Fire And Ice Page 29

  But how did the son of a bitch know? According to Doctor Mummy, Doctor Daddy was a self-taught engineer. Acoustics. Electronics. Maybe their buddy in the salvage business had taught them about gas carriers. Maybe he

  read Professional Mariner. Or Safety At Sea. Brass-balled son of a bitch.

  "Son of a bitch!"

  "What, Mr. Jack?"

  "What's your name, kid?"

  "Huh?"

  "Your name."

  "Ronnie. You know."

  "Your whole name."

  Her eyes slid aside for just a second, before she answered, "Veronica Margaret Soditan Samuels."

  "Yeah? Where'd you get the Margaret?"

  "Both Mummy and Daddy's mothers' names were Mar-

  garet. And they both died when they were very young." "Handy coincidence. How about the Soditan?" "Mummy's maiden name. From her father."

  "Who made up the Samuels?"

  "Mummy and Daddy —I mean, that's Daddy's name." "Sure, kid."

  She looked terrified. He let her stew a moment. "Seen enough?"

  "Yes, Mr. Jack."

  "Run down to the cabin and ask Ah Lee for some hot cocoa."

  But she stood rooted to the deck like a little bush. Old and dumb, he thought, old and dumb.

  "Moss," he yelled. "Front and center."

  Then he took pity. "Hey, don't cry, little girl. I won't tell on your daddy. I'm a bad guy too."

  "He's not bad."

  "Well, neither am I, really."

  Stupid, though. Should have made the connection right off—but it had happened after he had bailed out of Nigeria, just before it became a total nuthouse. . . . A general had been murdered. Mummy Doc's father? The cops had charged a white American. Daddy Doc?

  Scuttlebutt had said it was a bullshit story to cover a CIA screwup. Whatever. They never did catch the white guy. The American had escaped. Was he the loose cannon headed for Tokyo? Mr. Jack shrugged. God knew, so many crazy stories came out of Africa.

  "Go on, kid. Get outta here. I gotta talk to Moss." Moss hurried in from the computer room. "What's up, Mr. Jack?"

  Ronnie circled Moss like a rabbit around a snake and made a beeline down the corridor.

  Jack Powell waited until he heard her sneakers slapping on the stairs. "Beep the captain."

  The captain responded a minute later.

  "Mr. Jack wants you. Now."

  "Ah got my hands full up here."

  "On the bridge. Now."

  They waited in silence, Moss wanting to ask but knowing not to, Jack Powell ruminating on his shortcomings.

  "Captain," he said, when the Texan clumped in looking pissed off. "I want you to plot the route that Doctor S. and her hubby are sailing to Tokyo."

  "East China Sea. Osumi Strait. Philippine Sea. Hang a left at Tokyo Bay."

  "That much I can figure out on my own. What matters is the wind. It's a sailboat. I want the exact route."

  "Any objection to my chief mate crunching the numbers? I'm kind of busy. Those bozos on the cranes make One false move and they'll blow us to hell."

  Jack Powell's expression turned wintery. "Captain—and I use the title loosely, since you'

  ve already had your master's ticket revoked for blowing your last command to hell—"

  "That weren't my fault."

  "I believe in you, Captain. Hell, I'm paying you a lifetime's wages for one voyage.

  Unless you want me to promote your chief mate . . ."

  "No, sir."

  "Huddle with the computers and the goddammed weather fax and tell me where the man'

  s going to sail. And you," he shot at Moss, who was grinning at the captain's discomfort,

  "you work out where you're going to stop 'em. What, Moss?"

  "You going to let the kid radio them tomorrow?" "Yes."

  "Maybe we can triangulate their signal."

  Mr. Jack beamed. "Captain, you should have thought of that."

  "Didn't have to. Been watching the weather."

  The captain walked to the weather facsimile machine and tore off the latest chart.

  "There's a doozy of a cold front moving off the continent onto the East China Sea.

  Brand-new undisturbed front, wedging under this warm air mass." He waved the chart in Moss's face. "And this here puppy's a depression." He traced the depression—a tight whorl that resembled a knot in hardwood—with a work-scarred finger. "Dropping a millibar an hour, deepening like a bastard. Keeps doing this it's going to build into what the weather boys call a 'bomb,' and bomb the shit outta the doctors. They got no weather fax and there's no way the plain language forecast is going to pin the puppy down. Any luck, it'll sink 'em by lunchtime."

  A BROKEN SKY TEASED STONE WITH PROSPECTS OF A SUN

  shot. But while he brought his sextant up to the cockpit, he studied the sky less with an eye to navigation than to the weather. He knew approximately where they were by dead reckoning—a respectable hundred and forty miles east of the Huangpu, averaging seven and a half knots over the bottom, the eastward setting current making up for the boat-slowing chop. And with the chart showing nothing to crash into between here and Japan, they could wait for a celestial fix.

  "I wish I had killed him when I had the chance," said Sarah.

  Stone barely heard her. Speed was all: he had to shape a course to find the best wind—which was backing west and dropping—while avoiding getting beaten up by the storm headed their way. Not only would it slow them down, but also in the shallow East China Sea, steep waves could overwhelm even a boat as strong as the Swan. The barometer and the radio shipping reports painted a general picture. He had to know precisely what would happen within the radius of the ninety miles Veronica might sail in the next twelve hours.

  He had thrown his weather fax overboard years ago, a victim of Pacific humidity.

  Lacking the upper air charts that weather stations broadcast four times a day, he had learned slowly and painstakingly to read the sky like a 3-D monitor.

  Jet cirrus clouds were invading the upper atmosphere, trailing streaks of ice crystals that thickened into broad banners. It was usually hard to judge their speed without fixed references on the empty sea, but these were shooting between the horizons, indicating ferocious temperature differences between the retreating warm front and the advancing cold.

  Strong jets meant severe weather.

  So did their flight path from northwest to southeast.

  So did the cumulus clouds, lower down in the sky, that were traveling on a different course from the west: Watts's "crossed-winds" rule said that if you stood with your back to the surface wind and the upper wind came from your left, things were going to get worse before they got better. "Low weather from the left hand."

  To put "right weather" on his right hand, all he had to do was turn around and go the other way. Were time and speed less important than safety, he would do just that. But now time was everything, and the only question was did he want to run before the storm or cut across its path and try to squeeze through the canyon between the advancing and retreating systems?

  Ocean Passages noted a peculiarity of the northeast monsoon: it slackened ahead of a depression. Stone felt it happening already, the wind dropping, and he wondered whether it would cut their speed too much for them to make it across the storm. The only good news was that the broken sky was growing increasingly clouded: heavy cloud suggested a smallish low. And, promised Ocean Passages, the monsoon would come screaming back as soon as the low passed.

  He ran below to look again at the color-smeared chart he had drawn. The cold front was relatively near its breeding ground; young and active, it might shove the depression by quickly. Maybe. He looked again at the sky and imagined the clifflike face of the young front.

  He decided to take a chance. Instead of cutting across the low or retreating behind it, he would run with the son of a bitch and hope for the best.

  Sarah concurred, which Stone found a little unsettling. She was never a risk taker on the boat. But
since they had

  lost Ronnie, she was driving herself and the boat way beyond the edge.

  "My watch," he said. "Get some sleep."

  Sarah went below. But instead of climbing under a blanket, she began methodically cleaning the galley, only vaguely aware that she had cleaned it spotless two hours earlier.

  She had never felt so trapped on the boat. It was like drowning in a cage. For every breath of wind that pushed them ahead, a wave shoved them back. For every two hours at the helm, an eternal two hours below unable to sleep, her mind in knots.

  She kept trying to tell herself that Mr. Jack was enchanted by Ronnie. Everyone was, everyone who met the child. But the old man was completely unpredictable. And totally unrestrained.

  Who would challenge him? Moss? Not bloody likely. The captain was hopeless, the ship'

  s crew isolated from Mr. Jack's throne room. Whatever occurred in the Dallas Belle's palatial owner's suite was Mr. Jack's to decide.

  She was rubbing a frayed sponge on the corroded stainless steel saltwater tap—back and forth, back and forth—when she began to realize that the boat was heeling less. The noise of cutting water had quietened to a dull murmur. The wind had died. Impossible.

  They lived by the trade winds and the monsoon.

  She darted up the companionway, slid open the hatch. "Michael!"

  He had shipped the dodger and lashed it down. And to her astonishment, he was hanking the storm jib onto the inner forestay and had already taken a third reef in the mainsail.

  "What are you doing!"

  Without bothering to look up, he nodded astern.

  Now she saw in detail what she had registered only as darkness when she ran up the companionway. The horizon had moved in close. Hard-edged and randomly crenelated, it looked like streets of old buildings in a city made of stone. Cloud formed this apparition, cloud that plummeted sheer gray from a gray sky, blackening as it fell to a thin, bone-white line that edged the rim of the sea.

  The white was water churned up by a squall line that

  preceded the front like dragoons galloping ahead of infantry to draw first blood. Stone raised the storm jib. It hung limp in the suddenly dead air. He released the main halyard.

  "Get the storm trysail," he called. Sarah was already on her way, down the companionway, racing through the main cabin into the forepeak where the trysail lay in its bright yellow bag.

  She dragged it up on deck as he wrapped sail ties over the furled main, and clipped on the halyard, secured the clew, and bent sheets to the sail's tack. A gust swept the water, whipping the tops off the waves.

  "Ready."

  Stone heaved on the halyard. A second gust smacked into the little sail. Sarah sheeted it in. The jib filled, too, and the Swan jumped ahead.

  The white line caught up with a loud hiss. The wind doubled. The Swan leaned over, buried her bow, but before she could fling the sea aside, the wind doubled again, shrieking in the rigging, solid as a wall. It slammed the boat, already staggering under the weight of the water pounding her bow. She fell on her side like a heart-shot elk.

  Stone and Sarah went flying, tumbling into the leeward lifelines, which were disappearing underwater. For an instant the only thought in his head was, Thank God for Ronnie's child netting or they'd be thrown through the lines. But instead of the netting, he smashed into one of the stanchions that supported the lines. He heard a loud crunch and both felt and saw a blaze of pain as if someone had opened his skull to shine a light inside. He teetered on the edge of consciousness. Then his mouth and nose filled with cold water and he convulsed in a half-drowned attempt to breathe.

  Something was tugging at his right arm. Sarah, struggling to free herself from the grip that had kept her from tumbling over the lines into the water. The boat uprighted itself with a whoosh of seawater pouring from the sails, and flung them both in another tangle of arms and legs back into the cockpit. Sarah recovered first. "Can you steer?" she yelled over the shriek of the wind.

  "I'm okay."

  "Steer. I'll get the kit."

  She dove below, timing her opening of the hatch to keep the breaking seas from washing down with her, and reappeared in a moment with Surgipads and bandage.

  "Are you hurt?" yelled Stone, hands full of the helm as he tried to put the boat on a course across the wicked chop. The sea was as ragged as rows of serrated knives, and the blowing spray and something that kept stinging his eyes made it almost impossible to distinguish waves from the bow of the boat.

  Sarah faced him, braced herself by locking her legs around the binnacle post, and wiped his face with a hand towel that came away red. "Oh, it's me," he said stupidly. "Bad?"

  "You're still standing." She covered the wound with a Surgipad.

  Stone could see better now that the blood was out of his eyes. Veronica looked undamaged by her knockdown. But the China Sea was a mass of wildly moving water.

  The sky was dark, the sails tight as drumheads, streaming spray, and banging every time the wind shifted.

  "Go below," he yelled. "No sense in both of us getting beat up at the same time What are you looking at?"

  Sarah had thrown her head back and was staring at the masthead. Stone felt a stab of alarm. What had he missed?

  "Is the aerial all right?"

  She meant the radio antenna, tomorrow's connection to Ronnie.

  "Go below," he said. "Try the radio. Then get some sleep."

  Sarah tore her eyes from the masthead and stared bitterly at the raging sea.

  An hour of the chaotic wind drove the shallow sea into a frenzy. At the helm he was doing less steering than dodging. For the waves were growing steeper—slab-sided monsters that charged like bulls and collapsed suddenly, dropping tons of gray-green water that staggered Veronica, When they fell on the foredeck, they drove her bow under, pitching her so steeply that Stone fell against the helm. When they crashed behind her, they slammed into the cockpit, filling it to his knees and pummeling his shoulders. It was like a gang mugging, a sudden one-sided confrontation with mindless violence.

  A lesser boat would have broken to pieces already. But the Swan was born on the Baltic—another malevolently shallow sea—and her hull could take a strong beating.

  Stronger than her crew.

  The anemometer was measuring wind gusts near forty knots, a force 8 fresh gale building to a force 9. Wave crests broke apart, scattering long lines of dense foam across the lumpy sea. Tall waves started tumbling heavily, booming as they crashed beside Veronica. Blowing spray drove the oxygen from the atmosphere, and for long moments Stone couldn't draw a breath.

  Should have gone around behind it, he thought. Too late now.

  Sarah opened the hatch a crack, crawled over the washboards and across the cockpit to hand Stone a pair of scuba-diving goggles. She held the helm while he put them on, then crawled below. When she next appeared, she had a squeeze bottle filled with sweetened cocoa.

  Stone sensed shadow behind him as he reached for the cocoa. Sarah's eyes filled with disbelief. He looked back to see a square-faced sea reaching halfway up the backstay. It was racing after the boat, blocking the sky like a two-story building. He tried to swing the stem at right angles to the advancing face.

  She wouldn't answer the helm. The rudder moved too easily as the wave sucked water out from under the stem. The hull staggered, clumsy, started to broach. A slant of wind filled the jib and pushed the bow around just as the wave crashed aboard.

  Tons of water, heavy as lead, black as night, drove Stone to the cockpit sole, flattening him, his knees collapsed, his legs a-tangle. It ripped his right hand from the wheel and scrabbled at his left. Flailing with his right, he felt his fingers close on the slippery softness of Sarah's sea boot.

  The stem plummeted, the bow pointed at the sky. Water filled his pants, his jacket, his boots. It rushed past his head and then suddenly the deck thrust up under them, flinging them into light and air. He grabbed a stanchion

  and tried to orient himself. For a
long moment the cockpit resembled a bathtub. Then water drained out the scuppers and the Swan was afloat, bobbing on the surface, sails rattling like machine guns. He was still holding Sarah's foot.

  She lay on her back, staring up at the mast.

  "You okay?" he yelled. One of his gloves had vanished, flayed from his hand.

  "The aerial?" she pointed.

  He pulled the goggles from his eyes, shielded his face from the spray. Still there.

  The cockpit was a snakes' nest of sodden rope. The sheets had been stripped from their winches. One of the lifeline stanchions was bent, and the torrent had shredded the child netting like strands of seaweed. But both sails were intact. He sheeted them in and set the boat back on course, stern to the thundering seas.

  "Steer. I gotta douse the jib. We're going too fast."

  He clipped his safety harness onto the jack line he had led over the coach roof, crawled to the mast, fumbled in the near darkness for the storm halyard. The wind seized the sail when it descended the inner forestay, the heavy Dacron banged and crackled like sheet metal. Stone fought it to the deck, attempting to smother it with his body. Fingernails were broken from his bare hand. A five-minute job stretched to twenty. Once the sail ballooned under him and threatened to throw him over the lifelines. He bagged the sail and lashed it down and crawled at last back to the cockpit.

  The boat began to resonate with a low, deep moaning sound. The wind was rising again, howling through the rigging. And despite the lowered storm jib, Veronica was picking up speed, lunging and surfing from wave to wave, plummeting dangerously into the deepening troughs. The air was liquid, a wind-driven mix of spray, spindrift, and icy rain racing horizontally across the decks.

  Stone cast a weary eye on the storm trysail. He was exhausted from dousing the jib. But the trysail, a minuscule triangle of heavy cloth, was driving the boat too fast. Sarah nodded. It had to go. She stepped behind the wheel again. Stone crawled forward.

  An hour had passed before he returned to the cockpit.

  Sarah tried to send him below. But that he could not do, although he could barely stand.

  Veronica was crashing ahead under a bare mast. Without a scrap of sail flying, she was making eight knots. And Stone's gut told him that if the wind blew any harder or the waves climbed any steeper, she would be fighting for her life.