even as the wave passed over the reef and collapsed upon them.
The boat rolled once, twice, three times, then tossed end over end and spun just under the surface as the wave frothed over the island. Kimi and Tuck were wound against the boat by their lifelines, beaten against the trunks of the palms, tossed and battered against the boat. For Tucker there was no up, no down, no way to know when he might take a breath of life-giving air or suck seawater and die. He held his breath until he felt as if he would explode, then was slammed between the boat and a tree and he let go.
Roberto’s wing claws cut deep furrows into Kimi’s ribs as he scrambled for air. The navigator had taken a glancing blow across the forehead as the boat rolled over him and was knocked unconscious.
Tuck felt himself pulled away from the boat, spun for a moment, then the pressure of the lifeline around his waist. He could see the lights attached to the boat, still shining, the only visual input in the sensory chaos. The boat had caught on something and he was trailing out behind it. Something bumped against his ribs and he reached for it instinctively, catching a handful of Kimi’s dress. Roberto was clinging to Kimi’s head, growling into the wind.
They had passed through the island and come out on the other side. The boat had caught on the last palm tree before they were swept out to sea again.
Tuck caught his lifeline with one hand, then wrapped his other arm around Kimi’s chest. Slowly, working against the streaming current, more like a river now that the waves had been broken by the reef and the island, he pulled them back to the boat.
The boat was afloat, but barely, held up by the Styrofoam underseats and the air trapped in the gas tank. Only an inch or two of gunwale showed above the water. Tuck crawled in, took one deep breath, then dragged the lifeless navigator in after him. Roberto scrambled on Kimi’s head to escape the sea and was almost taken by the wind. Tucker caught the giant bat by the throat and lifted him from Kimi’s head to his own back, wincing as Roberto’s claws penetrated his shirt. Then he hung the navigator over the side and began pumping the water out of his lungs.
After a few seconds, he flipped him again and administered mouth-tomouth until Kimi coughed and vomited up a stream of seawater. Tuck held his head.
“You okay?”
Kimi nodded as he sucked in painful lungfuls of air. Once he had his breath, he said, “Roberto?”
Tuck pointed to the little dog face that was looking over his shoulder.
Kimi managed a smile. “Roberto! Come.” He took the bat from Tuck’s back and held him to his chest.
They were safe, relatively; sheltered by the island from the monster swells, they had only the wind and the rain to deal with. The tarpaulin was gone. The boat was full of water, but it was afloat. Miraculously, the flashlights were still attached. Tucker could see the tree that had caught them. He fell back into the bow, hooking his armpits over the gunwales, then slipped into a state of exhausted unconsciousness that could almost be called sleep.
19
Water, Water
At first light the coconut palm that had saved them finally gave up and tipped over, releasing the boat to the sea. The outgoing tide carried the skiff and its sleeping passengers through a break in the reef to the open ocean.
Tuck, sitting chest deep in seawater in the bow, was dreaming of being lost in the desert when a flying fish smacked him in the side of the head. Startled, he reached up instinctively, as one might slap at a biting mosquito, and caught the fish in his right hand. He opened his eyes. In his mind he was still in the desert, dying of thirst, and the fact that he was now holding on to something that looked like a trout with wings seemed a cruel surrealist joke. He looked around, saw the boat, Kimi slumped in the back, ocean and sky, and nothing else—there was no land in sight.
He threw the fish at Kimi. It bounced off the navigator’s forehead and into the sea. Kimi screamed and sat up abruptly. Roberto—sunglasses akimbo—poked his head out the neck of Kimi’s dress and screeched at Tucker.
“What you do that for?” Kimi said.
“Nice piece of navigation,” Tuck said. Then he mocked Kimi’s broken English. “You smell storm? You see storm in sky?”
“Oh, you big-time pilot. Why you not check weather? What kind of dumb fuck American try to go two hundred miles in outboard, huh?”
“You told me it was no problem.”
“You paying Kimi big money. Not a problem.”
“Well, it’s a fucking problem now, isn’t it?”
Kimi stroked Roberto’s head to calm him. “Stop yelling. You scare Roberto.”
“I don’t care about Roberto. We’re half-sunk in the middle of the Pacific and we don’t have a motor. I’d say we have a problem.”
Kimi stopped ministering to Roberto and looked up. “No motor?” He turned and looked back at the empty motor board. There were marks where the clamps had raked across it as the motor pulled off in the tumble. He turned back to Tuck and grinned sheepishly. “Whoops.”
“We’re dead,” Tuck said.
Kimi looked back again where the motor should have been, just to make sure that it was still gone. “I ask that man, ‘Is motor on good?’ He say, ‘Oh yes, is clamp on very tight.’ I pay him good money and he lie. Oh, Kimi is very mad.”
Roberto barked in agreement.
“Stop it!” Tucker shouted. Roberto ducked into Kimi’s dress again. “We’ve got to get some of this water out of here. We have no motor. We can’t go anywhere. We’re adrift, lost…”
“Alive,” Kimi interrupted. “I get you out of typhoon alive and you just yell and say bad things. I quit. You get new navigator. Roberto say you mean, nasty, Chevy-driving, milk-drinking, American dog fucker.”
“I don’t drink milk,” Tuck said. Ha! Won that round.
“That what he say.”
“Roberto does not talk!”
“Not to you, dog fucker. You no…” Kimi paused in mid-rant and retrieved the coffee can, which had been tied to the boat with a string, and started furiously scooping water out of the boat. “You right. Now we bail.”
“What?” Tuck looked up to see Kimi was looking, wide-eyed, out to sea. Tuck followed his gaze to a spot twenty yards in front of the boat where a triangular fin was describing slow arcs in the swells.
“Hurry,” Kimi shouted. “He coming in.”
Tucker reached for his pack, causing the bow to dip under the water by a foot. Before he could adjust his weight to counterbalance the boat, the shark came over the gunwale, snapping its jaws like a man-eating puppet.
Tuck stood up to escape the jaws and the bow lurched deeper underwater. The shark slid into the boat as Tuck went backward over the side.
Fear bolted through his body as if the water had been electrified.
He wanted to move in all directions at once. He kicked hard and came up a few feet from the boat to see the shark slide back into the water.
“Get in boat!” Kimi screamed. He was standing with his feet wide, trying to keep the boat from capsizing.
Tuck kicked so hard that he raised out of the water to the waist, then he fell toward the boat, catching the gunwale with one hand. Kimi shifted his weight to counterbalance and Tuck pulled himself in just as something hit his foot. He jerked his foot so hard he nearly went out of the boat on the opposite side, then he twisted in time to see the shark sliding down into the water with his shoe in its mouth.
“Behind you!” Kimi screamed.