“Good enough.” Claire patted him on the back. “Now, dump that asshole over the side.”
After the kerplunk and splash, Tony pulled the depth-sounder plug. He also cut open some thru-hulls, and water flooded into the sailboat. Claire did some math in her head and predicted that the boat would go under in about eight minutes.
“Open the storage to let the vests out and the liferaft out. Anything that can float can’t stay on board.”
“I did that already, Mrs. Clemp.”
“Johnny. Explain to Tony that I like to be thorough.”
“Tony. She likes to be thorough.”
Reacher stepped up onto the small motorboat as the seawater washed over the deck. Soon, only a few meters of the mast were visible, and then it disappeared entirely. The only traces were the fenders, some lifevests, and the raft, which floated away.
“Alright,” ordered Claire. “Back to Messina.”
The day’s fishing had been fantastic. Mike noticed that as he drifted further south and west, the good ones increased in quantity. The little guys went back into the Med, but the pretty fish would make him a profit. It felt great!
He looked in the cooler and decided it was full enough. Then he checked the GPS and calculated that he was about eight miles off of Pallero. With the current heading more or less north, he’d get back in about an hour—a damn good day. That also meant he could go home and tell Cassie that she was lucky to have a successful and happy fisherman as the love of her life.
Casper stowed the nets and checked that everything was tied down or put away. Off to his port side, there was that same motorboat he’d see earlier, now making its way back north. Tourists from Messina, he figured.
Mike fired up the small diesel and headed on a parallel course with the overtaking boat. For some reason, his decent haul made him want to see other people. Misery loves company, but so does a good day at sea.
His keen eyes saw three people in the cockpit from a distance of a hundred and fifty meters. Two were the dark-haired skipper and the blond woman he’d seen an hour earlier. The third passenger was another man. Mike waved. They were fairly close now, and the additional man on the boat looked like the spitting image of the sailor he’d seen in the morning. He squinted. Yep. Same guy and a little unusual to be sailing down and motoring back, but who knows? Maybe he got a call that his wife is in labor.
“That’s the guy from this morning,” said Tony over the engines and the wind. “I think he recognized me.”
Claire sneered. “Are you sure? Did he see you and Charles on the boat?”
“No question. That guy took out a pair of binoculars, and so did Mr. Clemp.”
“Shit!” yelled out Johnny. “Claire?”
“Circle back. Where’s the AK?”
Johnny turned the wheel and began a tight loop to bring the boat on a course towards the fisherman. “It’s under my jacket on the bench below.”
Claire dashed below and retrieved the rifle. There was a thirty-round magazine. “Tony. Do you know how to use this?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Shoot that guy when we are in range.”
Casper saw the boat make a small arc away from him and to port. But then it continued turning around and headed directly towards the Sylvia.
“What the hell?” he said out loud. “Please let this not be those guys from New York.”
The boat slowed its approach and closed to within thirty meters. He could see all three clearly now. They didn’t look like they wanted to share a pizza.
“How can I help you?” Mike yelled, unable to hide the trepidation in his voice.
He listened. The woman turned to the guy at the wheel. Mike heard her say, “English! The bastard speaks English.” She turned to the other guy. “Shoot him, Tony.”
Casper didn’t quite react to the surreal situation as fast as he could, but it was fast enough. Tony’s first shot was off. It whizzed past his target as Mike was turning to leap over the side of the Sylvia Cantonni. The next three shots flew through empty space.
“I don’t think you hit him,” said Claire. “I’m not overly impressed with your work today. Johnny, go around the other side so we can finish him.”
The little motorboat zipped around the starboard side of the Sylvia, but there was no sign of their target.
“What the fudge? The guy must be dead. Where is he? Maybe you did hit him,” speculated Johnny.
“No,” announced Claire. “He swam under his boat. I’m not going to play this game. Get onboard and pull the plug on it. Move it!”
Reacher jumped onto the small fishing boat. He sliced a couple of hoses down below, and water began pouring in. He took a few moments to look around. It was very clean. Too bad.
“Get off!”
Tony pulled himself off the sinking fishing boat. “The guy keeps a clean boat.”
“Enough! Claire can you tell him to shut up?”
“Yes! Shut up, and look over the side and see if you can spot our guy.”
“Right, okay.”
The breeze had strengthened—a late afternoon wind that wasn’t uncommon. Claire stuck out her hand towards Johnny. For a second, he didn’t know what she was signaling to him. But then it dawned on him as they bobbed in the water, hoping to get a clear shot at the fisherman. He handed her the little .25 caliber from his pocket. She nodded her appreciation and raised the weapon to the back of Tony’s head. He sensed it just as Claire squeezed the trigger. The little pistol made a small pop sound.
“Push him over before he bleeds everywhere. Wait. Put a couple of those weights around his ankles.” Reacher slid into the water and sank. Two down and one to go, she thought.
Claire looked at the fishing boat. “It’s not sinking fast enough.”
“It will get there. Don’t worry. Let’s circle and take care of the guy.”
Mike heard the engines rev. He swam under the sinking hull of his boat and surfaced on the other side.
“Keep circling. He can’t hold his breath or swim back and forth forever.”
They continued around, but there were two things that Casper did damn well in the water. One was holding his breath, and the second was swimming. Everyone had some special skills, and Mike’s was being able to stay under for three minutes without air. It was a freaky gift from his mother—she could do the same thing, and it was a childhood game for them.
Johnny was starting to get pissed with the cat and mouse game. It was also dangerous to keep circling. Just over the horizon, there might be a commercial ship barrelling towards them. If they saw a sinking boat, they would stop without a doubt.
“I know what you’re thinking. Just keep making loops. That boat is dropping fast now.”
Just then, completely unexpected, the Sylvia Cantonni capsized. A small section of the hull by the bow jutted out of the water. Claire scanned the area. Nothing was above the waterline.
“He’s dead, Mrs. Clemp. Let’s go.”
“Wait!”
Johnny Demarco puttered around the nearly submerged boat for at least a minute and a half. He eyed Claire. “We got maybe two hours until dark.” Again she held out her hand to quiet him.
Under the capsized hull, Mike had his lips puckered up against a small pocket of air. It wasn’t going to last long, and if he didn’t get a real breath soon, the carbon dioxide would cause him to pass out and drown. He sucked in a lungful and felt his way forward towards the fish well. It was upside down now, like the rest of the boat. He felt for the latch and slid it until the two doors swung down. A few fish floated at the waterline, but inside the little cube was air—a large pocket of it. Casper stuck his whole head in there. The smell was awful. He tried so hard not to puke his guts out, but he could hear the sputtering of the twin outboards from the boat that was hunting him.
“Cassie,” he whispered. He needed to live for her. And he had to be ready to snake his head out of that fish well if his boat started sinking any further. If that happened any time soon, they woul
d probably succeed in shooting him. Mike Casper would die in the Messina Straits, and the woman he loved so much would never know.
“It’s been five minutes. And there’s a freighter coming up the straits now. We need to get the hell out of here. No one can hold their breath that long.”
“What if he’s under that air pocket in the bow?”
“Impossible,” said Johnny feeling a little uptight at this point. “We need to get out of this crime scene. Now.”
“Put and bullet in the bow. That will sink it, and then we’ll go.”
He picked up the AK, but Claire stopped him. “Too loud. That ship is closing on us. Use the pistol.”
He fired one round at the exposed hull. It would do the job. Johnny got the nod of approval from Claire and pushed the throttle as he turned toward Messina.
Chapter 12
The relatively quiet “Thwap” was audible in the fish locker, and the bullet put a small hole in the fiberglass above Mike’s head. That scared him senseless. It only took an instant to realize that the people trying to kill him took a shot to vent the trapped air. He held his breath and submerged. After less than a minute, he heard the sound of the engines vibrating under the water. The wash from the props calmed as his attackers roared off.
When Mike stuck his head back up into the fish well, the volume of air had decreased—the boat was starting to go under fast. He stuck his finger against the bullet hole to stop the process, but that was not a long-term solution; getting ashore was the only way to cheat death.
“Cassie!” Casper needed to say her name. He wanted to hear her voice. After a deep breath, he swam under the deck and around to the far side of the nearly submerged vessel. Once his eyes were barely above the water, the shimmering image of the other boat was seen in the distance. Treading water, he watched the Sylvia Cantonni slip under on her way to a watery grave 400 meters below.
A good bit to the east, a commercial vessel was plowing its way north. It was far. He stripped off his shirt and thought about waving to it. First, he looked to the north. The people who must have been mob hitters from New York were too close. Mike had to wait. But that would be pointless if the freighter didn’t see him, and that was more likely than not. No. He had to swim. And swimming was the other thing that he was really good at besides holding his breath.
“Two miles per hour is ambitious.” He was treading water and trying to calculate. “Let’s say 1.5 miles per hour. Add a little bit of current. 1.7 mph.” The rest he did in his head. Five hours if he could swim straight. Not likely. Not until he could see land easily. But then it would be dark.
Mike started swimming, but the shirt in his hand was slowing him down. He tossed it. There was no choice but to swim his ass off for two hours. Once it got dark, he needed to focus on some onshore light. He was known as Casper the fish in the pool, but even when he swam as an adult, Mike never swam more than six miles, and that was in a pool. The likelihood that he might die out here was ominous, but this was about his life and Cassie. It was time to swim like Aquaman.
Cassie closed the pub at five to ten. The quarter-mile walk south to the junkyard felt like a long hike. The air was warm, so if the a/c was running, she’d be ecstatic.
Augustino’s office light was on, but the man had a habit of forgetting. She stepped her way quietly through the yard. Some junk moved every day, but the spotlights were enough to keep her from tripping over car parts.
There was no light coming from the little, white container home. Cassie wondered if she missed him outside the pub. Could they have walked right by each other? The door was locked. Maybe he was asleep.
“Mike. Wake up and let me in.”
No answer.
“What the hell?” she felt nervous. Maybe go try Augustino? Nope. Not a good idea.
Cassie turned and headed towards the beach. What if the boat was giving him trouble. The walk was flat and took just a few minutes. It was 10:10 when she got to the shoreline. Over to her right, Alfredo was sitting on a rock.
“Why are you up?”
“No school,” he answered.
She looked out behind the breakwater and felt panicked, then looked back to the boy.
“He not come back yet. I came a four. No boat. I came later and no boat. Still no boat.”
The anxiety crushed her like a steamroller, but she held it at bay because of Alfredo.
“Go home. Maybe he had a little motor problem. Bill is smart; he’ll be back soon. Go to sleep.”
Alfredo tossed a shell or a rock into the water. “Okay.”
Mike had no reference point to figure how far he’d gone, but he saw one or two bright lights far in the distance. Those were his targets. Whatever the hell it took. He would be dehydrated and completely wiped, but he would survive.
Every now and then, a fish would take a nip at him. It was more irritating than painful, but it stirred up fears of a shark coming and making him dinner. Luckily, in the Med, the number of shark attacks was exceedingly few. Knowing that didn’t help much.
Maybe an hour after sunset, he felt the dehydration setting in. All that salt water meant nothing. The fact that he was cool also meant nothing. His body would be depleted when he reached the shore. For now, he felt strong, and every couple of minutes, Mike looked up to focus on the same light in the distance. If he made it, then the news media would have a great story; however, that would be a tale that had to stay secret—but it would be a hell of a feature on Italy’s national news. He kept swimming.
Cassie sat on Alfredo’s rock until two a.m. She desperately wanted to call the police and start a search, but that would put both of them in danger. If there were a search, there would be reporters. Her emotions were ripped to shreds. Cassie got up and walked back to her apartment, where she could cry into her pillow and maybe get an hour of sleep. In the morning, she would talk to Augustino about where to look. The man was her best chance to search for Mike’s boat without setting off too many alarms.
Mike lost track of time. What he thought should be a five-hour swim in a pool was close to eight hours in the Straits. The currents were working against him now as he made the final push towards the light that he’d focused on from six miles away. So close now, but he was exhausted, beyond that even. He could just stop and let the water take him. Cassie would be safe, and he would never have to run again. The gang that sunk his boat had won. Perhaps—just stop fighting. If he took a gulp of seawater into his lungs, he wouldn’t survive that, and it would end. It would all end.
Mike forced himself to look up at the light. He could see the silhouette of a jetty not far ahead. Adrenalin, what was left, gave him a moment of exhilaration—very short-lived, but enough to shift his mind from fantasies about the release of death.
He was close. Drained and dry as a human desert, but very close. Push yourself. Mike could hear his dad’s voice echoing in his head. The beach was just there, and then his foot felt rock and sand. The water was lapping up onto the shore, and he slithered and crawled the last yards through the wet sand and collapsed. In the darkness, on a beach that would be crowded with tourists in six hours, Casper coughed and then slipped into a comatose-like slumber.
A shaky Cassie, wracked with anxiety and lack of sleep, stood behind the bar, staring at the door. It opened out, but it wasn’t Mike. Instead, it was Augustino. She panicked and started crying a few tears. The man could imagine what was going through her head. He urged her to come out from behind the bar and pulled Cassie close to hold her.
“He’s not dead.”
Her legs nearly buckled. Fortunately, in the morning, the pub was empty. The plump Italian salvage man repeated as he supported her body weight and eased her to a chair, “He’s not dead.” Then added, “Your man is in a clinic, south of here, in Anna. I take you.”
The ride in Augustino’s car was torture. Every second she could feel her heart pounding in her chest.
“He had a boat problem.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
<
br /> “His boat is at bottom, so he swim back.”
“What? Back from where?”
She didn’t get an understandable answer, but it didn’t matter. They pulled up at the clinic, and to her dismay, there were a couple of news people outside—one had a camera.
There were two good things about the clinic in Anna. One was that the nurses didn’t pepper the hell out of her with questions about her identity. The other was that they had Mike hooked up to an I.V. and the room looked sterile.
When she saw him, she wanted to break down and ball her eyes out, but she sucked it up. He was unconscious or sleeping, and when she grabbed the nurse to find out which, the nurse’s response was “sleeping” in broken English. Fortunately, the doctor was, like most doctors on the planet, able to speak her language. He eyed her up and down while Augustino sat on the only chair in the room.
“Are you this man’s wife?”
“No.”
The doctor winked at her, and Cassie corrected herself. “Um, yes, we’re only recently married.”
“Excellent. And what is your husband’s name?” asked the physician.
Augustino cleared his throat and said something in Italian that she couldn’t follow.
“Okay. So your husband, Bill, is dehydrated. Also, he was in the sea for maybe eight hours. I’m not worried about his skin, but he needs a few bags of saline. The nurse just started the third one.”
“When can he leave?”
“After this bag, I will do some fast blood work. If it is good, then you can take him home, but he must sleep and eat.”
“Did he tell you what happened?”
“He was mumbling something about New York, but then he focused on me and said that his boat got a hole. He swim maybe 14 kilometers to the beach near here. Then he got found.”
Cold Dead Hands (A Mike Casper Thriller Book 1) Page 10