Swimming to Catalina (Stone Barrington 4)

Twisting his wrists back and forth to gain as much slack as possible, which wasn’t much, he held the anchor and the marlin spike with one hand as he found the shackle with the other. The spike had a slot at its top, made for this very job, if not this very moment. Frantically, he got the nub of the shackle pin into the slot in the marlin spike, loosened it, then, using his fingers, quickly unscrewed the pin, yanked it out, and let go of the anchor. He stopped sinking, seeming to have achieved neutral buoyancy. Then he made an awful discovery. When he had let go of the anchor he had let go of the marlin spike, too, and there remained one shackle to defeat, the one holding the chain around his waist.

Once, as a boy, he had been sent to a socialist summer camp by his left-wing parents, and some of the camp counselors had amused themselves by binding the boys hand and foot and tossing them into the lake, just to see how long they would last before they had to be rescued. There were no rescuers at hand now, but at least camp had given Stone some experience of swimming with his hands and feet tied. He tried once to loosen the shackle pin with his fingers, then, with his lungs exploding, began to kick and paddle as best he could toward the surface. Looking up, he could see the bright moon lighting his way, but he had no idea of how deep he had gone. The going seemed painfully slow.

To take his mind off the struggle, he thought about how long he had been underwater. He figured he was at about one minute now, and the surface still seemed miles away. Air began to leak from his nostrils, and he fought to hang on to it, since there was nothing to replace it but seawater. He struggled on, wishing his mouth wasn’t taped so that he could scream, and still the surface eluded him.

He thought of himself as a porpoise and tried to propel himself faster with the kick he had been taught at camp as part of the butterfly stroke. The seconds flew like hours. And then, suddenly, he could see the moon clearly, and he was expelling air and ripping at the tape over his mouth. It came free and as he broke the surface he gulped in air, shouting as he expelled it, then gulped in more.

A minute passed before his intake of air began to catch up with his need for oxygen. He looked around and saw, in the distance, the running lights of the sports fisherman as it turned toward Catalina, then he looked for other boats. There was a fleet of them, but they were a long, long way from where he struggled to keep his head above water.

He tried floating on his back, but the chain around his waist and the weight of his sodden clothing made that impossible. The best he could do was to continue his porpoise kick and draw his taped hands through the water. He felt for the end of the tape with his tongue, thinking to pull it off his hands with his teeth, but apparently the end was inaccessible. There was nothing to do but swim for it as best he could.

He developed a kind of rhythm, a two-hands-together dog paddle which, combined with his porpoise kick, moved him through the water, though not very fast. His goal was the forest of lighted masts ahead of him—how far? Two hundred, three hundred, a thousand yards away? He thought about the strength he had left and wondered if it would be enough or if, finally, the chain would drag him down, short of the goal ahead. He remembered reading somewhere that drowning was an easy way to die, but he didn’t believe it. He thought of himself drifting along the bottom, being fed upon by the crabs and—oh, God—sharks. Sharks were nocturnal creatures, weren’t they? They were attracted by splashing at the surface, and he was doing a lot of splashing in his effort to reach something he could hang on to. He could not get used to the cold of the water; it seemed to be right at the freezing point. Why were there no chunks of ice floating in it? He could hang on to an ice floe and rest his weary muscles.

Cold water. The great white shark was a cold-water creature, wasn’t it? Didn’t fishermen catch great whites in these waters? Clips from the film Jaws flashed through his mind. A naked girl hanging desperately on to a buoy as the giant fish tore its way through her lower extremities. At least he wasn’t naked, though he knew he could swim faster if he were. He thought about kicking off his shoes, but they didn’t seem to be slowing him down, and anyway, he had paid six hundred and fifty dollars to have them made. He’d hang on to the shoes.

He thought about making love to Betty the night before, but then he recalled that Betty was responsible for his being where he was, and he thought about Barbara Tierney instead. Where was she now Drinking champagne aboard Ippolito’s yacht, anchored at Catalina? Or was the yacht really there? Or was there really a yacht? Yes, there was; he recalled the bank manager telling him that Ippolito had a veritable flotilla—was that the word he had used? Stone had already been aboard two of Ippolito’s boats, albeit briefly.

He tried a sidestroke but began sinking, so he went back to his crippled dog paddle. There was no way to rest—the chain prevented that—so he slogged on, stroke after stroke, kick after kick, gulp after gulp of air, on and on into the night. At this rate he might miss Catalina entirely and continue on toward Hawaii.

The lights were closer now, but not that much closer, and he was fading. His strokes were getting shorter and slower, and nothing his brain could say to his muscles would make them work better or longer. Thank God there isn’t a sea running, he thought; I’d be dead by now. He thought about dying and discovered that he wasn’t ready to do it. The thought gave him new strength, but not much; you couldn’t call it a second wind, hardly that. He thought about Arrington and the child she carried inside her. Was it his? If he died tonight, would there be a son to carry on the Barrington name, such as it was? No, he would carry on the Calder name, no matter to whom he owed his DNA.

He lurched onward, but something was wrong. The mast lights were no longer visible. He turned his head and looked around; had he gotten off course? He was sure he hadn’t, so he paddled on. Then something very strange happened; he reached out in front of him with his bound hands, pulled the Pacific Ocean toward him and struck his head very hard on a very hard object.

Dazed, he put out his hands and they met the object, too; it was smooth and dark, and he couldn’t hold on to it. With new, brief strength he turned and swam parallel to it, and he came to its end. It was a small boat with a black hull, and at its stem there was the most wonderful thing: a boarding ladder. He grasped it in both hands and laid his cheek against the hull, panting and whimpering.

After a moment, he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. He shook his head. “No!” he screamed as loudly as he could, and it wasn’t very loud. The ladder unfolded in his hands and the bottom rung fell into the water as it had been designed to do, for swimmers. He got his feet on the rung, which was about a foot underwater, and tried to stand on it, but his hands slipped and he fell sideways into the water.

He had so little strength left now; he began to think that perhaps it would feel better if he just gave himself to the sea and let everything go. But he couldn’t; he had one more try in him, he was sure. He lurched toward the ladder again and got his feet on the bottom rung. Holding a higher rung with both hands, he pulled himself upward until he was standing with his knees locked. He stayed that way for a good minute, hearing the water running from his clothes, back into the sea. The next rung would be harder, since he no longer had any buoyancy.

He reached up and grabbed the stainless stee railing above him with his two hands, then, holding on for dear life, he pulled his feet up and felt for the next rung. Miraculously, he found it. The deck of the little yacht was now at the level of his knees, and he could get his arms over the top steel railing. That allowed him to pull his feet on the deck, and with his last strength, he pushed himself over the railing and fell headlong into the cockpit. Almost immediately, he was unconscious.

32

He half awoke with a start, thinking that he had heard a woman scream, then he fell back into a stupor. The boat under him moved, annoying him; he wanted to sleep, and the cradle was rocking.

“Holy shit!” a man’s voice said loudly.

Stone tried to tell him to shut up, but his voice wouldn’t work. He went back to sleep.

“Give him CPR,” a woman’s voice said.

“He doesn’t need CPR,” the man replied, “he’s breathing, and he has a pulse.”

“Why are his hands like that?” she asked.

“How the fuck should I know, Jennifer?” the man asked, exasperated.

Stone, who had been lying on his right side, tried to turn onto his back.

“He moved!” she said.

“So he can move; big deal. Go below and get my rigging knife; it’s on the chart table.”

“But he might be dangerous,” she said.

“In his present condition, he’s not dangerous to anybody,” the man replied. “Now go below and get me the knife. Jesus, he’s got a length of anchor chain shackled to him; bring me the pliers, too.”

Stone drifted off again, then he was moving, but he wasn’t doing the moving. He opened his eyes.