The Night Boat

by Robert R. McCammon

  Moore nodded and then went out the doorway into the weather. A surge of spray slapped against him, almost knocking him back, but he clenched his teeth and began to move, hanging on to the starboard gunwale, creeping inch by inch toward the prow. Kip grasped the overhead beam behind him with one hand, bracing his feet against the door frame and letting out the line. A wave pounded diagonally across the Pride, hammering at Moore; he clung against a capstan for balance, the trawler pitching beneath him.

  He watched for the telltale coral swirls. A plateau of growth lay to port; Moore motioned in a starboard direction and the Pride responded. Other reefheads were exposed beyond, as the sea rose away from them; Moore waved his arm frantically. One of the bommies ground up under the hull with a long grating noise, but then they were through and Moore, straining his eyes, couldn’t see any others. He stayed where he was, his arms aching and his lungs heaving to draw in air through the bitter salt spray. The trawler suddenly bucked upward as a green-veined wave crashed beneath, and Moore was driven to his knees, feeling the rope gnaw at his waist. With a shriek that was unlike anything he had ever heard before, the sea parted, sending the Pride racing down into a black gully before tossing it high again.

  Moore hung on; suddenly he was wearing his yellow slicker. Around him the crashing and grinding of water, the wind screaming in a high wail. He lay at the stern, fighting to control the rudder, hoping beyond all hope he could make harbor before this freak storm consumed his boat. Panic welled up within him: Don’t lose control, he shouted to himself. For God’s sake, don’t lose control!

  “DAVID!” his wife screamed from the cabin companionway. And there they stood, both of them watching, their eyes frozen in white faces.

  “GET BACK INSIDE!” he shouted, the words twisted and hurled over his head.

  “PLEASE…!” she cried hopelessly.

  Ice filled his veins; he had seen it over her head: a wave that blocked out the sky, staining it deepest black, a churning wall of water that was going to sweep over them. He opened his mouth to shout because he knew she hadn’t seen, but nothing came from his throat. Don’t lose control! he shouted mentally. Let the wave break over the bow, let it break and keep control of this boat! It will lift the boat high and send it tumbling across its huge precipice, but KEEP YOUR HAND ON THIS TILLER!

  He watched it coming, could not speak, could not breathe, could not think. He saw their eyes fixed on him.

  An instant before the wave hit he took his hand away from the tiller, a self-protective instinct, throwing an arm over his face and screaming even as he knew it was a fatal, senseless mistake.

  A single cry tore at his heart before the water twisted the boat, before the black wave crashed broadside and covered Destiny’s Child: “DAVID…!”

  When he reached back for the tiller it was gone; he was sealed in a coffin of water, twisted and mauled by the sheer force of the wave. He went down choking, hands gripping emptiness, around him the tangled timbers that had been Destiny’s Child. He’d lost control for one instant; it had been enough to sweep them away from him forever. He’d failed them, failed them even as they trusted him with their lives.

  And now, on the Pride’s pitching forward deck, Moore forced himself back from a voyage through rage and bitterness through the dark caverns of his own soul. He clutched at the capstan, his muscles aching; he ignored the sharp pulling at the line around him. He was afraid to move. The storm-swept sky and sea, the wind now building and hitting his face, the waves dancing madly before the bow all combined to haunt him with fragmented, horrible images of the past. Water crashed over him, streaming around his feet and threatening to suck him away from his hold.

  Yes, yes. Why not let go? Why not let the sea take you? This is the time you’ve waited for; this is the moment, the second, the place. When the next white sheet of water covers you over, let go…let go. Only an instant of pain, perhaps, as the sea fills your lungs and chokes the brain. An instant. That’s all. He shook his head. No. Yes. No. NO! It was not suicide he’d followed across the world; no, the thought of that was repugnant to him. He had followed his beckoning destiny and now was not yet the time.

  Then from the blackness of the sea, crashing through the next wave that loomed overhead, a huge and terrible shape materialized. Foam swept the decks, shimmered like glass along its hull. A haunted boat, its railings strung with weed, chasms of water opening beneath it. The iron bow raced toward Moore.

  “Cheyne!” he shouted, twisting his head around.

  He saw the Carib’s face through the glass: drawn, mouth open, eyes staring in cold terror. The man’s hands clamped around the wheel, frozen in a collision course. Kip peered out behind Cheyne, reaching forward.

  “Cheyne!” Moore shouted again, unable to move.

  Water splattered the windshield and rolled off. When it had cleared Moore saw that the Carib’s eyes were fierce holes, and his teeth were bared. Cheyne threw his shoulder into the wheel, spinning it to starboard; the Pride responded, sending another wall of water over Moore.

  The Night Boat passed to the port side only feet away; Moore could hear the hoarse rumblings of its engines, the taunting roar of a creature from the depths. The trawler listed to starboard and Moore lost his grip. He fell away from the capstan, slamming hard into the starboard gunwale. He heard the Night Boat’s iron flesh rasp against wood. “God…” Moore hissed, salt stinging his eyes; he wiped the water away, saw the thing vanish through another high wave, trailing streaks of green luminescence. The rope tightened, almost cutting him in two; he pushed himself away from the gunwale and was dragged back into the wheelhouse.

  Cheyne fought to regain control of the rudder. The Pride wanted to break free and run, but he wouldn’t let her go. “I won’t lose it!” he breathed. “By God, I won’t lose it!” The trawler shuddered, pitched high, but began to answer the helm. Cheyne worked against the wheel, the muscles of his back aching; Kip leaped to his side and together they righted the boat.

  Moore lay back against the wheelhouse bulkhead trying to catch his breath, coughing and trembling. Jana was suddenly at his side, bending over him. “It came out of the dark,” he told her between coughs. “I didn’t have time to…”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s gone.”

  “No, not gone,” Cheyne said. “They turned back to ram us under; they know we’re here, and they know we’re following. Now maybe they’re after us, playing with us a little bit, biding their time.” He shook his fist at the dark sea. “Damn you, where are you? I’ll follow you into Hell, you sonofabitch!”

  Moore waited a few minutes longer, until his strength had returned, then he rose shakily to his feet and came alongside Cheyne; he reached up and searched the radio band. There was only more static. Ahead the sky was solid black; a dozen or more jagged white bolts of lightning cut the wide range of the horizon. Now they couldn’t be certain where the U-boat was. It could be moving alongside them, turning to ram them from behind, or waiting ahead for a confrontation of flesh and iron.

  The black door was wide open; the Pride hurtled through.

  Twenty-five

  MOORE STOOD PEERING out through the windshield, his eyes probing the dark for the thing he knew must be here, somewhere, perhaps dangerously close, perhaps a dozen miles away. Bolts of lightning crackled, striking deep into the sea. Wind whistled around the edges of the wheelhouse, died away, built back up.

  Moore had no idea how long they’d been tracking the U-boat—or was the U-boat tracking them now?—because his wristwatch had shattered when he’d fallen to the deck. It was a matter of hours, he was certain, but time here was elusive, something alien. His body was fatigued, his eyes ached from straining out to the horizon. They had not sighted any land nor any other ships, and once when Kip had gone out onto the deck, he let a blast of air into the wheelhouse that felt thick and hot, as if the sun were beating down directly overhead.

  “Turn us back to Coquina, Cheyne,” Jana called from where she sat at the rear
of the wheelhouse. “Your trawler can’t take the force of these waves much longer. The U-boat’s gone. It’s gotten away and you won’t be able to find it again.”

  Cheyne said nothing; he paid no attention to her.

  She rose and made her way forward. “Damn it!” she said, her gray eyes blazing. “Listen to me! You can’t cover the whole of the Caribbean! And if you do find the boat again, how can you ever hope to force it to the reef? It will crush this trawler to pieces!”

  Cheyne glanced over at her and then at the other two men. “I’ve returned to original course, directly into the passage between Big Danny Cay and Jacob’s Teeth toward the sea lanes. I know where they’re headed. Turning back to grind us under cost them time; if they hadn’t we would’ve lost them for sure.”

  He stared into Jana’s face. “I didn’t ask you to come. I didn’t ask any of you. You all came of your own free will; I didn’t have to tell you what you’d be facing out here.” He looked away, his gaze sweeping the wild horizon. “The currents come together between the cay and the Teeth; they drive a boat through there like a bullet. And that’s where they’ll try to go through into the lanes a few miles beyond. No. I’m not turning back now.”

  “You can’t stop them,” Jana said. “You’re mad if you think you can!”

  “Maybe I am,” he acknowledged. “But if I can’t drive the boat over the Teeth, then…As for the artillery, or a bomb…Moore, take that lantern from back there and step down into the cabin. I want this woman to see something.”

  Moore turned up the wick and went down, carefully, through the narrow opening. “Go take a look,” Cheyne told Jana.

  The light illuminated a small galley, a couple of bare-mattressed bunks, and more coils of rope and crates. Moore edged forward, watching his footing, and Jana followed close behind. Where the frames and plankings came together near the bow the crates were piled on top of each other and secured with heavy ropes. On some of them he could make out faded letters: CAUTION. HIGH EXPLOSIVES. He remembered the crate he’d kicked away on the deck. Dynamite. The fuses led out from cracks in the boxes, winding around each other to make a single, thick fuse, which was attached to a small reel. Bundles wrapped in clear plastic were tied to plankings, the cord fuses bound to the others. He raised the light and saw the long, brown sticks. There were four crates and two bundles of the plastic-wrapped dynamite. Enough for a tremendous explosion.

  They made their way silently back into the wheel-house. “Put that lamp back on the shelf,” Cheyne said. He saw an opening beyond, spun the wheel for it; the Pride vibrated. Jana stared at him, her face pale. “That’s the dynamite we stole from those company men,” Cheyne said. “So you see, I did come prepared.”

  “The entire boat…?” Jana asked softly.

  “Dynamite packed in the bow, drums of diesel fuel in the hold. When the primary fuse is wound out there’ll be three minutes before the flame sets off the first case. When the explosion comes it’ll take off the bow section and turn those hardwood plankings into spears. Then the hold will go, and those fuel drums will blow like…”

  “…depth charges,” Moore said.

  Cheyne glanced quickly at him, sweat shining on his face, his massive shoulders glistening with the effort of controlling the rudder. Then he returned his gaze to the sea. “Three minutes to get off before the bow blows.”

  “Off? Where?” Jana thrust out her arm. “Into that sea?”

  “If it happens…if I have to light that primary fuse,” Cheyne told her, “you’ll gladly take your chances in the water, storm or no. Now stop your chatter and get out of my way.” He saw holes opening ahead, veered for the nearest; the sea streamed over the port beam and then rolled off, as if the Pride had shrugged her shoulders of the ocean.

  Cheyne kept the wheel under firm control. He saw the barometer was still descending; a pulse throbbed at the base of his throat. He looked across as the floating compass rose, and slowly corrected two points. Sweat dripped from his chin and spattered onto the instrumentation panel. He was listening for a noise over the gobbling racket of the diesels: the faint rattling of the warning buoys on the southeastern point of Jacob’s Teeth. The sea would be twisting them around, making their bells hammer. Cheyne was staring off to port at about ninety degrees when the next few flashes of lightning cut the darkness. He had sailed these waters a thousand times with the Carib fishing fleet, and sheer instinct told him the cay should be within sight, though some miles distant; beyond them would be the treacherous, hundred-yard-long stretch of the reefs.

  But the lightning revealed only the wind-whipped sea. Something was wrong. Was it possible the compass was off, he wondered, or had his instincts been fooled by the storm? He leaned forward slightly, over the wheel, staring into the sea. It’s not right, damn it! he told himself, his eyes flint-hard. Nothing is right! He should be hearing those warning buoys by now, and even seeing the wash around the first of the blunt, green-slimed bommies that would sharpen into knife blades ahead. “Try the radio,” he said to Moore.

  Moore twisted the dial; this time there was no sound from the radio. He turned up the volume. No squeak of static or electrical interference.

  Only silence.

  “That’s funny,” Moore said. “Something’s wrong with it…”

  “No,” Cheyne said. “The radio’s not out. I don’t know what it is. I’m not sure where we are.”

  The wind hissed around the wheelhouse, whispering through cracks in the ceiling.

  “What’s the matter?” Kip asked, his voice tight.

  Cheyne looked from side to side, searching for the bommies. There was nothing. He turned to port a few degrees. The wind filtering through the ceiling stank of rot, of something decayed, yet refusing to die.

  The sea stretched out before them, huge and empty, a universe of water. No Big Danny Cay, no landmark bommies. Cheyne eased back on both throttles, his skin beginning to crawl. The boat…where was the boat…?

  “I haven’t lost it!” he said through clenched teeth. “I haven’t lost it! No! It’s out there. And it’s waiting for me.”

  “Where are we?” Jana asked, looking first at Moore and than at the Carib.

  A wave slammed hard into the hull, rocking the Pride to both sides. The wind pulled at the windshield frame.

  Then there was an abrupt, deafening silence.

  Sea crashed across the bow; Cheyne drove straight through the rising wave, and on the other side of it he clenched his hand tight around the wheel and stared.

  The ocean had flattened into a black, limitless plain. No wind, no slap of sea across the trawler. There was a strange, unnerving stillness.

  “Where are you, bastard?” Cheyne whispered. “Come on, let’s be done with it!”

  Cheyne cut back the engines until the Pride was almost sitting still. Lightning flashed across his field of vision. Moore, standing beside him, gripped the instrumentation panel for support.

  “Listen…!” Kip said.

  The wind. Rising in the distance. Shrieking, turning, thrashing against itself like a maddened beast.

  Veins of yellow broke open in the sky, cutting the sea into a jigsaw pattern of black and ocher. Lightning made the water shimmer. In the half-light Moore caught his breath; he’d seen the entire horizon roiling. The hurricane was advancing rapidly, a storm of gargantuan magnitude.

  At the same instant the entire plain of the ocean seemed to rise up, throwing the Pride forward so fast Jana and Kip were slammed against the bulkheads. Cheyne fought with all his strength to hold the rudder, shouting for Moore to help. The wind howled the length of the boat, and as the next roaring water flooded across the Pride there was a snapping noise—wood giving way. One of the masts toppling.

  Moore’s head was thrown back, his teeth almost biting through his tongue. Cheyne gasped, pushing against the vibrating wheel, fearful that the rudder would break. The Pride was thrown high, almost free of the water; in the next moment it was toppling down a black wall, the sea smashing agai
nst them so hard Moore thought the windshield would shatter. Something hit the boat; there was a grinding noise beneath. Cheyne cursed, fought the rudder.

  The sea was littered with broken planks, pieces of boats, here a huge tree with naked branches—they could see it all by the intermittent lightning’s illumination. The battered tin roof of a house whirled past the starboard beam. Floating crates, the bow of a skiff, jagged bits of a storm-broken wharf swept by on each side of the trawler. Sheets of spray drove over the boat, the scream of the wind like a man’s outcry. As Moore watched, his shoulder pressing against the wheel, a dark object hurtled across the prow directly toward the wheelhouse: the trunk of a tree, trailing clumps of seaweed. It struck the windshield; glass cracked, stinging Moore’s face. Water exploded into the wheelhouse, breaking out more of the glass. The tree trunk twisted, broke off, plunged away into the sea again. Cheyne wrenched at the wheel, his back about to give way, the sweat of pain running down his face. The rudder wouldn’t respond!

  And then suddenly, from the darkness straight ahead, as if borne toward them by the hurricane, came the looming, monstrous war machine.

  The Night Boat.

  Cheyne glared at the iron behemoth. “PUSH!” he shouted, his voice ragged. Kip moved forward to help, his feet slipping in water.

  The rudder was still sluggish; the sea had it locked in a powerful grip. The Pride began to turn broadside, helpless before the rush of the oncoming monster. It would strike them on the port side, crushing across the wheelhouse; Moore opened his mouth but could not manage to cry out.

  The iron prow lifted up, up, towering over them. Foam roared beneath it, the noise of certain destruction.

  But then something else rose out of the storm: an apparition, flaming green and ghostly, a vision from a nightmare.

  A freighter. It appeared to be aflame—its length twisted, glowing metal. Burning figures on the decks. A hideous noise of screaming and moaning that made Moore cry out and clap his hands to his ears.