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Karmann's pale skin was scored by the sun and salt. Blisters filled with fluid had formed on his chest and legs. When they broke, they left raw, unhealed skin exposed to sun and sea. Karmann tried to pray, but he did not know how. He had been a lifelong, convinced atheist; his conviction was fading. |
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He drifted in and out of dreams. Krasny dominated all of them. Krasny, the Soyuz anti-Semite. Krasny, the killer of shipmates. |
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The circling shark was joined by another. Karmann watched the cruising fins with swollen eyes and failing heart. The raft was perceptibly lower in the water. There was no way to repair the bullet hole put there by the Cuban gunner. |
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Hatred of Krasny permeated Karmann's breath-sucking terror. After four days of sun and two days without food or water, his memories were mingled with phantasmagoric horrors that surely were not real. It wasn't possible that the Cubans on the gunboat had machine-gunned the corpses vomited up by the mortally wounded Pravda. Yet Karmann saw it happen. |
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The sharks swam lazily around the softening raft. His raw skin was agonized by the thin, cloud-filtered sunlight. The raft was drifting westward. It appeared to follow the sun, which was moving behind the overcast toward the horizon. When night returned, Karmann once again would be terribly aware of the black void below. He had never felt so alone. On the first day he had seen contrails high in the sky. It was fantastic to realize that ten thousand meters from the surface of the sea commercial airliners were carrying passengers who went about their affairs, unknowing and uncaring that a man was dying far, far below them. Today there had been no jet trails, no high blue air. The haze and the overcast contained him, imprisoned him. |
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And the sharks circled. With a single rush they could tear the raft to pieces if they chose. Did they choose anything? How much mind was there in the tiny brain behind those dreadful, flat, black eyes? |
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