Painkiller

47

The rotors of the helicopter shot a streaming gust of wind against the quiet harbor, compressing a circular section of the ocean’s surface, the water churning, then breaking into white spray as the chopper cleared the lagoon’s edge and settled on the soft white sand of the Sainte-Anne marina. It continued to rain hard. A spotlight roved around the marina, directing its beam from one boat to the next, finding, leaving, then returning to Cooper’s Apache, the boat’s registration number highlighted in the center of the blinding white cone of light. The chopper was a UH-1N “Huey,” standard U.S. Navy issue, its olive exterior at peace with the moonless Caribbean night.

Ignoring the pounding rain, Cooper rose on the deck of his boat, hand shielding his eyes from the searchlight. Laramie emerged from the cabin door behind him wearing a pair of Cooper’s sweat pants and a T-shirt that didn’t come close to fitting. The black shirt had the words FEEL ALRIGHT emblazoned in white across her chest.

“Our ride,” Cooper said, yelling to be heard over the roar of the Huey. The two of them, he decided, had been doing too much yelling.

Laramie looked up at him. Cooper decided she looked like a very appealing wet rat.

“Nice night for one,” she yelled.

When Cooper and Laramie boarded, the Huey’s copilot turned in his seat, formed a rectangle with his hands, and confirmed that Cooper was the man they’d come for when Cooper handed him one of his identification cards. The copilot then rose and distributed a pair of wireless headsets to his passengers. Once he saw they’d put them on, he said, “Good morning, sir. Ma’am. Please take a seat and buckle up. I assume you’re aware that our instructions are to deposit you in the open ocean on a safety raft approximately fifteen miles due south of Diamond Rock. That would be the southwestern corner of this island. The rain will continue, but we expect calm seas. The trip should take approximately twenty-five minutes. I’m Lance Corporal Miller, and I’ll be conducting the drop once we reach our destination. Any questions?”

Laramie looked around the cabin. Cooper saw her doing it.

“Got any barf bags?” he said to Miller.

Miller produced a pair and nodded.

“Even I use ’em sometimes, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” Laramie said. Cooper wasn’t sure who she was talking to when she said it.

“Appreciate the lift,” Cooper said.

“No problem, sir.” Miller nodded at Laramie. “Ma’am.” He reached back, slammed the side door closed, secured its latch, and returned to his seat.

When the pilot saw that Miller had buckled himself in, he applied some fuel to the turbines and left a white sandstorm in their wake as the Huey rose out of the marina and vanished upward into the downpour.

At the drop point, the pilot let the Huey nose up and hover in a lazy circle. Laramie forcibly swallowed a few waves of nausea as the chopper settled into a stationary position thirty feet above a patch of dark sea.

Miller flipped a switch, and the interior of the cabin lit up with a pair of dull red bulbs, one on either side of them. In a flurry, Miller hauled open the Huey’s side door, released a pair of nylon safety handles, removed a yellow cube from a storage container, grasped and pulled a red tab on the yellow cube, and tossed the cube through the open door. The cube self-inflated wildly, bursting into a circular life raft six feet in diameter and floating through the thirty feet of altitude like a glow-in-the-dark parachute until it flopped lazily onto the ocean’s surface. Through the open door, Cooper saw the hard Caribbean rain popping off of the ocean’s surface in a hundred thousand pinpricks of white foam. The water’s surface was otherwise flat.

Miller hand-cranked six feet of slack from a cable system behind a small door built into the cabin, found a pair of knapsacks in a square of netting, opened them, withdrew a slicker and a harness from the first knapsack, and flipped them to Cooper. The slicker and harness landed on Cooper’s lap.

“You first, sir,” Miller said over his headset. He looked at Laramie with what was intended, and which Cooper figured she regarded, as a respectful nod. “Ma’am, rule of this procedure is the reverse of a rescue operation: women and children last. We don’t want you landing alone on that raft.”

Miller looked outside. “Looks like you’ll get a little wet on the way down, sir,” he said.

Cooper slipped into the harness. Miller snagged it with a hook affixed to the cable he’d paid out, set a hand on Cooper’s shoulder, and gave the hook a short, violent tug. Satisfied, he guided Cooper to one of the safety handles dangling from the open doorway. He laid out a brief set of instructions before taking back Cooper’s headset.

Cooper leaned backward into the rain and sunk out of sight.

A rumbling rush of water sounded out in the blackness, giving the impression of approaching bulk. A tremor passed through the raft beneath them; a large swell followed, with smaller, choppier waves behind it, and then the sea returned to its prior peaceful state. The raindrops had become fewer and less bulky in the past fifteen minutes.

Cooper looked at his watch. Three-thirty.

A spotlight hit them with hot white light, then doused. Another light popped on fifty yards off, this one more faint, a yellow floodlight bathing a section of the black sea with incandescence. It offered sufficient illumination for Cooper and Laramie to notice a small group of men approaching in a Zodiac. The light, Cooper saw, was affixed to a stationary black column featuring a small deck, a series of antennae, and a white number painted on its side. Beneath the column, just protruding from the water, a swath of black steel stretched far enough in each direction to be lost in the darkness before it ended.

The Zodiac approached the raft, and in fewer than five minutes, Cooper and Laramie were deposited on the deck of the nuclear attack submarine USS Hampton. Their raft was quickly deflated and hidden by the men as Cooper and Laramie were escorted through a hatch at the base of the conning tower.

Eight minutes following its arrival, the sub slipped silently beneath the surface, its new and unofficial cargo of two civilian passengers safely aboard.