Assassins Gallery

Chapter One January 1, 1945 Newburyport, Massachusetts Five hundred yards from the beach, a gloved hand choked the outboard motor. Six black-clad men took up silent oars. They rowed toward shore, urging the raft through whitecaps with a strong wind at their backs. Two hundred yards out, where the breakers began to build, Judith in her wetsuit slid, practiced and liquid, over the side. She said nothing to the six and they did not speak to her. She merely sucked in breath at the bite of the icy water through her rubber sheath, then pushed off from the raft. The boat eased away. She turned to kick for shore. Behind her, slaps of water against the raft faded beneath the wind. Judith spit saltwater. The immense cold clawed her cheeks and stung through the wetsuit. She kept her arms wrapped to her chest, letting the suit and the knapsack and her fins keep her buoyant in the surging surf. A hundred yards from shore, Judith lowered her legs to float upright. A wave boosted her. At its crest she took a quick look at the beach under a veiled quarter moon. The coming storm flung foam off the whitecaps, a rabid water. She lifted the dive mask from her eyes to see better. She sank into a trough but another, taller roller swept in fast. Judith scanned the dark coastline. She saw nothing but vacant sand flats. No light glowed from the blacked-out town four miles beyond. She lowered her mask. Kicking the last hundred yards to the shore, she went numb. "It's sure blowin' stink," she said. With a hand on his belly, the man agreed. Spray from the surf speckled the windshield of his pickup truck parked on the packed sand of Plum Island. "Nor'easter." He pointed out the direction of the wind to the woman on the seat beside him. "Forecast called for it," she replied. "Gonna be a bitch of a New Year's Day." "Yeah, happy New Year's." "You, too." The two leaned across the seat to the center and kissed lightly. He had to angle down because she was short. He patted her leg when he straightened. "What time you got?" she asked. He dug under his cuff for his watch. "We're getting here a little late. We left the party a little before two. So I figure it's . . . yep, two-ten." "What do you think?" "I think it's blowin' stink, like you said. You dressed warm enough? You got a couple sweaters under them oilskins?" "Yeah, but geez. Look at it. It's cold as a well-digger's ass out there. Why we gotta be so gung ho all of a sudden? Who's gonna invade Newburyport?" "Honestly, Bonny, don't start. You and me got the graveyard shift this week. You knew that. Take the good with the bad, that's how it goes." "Yeah, but . . ." She raised a hand at the crashing surf out in the dim light, water bashing the sand so hard that mist spewed. The pickup rocked a little with the wind, but it might have been Otto's weight as he shifted to face her. "This is what we volunteered for," he said. "Guarding the coastline. Think about the boys in uniform, they're doin' tougher shit than this all the time. You know that." "Yeah, I know." "Look, I understand we been kind of slack about this Civil Defense thing. All of us, the whole town. But I been doing a lot of thinking since that Battle of the Bulge started over in Belgium. You don't think our boys are cold over there?"Robbins, David L. is the author of 'Assassins Gallery' with ISBN 9780553804416 and ISBN 0553804413.