Riptide (44 page)

The lobsterman hesitated. “I’d sure feel better if you came in now. You can fight them another day, but you can’t fight the
ocean.”

Clay waved his hand. “Maybe I’ll land on the island, talk to Neidelman myself…” He stopped, hiding his face as he pretended
to busy himself about the boat.

Smith gazed at him for a moment with creased, worried eyes. Clay wasn’t much of a seaman. But telling a man what to do with
his boat was an unforgivable offense. Besides, Smith could see something in the Reverend’s face, a sudden uncaring recklessness,
that told him anything he said would be useless.

He slapped the gunwale of Clay’s boat. “I guess we’d better shove off, then. I’ll be monitoring the ten point five channel,
case you need help.”

Clay hugged the lee of the
Cerberus,
engine idling, and stared as the remaining boats headed into the heaving sea, the sound of their diesels rising and falling
on the wind. He pulled his slicker tighter and tried to hold himself steady against the deck. Twenty yards away, the curving
white hull of the
Cerberus
rose up, rock solid in the water, the swell sliding noiselessly past.

Clay mechanically checked his boat. The bilge pumps were running smoothly, jetting fine streams of water over the side; the
engine was purring nicely, and he still had plenty of diesel fuel. Now that it had come to this—now that he was alone, the
Almighty his sole companion—he felt an odd sense of comfort. Perhaps it was a sin of presumption to expect so much from the
people of Stormhaven. He couldn’t rely on them, but he could rely on himself.

He would wait a little before heading toward Ragged Island. He had boat and time enough. All the time in the world.

He watched the remains of the fleet head back toward Stormhaven harbor, his arms braced hard upon the helm. Soon, they were
nothing but distant, ghostly shapes against a sodden background of gray.

He did not see the Thalassa launch that pulled away from the island, pitching and yawing, the outboard cavitating with each
plunge as it struggled toward the boarding hatch on the far side of the
Cerberus.

D
onny Truitt lay on the sofa, breathing more calmly now that the one-milligram IM dose of lorazepam had started to take effect.
He stared at the ceiling, blinking patiently, while Hatch examined him. Bonterre and the professor had retreated to the kitchen,
where they were talking in hushed tones.

“Donny, listen to me,” Hatch said. “When did the symptoms begin to show?”

“About a week ago,” Truitt replied miserably. “I didn’t think anything of it. I started waking up nauseated. Lost my breakfast
a couple of times. Then this rash thing appeared on my chest.”

“What did it look like?”

“Red splotches at first. Then it got kind of bumpy. My neck started to hurt, too. On the sides, like. And I started noticing
hair in my comb. First just a little, but now it’s like I could pull it all out. But there’s never been a touch of baldness
in my family; we’ve always been buried with a full head of hair. Honest to God, Mally, I don’t know how my wife’d take it
if I went bald.”

“Don’t worry. It’s not male pattern baldness. Once we figure out what’s wrong and take care of it, it’ll grow back.”

“I sure as hell hope so,” said Truitt. “I got off the midnight shift last night and went straight to bed, but I only felt
worse in the morning. Never been to a doctor before. But I thought, hell, you’re a friend, right? It wasn’t like going to
a clinic or something.”

“Anything else I should know about?” Hatch asked.

Donny grew suddenly embarrassed. “Well, my—it kind of hurts around my hind end. There’s sores back there, or something.”

“Roll to one side,” Hatch said. “I’ll take a look.”

A few minutes later, Hatch sat by himself in the dining room. He had called an ambulance from the hospital, but it would take
at least another fifteen minutes to arrive. And then there would be the problem of getting Donny into it. A rural Mainer,
Truitt had a horror of going to the doctor, and an even greater horror of the hospital.

Some of his symptoms were similar to what other crew members had complained of: apathy, nausea. But, as with the others, there
were symptoms Donny presented that were maddeningly unique. Hatch reached for his battered copy of the Merck manual. A few
minutes of study gave him a de-pressingly easy working diagnosis: Donny was suffering from chronic granulomatous disease.
The widespread granular lesions of the skin, the suppurative lymph nodes, the all-too-obviously painful perianal abscesses
made diagnosis almost unavoidable.
But CGD is usually inherited,
Hatch thought to himself.
An inability of the white blood cells to kill bacteria. Why would it be showing up only now?

Putting the book down, he walked back into the living room. “Donny,” he said, “let me take another look at your scalp. I want
to see if the hair is coming out in clean patches.”

“Any cleaner, and I’d be Yul Brynner.” Truitt touched his head with his hand, gingerly, and as he did so Hatch noticed an
ugly cut he hadn’t seen before.

“Lower your hand a moment.” He rolled up Truitt’s sleeve and examined the man’s wrist. “What’s this?”

“Nothing. Just a scratch I got in the Pit.”

“It needs to be cleaned.” Hatch reached for his bag, rummaged inside, irrigated the cut with saline solution and Be-tadine,
then smeared on some topical antibacterial ointment. “How did this happen?”

“Got cut by a sharp edge of titanium, setting that fancy ladder thing into the Pit.”

Hatch looked up, startled. “That was over a week ago. This wound looks fresh.”

“Don’t I know it. Damn thing keeps opening up. The missus puts liniment on it every night, I swear.”

Hatch took a closer look at it. “Not infected,” he said. Then: “How are your teeth?”

“Funny you should mention it. Just the other day, I noticed one of my buck teeth was a bit loose. Getting old, I guess.”

Hair loss, tooth loss, cessation of the healing process. Just like the pirates.
The pirates had other, unrelated diseases. But they all had those three things in common. As did some of the digging crew.

Hatch shook his head. They were all classic symptoms of scurvy. But all the other exotic symptoms made scurvy impossible.
And yet something about it all was damnably familiar.
Like the professor said, forget the other diseases, subtract them all, and see what’s left. Abnormal white blood cell count.
Hair loss, tooth loss, cessation of the healing process, nausea, weakness, apathy…

Suddenly, it became overwhelmingly clear.

Hatch stood up quickly.

“Oh, Jesus—” he began.

As the pieces flew into place he stood, thunderstruck, horrified at the implications.

“Excuse me a minute,” he said to Truitt, pulling the blanket up and turning away. He looked at his watch: seven o’clock. Just
a couple of hours until Neidelman reached the treasure chamber.

Hatch took a few deep breaths, waiting for a good ground of control to settle beneath his feet. Then he went to the phone
and dialed the number for the island’s automated cellular routing center.

It was down.

“Shit,” he muttered to himself.

Reaching into his medical bag, he pulled out the emergency radio communicator. All Thalassa channels were awash in static.

He paused a minute, thinking quickly, trying to sort out his options. Just as quickly, he realized there was only one.

He stepped into the kitchen. The professor had spread out a dozen arrowheads on the kitchen table and was describing coastal
Indian sites to Bonterre. She looked up excitedly, but her face fell when she saw Hatch.

“Isobel,” he said in a low voice, “I have to go to the island. Will you make sure Donny gets on the ambulance and goes to
the hospital?”

“Going to the island?” Bonterre cried. “Are you mad?”

“No time to explain,” Hatch said on his way to the hall closet. Behind him, he could hear the rustle of chairs being pushed
back as Bonterre and the professor rose to follow him. Opening the closet door, he pulled out two woolen sweaters and began
shrugging into them.

“Malin—”

“Sorry, Isobel. I’ll explain later.”

“I will come with you.”

“Forget it,” Hatch said. “Too dangerous. Anyway, you have to stay here and see that Donny gets to the hospital.”

“I ain’t going to no hospital,” rose the voice from the sofa.

“See what I mean?” Hatch pulled on his oilskin and stuffed a sou’wester into one pocket.

“No. I know the sea. It will take two to get across in this weather, and you know it.” Bonterre began pulling clothes out
of the closet: heavy sweaters, his father’s old slicker.

“Sorry,” Hatch said, tugging into a pair of boots.

He felt a hand laid on his arm. “The lady is right,” the professor said. “I don’t know what this is all about. But I do know
you can’t steer, navigate, and land a boat in this weather by yourself. I can get Donny on the ambulance and to the hospital.”

“Did you hear me?” Donny called. “I ain’t getting in no ambulance.”

The professor turned and fixed him with a stern look. “One more word out of you and you’ll be clapped on a stretcher and strapped
down like a madman. One way or another, you
are
going.”

There was a brief pause. “Yes, sir,” Truitt answered.

The professor turned back and winked.

Hatch grabbed a flashlight and turned to look at Bonterre, her determined black eyes peering out from under an oversized yellow
sou’wester.

“She’s as capable as you are,” the professor said. “More so, if I were being honest.”

“Why do you need to do this?” Hatch asked quietly.

In answer, Bonterre slipped her hand around his elbow. “Because you are special,
monsieur le docteur.
You are special to
me.
I would never forgive myself if I stayed behind and something bad happened to you.”

Hatch paused a moment to whisper Truitt’s treatment instructions to the professor, then they raced out into the driving rain.
In the last hour the storm had picked up dramatically, and above the howling wind and lashing trees Hatch could hear the boom
of Atlantic rollers pounding the headland, so low and powerful it registered more in the gut than in the ear.

They dashed through streaming streets full of shuttered houses, lights gleaming in the premature dark. Within a minute Hatch
was drenched despite the slicker. As they neared the wharf there was an immense flash of blue light, followed immediately
by a thunderous crash. In the aftermath, Hatch could hear the pop of a transformer failing at the head of the harbor. Instantly,
the town was plunged into blackness.

They made their way along the wharf, carefully stepping down the slick gangplank to the floating dock. All the dinghies had
been lashed to the shaking structure. Pulling his knife from a pocket, Hatch cut the
Plain Jane’s
dinghy loose, and with Bonterre’s help slid it into the water.

“It might swamp with two,” said Hatch, stepping in. “I’ll come back and pick you up.”

“You had better,” Bonterre said, comic in the oversized sweater and slicker.

Not bothering to start the dinghy’s engine, Hatch ran the oars through the oarlocks and rowed out to the
Plain Jane.
The harbor waters were still relatively calm, but the wind had raised a steep chop. The dinghy was flung up and down, slapping
the troughs with unwholesome shudders. As he rowed his back to the sea, Hatch could see the outlines of the town, dim against
the dark sky. He found his eyes drawn toward the narrow, tall structure of the rectory, a wooden finger of blackness. There
was a flash of livid lightning, and in the brief glare Hatch saw, or thought he saw, Claire—dressed in a yellow skirt, one
hand on the open doorframe of the house, staring out to sea toward him—before darkness descended once again.

There was a thump as the dinghy nudged alongside his boat. Clipping it to a sternbolt, Hatch clambered aboard, primed the
engine, then said a brief prayer and cranked the starter. The
Plain Jane
sprang to life. As he drew the anchor chain up through the hawsehole, Hatch was once again grateful to have secured such
a weatherly craft.

He goosed the engine and made a passing swipe at the dock, pleased to see Bonterre leap aboard with a seaman’s agility despite
the bulky clothing. She strapped on the life jacket Hatch tossed her, then tucked her hair under the sou’wester. Hatch checked
the binnacle and turned his gaze seaward, toward the two light buoys midchannel and the peppercan bell buoy at the mouth of
the bay.

“When we hit the open ocean,” he said, “I’m going to head diagonally into the sea at half throttle. It’s going to buck like
hell, so keep hold of something. Stay close by, in case I need your help with the wheel.”

“You are foolish,” said Bonterre, nerves turning her good humor testy. “Do you think storms are found only off Maine? What
I want to know is what this insane trip is all about.”

“I’ll tell you,” Hatch said, staring out to sea. “But you’re not going to like it.”