But the farther up the trail they went, the more it became clear to him that they would be trapped. The only way down from the towering cliff was the stairs, where they’d be in clear sight of the men on the ship. But the rest of the island would soon be engulfed in flames. There was no way out.
Shoeshine led them off the path, toward the edge of the cliff, and Shy recognized the helicopter launchpad. It was where he’d slipped and almost fallen. The four of them stood at the very edge and stared down at the water some sixty feet below, the fire already pushing up against their backs.
“What now?” Shy shouted.
Shoeshine grabbed the radio out of Marcus’s hands and the duffel bag off Shy’s shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Marcus shouted.
“I’ve got it!” Shoeshine shouted back, shoving the radio inside the duffel and zipping up. He then leaned into Shy’s ear and told him: “You make sure they follow.”
He turned and leaped over the edge, throwing the duffel out in front of him.
Carmen screamed as the three of them scrambled to the edge to watch Shoeshine falling feetfirst, arms and legs flailing, until his body exploded into the water.
“No way,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “No fucking way.”
Shy glanced at the flames surrounding them.
There was no choice.
He moved toward Marcus, holding up his hands and saying: “We don’t have to jump. We can just go back down the trail—” Then he shoved Marcus, as hard as he could, off the cliff, watched him fall screaming toward the water.
Shy took Carmen’s hand and looked at her.
Her face was contorted with fear but she nodded to him, and they both took two hurried steps toward the edge and leaped together.
In the air, Shy reached out for nothing with his arms and kicked, the air whipping past his ears and the lost feeling of weightlessness and freedom, and he saw the comb-over man falling from the ship and he saw Carmen’s bugged eyes beside him and then he smacked into the water and sank down into it, deeper and deeper, even when he fought to stop himself, and then he let his body go limp and the water wrapped its arms around him and lifted him back up toward the surface, slowly and steadily, and he fought his burning lungs, waiting until he burst back through the surface to suck in a huge breath, and then he spun around in the water, desperately, until he found Carmen staring back at him.
50
Five Knots
“Over here,” Shoeshine said, waving for them to follow him. He was in the water with the duffel bag, against the cliff.
Shy’s entire right side was numb where he’d slammed into the ocean. And his mind was numb, too. He saw Carmen and Marcus swimming up ahead of him. And he saw the sailboat with the torn sail floating off to the right. The one Carmen claimed Shoeshine had been obsessed with. It seemed impossible that he’d gotten it to the point that it could float again. But here it was.
Shoeshine was slowly climbing up the rocky cliff now, which didn’t seem like a good idea since the entire island was still engulfed in flames.
By the time Shy got to the cliff, he saw that Shoeshine was crawling toward a cave in the side of the cliff, about fifteen feet above the water. Shoeshine reached down for Carmen and helped her into the cave. Then he helped Marcus. Shy climbed up after them and Shoeshine pulled him up and in as well. Inside, the cave opened up much wider. Shoeshine walked over to a pile of life jackets, tossed one to each of them, saying: “You’re gonna need these.” They all strapped the jackets on. Then Shoeshine lifted a large folded blanket.
“What are we doing?” Carmen said.
“Getting on that sailboat out there,” Shoeshine said.
Shy was shivering as he turned to the water again.
“We can’t!” Marcus shouted. “The ship’s moving toward it!”
They all rushed to the cave opening and looked out, saw a ball of fire screaming through the air, toward the boat. It landed only fifteen feet away and quickly died in the water.
“They’re trying to burn it down!” Carmen shouted.
Shoeshine leaned out of the cave and shouted at the research ship: “Come on, you bastard! Just get up to five knots!”
Another fireball fell short of the boat.
Then a third.
Shy watched the ship start gaining momentum toward the boat and he watched the balls of fire continue arcing through the air toward it. One landed right next to the boat, nearly turning it on its side. The fire jumped up and set the tattered sail ablaze.
“Come on!” Shoeshine shouted. “Speed up for me!”
Above them, Shy heard the earth-shaking sound of fire sweeping over the island. He was so confused. “Why do you want it to speed up?” he said.
“I spent all afternoon rigging the damn thing. Just in case.”
Carmen slid up next to Shy to watch the ship bearing down on the helpless sailboat.
Another fireball missed, and then the research ship itself exploded in a burst of flames that shot into the sky. A second explosion followed on the back half of the ship and pieces of it blew out in every direction, some of them landing as far as the mouth of their cave.
The three of them looked at Shoeshine all bug-eyed as Shoeshine nodded calmly.
“What the hell happened?” Carmen asked.
“I rigged their own explosives to the ship’s propeller,” Shoeshine said. “Soon as it got to five knots she was gonna blow.”
“So you knew they were gonna kill everyone here?” Marcus said.
Shoeshine shook his head. “Just knew it wasn’t a research ship.” He looked out over the water, at what was left of the ship. “Didn’t set the trigger, though, until I realized they were aiming to torch the island.”
“What if we had all gotten on the ship?” Carmen asked.
“I would have disarmed it.”
They all stared at Shoeshine in awe.
“Jesus, dude,” Marcus said. “Who are you?”
“A guy who shines shoes,” Shy interjected, recalling all the times he’d asked the exact same question.
Shoeshine grinned at him and added: “May have spent some time in the military, too. Special ops.”
Shy turned with everyone else to watch the flames continue to engulf the decimated ship, lighting up the sky. And they watched the shadow of the flames on the island, flickering against the water in front of their cave.
Shoeshine pointed to the sad-looking sailboat sitting a hundred yards to the right of the burning ship. “You all ready for another swim?” he asked, tossing the duffel back to Shy.
They all nodded and Shoeshine picked up the folded blanket and let himself drop from the cave back into the water.
Shy slung the bag over his shoulder and followed right behind him.
Day 8
51 The Living
Shy awoke early the next morning on the ragged sailboat, trembling and in a mental haze. So much had happened the day before he could hardly formulate a coherent thought. And he couldn’t speak. Nobody could. He reached into the duffel and pulled out the comb-over man’s letter and read every word of it, over and over. It was so crushing, though, he had to eventually put it away and stop thinking about it. He looked around instead, taking in his surroundings.
They hadn’t gone very far over the course of the night. Only a few hundred yards away from the island. Shoeshine had stripped the tattered sail from the boat and was just starting to replace it with a different one. What Shy had thought was a blanket the night before was actually a sail the man must have been piecing together out of random scraps since landing on the island. He hadn’t finished until right before Shy awoke, like maybe he’d been up the entire night.