She was about to mount the ladder when a gasp startled her. She jerked around, boat hook at the ready.
Andy was standing there, blue eyes enormous in his white face. "Kate?" He took one faltering step forward.
"Kate! You're alive!"
She let go the ladder and leapt forward to slap one hand over his mouth. "Shut up!"
Ignoring her, he folded her in his arms and hugged her unself-consciously, his head buried in her soaking hair, muttering over and over again, "Thank God, thank God, thank God. I thought you were drowned. We all did. Thank God you weren't! How did you get back on board? When did you get back on board? Why didn't you-"
"Andy," she said, shaking him, "hush up. Dammit, I said be quiet!"
Her hissed words finally penetrated his consciousness and he pulled back to stare down at her, his expression confused.
"Never mind how, but my going overboard was no accident."
He stared down at her, his hands lax on her arms.
"It's true, dammit!" she said fiercely, her teeth beginning to chatter again. "N-Ned signaled t-to H-Harry to throw the b-boat on a sh-sharp tack wh-while hhe]-launched the pot. Th-they w-waited until I was h-hanging the b-bait jar."
"Why?" he said simply.
"Th-they're sm-smuggling dope." His face changed.
"C-cocaine. Th-they land it on A-Anua and s-sell it in D-Dutch."
His face changed again, to something older and harder.
Looking at her through narrowed eyes, he said, "What are you, really? A cop?"
She was surprised at his quickness, and immediately ashamed of her surprise. She wouldn't have liked him so much if he was just another dumb blond. "N-no."
She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to control the shudders rippling through her body. "N-never mind that now. Seth's locked in the meat freezer in the storeroom.
"What!"
"But there's still Ned and Harry. I don't think they know I'm back on board yet. I want you to lock yourself in our stateroom and stay there until I come to get you."
He stared at her. "Lock myself in our room?" He drew himself up, seeming to grow a foot and age twenty years in a single instant. When he spoke his voice was deep and certain. "I won't go to my stateroom like a good little boy, Kate. I'm not a good little boy."
"Keep your voice down!" She had pulled him against the bulkhead of the aft cabin and they crouched there together, speaking in furious whispers.
"I want to help," he said, his face stubborn.
"You want to what?"
He gave the pale imitation of a grin, but it was a grin nevertheless. " 'Not by abstention from actions does a man gain freedom, and not by mere renunciation does he attain perfection.' Lead on, MacDuff."
She swore once, and gave in. "Is Harry on the bridge?"
"He was the last time I looked."
"Where's Ned?"
"Picking up the deck."
"Okay. I'm taking this boat hook up the ladder after Harry. Can you distract Ned long enough for me to do it? Then the two of us can take him on."
The scared look was back but he said stoutly, "No problem." He rose to his feet.
"Andy!" He paused in the act of turning the corner of the cabin and looked back at her inquiringly. "Be careful, dammit. No heroics, no trying to take him yourself.
These guys are playing for keeps. They've already killed bibtwice. Once they find out you're in the know, they'll try to kill you, too."
His grin flashed and a measure of his youthful cockiness returned. "I love you, too, Kate. Even if you are a heathen and an atheist." He disappeared around the corner of the cabin before her tired mind could formulate a retort. A moment later she heard his voice. "Hey, Ned.
Something in the fo'c'sle I think you should see."
Kate could hear the bad temper in Ned's responding growl.
"No," Andy said, far too cheerfully to still be mourning Kate, "this I think you've got to see for yourself."
"It's show time," Kate muttered. "Move your ass, Shugak." As Ned was so fond of saying. She went up the ladder and slithered onto the catwalk. There was only the catwalk beneath her and the bulkhead of the cabin's second story on her right; the rest was open sky, and Kate had never felt so exposed or so vulnerable. Every time the Avilda creaked, every time the boat hook scraped against something, every time her wet clothing caught on something else and she had to pull it free, she started and froze in place and had to talk herself forward. After about a year of this she reached the portside door of the bridge.
She didn't stop to think or plan or calculate the odds; she was too far gone for that. In one smooth motion she swung the door open and, boat hook held in a loose grip in both hands in front of her, darted inside.
The bridge was empty.
So was the chart room.
She dropped like a stone to the floor of the bridge and swore helplessly and uselessly. "God damn it."
She propelled herself crablike through the opposite door and back out onto the catwalk, where she crouched, flattened up against the bulkhead and tried to think of what the hell to do next.
There was a yell from the forward deck and her head snapped around, straining anxiously to see what had happened.
The worst possible sight met her eyes. Andy in one hand, the baseball bat in the other, Ned emerged from the fo'c'sle door. Andy's face was bleeding profusely and one of his arms was bent up behind his back in a remorseless grip whose force showed clearly on his agonized face. "Harry! I got the kid! Get the bitch!"
There was a shout aft in reply, followed by the sudden pounding of rapidly moving feet. Kate took one last look at Andy's bruised and battered face and gathered herself to tackle Harry as he went by beneath her.
A miracle occurred. Ned, attention divided between hanging on to Andy and calling for backup, tripped over the raised edge of the hold and lost his balance. He dropped the bat, which clattered down to the deck and rolled out of reach. He dropped Andy, who fell to his hands and knees, his head hanging, blood dripping from it to the deck. Ned waved his arms to catch his balance.
It didn't work. The hatch cover, which Andy had apparently caught Ned in the act of replacing over the hold when Andy called him to the fo'c'sle, lay over only one corner of the opening.
Into the hold Ned went, headfirst, in a swan dive that would have earned him ten points in any Olympic competition. The hold was only half full, but it was only half full of salt water and tanner crab, and he disappeared beneath a scrabbling layer of long, spiny legs and claws.
His head reappeared immediately, spitting, coughing, his arms reaching frantically for purchase that wasn't there.
"Help! Harry! Help me! Harry!"
Kate surged to her feet. "Andy! Andy! Close the hold!
Close the hold!"
Andy, still on his hands and knees, shook his head, once, twice, and just as Kate, despairing, had decided he was too dazed to hear her or understand what she was saying, he crawled forward. He laid hands on the hatch cover, a metal lid six feet square that probably weighed more than he did. Kate could hear him grunting from where she crouched. He was a fearful sight, his face twisted into a snarl of strain, covered in congealing blood. For one awful second that seemed to last a year the hatch cover resisted, and then the Avilda, as if she knew, took a steep slide down an unexpected swell, Newton kicked in and the hatch cover slid over the hold with a resounding clang.
As the last light disappeared Ned's voice rose to a shriek, until the Avilda's hull seemed to vibrate from the sound. "Harry! Ouch shit get away from me goddam mother, fucking sonofabitch I'll kill you You cocksucking little bastard HARRY GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
Unhearing, uncaring, Andy collapsed forward on the hatch cover and Jay there. The running footsteps had ceased at Ned's first yell for help but the slide of wet leather against a slippery deck alerted Kate. She tore her attention from the forward deck and peered cautiously over the catwalk. Harry was crouched against the railing, a pistol in his hand, sighting carefully around the corner of the cabin. Terrified, Kate grabbed instinctively for the boat hook with both hands and thrust it hook first over the side of the catwalk.