3
By midnight, he’d been dealt his deuce.
The ship had pitched and rolled in a brawl with the sea. Hank had gripped the rim of the lifeboat at least a hundred times, cursing every time. After an endless hour of bad weather, the wind stopped howling as suddenly as it had all begun, and the sea grew calm.
He lay back in the boat and listened. He could hear the crew rushing on the deck to secure things. He heard their laughter and a few bawdy jokes, the sailors’ way of dealing with the aftermath of fear. Soon it was calm and quiet again, so he closed his eyes.
He awakened with a start, his pulse racing like someone in the throes of a too-real nightmare. He jerked up, fist swinging. An old reflex. His fist connected with the tarp, and he stared at it for a disoriented second. He rubbed a hand over his face, then shook his head. He remembered where he was.
He listened again, his senses alert. There was nothing. He didn’t know how long he’d slept. It felt as if it had been only a few minutes, but it could have been a few hours.
He lay back on the life vests, his hands still clammy, his pulse still racing. Uneasy. The air was absolutely still. Absolutely silent. Yet he was as tense as he had been in prison.
With his next breath came a deafening blast. The whole ship shook. Hank swore. He’d heard a steam engine blow before. He knew that sound.
The ship’s bow shot upward. It seemed to freeze for an agonizing instant, then its steel hull slapped back into the water. Momentum slammed him against the bottom of the lifeboat.
There was a loud rumble, as if the deckload in the bowels of the hold had shifted. The ship lurched.
He could hear the shouts of the crew. He swore when their words sunk in. The hold cargo had shifted and thrown the ship off balance. Then he heard the distinctive, echoing sound of water rushing inside the hold.
He pulled at the tarp snaps.
The ship listed again suddenly. Too suddenly. The lifeboat snapped from its winch and fell through the air.
Down... Down.
Christ!he thought, and instinct kicked in. He quickly curled into a ball.
The lifeboat hit the water. Right side up. He slammed upward into the canvas tarp. Some of the snaps popped free, but the tarp kept him from flying out.
The lifeboat shifted on a swell. He gripped the rim, jerked loose the tarp snaps, then sat up, shoving the tarp out of his way. He looked at the steamer.
Flames shot like rockets into the night sky. There was a burning hole where the engine room had been. The seams of the ship cracked open a few feet, and water rushed inside.
His lifeboat rocked against barrels that had fallen from the deck. Hank struggled into one of the life vests and clipped it together.
There were screams and shouts and a horrific howling noise from the fire.
He looked up.
A hollow steel echo belched from within the bowels of the ship, and it rolled heavily toward its port side. Smoke coughed from the stacks. Men shouted and scurried like rats while debris fell into the sea.
Then he saw her: the blonde. Stranded on a small part of the port deck that hadn’t blown apart. She hugged what was left of the rail. To her right was a gaping hole filled with flames; to her left, a few feet of deck and nothing.
He grabbed another life vest and dove into the sea. A second later he was swimming toward her. The water all around him rippled an orange color, an eerie reflection of the ship’s flames. He could smell the fire and the oil and the black taste of coal.
The steamer groaned and slipped lower.
He was only a hundred feet away. The ship had listed to almost a forty-five-degree angle over the water.
The woman wore a dark coat and had one leg hitched over the lower bar of the ship’s rail. Her arm was wrapped under and over the upper rail so that she was half sitting on the lower rail, clinging to it and using it to keep her from falling into the sea.
By the time he was in shouting range, the ship had shifted again lower, and the main deck and its railing were barely fifteen feet above sea level.
“Jump!” he bellowed, treading water and gripping the other life jacket.
She whipped her head around.
