He was fifty yards from the jutting wing when he heard the first splashes and made out the whimpers and soft cries, and a low, wet snuffling like penned-up horses. He poled faster, sweating now, as the boat skimmed ahead, the last ticks of daylight dying in the west. Everything was coated with gold. The bay, the shadowy people floundering up ahead, the suitcases and duffels that hung like dark icebergs just an inch or two below the surface.
The first two he came upon were women. One in a blue business suit, another in a white sweatshirt. They thrashed over to the skiff and clambered aboard before he could get down from the platform to help. One was dark-haired with a bad gash across her forehead. The one in the white sweatshirt was a frail woman with weak blue eyes. A triangular chunk of flesh was missing from her cheek. The business suit thanked him and the other woman peered at him, then her face collapsed and she began to sob. The large woman took the small one in her arms and held her tightly as Thorn pushed on.
‘There’s a first-aid kit in the console.’
The woman looked back at him.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘Nobody.’
‘You wait out here for airplanes to crash?’
‘You’re my first,’ he said. ‘You should put something on those cuts. You’re losing blood.’
She tightened her hug on the small woman.
‘We’re all right. Believe me, there’s others who need it more.’
Behind the broken fuselage he heard voices, cries and blubbering, the first moments of numbness and shock wearing off. He shoved the pole into the sucking mud, withdrew it, shoved it in again, and the skiff coasted forward.
‘On your right,’ Thorn called to the woman in the business suit. ‘Coming up on your right.’
The woman looked out and saw the child’s arm and let go of the delicate woman and leaned over to grab the elbow. She swung forward, then drew back with the arm in her hand. A bloody stump severed at the shoulder. She held it up for Thorn to see, then dropped it back in the poisoned water.
On that first pass, he filled the skiff with nine adults and two children and a small white poodle before he swung around and poled the sluggish boat over to the beach of the mangrove island. There was a nurse in that first group, and although her left arm was badly broken, she took the first-aid kit and was already bandaging the most badly hurt as Thorn headed back to the crash site through the last golden moments of twilight.
Thorn was hauling an elderly man aboard when the first Coast Guard helicopter arrived, followed almost immediately by a news chopper. Their searchlights held on him for a moment. Holding the man by his armpits, Thorn stared up into the brightness. The choppers moved on, sending a ghastly halo over the scene and illuminating another boat he hadn’t noticed earlier.
It was only thirty or forty yards away, idling near a half-submerged engine pod. At the helm of the twenty-foot Maverick was a woman with short black hair, and flanking her were two men. One was tall and lanky and wore a cowboy hat. The other man was stocky and short. As Thorn poled through the bloody waters searching for survivors, the Maverick shifted its position, inching along the perimeter of the wreckage. They were making no effort to save the injured, but seemed to be angling for the best view of the proceedings.
Thorn worked for another hour as helicopters filled the sky and the Coast Guard and marine patrol boats finally arrived. He brought four loads of passengers to the beach. Most were badly mangled, gibbering and torn, bones exposed, faces blackened with soot, flesh lacerated and scorched. Some were weeping, moaning, others struck dumb. On his last trip a young man in a blue track suit went into spasms on the foredeck. A middle-aged black woman scooped him into her arms and the young man stiffened, then went slack. The black woman continued to hold him, rocking him gently and crooning what sounded like a lullaby. The deck of his skiff sloshed with blood. Through the darkness, he watched the sharks move in, snatching down the easy meat, and he saw the gleaming snout of an alligator gliding through the wreckage.
Twice more he noticed the Maverick moving in and out of the shadows. And an hour later he saw the boat again, the three passengers at the docks at Flamingo. The men were straining to lift a large cooler from the boat up to the dock. Out in the large parking area dozens of medevac helicopters were landing and taking off, and the television cameras were set up. By then he was woozy with exhaustion, as numb and shaky as if he’d gone without sleep for a month.
He tied up his skiff near the tackle shop and came ashore. A few minutes later as he wandered amid the confusion, he caught sight of Casey staggering across the parking lot, supported by a man in a blue paramedic’s jumpsuit. He jogged over to her and called her name and she swung around and watched him approach. Her mouth was rigid, eyes unlocked from the moment.
‘Your boat’s in the marina,’ she said in a dead voice. ‘Slip eighteen.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘No, I’m not all right. I’m not all right at all.’
Thorn looked at the paramedic. He had his arm around Casey’s waist.
‘This is José,’ she said. ‘He’s looking after me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Thorn said.
She reached out and smoothed a hand across his cheek, then cocked it back and gave him a sharp slap.
‘You’re a goddamn magnet, Thorn. You attract this shit. You’re the baddest luck I’ve ever known.’
He watched her limp away, then he turned and went back to the docks. His daze had hardened into a cold shock that felt like it was rooted so deep in his tissues it might be with him forever. The sky was a black whirling mass overhead, and the earth rocked and wobbled beneath his feet. The roar of the choppers and sirens and the crowd was setting up a deep hum in his skull. Someone handed him a beer and he drained it and dropped the can on the sandy soil. A man in a fishing hat handed him another, and he meandered through the hallucinatory throng of reporters and medics and wild-eyed relatives of the passengers. A woman with a blond helmet of hair and perfect teeth, followed by a cameraman, jabbed a microphone in his face, and he shoved it away and kept on walking.
Gulping the beer, he followed the brightest lights to the pavilion near the boat ramps. Beside the pavilion were four concrete fish-cleaning tables the media were using as the local-color backdrop for their live shots.
He nudged into the crowd and jostled to the front. The woman from the Maverick was being interviewed. Her black hair gleamed in the lights and her blue eyes were achingly pale. She wore a long-sleeved white fishing shirt and khaki shorts. Her legs were sleek and deeply tanned and she stood with the gawky elegance Thorn associated with high-fashion models, back straight, hips and shoulders canted in slightly different directions as if to catch the most flattering light. There was a single spatter of blood on her right sleeve, but otherwise she seemed as cool and unruffled as if she’d just stepped from her dressing room.
‘Bonefishing,’ she was saying. ‘Johnny and I were out on the flats when it came down. Maybe a mile or two away.’
‘And what did you hear, Miss Braswell? Were the engines running? We’ve heard reports that they were shut down.’
Her eyes roamed the crowd, then returned to the reporter.
‘Yes, I believe the engines were silent. It was all very eerie.’
The reporter thanked her and turned back to the camera. He was excited, working a major story, a career boost. He sounded almost elated as he told the TV viewers that so far sixty survivors had been pulled from those remote waters. And that none other than Morgan Braswell, prominent local businesswoman, had been an eyewitness to these tragic events. According to Ms Braswell, the plane’s engines were shut down at the time of the crash.
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