Buried At Sea Read online

  The way to catch Will Spark was to station patrols at his likely stops: ambush him east, west, north, and south. Deny him access to his lairs. Wear him down with disappointed hopes until the thief lost the strength to run.

  Nickels took his sat phone to a quiet corner and commenced a long day and night of encrypted conversations with arms dealers, soldiers, smugglers, and cops in ports on both coasts of the North and South Atlantic. Ten years with the U.S. Army Rangers fighting narcoterrorists left him well connected in Central and South America and throughout the Caribbean. He was thinner on the ground in Africa, though not by much, having established contacts there among the oilmen drilling offshore. Wherever his uncle had taken him around, the local security guy was often someone he'd known in the service.

  Still, it would have been easier if Will Spark had gone west. Problem was, Nickels could still almost smell him; the thief was out here, somewhere, headed east.

  Deer Shannon.

  Just wanted to flashmail a quick hi.

  I learned how to row. We were stuck in the Doldrums—no wind—so I went rowing in the rubber dinghy.

  Dear Jim.

  Rowing sounds greet. Did you tie a rape to the boat in case the wind came up and blew you away?

  Dear Shannon,

  Yeah. I had a line tied on real tight. For the first couple of times. until I knew I could get back on my own.

  And. hey. I climbed the mast to fix a broken stay! Will taught me how to crimp the wire end he said I did a good job.

  Dear Jim.

  Boy. I'll bet you were glad you worked out on the climbing wall. What was it like when you looked down? How high is the mast?

  "Will, let's talk about

  " "What about 'em?"

  "Who is chasing you? And why?"

  It was a week since their abrupt change of course—five days since they had finally motored out of the Doldrums—monotonous days of pearly overcast skies, dark nights, and a slow if steady six knots on the knot meter. Jim began to entertain vague hopes of a storm—anything for a change. Will's retort was "Bite your tongue."

  Lulled (dulled?) by the constant northeast trade wind, calmed (numbed?) by the orderly, moderate swell, the thick heat, and the regular watches on and off by the clock, Jim had submitted to the reality that Will had added weeks to their voyage. But if the "adventure"

  was longer, it wasn't any bigger and he still entertained the hope that if he could convince Will that "they" were a fantasy, his employer would change course and let him off early.

  The books in the nav station said that the Cape Verde Islands had an international airport. The Cape Verde Islands were a lot closer than Nigeria and sounded a lot safer.

  "Who are 'they,' Will? Who's chasing you?"

  Will shrugged. He looked away. "Sometimes in business you disappoint people."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Let's say you forgot to show up for a spinning class. Or you missed a personal trainer appointment, pissed off your clients."

  "But they're not chasing me. Or, should I say, I'm not running from them."

  "Well, sometimes you disappoint the wrong people. People who take disappointment personally. Hey, it's hot as hell. Feel like going swimming?"

  "Here?"

  Jim looked over the side. The water sliding past was several miles deep, an unappetizing gray color, with Godknows-what swimming under its impenetrable surface. "I'll pass.

  These people you disappointed? What kind of people are we talking about?"

  "Angry people." Will winked and flashed his most engaging smile. Jim ignored the invitation to join the laugh, insisting instead, "I don't know a lot about business, but I gather

  from my lawyer clients that angry people usually sue when they're disappointed. Then, if you keep on disappointing them, the law chases you."

  'There is no law out here, son."

  "So . . . how do I put this? That ship—if it was a ship—contained angry, disappointed people who are, shall we say, outlaws?"

  "Listen, smart mouth, there's no 'if.' It was a ship. The people on board that ship don't mess around with lawsuits. Okay? You got your answer?"

  "You're being hunted by criminals?"

  "If only that were true." "why?"

  "If they were common criminals, I could call the cops. I'm going swimming. You want to come?"

  "No."

  "Up to you:'

  "If they're not criminals, and you can't call the cops, who the hell are they?"

  Will opened a hatch and pulled out a neatly coiled length of line and a safety harness, which he buckled around his chest. Then he climbed out of the cockpit and ran the line through a block at the end of the boom. He tied one end to his harness and ran the other through a deck block and wrapped it around an idle winch.

  "Let out the main."

  Jim traced the mainsheet from the boom through its traveler and loosened the proper winch. The mainsail swung away.

  "Cleat it off," Will ordered when the boom was hanging six feet over the water, rising and falling with the roll of the boat.

  He handed Jim the end of his line, stepped over the safety lines, and jumped. Then, dangling in his harness, hanging from the end of the boom, he yelled, "Lower me into the water."

  Jim eased on Will's line until Will was dragged along the side of the boat, pushing off the hull with his feet and being alternately submerged and raised as the boat rolled.

  "Fantastic!" he whooped. "Oh man, this is beautiful."

  Watching him frolic, Jim began to feel the oppressive heat more than ever. Will looked cool and clean, as happy as a baby in a backyard pool.

  "You gotta try this. It's fantastic."

  But the water was gray, the body of it invisible. It looked like it was eating Will, who disappeared every time the boat dunked him.

  "Okay, haul me in."

  Jim cranked the winch, which raised Will out of the water. Then he cranked the mainsheet and drew the boom into the boat.

  Will scrambled over the safety lines, laughing. "Oh man, you gotta try it."

  Jim was afraid. What if there were sharks?

  "You know what you are?" Will teased. "You're thèClimate-Control Kid.' "

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "If you're not in the air-conditioned mall with a roof over your head, you're scared."

  "What are you talking about? I just don't feel like swimming."

  "You're a suburban health club mall rat. You're afraid of the outdoors."

  "Hey, screw you. I'm not afraid. I'll swim if it makes you happy."

  "It'll make you happy." Will laughed. "You'll feel like you're flying."

  Flying turned out to be the perfect word. The boat rolled and the boom swept him high.

  When it rolled the other way, the boom dropped him in the warm water. It was incredibly exhilarating, and the jolt of the water yanked a happy yell from deep in his gut.

  "Shove off with your feet!"

  Jim swung himself in the harness, aligned his feet with the hull, and pushed off. Then he was whipped into the sky again and dunked a moment later, the water rubbing him, sluicing him clean of sweat.

  "This is fantastic." He hadn't felt so clean in his life. He should have done this days ago. He yelled again, pushed off, jumped high. As he rose from the water, he saw Will peering past him. Watching something. There was something alongside, something in the water. Jim could sense it moving beside him, keeping pace. His heart jumped, his stomach shriveled. "Will!"

  Will leaned out. "Jesus, is that a dolphin?"

  The rolling boat plunged Jim into the water again. He craned his neck and saw a thick gray body draw near. "It's a shark! It's a shark. Pull me in."

  "That's not a shark—hell, maybe it is."

  "Will, pull me up." Trapped in the sling, bouncing in and out of the water, Jim panicked.

  "Will, save me!"

  "Easy, easy, easy. I got you." But to Jim's horror, Will seemed to be moving very, very slowly, reaching for the winch han
dle as if he had all the time in the world. The thing in the water came closer and Jim screamed.

  The boom snapped him out of the water. But a second later it dropped him in again as if to feed him to whatever was waiting. "Will!"

  "I got you. Don't blow a gasket," Will shouted from the winch. Slowly he cranked and slowly Jim rose higher in the water. Will called, "Hey, you're in great shape, which is always an advantage in surviving shark bites. Main thing is . . . don't go into shock when they bite you. Shock will kill you."

  "Get me up!"

  Will cranked harder. Then he hauled in the mainsheet, and Jim found himself clinging to the safety lines, desperately holding up his legs, imagining a shark sliding up the side of the boat and taking his foot in jagged rows of razor teeth.

  Will helped him over the lines and he half fell into the cockpit, where he huddled as he tried to contain his panic by gulping deep breaths of air to dissipate the adrenaline rampaging through his system.

  "Give you a tip," said Will. "If you want to swim with the sharks, you better swim with strong strokes; don't splash around like you're weak and dying, and bump them back when they bump you. Bump 'em back! Show 'em you're

  still alive—though I got to tell you, that looked to me like a friendly dolphin. In fact, there's some now. Aren't those dolphins?"

  Jim looked at the gray water. Crescent shapes were cutting in and out of the sea, pacing the boat.

  "Looks to me like you got spooked by Flipper."

  Frightened, angry, and embarrassed by his weakness, Jim slowly caught his breath and took charge of his body and his spirit. Will was chuckling as if it were the funniest joke he'd ever heard.

  "The CC Kid," he said. "I'm shipmates with the Climate-Control Kid."

  Jim stood up. His knees were trembling. His hands were still shaking. But terror and the mind-dissolving panic were coiling into rage. He wanted to take Will by the throat and squeeze the laughter out of him. He stared fixedly behind the boat. "Here comes that ship again."

  Will went dead white. He spun around, pawed his binoculars from their rack, and swept a barren and completely empty horizon. Slowly the color returned to his face.

  " 'Bumped' me back." He smiled at last. "Very funny. . . . So you're a counterpuncher.

  Didn't know you had it in you."

  "If you ever do something like that to me again I'll tear your fucking head off."

  "Or maybe it's just a hot temper," Will replied. Then he fell silent. A vague smile played on his lips, as if he knew something even funnier.

  As the old man slid down into his private world, the truth struck Jim like lightning. Will Spark truly believed he was being hunted.

  Dear Shannon.

  Jim stared at the screen. He was more baffled than ever by Will's behavior. Even if the man was being hunted by his enemies, how did that relate to "Shark Attack"?

  He started typing, watching the event unfold on the computer screen,

  ... And now lm wondering—why? Was he just plain cruel? Dr did he do it to control me, shut me up, make me his obedient shipmate?

  Delete.

  In the cool lines of computer print, he looked like a real jerk.

  Dear Shannon.

  Funny thing happened the other day: I mistook a dolphin for a shark, which ordinarily wouldn't have mattered a whole hell of a lot. But being in the water, swimming from the boom. it mattered a lot. To me, at least. In fact, you might even say I flipped out over Flipper.

  Fortunately. Will was not fooled. So he took a long, long, long time to pull me out. A Illooooonggg time. Huge laugh. But maybe you had to be here.

  WILL'S YACHT WAS named Hustle.

  Jim's first sight of the fifty-foot sloop had been a saber silhouette in the glare of the Barbados fishing boat's searchlight: a spiry mast, two drum-tight sails, and a lean hull slashing the waves. What had looked from a distance like slicing the seas was altogether different on board—an endless, erratic chain of heart-stopping crashes as Hustle pounded through waves and stomach-dropping lurches as she fell into their troughs.

  Will had assured him that things would calm down once they sailed into deeper water.

  But by daylight, they were getting mauled by short, steep seas breaking over the deck.

  Jim, unable to eat, drink, sleep, or even move from the bunk Will finally dumped him into after he had emptied his guts in the airless toilet, would gladly have died.

  Only many days later, after tentatively ingesting warm water and saltines, and prompted by Shannon's e-mail begging him to describe everything he saw, could he begin to admire the drama of the boat's towering mast, the power of her thickset winches, and the rugged beauty of her broad wooden decks.

  The sloop was, he came to realize, both a rich man's toy and a potent machine. Shannon's parents' health clubs were making money hand over fist, but none of the stuff they owned—house, ski house, SUVs, diamond jewelry—seemed as costly, as extravagant, or as purposeful as Will's yacht.

  "Do you mind my asking what Hustle cost?" Jim asked one evening in the cockpit.

  "I bought her cheap," Will answered casually, pausing for a sip from a tall gin and tonic.

  "Hong Kong's the best place in the world to get a bargain on a boat."

  The old man had emerged from his paralyzing depression and seemed to have forgotten the fear that had driven him to change course. He was, this evening, in one of his talkative moods. So talk, Jim thought. You talk, and I'll ask questions till I nudge you around to "they."

  "Why are boats cheap in Hong Kong?"

  "That's how far couples sailing around the world to save their marriages get before they admit it was a lousy idea," Will said.

  "Sailing or the marriage?"

  Will grinned. "Both

  don't get me started on marriage. I know you asked Shannon

  to marry you."

  Jim regretted going into it, but Will had gotten him talking one night.

  Will's grin broadened, exposing remarkably straight teeth. "I won't be the naysayer. You poor deluded fool. Fact is, Hong Kong was the only place I could afford to buy. These days, every time you turn around there're newer, richer new-rich parvenus crawling out of the woodwork, driving prices up. And I was broke."

  Jim had worked for a number of well-off clients, but he was sure that Will was the richest man he had ever met. Will's kind of broke had nothing to do with how to pay next month's rent.

  "My last divorce had really wiped me out. Ruinous—though worth every penny."

  Jim looked away, irritated by the bluster. Aging macho man Will, with his faded Marine Corps tattoos and "manly"

  proclamations, was acting like an Ernest Hemingway retread.

  "Am I offending you?" Will asked.

  "Like you said, I was hoping to get married. I'm looking at the upside."

  "Actually, I'm curious. Why'd she say no? Good-looking guy, sleepy eyes girls go for, and all them muscles . . . Did you tell me your parents were divorced?"

  "No!"

  Will gave him a quizzical look. "Something tells me—stop me if I'm wrong—they should have been. A long time ago."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "You're a nice kid. You're very polite. You have good manners. But you dislike older people. I'm guessing they put you through the wringer."

  Jim stood up and climbed out of the cockpit. Crouching low and gripping the safety lines that fenced the decks, he headed forward.

  "Hey, relax," Will called after him. "Forget I said that. Nobody knows about anybody else's marriage, especially their parents'. Inge had it right: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs."

  Jim kept going. Timing the roll of the boat—he was finally getting used to it—he swung through the narrow alley between the mast and the thick wire stays that guyed it—the shrouds, the side stays were called shrouds—and worked his way along the foredeck. At the bow he propped himself within the rails of the pulpit and gripped the forestay, which was thrumming with the press of the wind on the jib, and stared d
own at the water the hull was cleaving.

  It wasn't that he hated older people. He didn't hate anybody. But he did carry baggage—

  Shannon's word—filled with his mother's frustrated longings and his father's inability to do anything about them. In reaction, he had learned from watching his mother not to want too much. While from his father, he feared, he had learned not to hope for too much and not to try too hard. So in a way, Will had guessed right.

  He had always equated age with discouragement, disappointment, and deceit, and he had dreamed that when he left home the world would be a sunnier place.

  For some reason, he had ended up commuting to college, not moving out until graduation. And after three longish relationships with gloomy, troubled women he had begun to question whether he deliberately sought out disappointment. Then he met Shannon. She was sunny enough for both of them, baggage and all. His and hers.

  "You can't fix my legs," she had said when her father brought Jim into her bedroom.

  Somehow--perhaps guessing that she had been a cheerful soul before the accident—he had known to answer, "I don't do legs. I'm here for the flabby arms."

  She stared, stung, her gaze flicking to her sagging arms. "You'd be flabby, too, if you were stuck in bed for a year."

  "This is what I would do if I were stuck in bed for a year."

  Where he had gotten the nerve he would never know, but he had startled the heck out of her, himself, and her father by lying down on the bed beside her and curling ten reps of a five-pound dumbbell. They had held eye contact for the full ten reps of the right hand, and ten more of his left.

  As they lay face-to-face on the sheets, six inches apart, her father gaping like a guy at a zoo, Jim had thought, God, what a pretty girl, and a smile had begun to light her blue eyes.

  With their eyes still locked, Jim had rolled on his side, balanced on his hand, and started one-arm push-ups. The smile had traveled over her face and she said, still holding Jim's gaze, "Daddy, go away."

  Where, Jim still wondered, had he gotten the nerve? How had he sensed that she was ready to emerge from despair? In any case, it had worked.

  He could never make her walk normally. No one could. But he could help her get strong.

  Though that success had led them both to a new form of despair. "I don't want to be your job."