Dash in the Blue Pacific Read online

  Dash in the Blue Pacific

  Cole Alpaugh

  Seattle, WA

  Coffeetown Press

  PO Box 70515

  Seattle, WA 98127

  For more information go to: www.coffeetownpress.com

  www.colealpaugh.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design by Sabrina Sun

  Dash in the Blue Pacific

  Copyright © 2015 by Cole Alpaugh

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-252-8 (Trade Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-253-5 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014951786

  Produced in the United States of America

  * * *

  For Kari and Decker

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Phillip Vaiimene of Avarua, Rarotonga, for helping with so many small details. Thanks to Tammy and Michael Winser who gave us a real volcano we'll soon call home. My love and gratitude to Kat, Tylea, Amy, and Regan for making me believe in invisible things. My deep appreciation to Ellin O’Hora for teaching a special game that will last a lifetime. And my thanks to Catherine Treadgold, the most patient and gifted editor on this extraordinarily blue planet.

  * * *

  In the Beginning

  The volcano beckoned with pale smoke that curled into slender fingers at its far reach. The giant brown teat ascended from the blue sea, its milky ribbon spilling across the late-day sky. It was irresistible, despite a fuel needle dancing near the dead zone and a sun barely two fists above the horizon.

  “We have time, mate. One pass ain’t gonna hurt, but keep her nice and wide. I don’t wanna spoil the surprise in case somebody’s home.” Red’s hands itched from nervous energy, jagged knife scars turning crimson as he kneaded a shiny spot into his soiled khakis. He lived for the hunt. Paydays were sweet, but it was the hunt that got the blood pumping. It made the hair over your collar stand up and put the taste of copper on your tongue’s fat end.

  The man at the helm steered through the heavy rollers, white water kicking off the bow and spitting across the windscreen. Wending in and out of the volcano’s shadow, they made their way counterclockwise around the teardrop-shaped island.

  Red could sniff out a nest from twenty klicks, and sure enough, he was right on target with this honey hole. Rising and falling on the deep-water side of a protective reef were four canoes.

  “We got savages,” he said, not relinquishing the field glasses to the reaching hand of the man in the helm seat. “I don’t see weapons, just bare-ass fishermen in dugouts.”

  Red glanced behind him to size up the western sky. “They ain’t seen us. Leave the sun on our backs, and let ’em show us where the reef break is. You feelin’ like a big bad wolf, Slim?”

  Slim chuckled. “You know I’m feeling like a big bad wolf.”

  “I sure would like to find me a Little Red Riding Hood. You think there’s a sweet young bird stashed away in them trees?”

  Slim drummed the boat’s metal steering wheel. “Only one way to know, Boss.”

  Binoculars back to his face, Red scanned the treetops for signs of cook fires. Four boats meant a village of at least a few dozen adults, which gave fair odds of finding high-value quarry. He hocked through a side window and shook a smoke between his teeth. The market for boys was bone dry, and that was fine and dandy in his book. Boys were a pain in the arse, always with half a mind to jump overboard when they weren’t trying to sink their pointy teeth into anything you left close. And he wanted to puke from dealing with ratbag Euro businessmen who sweated like pigs and stank of perfume. He’d like to gut one or two of those slimy fuckwits if not for the rep it would cause.

  Girls were a different enterprise, with their easy fear and the way they clung, once land was out of sight. The lost pups were ripe for training, and it was a wonder they got them to port in one piece. More than one little sprog had fed the fish after his boys got carried away, but that shit didn’t pay the bills and he put his foot down hard.

  Red watched the fishermen at work. In the undulating waves, their narrow skiffs appeared and disappeared, rocking tip to tail in what looked to be a dodgy spot. Too many hungry tiger sharks to be out in heavy waters. Not in dinky, hand-carved paddle boats, anyway. You had to be mighty brave or mighty dumb.

  A flock of circling gulls swooped in close when the fishermen dropped to their knees. The four wiry torsos twisted in fast rhythm, as if moving to the same music. “They’re hauling lines,” Red hollered, then cleared his throat to calm himself. “Let’s saddle up, but keep the hardware low. We’ll go in friendly ’til I’m sure what we got, but I don’t reckon anything more than spears and arrows. I’ll take the wheel.”

  Red flicked his cig and shimmied onto the cracked vinyl. The engine was a low rumble as they came about, the sea below the bow turning to soot in their hulking shadow. Less than an hour until dark, and these backwater shithole folks were known to get crafty with their home-field advantage once the sun fell under.

  “Nice and easy, girl.” He inched the throttle, feeding the engine and squeezing the gap. Three hundred meters, give or take, and still out of earshot. No need for introductions just yet. The sun kept them invisible as the primitive crafts fell into a single line, paddling south and then hooking a sharp turn through the reef opening. “Bingo. There’s the front door, thank you very much.”

  Red kept tabs on the depth finder as the skiffs angled north to skirt the coast. There was plenty of draft, a steady five meters after they sliced into the protected water. Beyond the sagging whip aerial was a jetliner reflecting sun on the cold highway ferrying Aussies and Yanks. The volcano’s upper third remained visible over waving palms. Smoke above the cone blinked orange, as though this might not be such a habitable place before too long. “Hello, Mother,” he whispered. “I think you have a present for me.”

  Losing sight of the fishermen wasn’t a worry. They’d beach in a cove or along the shallows, and he and his six men would roll on up with how-do-you-do grins, like they were new neighbors coming by with a plate of jelly slices. And it would be damn fine to stretch his limbs on solid ground. The world tilted off center when you hadn’t sent a soul to heaven or hell for too long a stretch.

  “Let’s keep focus, boys, before the good light gets scarce,” he called over his shoulder. The 44-foot Waveney was American made, but outfitted for the Australian Coast Guard. Its V6 Cummins growled like a bear, so there was no way of truly sneaking up on anything with a pulse. “Shoulder your rifles and tilt up your brims. I don’t wanna spook the natives and cause any unnecessary bushwhacking.”

  There was a decent enough channel twenty meters out, although they took a nasty scrape coming up on the men hauling their boats onto the sandy scrub. Each looked up, eyes narrow, skin reflecting the late day glow. The fishermen stood frozen in mid-heave as Red leaned the painted steel against the island’s stone hip and throttled down. The engine cut out with a wet belch.

  “Candy from a baby,” he sang under his breath, turning from the instruments and shouldering the Kalashnikov he kept racked in a dry spot over the visor.

  One of his men already had wet knees tying them off when Red stepped up to the gunwale and gave his best aw-shucks shrug to the not-so-certain looking locals, two standing in drooping, western-style underpants the color of their skin. Each skiff sp
orted a bloody mound of silver-bellied fish, but the only cutting tool in sight was a rusty blade, nothing more than a pen knife. And while some heavy-handed coercion was always entertaining, the clock was ticking.

  “G’day, gents.” Red gave a cordial wink, then pulled a handkerchief from a back pocket good and slow, a magician beginning a well-practiced trick. He lifted his bush hat and wiped away beaded sweat. He knew the effect his shock of red hair had on these sorts. What once got his bum handed to him in the schoolyard now made him a god. The thought was a hoot and a half, but these simple fucks would bow down to a turd pile if it steamed just so. “I was gonna ask how they was biting, but just looky there. You sure got into them today.”

  Red measured their faces as they turned toward each other. The man on the far left—the tallest and broadest at the shoulders—jabbered to the others in some dipshit bird talk. Good so far. None looked ready to sprint off to their mud huts to scatter the tribe into this godforsaken jungle. Red hefted a boot onto the rail and rubbed his jaw whiskers, rifle butt tight against his shoulder blades. It was a quiet spot away from the breakers crashing out over the reef, and the night critters hadn’t started their usual chatter. He turned his ear to the slight breeze coming from a black opening in the canopy beyond the fishermen. It was a tunnel hacked out of thick greenery. A lesser hunter might have mistaken the high-pitched sounds for feral pigs or those quick little giant-eyed monkeys. But Red recognized the distant clamor of blissful children, a choir of ten or more angels engaged in some game or sport.

  The hunter’s mouth turned wet enough to wipe one corner. He took a deep breath of salty air and leaned his weight forward.

  “Maybe one of you blokes has a map of these fine and lovely parts?” Red showed the four men a toothy smile that he hoped wasn’t too wolf-like. Not quite yet. “To be honest, we got a little lost on our way to Grandma’s house.”

  Chapter 1

  Dash did calculations in his head. He guessed they had about four minutes to live. Not that he was an aeronautical expert—or any kind of expert, for that matter—but sitting alone in the upright position, he had nothing better to do after the engines went silent. When he’d attempted small talk, the elderly woman in the aisle seat had responded with an unfriendly grunt.

  He shielded his eyes and craned for a view out the oval window, searching for flames and sniffing the air for trouble. Perfume and sweat. Someone close was a smoker. Setting fire to model airplanes as a kid seemed less cool now that he was aboard a full-size jetliner about to crash.

  He had rubbed the fingertip pads that turned rough from pungent glue those summer days, hands trembling as he tied string to one wing and then held a lighter to the tail. He turned fast circles, flaming goo spraying across the lawn, black smoke curling into the trees.

  The cabin speaker was full of static, and then a mouth came close to the microphone. “Cindy?”

  Dash looked at his row mate. She was too old to be ‘Cindy.’ Cynthia, maybe. The woman caught him staring and glared back. He tried a smile.

  “Are you there?”

  The massive plane had become an unwieldy glider six miles above the Pacific Ocean. Dash kneaded both ears, worked his jaw to pop the right. He’d been dozing when the captain had first clicked on his mic to report in a silky, overnight disc jockey voice that they should expect light headwinds and an early arrival. Local temperature in Sydney would be a balmy thirty degrees Celsius, perfect weather for a chilled mai tai or a little sex on the beach, ha ha. A real hoot if they recover the black box. Maybe not replay that sound bite at the press conference.

  “Please come forward.”

  No velvet edge to the voice. Maybe even a hint of desperation.

  “Cindy?”

  Dash watched heads turn, but there was no Cindy, or she didn’t want any part of this. Nobody got up to pretend to be Cindy.

  The relative quiet following hours of mechanical howling created its own dimension of noise. Dash shifted in his seat, tilted his chin, and whispered the lullaby his increasingly bat-shit crazy mother had been singing while she fed cubed tofu and miniature pickles to her porcelain dolls during his last visit. She cooed and sang, only knowing half the words, filling in the blanks with whispered obscenities—proof nothing had changed since he was a boy.

  “Papa’s gonna buy you a piece of ass,” Dash sang.

  His row mate pursed her lips, wrinkles everywhere.

  He’d been sent to the principal’s office in second grade. He was seven, and it had been his mother’s word against his.

  And then Sarah’s icy breath took over. Scented puffs of frozen moisture contained news that she couldn’t wait to be married. We’ll live happily ever after, a fairy tale everyone will envy. They’ll wish they were us. Imagine the gifts, the cash, and all the new … the new stuff! Love will be easy. We’ll honeymoon someplace exotic, warm.

  Thirty degrees Celsius. Balmy enough for string bikinis. Sarah should be on this doomed fucking plane. Mom and her both.

  There were grumbles from his dead father, another visit in spirit only, but Dash wasn’t ready to listen to the old man’s excuses. Prick. He tuned his father out and sat up, allowed the buzz from five hundred passengers to smother whatever his father wanted to report from the grave.

  The voice: “I can’t.”

  Can’t find Cindy? Can’t live without her? Can’t die without her?

  Cloud tops attracted his attention, a calming distraction. Puffy white things on the other side of the scratched window formed an entire encyclopedia’s worth of farm and zoo creatures in boundless quilted serenity.

  Dash tapped the window with a middle knuckle. “A one-armed zombie.” He looked at the lady in the aisle seat and winked, hoping to cheer her up, work his way back on her good side while there was still time. No more swearing. But her eyes were too wide open and her mouth formed a lipstick-red circle. Seatbelt lights were flashing bright yellow reminders all around. He looked back out at the cloud. “It’s riding a unicycle.”

  Someone close muffled a sneeze and another asked what was happening. A gorgeous flight attendant jogged up the aisle. Dash watched her long fingers brush each headrest, her nails bright white flashes. Authoritative and compassionate, she provoked a longing in him such as what he’d felt for his fourth grade teacher and the trooper who last handed him a speeding ticket. No nametag to solve the Cindy mystery, so he was left to imagine the smell of her neck, and how her rounded spots trapped beneath the slick material of her blouse might feel. Her crisp blue uniform disappeared through the curtain separating coach from the rich people. Only a single strand of blond hair was left behind, wafting toward the carpeted floor.

  Passengers half rose from their seats, thumbs jamming overhead call buttons. Click, click, click. Dash looked up at his own set of controls. There was a reading light, a tiny stream of forced air that had tickled his palm, and the button that summoned the flight attendant. He thought of calling back the pretty woman, maybe tell her about the hair she’d left behind, how it seemed utterly magical.

  “Are you Cindy?” he would ask. “Can you tell me about her?”

  One section of the cabin began crying and another prayed, two rapidly spreading contagions competing for bodies, gobbling the weak first. Dash, looking out his window at a butterfly chasing a three-legged giraffe, settled back and tried to shut them out.

  “I’ve never flown.” It was a small voice that came from the woman too old to be Cindy. The middle seat held a canvas tote overflowing with wads of bright yarn. A candy color rainbow of fluff impaled by a set of knitting needles he assumed had been missed by the screener who confiscated his four dollar water bottle.

  He nodded down to the seat occupied by her supplies. “I’m on my honeymoon.”

  There was a heavy bump underneath. A rabbit or slow moving turtle. Would a cloud leave blood and guts? It forced simultaneous hiccups from all around. Dash squeezed his armrest with one hand, rubbed his face with the other. Perhaps they’d boarded a plane driv
en by one of those boozed-up captains who made the nightly news in gritty airport bar surveillance videos. It was a high-pressure job, but why not cocaine or some other drug that enhanced concentration and helped get these giant rubber tires back on solid ground? He also knew from his recent run of bad luck that the trouble could be terrorist related, maniacs in clever old lady disguises, throwing off shawls to stab the flight crew with knitting needles, screaming how Allah was great.

  Dash pushed away thoughts of al Qaeda, let them wander back to the clouds.

  “A giant skyscraper,” he said, “and an airplane.”

  The lady scowled.

  The plane they were inside was the size of his town’s elementary school, with twice the souls on board. He counted both engines a half dozen times. There were probably two more bolted onto the other wing. That made four. He’d heard plenty of stories in which big jetliners landed under the power of a single engine. And these couldn’t all be broken. Surely someone put in charge of such an expensive piece of equipment could get one motor to turn over?

  Two minutes to live.

  Another jolt tilted the nose down, making the seatbelt dig into his hips, and new humps in the floor forced the seats askew like rows of bad teeth. The disconcerting effect was multiplied when oxygen masks dropped from above to hover like dancing spiders.

  Dash looked back to his row mate. “Do you need help?”

  The old woman shook her head and put it on wrong. The band fitted properly around the back of her stiff hairdo, but the yellow cup covered her throat like a diseased Adam’s apple.

  Another bump and pieces of the cabin interior shifted, panels separating at their seams. An overhead compartment unlatched and dumped carry-ons into the aisle, where they sat unclaimed. Dash inspected faces near the mess, watched passengers suspiciously eye the bags and then each other. Someone should fix this; it isn’t right. That one’s too big. People are selfish. They’re not mine. Are they just going to be left there?