Seizure (2 page)

It was ninety minutes after she had first taken the fish, after one final and unbelievably spectacular leap which could have been over a dozen feet, that Flynn knew for sure Gill had beaten it.

She coaxed the fish to the side of the boat. Flynn called for Tommy to take the wheel and he scrambled down the ladder onto the deck as Gill and Jose, who'd managed to grab the line, drew the fish alongside. Jose leaned over the side and with his safety-gloved hands, gripped the marlin's beak and held it steady, keeping the water flowing over its superb body.

As ‘tag and release' was company policy these days (although Flynn understood why, he achingly missed the quayside display of a monster fish and its attendant glory), Flynn took many good quality digital photos of Gill leaning over the side of the boat, stroking her catch, a huge smile on her face. He then estimated the weight and length of the fish, tagged it and allowed Gill the pleasure of releasing it back into its habitat.

With an almost arrogant roll of its body, it dived, was gone.

Flynn turned to Gill. ‘Happy now?'

The boat rolled on a wave. She lost her balance. Flynn caught her and she held on to his arms gratefully, now weary and weak from the battle royal she'd just had. ‘You will be,' she responded, eye to eye with him. ‘How heavy d'you reckon?'

‘I'm about fifteen-five,' he quipped and she punched him gently. ‘I'd say seven-forty, seven-fifty . . . a good fish by any standards.' He, too, was beaming proudly, knowing just how important the photos he'd taken would be for business when posted on the website.

‘Thanks,' Gill said. ‘I'm famished and thirsty now.'

‘Chicken mayo sarnies in the cool box, more
cerveza
in the galley fridge, if you so desire,' Flynn told her. Then he looked at Jose. ‘Thanks,
amigo
.'

‘
De nada
,' Jose winked.

Flynn looked up to the flying bridge, about to thank Tommy too – but the youngster rose from the chair, peering ahead. He looked down at Flynn, worried.

‘Boss,' he said before Flynn could speak. ‘Problem.'

Flynn's eyes were hawk sharp, but even so it took him a second or two to actually focus in, understand and identify what Tommy was urgently pointing to, some four hundred metres dead ahead of the boat. For a micro-flash he thought he was looking at a school of pilot whales, a common sight in these waters, their rounded heads bobbing about in between the rise and fall of the swell. But as his eyes and brain aligned he realized that the black blobs were not any sort of marine animal at all. The floating debris of a wrecked boat confirmed this. They were in fact the heads of people in the water – drowning people. The reason he didn't compute it immediately was because what he was seeing was so out of context with the environment: at least a dozen people were fighting for their lives in the sea, almost twenty miles due south of Gran Canaria. But then he reacted like any seaman should.

‘Get the boat to them, Tommy,' he uttered. The young lad, a skilled pilot despite his age, needed no further instruction. Flynn joined him on the flying bridge, clapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Well spotted, kid,' then turned and slid back down the ladder on to the deck. He landed lightly, keeping his balance as Tommy powered up and
Lady Faye
rose majestically out of the ocean. Jose had begun to clean the deck, sluicing it down with buckets of seawater. ‘Forget that,' Flynn said, ‘bodies in the water, probably illegals. Could get messy.'

Jose stopped mid-throw and scowled. ‘Bastards.'

‘Nevertheless, bastards who need rescuing,' Flynn admonished him, increasing the length and breadth of the scowl.

‘What's going on?' Gill had emerged from the salon, chicken sandwich and beer in hand, alerted by the power surge of the boat and the raised voices. Flynn quickly explained but by the time he'd finished speaking they were on the scene and words were superfluous. Tommy powered right down to a holding crawl.

‘Jeez,' Flynn uttered on seeing a tableau reminiscent of something from the aftermath of a Nazi U-boat attack in a Second World War movie. The water was covered with a viscous layer of diesel oil and fuel, probably an area the size of a football pitch. And in that area was the wreckage of a small wooden boat and about twenty people bobbing up and down in the water, some clinging to wreckage, others desperately trying to stay afloat through their own efforts. Among them floated several face-down bodies, splayed out as though on invisible crucifixes. And above all that were screams for help, desperate screams.

‘Freak wave,' Jose spat, assessing the situation.

‘Shit boat,' Flynn said, then called to Tommy to keep
Faye
steady.

There was not one life jacket in sight and Flynn realized that a rescue had to be effected quickly, or even more would drown. He turned to Gill. ‘We'll need your help – and I don't want to sound sexist, but you get the hot water boiling on the stove for tea and there's about a dozen blankets in the bulkhead storeroom. Get the tea on and the blankets out, please.'

Gill, a terrified expression on her face, nodded numbly and with one last look across the water, hurried down into the galley. Flynn and Jose leaned over the side and using a combination of life belts and a gaffe each, hooks removed, they began the task of dragging people out of the water. Some had already managed to swim to the side of the boat and were clinging to the ropes; others looked to have given up all hope, their energy vanished, nothing left inside them.

‘More trouble, boss,' Tommy yelled from the flying bridge, pointing urgently.

Flynn was concentrating on reaching out with his gaffe as far as possible and getting it into the grasping hands of his first rescuee. It was a flailing black woman who was screaming desperate words in a language he did not understand.

‘Come on – take it,' he yelled at her.

She lunged for it, missed and her head disappeared under the water.

‘Boss,' Tommy shouted again, a worried tone in his voice.

Flynn gave him one of those irritable ‘in a minute' chopping gestures with his free hand, then reached out as far as he could and made sure the gaffe was presented to the woman as she broke the surface covered in the slime of engine oil, fighting for her breath. This time she grabbed the hook and Flynn pulled her quickly and gently to the boat. Once she was within arm's length, Flynn leaned over and took hold of the scruff of her neck, hauling her thin body easily out of the sea. He'd caught and landed fish much heavier than her. He spun her around and eased her on all fours on to the deck. He pointed to the galley.

‘Go,' he pushed her, ‘go inside.'

She looked gratefully at him and crawled away, dragging her exhausted body. Flynn gasped at the futility of her plight, but did not dwell on it. Task was now, emotions could come later, maybe. He turned his face up to Tommy, who'd screamed ‘Boss!' even more demandingly.

‘What?' he said impatiently. Behind him, Jose had manhandled the first of his bedraggled bodies on to the boat, a young guy, nothing more than a kid, who flopped on to the polished deck, spreading oil everywhere – and also blood. He had a huge gouge to his inner right bicep, long, deep and very nasty.

Jose looked disgustedly at the mess, knowing it would be hell to clean up. ‘Shit.'

Tommy pointed, jabbing his finger.

Flynn followed the direction of the finger.

‘Hammerhead,' Tommy said. ‘And mako.'

‘Shit,' Flynn spat. He looked at Jose, who had also seen what Tommy was pointing at – sharks moving in. ‘Get working,' he shouted.

Most of the survivors had managed to get closer to the boat now, but there were four of them whose strength had deserted them and were drifting away, unable to muster even a pathetic swim stroke against the current. Two dead bodies floated with them, riding the swells with ease.

Flynn's mind raced.

The hammerhead shark was common in these waters. Flynn had yanked many of the strangely designed beasts out, but they were not particularly good game fish in his estimation, not really sought by anglers except on bad days. Generally speaking they were not a great threat to humans either. Even though a hammerhead is a consummate predator, attacks on people were rare occurrences under normal circumstances.

The same pretty much applied to the mako shark. Described as the most aristocratic of all sharks, they were a good game fish, but attacks on humans were pretty rare.

Unless of course the humans were in deep water, severely injured, with blood flowing from the cuts.

Both types of shark could easily be driven into a feeding frenzy by the scent of blood in the water.

For a moment, Flynn was transfixed, taking in what was happening – maybe six dorsal fins rushing towards the drowning or dead people. Flynn recognized two mako and four hammerhead. Suddenly there was a foaming flurry fifty metres off starboard as another unseen shark struck from below with terrible ferocity and took one of the floating dead bodies. The shark rose from the water and bit into the torso of the body, spun and dragged it under. The activity seemed to influence the approaching sharks and they speeded up excitedly, drawn by the bubbling, bloody frenzy.

With horror, the four drifting survivors had seen what had happened, the body of their travelling companion disappearing.

‘Fuck!' Flynn breathed, feeling powerless, knowing that unless he did something, more people were going to die terrible deaths he was going to have to witness.

His mind whirred.

The boat itself was now virtually surrounded by people trying to clamber aboard. There was no way he could abandon them, because if he left them and got Tommy to spin
Lady Faye
around to deal with the weak, shark-threatened survivors, he'd put the ones at the boat in the same predicament.

Some alternative.

He looked into Jose's petrified face, then up to Tommy, equally frightened, and then to Gill Hartland who had reappeared on deck. All of them were looking to him for the big decision. In other words, ‘What the hell are you going to do, skip?'

‘I came here for an easy life,' Flynn moaned bleakly. He pointed at Jose and Gill and stabbed an instruction at them. ‘You – both of you – keep dragging these poor souls out of the water.' His face flicked to Tommy. ‘You keep edging her slowly backwards and watch the debris,' he concluded warningly. There was no way he could allow the boat to be damaged by the floating bits of the destroyed vessel. If
Lady Faye
was holed accidentally by any of these chunks, they'd all be in deep trouble – and water.

With his orders issued, Flynn rushed past Gill into the cockpit, ducked and dived for the storage cupboard under the double bed in the master stateroom. On his belly, he yanked it open, stretched into it, running his right hand along the inner cupboard wall. He pressed the hidden catch and flipped up the front of the makeshift false wall he'd built into the cupboard, then reached inside until his fingers clasped around the cold metal barrel of the Bushmaster .223 AR-15 Predator rifle secreted there.

It was an additional piece of kit he had not bothered running past the boat's owner, put there for defensive purposes only – he would argue. There was always the prospect of encountering unsavoury people such as pirates on the seas these days and Flynn wanted to be prepared for that eventuality. He pulled the heavy gun out of the clips that held it to the bulkhead and rolled back up on to his feet. As he legged it back through the cockpit, he checked the five-round magazine, found it to be full of lethal-looking bullets and slotted it back into place. He cocked the weapon as he emerged on deck, where the others were still dragging people to safety one by one.

Once by the fighting chair, he took in the situation again.

The word ‘dire' came to mind.

More sharks were moving in – at least a dozen of them. Several were engaged in ripping the body to shreds in a blood-foaming frenzy which was growing more intense. No one else had been touched yet, even the other floating body.

‘Flynn, what the hell are you doing?' Gill shrieked as she dragged an oil-covered female on board. She had seen the gun in his hands and her mouth was open in shock.

Jose piped up, as he distastefully saved another life. ‘Shoot all the immigrants – good idea.'

Flynn gave him a withering look, then Gill a sidelong glance. ‘Diversionary tactics?' he suggested. ‘Well, hopefully.' He raised the weapon to his right shoulder and peered down the twenty-inch barrel. There was no scope fitted, but Flynn was good enough not to need it at this range. Curling his right forefinger on to the trigger, he steadied himself against the roll of the boat, pulled himself physically and mentally down, controlled his breathing, controlled his heartbeat.

His target was one of the sharks just arriving and therefore furthest away. It was a fearsome hammerhead swishing through the water, its monstrous flattened head swivelling from side to side as it used each eye in turn because its optic nerves could not produce a single, combined image. This action alone made the fish seem even more sinister and dangerous than it was.

Flynn purged everything: his surroundings, the movement of the boat, the panic-stricken people in the water. His finger tightened. It was just him and the shark. He squeezed the trigger.

Even in the open, the sound of the shot was loud, but more importantly, it was deadly. Expertly using the dorsal fin to estimate where the brain would be, Flynn knew he'd hit the fish exactly where he wanted.

The water exploded and the huge shark, mortally wounded, jerked and thrashed obscenely.

Flynn lowered his weapon, satisfied, his breath shallow.

A spark of triumph seared through him as the other sharks veered away and closed in on their companion in its death throes. Flynn made a fist and jabbed the air, hoping he'd given them a little bit more time.

He propped the gun against the fighting chair and cast his eyes over the scene. Gill and Jose were dragging two more out on to the boat, the deck of which was now a horrible mess. He saw that Gill was having a particularly torrid time with the young girl she was trying to rescue. The girl seemed to be fighting her, not wanting to be saved. Flynn moved across to them and grabbed the female's wrist. With a heave of strength he hauled her over the side and deposited her unceremoniously on deck. But the girl, who looked no older than fifteen, lurched back to the rail and tried to scramble back into the water. Gill pulled her back.