The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,29

it seemed almost quiet. It wasn’t perfect, there were gaps, but most of the water was staying out. He turned and half waded, half swam forward and crawled up into the forward berth. The hole in the deck was about the size of his outstretched hand, almost at the point of the bow, just aft of the anchor locker, difficult to get at. Planking was not going to fit, not without cutting and fitting. He didn’t have time. Clay grabbed one of the floating cushions and jammed it into the hole. It took a few seconds to force the foam into the opening, then he wedged it into place with the boathook. He couldn’t count on it for long, but it fit well enough and for now it was keeping most of the water out. With the hull sealed, the next priority was bailing. He tried the electric pumps, knowing that they wouldn’t work. They didn’t. The electrics were shot. So no radio either, no chance for rescue. Not that he would have taken it anyway. Crowbar’s men would be out there, listening. Some rescue: a bullet through the head.

Clay waded aft, grabbed the pump handle from its cradle near the nav station and clambered out into the fury of the gale. He stumbled through the cockpit feeling for the attachment point, slammed in the handle and started pumping.

Clay had always found something soothing, something transformative, about repetitive action. During the long patrols deep inside Angola, putting one foot in front of the other, watching the dust swirl from under his boots, the horizon unchanging, time would slide by and for a while there was a measure of peace in the green bushes and trees. And after the – what did you call such a thing? Massacre? Slaughter? He realised he’d never named it; for all these years it had always just been there, barely buried beneath that thin layer of denial, a regolith of self-delusion – so yes, massacre, recovering from his wounds in the Bloemfontein military hospital, doing his rehab exercises, he would work his body until his muscles burned, anything to keep the screams away, keep his mind from what had happened, his role in it, quiet the open wound of his conscience. And now, here, with the sea rising around him, he moved the handle through its strokes, imagining the rubber diaphragm pulling in water, pushing it out through the seacock, a cup at a time, a litre, a gallon, not thinking of Rania or Medved, of Crowbar or any of them. Despite the roar of the wind and waves, he could hear the pump working, feel the water surging under his feet. Like walking, you think you’ll never get there, but you do. Just keep going.

He pumped until his arm was trembling with the effort. In the hospital in Oman, the staff had offered to fit him with a prosthetic, a short, flesh-coloured device that he could strap on to his stump. The doctor told him that, with practice, he would be able to grip and manipulate objects, perform basic tasks. But it was ugly, an offence, and his first attempts at using it were clumsy, embarrassing, and he’d torn the thing from his arm and thrown it across the room. Now he wished he’d kept it. His shoulder muscles were burning. He kept pumping.

After a time he noticed that the rain had stopped, and he dared imagine that the wind had slackened, just a bit. The sky still swirled with menace, but the pitch of the wind’s scream had changed perceptibly. He looked at his watch. An hour, maybe two since they’d been pitchpoled and dismasted. More than an hour of pumping. Clay clambered to the hatchway, slid back the makeshift hatch cover and peered down into the cabin. Lying ahull in the storm, without the stabilising inertia of the masts, the ketch rolled violently across each wave. Water sloshed back and forth in the cabin, carrying a growing tide of flotsam, Punk’s ukulele was there, floating amidst all the other junk, strings up. But the water level had dropped. Not by much, maybe ten centimetres, but it was something. A start. Energy flowed through him. He pushed back the hatch, searched the port locker for a bucket, stood in the gangway, started bailing. Twice he was knocked off his feet by the roll, but he kept going, scooping up bucketfuls of diesel-tainted water and tossing them over the side. After a while the