I described Tom, Brad, the taciturn Walt. “They have two more I haven’t met.”
“That will have to do,” he said. “Very good.” He stood up and took off his shirt and pants, revealing a layer of neoprene that fit like a cutoff pair of overalls. He quickly put on an equipment belt and loaded a large knife and two handguns, and attached a gear bag to it by a rope.
“How do you keep your pistols dry?” I asked.
“These weapons are designed to fire wet. We just open the bolt a tad to allow the water to flow from the barrel.” Philemon allowed himself a low chuckle. “Otherwise the weapon goes kapoohey!”
He produced a huge set of fins and put them on his feet, put a diving mask on his face, set its snorkel and his rebreather in position, and gave me a nod. He checked to make certain Calvin Wheat’s gear was secured to his belt. Then he glided to a stop, engines off.
The cay owned by the cruise line was a long shadow to the east of us, barely discernable from the sleeping sky and ocean that held it in their embrace. Around it I could see several other small points of land and small dots with lights, presumably boats. The closest lay to the south, just off the next islet. Was that Jack? None of them were moving. “Can other boats see us?” I asked. Beyond the pale illumination of the screen, all was dark as pitch. I wondered what kind of boat Tom and the others were in. I wondered if they had rendezvoused with Jack. I tried not to wonder if Jack was even still alive.
Philemon said, “I think not. The larger yachts will have
radar, but we are small. Besides, we were never here. This night never happened. You understand?”
“Yes.”
Calvin nodded. “When I get to Barbados, I’ll tell them I saw the lab journal floating by … .”
Philemon smiled. “That which floats may be all that’s left of this cay come daybreak. Ah, speaking of day …” He opened another locker under the saddle and produced a set of night-vision goggles that made the ones I had seen in the Everglades look like dime-store reading glasses. He rigged them on his head, changing its smooth, sculptural shape into something alien, inhuman. As the last light faded, he scanned the island. “Lady Emily,” he said. “Things get too bright on the island, you put these on. The intensifiers are designed to cut out to avoid overloading.”
I put the bud from the radio into my ear. It let out a small, thin static. Philemon set the speaker so that he and Calvin Wheat could listen, too.
It was so dark now that I could barely see my hand in front of my face. I heard Philemon in the stern. He whistled softly, barely a sigh escaping between his lips. Suddenly, the sound of the static shifted slightly, and Philemon went on the alert. “There,” he said. “Our signal. Dr. Wheat, after you.” And without saying good-bye, the two of them rolled over the side and slipped into the dark, shifting waters.
I was all alone in the boat, in the dark, surrounded by water.
Waves slapped at the hull. I tried to imagine the sound came from some other source; a cow slapping her tail at flies, perhaps, or my mother pouring Kool-Aid out of a jug at a family picnic. The thought made me feel my loneliness.
Time scraped past. I sat in the bottom of the boat watching for the next signal, feeling clammy, trying not to notice the slight swell that constantly reminded me that I was in a boat in the middle of the ocean. I let my mind wander off to one side of my head, ignoring the deep and abiding sense of panic all that water raised in me.
A half hour passed, perhaps an hour.
Suddenly, a flash turned my eyelids red. I sat up, opened my eyes, and turned to the east, toward the island, toward the source of the light, just in time to feel the concussion of the explosion thump my chest.
My body shook with adrenaline. I was terrified and angry all at once, and had nowhere to go with it. Bright shards of light peppered the night, followed by the reports of small arms. In between the flashes, I could see nothing but splotches in my vision. I watched for the signal, but saw chaos instead.
The shaking in my arms and legs became violent. I told myself that I must be cold. My body cramped from head to foot, and I was terrified that I was about to pee or vomit or both. I heard a boat rev its engines near the island. I reached for Philemon’s night-vision goggles and put them on, turning my universe once again into a tracery of black and electric green.
Then I saw it: a long boat shaped like an arrow, taking off like a shot to the west.
The radio coughed into life. I heard Tom’s voice: “Em! Come!”
I slapped the throttle, and the boat stood almost on end. Crashing back into the water, it took off like a bolt of lightning toward the island.
Time telescoped. The flashes grew closer and closer, weirdly ghostlike through the goggles. The delay between flash and report shortened, merged. Sound rocketed across space. I began to wonder what would happen if a stray bullet caught me, or the boat, or—
I could now discern a vague line where water turned more solid, but knew that distances appeared different in the dark. I had to be traveling at fifty or sixty miles per hour. Would I hit the shore? Worse yet, would I strike it in the right place?
The radio crackled. I said, “Tom?”
“To your right! Your right!”
Now I could see men running down the beach, all the same electric-green color. Which were friends? Which
foes? My stomach lurched, but a crazed chemistry in my blood took over. I spun the wheel and yanked back on the throttle, skidding the boat. I fought to think thoughts other than those that crashed about my mind, fought to go completely blank except for the tiny point on which I must focus. I became that point.
Another large flash briefly overwhelmed the goggles, and then I could see men splashing into the water. I counted one, two, three … one man dragging another. That made four. They disappeared beneath the surface. Where was Jack? Not a one of them had his shape, his magnificent size, nor Philemon’s.
I spun the inflatable ninety degrees, giving them the side, and shut the throttle. The boat careened to a stop. I could see no one. Where had they gone? Had I overshot them in the compressed depth perception of the dark? I glanced at the fish finder, saw nothing.
Then suddenly a hand rose from the darkness and slapped the far side of the boat. Realizing that they had dived underneath to use it as cover, I lunged to the far gunwale and grabbed at the arm. It was slick with neoprene. A face appeared, distorted behind a diving mask, weirdly glowing with electric-green light. Had I connected with the right people? Was this one of mine, or was it the dreaded other? A finned leg rose over the side, landed in the boat. The man heaved himself up, rolled aboard, flopped onto his back, gasping. “Thanks, Em,” he said. I recognized Brad’s voice.
More men rolled aboard, each helping the next. I saw Walt flop into the hold and lie panting, his face black with camouflage. Brad got another by the arm and pulled. A fourth. Fifth—
Philemon burst over the side of the boat, kicked off his fins, and jumped into the saddle, all in one sinuous motion. Without ceremony, he tugged the night-vision goggles from my head.
Where was Jack? And was Tom one of those who lay
gasping at my feet? I groped in the dark, touching faces, arms, hands. Nothing felt familiar.
I saw Jack running down the beach then, half dragging another man. I watched them scatter into the water, saw Jack heave himself like a plank onto the roiling fluid. I lost him, now glimpsed him again, my vision a flurry of black dots from the flashes. Philemon whipped the boat around and caught Jack on the fly, plucking him from the water with one arm as if he were little more than an inflated tube himself. A half second later, he snagged the final man, then opened the throttle full and swung this way and that, making a crazy line through the water, harder to hit. We tore away from the island, heading full tilt for the next.
Jack rolled to his knees. “Give me a weapon!” he shouted. Suddenly seeing me, he roared, “Get down!”
Philemon grabbed my poncho and threw me to the floor. “Your friends,” he said, “they like a loud party.” His sarcasm was soft-edged, sad. “This is what war is like,” he said, his voice barely audible over the roar of the engines. “Your American war movies make you think soldiers can see what they are doing in the night, but that is not right. At night, war is blind chaos. Then there is an explosion and it blinds you. Someone can come right up to you and you don’t see him until he is close enough to snatch your face from your head.”
Craning my neck from the awkward position into which Philemon had thrust me, I saw another boat coming after us. It was larger, moving faster, closing quickly, a string of flashes coming off its bow.
Jack pulled something off his shirt, yanked a pin, hurled it at the pursuing craft. Walt raised a weapon, fired. The following boat suddenly bucked, humped with flame. The wall of noise hit me like a hammer, boxing my ears, rattling my teeth.
Now we are safe,
I told myself.
Suddenly, Philemon slumped to the side, his hand lazily drawing the boat into a slew as his body crumpled. His warm bulk rolled against me.
“Philemon’s been hit!” I cried. I struggled to support his head. With one hand, I felt for a pulse, but found sticky ooze instead.
Jack jumped to the controls. In the pale haze cast by the fire that now engulfed most trees on the island, I could see that he wore a strange gadgetry across his eyes. He looked strange to me, half man, half machine.
My skin crawled with fear. I rolled Philemon onto his side, putting the wound high, and felt for a pulse. I found one, fast but steady, and his stomach still moved with a rapid breath.
Brad shouted, “Where’d your target get to?”
Jack roared back, “He headed west. I’ve got him with the goggles. There! No need for speed. I holed his gas tank. He’ll be stalling any moment now.”
“There he is!” someone yelled.
“He’s mine!” Walt hollered.
“No,
mine
!” Jack insisted.
One lone form stood out against the sleek contours of the boat. The man ducked.
Jack cut the engines and let the Zodiac drift. The night was suddenly silent except for the soft murmur of the waves.
I heard a voice call out across the waters. “I only worked there!” the man on the far boat shrieked, his voice cracking with hysteria. “I didn’t know! Please, don’t hurt me!”
“Keep back,” Brad said. “I saw him pack an Uzi onto that thing. Nasty little alley sweeper. Wait, check this out.” He flipped a switch, turning on a spotlight on a long wire, and aimed it toward the other boat.
“Don’t worry,” Jack said. He raised a rifle to his shoulder. Aimed. Fired. Again. Again. Again. The bullets flew from the muzzle like angry bees. His body heaved with the recoil. Suddenly, between the concussions of the shots, I heard a screech like a wild animal caught in a trap. The man slipped to the deck, a stark pale shape in the spotlight.
Jack grinned. “Got him!” he whispered.
There was a cracking sound and a dull explosion.
“Shit!” Brad howled. “Fucker got the port tubing! He was just playing dead, Jack!”
“We’ll see how dead we can get him,” Jack hissed. He opened the throttle and slewed wildly toward the boat, whipping it to the left at the last moment so that the right side bounced against his opponent’s craft. The man rolled back onto his haunches, still holding his gun. I feared that he was readying himself to fire, but instead he cowered back as if unarmed. He was husky and blond, and his eyes were wide with fear. In a split second’s recognition that etched itself in my mind, I realized that he looked like … Jack.
Jack leaped aboard the boat and kicked the gun from the man’s arms. He grabbed the man by his head, wrapped it in his arms, and gave it a sickening twist. As bone cracked, Jack roared, “That’s for Lily, you shit-eating bastard!”
The last look on the man’s face as life drained from him was one of pouting self-pity, his lower lip extended like a child’s.
I fell to the bottom of Philemon’s boat in horror, my bearings completely lost, my eyes squeezed shut to erase the last look of that dying man. I tumbled up against something firm like a human but as unresponsive as a slaughtered calf. Even in the darkness, in all the chaos of the moment, I knew that I was embracing a corpse. Believing it to be Philemon, I wrapped my arms around it, holding on as if it were my own life that had escaped it. I ran a hand upward, thinking to touch Philemon’s rich hair, but what I found was thin and stubbly. I opened my eyes and looked, only to find that my hand rested in hair that shone silver in the wan light of the GPS. I stared into eyes that stared unseeing into the great beyond.
Tom.
On the television screen in the hotel suite, space shuttle
Endeavor
loomed like a vague sentinel through the haze. The clock ticked down. A voiceover track announced the progress of the countdown.
T minus one minute and counting
… .
Jack shifted from the place where he had been waiting patiently in the shadows. “Let’s step outside, Em. The sky is clear and still dark. We’ll be able to see it lift off.”
“No. I don’t want to leave Faye.”
Nancy spoke from her vigil at the other side of the bed, “She’s sleeping, Em. The doctors in the emergency room said she just needs to stay down and rest to hold onto that baby. You’ll wake her with all your fretting. I’ll stay with her.”
Forty seconds
…
I touched Faye’s hand, listened to her breathe. Sometime in the next few hours she would awaken, and ask me how Tom had fared, and I would have to tell her that I had failed her. That the whole world had failed her, unable to come to peace.
Jack pulled me gently toward the balcony adjacent to the room.
Outside, it was clear and cool, the sea breeze ruffling at the palms. The lights of Fort Lauderdale were slowly dulling as the first tinges of dawn crept into the eastern sky.
Through the open door, I could hear the sonorous voice pronounce the final countdown, that calm recitation of descending numbers, so familiar and yet still stunning after all these years:
Ten … nine … eight
…
My heart pounded. All my life our hungering for weightless space had been a scene inside the box called television. But now, in spite of the shock and horror of the long night at sea, pounding relentlessly over the waves as my friend and teacher grew stiff and cold beside me, my heart lifted. I was witnessing the dream, one American among millions filled with pride.
Seven … six … five … four
…
Tears filled my eyes. Faye, trying to hang onto the tiny life that dwelt within her. War is the tearing of families. War is good-byes left unsaid. I wanted to rise up like
Endeavor
until I found a vantage high enough from which to embrace, all at once, both the brightness of my hopes and the dark ambiguities of human existence.
Three … two … one
…
Through the open door, I watched the monitor display the close-up of the ignition beneath the rockets. Streams of sparks spewed out into the blast of fuel. It set off a noise like a string of firecrackers, the reports too reminiscent of recent experience for comfort. I cringed.
Jack tightened his grip around my shoulders.
I tensed, uncertain how I felt about being enfolded in an embrace that had so recently extinguished a life.
Jack read my feelings. He turned to the north and wrapped his strong arms around himself as the shuttle lifted off, a bright streak of intense light and vapor now appearing above the row of buildings and palm trees that formed the horizon, now accelerating, rising, rising, flying up through a cloud that turned incandescent. The craft climbed the hill toward the stars, escaping the bonds of Earth—
“She did it,” Jack said with satisfaction. “I’ll be damned.”