Flying Beyond the Bar by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.

Chapter 7

Harvey seriously considered throwing the boat’s owner over the side and let there only be five survivors.

God damn, but his shoulder hurt. And his knee where he’d caught it as he crashed to the deck.

Whatever happened to the old adage of captain being last off? Letting the man go down with his ship sounded pretty good at the moment. Harvey had spent as much time arguing with the guy as watching the waves. Too much time.

It had taken Harvey a while to realize the guy was mostly drunk, just used to hiding it well. He’d certainly seen it on Dad enough times—the “functional” drunk. It should have made Captain Dan far more susceptible to hypothermia, but perhaps his bulk buffered him.

Foolishly, Harvey thought that the self-proclaimed captain made a good distraction from the decaying condition of the boat. The bow wasn’t even lifting clear of the waves anymore.

However, being so distracted from his job that he’d let a basket clobber him absolutely wouldn’t do. He lay sprawled over what had once been the captain’s pride and joy, the pilot’s console with twice the number of controls and readouts than the boat really needed. Sound system controls, remotely operated searchlight (which the guy probably used for illegal night fishing), auto-pilot (that definitely should have been set to never let the guy leave the harbor), and more.

He shrugged a shoulder. Big damn mistake!

He dragged his focus back to the crisis; his head swam with a bout of nausea like he hadn’t had since drown-proof training back in A School. He wasn’t ready for the next wave that plastered him in the face and stole his breath away.

A chance grab at the steering wheel was all that kept him aboard as the biggest wave yet swept the boat. The other hand wasn’t cooperating so well.

Something tried to push him aside. Then it thudded into his gut, but the blow was slowed by the water. Still, it drove out what little air he’d managed to catch. He was about to release his hold and hope he could follow the bubbles to the surface in the dark, when he resurfaced into the storm.

Beneath him, trapped against the deck between the console and the captain’s chair, was the beefy boat’s owner. That’s what had hit him in the gut. But the prolonged dunking seemed to have taken most of the fight out of him.

The basket almost caught Harvey again on the next swing, but he managed to grab it, and heave the sputtering captain in. He was about to latch himself onto the basket and ride up with it from the doomed boat when his head cleared enough to ask the crucial body-count question.

“You’re the last one, right? There were six of you. Right?”

“Six. Sure. Except for the dead one in the cabin.”

Harvey’s blood chilled. Something didn’t sound right. If the others had survived out here in the elements, why would the one in the cabin be dead? He let his harness drop and waved the basket aloft.

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