Dana Stabenow - Dead in the Water

We're on goddam Anua!"

At that moment she heard the sound of a distant engine, and for a single panicked moment thought the men had doubled back on her, returned to the Avilda and were leaving the island without her. She leapt to her feet, and recognized the sound of an airplane engine. Extremities numb from the cold water, body bruised from the fall, self exhausted from fighting the ice storm, all were forgotten as she yanked open the barabara's door. The sound of the airplane grew louder and Kate turned and headed for the airstrip at a smart clip, the thudding of her feet through the dry grass and snow covered by the noise of two engines on a short final. This time she didn't stumble. She was in familiar territory and she knew where she was going.

She topped the little rise and crouched immediately behind a clump of dead rye grass. A twin-engine Navaho was touching down to a landing on the hard-packed snow of the strip. Kate immediately stretched out flat on her stomach and prayed they hadn't seen her come crashing up while they were still in the air.

The Navaho bounced twice before rolling out to a stop next to the gas tank. Two men got out. The three men from the Avilda advanced to meet them. Nobody shook hands. Kate, cursing the lack of cover and the bright orange of her survival suit, strained to hear something, anything.

"Have you got it?" she thought she heard Harry say.

He was answered by a low laugh. One of the men returned to the plane and produced a suitcase. A thickset figure Kate recognized as Ned produced two suitcases of his own, shiny silver suitcases that gleamed even in the predawn light. Shiny silver suitcases so well chaperoned that she hadn't been able to lay her hands on them for the past seven days.

One man each from boat and plane went to the gas tank to connect the hose to the Navaho's wing tanks and refuel the plane. The other three squatted down on their haunches, produced flashlights and opened two of the suitcases. One was filled with a lot of something white, the other with a lot more of something green.

"Yes, " Kate hissed. She was filled with a rush of fierce triumph. "Gotcha, you sonsabitches."

Kate harbored no illusions about honor among thieves.

With leverage like this, it was only a matter of time before she got one crew member to roll over on the others and finally tell what had happened to Alcala and Brown. "Yes," she said again, her satisfaction as cold and hard as her toes presently were.

She'd seen enough, but she hesitated. If she could just wait until it got light enough to make out the Navaho's tail numbers. No. It was too risky. She had to get back to the Avilda and on board before the men. Already the suitcases were being closed. Stealthily, she rose enough to move in a kind of crouching, sideways walk, hands and feet the only things touching the ground. When she was out of sight she straightened up and ran, no mean feat in a survival suit in the dark, over clumps of rough grass and sudden drifts of snow. Her feet splashed into the water, she fell forward and struck out, suddenly terrified that she would be caught. At first she couldn't see where she was going, then the Avilda's hull swung sharply into focus and with alarm Kate realized how light it was getting. They would see her climbing aboard from shore. Fear spurred her on and she maintained a steady breaststroke, eyes fixed on the Avilda's oh-so-slowly nearing hull, ears straining for the launch of the skiff and the dip of oars in the water.

Her knee hit a rock, probably the same one that got her on the way in, she thought wearily, and began a halfhearted frog kick. For Harry Gault to have found his way through the series of killer reefs she remembered seeing, he had to have made this trip more than once.

So interesting did she find this thought that she missed her stroke and swallowed a mouthful of seawater and began to choke. A violent cough brought her knees up, a second banged her head against the hull, surprising her into swallowing another lungful of seawater and setting up another bout of hacking. A clumsy hand searched for some kind of hold on the hull, and slid off. God, she was just so tired.

"What the hell?" From a long way off, the voice was young and scared, and a little angry, too. "Kate? Kate, is that you?"

She almost went down for the third time. "Andy?"

Then, sharply, "Shh! Sound carries over water. Meet me on the other side."

"What?"

"Hush! The other side of the boat! Meet me around the other side of the boat!"

It took all of her remaining energy to push and pull her way around the hull, ducking beneath the anchor chain at the bow, and by the time she reached the opposite side she was nearly spent. Back on Anua the Navaho revved its engines and began the long whine to takeoff.

Galvanized, Kate said, "Andy?"

"I'm here."

She paused for breath, just trying to speak exhausting her all over again. "I can't get up, Andy. Can you help me? Don't turn on the deck lights!"

His whisper was annoyed. "I wasn't going to. Hold on a minute."

"To what?" she asked.

A moment later there was a soft scrape. "Here. Grab this."

It was the boat hook, and with the last ounce of strength left in her Kate grasped at it with both hands, realizing for the first time that she'd forgotten to pull her mittens back on before reentering the water. The suit had been leaking up her arms all the way back to the boat. She wondered in a detached sort of way if her hands had the strength to hold on long enough to get her aboard. The next thing she knew she had collapsed on the deck, gasping like a dying fish. Andy knelt next to her. "Are you all right? What the hell were you doing out there?"

Kate gave a ghost of a laugh. "Surf's up."

"Surf's up, my ass!"

"Why, Andy," she said weakly, "you're sounding more like me every day." A giggle rose to her throat.

Recognizing the beginnings of hysteria, she quelled it sternly.

"Where's the skipper? And Ned and Seth?"

Wet, cold, sore, tired, she said, her voice an unconscious plea, "Can you get me to our stateroom?"

In stiff-lipped silence he hauled her to her feet. "No," she said, when he would have taken her through the galley,

"let's use the aft cabin door. And you go in first and get some towels so I don't drip all over everything."

He did as she said, helping her out of the survival suit and mopping up the floor where it had dripped. With impersonal hands he stripped her to her skin, rubbed her down and tucked her up in her bunk with three extra blankets on top of her sleeping bag. She was shivering uncontrollably and he wanted to make her a hot drink but she wouldn't let him. "Get into your bunk. Now." When he hesitated, she said, her voice a thin thread of sound,

"Now, Andy. Please. They can't know we were awake."

He hesitated a little longer, and then reluctantly did as she asked. Together in the darkness, they listened as the bow of the skiff bumped the hull, as oars were shipped, as footsteps padded the length of the boat, as doors creaked open and slid shut.

"Are you asleep?" Andy whispered.

"No," she whispered back.

"Care to tell me what the hell is going on?"

"No," she said. "Not yet."

She went to sleep listening to him toss and turn in the bunk above.

THEY pulled the hook and got under way early the following morning. Kate slept right through it and woke to a rolling, ocean-going swell and the steady throb of the engines. She yawned and stretched, her muscles sore but not as sore as she'd expected. She heard a muffled noise and looked around. Andy was back under his sheet pyramid, taking up most of their limited floor space. A low hum emanated from beneath it.

"What does that thing do again?" she asked in a lazy voice. "Reinforce your penis?"