“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,” Blaine sang in his best Bing Crosby impersonation when they had turned onto Route 1. “Just like the ones I used to know. …”
Sandy wanted to tell him to shut up, then smiled in spite of herself and noticed that even Wareagle had cracked a slight grin. Of all McCracken’s features, it was his sense of humor that confused her the most. It seemed so out of place in the world of violence and death he had been immersed in for so long. Then something occurred to her: perhaps that was how he had survived and kept his sanity at the same time. She recalled the horror she had experienced in Houston of having to become a killer to avoid being killed. It still lingered, and she knew it would haunt her sleep for as long as she lived. Blaine McCracken had lived with such experiences for most of his life. He was cynical and sarcastic, and maybe that kept him going. His sense of humor, she supposed, was a kind of weapon to be used like any other.
Route 1 was no better than 17. Plows had obviously been over the road once earlier in the storm and had produced a thin coat of ice beneath the snow piling up again. The jeeps lunged drunkenly down the road, brakes now as useless as lights. If there were road signs, the snow had long since obscured them. The Indian driver had studied the map to Muscongus Bay and Horse Neck Island only once that Sandy could remember. He took his eyes off the snow-blown road only to check the rearview mirror to make sure the second jeep was still in his tracks.
The jeep slowed finally and Sandy thought she saw water to their right, distinguishable by its dark surface. They had turned off Route 1 some minutes before and seemed to be passing through a small village. Her eyes found few lights and these were dim, behind drawn blinds, as though the village’s residents were hiding from the raging storm outside.
The jeep continued through the town, and Sandy could hear the sounds of waves thrusting violently on a nearby shore. Another few hundred yards later Wareagle signaled the jeep’s driver to stop.
“It’s almost seven o’clock,” McCracken announced. “There’s not much time left.”
“The spirits guiding us do not go by minutes, Blainey. Their view is eternal. The time they provide us with will be enough.”
Blaine just shrugged and climbed out, bearing his personal arsenal. Sandy followed and stood to his rear as War-eagle and the other Indians approached. In the distance across the bay she could make out the dark shape of Horse Neck Island. It lay like a great serpent writhing on the water — an illusion provided by the blowing snow.
“Over there.” Wareagle motioned.
Blaine followed the line of Johnny’s finger to a small, rickety pier extending from the farthest jagged edge of the shoreline. From this distance all was pale except for a trace of darker motion bobbing in rhythm with the wind.
It was a boat, a fishing boat.
“Looks like those spirits of yours are taking care of us after all, Indian,” Blaine said, feeling hopeful again.
Wareagle shook his head. “We’d never make it, Blainey. In calm waters we’d have a chance. But now, tonight, the rocks will feed us to the icy seas. The boat is useless to us. Only a man whose manitou knows these waters by heart could make it.”
“We’ve got to try, Johnny,” Blaine insisted. “Even if we have to swim across the bay, we’ve got to try.”
“Maybe we won’t have to,” Sandy said suddenly, noticing the small clouds of gray wood-smoke billowing from the chimney of a shack just off the pier. A light flickered in the window.“There’s someone in that shack.”
McCracken turned to Wareagle. “The boat’s owner?”
“If the spirits are with us, anything is possible.”
“Then let’s go see if we can hire ourselves a driver.”
Chapter 29
McCracken rapped on the door five times hard before he heard a knob being turned on the inside. The windows were so caked with ice that inspection of the shack’s interior was impossible from the outside. There was a dim light glowing within, but until the knob began to squeak, he had no way of knowing if someone was inside.
“What do ya want?” the boatman asked, opening the door just a crack.
“We need your help,” Blaine told him as the wind blew fresh snow through the narrow opening. He could feel the heat of a warm fire from the inside now, could smell the pine-scented relief it promised from the cold.
“Ayuh,” the boatman drawled in a raspy, weather-scorched drawl. “You fellas best come out of the storm ’fore it freezes ya dead.”
“We haven’t got time.”
“You got time enough to freeze, and that’s just what you’ll do ’less you listen up to me.”
Blaine gave in and entered, followed by Sandy and then Wareagle, who elicited a sharp look from the boatman.
“There’s more of ya out there,” he said. “I heard ’em.”
“If they come in, the cold will only seem crueler when they must go out again,” Wareagle explained. “It was their choice.”
“Ayuh. This night’ll kill what it can. You fellas … and lady … are white-faced. You been out in it for a while. I can tell.”
“We need your boat,” Blaine started.
“My boat ain’t for rent, friend.”
“What about charter? We also need you to drive it.”
“Better men ’an me been lost in coastal blows, friend. Better boats too.”
Blaine followed the boatman closer to a single kerosene lamp, which gave him his first good look at the man’s face. It was a formless face, neither young nor old, features hidden by beard stubble and dull eyes held low beneath a nest of graying hair.
“Money’s no problem,” he offered.
“You’re right, it ain’t,” the boatman snapped, “ ’cause money can’t buy nobody a new life.”
“A new boat, though.”
“I’m happy with the one I got now,” the boatman insisted. “She’s got some life left in her.” He paused. “ ’Sides, where you boys gotta get to so fast in this kind of blow?”
“Horse Neck Island.” Blaine checked his watch. “We’ve got to hurry.”
McCracken briefly considered using his gun as impetus and the boatman must have read his mind, for his dull eyes turned to the M-16 slung over his shoulder.
“You boys fixin’ to fight a war or somethin’?” he asked, scratching at his beard stubble.
“Something,” Blaine replied anxiously.
The boatman nodded. “I know these waters better than any, mister. But this storm’s a killer. It might take us ’fore the rocks even get a chance to.”
“We’re willing to take that risk.”
“How many are you?”
“Nine,” Blaine replied, not bothering to leave Sandy out.
“The boat’ll be weighted down, friend. She’ll be ridin’ awful heavy, low in the water. With the waves out there now, that ain’t hardly advisable.”
“But you’ll do it,” Blaine said, and for some reason he knew this ragged man living in a shack stinking of stale sweat and cheap whiskey would.
“Just let me get my gear, friend.”
Wells had spent most of the afternoon in the surveillance room with the closed-circuit television monitors and communications equipment that linked him to his guards scattered across the island. The blizzard had become a blessing for it totally precluded attack by air. Since approach by water was impossible in this weather even before night had fallen, he should have felt at ease.
But he didn’t. Something was nagging at him. The storm’s lashing snows had rendered the closed circuit cameras virtually useless for nighttime monitoring, which left Wells totally dependent on his guards. Several times he had ventured out beyond the fortress’s walls to check the island himself, searching the swelling waters through a pair of binoculars as if he expected visitors.