Pang shook his head, dumbstruck. “One wrong step and you would’ve—”
Tori cut him off. “They’re down there, aren’t they?” Staring at him, studying his eyes.
Gabe nodded. “On the hull.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Pang said with such sadness that the profanity sounded almost like a prayer.
From down in the shadows between ships, a lone voice rose in a slow, ethereal melody, and a second joined it. Revulsion rippled through him.
“Sirens,” Kevonne said. “They’re sirens. Like in the legends.”
“I don’t remember anything about flesh-eating monsters with octopus fingers from my Greek mythology,” Gabe said.
“Maybe not,” Tori said, “but every legend starts somewhere.”
But by then Gabe was barely listening. He stared past Kevonne, out to sea, and now Tori was turning, too. Then Kevonne and Pang both looked to see what had drawn their attention. The Antoinette glided closer — as close as they could take her without running aground.
Not that it would matter. The ship couldn’t come alongside the old freighter, and any gap would be too far. But Miguel had said he had a plan, and as Gabe watched his ship slip through the water, he began to get an inkling just what that plan might entail.
The crane at the Antoinette’s bow was in motion. Already, one of the twenty-foot metal containers had been hooked up, and the crane lifted it slowly into the air.
52
Tori and the guys stood on the far edge of the rusty freighter’s deck, away from the wheelhouse and the stairs — away from anything that might allow access from the darkness of the flooded cargo hold. Kevonne and Pang talked animatedly, both excited at the prospect of rescue and anxious about the waning sunlight. Gabe glared at the Antoinette, waiting in grim silence for the moment when he could confront Miguel. They had all heard Josh’s accusation, and understood what it meant. Miguel had been sleeping with his brother’s wife.
On board the Antoinette, people ran around on the deck, shouting to one another, working quickly. The crane swung out, metal containers dangling in the air. Normally Sal Pucillo operated the crane, but Tori wondered if Miguel had taken the controls. Surely, under the circumstances, Pucillo would put aside any objections he had and do whatever it took to save their lives, but Miguel might not want to trust him with it. Tori suspected the chief mate would want to do this job himself.
Whoever held the controls, the crane lowered the latest container out over the water. The container swayed, like the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler twisting on the end of a string, and the crane operator lowered it over the side of the ship. The cable began to play out. Up on the deck, Tori could see Dwyer talking into a handheld radio, probably guiding whoever operated the crane.
When the container was just above the water, Dwyer gave a hand signal and the crane released the huge metal case. It splashed into the water, tilted slightly, then settled and began to sink. Abruptly it came to a halt, slightly askew, the side nearest them above the water.
“This might actually work,” Kevonne said.
“Might?” Pang snapped. “Fuck might. It’s gonna work.”
The first container the crane had dropped into the water had vanished beneath the waves. So had the second. They were on the sixth now, and two of those managed to rise partway above the water. Miguel had begun to build them a bridge back to the Antoinette. One container had popped open, boxes spilling out, floating to the surface. Another had slid off to the side and disappeared, but Tori thought if they dumped enough of the containers, the crazy plan might just work.
As the thought took shape in her mind, she heard Kevonne and Pang start to laugh. The crane operator had taken a new approach. The crane itself had dipped down between two stacks of containers, each half a dozen high, and now it swung. Tori took a step back in surprise as the top four in the pile nearest the edge toppled off the deck and into the water.
“That’s it,” Gabe said. “No time for precision.”
Even so, Tori kept glancing at the western horizon and then at the work in progress, silently urging Miguel and the others on the Antoinette to hurry. Sunset seemed to be approaching much faster than they could build their bridge. Dusk would come too soon.
Once again, her fate had been taken out of her hands, and Tori hated it. She stood on the edge of the freighter’s deck, washed in golden, late afternoon sunlight, and stared back the way they had come, at the opposite side of the deck. Darkness yawned in the space between freighter and lopsided schooner, and Tori watched intently, waiting for the moment when those long, hideous fingers would come up from the shadows and the creatures would slither onto the deck.
At sunset, they would come.
53
Josh opened his eyes, unsure at first what had woken him. He’d been out for a few minutes, maybe longer. Not asleep, but unconscious. That didn’t bode well. With Angie’s help he had torn up his shirt and bound the gunshot wound in his shoulder, but whenever he moved he paid for it with searing pain that brought beads of sweat out on his forehead.
Now he looked down, saw that blood had soaked through the shirt, but when he touched the cloth with his good hand it felt tacky, like it had begun to dry. The bleeding seemed to have slowed or stopped. He might not die from the gunshot after all — the bullet had passed all the way through, and that was a plus — but infection could still get him.
Off to his left, in the dimming light inside the wheelhouse, someone shifted. He glanced over and saw Angie unclip a heavy duty emergency flashlight from the charger where it was mounted near the port side door. She moved casually, but with purpose, walking toward Suarez, who sat by the wheel, watching the progress Miguel and the others were making with the crane.
Suarez sensed her coming and turned, starting to frown, perhaps to chastise her. A flicker of alarm crossed his features as Angie came too close and his hand began to move toward the gun in his waistband.
Angie struck him with the heavy flashlight, right across the bridge of his nose. Suarez let out a grunt as blood gushed from his nostrils. Angie kept moving, driving him into the control panel and the wheel. She let the flashlight drop from her grip and it shattered as it hit the ground, and then they were grappling together, both of them reaching for his gun. Angie got it first, pulling it out, raising the barrel, but Suarez slapped it out of her hand and it skittered across the floor toward the back of the wheelhouse.
They went down, grunting, hands tangled in hair or closing around throats.
“Stupid woman. What the hell you think you—”
“I don’t want to die, you asshole!” Angie screamed in Suarez’s face.
He tried to reason with her as they continued grappling. Suarez slipped her grasp and crawled toward the gun, but Angie grabbed him by the belt and drove her fist into his crotch. With a cry of pain, Suarez doubled up. Angie tried to get past him, but despite his pain he got his fingers wrapped in her hair again and grabbed her arm, pulling her back.
Josh forced himself to stand, sliding up the wall. Pain set off fireworks in his head and he swayed, breathing through his teeth, nearly collapsing again. Then he staggered across the wheelhouse to the two chairs that were affixed to the floor in front of the wheel. He snatched the PLB from the console, but his left arm hung useless and he could not slide it from its rubber holster.
As Angie and Suarez fought, he set the PLB back on the console, rested his hand on it, and managed to slip it out of the holster. He flipped open the faceplate, blinking back the pain, and pressed the two blue buttons there simultaneously, holding them down until the little gadget issued a long beep.