Circle of Bones - Kling Christine - Страница 8

He paused for an almost imperceptible beat before answering her. “Robert – Bob Surcouf.” He held out his left hand for her to shake.

“Something wrong with your other hand?”

He cradled it against his body and did not offer to show it to her. With a shrug, he said, “I must’ve cut it on a barnacle climbing aboard.” He smiled at her then, revealing a pair of deep dimples.

She smiled back, but didn’t say anything at first. She had cleaned her boat’s bottom back at Nelson’s Dockyard, Antigua. She knew there wasn’t a single barnacle growing anywhere on the Bonefish. Dimples or no, she needed to keep her distance from this guy. There was something about his story that didn’t track.

“Well, welcome aboard, Bob,” she said at last reaching out to shake in one of those back-handed handshakes. “I’m Maggie Riley. Most people just call me Riley.”

He couldn’t sit still. She saw the bloody footprints as he shuffled his feet across the white paint of her cockpit floor.

“Pleased to meet you, Miz Riley. You singlehanding?”

He was fishing – wanted to know if there was anyone else aboard. She considered lying but decided against it. She nodded, then reached down, turned the key and started the engine. There was only one of him, and she was confident she could handle him if she needed to. After all, he certainly wasn’t carrying any concealed weapons.

CHAPTER SIX

The Atlantic south of Bermuda

February 12, 1942

Woolsey lay sprawled out on the cold steel deck in utter darkness. The pain in his head and shoulder where he had slammed down onto the deck seemed almost to glow in the black hold. He wasn’t sure if he’d lost consciousness, or for how long, but it was several minutes before he could clear his head enough to think through the pain. The noise of his own breathing was so loud inside his head, it nearly drowned out the throb of the diesel engines. Then he sensed the change in the vibration of the steel plate that pressed against his cheek. No more idling. The screws were turning. Surcouf was heading out to sea. He felt the sour taste of panic climbing up his throat.

No. Not him. He would survive. Gohin’s words kept repeating, like a chant inside his head. A l’enfer avec toi. No. He wasn’t one of them.

In twenty-three hours, if he didn’t figure a way out of this hole, they’d all go to hell.

Woolsey pushed himself up into a sitting position, and he realized he was sucking in mouthfuls of the foul air. He crawled forward until he found steel, and banging his fists on the bulkhead, he began to shout.

“Hey! Let me out of here! Stop this boat!” He beat on the steel until his throat burned and the bones in his hands ached. He fell back on the steel deck with a sob. It was useless.

He’d hated the goddamn Surcouf since the first day he came aboard. She looked like a bloody coffin, and the few times they’d taken her below the surface, he had suffered inexplicable panic attacks, sure he was going to drown. He felt the panic welling up in him now. The cold sweat dampened his armpits, his breathing grew shallow.

Closing his eyes, he attempted to slow his breathing. He had to get himself under control. His fingers explored the rising knot on the side of his head where Gohin had frapped him with the pistol. The hair on the side of his head was matted and sticky with warm blood. Damn scalp wounds bled like mad. The smell of the blood was almost stronger than the stink of the cheese.

Through the bulkhead he heard the muffled sound of a voice on the speaker. Even if there had been a speaker inside the hold, he would not have understood a word. Stupid bloody French. When the distant voice stopped issuing orders, the hold seemed quiet in spite of the rumbling engines.

The darkness was so complete he felt the vertigo of not knowing which direction was up or where the walls were. At least, he hoped it was just the darkness and not a concussion. Control, man, think! He’d been in bad spots before this – thought he was going to die and hadn’t. He couldn’t just lie down and wait for the boom.

He’d heard about this compartment but never been inside since he came aboard. It was a cargo hold of sorts, designed originally to hold up to forty prisoners of war. Surcouf could sink some good-sized ships with those guns of hers, and she was designed to pick up the survivors afterwards, shut them all in here. They hadn’t been firing any guns this trip – or for years before for that matter. The cook stored some foodstuffs in here, but as far as Woolsey knew, Captain Lamoreaux was the only one who had a key. The Frenchie had always been a bit touchy about it when he’d asked. Woolsey had figured the Captain was using it as a sort of private wine cellar for his better stock – better than the plonk the rest of the crew got out of the tanks. That was a detail he’d once found amusing — only a French sub would have tanks designed to carry wine.

He ran his fingers in an arc across the deck on either side of him. He felt nothing but the fine grit of dirt on the cold steel. He rolled onto his hands and knees and began to crawl forward, reaching out and patting his fingertips against the steel plate ahead of him like a blind man tapping his cane. He inched forward expecting at any moment to come up against something, but he kept moving. He tried to sense where the bulkheads were, but he had no concept of the size of the compartment, nor whether there was anything in it. Odd because his personal radar usually worked better than that. The thought flashed in his head that there were no sides to this darkness, that he had fallen into some infinite black hole. He shuddered, shook his head, and told himself to stop thinking such foolishness. He kept on creeping forward.

After what seemed like a ridiculously long time, his knuckles brushed against rough wood planks. His fingers crawled over the surface and he found it to be a box, roughly two feet square. Between the slats, he felt the cool smooth surface of glass. And there was another box, and another after that. Wine. Cases of it. The captain’s private reserve.

The wooden cases were stacked one on top of another three high. He came to one spot where a single case was out of alignment, and he tried to slide it back out of his way. The thing would not budge. Heavy buggers. He went around it.

He followed the cases of wine, fairly certain he was moving aft, until, at last, he reached a bulkhead. Steadying himself with one hand on the wall, he stood. Then he slid one foot forward several inches, followed by his other foot. The hold could only have four sides, and of course, there was a door. He would find a way out of here. He had to.

He slid his foot forward again and his shoe came to a stop against something solid. It didn’t have the firmness of the cases of wine. Cheese, he thought. The stink had to be coming from somewhere. It was probably sacks of the stuff, the round ripe cheeses the Frenchies had to have on the table at every meal. He prodded at it with the toe of his shoe, but it did not move. He bent his knees and squatted down into a crouch, swinging his outstretched fingers in the cold dark air, feeling for the object in his path.

There was something about the darkness in front of him. It was denser, somehow. His radar seemed to be clicking back on.  Though he could not see anything, he sensed more than saw there was something large there on the deck. He slid his leg forward and kicked at it, a little harder this time.

“Bugger off.”

The deep, menacing voice startled him, and when he yanked his leg back, he lost his balance and toppled onto his backside.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Aboard the Bonefish

March 25, 2008

12:50 p.m.

“Thanks for picking me up. I really wasn’t sure I was gonna make it to shore.” Cole looked back at the island, his left hand at his throat, his thumb caressing the coin.