The Ocean Dark

27

The Antoinette carried ten lifeboats, five on either side. Some were enclosed, designed for tropical storms and worse, mostly used by the Navy but growing more common in the private sector during recent years. Though there were usually only about two dozen people aboard the ship, at least twice a year they sailed with an additional maintenance crew, who made improvements, painted, and cleaned while under way, so that the ship would not have to waste time in port while it could be sailing, making money for its owners. There were never more than fifty people on board. Maritime rules indicated that there should be lifeboats enough on each side of the vessel to carry everyone, so that if the Antoinette listed to port, they could all escape using the lifeboats on the starboard side, or vice versa.

The company — and often enough the crew — might cut corners in some areas, but never when it came to lifeboats. In fact, in recent years, Viscaya Shipping had invested in the enclosed lifeboats that had first been used by the military. The entrance was a hatch that could be sealed from within, making the boat into a watertight escape pod, in case of rough seas.

But of the ten lifeboats on board the Antoinette, only four were enclosed. Frank Esper at Viscaya had priced out the cost of replacing all ten of the traditional open boats, but Tori had been there when he had brought it up to the Rio brothers. She remembered the way they had scoffed at the idea. Lifeboats were vital in an emergency, but in practice they were used far more often to ferry people and materials to and from the ship when it wasn’t convenient to make port.

Morning had come on in full by the time they set off from the Antoinette. Tori rode in the first lifeboat to hit the water, along with the captain and three able-bodied seamen. Two of them she didn’t know very well, but the third — Kevonne Royce — had worked for Viscaya for three years, and Tori liked him a great deal. Kevonne worked hard and followed orders when he was on duty, and off duty he never failed to lighten the mood around him. He had a baby girl named Violet at home, and she had changed his life. Kevonne had grown up a club kid in Miami, hanging with rappers and dancers who came from nothing but found themselves what they called “dumb, stupid rich.” He’d deejayed for a couple of years, partied hard and ugly, and then one of his girlfriends had turned up pregnant. Violet’s birth had been an epiphany for Kevonne, and her mother was now his fiancée. All he wanted out of his life was to take care of his family.

He still had the charm that had helped him blaze his way through Miami, but Kevonne didn’t seem charming today. Nothing could lighten the mood.

The wind seemed reluctant to blow, only the barest hint of a breeze sweeping across the waves. From the look of the trees, it was not even enough to rustle the leaves and fronds. The sun had felt like a gift at daybreak, but now it beat down on them, promising a blistering day. They had been blessed with beautiful weather the past week or so, but it was barely after nine o’clock and already it was clear that today would be different.

Tori glanced back at the second lifeboat, saw Hank Boggs staring at her, and turned to face forward again.

“What is it?” Gabe asked.

She hesitated. How much might she say to the captain before he would think she had overstepped her bounds? It had taken him so long to get past the idea that Viscaya had put her on board because they didn’t trust him that she didn’t want to give him any reason to think she doubted him now.

But silence would be worse. Gabe would read something negative into a lack of response.

“I just wish you hadn’t brought him along,” she admitted.

“Boggs?”

Tori nodded. “He gives me the creeps.”

Gabe glanced back. The second lifeboat carried the chief engineer and another two able-bodied seamen whose jobs were to do whatever the captain needed them to do. In this case, it would be hauling and carrying crates of guns … if they could find the damned things.

“He’s useful,” the captain said.

“He’s dangerous,” Tori replied, then glanced up at Gabe. “Sorry. No disrespect intended. You’re the captain. But you asked, and he does creep me out.”

“If there’s trouble, you’ll be glad he’s along.”

Tori opened her mouth, forming words without even thinking. You’re expecting trouble? But the question died on her lips. She scanned the ruined, derelict ships that crowded the water ahead of them, half-sunken, blocking much of their view of the island.

Stupid question.

The guttural roar of the motor echoed back off the hulls of the half-sunken ships as they approached. Spray from the prow of the lifeboat misted on her arms and face, sprinkling her sunglasses. She licked salt from her lips and removed the glasses, cleaning them on her shirt, but the moment she put them back on, the spray began to dot the lenses again and she abandoned any effort to keep her vision clear.

A dreadful silence descended upon the passengers on the lifeboat — the noise of the motor and the water remained, but none of them seemed willing to speak. No one knew what to say. The two sailors who sat with Kevonne were a study in opposites — one a stubbled and bedraggled California surfer boy who went by the name of Bone, and the other an acutely professional Vietnamese man called Pang.

Bone and Kevonne were known to cultivate magnificently potent marijuana, with which they were generous to a fault. All Tori knew about Pang was that he had been a musician of some kind — or perhaps still was. She’d rarely seen him without his iPod, the white buds in his ears. Even now, as the lifeboat plowed through the water, Pang sat listening to his music. Sunlight glinted off his mirrored glasses. If not for the curious smile on his face as they slowed, navigating through a break among the derelict ships, he would have looked more like an off-duty Secret Service agent than a sailor. What the hell he had to smile about, Tori had no idea. Maybe, to Pang, their situation seemed like some kind of adventure. If so, then he must have been the only one among them that could not feel the strange heaviness of the island air, the wrongness of everything around them.

Tori doubted she’d ever seen Bone without an amiable grin and a slightly stoned glaze in his eyes. His easy charm often made him seem a bit stupid or foolish, but now he gripped the side of the lifeboat and stared at the ruined vessels around them as they maneuvered around the wrecks, and his gaze held a darkly intelligent spark. The man might be friendly and open, but that didn’t make him an idiot. He knew enough to fear the unknown.

Yes, if they went back to Miami without the guns, things would get ugly. But by going ashore now, they were taking the risk that the FBI would catch up to them before they could get clear of the area. Gabe seemed to think they could pull it off — get the guns on board, keep Josh locked up until they got closer to U.S. waters, radio ahead to Viscaya, and get the guns off-loaded before they made port. There would be arrests and probably criminal charges, maybe court hearings, but in the end the Feds would have zero evidence of anything except that Josh had been beaten and locked up. And, for that, lies could obfuscate the truth. Tori had suggested several of these herself — that he’d assaulted Miguel, raved about them being terrorists, and that they’d locked him up for their safety and for his own. Since he had no proof of his claims that he was an FBI agent and had seemed so unstable, they couldn’t take the risk he might be lying.

Bullshit, and no judge would be stupid enough not to smell it. But the law was all about what could be proven, and Viscaya could afford excellent lawyers.

To Tori, it sounded like a fairy-tale future, but she needed Gabe to tell her fairy tales right now. As long as they had a plan that didn’t include killing Josh or going to prison, she would go along with the Rios. There were no good options left. Out on the ocean, she could run away from her conflicted feelings about Josh, but not from their situation.

“This is fucked,” Kevonne said.

Tori blinked, startled from her reverie. She glanced at Gabe, but his focus remained on the island, as though he didn’t even notice the wrecks they were navigating past. Pang steered them carefully, throttling down even as he gazed around with the smile of a teenager discovering the world’s coolest video game.

Kevonne glanced from Tori to the captain and back again, expecting a reply. When none came, he swore under his breath and peered at the nearest of the wrecks. Tori wondered what he wanted her to say.

“Slow down,” Gabe said.

Pang throttled down even further and they all got a better look at the derelict ships around them. Though it forced them to approach at an angle, a clear path — perhaps fifty feet wide — lay open before them. The cove seemed ordinary enough, save for the jagged black rocks that jutted out to either side. Once they cleared the graveyard of ships, their course would be simple and swift.

Tori understood why Gabe had wanted a better look at the wrecks, though. The ships were weathered to varying degrees, depending upon how long they had lain off the island’s coast. They passed a fishing boat whose cabin had partially rotted. The hull had several holes in it, each two or three feet wide. But adjacent to it — nearer to the lifeboat — was the sort of pleasure craft that rich men hired crews for just so that they could call themselves captain. The wheelhouse had been damaged by fire, but otherwise it seemed in excellent shape until they passed close by. Under the crystal blue water, they could see a broad dark area on the white hull.

“Did you—?” Bone began, then stopped himself.

Gabe looked at him. “What?”

“Nothing. Just fish.”

But Tori had seen something darting back into that hole as well. “An eel, maybe?”

Bone nodded. “Probably.”

To their left lay the sailboat they’d seen earlier, its twin masts canted over the top of a small, rusty freighter. Tori stared at it as they passed, noticing that all but one of the lifeboat berths were empty, and wondering where the rest of them had gone. Against the vividness of the blue sky and the crystal water, and washed by the brilliant sunlight, the conjoined wrecks looked bleached and lifeless. Yet the morning made the shadowy interiors of both vessels that much darker, and a stray thought ran through Tori’s mind about rats leaving sinking ships.

But not these, she thought, nonsensically. They didn’t leave these.

And that was it, she realized. The ships were derelict wrecks, half-sunk and ruined, but they didn’t feel abandoned. She glanced again at the pleasure craft and tipped her head back, staring at the trawling nets that had been roped together and strung from the prow across the fifty-foot span that separated it from the twin-masted sailboat. Pang piloted the lifeboat beneath that high-wire array of nets. They had all noticed many other ropes and chains that had been used to connect some of the wrecks to others like some kind of web. The one above their heads hadn’t sagged much, which meant it hadn’t been there very long.

“It just doesn’t feel like we’re alone,” she said, her voice small.

Gabe shot her a dark look.

“Thank you!” Kevonne threw up his hands. “That’s what I’m saying. It’s freaky. The back of my neck is itching something fierce, like someone’s watching me.”

Bone looked up at Gabe. “My skin’s crawling, Captain. I’m with them. Think we ought to hail whoever’s here?”

Gabe looked like he was going to argue the point, and Tori felt sure he would say he hadn’t felt it at all.

“There could be people on the island,” she said quickly. “Or out on some of these wrecks. Might be survivors from the Mariposa, or whoever attacked them.”

The captain shook his head. “You guys are spooked, that’s all. None of these ships are seaworthy, and whoever attacked the Mariposa’s crew wouldn’t just be hanging out here. They’d have taken the guns and gone.”

“If they found the guns,” Bone said, shifting in the lifeboat, looking like he’d never needed a joint more in all his days. “If they didn’t, maybe they’re still on the island, man. Maybe they left some guys here to look and are coming back for them.”

“You’re getting paranoid,” Gabe said.

Bone gave a little laugh and turned, wide-eyed. “Dude, I’m freaking out, okay? Someone killed all those guys, we got an FBI on the boat, and fucking look around you! Paranoia’s the healthiest reaction I can muster, okay?”

Gabe’s nostrils flared.

“Dude,” Kevonne said. “Captain.”

Bone gave a sheepish smile and an apologetic shrug and looked at Gabe. “Sorry, Captain. Sure as hell feels like we’re not alone, that’s all.”

Gabe relented. “Go on, then. Hail them, if you think they’re here.”

Bone nodded and licked his lips, then got on his knees in the lifeboat and started to call out to the wrecks as they passed. His voice echoed off hulls, sometimes drifting away on an errant breeze or hissing into the shush of water against the boat or the roar of the motor. He kept calling as Pang — lost in his music — steered them clear of the graveyard of ships and then upped the throttle, churning them faster into the cove and toward the shore.

No one called back. Tori didn’t see any movement on any of the boats, or on shore. Bone finally relented and quieted down, and for a few seconds, no one said anything at all.

Then Tori shuddered, her spine stiffening, a chill dancing up the back of her neck.

“Do you hear that?” she asked.

Gabe, Kevonne, and Bone all looked at her.

“What?” the captain asked.

She frowned, glanced back over her shoulder. Pang sat behind her, and past him Hank Boggs and the other two sailors they’d brought followed in the second lifeboat, making their way through the derelict ships.

“Nothing now,” she said, studying the shadows aboard those wrecks again. “For a second, I thought I heard singing.”

“Pang’s got his damn iPod up too loud,” Kevonne said.

Tori glanced at the smiling sailor, hidden behind his sunglasses. She listened hard, but she couldn’t hear a single note of his music, and couldn’t believe that bit of singing had been an errant snatch of a tune from his iPod. She considered asking if she could listen a moment, but told herself she was being foolish. Of course the music had come from Pang’s iPod.

But when Tori turned toward the island again, she found Bone watching her anxiously, eyes wide with a fear that made him look like a small boy. Had he heard the singing, too?

“Here we go,” Gabe said, gesturing to Pang.

The lifeboat knifed through the shallows and bottomed out, sliding onto the shore even as Pang raised the motor blades out of the water. Gabe jumped into the shallows and Kevonne stepped out onto the sand.

They’d arrived.