Dead Heat (34 page)

Flares. Lots of flares.

Quick scan of the instructions, then Georgia hung through the entrance of the life raft and lit a mini-flare. It shot high
and wide—150 feet in the air, the packet read—and with a pop hung there before slowly arcing for the sea. It was impossible
he wouldn’t see it.

I’m here.
Swim for me. Swim.

She grabbed the paddle from the bottom of the raft and sculled furiously to where she thought she’d last seen him. When she
reached the crest of a wave she thought she saw a man’s torso bobbing in the water.

“Daniel!”

Paddling hard, she headed to the spot but saw nothing.

Have to find Daniel, she thought. Can’t stop until I’ve found him.

She continued paddling. High on the next wave, she was convinced she saw a light winking to her left. The life jacket, she
thought. Did it have a self-igniting light? Putting her head down, she pelted for the wink of light. Rising on the next crest,
she looked vainly for it, but saw nothing. She was shuddering and shaking and her hands were numb. Was he hidden by another
wave? Had he been swept away by a current?

She lit another mini-flare, then another and another. In between, she paddled like fury, determined to keep searching until
she found him.

I’m here, Daniel. Swim for me, dammit.

Gallons of water sloshed in the bottom of the raft. She ignored it and kept paddling. It warmed her, but she knew she was
tiring rapidly.

Mustn’t stop. He might be over the next wave.

She lit a night-and-day flare, which didn’t fire into the air but was designed to be handheld, smoke one end of the tube,
a flare at the other. Hanging out of the raft, she reached as high as she could. It fizzed and spat and spewed green, and
she gazed at the black of the sea, lit as though it was day, and part of her couldn’t quite believe what was happening, but
the other part, the selfish, self-survival part, was telling her not to waste her last mini-flare. Just in case.

Georgia ignored the selfish voice and lit the last mini-flare. She held her breath as hissing waves, black as ink, were lit
all around, rolling and curling. None of them bore Daniel or a winking light from the life jacket.

Georgia paddled until the muscles in her shoulders and arms were aching red-hot. Then she lit a night-and-day flare, rested
a while, paddled some more, lit another, rested, and paddled until she could barely raise the oar. Finally, after she’d nearly
lost the oar overboard, she gave in to her exhaustion and slumped back inside the raft.

She had two night-and-day flares left.

Oh God. Please let Daniel survive. Please, please.

T
o stem the feeling of hysteria, Georgia concentrated on her raft, along with the conviction that Daniel had the life jacket.
The inside diameter of her raft was about ten feet, and smelled nauseatingly of rubber and talcum powder. Maybe the powder
was to prevent the rubber chafing, keep it pristine in its container. She didn’t know, but she wished they’d used something
else. It made her want to throw up.

The raft had a single tube, about eighteen inches high, around its circumference, and what she took to be several safety valves
dotted along it. Attached to the tube was another, smaller tube that supported the canopy. Like a tent, it stretched over
the raft. A quarter of it was loose, and hung open to provide the entrance.

Using the flashlight, she carefully inspected the basic survival equipment she’d spilled from the bag: a first aid kit, fishing
lines and five fishing hooks in another small tin, two knives, five packs of seasickness pills, a signal mirror, a liter of
water in a tin.

She stared at the tin of water. There should have been at least ten liters in a life raft this size. There couldn’t be just
one. Repressing the urge to panic, she meticulously checked the life raft and the contents from the survival bag.

One liter of water.

Don’t think about it, she told herself. Think about what else will help you.

She peered at the hard plastic package she’d tossed aside earlier and saw it was a drogue, a type of sea anchor. It was a
piece of fabric that would operate like a parachute and slow the raft down, keeping her in the area where
Songtao
had sunk. The next package contained sea dye, which would, it told her, create a green fluorescent slick and alert aircraft
that she wasn’t far away.

Georgia decided to use the dye when the sun came up, but in the meantime she’d set the drogue in place. She didn’t know how
far she’d already drifted, and the sooner she did it the better. Her fingers were stiff and cold, but she persevered, reading
the instructions by flashlight and finally tying the anchor’s rope to a cleat positioned just outside the entrance of the
life raft, next to what looked like an antenna.

A surge of elation rocketed through her when she saw the antenna. You pathetic, panic-stricken idiot, she told herself, both
you and Daniel will be rescued within the hour. It’s a personal locator beacon! Activated the second it hit seawater, she
knew it would already be transmitting her location on the international distress frequency. An airplane might hear it, and
the police and coast guard certainly would.

Georgia settled back inside the raft. Help is on its way. Help is just around the corner. Thank you, God.

Later. Maybe an hour or so, it was difficult to tell. She was shivering with cold, but through her numbed senses, she kept
seeing Daniel’s strained face, hearing his voice.

We’re on Lee’s boat. The Chens . . . They would have heard he was planning to set sail . . . Who knows what else they’ve done?

Huddled in her icy raft, arms wrapped around herself, she tried not to think where she was but instead about what had happened.
She knew now for certain that the Chens wanted Lee dead, hence blowing up his boat. Had they tampered with the Piper’s wire-lock
as well? But she couldn’t deny Jason Chen’s surprise when she’d mentioned the airplane’s sabotage. The Chens had destroyed
Songtao
in revenge for Lee killing Ronnie Chen, annihilating their plans to team up with the Dragon Syndicate, and “stealing” Suzie,
but who had destroyed Bri’s airplane?

It was the middle of the night, and Georgia’s body was racked with shudders. Her clothes were sodden, her body slopping in
the water on the floor of the life raft. She’d never been so cold. Crawling to the entrance, she peered outside. Where was
the coast guard? They should be here by now. It was at least two hours since the PLB had been activated. Was it working?

She checked the antenna. It seemed all right, and although it wasn’t exactly erect, pointing more dead ahead than into the
sky, she didn’t think it would prevent the thing from functioning.
What if it wasn’t working?
No, don’t think of that. There was no point in panicking. She had no control over it.

The wind started to rise and whistled through the entrance of the life raft’s canopy, cold as a blast from the Arctic. She
took in the froth whipping off the tops of the waves, the way the life raft was rising and rolling more violently, and thought,
God, please blow the storm out, they’ll never find me in a storm, let alone Daniel.

It didn’t take long before a gale was sweeping in, and the life raft scudded up and down waves that were rapidly growing into
mountains. A rush of water poured through the entrance and she yelped, scrambling to close the canopy. Gradually the waves
and wind grew more fierce and the raft began swooping into troughs that grew steeper and steeper, until sometimes it stopped
dead against a wall of water before rising high once again to fall into another endless valley.

She heard a low grumbling sound start to approach, and her lips were trembling, her whole body shaking, as the center of the
storm approached, growing louder and louder, the seas higher and higher.

Thank God for the drogue, she thought. It would be acting as a stabilizer, preventing the raft from capsizing, being tipped
over . . . Don’t even contemplate the thought . . .

The raft was bending around her like plasticine against the somersaulting waves, and Georgia hunched there, too scared to
do anything but sit tight and pray for the storm to pass quickly. A wave broke beneath the raft and gallons of water gushed
inside. She grabbed the fishing tin and started to bail. The ocean battered and punched the raft, the wind a howling, shrieking
creature that relentlessly rattled the entry-flap.

Throughout the night, Georgia alternately bailed and rested, bailed and rested, the sickening smell of talcum powder making
her feel endlessly nauseous. The storm never lessened, raging and roaring against her and the life raft, lifting them high
for a second before dropping them down a steep bank to be pounded wildly before lifting them high again.

The light inside the raft turned from black to gray, the only indication it was day. It was Saturday, the day before the deadline.
She peeped outside to see waves as tall as houses towering high, the clouds a deep black and racing overhead, the sky dark.

Inside the raft, Georgia shivered in a sodden, waterlogged world that churned and boiled around her. She drifted into unconsciousness
throughout the day, then woke with a terrified jerk when a larger wave slammed into the raft. The day felt as long as a year,
the storm endless, until the waves started lessening, easing from their towering mountains into hills, and it was finally
passing.

She wondered briefly where she was, but she knew there was no point thinking about it as she had no choice but to sit and
let the life raft take her where it would. The drogue would only have stabilized her to an extent. She could be miles from
Songtao
’s wreck.

Her mouth was parched from salt water, and she took her first sip of fresh water and rolled it around her mouth before swallowing.
Then she sank against the raft’s tube, her thoughts returning to
Songtao,
the explosion, Daniel’s final yells, the water pouring over the top deck. A rush of desolation. Where was Daniel now? Had
he really caught the life jacket she’d thrown him? She hoped so much that he’d put it on, that it was one of those belts with
a drogue, and that he’d been picked up before the storm hit and was now ashore, tucked up in a warm bed with a hot cup of
his too-strong coffee.

She fell into an uneasy doze, and when she awoke it was night again, a second interminable night of sodden shuddering and
shaking in a rising and rolling world of rubber.

Finally, dawn broke. Peeking over the horizon, the yellow crescent of sun turned the sky a pale cotton-wool blue. Not a cloud
could be seen. A soft breeze had replaced the gale, and Georgia found herself filled with amazement that not only had she
survived the storm, but that the drogue was still in place and her plastic Price’s watch still working. The bright fruit face
cheerfully informed her it was 6:20
AM.

It was the morning of the Chens’ deadline. Today was Sunday. Desperately she turned her mind to Lee, what he’d said when he
was standing outside the caravan park, smoking his long cigar.

Linette’s more valuable to them alive than dead.

She had to cling on to that, and pray the Chens wouldn’t jettison her mother just because she’d fled on the boat they’d blown
up, and hang on to her as a precaution, in case Georgia survived.

Flash of Lee across her vision, the starbursts of scars on his knuckles, and her mind froze briefly in a shock of awful realization.
She hadn’t wanted to face it before, but she knew Lee was in trouble, had known it the instant he hadn’t rung her when she
arrived in Nulgarra. She’d been in denial.

Gazing across an ocean shimmering like blue mercury under the rising sun, she felt a stabbing pain of something that felt
like guilt beneath her diaphragm, near her heart. She’d been so angry with him and only now could she see that his silence
meant he couldn’t ring her, was unable to, and she could almost see his face drawn white as he lay on the ground with a bullet
lodged in his chest, bleeding into the dirt. For her. For her mother. Living out some debt his wizened granny had warned him
against. Sweet Jesus. Lee and Daniel. One a criminal. The other a cop. Two men she cared for were in danger and there was
nothing she could do for them.

Would they survive? Were they both already dead?

They were in fate’s hands. So was she. And she was going to survive. She’d lived through the storm, hadn’t she?

Despite her initial optimism, when she looked at the antenna Georgia felt her spirits plummet. The PLB was obviously broken.
Christ. Tears ballooned in her throat and she fought them down. She tried to pull the antenna erect, but it remained at its
half-cocked angle. Bloody, bloody thing. My life depends on you and you’re not bloody working, you piece of shit.

To distract herself, Georgia concentrated on the instructions for the dye, which she had saved, and soon there was a great
slick of fluorescent green spreading across the waves. Excellent, she thought. Should a plane pass overhead right now, they
wouldn’t miss it, but the waves would eventually disperse the stuff. She hoped someone would fly over soon.

It was already hot, and as the sun rose it grew hotter, and she could feel her skin drying out, tightening, flaky with salt.
She wanted to sit outside, away from the loathsome rubber smell, but she would burn badly without the canopy, so she stayed
inside, forced to sit in water like a piece of chicken broiling in an oven.

She felt sweat trickle down her flanks. Loss of water. Loss of precious water. She couldn’t think what she could do to prevent
it, so she rummaged through the survival kit. No idea came to mind.

Already she was incredibly thirsty. She didn’t know how much water it took in these sorts of conditions to stay alive, but
reckoned on a liter taken in sips, slowly, throughout the day, which meant she had to eke out her single liter for as long
as she could.

She took a small mouthful, rolling it around her teeth and gums before swallowing it in little gulps. The urge to upend the
can’s contents down her throat was so overwhelming that her hands were trembling. She had to force the tin immediately out
of sight and in the bag.