By the time they were taken out onto the rear deck of the yacht, the rain was coming down in ragged torrents and the visibility was nonexistent. The ocean around the boat had been torn to ribbons, a mass of broken, spume-flecked chop and huge rolling waves that vanished in the sodden curtain of rain to break like thunder in the hidden distance. The sky overhead was a black roiling mass of clouds driven to madness.
“The robes, please,” said Adamson. They stripped them off, leaving them in their bathing suits. There was no sign of their dive vests or other equipment. The inflatable had vanished and the float plane was gone. “Follow the sound of the breakers. That’s Cay Lobos,” said Adamson, shouting to make himself heard over the sound of the storm. “ Micah, verse three, chapter three: ‘Who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the caldron.’ That’s what the coral is going to do to you, and if that’s not enough, the highest point on the island is twelve feet above sea level. During the last half dozen hurricanes in this area the storm surge was twice that. You two are about to have an unfortunate accident.”
“Why are you doing this?” Finn asked, shivering. “You have the medallion. Without it we have no proof of anything. You have what you wanted.”
“I need your silence, just as your father needed DeVaux’s silence and DeVaux needed Pedrazzi’s. The secret of the Lucifer Gospel can’t be shared.” He waved the shotgun in his hands. “Down onto the swim platform, please.” Finn looked over the side. Four steps down, the wide lip of the teak-decked swim platform jutted out from the rear of the yacht. The breaking seas curled over it in long steady sweeps. Beyond that the waves were a tangled hell. Once they went overboard they wouldn’t stand a chance.
“What if we refuse, then what?” asked Hilts.
“Then I’ll do the Lord’s work for him and blow your brains out,” answered Adamson, hefting the shotgun. “The barracuda won’t mind the mess and neither will the sharks. Up to you.” He motioned with the pump gun again. “Over you go.”
Hilts grabbed Finn by the wrist and pulled her toward him. “When we go over don’t try to stick with me and don’t try and help me if you see I’m in trouble. Take care of yourself, forget about anything else.” He turned, gave Adamson the finger and went down onto the platform. Within seconds a roller swept him off his feet and he vanished. Finn went after him and stepped down onto the platform, taking a deep lungful of air as she did so. Instantly she was swallowed by the darkness of the sea.
The first of the huge rollers pulled her down and under in a single, ice-cold moment of absolute terror. As a child she’d once been briefly caught by an undertow in the warm waters off Cancun, but she’d instantly been snatched to safety, plucked out of the water by the strong hand of her ever-vigilant father. There was no one to save her now. The deadly surge grabbed her in its watery fist and pulled her relentlessly toward the bottom.
Finally she broke free of the wave’s terrible grip and gulped in huge gasping lungfuls of air, retching seawater, feeling the tug of the next wave as she was swept forward and down, with barely enough time to take a breath before the deluge swallowed her again. Once more she was pressed down, thrown onto the reef, the rough sand and coral tearing at her skin, and once more, exhausted, she clawed her way to the surface for another retching breath.
A third wave took her, but this time instead of coral there was only sand on the sloping bottom, and she barely had to swim at all before she reached the surface. Her feet stumbled and she threw herself forward with the last of her strength, staggering as the sea sucked back from the shore of the tiny island in a rushing rip current, strong enough to bring her to her knees. She crawled, rose to her feet again and plunged on, knees buckling, in despair because she knew in some distant corner of her mind that another wave as strong as the first could still steal her life away with salvation and survival so tantalizingly near.
She staggered again in the treacherous sand that dragged at her heels and almost toppled her over. She took another step and then another, blinking in the slanting, blinding rain. Ahead, farther up the strip of shining beach, was a darker line of a few trees, fan palms and coconuts, their trunks bent away from the howling wind and the lashing rain, unripe fruit torn away, crashing away in the teeth of the storm like cannonballs. Finn’s breath came in ragged gasps and her legs were like deadweights, but at least she was free of the mad, clutching surf that broke behind her now like crashing thunder.
Struggling higher up the sandy slope she finally reached a point above the wrack and turned back to the sea, sinking down exhausted to her knees. The straps of her one-piece swimsuit were torn. She was still badly frightened, but wept with relief as she stared into the shrieking nightmare of the rising hurricane. She was alive.
Through the rain she could see the heaving broken line of frothing white that marked the reef, but nothing more. True to his word, Adamson had run before the wind and disappeared. Suddenly she felt something touch her shoulder and she turned, screaming. She whirled, heart in her throat. It was Hilts, a gash on his forehead streaming blood, his hair plastered down, grinning like a lunatic. He had survived as well.
“Misery acquaints man with strange bedfellows!” he said, yelling happily into her ear.
“What are you talking about!?”
“Adamson’s not the only one who can quote things!” Hilts yelled. “How about:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”
“The Bible?” asked Finn.
“Shakespeare,” said Hilts. “Miss Slynn’s grade-nine English class. The Tempest. Had to learn the whole damn play. First time it’s ever come in handy.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Come on,” he said. “Even Caliban knew to get in out of the storm.”
34
Finn woke to the terrible, windborne crying of the gulls and the savage echo of broken surf pounding on the reef. She vaguely recalled the night before in brief images and sensations: the pressure of the mounting wind, the monstrous sounds of nature unleashed, the harsh, pervasive slanting rain so powerful at times it almost stole her breath. The sound of water swirling at her feet. The knowledge that there was no hope left.
Instead of hope there had been the fickle randomness of storms. Late in the night and early the following day the wind had veered a mere two points in a new direction, the hurricane had shifted its wheeling carnage overhead and slipped away, and finally the waters had receded. In the cold lens of the NOAA cameras roughly twenty-three thousand miles overhead, the pinwheel of the hurricane cloud began to shred and tear.
Opening her eyes, it took her a moment to realize that she was lying just inside the entrance to the abandoned hut next to the lighthouse. The dead cat was gone and so was most of the litter. The cat’s ghost still occupied the hut with its musky, dead animal odor. The strap on her bathing suit had been repaired with a neat reef knot. There was no sign of Hilts. Finn suddenly realized that she had a splitting headache. She was also cold.
Shivering, she sat up. She looked around. Somehow the sheet-metal roof of the hut had managed to stay nailed to the rafters, and it was obvious that Adamson’s prediction about the island being covered by the storm surge had not been borne out because, thankfully, she was high and dry.
Finn stood up, still groggy, and ducked through the entrance. The sky was hammered blue, the sun a blinding disk as it rose in the east, and the sea was like liquid metal, dark lines of heavy breakers destroying themselves loudly against the line of the invisible reef.
There was a strange, unpleasant taste in the air, like hot blood on tin or what she imagined death by electrocution would smell like. She made her way down to the spot where the marram grass met the sand and dropped down, hugging her knees as she stared out to sea. She realized that she was both hungry and terribly thirsty. She heard a faint sound and turned; Hilts was approaching from down the beach, hauling what seemed to be their flotation vests behind him.