Ocean Burning (13 page)

I was wrong.

Chapter 13

THE PISTOL GLINTED like the waves around us, a strange mixture of shine and darkness. Ben had unzipped his jacket, reached inside, and produced it—a small, silver automatic. I would have felt better if he’d been holding it loosely, professionally, knowing the mere presence of the thing would be threat enough.

Instead he clutched it, knuckles white, and held it at arm’s length. He pointed it right at my face, and his index finger stroked the trigger. He was shaking. A burning sensation flushed my forehead, right where he was aiming. I could almost feel the bullet going in.

“Trigger discipline,” I said.

“What?” he shouted over the motor and the spray.

“Trigger discipline,” I shouted back. “That means don’t touch the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. Are you ready to shoot me?”

“I don’t want to. But I don’t see any way around it, either.” He paused, just looking at me. Then he took his finger off the trigger, rested it on the trigger guard. Finally, he said, “Look, I know.”

“Know what?”

“You’re up to something, Frank.”

My main goal was to keep him talking, and to keep him from looking behind him. I made a concerted and difficult effort to look him right in the eye. Using my peripheral vision, I scanned the sea out in front of us.

We were approaching the edge of the cove at top speed, bumping over waves like speed bumps, dipping crazily. His finger clenched dangerously near the trigger again, and I nearly dove off the boat. It took everything I had to stay still.

“Maybe we can talk,” I said. “If I didn’t have a gun pointed at me, we could talk.”

“No more talk.”

“Come on,” I said. The rocks edging the cove entrance grew another size behind him. “There’s always time for talk.”

“Cut the engine, or I’ll shoot.”

“You want to stop here? There’s sharks. Let me get us to the beach, and then you can shoot me if you want.”

“That’s a trick,” he said. “You’re hoping for your moment, a chance to get the better of me. You’re not going to get it.” His finger swerved towards the sickle-shaped piece of metal that would kill me if it moved. He started to press. The inky black rocks, wet and sharp, jutted from the water not fifty feet behind him. I twisted the throttle again, hoping to eek out some extra juice.

“I said cut it!” He waved the pistol, gesturing wildly.

“Can’t do that,” I muttered. He needed to keep talking, just a few more seconds.

“I know what you did.” His eyes narrowed in disgust. “She told me everything. I’m sorry, Frank, but I don’t see another way.” He pushed the pistol out towards me, barrel first, and his finger moved. The trigger depressed just a terrifying fraction of an inch, and that was enough for me.

“I’m sorry too,” I said.

“Wha—”

I wrenched the steering arm, shoving it away from me just as went between the rocks. The raft took a sickening turn, and for a second I though the boat would flip. Then it evened out. Ben looked behind him, then back to me, his eyes wide in confusion.

For a moment, everything froze, a perfect tableau. Ben’s look of disbelief. The rocks looming up behind him bigger than I remembered them, like a huge dark hand reaching out to snatch him away. The gun barrel pointed at me heart, the firing pin already on its way home. But even frozen moments must come to an end. Ice shatters. As quickly as it had come the moment disintegrated, and all hell broke loose.

We hit the rocks. The gun went off, a flash and a roar. The raft’s rubber front gave a crunch and a wheeze, then the back end folded upwards and suddenly I was airborne, sucking my air out of the whistling wind and hoping not to hit the rocks.

Somehow I must have cleared them, because in a flash I was sucking water instead.

The blue surrounded me. I tried to swim, but my arms were lead. I made them move, started to paddle, then realized I had no idea which way was up. Air wouldn’t come out of my lungs; there was none left. I shook myself, like a dog drying off, hoped it would work. Sure enough, air trapped in the various pockets of my clothing escaped and the bubbles all traveled in the same direction, heading unerringly for the surface.

I reoriented myself and followed them up, but it was slow going. I became certain I was headed the wrong direction. Just as the urge to open my mouth and take a breath became overwhelming, the light changed. The deep, dark blue became lighter. Up ahead, I made out ripples of azure blue sky. With everything I had left, I gave one great kick.

My head burst the surface the lagoon, and I gasped and gasped. As soon as I could think again, I realized that—incredibly—the beach lay only a hundred feet away. I’d like to say I swam, but really I just pulled in the general direction of the shore and let the waves wash me in. What can I say, I’m a hell of a body surfer.

The beach’s sand was white and hot and blissfully dry. I rolled over in it, exhausted, unable to move. I thought I might lay there forever, just let the sun beat down on me until I soaked up whatever I needed to keep on living.

I was still there, stretched on on the beach with my eyes closed, when the first blow caught me.

My eyes opened just in time to make out a great, thick piece of wood blotting out the sun above me. I blinked at it, then watched it whistle through the air and connect with my ribs. I heard something crack and considered the sound almost clinically in the moments before the pain took me. When it did come, it washed over me like one of the waves that had carried me to shore, primal and unrelenting.

“Shit!” I yelled out, always the poet.

The wood whistled again. Only one thing seemed a worse prospect than moving: getting hit again. Adrenaline took over. I rolled over three times quickly and bounced to my feet. Something grated ominously in my torso, bone against bone, but I ignored it.

My fists came up to protect my face, just like my father had taught me as a boy. He’d drink until the sun went down, then challenge me to a fight. I’d hated the man, but he sure as shit knew how to box.

Hawking stood ten feet away, a thick piece of driftwood resting on his shoulder like a baseball bat. His feet had dug into the sand shoulder-width apart, his knees bent in a slight crouch. I saw two feet, then four for a second. The wood stick blurred as I kept an eye on it, and not from any kind of movement. Rather, it hissed in place, like static on a television.

I shook my head, tried to clear it.

Obviously, I must have taken more of a blow than I thought. The incredible thing was that even after a high-speed crash into solid rock, Ben Hawking seemed undamaged.

“Still time to talk,” I said.

He took three quick steps forward and swung from the hips. The driftwood came in at chest height. Any higher and I could have ducked it; lower and the angle would have shortened the range and I could have stepped back. As it was, I had no choice. It rocketed towards me. I lowered an elbow to protect my ribs, and took a huge shot across the forearm.

I grunted, backed two paces.

He swung again at the other side. I took it across the forearm again.

Backed two more paces, he swung, and whanged the first forearm again. It felt like it might be broken.

Two more paces back.

My only chance, I knew, would be to lull him into a rhythm, and use that to get him on the ropes. I’d been successful so far. He’d taken two steps, swung, done it again, and again. I didn’t think I could take another shot.

I landed lightly on my second step back, staying on the ball of my foot. Hawking started his two steps forward, the makeshift bat cocked over his shoulder. As he did, I pushed off and rushed him, closing the distance as fast as I could. He read the move and started his swing early.

Too late.

I was already inside his swing, catching his arm, getting foot behind his heel, giving him a terrific shove. Over he went, rolling across the sand. I stomped at him, missing the first time, waiting for him to finish his roll the second and catching him dead in the chest. I felt my heel drive into the soft spot right at the bottom end of the sternum—the solar plexus, the bundle of nerves that control the lungs. He dropped the stick, started gasping. The moment I saw that, I knew I’d won.

As easy as breathing, that’s the saying.

The thing about a shot to the solar plexus: your brain still gives its orders (like “breathe!”) but the message gets lost in that bundle of nerves. It is an unnerving experience indeed. I could see the confusion on his face as he tried to suck in air, just as he had since the day he was born, only this time nothing happened. His hands clutched at sand as he tried to pull himself away from me, but the grains just ran through his fingers. He curled into a ball right there in front of me, as harmless as a baby.

I bent down, wincing, and picked up the piece of driftwood. It measured about three feet, thick and heavy at one end, but tapered down at the other, an ideal handle.

“Where’d you manage to find this?” I said. “It’s damn near perfect.”

He just thrashed about on the sand, eyes bugging out, making horrible little sipping noises. Pathetic. Here I had been planning to cave in his skull, but listening to those desperate sounds, it was all I could do not to help the man.

“Oh, get over it already. I know it feels like you’re dying, but you won’t. The shock to your breathing will wear off. You’ll be up and about in no time.”

I crouched ten feet off, weighing the club in my hand, waiting. His first real breaths came ragged, but over the course of a few minutes he gathered himself nearly back to normal.

What to do? Caving in his skull still kept popping up on my mental list of options, but I’d never been one to hit a man while he’s down. My father, if we started our fight too many drinks into the night, had had no such compunctions when I would slip and fall. But that had been his greatest lesson, as I had sworn never to be like the bastard.

“What are you going to do with me?” Hawking said. His first words were unsteady. They came out gravelly, as though he had laryngitis.

“Honestly, I’m still thinking it over.” I tapped the end of the club into my palm. “The truth is that no matter what I do, you’re going to die. It’s just a question of the method. Either I kill you here and now, or I abandon you on the island to fend for yourself. Which would mean a slow death, probably by starvation. That could take weeks.”

He said nothing, just pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked at me.

“So despite the fact that it isn’t usually my style to murder a man in cold blood, in this case I’m thinking it might be an act of mercy.”

He coughed some more.

“You want to weigh in here, Hawking? Any opinion on the best way for you to go?”

“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t give a shit what you do to me. Look, I know what kind of man you are.” He said it like he’d just discovered shit on the bottom of his shoe. “But I still need to ask you for something. A favor.”

“A favor? Now?”

“Please.”

I said nothing.

“Don’t hurt Carmen.”

My eyes may have have bugged out of my skull. My jaw went slack; my tongue flapped in the breeze. “Huh?” I mustered.

“You heard me, you son of a bitch. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll let you beat me to death, or starve me to death, whatever—just don’t do anything to hurt the girl.”

I regained a bit of composure, tried to find the angle in this new play. “I would never hurt Carmen.”

“She told me about the money, Frank.”

“The money,” I said.

“The money. All that money from that boat we so conveniently met. The money tied up in stacks marked Banco United, my bank’s name. I could see right away you planned to pin it on me. Hell, I’m the vice president, it would all make sense, right?”

I tried to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind. He kept talking.

“Well, I figure it all went to plan until that other boat of yours sank. Carmen told me all about how you called her, invited her down for a boat ride, fiance or no fiance, to catch up on old times. God, I was a fool. She said you were unsavory, but this…”

“I have been known to be less than savory,” I drawled, finally finding my voice again.

“And once I heard about the money, and connected it with the money missing from my bank, I knew we could only be here for one reason.”

I said nothing.

“We’re patsies, right? Carmen and I, you mean for everyone to think we did it, once they…find our bodies.”

Stars were exploding behind my eyes. I’d been such a fool. “Believe it or not,” I said, “you’re pretty damn close.”

“I know you must be mad. I did try to club you to death, but I didn’t know what else to do! Once we were all stranded on that damn boat together, I knew it would only be a matter of time until you killed us. So we came up with a plan.”

“You and Carmen,” I said slowly.

“Yes, but leave her out of it, for God’s sake. She said she could crack the tank, and that I should go with whoever went for water, and get rid of them.” He said this last bit as distastefully as before, even looked a bit guilty. “But what else was there to do? We were trapped…” he trailed off.

“You and Carmen,” I said again.

“Yes, man, yes, but please—I’m begging you— just do me the one thing. Spare her. Won’t you? Kill me, but let her live.”

“Are you sure?”

His eyes narrowed in defiance. “Yes, I’m sure. I love her.”

I shrugged, raised the driftwood up above my head. Ben closed his eyes and waited for the end. I brought the club down hard and fast.

It stuck into the sand right next to his head, just where I’d aimed it. I reached down, grabbed his arm, and pulled him up to his feet. He stared at me, totally shocked.

“Friend,” I said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Chapter 14

“THAT BITCH!” HE groaned, and kicked at the sand. “That conniving little…little…” he searched for a strong enough word. “Cunt!” he finally yelled into the breeze. “Carmen, you cunt!”

I let him get it out of his system. God knows I had some choice things to say when he was done. “Ben, I’ve never heard you use that language,” I said when he ran out of steam. I covered my mouth, acting scandalized. He blushed beside himself, then we both started laughing. It felt good, especially after the past thirty minutes.