Return to The Deep (From The Deep Book 2) (7 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Clayton shifted in the front seat of the pickup, unsure if he was more nervous or excited. He decided it was the former, and looked out the window as traffic rolled past them.

"Take it easy," Jim said from the passenger side, one arm hanging nonchalantly out of the window. "Smoke?"

Clayton took the offered cigarette, lighting up and blowing smoke out the open window. "I don’t like this."

"We agreed. It's all worked out."

"What if something goes wrong? We can’t plan for everything."

"Trust me, I know what I'm doing."

Clayton nodded. The fact that Jim seemed so comfortable was part of the problem. For as much as they were friends, Clayton knew he was known to get volatile and unpredictable. It was something he had wanted to approach more than once in the past, yet, hadn’t because he was a little bit afraid of the reaction it might receive. Checking his phone again, he shifted position and tried to push his negativity away.

"So," Jim said with a grin, "you and Marie. What's the story there?"

"Nothin' to tell."

"Come on, don’t give me that shit. I've seen the way she gives you the eye."

"Like I said, nothing to tell."

"Yeah, I bet,” Jim snorted. “What happened? She knock you back?"

"Come on, knock it off," Clayton snapped.

"Jesus, relax, I was just screwin' around."

Clayton didn’t answer, and checked his phone again. Jim watched, an amused grin stretched across his face. "She said she'd call when the truck was on its way."

"I still don’t know how we’re going to do this. We don’t even know if the driver will get out of the truck."

"He will."

"What makes you so sure?"

Jim grinned, the expression making Claytons heart plummet into his shoes. Jim reached into the glove box and pulled out a rag. Even before it was unwrapped, Clayton knew what it was.

"No, absolutely not," Clayton said as Jim revealed the handgun.

"Come on, it’s just so we can intimidate the guy into giving up the truck.”

"Screw this, man. Helping to free this whale is one thing. Guns are something else. I won’t have any part of it."

Clayton started the engine, intending to drive to the meeting point where they were to pick up the others.

"Shut it off," Jim said.

Clayton froze. His friend was still grinning, but the sightless eye of the gun was trained on Clayton from the passenger side.

"Are you fucking insane?" Clayton hissed, his fear masquerading as anger.

"Relax, I’m not gonna shoot you. Look." He pulled the trigger, causing Clayton to flinch away. The gun clicked harmlessly. "Fuckin' things empty."

"That’s not the point. This is too much. We're getting in way over our heads here."

"You won’t be saying that when it’s done. When this fish is free, me and you will be the heroes," he said, widening his grin.

"Heroes to who?"

"The rest of the group. We'll be legends."

Clayton turned away and looked out the window. The grin on his friend’s face was starting to scare him. He was trying to think of ways to get out of what they were about to do when his phone vibrated. Watched by Jim, Clayton picked up the handset. "It's time," he said, flicking another glance in the direction of the handgun in Jim's lap.

"Good," Jim said, looking more agitated. "Just follow my lead and everything will go down smooth. Trust me."

Clayton nodded, and then despite the nausea racing through him, he started the engine and pulled off the hard shoulder and into traffic.

II

Fully loaded with its cargo, the specially designed flatbed truck was hard to control even for its experienced driver. Even the minute adjustments to allow for the contours of the road were slow and had to be pre-empted. For a lesser driver, it would have been easy to overcompensate and slew off the road. Sam Bolton, however, was masterful as he shifted into high gear. As instructed, he kept to a safe speed, keeping the journey as smooth as he could. Even on the straight, flat route, the engine was struggling to haul its massive load. He hadn’t been allowed to see the creature, and it had already been loaded onto his vehicle when he returned from his overpriced lunch in the aquarium restaurant, which suited him fine. 

He shifted into a lower gear as the road inclined slightly, balancing the throttle, careful not to go too fast. For the first time in years, he was feeling nervous, and had to give every ounce of his concentration to the road ahead. The oncoming traffic rubbernecked as they passed, unused to seeing such a huge vehicle on the roads, especially one with such a mysterious cargo. Normally, such a vehicle would require a police escort. However, due to the covert nature of the operation, it had been deemed both inappropriate and something that would potentially raise too many questions.

He smiled at the thought, wondering how many children had passed coming in the opposite direction in the back of cars driven by parents perhaps heading to the coast for a holiday, and upon seeing the truck, had decided they wanted to drive one someday too, just the way he had. It was because he was thinking of this that he didn’t immediately notice the rusty white pickup truck ahead swerve into his lane, and put itself on a collision course with the trailer.

A less experienced driver would have slammed on the brakes, and in doing so, risk the rear trailer fishtailing and tipping, spilling cargo and people riding along with it all over the road. Instead, he gently pumped them, feeling for the signs of locking up and releasing the pressure for a second, in effect, performing as a manual anti-lock brake. His can of coke spilled over into the foot well, followed by the mountain of newspapers on the passenger seat. Neither of those were his concern though. His only thought was of safely bringing the truck to a halt. With a shudder and groan of brakes, the forward momentum of the truck ceased, and it hissed to a pneumatic halt.

Seconds later, the pickup did the same. Bolton watched as two balaclava-clad men threw open the doors and climbed out, racing for the driver’s side door. At first, Bolton wondered if they had spotted something, some emergency that required his attention. It was only when he saw the handgun that he realised something else was happening.

"Get out of the truck right now, motherfucker!" the one with gun screamed whilst his colleague fidgeted beside him and threw concerned glances at the traffic who weren’t stopping and getting involved in the situation.

"What the hell are you doing?" Bolton said, half opening the door.

"Get the fuck out," Jim screamed, waving the gun for emphasis.

"Alright, take it easy," Bolton said, clambering down out of the cab.

He could tell they were just kids, and the one without the gun wasn’t really certain of his actions, which made his next decision easier to make. He lunged for the one with the weapon, sure that if he could disarm him, his friend would give up.

"Hey, back up, back up-" Jim squealed as Bolton grappled with him, trying to pry the weapon free. Clayton looked on, absolutely numb and unable to react. It was the worst possible scenario. His instinct told him to run, yet, he couldn’t leave his friend, as seemingly off the rails as he was. The entire inner conflict was rendered useless, when the crisp sound of a single gunshot rolled through the air as the driver of the rig fell to the ground.

III

There was no fear. No panic. Jim looked down at the old man lying in the road, blood welling up from the wound in his stomach and he wasn’t really sure what he felt. All he knew was they had come too far to go back.

"What did you do? What the fuck did you do?" Clayton screeched from somewhere behind him.

Jim didn’t hear it. He was mesmerised in watching the old man as he lay dying.

"You said it wasn’t loaded, you said it was just supposed to scare him," Clayton hissed.

Jim watched as the man took a last gasping breath, and then stopped, eyes staring blankly into the crisp blue sky.

"Get in the truck," Jim said, his voice cold and commanding.

Too afraid to do anything but comply, Clayton did as he was told; glad Jim couldn’t see him crying under his balaclava. He clambered up into the passenger side, feeling like he was a stranger living in somebody else's body. Jim climbed into the driver’s side and closed the door, pulling off his balaclava. Unlike Clayton who was still coming to terms with what had happened, Jim was grinning.

"Let's get this show on the road," he said, slipping the truck into gear and setting off, nudging Jim's beaten pickup aside and leaving the dead driver by the roadside. Cars were pulling to a stop now to see if they could help. Jim picked up speed, arms hacking at the wheel as he struggled to control the truck.

"This fucker's heavy," he muttered.

Clayton didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled off his balaclava and stared out of the window.

"Hey, I’m talking to you," Jim said.

"You killed that man back there," Clayton croaked.

"It wasn’t my fault. He should have done as I told him. Anyway, we don’t know he's dead for sure."

"We watched him die!" Clayton screamed.

"Shut up, we don’t know for sure. He might have just passed out or something."

"We're gonna go down for this, Jim. Both of us. Don’t you realise what you've done? This isn’t something petty like shoplifting or carjacking. This is murder."

"Relax; it will never come to that,” Jim said, trying to convince himself just as much as Clayton. “Besides, nobody knows who we are. Nobody knows what we've done."

"Your truck is at the scene!" Clayton said, slamming his fist on the dash. "They can link it to you. They'll hunt you down for murder, Jim. You've crossed the line. You can’t go back now."

A cloud of uncertainty passed over Jim’s face. Clayton watched as his friend came to terms with the reality of the situation. "Well, it might be okay," he said, barely able to muster any conviction. "Like I said, he might just be wounded. It might be alright. Besides, it never would have happened if he hadn’t gone for the gun. I mean, who the hell does something like that?"

"Why did you load it?" Clayton asked quietly.

"I don’t know,” Jim shrugged as he pulled off his mask. “I was thinkin’ maybe I could intimidate the guy if he didn’t go along with it. I was gonna fire a shot into the air, scare him a little, like they do in the movies, you know? Then the old prick came at me and things got out of hand. Hell, you were there, you saw it. You can vouch for me, right Clayton?"

"You need to turn yourself in. We need to stop the truck right now and you need to give yourself up. The longer you run, the worse you’ll make things for yourself."

"Then I'll have done this for nothing. At least if we do this, they'll see why, they'll see the reason. That will help my case, won’t it?"

Clayton hated the pleading tone in Jim’s voice almost as much as the waxy tone of his skin and desperate set of his grin.

"Yeah, Maybe," Clayton mumbled, choosing his words carefully. For as much as he didn’t think Jim would hurt him, he also didn’t expect him to have ever gone as far as shooting a man for no reason. Either way, it was plain to see that he was a man with nothing to lose, and he knew well enough that desperate men do desperate things when they have to.

"Promise me you won’t tell the others what happened."

Clayton looked at his friend, trying to see past the desperation. "They'll find out soon enough, this will be all over the news. You can’t hide this from them."

"I know that, but don’t make this all for nothing. As soon as we get this thing back in the water, I’ll turn myself in. Explain how it was an accident. How nobody else was involved."

"Okay, good idea," Clayton said, not having the heart to tell Jim that freeing a blue whale wasn’t going to hold water and give him any kind of a free pass against a murder charge, no matter what the initial intention was.

"Let’s just hope the others are ready for us," Jim said as he wrestled with the wheel, changing direction and heading up the up the Florida coast. In the back, Andrews’s staff stayed in position through a combination of fear and sense of duty to the creature. They could ony stay as helpless passengers as the truck rumbled closer to its destination.

IV

Minutemen Causeway,

Cocoa Beach, Florida.

Fernando, Emma, and Tom, waited on the beach, each nervous and excited in equal measure. Already the golden sands of Cocoa Beach were filling with people, which meant they would have quite a crowd for their planned operation. Tom paced, kicking sand whilst his brother and Emma stood nearby, trying not to look like they were up to no good.

They had chosen Cocoa Beach as the best place to return the whale to the sea, for the simple reason that it was possible to drive the truck directly from the road onto the sand and have enough space to get the trailer into the water. As far as freeing the whale itself went, the plan was simple in principal. Jim had been instructed to drive straight down the beach, wait for them to get in the back, usher out the team who were riding along to keep the whale moist, and then cut it loose from its harness. Jim would then reverse the truck into the ocean until the natural buoyancy of the water allowed the whale to swim free. There was risk involved of course. The stress to the creature would be a telling factor. However, they were way too far in now to change their minds, and so were hoping for a minor miracle. Their job upon seeing the truck arrive at the beach was to clear the way and ensure clear passage to the water.