Smith found the open window almost at once. He reached in, encountered a limply flailing arm and pulled at it.
Whoever it was came out like a big balloon. Smith felt the body float past.
Smith kicked clear and reached in again.
This time it was like reaching into some cold, watery hell where the damned huddled awaiting redemption.
What felt like two dozen grasping hands reached out to him. Smith took one, but even as he touched it, it went limp. He let go. It was too cold, too dead. He found another-or rather, it found him. Yanking again, Smith extracted another victim. And the person lashed the water, all arms and kicking feet.
There was time to save one more. Smith reached in with one hand. Two hands grapsed his thin wrist. He heaved, and his lungs expelled oxygen. The strain was too great, the person too heavy. He tried to pull free, but the hands refused to release him. And when he stuck his other hand in, it was also grasped by frantic, clawing fingers.
The entire world went black for Harold Smith. Then red. His ears filled with a roaring. It sounded red. Everything was red. Everything was the screaming color of blood.
This is it, he remembered thinking. I am to lose my life because I tried to save my fellow man.
A weird darkness ate the roaring redness, and Harold Smith knew nothing more until he heard the emotionless voice pronouncing him DOA.
Smith could feel the water in his lungs. They were not full, but neither were they functioning properly. His body was trying to inhale. But his lungs had no elasticity.
He tried to call out, but without air to force through his voice box, no sounds could be made. He forced his stomach to cough, and brackish water bubbled up from his mouth, only to slide back again. It was a cold, ugly sensation.
Smith knew that he had to get over on his stomach. He turned.
"Doctor," the nurse's voice said, shrill and high, "I think this man is moving."
"Help me with this other one," the doctor snapped.
"But, Doctor-"
"Stat! Nurse!"
"Screw you," the nurse said in a small voice, and rolled Harold Smith over onto his stomach; A sudden pressure in his back became a hard pumping that made Smith's ribs creak and groan and his lungs rebel.
Smith began vomiting water from mouth and nostrils and, as terrible as the bitter marsh water tasted, he knew it meant life. He began coughing. He kept coughing. He coughed long after the coughing reflex subsided.
"He's alive," the nurse was saying.
"Then he doesn't need your help. I need you here, nurse."
The nurse dug in with all her strength, and the last of the lung water rushed out.
Smith hacked and coughed on his stomach, eyes pinched shut, his brain pounding with each explosion of air like a tormented sponge recoiling in pain.
When he was again breathing normally, Harold Smith opened his eyes.
The hovering face was very pale. A wide woman's face, the fleshy ridges contorted with concern.
"Please do not move." The voice was that of the conscientious nurse who had saved his life.
"Doctor's... name..." Smith croaked.
"What?"
"What is the doctor's name?"
"Dr. Skelton," the nurse said. She lowered her voice. "He thinks God planted his feet on the planet personally."
"Thank you..." Smith said weakly.
"You just rest. They'll take you to St. Mary's as soon as an empty ambulance is available."
The nurse disappeared. Only then did Smith remember that he had forgotten to ask her name. On second thought, he decided, it was unimportant. She was just doing her duty as she should. On the other hand, the doctor had been derelict. He would pay for that.
Smith waited until he had the strength to get up before he dared move off the cot.
He stood swaying on his stocking feet. The harsh lights burned through his retina. He took hold of the cot to steady himself. It upset. He landed on his face in the mud, only to climb to his feet with a cold purpose.
With difficulty Smith stumbled out into the night. The panorama of the crash lay spread out before him. A crane was trying to lift a coach from the water. Smith had a sickening thought it was his coach but couldn't be sure.
Passing a pup tent, Smith spied the nurse working over a woman who was naked to the waist. A black woman. A flat-faced doctor was applying two round defibrillator paddles to her chest. "Clear!" he called, not giving the nurse enough time to react. She jumped back just as the body convulsed. This was done three times until the doctor stepped back, dragged his shirtsleeve across his sweating brow and said, "Cover the body."
Smith recognized the dead woman's purple print dress. It was his erstwhile seatmate. He never got her name.
Smith moved on, feet making ugly sucking sounds in the mud. Rescue workers hurried back and forth. No one paid him any mind.
Coast Guard helicopters were patrolling the night sky like impotent dragonflies. Fireboats bobbed offshore, blue beacon lights rotating monotonously. Khaki-clad Connecticut State troopers stood watch over the operation. All was a kind of controlled chaos.
The soft mud under his feet squished with each step. Smith felt awful, unclear, without purpose. Dimly he understood that his briefcase had been lost. It was not waterproof. That meant its contents would be useless if found. But if anyone attempted to open it, they would be killed or maimed by the explosive charges.
Grimly Smith realized that was his highest priority.
Stumbling toward high ground, he found a road that led through thick trees to an area where police sawhorses held back the morbidly curious. Reporters and TV crews were pacing impatiently, waiting for permission to come forward. They were getting little cooperation if the bitter complaints reaching Smith's ears meant anything.
Working his way around, Smith happened to notice the fireman in the cattails.
Instinctively Smith ducked so as not to be seen. The fireman was not looking in his direction. He was wading through the cattails, wading out from shore.
Smith noticed two very strange things about the fireman.
The first was that the cattails surrounding him were still. Eerily still. As he moved through them, they failed utterly to respond to the ripples and waves he was making.
Smith had lost his glasses in the wreck, so his eyes were not at their best. Maybe it was a combination of that, the darkness and his deep fatigue, he thought.
Yet something was very strange. The cattails were photograph-still as the fireman waded through them. The moonlight was strong here, and it showed the play of eddies in the water. A fish splashed, making a quivering ring. Moonlight danced on its dark surface.
But where the fireman was wading purposely out to sea, there was no disturbance of the surface. No ripples. No splashing.