The Water Keeper(73)

The wind pushed me hard off course, and I had to fight the wheel to keep her aimed north. Gunner whined above the roar of the wind. He didn’t like this any more than I did. He retreated from the bow and huddled next to me, eventually bracing himself between my legs. I kept one hand on the wheel, one on the throttle, and every few seconds I’d touch his head and let him know I knew he was there.

In the chaos, I lost sight of the boat, but that did not mean they had lost sight of me. While I couldn’t see twenty feet off the bow, chances were good they had radar, which told them both my and their exact locations. My chart told me I was within a thousand feet of the first home, but my electronics worked off of GPS; given the clouds, I doubted my location. And I was right to doubt it. A wave crashed over the bow, flooding the inside. When I looked up, I was nearly beneath the porch or some outcrop of the first home. Above me loomed concrete beams threatening to crush my T-top.

I slammed the throttle forward, digging myself out of the black hole I’d fallen into. My momentum pushed me into and through the next oncoming wave, further flooding the deck. The water had risen above my ankles. More mid-shin. I wasn’t worried about Gone Fiction sinking as much as I was worried about the engine flooding and leaving me powerless to be bashed against the pilings or tossed at will through the bay.

The next wave brought more water. The boat turned thirty degrees beneath me and Gunner slid out from beneath my legs, slamming into the wall of the gunnel. The impact flipped him and sent him spinning through the air like a caricature from a comic book. While he was a good swimmer, I doubted he was that good. I lunged, grabbed his collar, and dragged him back through the foam and spray. I wedged him between my legs and throttled through the next wave as the water poured over the bow, again threatening to swamp the boat. Conditions had deteriorated, and I needed to get out before I lost the boat. Gunner whined beneath me in agreement.

In the distance, a single running light flashed. Tossing about the water like a bobber. There it was again. At half throttle, I circled, allowing the wind to come in behind me, which meant the waves were no longer coming over the bow. Now the wind was pushing the nose down, threatening to bury the bow in the troughs between the waves.

I used the light like a beacon and moved toward it. Somehow that boat had enough power to remain stationary on the leeward side of one of the homes toward the middle of the cluster. Between her two thousand horsepower, her bow thrusters, and a bow line that threatened to snap the piling in two, she was able to counter the storm and remain stable enough beneath a platform. Stable enough that bodies appeared, walking on the porch above it. Ninety seconds later, a line formed on the edge of the porch, and one by one they began jumping off the platform onto the deck of the boat below. This was roughly akin to jumping off a one-story house into a swimming pool—although the pool was moving and tilting at more than thirty degrees. The figures were female. Save the very last one. He was stocky, in charge, and pointing something at them. Prodding them. One by one, they jumped. Maybe ten in total. Their mouths said they were screaming, but I couldn’t hear them.

With two to go, one of the girls mistimed her jump and missed the boat entirely, landing in the water. One of the girls in the boat reached for her while others shined a light, but it was useless. She was gone.

The guy with the gun pushed the last of the girls headfirst into the boat, and then he turned toward me. I knew this because I saw the thing in his hand flash red. Once, twice, then a continual red flash. I did not hear the report of the rifle over the roar of the wind, but in my experience, you never hear the bullets before they hit you. If you’re lucky, you hear them after.

I cut the wheel hard north and slammed the throttle to full, shooting me out of one wave trough and immediately into another. Cutting the wheel again hard left, I saw the transport vessel had throttled up and was moving up on plane. Attesting to the power of the engines. All I could see was the white foam of her wake painted against the darkness that had become the ocean.

Whoever had ended up in the water was certainly long gone, but judging by her mistimed landing, she was only a hundred yards or so from the next house. The wind and waves would push her directly into the pilings or the dock. Which would either snap her neck, causing her to drown, or spit her up on the floating dock.

I made one pass. Saw nothing. Then circled again. Still nothing. Gunner whined. The black boat was becoming a speck in the distance. I screamed at the dog. “You see her, boy?” I pointed to the dock, which was appearing and disappearing with every wave. On my third pass, Gunner stood on the console, bringing his eyes near shoulder level with me. As I turned to follow the boat, he barked. Then again. I didn’t know if he saw something or he was just angry at the storm, but since he was the smartest dog I’d ever met, I whipped the wheel 180 degrees and pushed the throttle to fifty percent.

A body lay on the dock.

Somehow either the current or a wave had spit her up on the floating dock. She’d wrapped herself in a mooring line and clung to a piling. When I approached, massive waves threatened to rip her from the dock’s surface. I knew I had one shot. Gauging the current, the wind, and the time between the waves, I rode down one wave, up another, and throttled up to almost ninety percent, shooting me nearly airborne onto the floating dock. The hull landed hard, and the solid surface of the dock listed the boat violently, nearly tossing me and Gunner overboard.

I saw the girl. Reached. But she wouldn’t let go of the piling. A wave crashed over the bow and caught the center console in the middle, catapulting Gone Fiction off the dock and back into open water.