Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (22 page)

The waves had whitened all around us. I wasn’t completely sure if it was raining or not, but we were soaked with either rain or spray.
The temperature had dropped twenty degrees, and the cold began to numb my fingers.

“Wave! Wave! Wave!” screamed Leyla. I caught a brief glimpse of a white-streaked gray wall climbing
in front of the bow
. I dove for the mast and got one hand on it before the water hit me.

The water
was smooth and slow and very heavy. It was like a giant had poured the contents of a large swimming pool out onto the
Tiny Dancer
.
The cold was deadly.
My breath exploded out of me with the shock
. I clutched at the mast
with my left hand
,
but I couldn’t reach all the way around it. I couldn’t lift my right hand against
the
massive
flow of icy water. My hands had been numb and freezing to start with. Slowly, my fingers slipped, plucked off one-by-one
by
the inexorable force of Lake Superior.
Dimly, I heard a scream behind me.

I couldn’t breathe. Suddenly
,
I lost my hold entirely and slid helplessly backwards.
Something slammed into my chest.
I felt a sickening weightlessness, and then landed with bruising force on my face
inside
the cockpit.

“Jonah!” Leyla screamed. “Jonah
!
”

I
forced myself up to my hands and knees, hacking and coughing. Leyla was kneeling beside me. The wind was howling now, and there could be no doubt that water was falling from the sky as well as whipping up from the waves. It was as dark as dusk.
The cockpit was half full of water, but it drained out quickly through
drainage
holes made for that very purpose.
I recalled vaguely that they were called scuppers.

“I’m OK,” I said weakly.

“Watch the wheel!” shouted Angela sharply. She was completely soaked, but she remained braced in the corner, her gun held steady. Leyla stood up shakily and returned to the wheel.

“This is crazy,” she called. “We’re all going to die unless we get out of this.”
She was taking small steps and
straining at the wheel as it bucke
d
in her hands.

Angela shook her head. “I have every confidence in you. Follow the GPS course.”

I sat back on my heels. Stone was also as wet as if he’d stepped fully clothed into a bath. His legs were dangling into the cockpit, while his arms were still tightly
intertwined with
the rope that went from the traveler
on the deck, up
to th
e boom. As I watched, he let go
and slid down to a sitting position on the starboard bench.

He glanced at me. “That was close.”
If I was given to imagination,
I might have thought he looked
mildly
concerned.
Suddenly
,
I was very glad he was with us on this trip. I returned his look.

“Yeah. Fun though.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. I swear it did.

Stone patted his soaking blue jeans to make sure everything was there. He patted again and then looked down. He glanced all around the cockpit, then stood up and looked at the deck forward. He sat down again and started to swear vehemently.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I lost my pager.”

I was puzzled. Surely a pager should be the l
e
ast of his worries at this moment. Human nature is funny though. Sometimes we focus on peripheral details to avoid dealing with the big problems right in front of us.

Angela smiled like she was sharing my thoughts. “Your pager is irrelevant now. You aren’t going to work, even if you’re called in.”

Stone took a deep breath
and then shrugged.

A big gust slapped the
foresail
,
and we tipped far over to star
board
again. I held my breath while the waves pounded at us, keeping us over. As slow as spring thaw, we came up again
, dragged by the great counter
-
weight of the leaden keel
.

“We should switch to diesel and bring down the
foresail
too
,” said Leyla. “This wind, it’s safer with no canvas.”

“Do it!” snapped Angela.

“We can do this from the cockpit,” said Leyla. “Jonah, take the wheel.”

I did. Immediately I understood why Leyla had been moving about. The wheel was like a live
thing trying to jump out of my
grip
,
first pushing down to starboard and then leaping back up the other
way. I fought to hold it steady, taking little steps to keep my balance against the plunge and roll of the boat and
the
kick and buck of the wheel.

Leyla reached around me and turned a key.
Through the increasing roar of the storm
,
I could feel
, more than hear,
the engine throb
bing to life.
She pushed the throttle lever forward about one third of the way.

“Keep it there,” she shouted. I did my best. Then
,
with Tony Stone’s help, she cranked the
foresail
until it was completely rolled up on the
forestay.

“Now the dodger,” she shouted, shaking her head. “I should have had that up the whole time.”

The folded
-
up dodger was apparently what had struck me in the chest when I was swept back into the cockpit. Leyla and Stone unsnapped
the
retaining straps, and with some difficulty pulled up a canvas hood that was stretched across a metal frame. It looked a little bit like one of those manually operated convertible tops on
an old car, except
it was backwards, folding out the windshield first, then a yard or so of canvas roof, leaving the back open.

There was something wrong with it, however. The metal frame appeared bent, and I realized that it was probably my body that had done it. They wrestled with it for a few minutes. Finally Stone was able to get the starboard side strapped tight into place. Immediately, the noise in
the cockpit abated a little bit and
the spray slammed up against the clear p
lastic windshield instead of on
to us.
But the rear port side of the hood flapped insanely in the wind. Stone stepped over to where Leyla struggled with it.

While they were trying to get it secured, Angela rapped on the close
d
companionway door.
I glimpsed Phil’s face as he opened it. They exchanged a few words, and the door shut again.

Leyla and Tony finally settled for tying down the port side of the dodger with a bit of rope secured to one of the many cleats lining the gunwale. It still flapped and shuddered, and water flew through that side fairly easily.

“It will have to do for now,”
said Leyla in the
slightly
quieter air of the cockpit.

“Speed up now,” said Angela. Leyla looked at her w
ithout comment
and then leaned
in front of me
and pushed the throttle all the way forward. The result was not spectacular. “These engines aren’t made for speed,” she said.

A minute later, there was a rap on the companionway door. Angela moved over to Leyla and put the gun against her head.

“You know the drill,” said Angela
to Stone and me
. “Behave if you value her life.”

Phil emerged from the cabin a few moments later.

“All secure?” she asked him.

He nodded. He stared for a moment at the wind and the waves. “This is getting worse.”

“A lot worse,” I said. “Superior is a man-killer. We need to run back for cover.” I glanced behind me,
towards where the islands should be,
but nothing was visible except big waves and driving rain.

“Shut up Borden,” said Phil
. He
walked over and stood by me.
He pushed the power-button of the
Tiny Dancer’s
GPS. Then he looked at the handheld unit which Angela had passed to him. He programmed the boat’s GPS to match his. He watched for a few moments, looking first
at
one screen
,
then the other. Finally, he nodded.

“Now,” said Angela. “We have an appointment to keep, so we are going to follow the course on this GPS. You all will have your turn steering.” She turned to Phil. “Show us how to do it,” she commanded.

We braced ourselves
against the heaving waves as
Phil
explained how to hold our course to the destination indicated on the GPS.

“Whoever is in the cabin will have our handheld unit,” said Angela. “If we see you going off course, we’ll
hurt someone. If it happens a second time, someone will die.
”

“Where is this?” I asked. “Where are you taking us?”

“Nowhere,”
said Phil. “It doesn’t really concern you.”

I
was no
GPS expert, but it looked to me like we were heading into the middle of Lake Superior
in the teeth of an autumn storm that had only just begun.

The waves were piling up and white spray seemed to fly everywhere. Sail or no sail, the wind from the northwest pushed us a little to starboard
,
while fifteen
-
foot waves tossed us around like a toy. Every so often we hit one wrong, and it crashed across the deck, burying our bow underwater for a few heart-sickening seconds. But each time
,
the
Tiny Dancer
heaved herself up like Archimedes slowly getting out of his bathtub. The water washed around the dodger for the most part, though some of it still flowed into the cockpit
,
only to drain out the scuppers. The sky was black
,
and the steadily increasing wind roared and plucked eerie tunes from the rigging.

Angela waved her gun at Leyla. “Take the wheel. Someone will relieve you in two hours. If we start moving off course, we’ll castrate your lover-boy first, and only afterwards send some
one
up to correct you. You understand?”

“Stay on course,” said Leyla grimly.

“Phil
ip
,” said Angela. He went down the companionway. Stone started to move after him.

“
Wait!
” s
napped
Angela. “Let him get to the bottom and out of your way first. You try anything, and
that pretty
little
girl down there
won’t be so pretty anymore.”

We waited a beat. “Okay
.
”
S
he waved us forward with the gun.

Stone waved me ahead of him.
I was one step from the bottom when the boat lurched just a little
more than it had on the previous wave
,
and
he
came crashing down on top of me.
We fell to the cabin deck with him on top, bruising me to breathlessness.

A bare millisecond after we landed and were still, he coughed softly and sighed a little bit.
I strained
in shock,
but I couldn’t see his face. Then
I heard a loud click and Phil was standing, legs low and spread apart
to brace against the roll of the boat
, his gun about one foot from Tony’s head. I couldn’t see Angela because Stone was on top of me, but I heard the barely controlled rage in her voice.

“Do you have a death wish?”

Stone lay still on top of me. “I lost my balance is all,” he mumbled. He coughed softly again, but didn’t move.

“Get up,” said Angela.

Slowly, with what seemed a great deal of trouble, Stone got himself off me, but not with
out
pushing and poking me and using me as if I was some kind footstool to assist him. My breath began to come back. I rolled over onto my hands and knees, and then sat down with my back against the galley wall. Stone clambered to his feet and Phil grabbed his arm, shoving
him
into the straight settee on the forward port side.

“Now you,” said Angela, who was down in the cabin. The door behind her was shut. I got up slowly, making a show of feeling my aches and bruises.
“To the other settee.” She gestured to the starboard U-shaped bench that went around the eating table. “Hands on the table, always visible,” she said. I put my hands on the table and sat down with my back to the forward bulkhead, facing the stern. Jasmine was standing next to me, her hands on either side of the great
steel
mast-pole, secured by plastic cable-tie type handcuffs.