Free Chain Lightning by Elizabeth Lowell

feeling of being divided in two – half of her screaming soundlessly in pain and anger, the other half watching with unnatural calm.
    “Fine,“ Andrew said curtly. “So we’ll have hamburger.“
    “Like hell.“
    He rubbed his forehead in sudden pain. “Mandy, I’ve got a real splitter. Could we put this on hold?“
    “You can put it where the sun don’t shine,“ she shot back. “I’m going home right now if I have to swim.“
    “If I break camp and take the gear, there will be too much weight in the plane.“
    “Who said anything about breaking camp?“
    “Mandy – “
    “If we hurry,“ she interrupted, her voice brittle, “in a few hours you can be back here grunting and sweating on top of little miss loose thighs.“
    “Why don’t you stay and watch? Maybe you’d learn something about how to make a man feel like a man!“
    Mandy spun around and left the tent, heading for the airplane.
    It wasn’t that easy, of course. Andrew couldn’t believe that his young wife wouldn’t change her mind once she had cooled off. Mandy endured the arguments and pleas and insults because there was no other choice, no place to go, nothing she could do but wait for Andrew to give in or for tomorrow’s early ferry to leave the island, whichever came first.
    It was Andrew who finally gave in, sometime in the lost hours before dawn. Grim-faced, unnaturally pale, he strapped himself into the little plane. The tiny strip was unmanned and not set up for night takeoffs, but Andrew had flown in and out of Catalina so many times that he didn’t even hesitate. The small plane leaped into the air, climbed, executed a crisp turn and headed for the mainland.
    For once Mandy wasn’t nervous about being in the little plane. She was more afraid of what her husband’s next cutting justifications for adultery might be than she was afraid of the plane itself. A swath of city lights glittered on the mainland horizon, a beacon of life and color beyond the blank darkness of the sea. Next to her Andrew piloted the plane in silence, his hands too tight on the controls. Several times she thought he was going to speak, but beyond kneading his neck and left shoulder from time to time, he concentrated exclusively on flying.
    Gradually Mandy became aware that Andrew’s breathing had changed. Simultaneously she realized that the altitude of the plane had changed, as well. Instead of flying level, they were descending. The plane had lost so much altitude that the mainland’s glittering lights were barely a tiny thread across the darkness. It was as though Andrew were going for a landing, yet there were no lights below, no airport, nothing but the black sea.
    “Andrew? What are you doing?“ She turned and saw him. “Oh, God! Andrew!“
    His face was bathed in sweat and his mouth was flattened in a grim line of pain. He was flying one-handed. Before her horrified eyes he groaned and went limp. Instants later the plane ripped off the top of one wave and bounced onto the peak of another and then another, skimming the surface of the sea like a flat rock thrown by skillful hand.
    But unlike a rock, the plane could float. For a time. Long enough for a dazed, battered Mandy to realize what had happened. Long enough for her to claw off her harness and her husband’s. Long enough for her to pull futilely at his slack body, wrenching with all her strength and calling incoherent prayers, trying and trying to pull him out the buckled passenger door, kicking at the door with her feet and screaming and yanking at Andrew’s dead weight.
    Suddenly cold water surged upward, engulfing the white wreckage, pulling the fuselage down and down, taking her and her immovable burden with it…

* * *
    Sutter lifted his attention from the fascinating patterns of indigo and glittering silver reflections that gave the sea around the Great Barrier Reef so much visual variety. Each difference in color represented a change in the depth of the sea, a change caused by the