Deep Six Read Free

superstitions, eerie monsters of the deep and funny tidbits of scuttlebutt about the crew that made her laugh.
    At last they reached the door of her stateroom, and he gallantly kissed her hand again. She accepted when he asked her to join him for breakfast in the morning.
    She entered the tiny cabin, clicked the lock on the door and switched on the overhead light. Then she closed the curtain tightly over the single porthole, pulled the suitcase from under the bed and opened it.
    The top tray contained her cosmetics and carelessly jumbled underthings, and she removed it. Next came several neatly folded blouses and skirts. These she also removed and set aside to later steam out the wrinkles in the shower. Gently inserting a nail file around the edges of the false bottom of the suitcase, she pried it up. Then she sat back and sighed with relief. The money was still there, stacked and bound in the Federal Reserve Bank wrappers. She had hardly spent any of it.
    She stood up and slipped her dress over her head— daringly, she wore nothing beneath—and collapsed across the bed, hands behind her head.
    She closed her eyes and tried to picture the shocked expressions on her supervisors’ faces when they discovered the money and reliable little Arta Casilighio missing at the same time. She had fooled them all!
    She felt a strange, almost sexual, thrill at knowing the FBI would post her on their list of most wanted criminals. The investigators would question all her friends and neighbors, search all her old haunts, check a thousand and one banks for sudden large deposits of consecutively numbered bills—but they would come up dry. Arta, alias Estelle, was not where they’d expect her to be.
    She opened her eyes and stared at the now familiar walls of her stateroom. Oddly the room began to slip away from her. Objects were focusing and unfocusing into a blurry montage. Her bladder signaled a trip to the bathroom, but her body refused to obey any command to move. Every muscle seemed frozen. Then the door opened and Lee the mess boy entered with another Oriental crewman.
    Lee wasn’t smiling.
    This can’t be happening, she told herself. The mess boy wouldn’t dare intrude on her privacy while she was lying naked on the bed. It had to be a crazy dream brought on by the lavish food and drink, a nightmare stoked by the fires of indigestion.
    She felt detached from her body, as if she were watching the eerie scene from one corner of the stateroom. Lee gently carried her through the doorway, down the passageway and onto the deck.
    Several of the Korean crewmen were there, their oval faces illuminated by bright overhead floodlights. They were hoisting large bundles and dropping them over the ship’s railing. Abruptly, one of the bundles stared at her. It was the ashen face of the young fourth officer, eyes wide in a mixture of disbelief and terror. Then he too disappeared over the side.
    Lee was leaning over her, doing something to her feet. She could feel nothing, only a lethargic numbness. He appeared to be attaching a length of rusty chain to her ankles.
    Why would he do that? she wondered vaguely. She watched indifferently as she was lifted into the air. Then she was released and floated through the darkness.
    Something struck her a great blow, knocking the breath from her lungs. A cool, yielding force closed over her. A relentless pressure enveloped her body and dragged her downward, squeezing her internal organs in a giant vise.
    Her eardrums exploded, and in that instant of tearing pain, total clarity flooded her mind and she knew it was no dream. Her mouth opened to emit a hysterical scream.
    No sound came. The increasing water density soon crushed her chest cavity. Her lifeless body drifted into the waiting arms of the abyss ten thousand feet below.

Part I
    The Pilottown

 
     

1
    July 25,1989
    Cook Inlet, Alaska
     
    BLACK CLOUDS ROLLED menacingly over the sea from Kodiak Island and turned the deep blue-green surface to lead.