She had been looked at a little sardonically when she had insisted, her first day on board, on trying on one of the survival suits, but it was a good thing she had. It was bulky, made of a thick synthetic material that reminded her of nothing so much as woven polypropylene, with a multitude of zips and snaps and pull-tabs for an inflating collar and a buddy belt and a helicopter ring and who knew what else. She would never have been able to fumble her way into it in the dark if she hadn't done it at least once in daylight. As it was, she fought to get the right fingers into the right sections of the divided mitts and prayed the zip flap and the hood were properly fastened.
Opening the galley door, carefully muffling any sound that might carry across the water to the cursing men just now working the skiff off where it had caught on a reef, she stepped across to the railing and with great courage and no brains lowered herself over the side and into the water.
A body submerged in water loses body heat twenty-four times faster than it does in air of the same temperature. Kate's inconvenient memory produced this interesting fact at exactly the same moment the chill waters of the Bering Sea closed over her body.
Cold, cold, it was so cold. Her hands and feet, which had already taken enough abuse that night, went numb instantly. Swearing at Gault, swearing at Jack, swearing at herself, she struck out for shore, struggling to keep her head up and her face out of the water.
The Avilda was anchored half a mile offshore. The tide was almost in and the distance seemed endless. The water lapped at her chin. She alternated a breaststroke with a dog-paddle and concentrated on breathing while trying not to splash. Once her knee scraped against a rock too close to the surface, and she knew a moment of terror that the suit had been breached. Ahead of her she heard a scrap of muttered conversation, the grating sound of the skiff's hull as it was drawn up the shore, the crunch of sand beneath boots. Galvanized, she struck out for shore.
One kicking toe touched bottom, another, and she stood up and waded out, crouching in the water as long as she could so the water pouring off her would make as little noise as possible. Once on the beach, she stopped to catch her breath and listen. The sound of footsteps crunching through crusted snow floated back to her clearly on the still morning air. Trying to keep up with their pace so as to disguise the sound of her own steps, she began to walk behind them.
If Jack could see her now. This was a little different from tailing someone through the greater metropolitan area of Dutch Harbor, or downtown Anchorage, for that matter. Dripping and numb, she smiled into the darkness.
Unzipping her mitts and freeing her hands, she moved forward cautiously, feeling her way up over the lip of the beach and into the thick grass. The sound of the men's footsteps began to fade, and afraid she was going to lose them she quickened her pace. Something tripped her and she lost her balance. The heavy survival suit made her clumsy and she fell. Something caught her and held, for just a moment, before it gave way and she was tumbling, down in the dark. She hit hard, and lay, feeling bruised and shaken, staring up at a hole in the world through which she could see stars twinkling. She gave an experimental wriggle. Material rustled beneath her. Feeling around with an inquiring hand, she touched tarpaulin. She looked back up at the hole and realized why the outline of the island had looked familiar. "Anua!
We're on goddam Anua!"
At that moment she heard the sound of a distant engine, and for a single panicked moment thought the men had doubled back on her, returned to the Avilda and were leaving the island without her. She leapt to her feet, and recognized the sound of an airplane engine. Extremities numb from the cold water, body bruised from the fall, self exhausted from fighting the ice storm, all were forgotten as she yanked open the barabara's door. The sound of the airplane grew louder and Kate turned and headed for the airstrip at a smart clip, the thudding of her feet through the dry grass and snow covered by the noise of two engines on a short final. This time she didn't stumble. She was in familiar territory and she knew where she was going.
She topped the little rise and crouched immediately behind a clump of dead rye grass. A twin-engine Navaho was touching down to a landing on the hard-packed snow of the strip. Kate immediately stretched out flat on her stomach and prayed they hadn't seen her come crashing up while they were still in the air.
The Navaho bounced twice before rolling out to a stop next to the gas tank. Two men got out. The three men from the Avilda advanced to meet them. Nobody shook hands. Kate, cursing the lack of cover and the bright orange of her survival suit, strained to hear something, anything.
"Have you got it?" she thought she heard Harry say.
He was answered by a low laugh. One of the men returned to the plane and produced a suitcase. A thickset figure Kate recognized as Ned produced two suitcases of his own, shiny silver suitcases that gleamed even in the predawn light. Shiny silver suitcases so well chaperoned that she hadn't been able to lay her hands on them for the past seven days.
One man each from boat and plane went to the gas tank to connect the hose to the Navaho's wing tanks and refuel the plane. The other three squatted down on their haunches, produced flashlights and opened two of the suitcases. One was filled with a lot of something white, the other with a lot more of something green.
"Yes, " Kate hissed. She was filled with a rush of fierce triumph. "Gotcha, you sonsabitches."
Kate harbored no illusions about honor among thieves.
With leverage like this, it was only a matter of time before she got one crew member to roll over on the others and finally tell what had happened to Alcala and Brown. "Yes," she said again, her satisfaction as cold and hard as her toes presently were.
She'd seen enough, but she hesitated. If she could just wait until it got light enough to make out the Navaho's tail numbers. No. It was too risky. She had to get back to the Avilda and on board before the men. Already the suitcases were being closed. Stealthily, she rose enough to move in a kind of crouching, sideways walk, hands and feet the only things touching the ground. When she was out of sight she straightened up and ran, no mean feat in a survival suit in the dark, over clumps of rough grass and sudden drifts of snow. Her feet splashed into the water, she fell forward and struck out, suddenly terrified that she would be caught. At first she couldn't see where she was going, then the Avilda's hull swung sharply into focus and with alarm Kate realized how light it was getting. They would see her climbing aboard from shore. Fear spurred her on and she maintained a steady breaststroke, eyes fixed on the Avilda's oh-so-slowly nearing hull, ears straining for the launch of the skiff and the dip of oars in the water.
Her knee hit a rock, probably the same one that got her on the way in, she thought wearily, and began a halfhearted frog kick. For Harry Gault to have found his way through the series of killer reefs she remembered seeing, he had to have made this trip more than once.
So interesting did she find this thought that she missed her stroke and swallowed a mouthful of seawater and began to choke. A violent cough brought her knees up, a second banged her head against the hull, surprising her into swallowing another lungful of seawater and setting up another bout of hacking. A clumsy hand searched for some kind of hold on the hull, and slid off. God, she was just so tired.
"What the hell?" From a long way off, the voice was young and scared, and a little angry, too. "Kate? Kate, is that you?"