My reaction was instinctive and immediate, without thought of any kind. I lunged off the bulkhead and into Kellenbeck, caught hold of his jacket to keep him in front of me-Greene yelled something, Kellenbeck gagged again and vomited through his hands-and propelled him into Greene and all three of us sandwichlike out onto the deck. The gun fired, cracking, but Greene’s arm had been thrown out to the side; the bullet hummed off into the night. He went down with Kellenbeck sprawled half on top of him, still yelling, kicking viciously to free himself. I stayed on my feet-but momentum and the deck-roll flung me off-balance against the starboard gunwale.
Greene got his arm free, swung the gun around.
I threw myself overboard.
NINETEEN
The gun cracked again just as I cleared the gunwale. I felt a hard slapping along the edge of my right shoe; the leg jerked in reflex and the knee bent up against my chest, and that made my body, already twisted into an awkward position, curl around instead of flattening out as I fell. I hit the water on my neck and right shoulder with enough impact to flip me over, slice me backward through the surface.
It was like dropping naked into a snowdrift. The subfreezing temperature constricted my lungs, deflated them in a convulsive exhalation. Brackish water streamed into my mouth before I could snap it closed again. I fought to get my legs down and under me, body turned into a horizontal plane. But by the time I managed that the pressure in my chest was acute and painful; I had to have air-and I had to orient myself-before I could start to swim.
I stopped thrashing arms and legs, let the water’s buoyancy bob me up like a cork. When my head broke surface I opened my mouth wide and filled my lungs in gasping breaths. Salt stung my eyes, laid a film across them; at first I could not see anything except smeary blackness. Then the movement of the water shuttled me half- around, and on my left I could make out a blurred shimmer of red and green: the Kingfisher’s running lights. I blinked half a dozen times until the lights steadied into focus. The boat was a dark shape that seemed to be floating spectrally in fog, maybe twenty yards away and still angled away from the marina. No movement on the deck astern-which had to mean that Greene was up and inside the wheelhouse, about to swing the troller around.
I struggled, kicking again, to face the opposite direction. More shapes loomed up through the mist: boats rocking in the marina slips. How far away? Seventy-five yards? A hundred?
Trapped air had billowed my overcoat around me; I ripped at the buttons and wrenched out of it. And at the same time scraped off my waterlogged shoes. Behind me I could hear the guttural throb of the diesel climb in volume. I twisted my head to look back there.
The boat was thirty yards away now and just starting into a tight left-hand turn.
I scissored up and into a rapid crawl. The direction of the wind and what current there was were in my favor; I did not have to fight through the swells. But the water was freezing cold: Before long my arms and legs began to numb, to feel heavy, and I was forced to shorten and slow my stroke. Each breath burned as if I were inhaling slivers of dry ice.
Don’t think about the cold. Swim!
Stroke.
Stroke.
Head up: The marina was maybe thirty or forty yards distant now. I could see the dull fuzzy glow of the nightlights, the end of the center float, the entrances to the two channels on either side.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Stroke Off to my left a beam of light sprayed out over the water; the throb of the diesel seemed to build to a roaring. I rolled onto my side, dragged my head around again.
The troller was fifteen yards behind me, coming at about quarter-throttle but at an angle to the west. The hand-operated spotlight probed around in an arc, glistening off streamers of fog. Greene had not seen me yet-but it would only be a matter of seconds until he did.
I sucked in as much air as I could hold and took myself under, just as the beam swung closer and the bow veered toward me.
When I had kicked straight down for maybe ten feet I swam in a blind forward breaststroke. In my mind I counted off ten seconds, fifteen. The amount of salt in the water kept trying to buoy me up; my arms felt as if there were lead sinkers tied to them and a cramp was starting to form in the calf of my left leg.
Twenty seconds.
And the troller passed above me-not directly overhead but close enough so that I could hear the water- muffled whine of the diesel, feel the turbulence created by the screws.
I made myself count off another five seconds. Then I clawed upward, broke surface just as the pressure mounted to an intolerable level in my chest; my lungs heaved, the intake of air sent out shoots of pain. The Kingfisher’s wake pitched me around like a piece of flotsam, the salt film and rivulets of water obscured my vision. I shook my head, breathing in pants and gulps. Had to shake it twice more before I could see where the boat was: between me and the marina, twenty yards away and running diagonally to my left.
I kicked out and swam half a dozen uneven strokes. Struggled clear of the wake with my head up and my eyes fixed on the troller. It turned perpendicular to the marina and then began to veer around hard right; the spotlight sliced a down-slanted arc through the blackness, swinging toward me. I dragged in air and tensed for another dive.
But then the bow straightened, and I saw that the boat was going to bypass me this time by a good fifteen yards. The light jerked back the other way. Greene had no idea where I was; he was hunting blind in the fog. I stopped swimming and treaded water, so that only my head bobbed above the surface. I was afraid of giving my position away with splashes and churned-up foam.
The Kingfisher drew abreast-and growled past without changing trajectory.
I lowered my head, flailed out again. The cramp in my calf was worse now: hot wire of pain jabbing all the way up to the hip.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Leg stiffening up.
Stroke.
Agony.
Stroke.
How much farther? Head up. More of the center float visible, boat moored in the right-hand slip rearing up black but distinct, left-hand slip empty. Twenty yards, maybe less.
Stroke.
Leg on fire.
Stroke.
The diesel sound-I could no longer hear it except as a low rumble. Greene, the boat, where were they now?
Drifting in the swells forty or fifty yards distant.
Throttle shut off, just drifting.
Movement on deck near the starboard gunwale; a mass of heavy shadows, distorted by the fog. Then they seemed to separate, amoebalike. I thought I saw a blackish lump drop down over the side, thought I heard a splash.
Kellenbeck? Dead, dumped overboard?
Swim!
Flex the leg, suck in air, crawl forward. Pain. Numbness. Heart hammering in a wild cadence. Not enough air; gasps and whimpers coming out of my throat.
Stroke.
Stroke.
Less than ten yards.
