Morning Colors

by Sharon Timm

  Careful, Sam, she thought to herself.

  She had spent her life easing people's pain, yet in a moment of necessity she had inflicted great pain. She had kicked a man while he was down and had kept him down.

  Although it was a new sensation for her, she didn't regret her actions. She wondered what they'd planned for her and Luca. She wondered where they'd be now if she hadn't subdued the man and taken his gun away. She glanced over at the cemetery gate. She wasn't ready to become a permanent resident of a cold dark grave.

  Even now, basking in the glory of the morning colors, the seriousness of their predicament was obvious to her. These people, apparently foreigners, had kidnapped a Chief of Police and a Chief in the American Navy. Had they not escaped, she could think of no reason they would have been released alive.

  A water-bus rounded the far point of land on the Venetian island, and steamed into view. Sam studied the boat, looking for the number five. Sam waved frantically at the boat. Jumping up and down on the pier.

  The crewman smiled and waved back, but the boat glided past the island of San Michele. It didn't turn. It didn't slow. It didn't stop.

  Sam turned and looked desperately at Luca. He called out to her. "Don't worry, another boat will be coming in a few minutes."

  Another boat was coming. Sam turned and studied it as it approached. She had not seen the boat before in daylight but the sound of the engines was eerily familiar. The boat that had pursued them the night before was approaching. Maybe Luca was wrong. Maybe they would try to capture them in broad daylight.

  "It's them, Luca!" Sam exclaimed as she sprinted back to the others.

  Luca brandished his weapon and pointed it at the man, motioning him to get down on the ground. He complied instantly. Sam sensed that he was not elated by the sight of the approaching boat. Perhaps he was cooperating because he was better off in their hands than back in the hands of his colleagues. She thought she saw fear in his shifty eyes. They would kill him for letting her and Luca escape, she reasoned. His prone figure was total submission. He was practically begging them to somehow keep him from falling into the hands of his own compatriots.

  As the boat approached the landing, Sam spotted another craft emerge from a canal midway down the length of the Venice water line. She grabbed Luca's shoulder and pointed. It was a small boat, painted blue and white and had a word emblazoned on the side. CARABINIERI!

  As the boat approached the landing, Luca made a desperate move. He leveled the gun and fired two shots at the waterline of the approaching craft. The pilot backed down on the engines and retreated from the landing. Sam dove for cover as a shot was returned from the boat.

  The shots were more a signal than an effective defense. It worked. Soon the small police boat picked up speed and raced toward them. It was too far away for the engines to be heard, but the spray from the bow was evidence of the speed of its approach and the blue rotating light indicated an emergency response.

  Sam and Luca crouched behind the granite spans that formed the gateway. The prisoner cowered on the ground in a fetal position, obviously scared to death, or afraid of death. Luca aimed another shot at the hull of the boat. The bullet struck just below the waterline, leaving a white trail through the waves. It succeeded in keeping the boat crew focused on them and not on the rapidly approaching police boat that they'd not appeared to notice.

  Terse words booming from the police boat's public address system echoed across the water. The startled crew of the hostile boat whirled to see the approaching law enforcement officials for the first time. The pilot of the boat slammed the throttle to ahead full and the powerful boat settled for a moment, hesitating in its own bubbling wake before streaking away from the cemetery.

  Luca emerged onto the landing, moving as quickly as his crutch and leg would allow and waving frantically. The police boat, which had begun pursuit, circled back for them. Sam tapped the prisoner lightly with her pipe. He got to his feet and shuffled toward the landing. She prodded him with the pipe and he moved faster and less reluctantly toward the police boat.

  Sam shoved him toward the uniformed officer who escorted him roughly to the cabin under the bow of the small boat. Sam jumped in and helped Luca ease himself into the boat.

  Luca spoke quickly in Italian and the officer spun the boat around and began to chase the rapidly receding boat. Sam held tightly to the gunwale railing as the boat skipped off the wave crests and slammed into the troughs. The boat was built for speed and ruggedness. The horsepower far exceeded the requirements of a boat its size and it rapidly closed the distance to the fleeing vessel.

  Luca collapsed against Sam. Each bounce across the waves sent waves of agony up his leg. The uniformed officer spoke to him in Italian with a concerned look on his face.

  Luca, shouted, "NO!", and pointed sternly at the other boat.

  The officer nodded and stood next to the pilot. He keyed the microphone on the police radio and shouted staccato instructions to other law enforcement units in the area. When he replaced the mike, the radio came alive with confusion. Units from the Italian Navy, the customs police and the Carabinieri responded, and Luca identified each in turn to Sam as the radio squawked.

  They were closing in on the boat which was forced to turn parallel to the breakwater. The boat angled toward the mouth of the lagoon, clearly making its way to sea.

  Luca barked an order to the officer. He snapped the frequency selector to another channel and began to speak into the mike.

  Luca pointed toward the horizon where a fishing boat was moving toward the channel from the sea. The bow wave pushed up by the fishing boat whitened and grew. Sam could tell it had picked up speed.

  Luca reached into a compartment and removed a submachine gun. He handed it to the officer and removed another for himself. He handed the pistol to Sam. She checked the safety and press checked the chamber where the brass casing gleamed. The weapon was loaded and ready.

  A low slung, open boat with outboard motors was vectoring in at full speed from the right. It was a Boston Whaler with words emblazoned down the length of its hull.

  Sam pointed it out to Luca. "Who is that?" she asked.

  "Guardia di Finanza!" Luca hollered. "Customs police."

  Sam turned and saw a large boat emerging at full speed behind them. It was another police boat, the ocean going boat she'd taken on her trip to the ship. She pointed it out to Luca.

  The net of law enforcement boats tightened around the fleeing boat, and the fishing boat was the cork in the bottleneck. The boat had nowhere to go. It circled briefly looking for an escape route but was surrounded by boats, bristling with weapons. Finding no route of escape the pilot eased the throttles to idle and the occupants of the boat raised their hands and surrendered.

  Luca, had maintained consciousness by sheer will power, it seemed. When the chase concluded, he passed out from pain and exhaustion and collapsed into Sam's arms.

  She cradled him against her breast and watched as the men were taken into custody on board the large police boat. Sam's prisoner was cross-decked to the police boat with his comrades and a member of the customs patrol, boarded the seized vessel to pilot it back to Venice.

  Sam spoke to the pilot of her boat and motioned for him to take Luca to the hospital. They left the others with the prisoners and jetted across the lagoon to the Venice Hospital.

  Sam stayed with Luca until they rolled him away to surgery, then waited for him outside. Several of Luca's men stopped by. Some of them spoke enough English to sit with her and talk a while. All of them could at least thank her for saving Luca and freeing him from the cage.

  They told her that her little ferret man had broken down at the station. With the help of an interpreter he had explained that he was less afraid of the Italian justice system than he was of his own friends.

  He'd told all about the plans for intercepting a weapons shipment. He'd told them about the capture of Sam and Luca, and had identified one local accomplice. Sam had been right about
the pilot of the small boat being from Venice. The ferret had told them about the abandoned building they had used to secure Sam and Luca, and about their plans to interrogate them early the next morning. Then, the man had sheepishly told them about the escape and of the woman with the pipe who had attacked him viciously and disarmed him.

  Samantha could tell by their fervent appreciation that they had not expected to see either her or Luca alive again. She shuddered to think how close they'd come to joining their hosts on the cemetery island.

  Luca's surgery took hours. Sam waited.

  A doctor emerged. He approached her smiling and reached out his hand. "Hospital Corpsman Chief Logan," he said formally in carefully enunciated English.

  Sam shook his hand. "Call me Sam."

  "Fine," he said. "I have been hoping to meet you, Sam, since the last patient you sent my way."

  "Excuse me?" Sam wondered guiltily if she had broken the Ferret's ribs with her long steel pipe.

  "The man with the knife wound?" The doctor jarred her memory.

  "Oh him!" Sam sighed with relief.

  "Are there more?"

  Sam looked at the doctor and they both laughed as Sam shook her head.

  "How is Luca?" she asked.

  "He is fine. We had to repair some muscle damage and reroute a couple of veins, but thanks, again, to your expert care, he didn't lose as much blood as he could have. He is a very lucky man. He will recover fully."

  "I have a souvenir for you", he said. He reached into the back pocket of his surgical gown and pulled out a piece of colored glass. It had rich hues of blue and green swirled together like a small tornado of tints which glowed when Sam held it up to the light. It was smooth and cylindrical and had a sharp ridge on one end.

  "What is it?" Sam asked.

  "It was part of your unorthodox bandage, Sam. It put just the right amount of pressure on a very tricky exit wound. It stopped the bleeding without cutting off the circulation to the tissue below the wound."

  "Oh. That." Sam nodded. "I couldn't see it in the dark."

  "You dressed that wound in the dark?" The doctor whistled in amazement. "They told me you were in an old glass factory. That is the piece of glass that holds the base of the vase or sculpture to the steel rod while it is being worked. It is scored and snapped off when the vase is done. You are good at improvising, Doctor."

  "Well I'm not exactly a doctor." Sam protested.

  "To me, you are a doctor." He patted her gently on the shoulder. "You can see the Maresciallo in room three-ten." He walked away quickly, leaving Sam standing in the middle of the waiting room floor examining her blue piece of glass.

  Sam found the recovery room and entered. Luca was dressed in hospital clothes. The top two buttons were missing from his shirt, exposing his strong chest with its curly dark hair. His leg was elevated, and bandaged and the hospital blanket covered the rest of him.

  "I am so cold, Sam," he said. "Hospitals are always so cold.

  "I'll warm you up," Sam whispered. She crawled onto his bed and rested her head on his chest, looking through the blue crystal at the light that streamed through the window.

  Sam was awakened by a firm hand on her shoulder. She looked up and was embarrassed to see the Colonel standing by her side, the doctor she'd met and a nurse, smiled at her from the doorway. She was even more embarrassed to learn that she had slept all day, through the night and into the following day.

  Someone had placed the blue glass memento on the night table. She reached for it and held it in her hand and glanced up at Luca who was also just waking.

  Sam slid quickly, sheepishly, out of his bed and straightened her clothes. She was a mess. Her jeans were torn. She had a round brown spot on her knee where the barbed wire had gouged her climbing over the top of the cage and she had bled. Her hands were grimy, she was dirty and her hair felt stiff like straw. Her cheekbone hurt where she'd been kicked in the struggle on the boat. "Good morning, Sir." she stammered.

  "Good morning, Chief Logan," he said.

  Two other men entered the room. The Colonel turned to Samantha. "Could you excuse us, please?"

  Sam was escorted out of the room by a nurse and the door was closed behind her. A uniformed Carabiniere approached and gently escorted her to the far end of the long corridor. Looking back, Sam saw other uniformed officers holding back a line of people with cameras and microphones. A journalist held his camera high in the air, pointed in her general direction and the flash popped blue light.

  "What is going on?" she asked her escort.

  "Press con-fe-rence." he sounded out the words carefully.

  Sam watched as the nurse wheeled Luca from his room. He was surrounded by the Colonel and his men. The Colonel approached. "We will be going to a brief press conference then you will be returned to your ship." he said. "You may watch the press conference but do not say anything." He studied her for a moment and then removed his long coat.

  "Put this on," he ordered.

  Sam put the overcoat on. It covered her nearly to her feet. She walked with the Colonel, wondering about the press conference. Something strange was happening. She could feel it. She was led to an inconspicuous position by the elevators. Luca was wheeled to the center of the waiting room and was surrounded by reporters with microphones. He held out his hands for silence and began his speech. He did not look at Sam.

  "The day before yesterday," he said. "I was kidnapped by criminals involved in smuggling drugs into the city of Venice."

  "Wha..." Sam began. She was silenced by an iron grip on her arm and a glare from the Colonel.

  She listened in shock as Luca continued his speech. "I was shot while escaping from the criminals. I captured one of them and was able to escape. The men are in custody facing trial or extradition to their native countries. One man from Venice was involved he is being held for trial."

  The room erupted into a frenzy of questions and waving microphones. She was shocked to hear the story that unfolded. She could not believe her ears. That arrogant, self-centered, egotistical man. He would probably receive a heroism medal and advance to First Maresciallo based on his telling of this far- fetched tale. She seethed with fury inside while hot tears streamed down her face.

  She'd been driven to succeed. She worked hard and put in long hours, but she had learned a lesson from Doug and her husband, Joe. "Never take credit for your people's work," they told her. "Take credit for developing good people."

  She had lived by those words. She rocketed to the top of her profession but the people she led had shined along the way. She had made sure they got the awards they deserved and was known for recognizing her people.

  Now, with the spotlight on Luca, she faded to the background. It stung to realize that after all she had been through, she was not even an honorable mention. She didn't even rate a thank you in his acceptance speech.

  One of the reporters from a British news agency asked Luca. "Who was the blond lady that was with you?"

  "Blond lady?" Luca asked, "What blond lady?"

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The iron grip on her elbow dragged her into the elevator. She was whisked away by uniformed policemen. She felt numb. Somewhere along the way, before she could ask him questions, the Colonel vanished.

  Escorted to an awaiting boat, shoved onboard and rushed away from the hospital, Sam stood dumbly in the back of the boat as it weaved through the canals. Angry tears still coursed down her cheeks. She'd been so right about Luca before. She had been so wrong to want to stay by his side. She would not, could not fade into the background for that man or any other. She would never just be scenery, a decoration to brighten his life. She was a professional. In her own field, she was a respected professional. Just the day before the doctor had been so impressed with her skills he had called her, "Doctor." Even on the ship, where she was referred to as, "Doc", no one actually called her a doctor.

  Images from her first encounter with Luca came back to her now. They say that first impressions are u
sually right, she thought. Oh boy, was I right about Luca!

  She fumed on the boat. Her eyes were dry as the sadness and disappointment turned to anger. She fumed climbing onto the wharf. She fumed on the short walk from the landing.

  She realized, suddenly, that she was standing in St. Mark's Square. A ring of uniformed men surrounded a large circle of flares on the ground.

  The thump, thump, of a helicopter approaching, broke through Sam's anger. She turned to see an S-H-SIXTY SEAHAWK swing wide around the bell tower and settle to the ground in the center of the circle.

  The helmeted air crewman hopped down from the gray bird and ran toward her with an armful of safety equipment.

  Sam was still wearing the Colonel's coat. She handed it to her escort and slipped the reflective float coat on, pulled a cranial over her blonde hair and adjusted the goggles over her eyes.

  "Who is the blond?" they had asked. "What blond?" he had answered.

  Sam strapped herself into the helicopter seat and signaled to the aircraft crew. She made two fists, wrists up, thumbs out and jerked them quickly away from each other. The air crewman understood the standard signal for pulling the chocks away from the wheels, which meant she was ready for takeoff.

  He spoke into the helmet microphone and the helicopter shuddered and vibrated and lifted gracefully into the air. Sam watched the fairy-tale city recede below and behind them, as the helicopter homed in on the radio beacon from the ship which guided them, unerringly home. She knew she wouldn't be able to sort all of the emotions that had danced through her like and endless ballet for the last week. She knew it would take time to understand what had happened. Replaying her conversation with herself on her solitary walk at Luca's house, she knew she had been right.