“WE HAVE A LITTLE PROBLEM,” Connor said quietly.
“You mean besides the bullet hole in your side?” Paige asked.
“I’m all right. The bullet zipped right through the flesh. It’s just bleeding a little.”
“Then what?”
“I think those bastards managed to hit the fuel tank. We should still have almost half a tank left.”
Her eyes flew across the array of gauges and lights in the cockpit. The fuel gauge was just above empty. “How far can we get?”
“Not far enough, I’m afraid. The good news is that we can land in the ocean without a problem. The bad news is that we’re stuck there until someone comes along to rescue us.”
“What about the radio? We can radio for help.”
“They removed the handset from the radio.” Connor pointed to where the handset should have been. “My guess is they’ve disabled the GPS, too.”
“What do we do?”
“When we run out of fuel, which will be soon, I’ll land in the ocean and we’ll wait for someone to come by and rescue us. The plane will be fine on the ocean as long as we don’t encounter any rough seas, and that’s not likely in the gulf unless there’s a storm.”
“How far are we from Florida?” she asked.
“About eighty miles from the gulf coast. The good news is that we’re well past Cuba.”
Paige shuddered. She hadn’t even thought of that. She stepped into the rear of the plane and explained the situation to the group.
Just a few minutes after she returned to her seat the plane’s engine coughed as it used up the last drops of fuel. The group had taken the news of their impending sea landing fairly well. Probably because being off Hell Island and away from the Hunters made them feel they could survive anything. That, and the fact that Paige hadn’t told them about the damaged GPS. Connor glided the plane down to the sea, doing exceptionally well for a man with a bullet hole in his side.
“Hang on, this is going to be a little rough,” Connor said. Paige wasn’t about to complain, no matter how rough it was. She had already come to the conclusion that if Connor couldn’t fly the plane, she was going to have to do it. Any landing he made had to be better than what she would do.
When the pontoons hit the water, Paige heard thumps and a couple of muffled groans from the back. She got tossed around a bit and Connor was hanging onto the throttle, leaning to one side. As the plane slowed, he slumped over the wheel, and she saw that he’d bled more than he’d admitted.
“Connor!” She put her hand on his side, and he groaned in pain. Her fingers were sticky with his blood. “Ty, clear a place for Connor to lie down back there.”
Paige pulled up his shirt. The bullet had been slowed by plowing through all the stuff in the bag before it went into his side. But Connor was wrong about it having passed through. There was no exit wound. The bullet was still lodged in his flesh.
Ty came up to help her get Connor to the rear of the plane and laid him down.
Paige pulled a shirt from her backpack and pressed it against his side, ignoring Connor’s groan at the pressure.
“Give me your belt,” she instructed Alex. “Then lift him. Gently.”
Alex removed the belt and handed it to her, then placed his hands under Connor’s shoulders and lifted. Paige slipped the belt under his back and buckled it so that it held the bandage in place. Connor closed his eyes, and his mouth thinned into a tight line, but he didn’t make a sound. Alex lowered him back to the floor.
“Just try to rest. The less you move, the less you’ll bleed.” Paige brushed the hair off his forehead and blinked back the tears stinging her eyes.
The sun was still well above the horizon, and she hoped a ship would come by or a plane would fly over and see them before dark. They had no food, no water. And she was praying they weren’t drifting toward Cuba.
Connor had fallen asleep. Or passed out from the pain and loss of blood. Paige shoved herself into the seat closest to him and leaned her head back. At least the Hunters couldn’t use their boat to find them. She dozed off comforting herself with the thought that the Hunters were stuck on their private island until the police came for them.
Paige jerked awake some time later. Checking her watch, she saw that she had been asleep for two hours. Everyone else had fallen asleep, too. Great. She hadn’t even set a watch or told everyone what to do if a plane or ship happened to come by. She leaned over and looked at Connor’s bandage, relieved to find that the bleeding had slowed considerably.
“Hey, everyone, wake up. We need to talk.” Paige clapped her hands
“What?” Aleisha lifted her head from Alex’s shoulder.
“What’s up, boss?” Ty asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Yo, I’m awake,” Nick called.
“We need to go over some procedures,” Paige said. “If a ship goes by, we need to flag it down. If they aren’t looking in our direction, they might not see us. Same for a plane. Lots of people fly to Mexico, and some of the islands in small planes and they could spot us too.”
“We need flares,” Ty said.
“Flares would be good,” Paige agreed. “Nick, check around back there and see if you can find any kind of emergency equipment.”
“Not much back here. Wait, there’s a couple of metal boxes.”
“Now, I know we’re all exhausted. But we need to set up a watch schedule. We don’t want to be asleep if a boat passes by.”
“Hey, I found some flares. Not many, though,” Nick said.
“How many?” Paige asked.
“Three. No, wait, four,” Nick answered.
“That’s enough. All we have to do is get someone’s attention.”
“What if they don’t stop?” Ty asked.
“There’s an unspoken maritime rule,” Paige told them. “If someone’s in trouble, anyone who can goes to help.”
“Who has first watch?” Ty asked.
“I’ll take first watch. We’ll go an hour at a time. Otherwise, we might get bored and fall asleep, or not notice something.”
“Hey, there’re sharks in the water!” Aleisha had her face pressed up against the window on her side of the plane.
“Great Whites?” Nick asked, lunging across the cabin, causing the plane to rock. “Oh, sorry.”
“I don’t think there are Great Whites in this area,” Paige said, suppressing a shudder. Sharks were fascinating and intriguing creatures. At Sea World. At the aquarium. On the nature channel. Up close and personal, she had no use for them.
“What’s that?” Paige asked, cocking an ear.
“A plane?” Ty suggested.
They almost fell over each other trying to get to the front of the plane.
“Stay seated,” she told them. They all sat down. “Ty, go up to the front and take a look.” The noise woke Connor, and he tried to sit up. Paige put a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t move. We think there might be a plane.” She stepped over him and joined Ty in the cockpit. She couldn’t see much of the sky through the windshield. Ty wrenched the door open, and they both stuck their heads out craning their necks to see above them.
A plane!
“Nick, get those flares up here. Now!” Paige yelled.
A moment later, Nick handed her a flare, and Ty pulled a lighter from his pocket. Paige smiled when she saw that it was the kind of lighter that would stay lit in a high wind. She held a flare to the flame until it caught, then stuck it out the door and let the orange smoke drift upward. They all watched as the plane continued on course, headed west.
There were groans when they realized that the plane hadn’t seen the signal. Then it banked to the left and turned around again. They all whooped and cheered.
Paige watched the plane drop down. For a better look? The plane was getting closer and closer. As it passed over them again, a door opened and a man stood braced in the doorway. Wade Culver. And he held a rifle.
Bullets sprayed, breaking a couple of windows. Paige heard Aleisha screaming, Connor moaning, and Alex’s soft voice trying to calm Aleisha down.
The plane banked and came over them again. She and Ty ran for the rear of the plane where there was more protection as gunfire rained down again. When the plane passed, she peeked out the open door.
Both of the pontoons had been hit.
They were taking on water. Great. Now they were stranded at sea on a plane that was sinking. At least the gunfire seemed to have dispersed the sharks. But how long would they be gone? Alex and Aleisha both had open wounds and Connor was still bleeding. Paige looked down at him. He was unconscious again. She sent up a little prayer and tacked on one for the rest of them, then turned back to the group.
“What do we have that floats?” Paige asked. Everyone looked in their packs and around the cabin. Paige remembered that she had her Mae West in her backpack. She pulled it out, blew it up, and strapped it around Connor. He moaned but didn’t awake. She had to do something about his bleeding. The nylon tarp was neatly folded at the bottom of her backpack, a roll of duct tape on top of it. The tarp was waterproof. Waterproof had to be blood proof, didn’t it?
Paige used her knife to cut off a square of the tarp, padded Connor’s injury with another shirt, and placed the nylon over it. She ripped off lengths of duct tape and placed them over the nylon tarp and makeshift bandage, making sure the entire thing was covered with duct tape. That was going to be a bitch to get off, and Paige didn’t envy him the loss of hair and skin.
“Hey, the seat cushions look like they’ll float,” Nick said as he ripped one off a seat. And she had thought that had always been a joke.
Paige glanced out the window. At least they weren’t sinking fast. Still, she figured they had less than an hour before they’d have to leave the plane. And it would be dark soon. The sun was already close to the horizon.
Wasn’t that just perfect? Floating around a shark-infested ocean at night with three members of the team bleeding.
“Alex, Aleisha, I want you to pad your wounds with anything you can find, then cover them with a piece of this tarp and wrap it all in duct tape.”
Aleisha looked questioningly at Paige, and knowledge dawned in her dark brown eyes. She took the knife from Paige and cut off a large square of tarp, then handed the knife to Alex.
“Connor?” Paige lightly slapped his cheeks.
“Huh?” His head rolled from one side to the other.
“Connor, you gotta wake up now.”
“Yeah.” His head lolled to the side.
“Connor, damn it! The plane is sinking. You have to wake up!”
“What? The plane?” Connor struggled to sit up, wincing against the pain. “The plane is sinking? How?”
“No time to explain. We have about another thirty minutes before we go under. I wrapped your wound.” Paige hesitated, then decided she needed to let him know the situation. “There were sharks out there not long ago. And it’s going to be dark soon.”
“Great,” he said and leaned back against her. “How’s the rest of the group?”
“They’re good. Everyone is fine.” Except her. Paige wanted to cry with frustration. How the hell was she going to keep them all together in the ocean at night and away from the sharks?
“Hey, you hear that?” Nick yelled from the door of the plane. “It’s a boat!”
“Get the flares!” Paige yelled. The sun was setting, and she had no faith that they’d see the plane without them. Ty grabbed the flares and passed them to Aleisha who ran the short distance to Nick.
“Light! I need a light!” Nick yelled. Ty leapt over Connor and Paige, digging his lighter out of his shorts pocket. Paige prayed.
“Damn!” Nick cursed.
“What?” Paige demanded.
“Nick just dropped one of the flares. It’s all right, we still have two left.”
“Get those flares lit!” A few seconds later she could see the lighted tip and orange smoke through the cabin windows. She could also see that they were close to sea level. The waves broke against the side of the plane, water sloshing into the broken windows, which was just making them sink faster.
They all waited, listening to the sound of the boat’s motor, wanting to believe that it was getting closer.
Paige saw the light and smoke of the second flare and sent up another prayer with it. Connor struggled to get to his feet. She threw his arm over her shoulder and leveraged him up. Damn, he was big and holding up his weight the twelve feet to the door wasn’t easy. Paige stumbled under his weight and lowered him onto a seat.
“Just stay here for a minute. There’s a boat out there.” She looked out the window as another flare lit up the darkening sky.
They were answering! The boat had seen them and recognized that they were in trouble.
“It’s going to be all right,” Paige told Connor. “The boat sees us. They lit a flare in answer to ours.”
“Thank God,” Connor said.
The weakness of his voice worried her. She had no idea how much blood he’d lost, but from the looks of his shirt it was significant.
“I’m going to go talk to the people on the boat. I’ll be right back.”
Alex was standing half outside the cockpit, one foot on a pontoon, talking in Spanish to the men on the boat. The pontoons were already several inches under water.
“I told him we have an injured person who can’t hold onto a rope. They’re rigging up a fishing net to bring him over.”
“I want to get Connor off first, then you and Aleisha.”
“I can wait,” Alex insisted.
Paige shook her head. “I don’t want to take a chance on you or Aleisha falling into the water. You’re both bleeding, and I’m not sure the nylon and tape will keep the scent of the blood away from the sharks.”
“Good point,” Alex agreed.
“Ty, go help Connor get up here,” she instructed.
The men on the boat had attached a small fishing net to a rope, and swung it over to the plane. Paige caught it and hauled it in just as Ty half carried and half dragged Connor into the cockpit. His side was soaked with blood again, but there was nothing she could do about it. Ty and Paige got Connor into the fishing net and out onto the pontoon. The boat had pulled alongside the plane so there were only a few feet between them.
Alex spoke to the fishermen again in Spanish and they pulled on the rope until it was taut. Paige could see that Connor was going to slam into the side of the boat when they let him go. She grabbed the bulky rope, hooked a foot into the net and pulled herself up.
“Now!” she shouted to Alex. He relayed the command to the fishermen and let go of the rope. Paige hung onto it as the net holding Connor swung out over the water. She put a leg out so he wouldn’t be jarred as much by hitting the side of the boat.
Suddenly they were dropping into the water.
“Ellos se caen! Levantelos!!” Alex yelled at the fishermen just as Paige felt her foot hit the water. The fishermen put more effort into it and lifted Paige and Connor slowly up the side of the boat. Paige ventured a glance at the water and saw that one of the sharks had returned. Probably he’d picked up the scent of the blood on Connor’s shirt.
“Alex, tell them to let me down again. I’m coming back over with the rope.”
“Stay there!” he yelled back.
“Not until everyone is over here.”
Alex said something to the men. Paige thought the words “stubborn bitch” were included in their answer, but the rope lowered, and she pushed off the side of the boat and swung over to the plane.
Next were Aleisha and Alex. With her injured shoulder, there was no way Aleisha would be able to hang on to the rope.
“I’ll go with her,” Alex said. Paige nodded and tied a loop in the bottom of the rope for him to place his good foot in. She guessed they had another ten minutes before the cockpit would start taking on water. Maybe five minutes after that they would be making buddies with the sharks. Aleisha wrapped her arms and legs around Alex and they swung out. The fishermen were more prepared this time, and the transfer went smoothly.
“You next,” Paige said to Nick. They both froze as the sound of a plane whined overhead. It passed and Nick and Paige breathed a sigh of relief when there was no gunfire. Just a plane. Not the Hunters.
Nick placed his foot in the loop and swung out. He wasn’t prepared for the encounter with the boat and slammed against the side. His foot slipped out of the loop, his hands slid down the rope, and he dropped into the water before he could catch himself.
“Hang on!” Paige yelled while Alex shouted to the fishermen in Spanish. Nick wrapped his arm around the rope and gave her a wave.
Paige saw one of the sharks swim rapidly in Nick’s direction. He screamed and Paige watched the frothing water turn red. The water around Nick churned as the other sharks moved in.
“Get him out of there!” Paige yelled to the fishermen over everyone’s screams. Alex was already giving directions to the men in Spanish. The fishermen scrambled for a better grip on the rope, yelling to each other and the sharks were denied their meal as they hauled Nick out of the sea and up the side of the boat.
Paige could see Nick’s leg was ripped and bleeding. The sharks were small, but she knew they could inflict extensive damage. Nick was pulled onto the boat, and one of the fishermen picked him up and carried him aft. Paige took a deep breath and tried to shake off her panic. She still had to get Ty and herself onto the boat.
“You next,” she told Ty. “And if you drop in that water, I’m coming in after you to beat you senseless.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Ty gave her a mock salute and a big grin.
His transfer went without a hitch and the rope swung back to Paige. The cockpit was almost knee-deep in water and the only thing keeping the sharks away was the height of the door opening. She put her foot in the loop and swung out, just inches above the ocean surface. Closer to the sharks than she really cared to be. The fishermen hauled her over the side, and Paige breathed a sigh of relief.
They had made it. They had cheated death one more time.
Damn, she hoped she wouldn’t need to again.