Between Here and the Horizon(46)
“Mr. Linneman, please…” I turned to the other man, hoping he’d see sense, but Linneman shrugged helplessly.
“This is probably the most foolhardy thing I’ll ever do in my life, Ophelia, I know it, but sometimes you just have to risk all in the face of uncertain odds. People’s lives depend on us.”
I could barely hear him over the roar of the wind, and the choking, coughing, rattle of the generator, but I could see that he’d made up his mind, and there was no point in trying to dissuade him. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his wife sniffling into a handkerchief, leaning against the shoulder of another middle aged woman in a house coat, who was trying to comfort her.
“Look on the bright side, Lang. If this thing goes down and I die, Ronan’s kids will finally get the house. You can stay there and live in it with them forever. That’s something to be cheery about, right?” Sully said, grinning.
“You’re right. Why don’t you do us all a favor and toss yourself overboard then,” I snapped. “See if I care. Or anyone else on this island for that matter.”
Sully barked out laughter. “Atta girl.” He attached a hose from the gray rubber to a small black pump at his feet, and the rubber began to inflate rapidly, expanding and growing quicker and quicker until the items in front of him were no longer bizarre unfamiliar shapes in the darkness, but the counterparts of a small, inflatable boat that simply needed lashing together.
“That’ll never hold,” I heard someone say behind me. “First wave he tries to bank in that will swallow them whole.”
“Arrogant bastard. Why can’t he listen…?”
“Someone should call the police.”
“These Fletchers are all far too ready to die. It’s in their bones.”
There was no way Sully could have heard them, standing so close to the generator. He didn’t even seem to know they were there. He worked quickly, hands lashing and tying, grabbing extra lines of rope from his truck. He pulled a large metal stand from the vehicle and attached it to the front of the boat he’d just put together in less than five minutes, securing a large, high beam lamp to the prow.
“All right, Linneman. Let’s get her in the water.” The two men picked up the boat via the plastic strapping on the side of the vessel, and then hurried it down to the water. “Lift!” Sully yelled. “Walk her out past the break!”
That made sense. The waves were still high, still rough. If they tried to drive the boat out, they were going to be smashed back time and time again. With the boat hoisted above the water, resting on Sully and Linneman’s shoulders, they lifted it every time a wave crashed against the shore, threatening to push them back inland. Soon they were shoulder deep in water, out past the break, and they lowered the boat into the water. Sully vaulted into the boat, holding out his hand to help Linneman in after him.
“Be careful!” Linneman’s wife shouted. And then, under her breath, “Lord, please be careful. I don’t think I can watch.”
Sully levered the boat’s small engine down into the water and cranked it; I couldn’t decide whether the fact that it started immediately was reassuring, or if it would have been better for the thing to have failed and left them sitting there on top of the water.
Sully was a machine. Efficient. Fearless. Determined. He didn’t look back at the shore once. They tore off away from land, the boat bouncing along the water like a skipping stone every time it hit a patch of rough water. Mrs. Linneman started crying.
I ran back to the car as quickly as I could—the children were both still passed out, thank god. I grabbed Connor’s old binoculars and then raced back to the shore, frantically scanning through the lenses to find Sully and Linneman, but all I could see was roiling, angry, gray sea, and roiling, angry, gray sky, and my heart wouldn’t stop hammering in my chest.
Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty.
No sign of the boat. No sign of anyone in the water. Michael and his friend were helping Ambulance Guy, who had finally woken up and was swabbing the cuts on his face from a medical bag at his feet. Nausea twisting through me like a snake, I headed down the pier again, counting the steps, trying not to panic.
“How deep is the water?” I demanded. “They’re not that far out. Why haven’t any of the men been able to swim back to shore yet?”
Michael opened his mouth and then closed it again, apparently frustrated. “It’s not that simple, Ophelia.”
“The water’s very deep,” the guy cleaning his cuts said. “The whole island was volcanic. The land falls away straight down underneath the water. Cliffs, dropping for hundreds of feet. And how far can you swim, Miss?”
“I don’t know. Over six hundred feet, that’s for sure.”
“In open water? In a storm? In the freezing cold? And in the dark? I don’t think so.”
That shut me up pretty quickly. He was right. Maybe in a swimming pool I could swim for six hundred feet. Further. But with conditions the way they were out there…
“If the men went into the water, they probably would have tried to swim into shore, but they never would have made it. The water’s too rough, but more importantly it’s freezing cold. You can only survive a matter of minutes in water like that.” Whoever this guy was, his attitude stank. He barely looked at me as he spoke, dabbing a cotton pad angrily against his lip. He was around my age, late twenties, and his Boston accent told me he wasn’t a local.