit!” The new shouts came from the front of the yacht. Amber spotted Eric treading water and shaking his fist at the night sky.
“This way!” she told Cherrywine. She swam toward him and, after a moment’s hesitation, the other girl trailed behind, making sure to keep Amber between her and Eric.
“Nooo!” Eric howled. The water had cleaned the blood off his face, leaving his nose a bulbous lump that pulled to the left. “I can’t goddamn believe this!”
Amber fought to keep her head above water. “Where’s Justin?”
He ignored her. “Look at this, he wrecked my father’s boat! I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch!”
“What did we hit?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t see!” Eric submerged briefly, thrashed, and came up choking. “Maybe I can still save it!”
He put his head facedown in the water in preparation to breaststroke, but Amber caught his arm. “You can’t do anything, it’s going to sink! We have to get away in case it rolls over on top of us!”
“Leggo of me!” Eric swung around, struggling like a maniac. He raised a fist as though to hit her, but it took too much effort to stay afloat. Then, all at once, he calmed down and stared over her shoulder.
Amber saw movement from the corner of her eye. A searchlight swept across them. The pirate boat coasted by, cutting a silent swath through the mats of seaweed, then its engines kicked on and it veered left to keep from hitting another small boat that floated in its path. It was beginning to look like the arena at a demolition derby out here.
She grabbed Cherrywine’s hand and waved the other in the air to flag them. “Help! Over here!”
Eric splashed water in her face. “What’re you, crazy? Don’t fucking call them! You just said they were gonna kill us!”
“It’s them or nothing! If they don’t pick us up, we’ll drown out here!”
“I can’t swim anymore!” Cherrywine pleaded. “I need to get outta the water!”
Eric pointed over the sinking prow of the MishMasher, where the boxy shape of yet another boat was visible. “There! Head toward that! Anything’s better than them!”
They began to swim (except in the thick mat of seaweed, it was really more like pushing through Jell-o), and Amber kept an eye out for Justin. She wanted to search for him on the other side of the yacht, but Cherrywine was right; she could feel herself getting heavier with each passing second, her lungs working harder and harder to pull in oxygen. Their path took them on a diagonal past the end of Eric’s boat, and, as they drew closer, the pirate screamed, “Wait! Wait, please don’t leave me, my fuckin leg, I’m gonna drown!”
Amber started to swim on, but a kernel of guilt blossomed inside her. She angled toward him.
“What’re you doing?” Eric yelled.
“Keep going!” she called over her shoulder. She reached the edge of the yacht and held the railing with a shaking hand, letting it support her weight. It felt so good to rest for a moment. She waited till her breathing slowed and some of her strength came back, then looked at the pirate. He’d taken off his ski mask; beneath was a grizzled face with tattoos creeping up the neck. His eyes were filled with panic.
“You’re a lot bigger than me,” she told him. “If you struggle, you’ll take us both under. Just relax and float and I’ll drag you. And if you try to hurt us when we get out, I swear to Christ, I’ll kill you myself.”
“Bless you li’l sheila, no worries, you got my word.” He took the hand she offered and let go of the yacht, then laid over on his back to float. She began to swim again, towing the behemoth behind her like a barge. From the pirates’ ship, a searchlight played across the water. She tried to avoid it. They’d crossed half the distance to their destination—a good-sized houseboat, she thought—before she looked back.
Only the MishMasher’s belly showed now, and even that was quickly disappearing beneath the ocean surface.
3
A hollow thump rang across the Steel Runner and vibrated through Lito’s feet. He opened his eyes.
They’d nudged the fishing vessel with the starboard side of their hull, and were now drifting to a stop right up against it, like two cars in a parking lot. The top of its cabin peaked just above the Runner’s bulwark.
Lito shut down the engines and emerged from the wheelhouse. In their current position, they were sandwiched between the yacht a few dozen yards away on their left, and the fishing boat up against them on the right.
The rest of the crew picked themselves up off the deck. Cheech was still barking—shrill, frightened yips unlike anything Lito had ever heard the ugly animal make. The pitbull stood on his hind legs, hanging over the guardrail and barking down at the boat against them.
“Someone shut him up!” Lito hissed. The last thing they needed was to get the owner of this other boat involved. Mondo grabbed Cheech’s collar and dragged the dog away with some effort. He settled on his haunches with a whimpering growl.
“Rabid, man, we gotta find him!” Jorge squealed, running to the port side of the ship.
“Just a sec! Let’s see if this is trouble!”
Of course, what he really meant was, find out if it was time to shag ass, either with or without Rabid. Lito went to the starboard bow and looked down at the fishing boat with Ray. Jericho turned the spotlight around and shone it along the length of the vessel.
It was upscale for a fishing boat, designed for multiple-day excursions. The aluminum deck measured ten yards by six and was held aloft two feet out of the water by the pontoons beneath. Big outboard motor, two jet skis parked on folding ramps to either side of it, and a narrow fiberglass cabin in the middle would sleep two or three comfortably. The kind of boat a true fisherman would cherish…but all the same, Lito figured his worries about waking the owner were groundless.
Unlike the Viking ship, this thing looked to be in baaaad shape. Rust and barnacles covered every inch of the two barrel pontoons, the deck sagged in several places, and the white paint on the cabin was sun faded. The door hung slightly open, the hinges so rusted it couldn’t swing freely in the strengthening breeze. The interior was too steeped in darkness to make out.
Lito didn’t think anyone had owned this vessel in a long time.
“Over there.” Ray nodded his head to their left. Again, Jericho directed the searchlight.
Yet another ship floated thirty or forty yards away, in the nocturnal shadows just beyond the foundering yacht. This one looked to be an even larger houseboat, and in just as poor condition as the pontoon. Moss covered the railings along the lip of the de
ck. The searchlight’s beam skittered across two words painted on the hull, barely visibly under a layer of grime and barnacles.
HOLY MACKEREL.
That wasn’t all, either. Lito could see more vessels out there now that he was looking, beyond the range of their light and too far away for the moonlight to illuminate, nothing more than silhouettes against the black horizon. They all just seemed adrift in a loose congregation.
And the air…the air was heavy with that burnt ozone he’d smelled earlier, so thick even the salt-laden scent of the ocean was overpowered.
For some reason, those ghostly sparks of blue light replayed in his head.
“What is dis, mon?” Jericho whispered.
Lito didn’t know if his mechanic expected an answer, but it was Mondo—standing behind them and forking some kind of evil eye sign with both hands—that said solemnly, “Bad omens. I’m tellin you Cap’n, ain’t nuttin good gonna come from this. You best belie’ that. We need ta turn our asses around and leave, right now.”
“Knock it off,” Lito told him. A prickle teased the nape of his neck.
“I don’t know ‘bout no bad omens,” Ray said, “but this is fuckin weird as shit, Lito. Maybe we should think about makin a run for it. The yacht’s trashed, there’s no reason to stay.”
Lito held out a hand. “Don’t freak out. Let’s think about this before we go runnin away with our tail between our legs.”
“Yeah, but this many boats…it’s too much activity, and we’re sittin here with our hand practically in the cookie jar. This is the quickest way to get pinched.”
“By who, Ray?” Lito couldn’t keep the frustration from his voice. “These things have gotta be abandoned, and even if they aren’t, none of ‘em look like cops to me.”
“Yeah, but Cap’n,” Jericho said quietly, “what if dis got somet’in to do wit de Dominican? A blockade, maybe?”
Lito looked out at the flotilla of dark boats once more, then at the rest of the gathering night around them. He hadn’t considered that idea, but it felt like paranoia. How could the man with a price on their heads possibly know they would come through here, when they hadn’t known themselves?
Unless…he was working with these rich kids in the first place.
Unless they’d been led here.
Suddenly, the whole business of the yacht falling into their lap seemed entirely too convenient.
“We’re gonna find Rabid,” he told them, “and then see how things play out.”
They left off their inspection of the fishing vessel and hurried to the opposite side. Off their port, the yacht performed a lazy roll before slipping under the water amid a flurry of bubbles. A group of four figures swam away from it, making for the houseboat on the other side. Jericho followed them with the spotlight, but Lito couldn’t determine their identities. The entire crew stood at the edge of the railing, straining to see what was going on.
Well, almost the entire crew. As Lito looked around at the faces of his men, he realized Carlos was not among them.
4
It was Romero Felix Santiago that Carlos focused on while he hurried down the starboard gangway of the Steel Runner. Santiago, and his damn ‘bottlecapping,’ which was almost certainly not a medical procedure recognized by any doctor. And the screams of Diego Palacios as he’d been thrown down on a plastic tarp.
As useful as blind ambition had been to motivate most of Carlos’s actions, he was finding fear an even better spur.
He didn’t know what to make of their current situation, but right now, he didn’t care. The abandoned ships were a useful distraction, and he didn’t want to waste it. His first priority was to make sure this boat couldn’t go another inch until he could plan his next move. Once the others were all dead, he would try to figure out what the ships were about.
He could look over the railing and see the old fishing boat below, right up against them, like the ships were spooning. Every few seconds there was a teeth-grinding creeeeak when the motion of the sea lifted one vessel or the other and the two metals rubbed against one another.
The engine room maintenance hatch was just ahead on his right. Carlos checked to make sure no one was looking. He could still hear their voices from the opposite side of the ship, watching the yacht sink. He raised the door and climbed down the ladder three rungs at a time.
Below deck was a dark, hot, cramped space that smelled of oil and gas fumes, but it was better than that constant burnt-hair stench floating through the air out in the open. The compartment couldn’t be any bigger than five-by-five, and most of it was taken up by the twin diesel engines. Heat baked off them, causing an instant flood of sweat from nearly every pore on his body. He reached bottom and inspected the metal conglomeration.
Now that he was down here, this no longer seemed like the greatest idea. He had a basic working knowledge of engines, but Jericho had made so many modifications, the thing looked like some kind of demented pipe organ now. Plus, whatever Carlos did to sabotage them would have to be reversible, so he could get the ship running again after he’d taken care of the others. And what could he do that Jericho wouldn’t be able to fix even easier than him?
Then he spotted the solution. The fuel line. He could just unscrew it from both ends, and take the whole damn thing. They wouldn’t get far without that.
A toolbox lay nearby. Carlos grabbed a pair of pliers and loosened the couplings at both ends of the fuel hose. It was a thick coil, maybe six inches long and an inch in diameter; too big to try and stuff in his pocket. He gripped it in one hand and started back up the ladder.
At the top, he closed the maintenance hatch. The gangway was still empty. So far, so good. He stood and hurried back the way he’d come, heading for the stairwell that led belowdeck so he could stash the hose in his room.
A low, dark shape hurtled over the guardrail just in front of him.
Carlos squawked and flailed backward, more surprised by the sudden movement than anything. He fell hard on his side. The fuel line flew out of his hand and slid across the deck. He flung an arm out and felt his fingertips brush the rubber before it rolled off the edge of the ship. He heard the ga-loop sound as the ocean swallowed it.
He sat up fast. Reached for his gun. Scanned the shadows along the narrow gangway ahead of him for the shape that had vaulted over the side of the ship. It was so dark, and the thing had moved so fast, he didn’t get a clear look at it. It had been short, maybe half his height, and hunched. An animal, maybe? Some sort of seabird?
Carlos looked over the railing, down at the rusted fishing boat. Its deck was dilapidated and silent, but it was the only place the shape could’ve come from.
That is, if he hadn’t imagined it entirely.
No time to obsess over that or the lost hose. All he could do is take things one step at a time. Carlos hurried toward the sounds of the others just ahead.
5
Justin’s head throbbed.
He thought it might be a hangover until he realized there was water pattering down on his face.
He opened his eyes and recognized the tiny control room of the MishMasher, but it looked different somehow. It took his aching head a minute to figure it out: everything was upside down. He lay in a heap on the ceiling, with the yacht’s steering wheel jutting from the control bank above him. The only light came from red emergency beacons mounted on both walls, casting a ruddy glow down on him. Several inches of tepid saltwater had flooded the interior, and more trickled down every wall and dripped from the ceiling onto his head. Through the cracked glass window—now taking up the lower half of the wall in front of him—his view of deck and sky had been replaced by a murky, greenish-black world.
Memories surfaced to help him make sense of the situation. The crash. Being slammed into the control room wall, his head caroming off the window. The boat had capsized obviously, and he was now underwater. The crash must have slammed the control room door closed on its sliding track, sealing him in here with a bubble of oxygen; otherwise
, he’d already be dead.
Might not be too late for that.
As if to confirm this, a groan of stressed metal and fiberglass sounded all around him.
He climbed to his feet in this space that was only a little bigger than a phone booth, using the steering wheel to help him stand, and probed at his head. There was a lump the size of a half baseball just above his right temple. He was still a little woozy, but even if he had a concussion, there were more pressing concerns.
The water in the control room was now up to his shins and rising fast. This booth wasn’t constructed to be watertight. It would be completely swamped in minutes. And, as scary as that idea was, an even worse one came right on its heels.
Amber. Had she survived the crash? He had to get out of here to find her.
His only option was to pry the door open and swim for the surface. And if the ship were sinking, then the longer he waited, the longer that swim would be.
Justin grabbed the handle and pulled. The door wouldn’t budge. Either the pressure difference was too great, or something in the door mechanism itself was broken. He hyperventilated, began to cough. Suddenly the room felt even smaller, the size of a coffin. One he would ride all the way to his final resting place on the ocean floor.
The only window was at his feet, the water in here close to covering it. In the black world beyond the glass, an even darker shadow flickered by.
Justin reared back his sneakered foot and kicked at the window. It was hard to get much force with the water as a cushion, but he thought he saw the cracks in the glass spread a little. He kept at it like a machine as the water level rose past his waist and headed for his chest.
In the middle of the operation, the red emergency lights winked out, plunging him into total darkness. He cried out, his voice ringing inside the tin can, and then went right back to kicking.
The glass shattered all at once. Justin felt the pressure change in his ears and had just enough time to grab a breath before a swell of chilly water shoved him against the wall. After the pressure equalized, he squeezed through the remains of the window and swam outward into the murk.
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