Exodus 2022 (9 page)

Beck showered in the solarium and silently accepted a fresh change of clothes from a hovering attendant. Other staff appeared with rags and mops and began cleaning the deck, wiping up the blood. They didn’t talk, and none of them so much as glanced at Beck.

Beck dressed, and the adrenaline and rage he’d felt while fighting Ellis dissipated. He needed a drink.

He picked up a pair of binoculars and studied the rocky beach where his men had deposited the prisoner.

Collins appeared at his side. Wilden was there, too. Beck said, “I told you to lock down the ship. No one on the weather deck except your team.”

Collins and Wilden looked at Beck, glanced at each other.

“We
were
locked down, sir,” said Collins. “Still are.”

Beck stared at him, then flicked his eyes to Wilden. “There was a guy, near the aft helipad. I saw him, just for a second, when Ellis was going for the gun.”

Collins and Wilden said nothing.

“Look at the surveillance tape. Find out who it was.”

“Yes, sir.”

Beck lifted the binoculars to his eyes again and found Ellis’s boots and legs protruding from a thicket of alders just above the high-tide line. The bears were still there—fifty yards from Ellis’s body—stabbing fat silver salmon with curved claws, scooping them from the creek. They seemed unperturbed. Completely uninterested in Ellis.

’Til nightfall
, Beck thought. He hoped Ellis survived long enough to feel it.

JOE AND ELLA SAT IN SILENCE,
gazing out the window of the Washington State ferry
Elwha
as a fiery sun sank into a platinum sea. It was 8:30 p.m. and in the fading summer glow it felt like the
Elwha
was motoring through a magical archipelago, a fairy-tale ocean worthy of Narnia or Middle Earth.

Joe stood. Stretched. “Restroom,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” Ella watched him walk toward the middle of the ship.

Beck’s men were watching too. A few tables away. Dodd and Drucker—the guys Beck had dispatched from
Marauder
, the ones who’d located Joe and Ella in the ferry terminal parking lot.

Dodd studied a new message on his phone.

“Boss wants the party transported to the
Northern Mercy
.”

Drucker grunted. “Yeah? And how the hell are we supposed to do that?”

“We’re not. Not yet anyway. Just supposed to follow. It’ll happen in Anacortes. Maybe in the parking lot. Plan’s still coming together.

Drucker looked at his watch. “Boat docks in half an hour. Hope they work fast.”

Joe exited the restroom and paused at a water fountain to get a drink.

“Excuse me,” said a woman. “Could I ask you a huge favor?”

She was petite. Older. Gray hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“What’s up?” Joe asked. 

“My truck,” the woman replied. “I’m driving my husband’s old pickup, and the door is stuck.”

“You lost the key?”

“No, no. I have the keys.” She held up a huge jangling set of the things. “The door just binds, is all. It’s an old truck, like I said. My husband always yells at me to pull harder. Usually it works, but I cannot get it open for the life of me, and I’m all alone, and—”

“I can give it a shot,” said Joe. “Which part of the car deck?”

“Oh, you are a saint!” said the woman, beaming and touching Joe’s arm. “Thank you so much.”

She led him toward the rear stairwell. “It’s near the back—won’t take thirty seconds. Big strong guy like you.”

Joe followed her down the stairs.

“You might want to try a little WD-40 on the door—if you have any,” said Joe as he followed. 

“I’ll definitely do that,” replied the woman, whose pace seemed to be increasing as they descended. She was a good twelve to fifteen steps ahead now, almost jogging. Joe wondered what the hurry was.

“Lady—” He emerged into the relative gloom of the car deck and looked around. There was no sign of the woman. And no sign of an old beater truck. 

The steady rumble of the
Elwha
’s engines was loud down here, and Joe could feel the vibration of the huge motors through the soles of his feet.

There.

He saw a flash of movement among the last row of cars. A shape slipping past a white van. That had to be her.

Joe walked around the van and stopped. No woman. No truck.

What the heck?

There was only twenty-five feet of flat, open deck between Joe and the water now, and the roar of the propellers was constant.

Joe stared out, past the massive safety chain guarding the last row of cars, past the rounded steel stern, to where the wake boiled up, sculpting itself into a cornice of churning, roiling foam.

Joe heard, or sensed, a single footfall behind him. He turned, and an enormous bare fist smashed the side of his face. His head slapped the rear panel of the van, denting it.

“Freak bastard,” the assailant growled, as Joe slid sideways and blood gushed from his nose. He heard alarms—shrieking bells—but couldn’t tell if they were coming from his brain or from the ship. It felt like chunks of metal were grinding together in his head.

“Creep son-of-a-bitch,” said the man, who loomed over Joe like an ogre. “Think it’s hilarious to trash someone’s business, huh?” He gripped Joe by the front of his shirt, jerked him upright, and reared back for another punch.

That’s when Joe found his footing and struck back. Joe Stanton knew how to fight, and he hit back hard now, surprising his attacker with three staccato punches to the face.

The big man gaped. Blood trickled from his own nose and he loosened his hold on Joe’s fleece jacket just a bit.

Joe pulled away but there was another shape to his right now: Ponytail Woman, lifting something, fast, toward his eyes. A can of pepper spray.

She pulled the trigger as Joe lurched back, tripping, falling, howling in pain and terror. Spray splattered his face, and his eyes felt like they’d been stabbed with white-hot skewers.

The big man crashed down on top of him, knocking the wind from his lungs and pinning him to the metal deck.

Joe was vaguely aware of Ponytail Woman pulling on the big man, telling him they had to get out of there.

The big man shoved her away and leaned close to Joe’s face. “You trashed my folk’s business so you could get yourself a funny clip on YouTube.” He grinned. “You’re gonna need some makeup for your next gig.”

And then he clubbed Joe in the head again.

There was no pain this time. Just the odd sensation that the sky over the open end of the car deck had gone dark. Midnight dark. And the rumble of the engines was suddenly far away. A distant drone.

And then the engine noise was back—big and bright and raucous in Joe’s ears.

He was being dragged along the deck—dragged by the man and Ponytail Woman onto a massive coil of rope behind one of the huge starboard cleats.

He opened his eyes again and his attackers were gone. Simply gone.

I blacked out
, Joe thought.

He lay there: coughing, bleeding, eyes burning—nearly swollen shut—limbs strewn about the coil of yellow rope.

How long have I been here?
he wondered.

And then all of his thoughts turned to Ella. 

She must be frantic.

He got to his knees—clawing against the uneven pile of rope—and brushed his eyes with his sleeves. He had to get to water, to a restroom. The burning in his eyes was the worst. Far worse than the other wounds to his face. He lurched to a standing position and the car deck morphed and undulated before him, seesawing, tilting sharply, so that it seemed to Joe as if all those silent, driverless cars might just start rolling backward and plunge into the icy sound. 

Panting, Joe steadied himself against a Ford Explorer and tried again to brush his eyes. No good. His right eye was swollen completely shut now, and his left felt like it had been coated with sticky cobwebs.

He swayed, contemplating his next step. The car deck was a graveyard. No activity except his own tentative movements. No sound except the relentless low-frequency roar of the motors.

Got to find Ella.

He took a wobbly old-man step. One step.

That’s when the hallucination came back.

Help me
, said a voice, clear and bright in Joe’s mind.

Joe froze.

Not now
, he replied, clutching his head. He stumbled forward, swerved.
We’ll talk later. My eyes are on fire.

The voice rang out again, clear and more present—like a radio signal that’s finally been isolated and perfectly tuned.
Stan-ton. Please. Can you help?

“Who are you?” Joe cried, choking on the words and weaving like a drunk across the rear of the deck. For a moment he even forgot the acid burn in his eyes. “Are you real?”

Flesh and blood
, replied the voice.
Muscle and bone. Like you. 

The rush of the MV
Elwha
’s wake suddenly became a roar in Joe’s ears. “Wrong way!” he screamed, pawing stupidly at his eyes and shivering with terror. “I’m going the wrong way!”

The deck had become a gray-green blur that blended with the water, which in turn blended with the sky. He couldn’t tell what was moving and what was still, what was solid and what was infirm.

By chance or misfortune, he stepped over the lowest section of the burly safety chain, the last line of defense between the cars and the water. 

Lorna Gwin has passed
, said the voice,
but countless others may be saved.

I need to save myself right now
, Joe replied.

I need your help!
cried the voice. It was a voice laden with anguish—the same horrible, all-consuming grief Joe had felt in the Breakwater parking lot.

I need your help!

The pain hit Joe like a fist and he swooned, teetered, and fell, clawing at the air as he plunged headlong into the
Elwha
’s wake, a raging, roaring geyser of white foam.

DALE DEVELDT WAS SITTING
in his 1978 Volkswagen Rabbit on the car deck of the MV
Elwha
, listening to music and smoking a cigarette. He caught Joe’s fall in the Rabbit’s passenger-side mirror and gawked, wide-eyed, the cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Holy shit,” he yelled, smashing out the smoke and fumbling with the door. “Man overboard!”

An overall-clad ship’s mechanic emerged from a stairwell thirty feet away and Dale sprinted toward him. “Man overboard!” he screamed again.

The mechanic removed his earplugs. Stared at Dale and saw smoke puffing out of his nostrils.

“You smokin’?” he asked, sniffing the air.

“Dude—”

“You know smoking on the car deck is a five-hundred-dollar fine?”

“Dude,” Dale screamed. “I’m trying to tell you, Man overboard! A guy just fell off the back of your damn boat!”

Understanding finally dawned on the mechanic’s greasy mug. “You sure?”

“Positive. Tell the captain to stop. The guy’s a half mile back there by now.”

The broad channel between Lopez and Blakely Islands was at flood tide, and the icy black water enveloped Joe Stanton like death and swept him south, toward Lopez Sound and away from the MV
Elwha
.

A speck of flotsam, he bobbed along, gasping for air as the fifty-four-degree water chilled the marrow in his bones, numbed every centimeter of his body and put him into instant shock.

My eyes are better at least
, he thought, as the
Elwha
motored into the distance, a twinkling, glittering ornament on the horizon. 

His eyes did feel better. He could see at least a little through both of them now. The water had eased the burn. But what he saw, as he bobbed away from the
Elwha
’s shimmering trail, did not give him hope.

The boat was disappearing into the night. A smattering of lights shone on Lopez Island—but it was at least a half mile away.

Treading water, he turned. Blakely Island was an amorphous gray mass to the east and even farther than Lopez. Decatur, to the southeast, was farther still.

It was almost dark and the frigid water crushed him, driving the wind from his lungs. Like a predator, it pinned him. Held him. Waiting for him to give up so that it could swallow and digest him once and for all.

Joe Stanton, on a normal day, might have made the swim to Lopez. He was extraordinarily strong and fit. A good swimmer. He’d surfed and scuba dived most of his life. The water didn’t scare him.

But this was not a normal day. The beating he’d just endured, and the events of the morning, had taken their toll. 

He swam toward Lopez, feeling the current, trying to move with the flow and edge toward land at the same time.

A leaden sky loomed overhead, and rolling black waves crested and fell around him, making it impossible to see. He gagged on the salty water, coughing and spluttering.

Far down the channel, the MV
Elwha
was turning at last. Turning hard, coming around to search for the missing passenger. Huge searchlights mounted above both wheelhouses flashed on, lighting up the channel like an oil platform at full production. Announcements blared. Alarms wailed.

Joe was oblivious to all of it. The current had carried him past the end of tiny Frost Island now, past Spencer Spit, well out of the main channel. He struggled to keep his arms moving in a coherent, steady stroke—to keep his feet kicking—but his limbs felt heavy and unwieldy, like tangled branches. 

And now his mind was playing tricks on him again, this time due to the cold. He dreamed in bright bursts that he was swimming hard for shore, then awoke to find that, in reality, he was barely moving, just feebly treading water. He thought of Ella’s sweet, serene face and tried again to swim, making a few frantic strokes.

At last his thoughts coalesced into a single dark blur. He stopped struggling, and began to sink.