“Shut up.”
“Wait until I tell the guys in the ready room about this. Sailor Grafton, puking his guts like a kid on the Staten Island ferry.”
“Could you please—”
“It’ll get worse. You’ll see. You’ll think you’re gonna die. You’re really in for it now.”
The convulsions had subsided somewhat when Jake felt the first nudge, just an irregularity in the motion of the raft. He almost missed it.
His seasickness was forgotten. He was reaching for the automatic when Flap said, “Uh-oh. I think a shark bumped me.”
Now he scanned the water. His eyes were well adjusted to the moonlight. He glimpsed a fin break water, for maybe two seconds. Then it was gone.
“Shark,” he told Flap. “I saw one!”
“See what you caused! All that moaning about sharks and you attracted the sons of bitches.”
Another bump, more aggressive this time. Jake thought he could feel the grinding from the rough hide rubbing against the fabric of the raft. They didn’t have to bite it — if they rubbed it enough they would rub a hole through it.
Fear coursed through him, fear as cold as ice water in his veins. Automatically he had drawn his feet into the raft and tucked his elbows in, which drove his butt deeper into the water. And there was nothing between his butt and those teeth but a very thin layer of rubberized canvas.
He tried to see downward, into the depths where the predators were. Not enough light. It was like looking into a pot of ink.
“See anything?”
“If I scream,” Flap said, “you’ll know they got me.”
“You asshole! You stupid perverted Marine asshole!”
“They’re just curious.”
Another nudge. Jake thought he saw something pass out to his right that was darker than the surrounding blackness, but he wasn’t sure.
“You hope,” Jake muttered. “Maybe they’re hungry too.”
A fin broke water fifty feet or so away, slightly to the right of the way Jake was facing. He thumbed off the pistol’s safety, leveled it and couldn’t see the sights clearly! He squeezed off the shot anyway. The muzzle flash temporarily blinded him.
The report was strangely flat. There was nothing to echo or concentrate the noise. The recoil of the weapon in his hand felt reassuring though.
He blinked his eyes clear and looked at Flap. He had some kind of knife in his right hand and was watching the water intently. It wasn’t a government-issue survival knife.
“What kind of knife is that?”
“Throwing knife. For stabbing.”
“What if you want to cut something?”
“Got another knife for that.”
“What are you, a walking cutlery shop?”
“Just look for sharks, will ya? Try not to shoot me or either of the rafts. If they get you I may need your boat.”
“Maybe they like dark meat. Can I have your stereo?”
“My roommate has first dibs.”
They sat staring intently at the water near them. Occasionally a shark nudged them, but the level of aggression didn’t seem to increase.
Maybe they would get out of this with whole hides. Then again…
A fin broke water just ten feet to Jake’s immediate right. He swung the pistol and squeezed the trigger in almost the same motion. The water seemed to explode.
Dimly he saw a tail slashing furiously and spray cascaded over them. The rafts rocked dangerously.
In seconds it was over. The shark sounded.
“Think that was the only one?” Flap asked, his voice betraying his tension for the first time.
“We’ll see.”
For some reason the terror that had gripped Jake earlier was gone. He still had enough adrenaline coursing through his veins to fuel a marathon and his heart was thudding like a drum, but for the first time he felt ready to face whatever came.
Nothing came.
If there were any more sharks out there, they stayed away from the raft. After a while Flap tried his radio again. This time he got an answer. One of the E-2 Hawkeyes from Columbia was up there somewhere far above, the crew warm, dry and comfortable.
Flap told them of the pirates, of being shot down, of flying south trying to keep the A-6 airborne on the backup hydraulic system and finally ejecting into the sea.
“We’re all right. Both of us are in our rafts, uninjured, and the rafts are lashed together.”
Jake had his radio out by this time and heard a calm voice say, “We’ll get planes off at dawn to look for you. You guys check in after sunrise about every fifteen minutes, okay?”
“Roger that. Keep the coffee hot.”
Jake Grafton spoke up. “Black Eagle, tell the Ops guys that they need to arm the planes. If anybody shoots at them, they need to defend themselves vigorously.”
“I’ll pass that along. Wait one while I talk to the ship on the other radio.”
They sat in the darkness with their radios in their hands. Finally the radio came back to life. “Five Zero Eight Alpha, just how sure are you that you were actually shot at? Is there any way the hydraulic failure could have been a coincidence?”
The question infuriated Grafton. “I’ve been shot at before,” he roared into the radio. “I’ve been shot at and missed and shot at and hit. You tell those stupid bastards on the ship that we were shot down.”
“Roger. You guys hang tough. Talk to you again fifteen minutes after sunrise.”
His anger kept Jake warm for about five minutes. Then he was just cold and tired. With every stitch they wore sopping wet, Jake and Flap huddled in their rafts and shivered. After a time their thirst got the better of them and Flap broke out his two baby bottles full of water. He passed one to Jake, who drank it quickly, afraid he might spill it.
The moon rose higher and gave more light, when it wasn’t obscured by clouds.
Eventually, despite the conditions, exhaustion claimed them and they dozed. Jake’s mind wandered feverishly. Faces from the past talked to him — Callie, his parents, Tiger Cole, Morgan McPherson — yet he couldn’t understand what they were saying. Just when he thought he was getting the message, the faces faded and he was half-asleep in a bobbing raft, wet and cold and very miserable.
Occasionally they talked. Once Jake asked Flap, “If that attack last month against the Russians had been real, do you think we would have made it?”
“I dunno.”
“Think we would have hit the cruiser?”
“Maybe.”
“They said it was eighty percent probable.”
“I say maybe. I don’t do numbers.”
“I think we would be dead.”
“Maybe,” Flap said.
Time passed too slowly, every minute seemed like an hour. The temptation to call Black Eagle to see if he was still up there was very strong and hard to resist. Jake got his radio out twice. Each time he stowed it without turning it on. He might need all the juice in those batteries tomorrow. Wasting battery power now would be stupid.
The worsening sea state brought them fully and completely awake. The swells were bigger and the wind was stronger.
At the top of each swell the rafts pitched dangerously, forcing each man to hang on tightly to keep from being thrown out. They made sure they still had a lanyard attached to each raft.
They had been hanging on to their seats in their frail craft for an eternity when Flap said, “You shouldn’t have called the heavies stupid bastards.”
“I know.”
“Someone will ream you out when we get back.”
“Gives me something to look forward to.”
Gradually they became aware that the sky was lightening up. Dawn. It was coming.
Incredibly, the wind strengthened and began to rip spindrift from the swells. Jake reeled in his helmet — it had fallen overboard at some point during the night — dumped out the water and put it on. He ran the clear visor down to keep the salt spray out of his eyes.