even kill her. But she could think of no way to protect herself except to move between the huge anchor-chain roller and the cabin. There she would be under the lip of the cabin roof-but vulnerable to a gunshot through the pilothouse wall.
Wham! The second toss smashed into the deck a foot from her hand, missing her shoulder by inches.
Move under the cabin roof, she urged herself. Groiter would not know she had moved or where to shoot.
And then she saw it in her peripheral vision-one small green light and numerous white lights burning through the fog-laden morning and into her mind, filling her with a tooth-rattling panic-the shadow of a supertanker bearing down on them.
34
Maria was ready for a vigorous pull. After a deep breath in anticipation of great pain, she shrank her hand by folding her thumb and yanked. Her arm shook; then her hand popped free. In seconds she had the second hand loose and crawled quickly for the deckhouse, with one eye on a nodding Groiter. As she opened the cabin door, Groiter jerked up, pointing the gun. Quickly she pulled herself inside, rolled, and once out of sight went to work on her feet.
'Hey, Maria Fischer,' he called out.
'What do you want?'
'You and me, we can make a deal.'
'Groiter, look, a ship,' Corey said.
'I see it.' His voice had the tones of a man resigned to his fate.
Maria jumped up. Her breath seized at the awesome sight of the multistory supertanker. Leaping from the galley into the pilothouse, she grabbed the wheel and spun it. Autopilot! She fumbled madly with a black box overhead.
'Off,' she screamed, flipping the switch. Grabbing the wheel, she threw the spokes. This time she felt resistance as the rudder dug in. A wall of black steel. A huge bow wave. She was turning, but so was the tanker.
'Oh God, oh God!' Then she saw a small boat racing. 'Dan,' she said.
Having checked all three outbound boats-and finding nothing-Dan was beyond desperate. Then for three minutes he had watched the scene on the radar. A mere speck, perhaps a boat with no radar reflector, a tiny target, going headlong into a supertanker's path. The freighter appeared as a moving island on the screen. The smaller something was almost invisible. Turning up the gain on the radar did little good, the second vessel barely visible, explaining why he hadn't seen it as he crossed the bar. Either the skipper was asleep at the boat's helm or the boat was out of control. The tanker hadn't picked up the tiny wisp of a target, either.
He picked up the VHF and broadcast on Channel 16.
'Mayday, Mayday, southbound supertanker off Palmer, you are about to run over a trawler. Mayday, Mayday, southbound supertanker, you are about to run over a trawler.'
Ignoring the fog and repeating the warning continuously, he pushed the boat to twenty-eight knots. It was dangerous. One seaborne log and he was all done. It didn't matter. In his gut he knew that this time he was right.
He strained his eyes. The fog was burning thinner.
'There,' he said, pointing. Shohei grunted. They could see the boat before the tanker.
'Mayday, Mayday, southbound supertanker, you are about to run over a trawler.'
'Damn, the big guy is moving to dodge me,' Dan said in disbelief.
Dan threw his own wheel over, but the tanker continued turning into the trawler.
A horn blasted across the water like a shock wave. Behind the tanker the water boiled.
'Reverse. He's hitting reverse,' Dan said.
Slamming the throttle forward, Dan headed for the trawler. In seconds it would be kindling.
Thunk! A bullet hit the pilothouse wall, missing Corey's nose by inches. A second bullet passed over her head. Least of her problems. In seconds it would be too late. Not hesitating, she dived off the bow and swam as hard and as fast as she could.
Maria shrank from the black wall that grew above the trawler.
Then bullets and wood flew as Groiter tried to shoot Corey.
Maria ran out of the wheelhouse. 'Dan,' she screamed, seeing his shock of blond hair.
Then a shot chunked the bulkhead next to her, sending splinters everywhere. He's trying to kill me. To kill anything. She leaped, hit the water, and swam.
There were a few seconds when Groiter hoped they might somehow pass in front of the tanker, but the giant bow backed by 100,000 tons of steel and petroleum hit the small fishing trawler amidships. The stern, which held Groiter, scraped along the tanker's vertical steel starboard wall for fifty yards or more, until cast aside by the ship's wake. As the lit stern of the tanker passed, Groiter, in water up to his waist, gripped the gun and began shooting wildly at the sea, hoping that against all odds he might hit Corey.
Desperately he tried to claw his way around the boat as it listed and turned, but the concrete was too heavy and he found no handholds. His fingernails made ugly noises as they scrabbled over the deck planking.
'Please,' he said to no one in particular as he made his final attempt to stop his slide into the cold, dark water.
'You missed,' he heard Corey call in the distance as he sank beneath the waves.
Corey looked to the east, where the sun would be shining on the beach, and began to swim.
Her hands stretched out flat with each stroke against the smooth, glassy sea; her breath pushed into the cold water; the bracing smell of salt was in her nostrils; the silky sensation of the water's passage lapped under her arms. She swam without thought of time save the rhythmic passing of her breaths, ignoring the folly of her will to live.
Then the sea became hard and brittle. Her hand cracked on something solid. She grabbed the metal. It was the stern of a small boat, and there was a man standing over her. He wore a deep blue down coat over a blue cotton dress shirt, deeply wrinkled, open at the neck.
Dan Young.
Reaching behind her, she drew the fillet knife from her waistband. He held out a hand. She grabbed. As he came low to swing her up, she thrust the blade straight for his heart, feeling every inch of the knife slice through flesh. She shrieked her satisfaction.
Then from above, hands closed on Corey's neck. She was shaken like a sapling. She heard screams of white- hot, crazy anger. Her own, she realized, as the deadly earnest grip tightened. Relaxing her body, she went totally limp. Her mind became a shrinking tunnel, and just before it closed to utter blackness, the hands departed.
Water closed over her head. Summoning all her rage, she stroked toward a breath. The first inhaling of sweet ocean air came in a stupor, leaving only the haziest memory. She floated away. There was the churning water of a wake and the fleeing vessel. The cold, cold water.
Maria clambered onto the boat nearly hysterical. Shohei held his hand tight to Dan's chest above his heart. Maria put her hands under his head, beside herself with fear for him.
'Drive, drive,' Shohei was saying.
Forcing herself to put Dan's head on the deck, she jumped up and engaged the throttle. The GPS made the entry to the bay obvious on the electronic chart.
Ground speed was thirty-five knots. The boat flew. Sometimes she could see ahead and sometimes she just stared at the screen. If they hit something not visible on the radar, they would all die. If they slowed, Dan would lose whatever slim margin he had. With her whole being she wanted to hold him, but instinctively she knew Shohei was strong, that he understood bodies and that he could best stop the life from seeping out of Dan.
