Together, they went over the back of the ship and into the water, the boat moving swiftly away from their falling bodies.
TWENTY-FIVE
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
Hovering above the boat now were two helicopters. Jim Parry had had Henri contact Lansing, telling him who they were. Lansing recognized Okinleye’s voice, Okinleye saying something to the effect that they were well within Cayman’s waters at this point and that the prisoner below was his prisoner now. Parry was simply yelling at Lansing for having allowed Jessica Coran to take the dangerous step of climbing down onto the boat from the moving chopper. Everyone above had then seen the sudden standoff below.
Parry had had an instinctual feeling that Tauman was not secured. He saw no handcuffs or anything else restraining the man, and earlier, he, Ja and Henri had seen the two flares sent up from the boat at the helicopter. Parry had prepared the flare he’d earlier seen, and he had had it poised and ready to signal those on the boat of their arrival the moment they came over. Instead, he’d used it to disrupt the Night Crawler’s plan when Parry saw him grab Jessica and take hold of her as his hostage. The distraction had worked, but only up to a point. Now it appeared Jessica was in the water with the now armed madman.
Parry shouted for Henri to get them in closer, over the water, and as Henri worked to do so, he tore at the rope ladder below the seat in front of him, and shoved open the door, which came immediately back at him, closing on him as if to deny him his plan. Ja Okinleye, too, meant to deny him, grasping him by the arm and shouting, “Don’t be a fool! We already have two people in the water. Don’t add to the problem!”
Parry snatched his arm away and pushed the door against the wind a second time, continuing with his plan, tossing the rope ladder out over the side.
“ You will only add to the casualties if-” But Ja saw that he was talking to an insane man. He threw his hands up and ordered Henri to give him the radio.
Parry shouted through his headphones at Henri the same instant, “Locate her in the water! Bring us over Dr. Coran, Henri, until this ladder is within her grasp! Do you understand?”
“ I will do my best, sir!”
Ja radioed Lansing, ordering him to pick up the prisoner using his chopper and rope ladder. Meanwhile, Parry tore off his headphones and his suit coat and climbed out onto the ladder, his body in the vortex of wind below the rotor blades now as rope and man swayed madly below the belly of the rattling old machine. He got a face full of exhaust and fuel from something that seemed abnormal, a leaking valve or fuel pump. Ignoring this, Parry worked his way down toward the surf as Henri and Ja searched the waters for any sign of Jessica.
When Jessica surfaced, she didn’t know where Tauman was or where the boat was. Twisting about in the water, she located first the chopper and next the boat, both trying desperately to turn around and retrieve her and Tauman. She glanced around now for Tauman, fearful he might’ve held tight to her weapon. Even wet, it could do a hell of a lot of damage. But Tauman hadn’t surfaced. Was he a non- swimmer?
The waves here were not terribly high, but Tauman, she knew, could easily be just beyond the next wave, just out of her extremely limited perspective and sight. Or he might at any moment pop up beside her and place a bullet in her head. She reached down to her ankle for her second gun, a. 38 Police Special. Thus armed, she felt a bit safer, until she saw the huge, gray-blue fin streaking along the surface some seventy or eighty yards off.
Shark, she thought, her pulse racing, knowing Tauman’s blood had baited the shark for some time now. She saw a second fin break the surface, a third and a fourth. Then she made out Tauman’s head bobbing about in the sea some fifty yards from where she’d spied the first of the sharks, which for the moment seemed content with the morsel before them.
Jessica held more tightly to the gun than ever. She wondered if she’d use it to fire at the sharks as they neared or if she’d use it on herself before being eaten alive by the beasts. She recalled Islamorada, imagined herself-or part of herself-returning there through no fault of her own, found in the belly of a great white. She thought how mad her life had been, how much she had given up over the years to become who she was; she questioned who she was, what she was, and wondered if it had all been worth it…
Lansing and the chopper got to her much more quickly than she had thought possible, and far more quickly than Eriq possibly could with the boat. She waved and shouted, but Lansing went by her, going for Tauman, who was in far graver circumstances. Still, she cursed Lansing his choice.
Then she saw the second-and from this distance nearly identical-chopper and realized it must be Ja Okinleye. He’d come through for her after all. A rope ladder trailed below his chopper, too, and amazingly enough, someone was dangling on the ladder. Okinleye?
No, it was not Ja. The clothes were not island uniform or wear; rather, it was a man in a gray flannel suit. She could not make out who the man was, but she thanked God he was coming for her.
The second chopper and rope ladder were now her only hope, her lifeline. She grabbed out at the ladder once, twice, missing as the helicopter hovered above. She missed a third pass, then finally snagged the ladder and held firm with one hand until she could safely put the. 38 into her shoulder holster. The man above her had descended almost to where he could reach down and help her up, but not quite. He was wearing expensive dress shoes-totally wrong footwear for this work-and having some difficulty holding on, and she began to fear for him. She was in no position to see his features, only his size and predicament. If he should fall over into the water, she knew, the sharks could easily feed on him, too. She had not dared watch the sharks, but she still didn’t feel completely safe so long as any part of her remained in the water.
Quickly now, Jessica tugged and pulled and powered her wet weight and the weight of her wet clothing onto the ladder. It was an exhausting struggle to do so, and when she slipped and fell back a rung, she felt a hand grasp her by the wrist, and then heard Jim Parry’s voice repeatedly calling her name.
“ Jim? Jim, it’s you!”
He wasn’t satisfied with her heels dangling in the sea, and so he dragged himself up, tugging her along with him until she was firmly on the bottom rung. The chopper was having trouble with the weight, first rising, then dipping, her ankles teasing the surf as it did so.
Parry remained calm, although he saw two sharks heading straight for them, responding no doubt to the slap and fray in the surf here. “Higher, Jess. Pull yourself up alongside me! Come on… come on… “ he said, managing to keep the sheer terror from his voice. “Hell of a party you’re throwing here.”
Jessica fought against the weight of her own cloying clothing, which seemed in a conspiracy to keep her in the water, but with Jim’s strong hand and help, she managed to pull her way to come alongside him on the ladder, panting wildly, finally able to breathe. Face-to-face with Jim Parry for the first time since she’d last left Hawaii, she said to him, “Hell of a way to surprise a girl.”
Again the chopper jarred them downward, dipping their legs into the spray, and for the first time Jessica saw how close the pair of sharks were. They had come within ten feet. She involuntarily screamed while Jim shouted to God and waved madly at the chopper pilot, screaming, “Get us the hell out of here!”
Henri gained control of the air and the weight tugging at his machine, lifting them all ahead of the hungry sharks, then speeding off.