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The aide did and Rhyme continued giving him directions.
Ten minutes of agony, ten minutes of exhausting effort . . . He gazed at the screen, finally satisfied with the result. He rested his head on the back of the chair. "Command, print."
Thom walked to the printer. "You want to see your handiwork?"
"Of course I want to see it," Rhyme barked.
Thom picked up the sheet and held it in front of Rhyme.
"I think that's the first thing you've written since the accident. In your actual handwriting."
"It's a goddamn schoolchild's scrawl," Rhyme muttered, feeling exhilarated at the accomplishment. "Hardly legible."
"You want me to paste that in the book?" Thom asked.
"If you would, yes. Thank you," Rhyme said. "Then set it aside and we'll give it to Li when he gets back."
"I'll wrap it up," the aide said.
"I don't think we need to go that far," Rhyme snapped. "Now, let's get back to the evidence."
Chapter Thirty-six
Okay, I can do this.
Amelia Sachs stood on the rippled metal floor of the Coast Guard's Sikorsky HH-60J helicopter fifty feet above the whipping antenna of the cutter Evan Brigant and let the crewman fit the harness around her.
It had never occurred to her when she'd requested the helicopter ride out to the ship that the only way to get onto the ship would be by winching down to a bobbing deck.
Well, what did she expect, she now reflected, an escalator?
The chopper pitched in the fierce wind and beneath them, through the mist, she could see the gray water breaking around the cutter in ragged white ridges.
Encased in an orange vest and battered helmet, Sachs gripped the handhold near the open doorway and thought again, Okay, I can do this.
The crewman shouted something she didn't hear and she shouted back for him to repeat it--a request he apparently didn't hear, for he took her words to be an acknowledgment. Then a hook was attached to the harness and the rig double-checked. The crewman shouted something else. Sachs pointed to herself, then out the door and received a thumbs-up.
Okay . . .
I can do this.
Her essential fear was claustrophobia, not heights, but still . . .
Then out she went, holding the cable, even though she thought she'd been told not to. She swung wildly from the momentum of stepping out the door. In a moment the motion slowed and she started down, buffeted by the wind and the powerful downdraft from the rotor blades.
Down, down . . .
A shroud of fog suddenly enveloped her and she was disoriented. She found herself hanging in space, not able to see either the chopper above or the ship below. Rain spattered her face and she was blinded. Vertigo consumed her and she couldn't tell if she was swinging like an out-of-control pendulum or dropping toward the ship at a hundred miles an hour.
Oh, Rhyme . . .
But then the cutter grew visible beneath her.
The Evan Brigant bobbed up and down and rocked but whoever was at the helm held the vessel perfectly in position despite waves that were so huge that they seemed fake--something created by a special-effects team for a movie. Her feet touched the deck but just as she hit the quick-release button on the harness the ship dropped to the bottom of a wave and she fell four feet to the deck, hitting hard, her arthritic legs screaming in pain. As two seamen ran to help her up she reflected that this was probably what the crewman on the chopper had been warning her about.
Boating is not a sport for arthritics, Sachs recalled; she had to flex her knees continually for stability as she made her way to the bridge. She had an imaginary conversation with Dr. John Sung, reporting to him that Chinese medicine had yet to score serious points over Percoset and anti-inflammatories.
On the bridge the improbably young-looking captain, Fred Ransom, greeted her with a smile and a handshake. He welcomed her to the ship and led her to the chart table. "Now, here's a picture of the vessel and where she's lying."
