“See it?” Blaine asked.
It was hard to miss even from a distance, because it was the only black thing in the clear blue Gulf of Mexico waters for miles around. The body was wearing some kind of black uniform. Now where had she seen that before?
“Collaborator?” she asked. “I can’t make out the pattern of the uniform from here.”
“Could be.”
“Danny said the ones in Texas wear black. That looks black to me.” She lowered the binoculars. “How far are we from the coastline?”
“Still twenty miles out. But it didn’t come from Sunport.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. It’s been steadily drifting westward — from the east.”
“Farther out to sea?”
“Uh huh.”
“Could be part of a long-range boat patrol. Maybe it capsized. What was the weather like last night?”
“Like this morning, but just a bit windier.” He paused for a moment, maybe replaying last night’s conditions in his head to be sure. “Even if Mother Nature did that, it doesn’t explain what it’s doing this far out.”
Blaine’s voice was calm, as if seeing a uniformed body floating all the way out here, with no obvious point of origin, happened every day. It didn’t, but after all she—they—had been through, this wasn’t even at the top of their WTF list.
She watched the corpse drift nearer, completely at the mercy of the waves that kept it afloat. If the Trident hadn’t been anchored, it might have washed right past them. It certainly would have last night in the dark. If she had learned one thing since being out here, it was that the vastness of the ocean was not to be underestimated.
“If there was a collaborator boat out here last night, they might have been communicating through the radio,” she said. “Did you hear anything?”
“Not a peep.”
“You were up here all night?”
“Maddie relieved me after midnight.”
She stared at the blackened body in silence for a moment, its presence triggering alarm bells. They had done everything possible to avoid running across civilization since Song Island, opting instead to keep their heads down. Sending Danny, Gaby, and Nate back out there hadn’t been easy. It had cost her a lot of sleepless nights, and she wasn’t the only one suffering.
“Speaking of the radio,” Blaine said, “not a peep from the expedition yet.”
She glanced down at her watch: 7:45 A.M. “They’ll radio in when they’re awake.”
“You think they’re still asleep?”
“Time works differently out there.” She unclipped her radio and pressed the transmit lever. “Maddie.”
“What’s up?” Maddie answered.
“You see it?”
“Hard to miss. That’s a uniform, right?”
“Looks like it. Grab Benny and bring it in.”
“Sweet,” Maddie said. “A can of SPAM for breakfast, and I get to fish a body out of the water. Best morning evah.”
Lara stood at the back of the Lower Deck, bracing against the bite of a hard wind and trying not to catch the cold that Elise and Vera had come down with a few days ago, a condition that kept the girls mostly confined to their rooms on the Main Deck. She watched Maddie deftly maneuver the inflatable boat toward them, with Benny sitting at the stern and the body they had fished out of the water just a black, indistinguishable lump around his legs. The tender was nineteen feet long, and it bounced against the active waves.
“Ah, the smell of rotting corpses in the morning,” a voice said. “Now this is the life.”
“Don’t exaggerate; it’s just one corpse,” Lara said.
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” Carly said, walking up next to her.
Her friend shaded her eyes and peered at the approaching boat. Carly’s hair had turned a darker shade of red since they had begun living on the yacht, and, like everyone else, she had developed a noticeable tan.
“By the way, when was the last time you changed clothes?” Carly asked.
Lara sighed. “Don’t start with me.”
“I’m just saying. As our fearless leader, you should at least comport yourself in a more scent-friendly manner.”
“‘Comport’?”
“What, didn’t I use it correctly?”
“Eh,” she shrugged.
“Give me a break; I didn’t have any fancy educumacallit,” Carly said. Then, “Speaking of illiterate ne’er-do-wells, when are we picking up Keo?”
Lara smiled. “He hasn’t radioed in yet.”
“That’s not good.”
“That seems to be the consensus.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions. He said they had a good place to stay last night. He could have just run into some trouble making his way to the beach this morning. Maybe a dead battery or something minor like that. The small things have a way of ballooning into big deals these days.”
“I guess he deserves the benefit of the doubt, being that he sort of saved our bacon a few times and all.”
“He said he’s been taking a lot of precautions since Galveston.”
“Undead trouble?”
“Them, too.”
“That’s K-pop for ya. Guy knows how to get himself into trouble, doesn’t he?”
“He’s not the only one.”
She owed Keo. They all did, but her in particular. In the first few weeks after Song Island, there were times when she hadn’t thought she would be able to keep it together, keep everyone together. Danny’s condition, Will’s absence, and the chaos of the gun battle had all made her doubt every decision she made. If Keo hadn’t been there…
You would have liked him, Will.
“You think it’s a good idea bringing it onboard?” Carly asked, squinting her eyes at the tender as it drew closer to the Trident’s aft. “What if it has diseases or something? The kids are already sick.”
“We’ll keep it away from the others, find out what we can, then toss it back into the ocean when we’re done.”
“Tough boat,” Carly chuckled. Then, turning around, “You kids have fun. I’m going to the bridge to wait for Danny to call in.”
“That’s a shark,” Zoe said, pointing at what was left of the man’s right leg — a stump that ended at the knee. “The missing fingers are fish nibbles. And these two—” she pointed first at the man’s cheek, then his neck “—are your department.”
“Gunshot wounds,” Lara said, looking down at the two small holes barely visible against the rest of the man’s bloated flesh, which was pretty much every part of him that wasn’t covered up by clothing.
The man wore some kind of urban assault vest, and water still drained from his empty ammo pouches long after they brought him on deck. A tactical gun belt with an empty holster sagged against his waist and thigh, the Velcro starting to lose its effectiveness after being drowned in the ocean for so long. There were two hollow slits where his eyes used to be, though he still had most of his left ear and the bridge part of his nose. There was a knee guard on his remaining leg and his black cargo pants were shredded, the tears revealing glistening pale skin on the other side.
“He’s not dressed like a collaborator,” Maddie said. “No patches or name tags.”
“Looks like a commando or something,” Benny said.
Maddie and Benny had deposited the body on the slick swimming pool area at the back of the yacht. Zoe was crouched next to it now, holding a rag against her mouth and nose. Lara wished she had been that forward thinking. The body was bloated and had been in the water long enough that the face was deformed and fleshy and looked as if it would melt off if she so much as touched it. Zoe did all of her prodding with a pair of surgical gloves.