Close Reach Read Online Free PDF

starboard rail. It was Jim from Arcturus.
    Jim’s feet were tied together with a length of yellow rope, and his arms hung down so that his hands trailed in the sea. His skin was blue except for the deep red lacerations across his back, as though he’d been beaten with a chain. He was either frozen solid or in deep rigor because he was board-stiff as he swung violently at the end of his rope.
    “Take the wheel,” Dean said.
    She turned from the horror at their stern and took Dean’s place. Behind her, Dean was pulling on his exposure suit. When he had it on, he moved beside her and resumed steering. He’d put the suit on over his harness so that he couldn’t tether himself to the boat. He reached past the instrument panel to the fluorescent green emergency position indicating radio beacon mounted to the bulkhead and activated it. The beacon would send their boat’s registration information and position to search and rescue satellites.
    At least it was supposed to do that.
    They watched the EPIRB’s tiny blue-lit screen as it scrolled a message past, one word at a time: NO  … GPS  … RECEPTION  … IS  … YOUR  … SKY  … VIEW  … OBSTRUCTED ?
    “Start the engine,” Dean said. “Maybe if we can get far enough ahead of their jammers, the EPIRB will work.”
    She nodded and went to the engine controls, her hand on the key.
    “No, you gotta open the seacock,” Dean said. He was speaking loudly enough that she could hear him over the screaming wind. But he was calm. When she didn’t immediately move, he said it again: “Open the seacock.”
    Now she remembered. They’d closed the seacock that vented the engine’s exhaust and cooling water to ensure that no seawater worked its way up the exhaust loop and into the engine. But now she’d have to open it before hitting the ignition or the engine would choke on its exhaust.
    She raced back into the cabin, letting the bulky exposure suit cushion her impacts against bulkheads and lockers. The seacock was under the galley sink. She fell to her knees in the galley, opened the cabinet, and tossed cleaning supplies and plastic buckets aside until she exposed the bronze handle of the seacock. It was stiff and didn’t want to move, but she yanked it with both gloved hands until the handle was parallel to the exhaust hose.
    “I got it!” she yelled.
    A second later she heard the engine cough and sputter and then kick into a higher rhythm as Dean gave it fuel. Then there was a grinding squeal as Dean slammed the ice-cold transmission into gear. She started up the companionway ladder, and when her head was high enough to see through the hatch, she saw La Araña break over the top of a wave and turn toward them.
    This time there was a figure standing in the bow pulpit. Nothing about him looked right at all. His eyes were three-inch disks of fire floating in the black void under his hood where his face should have been. Then he turned slightly, and she saw that beneath his hood, his face was hidden by a balaclava and some kind of antiglare goggles that were catching the low sun. He wore foul weather gear that had been yellow at some point but was smeared with grease and blood and other filth so that it was almost black. He wore rubber gloves that went past his elbows. And in those yellow oversized hands he cradled an ancient-looking rifle with a harpoon fitted at its tip.
    She tried to speak, and her voice was just a croak.
    “Dean …”
    She could only see Dean’s legs from this angle. She tried to pull herself higher, but her arms were stiff and wouldn’t budge.
    “Dean.”
    The crab boat crashed down the wave and hovered above Freefall ’s transom, and as she watched, the man in the bow pulpit calmly shouldered the harpoon gun, aimed it at her husband, and fired. She never heard the shot, but she saw the harpoon slice across the gap between the boats, the rope whipping as it uncoiled. It hit Dean just below his left buttock. The tip ripped through the