Then, suddenly, something grasped him by the wrist and hauled him free. Beside the killer’s head, floating in the dinghy, hanging on to the net, were Sergei Antonovich Ivanov, and Pjotr Picatel. Pjotr’s hand slapped against the monster’s white cheek.
“Dead,” he said.
They began to laugh. But Colin’s terrible fear was not lessened by the fact that he was safe. He looked down at the men, and they quietened. “Kate?” he said. He handled the word as someone handles a thing that he fears will give him pain. The Russians looked at one another, not understanding. Suddenly, agonisingly, he was certain she was dead. “Kate,” yelled Ross, as though the sound of the word, if it were loud enough, could call her back out of the depths of the ocean.
“It’s all right Colin, I’m up here.” He looked up, straining his neck. On the monster’s back, leaning against the fin where Simon had sat with the axe, she was sitting. Her feet dangled down the net. One hand raised to pull her hair back from her face. The other bent across her chest, easing her left shoulder. She was shivering convulsively, but she smiled at him. He smiled at her.
“Someone have one hell a fight!” said Pjotr, slapping the whale again, higher this time, just below where the stub of the boat-hook stood out like a bolt from its neck. He gestured to the net, the harpoons.
“Us,” said Ross. “We did it . . .”
He thought of them all then. He thought of the pilot keeping the plane aloft against all odds until he could land safely; of Hiram Preston pushing into the blizzard of fire inside the torn cargo-hold to save Kate; of old Doc Warren, legs spread, leaning forward over the harpoon gun, ready to send a silver-steel spear through anything that threatened them; of Simon, seated upon the killer’s back swinging the axe like a lunatic; of Job, of his massive strength, of his weaknesses, of his friendship, of no single thing that he had done, but all he had meant, all he had been, all he still was, somewhere. His eyes, moving up, met Kate’s again, and they smiled at each other, silent among the laughing Russians. Not needing to speak, not even needing to touch; tied even more deeply than Job had suspected.
“Just us,” he said again. “Just friends and enemies; just us and . . .” He searched for a word that would encapsulate it all, the crash, the explosion, the ice, the water, the fog, the rain, the bitterness, the strife, the nightmare, the bear, the iceberg, the walrus and the whales . . . “just we seven and the pack.”
“That is a story you must tell!” said Pjotr.
“Yes,” said Colin, “yes it is.”