Frankie looked at her, held up a finger.
“If a tug comes out here,” Wells said. “It will attack again. Do you understand? It attacked this ship but could not take it down, so now it will attack whatever comes near us. Just like it did the fishing boat.”
“
Whatever
it is,” Frankie said, in a tone that suggested they had already discussed what it might be for a good length of time. “It’s probably gone.”
“No,” Wells said. “It killed that man who rescued me, Gilly. It attacked, and it was successful, and it will want more. That’s how these kinds of predators function, whether it’s a lion or a shark. Once they smell blood in the water, they don’t leave.”
Moore tugged at his short beard. “Dr. Wells, I fully appreciate your concerns. But we are taking on water, our propellers are compromised, and our bilge, which was repaired just this morning, is now malfunctioning again. We need to return to dock, and to do that we need a tug.”
Wells turned to face the window. “I am not advising we should stay out here. What I’m saying is a standard tug is too small. It will attack it. We need to be airlifted, or transferred to a large ship. The Coast Guard—”
“We’ve already warned the tug,” Moore said. “They were not overly concerned.”
“What kind of warnings?” Wells said. “Did you tell them something ripped your propellers off and destroyed that fishing boat?”
“Listen,” Frankie said. “Listen, I get where you’re coming from. Is it pretty cool, being a research scientist? I bet it is. I bet the more theories you got, the more grant money comes in. But we got a lot of people on this ship don’t give two farts about your ideas. They want to get back to dock before they take an ice bath.” He turned to Moore. “And this man has a ship he’s responsible for. We can take care of both with a tug.”
“The other man,” Wells said. “Hawkins. He saw it, too. He was leaning right over the railing when it killed his first mate. He saw the whole thing.”
“Captain Hawkins?” Frankie said. “The man who boarded us without our permission?”
“Listen,” Wells said, jabbing a finger at Moore. “I know what I saw. It’s not a whale or a giant shark. It’s something much more dangerous, and if you send that tug out here alone it’ll be just plain murder. And I’ll let people know, when it happens, that I warned you.”
Frankie started forward. “We saved your ass, you ungrateful little sh—”
Moore grabbed his sleeve, tugging on it until Frankie followed him to the far corner.
“The forecast is bad,” Moore said. “NOAA is predicting fifteen- to twenty-foot waves by this time tomorrow, and we’re looking at a long haul in. This guy isn’t some punk. He’s a university scientist. He’ll raise a hell of a stink.”
“Not if I throw his ass overboard.”
“Don’t even kid about that,” Moore said. “I have enough explaining to do about Collins, and now this fishing boat.” He patted Frankie’s shoulder. “Play nice, Frankie. Let me lead on this. I can handle Wells.”
“What about that other asshole, Hawkins? He might raise a stink, too. His buddy got killed.”
“The pirate? I’ve come too far to let a guy like him complicate manners. I have it covered, Frankie. Your man Kharkov already helped me with the specifics.”
“Kharkov? He’s not my man.”
“We’re all on the same team, though. Right?”
“Supposed to be.”
“Good.” They returned to Wells, who was going through his pockets, taking inventory. “Would it make you more comfortable, Dr. Wells,” Moore said, “if I requested a cutter to accompany the tug?”
Wells looked up, suspicious. “Is that a Coast Guard ship? How big?”
“Twenty meters, minimum,” Moore said. “Standard Coast Guard assistance vessel. I cannot ask for it based solely on what you saw, please understand. But I will ask for it to accompany us based on the weather conditions, and the disabled status of my ship. We’re much heavier with all the water we’ve taken on, and that puts her hull under structural strain.”
“This cutter,” Wells said. “Is it armed?”
“Armed?” Moore said. “I don’t know. I tend to avoid firefights while piloting my cruise ships. I imagine it has some weaponry aboard.”
Wells was silent. Instead of waiting for his answer, both Moore and Frankie moved away, Moore toward the control panel array, Frankie toward Destiny. He rolled his eyes as he approached her, a rueful smile on his lips. He touched the back of her arm, steering her out onto the deck way.
“Come on,” he said. “Time for some fresh air.”
* * *
She breathed in the cold air, letting it saturate her lungs. So many years of breathing in stale smoke, the reek of ozone and cologne and perfume. In just a few weeks, no more than a couple months, she could choose what smells she was around. Sun-warmed dirt, the super-oxygenated greenhouse, blossoms on the fruit trees. She didn’t like the way something smelled, she could get rid of it, or move away. Nobody would be able to tell her to stay there, to endure it.
Well, that was a bit in the future. For now, she would take the smell of the sea, Frankie’s aftershave crowding in at the edges.
“Prower won,” she said.
Frankie nodded, looked out at the sea. “It’s too bad about the weather,” he said. “You come out here, on a nice day? There’s dolphins, sailboats, shit like that.”
“I suppose.” The wind gusted around them, sending her hair over her face. She tucked it back behind her ears. “They were kinda tense, downstairs. I think they wanted you to come down.”
“What I like is when the sun starts going down,” Frankie said. “The light turns soft, sorta pink and orange? My gramps, he used to call that his favorite color, sky-blue pink. I like it, too, when the sun isn’t beating down on you. Not as much pressure.” He thrummed his hands against the railing, the stubs of his fingers moving with the rest. “I wouldn’t mind seeing the sun right now, tell you the truth.”
Destiny was quiet. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to be romantic, or if he was the kind of guy who liked to talk. Either way, the pay was the same.
He turned to her. “Are you tense?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said they were tense downstairs. I wanna know, are you tense, too?”
She shrugged. “The floor’s getting wet, I’d feel better if we were moving. But I’m not going to freak out or something.”
“Good,” Frankie said. “That’s good.”
They were quiet for a moment. Destiny’s thoughts strayed a bit, wondering what it would be like to go on a cruise like this, standing at a railing with the sky turning sky-blue pink, and talking with someone you liked. Or even loved. Not Frankie, he was too hairy and too . . . she couldn’t quite put her hand on it. He was like a medium-sized guy that had little man’s syndrome. But someone like her old carpenter boyfriend, a plain, good-looking guy who cared about her, cared about his work . . . yeah, that might be something worth experiencing. She’d had opportunities since then, but most of the time they felt like potential contracts. They would spend money on her and she would return the favor. No, she wanted something free and clean, something given without any strings—
Out on the sea, hidden behind the fog, something big broke the surface of the ocean.
She fell back a step, noticing that Frankie didn’t so much as flinch, and caught herself before she fled back into the cabin. The noise came again, a loud sloshing that was different from the endless rolling of the waves. She stood where she was, subconsciously opening her mouth to hear the sounds better. Whatever was making the splashing noise wasn’t far off, less than a hundred yards away.
“There’s all kinds of stuff, follows a boat this big,” Frankie said, not turning from the railing. “Dolphins and whales and whatevers. That’s what our good Captain Moore told me.”
She took a tentative step back to the rail. “Is that it? The same thing that attacked us?”
Frankie watched the ocean. When he didn’t speak Destiny took a step forward, then another, until she was back at the railing with him. It was hard to focus, looking into the fog. Her eyes wanted to return to something concrete, something she could focus on. The brass railing, slick with condensation; her fingernails, in need of a fresh paint job; even the shoulder of Frankie’s sports coat, sprouting random nylon tendrils that quivered in the wind.
“It can’t get to us,” he said softly, without turning. “The ship’s too big.”
“Good,” she said, not entirely sure he was talking to her. “Did you see it, Frankie? When it came out of the water?”
There were more sloshing sounds out on the ocean. It sounded farther away from them now. Or maybe not. The fog muffled the noises, making it difficult to gauge distance.
“Frankie?”
He turned to her. “Yeah, I saw it, part of it. Biggest damn whale I ever saw. Then again, it’s the only one I ever saw.” He pursed his mouth as though about to spit over the railing and caught himself. “My guess is, those assholes pissed it off. They were hunting it, and it started hunting them back.”
“Hunting a whale?”
He nodded. “Big money in stuff like that, whale fin soup, whatever.”
“I thought it was shark fin soup.”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. Think how much more you’d get, a big old whale fin instead.” The wind blew her hair across her face and Frankie reached out, moved it aside, the stumps of his fingers right there in front of her. The stumps had healed inward, she saw, the wedges of skin puckered together. “The fisherman that made it onto the ship?” Frankie said. “He was still shooting at the friggin’ thing, even as he was being pulled up the side.”
She curled her lip in distaste, knowing that was the reaction Frankie wanted. Feeling the light but steady beat of her bullshit radar going off as he leaned forward, eyes measuring her response.
“As long as don’t make it angry,” she said. “It shouldn’t bother us again, right?”
He patted her shoulder. “There might be a bit more to do, downstairs. Okay? You’re a good person, Destiny, you’ve done a good job. We’re almost done, you’ll come out of this with a great story, a real nice check.” He moved past her. “Come on down whenever you want. Take a minute, enjoy the breeze.”
He was almost to the door when she called out to him. “You mean cash, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, without turning back. “Of course.”
Chapter 17
I
t was supposed to be their first real family vacation.
He was on a salvage job outside Baia de Todos os Santos harbor in Salvador, Brazil, working on a faltering BP oil tanker that had run aground after a monstrous storm. A big job, three weeks, but the tanker was wedged fast into the mud and the work was not nearly as dangerous or technical as most of his gigs. The money on the big corporate salvage jobs was fantastic, even for a welder, and he had flown Sienna and Mason down as soon as his son’s preschool graduation was over. Brian had missed the graduation, but he wouldn’t miss his son’s first days of summer vacation. He could still remember his old man picking him up after he’d finished kindergarten, down at the end of that long gravel road on a warm late spring day. No kindergarten graduation back in those days, but his father had let him know he’d done well, shaking his hand and then offering him a bottle of Coca-Cola, dripping ice water from the old green Igloo cooler in the box of the GMC farm truck.
Mason slept soundly the first night in the apartment the company had rented for him, a nice place on the western edge of Salvador’s Barra neighborhood, Mason’s room adjoining theirs so they had a bit of privacy. He and Sienna did not sleep, not until the morning light began to trickle in through their open windows. The city normally carried with it the faint odor common to most South American cities on the Atlantic, a combination of sewage and slaughterhouse reek, mingled with the fetid odor of the overfertilized fields outside town, but this morning the winds blew in off the ocean and it smelled of salt and the rosewood trees planted in the garden and along the causeway. And lodged in his mind was the sweet realization the job was done, money was in the bank, and he had nine days to spend with his family before the next job.
“It’s beautiful,” Sienna had said. She was standing at the window with a light robe around her, watching the ship traffic in the bay. “What’s the harbor called? In English, I mean.”
“The Bay of All Saints.” He and his coworkers in Borealis Salvage had come up with all sorts of alternate names in the past few weeks. The Bay of All Shit. The Bay of Ball Sweat. It had once been beautiful, no doubt, but the untreated sewage and effluents gave the water a brown, frothy appearance, especially at low tide. The Barra neighborhood had also undoubtedly once been beautiful, at least conceptually, with its whitewashed Portuguese buildings with clay tile roofs, but the streets were dirty and turned vicious at night. So he’d heard. The streets were dirty, certainly, but he ate and drank and traveled with the other welders, surly-looking men with slag burns tattooed on their forearms. Nobody bothered them.
But this morning it was beautiful, the wind blowing steady but softly off the ocean, and the name of the bay rolled off his tongue like a prayer of thanks. He rolled over in bed, thinking of Mason in the adjoining room, his first trip outside Vermont, his first summer vacation. His mind would be wide open, taking it all in, absorbing. How would he remember it? Brian could not hand his son a cold bottle of Coke, could not make him feel the way he’d felt as a boy, but then again repeats of what had worked for you were rarely as sweet for another.
“What do you have in mind?” Sienna asked, smiling. She was like that, could look at him and see where his mind was tending.
He reached out and pulled her into him, letting his hands run over the soft swell of her hip. “You know what?” he said. “Mason’s never been sailing.”
* * *
Brian sat in Moore’s quarters, his face buried in his hands. Thinking of Brazil, of winds that switched directions suddenly. Not trying to push away the memories, which was impossible. At this point, he was content with blocking out the finer details. The way she had turned and looked at him, for example, the clean smooth line of her face catching the morning sun. How his wrists and hands looked against her skin, his skin flecked with tiny burns from hot slag, her own skin soft, cream colored. Ogre hands on the fair maiden, he’d said, and she’d replied that it had been a long time since she was a maiden. Nor wanted to be.
Then Mason wandering into their room, rubbing at his eyes, trailing a thin
The Incredibles
sleeping bag he insisted on taking everywhere. The way he grinned and said
Daddy, you got sunburned
.
Details, like knives in his heart.
He ground his palms into his eyes. He could handle it, the way it had happened, but for the details. The goddamned details. Taking him by surprise, the pain still fresh after all these years. He knew it was a stupid trick of his own mind, a way to keep them alive, to keep them fresh. But at times, late on a winter night—or now, his last true friend killed before his eyes—the fine cutting edge of the details felt sourced from outside, from some malevolent being intent on torment.
Gilly’s hand open to the sky, beseeching Brian or God or both to help him.
His severed legs, kicking in the water as he tried to swim in a cloud of his own blood.
The shadow below him, pulling him under the surface.
The door opened. Captain Moore stepped inside, followed by a squat man Brian had not seen before. Moore set an urn of coffee on the end table, poured Brian a cup, and added a shot of brandy when Brian nodded. He did not offer a drink to the other man, whom he introduced as Kharkov. No first name, no rank.
Moore poured himself a cup, without brandy, and sat down on the other side of the end table. Kharkov stood near the door, arms crossed.
“Sorry about your man,” Moore said. “Your boat, too.”
Brian nodded dully.
“I’ve sent a preliminary report to the Coast Guard,” Moore said. “They’ve had other ships attacked in the same manner over the past week. In fact, it sounds like some of the wrecks may have been caused by the same phenomenon.”
Brian looked up. “Phenomenon?”
“They believe it’s a sperm whale,” Moore said. “Like Moby-Dick, I guess. Or, more likely, a pod of them. There’s some consensus that they’ve been irritated by ship traffic in their migratory routes. I understand there have been documented cases of—”
“You believe that thing was a
whale
?”
Moore frowned, took a drink of his coffee. “I’m not taking it as the gospel, no. But it seems a reasonable enough explanation. What I saw earlier seemed to fit with the description of a very large sperm whale.”
“Listen,” Brian said, speaking very slowly. “I don’t know what that . . . thing . . . was that attacked us and killed my first mate. But I know it wasn’t a goddamn whale. It had
teeth
, for Chrissake.”
“Sperm whales have teeth, Captain Hawkins.”
Brian stood. “Not the size of my goddamn leg they don’t. Is that what you actually told the Coast Guard? That we were attacked by a whale?”
“Please sit down. We have serious mechanical issues to resolve on this ship, the weather is deteriorating, and I would like to record your statement. Kharkov will be the witness.” He took a sip of coffee, motioned toward the chair. “Please, Captain.”
Brian sat back, gripping the armrests, watching Kharkov in his peripheral vision. He was a big man, impassive, his crossed forearms knotted with muscle. Kharkov took a step closer, his fingers wriggling at his sides.
“Now,” Moore said. “If you could recount—”
Brian held up a hand. “Just a second.” He turned to Kharkov, who had crept closer. “You don’t look like an officer of the boat. What’s your role here?”
Kharkov’s eyelids dropped a fraction of an inch and his chin came up. “I’m here to make sure you behave.”
“Yeah? I’m going to make sure you drink your meals out of a straw, you don’t quit breathing down my neck.”
Kharkov nodded. “When I was with
militsiya
and we get jokes instead of answers, we break the funny bone.”
“Could you find it?”
Kharkov nodded. “Was always the first bone.”
“Enough,” Moore said. “I’m understaffed, and Mr. Kharkov here is currently acting as my assistant. Now, Captain Hawkins, I understand your distress. If you could just give me your account—briefly—we’ll let you get some rest. We also have a physician on board who could give you a sedative.”
“I’ll make my report directly to the Coast Guard,” Brian said. “I don’t need a sedative.”
Moore set his cup down and leaned forward. “We really would prefer your statement now, Mr. Hawkins.”
Brian noticed the demotion Moore had given him and gave him a tight smile. His mind, which had felt cobwebby, was beginning to grind away at the details of Moore’s words, his chickenshit, paramilitary method of talking down. The goon at the entrance creeping in closer. The initial refusal to help a foundering ship on the open seas.
“I am requesting use of your ship’s radio,” he said. He turned to look at Kharkov, who was standing near the door. Could he fight his way through those scarred knuckles? “You’re witness to that request, whoever the hell you are.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Moore said calmly. “We are in critical communications with the tugboat
Santa Maria
.” Moore set his cup down. “Listen, I have three different eyewitnesses that confirmed a whale destroyed your boat. You were in the water, Captain, under extreme duress. Please think of your reputation before you make any statements.”
“Why?” Brian said. “Why in the world do you want to underplay this?”
Moore said, “The death of two men at sea will raise numerous questions, and it’s my duty to record all pertinent facts until we dock. There is no
underplaying
, as you say.”
“I commend you on protocol,” Brian said. “But it was my ship, and my friend. I don’t need my story filtered through you.”
Moore flushed. “There won’t be any filtering, either. As captain of this vessel it is my duty to record the facts of the incident, and to discover—”
“Oh, bullshit.” Brian waved him off. “I’m not making statements to a man who thinks a whale could do this. You got a serious situation out here, Captain Moore. Your passengers—”
“I’m well aware of my responsibilities to my passengers.”
“—your passengers deserve to know the danger they’re in, the real danger. This thing is still out there, probably ready to attack anything that moves. I saw the damn thing, Hawkins, saw its teeth. It’s built to grab on to something and not let go.”
“Now you sound like Wells,” Moore said, sighing. “I’d have thought you might be more reasonable. At least acknowledge that you did not have time to get a clear look at the creature.”
“I shot it in the eye with a flare,” Brian said. “At a range of about six feet. How close were you?”
Moore sighed. “You can wait outside, Mr. Kharkov. Thank you for your assistance, but it appears our friend here is not ready for a statement.”
Kharkov cut his eyes toward Brian, then grunted and exited. The door shut, but Kharkov’s shadow continued to fill the door’s opaque window on the far side, the wide shoulders blocking out most of the light.
Moore stood, walked behind his desk, and picked up a backpack. It dripped water as he carried it across the room and set it at his feet. “Your man, Giles Blanchard, was briefly aboard my ship before returning to rescue you. I believe you called him Gilly?”
Brian said nothing.
Moore said, “He dropped this on our deck before he dove back in. That was an awfully brave thing to do, I have to say. One of the bravest acts I’ve ever seen.” He flipped open the backpack. “He has an interesting mix of materials in here.”
“You went through his stuff?”
“Of course. We’re a disabled vessel that has been attacked by something, most likely a whale, but as you say . . . it could be a more deliberate hostile act, perhaps with a human element? You were, and remain, a stranger to us. You boarded us without our consent.” He held up a hand as Brian started to protest. “These are all facts, our communications logged and verified. You committed an act of piracy, Captain Hawkins, and as such anything you have is mine by maritime law. That includes the backpack your mate dropped. It even includes you, Captain.”
Son of a bitch, Brian thought. You finally landed us in it, Gilly, and you’re not even around for me to say I told you so.
“Possession of narcotics on land by a friend is one thing, Captain,” Moore said. “Having controlled substances on your ship in international waters? That falls squarely on the captain and owner of the vessel.”
“Well,” Brian said. “A few Xanax in my buddy’s backpack.”
Moore reached down and pulled a small Baggie from the backpack. It was secured with the same rubber bands they used to rig the releases on the
Tangled Blue
’s outrigger lines. “Sedatives are one thing, Mr. Hawkins. This does not appear to be sleeping pills.”
Brian peered at the bag. “What is that supposed to be?”
Moore raised his eyebrows. “I asked Mr. Kharkov the same thing. Apparently, heroin usage is quite rampant in his home country.”
“Bullshit,” Brian said. “Gilly wasn’t into junk.”
“Be that as it may, it was in his backpack. Before that it was on your ship.” Moore leaned forward. “You and I both know ignorance of the law is not a defense, Captain. When we return to dock, I will turn you and the backpack over to the proper authorities. Until then, the contents of the backpack will remain in the custody of our security man, Officer Vanders. We will have affidavits signed that the contents were not disturbed.”
“You piece of shit.”
Moore went on. “You can make a statement any time you wish, but it will be recorded here, by me, with one of my men as witness. After we have your statement and you have established yourself as cooperative, we can discuss the custody of your materials. In the meantime, you will remain under our—”
His words were cut off by a sharp rap on the door.
“What?” Moore called out.