The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(58)

Minutes passed. Jenkins checked his gauge: 8 psi. He checked his watch: 6:55. Paulina said the rescue boat would leave at 7:00 p.m., though she had probably not anticipated the vessel being boarded. Would it stay? Could it? Would the Russian Coast Guard impound the boat for being in Russian waters?

He heard an engine and looked up. The small inflatable churned away from the fishing vessel, returning to the larger boat. Jenkins checked his gauge: 5 psi. Another minute and he heard the sound of engines starting, first the engines of the Russian vessel, then the engine of the fishing boat.

Both boats were leaving. His heart pounded: 4 psi.

The Russian vessel pulled away, the sound of the engine increasing in volume and intensity as it sped off, churning the water and leaving a wake of white foam. Jenkins unfurled the string wrapped around his wrist, let the transponder rise, and kicked hard for the surface. The water bubbled and churned. When he breached the surface, he saw the fishing boat slowly moving away. Two men stood at the railing, pulling in something. He spit out the regulator.

“Hey,” he yelled. “Hey!”

He lowered his head and swam, kicking hard, but the boat continued to pull away. It was too far to reach, but he sensed something in the water, something dragging behind it, kicking up turbulence. Jenkins kicked harder and reached. Netting. He missed it, kicked again, reached.

The netting pulled farther from his grasp. The ship increased speed, departing.

He’d missed his ride out of Russia. His SPG was on empty, and he was adrift, far from shore, his limbs freezing and quickly going numb, without hope of rescue.





34



Demir Kaplan watched the Russians hook the inflatable to the winch, and the skiff lifted from the water. Popov and his two men stepped back on board the coast guard vessel and disappeared inside the bridge. Moments later, the engines churned and the boat departed, picking up speed and disappearing into the fog until even its lights were swallowed by the gray mist.

Kaplan throttled back the power, not wanting to accidentally get their netting caught in the engine prop. Then they’d really have a problem. His radar continued to emit twelve short beeps from a location on his boat’s starboard side, but that was also the location that the Russian patrol boat had departed. He could not risk going back to look for his pickup. He could not risk the lives of his two sons, both married and raising families. He shook his head. He knew he was likely leaving his pickup to die, either in the Black Sea or, if the person made it back to shore, at the hands of the Russians. It made him sick. He could only hope the person would have another opportunity to escape.

He reached for the throttle, about to turn the wheel and head for home, when he heard one of his sons shouting.

“Bok!” Kaplan feared they had sucked the netting into the engine prop. His son stuck his head into the pilothouse, gripping the doorjamb, a wild look in his eyes.

“Tekneyi durdur! Tekneyi durdur!”

Kaplan stopped the engine.

“Emir thinks he saw something in the water!”

Kaplan hurried onto the deck, knowing he was taking a risk stopping to search the water. The Russian patrol boat could return at any moment. He turned on the searchlight anyway. “Nerede?” he asked. Where?

His son pointed. Kaplan directed the light beam in the direction of his son’s outstretched arm and finger. The fog lit up, looking like a spider’s web enclosing its trapped prey. Kaplan lowered the angle of the light to cut the glare, then slowly rotated the light to the right and to the left, sweeping the water’s surface.

“There is nothing,” he said.

“I saw something in the water,” his son said again.

Kaplan swept the light back to the right. He could hear the ping of water against the side of his boat. “Nothing,” he said again.



Jenkins listened to the fading sound of the engine and watched the fog engulf the fishing boat. His heavy breathing marked the chilled air with white puffs. He felt himself tiring, felt the heat being sucked from his body. He knew he had to keep moving, to keep swimming. The cold would kill him. It might kill him anyway. But now he was tired. So damn tired.

And which direction should he swim? In the gray shroud, he could not see the shoreline. If he swam in the wrong direction, he could end up swimming farther out to sea, a certain death.

Think.

He needed to calm his mind. He needed to think logically. Ironically, at this moment of high stress and desperation, he felt no anxiety. Maybe what he’d needed all along was a hopeless situation and a certainty of death. He smiled at the absurdity of it, not that he was resigned to his fate, not when he still had a chance. He would not quit, not on Paulina or her brother, not on himself, and, more importantly, not on his family. He wanted CJ to have lasting memories of his father. He wanted to impart whatever wisdom he could share to make his son’s life better than his own. He wanted his unborn child to know him, and he was determined to see that child’s face.

His compass.

He looked at the compass on his wrist. He had been following a course out to sea set on 210 degrees. If he reset the arrow on north and set the lubber line to that same reading, then he could determine the reading exactly 180 degrees in the opposite direction, which, theoretically, should be the heading to take him back to shore. Yes, there were likely problems when he reached shore, but as Paul Newman had said to Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Redford refused to jump from a cliff into a river because he couldn’t swim, “Hell, the fall will probably kill you!”