There was a figure on the top deck of the other boat, and he was
settling a bulky pipe onto his shoulder.
Sabin didn't even have to think to know what it was; he'd seen
rocket launchers too many times not to recognize them on sight. Only a second
before the flash, and barely two seconds before the rocket exploded his boat,
Sabin went over the right side, into the turquoise water of the Gulf.
He went deep, as deep as he could, but he had very little time,
and the percussion rolled him through the water like a child's toy. Pain seared
his wounded muscles and everything went black again; it was for only a second
or two, but it was enough to completely disorient him. He was choking, and he
didn't know where the surface was. The water wasn't turquoise now, it was
black, and it was pressing down on him.
The years of training saved him. Sabin had never panicked, and now
wasn't the time to start.
He stopped fighting the water and forced himself to relax, and his
natural buoyancy began carrying him to the surface.
Once he could tell which direction was up, he began swimming as
well as he could, though he could barely move his left arm and leg. His lungs
were burning when he finally bobbed to the surface and gulped the warm,
salt-scented air.
Wanda
was burning, sending black
smoke billowing into a pearlescent sky that held only the last few moments of
light. Darkness had already spread over the earth and sea, and he seized it as
his only available cover. The other boat was circling the
Wanda,
playing
its spotlight over the burning wreckage and the surrounding ocean; he could
feel the water vibrating with the power of the engines. Unless they found his
body – or as much of it as they could realistically expect to remain – they
would search for him; they'd have to. They couldn't afford to do anything else.
His priority remained the same: he had to put as much distance as he could
between himself and them.
Clumsily he rolled to his back and began a one-sided backstroke,
not stopping until he was well away from the glare of the burning boat. His
chances weren't good; he was at least two miles from shore, probably closer to
three. He was weak from loss of blood, and he could barely move his left arm
and leg. Added to that were the chances that the predators of the sea would be
drawn to him by his wounds before he got anywhere close to land. He gave a low,
cynical laugh, and choked as a wave hit him in the face. He was caught between
the human sharks and the sharks of the sea, and damned if it really made any
difference which one got him, but they would both have to work for it. He
didn't intend to make it easy for them.
He took a deep breath and floated while he
struggled out
of his shorts, but his twisting efforts
made him sink, and he had to fight his way back to the surface.
He held the garment in his teeth while he considered the best
tactics to use. The denim was old, thin, almost threadbare; he should be able
to tear it. The problem was in staying afloat while he did it. He would have to
use his left arm and leg, or he'd never be able to manage it.
He had no choice; he had to do what was necessary, despite the
pain.
He thought he might pass out again
when he began treading water, but the moment passed, though the pain didn't
lessen.
Grimly he chewed on the edge of the
shorts, trying to get a tear started in the fabric. He forced the pain out of
his mind as his teeth shredded the threads, and he hastily tore the garment up
to the waistband, where the reinforced fabric and double-stitching stopped his progress.
He began tearing again, until he had four loose strips of cloth attached to the
waistband; then he began chewing along the waistband. The first strip came
loose, and he held it in his fist while he freed the second strip.
He rolled to his back and floated, groaning as his wounded leg
relaxed. Quickly he knotted the two strips together to get enough length to
wrap around his leg. Then he tied the makeshift tourniquet around his thigh,
making certain that the cloth covered both the entrance and exit wounds. He
pulled it as tightly as he could without cutting off circulation, but he had to
put pressure on the wounds to stop them from bleeding.
His shoulder was going to be more difficult. He bit and pulled
until he tore the other two strips from the waistband, then knotted them
together. How was he going to position this makeshift bandage? He didn't even
know if he had an exit wound in his back, or if the bullet was still in his
shoulder.
Slowly,
awkwardly, he moved his right hand and
felt his back, but his
water-puckered fingers could find only smooth skin, which meant that the bullet
was still in him.
The wound was high on his
shoulder, and bandaging it would be almost impossible with the materials he
had.
Even tied together, the two strips weren't enough. He began
chewing again, tore off two more strips, then tied them to the other two.
The best he could manage was to
sling the strip over his back, bring it around under his armpit and tie it in a
tight loop over his shoulder.
Then he folded
the remnant of his cutoffs into a pad and slipped it under the loop,
positioning it over the wound. It was a clumsy bandage at best, but his head
was swimming, and deadly lethargy was creeping into his limbs. Grimly Sabin
pushed both sensations away, staring fixedly at the stars in an effort to
orient himself. He wasn't going to give up; he could float, and he could manage
to swim for short periods of time. It might take a while, but unless a shark
got him, he was damned well going to make it to shore. He rolled onto his back
and rested for a few minutes before he began the slow, agonizing process of
swimming to shore.
It was a hot night, even for mid-July in central Florida. Rachel
Jones had automatically adjusted her habits to the weather, taking it easy,
either doing her chores early in the morning or putting them off until late
afternoon. She had been up at sunrise, hoeing the weeds out of her small
vegetable garden, feeding the geese, washing her car. When the temperature
soared into the nineties she moved inside and put a load of clothes in the
washer, then settled down for a few hours of research and planning for the
journalism course she had agreed to teach at night in Gainesville when the fall
quarter began.
With
the ceiling fan whirring serenely overhead, her dark hair pinned on top of her
head, and wearing only a tank top and an old pair of shorts, Rachel was
comfortable despite the heat.
A glass of iced
tea sat constantly beside her elbow, and she sipped at it as she read.
The geese honked peacefully as they waddled from one section of
grass to the other, herded by Ebenezer Duck, the cantankerous old leader. Once
there was an uproar when Ebenezer and Joe, the dog, got into a dispute over
which one had the right to the patch of cool green grass beneath the oleander
shrub. Rachel went to the screen door and shouted at her rambunctious pets to
be quiet, and that was the most exciting event of the day. That was the way
most of her days went during the summer. Things picked up during the fall, when
the tourist season began and her two souvenir shops in Treasure Island and
Tarpon Springs began doing a lively trade. With the journalism course her days
would be even busier than usual, but the summers were a time for relaxing. She
worked intermittently on her third book, feeling no great pressure to finish
it, since her deadline wasn't until Christmas and she was well ahead of
schedule. Rachel's energy was deceptive, because she managed to accomplish so
much without ever seeming to hurry.
She was at home here, her roots deep in the sandy soil. The house
she lived in had been her grandfather's, and the land had been in the family
for a hundred and fifty years. The house had been remodeled in the fifties and
no longer resembled the original frame structure. When Rachel had moved in she
had renovated the inside, but the place still gave her a sense of permanency.
She knew the house and the land surrounding it as well as she knew her own face
in the mirror. Probably better, because Rachel wasn't given to staring at
herself. She knew the tall pine thicket in front of her and the rolling
grassland at her back, every hill and tree and bush. A path wound through the
pines and down to the beach where the Gulf waters rolled in.
The beach
was undeveloped here, partly because of the unusual roughness of the
shore, partly because the beachfront property was owned by people who had had
it for generations and weren't inclined to see condominiums and motels rise in
their faces.
This was prime cattle country;
Rachel's property was almost surrounded by a huge ranch, owned by John
Rafferty, and Rafferty was as reluctant as she to sell any land for
development.
The beach was Rachel's special haven, a place for walking and
thinking and finding peace in the relentless, eternal surge of the water. It
was called Diamond Bay because of the way the light splintered on the waves as
they crashed over the underwater boulders that lined the mouth of the little
bay. The water shimmied and glittered like thousands of diamonds as it rolled
to shore. Her grandfather had taught her to swim in Diamond Bay; sometimes it
seemed as if her life had begun in the turquoise water.
Certainly the bay had been the center of the golden days of her
childhood, when a visit to Gramps's had been the most fun a young Rachel could
imagine. Then her mother died when Rachel was twelve, and the bay became her
permanent home. There was something about the ocean that had eased the
sharpness of her grief and taught her acceptance. She'd had Gramps, too, and
even now the thought of him brought a smile to her face. What a wonderful old
man he'd been!
He
had never been too busy or too embarrassed to answer the sometimes awkward
questions an adolescent girl could ask, and had given her the freedom to test her
wings while still keeping her solidly grounded in common sense.
He had died the year she'd finished college, but even death had
met him on his own terms. He had been tired and ill and ready to die, and he'd
done it with such humor and acceptance that Rachel had even felt a sort of
peace at his going.
She
had grieved, yes, but the grief had
been tempered by the knowledge
that it was what he had wanted.
The old house had stood empty
then, while Rachel pursued her career as an investigative reporter in
Miami
.
She had met and married B. B. Jones, and life had been good. B.B.
had been more than a husband, he had been a friend, and they had thought they
had the world on a string. Then B.B.'s violent death had ended that dream and
left Rachel a widow at the age of twenty-five. She quit her job and returned
here to the bay, once again finding solace in the unending sea. She had been
crippled emotionally, but time and the peaceful life had healed her. Still, she
felt no urge to return to the fast-paced life she'd led before. This was home,
and she was happy with what she was doing now.
The two souvenir stores provided an
adequate living, and she supplemented her income by writing an occasional
article as well as the adventure books that had done so surprisingly well.
This summer was almost exactly like all the other summers she had
ever spent at Diamond Bay, except it was hotter. The heat and humidity were
almost stifling, and some days she felt like doing nothing more strenuous than
lying in the hammock and fanning herself. Sundown brought some relief, but even
that was relative. The night brought a light breeze from the Gulf to cool her
heated skin, but it was still too hot to sleep. She had already taken a cool
shower, and now she sat on the front porch swing in the dark, lazily keeping
the swing moving with occasional movements of her foot. The chains squeaked in
time with the chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs; Joe lay on the
porch in front of the screen door, dozing and dreaming his doggy dreams.
Rachel closed her eyes, enjoying
the breeze on her face and thinking of what she would do the next day: pretty
much what she had done today, and
the day before, but she didn't
mind the repetition.
She had enjoyed the old days
of excitement, filled with the peculiar seductive power of danger, yet now she
also enjoyed the peace of her present life.
Even though she wore only panties and a man's oversize white
shirt, with the sleeves rolled up and first three buttons open, she could still
feel small beads of sweat forming between her breasts. The heat made her
restless, and finally she got to her feet. "I'm going for a walk,"
she told the dog, who flicked an ear at her but didn't open his eyes.
Rachel hadn't really expected him to join her; Joe wasn't a
friendly dog, not even with her. He was independent and antisocial, backing
away from an outstretched hand with his hackles raised and teeth showing. She
thought he must have been mistreated before he'd shown up in her yard a few
years before, but they had formed a truce. She fed him, and he filled the role
of guard dog. He still wouldn't allow her to pet him, but he would come
instantly to her side if a stranger drove up, and stand there glaring at the
intruder until he either decided there was no danger, or the stranger left. If
Rachel worked in her garden, Joe was usually close by. It was a partnership
based on mutual respect, and both were satisfied with it.