“Thanks anyway, but I really…”
Roberto shrieked. Tuck jumped back. Kimi said, “Roberto say he want to go on boat with you. How far is island?”
Tucker couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. He hadn’t really decided he would go by boat. “It’s called Alualu. It’s about two hundred and fifty miles north of here.”
“No problem,” Kimi said without hesitation. “My father was great navigator. He teach me everything. I take you to island and maybe we have party too. You have money?”
Tuck nodded.
“You wait over there in shade. We be right back.” Kimi turned and wiggled away. Tucker tried not to watch him walk. He was feeling sick to his stomach. He walked to a grove of palm trees that grew along the harbor and sat down to wait.
Kimi piloted the eighteen-foot fiberglass skiff out of a shantytown built over the water, across the harbor, to a dock in front of the marina restaurant. Roberto had unfolded his wings and was crawl
ing spiderlike over Kimi’s head and back, looking for a comfortable spot to get out of the light.
Tucker walked to the dock and looked at the boat, then out past the harbor, where waves were crashing on the reef, then back at the little boat. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but he was sure this wasn’t it. Something bigger, maybe a cabin cruiser, with twin diesels and a big wheelhouse with some radar stuff spinning on the top—a modest but well-stocked wet bar, perhaps.
“I got you boat!” Kimi said. “You give me money now, I go get gas and look at map.”
Tucker didn’t budge. The engine was a forty-horse Yamaha out-board. A rubber tube ran from the motor to a gas tank that took up nearly all the space between the two seats. Tuck guessed it would hold at least a hundred gallons of fuel, maybe more. “Are you sure this thing has the range to make it out there?”
“No problem. Give me money for gas. Five hundred dollar.”
“You’re insane!”
“Gas very expensive here.”
“You’re insane and your bat’s glasses are crooked.”
“I have to pay man for boat. The rest is for pilot. You buy water, flashlight, and two mango, two papaya for Roberto, and two box Pop Tarts for Kimi. Strawberry.”
Tucker felt he was being hustled. “For five hundred dollars you can get your own mangoes and Pop Tarts.”
“Okay, bye-bye.” Kimi said. “Say bye-bye to cheap sweaty American, Roberto.” Kimi moved Roberto onto his shoulders and pulled the cord to start the engine.
Tuck imagined himself stuck on Yap for another two weeks. “No, wait!” He unclipped the flap of his pack and dug inside.
Kimi killed the outboard, turned, and grinned. There was lipstick on his teeth. “Money, please.”
Tuck handed down a stack of bills. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t have a choice. Actually, not having a choice made it a little easier. “Are we going to leave right away?”
“We go through reef before dark so we no smash up and drown. After that it better to go in dark. Go by stars.”
Smash up? “Shouldn’t we call for weather?”
Kimi laughed. “You smell storm? See storm in sky?”
Tuck looked around. Except for a few mushroom-shaped clouds beyond the reef, it was clear. He smelled only tropical flowers on the breeze and something skunky rising up from his armpits. “No.”
“Meet me here in half hour.” Kimi started the motor and putted off across the harbor toward a big tank with the Mobil logo stenciled on the side.
Tuck walked to the store and bought the supplies, then found the telecom center a few doors down and sent a handwritten fax to the doctor on Alualu to let him know that his new pilot was on the way.
He was waiting at the dock when Kimi returned in the skiff, his wig tied down with a red chiffon scarf. Roberto wore a smaller scarf with holes cut for his ears. Strangely, the scarf, in conjunction with the sunglasses, made Roberto look a little like Diana Ross. They say there is a finite number of faces in the world…
Tucker threw the heavy pack into the front of the boat, then climbed in and sat down in front of the enormous gas tank. Kimi threw the transmis-sion lever on the motor, twisted the hand grip, and piloted the skiff out into the harbor toward the reef.
Kimi steered the boat out of the deep green of the harbor to the turquoise water of the channel. Tuck could see the reef, tan and red coral, just a few feet below the surface at the edge of the channel. He spotted small fish darting around great heads of brain coral. They were more like streaks of color than animals, and as one disappeared another appeared in the line of sight. A few long, slender trumpet fish, looking as if they had been forged from silver, swam adjacent to the boat, then turned and cruised into the reef.
They passed the edge of the reef and into the open sea with only a slight bump into the first few swells. Kimi cranked up the motor and the skiff lifted and rode across the tops of the waves, bucking and dropping a gentle six inches, thumping out a drumbeat as counterpoint to the whining out-board. Tucker relaxed and leaned back as Kimi skirted the reef, traveling toward the setting sun until he cleared the island and could make the turn north to Alualu.
For the first time since the crash, Tucker felt good, felt as if he was on his way to something better. He’d made a decision and acted on it and in eighteen hours he would be ready to start his new job. He’d be a pilot again, making good money, flying a great aircraft. And with some healing, he’d be a man again too.
A quarter mile from Yap, Kimi made a gradual turn that put the sun at their left shoulders. Tuck watched the sun bubble into the ocean. Columns of vertical cumulus clouds turned to cones of pink cotton candy, then as the sun became a red wafer on the horizon, they turned candy-apple red, with purple rays reaching out of them
like searchlights. The water was neon over wet asphalt, blood-spattered gunmetal—colors from the cover of a detective novel where heroes drink hard and beauty is always treacherous.
Tucker searched the sky for cumulus clouds that looked like they might have aspirations to become thunderheads. How in the hell were you supposed to see weather from sea level?
Just then a swell lifted the front of the boat and slammed it down. Tuck felt his tailbone bark on the edge of the seat and was just bracing himself when another swell bucked him to the floor of the boat and a sudden gust of wind soaked him with spray.
16
And Now, the Weather Report
The High Priestess sat on the lanai watching the sunset, taking sips from a glass of chilled vodka between bites of a banana. The intercom beeped inside the house and she cocked an ear to the open window.
“Beth, can you come down to my office? This is important.” The Sorcerer was in a panic.
He’s always in a panic, she thought. She put her vodka down on the bamboo table and tossed the banana out into the sand. She padded across the teak deck, through the french doors to the intercom, and laid an elegant finger on the talk button.
“I’m on my way,” she said.
She started toward the back door of the house—a two-room bungalow fashioned from bamboo, teak, and thatch—and caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror. “Shit.” She was naked, of course, and she’d have to cut across the compound to get to the Sorcerer’s office. Life had become a lot more complicated since they had hired the guards.
She stormed into the bedroom and grabbed an oversized 49ers jersey with the sleeves cut off out of her closet, then stepped into some sandals and headed out the back door. She wasn’t really dressed, but it might keep the Sorcerer off her back and the ninjas off her front.
The compound consisted of half a dozen buildings spread over a three-acre clearing covered with white coral gravel and concrete and surrounded by a twelve-foot chain-link fence topped with razor wire. At the front of the compound was a pier and a small beach that led to the only channel through the reef. At the back a new