Steady As She Goes: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 21) Read online

  Copyright © 2021

  Published by DOWN ISLAND PRESS, LLC, 2021

  Beaufort, SC

  Copyright © 2021 by Wayne Stinnett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,

  or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express

  written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy

  of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase

  only authorized editions.

  Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication Data

  Stinnett, Wayne

  Steady As She Goes/Wayne Stinnett

  p. cm. - (A Jesse McDermitt novel)

  ISBN: 978-1-7356231-2-2 (eBook)

  Cover photograph by VaLife

  Graphics by Aurora Publicity

  Edited by Marsha Zinberg, The Write Touch

  Final Proofreading by Donna Rich

  Interior Design by Aurora Publicity

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies,

  events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Many real people are used

  fictitiously in this work, with their permission. Most of the locations

  herein are also fictional or are used fictitiously. However, the author

  takes great pains to depict the location and description of the many

  well-known islands, locales, beaches, reefs, bars, and restaurants

  throughout the Florida Keys and the Caribbean to the best of his ability.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Maps

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Afterward

  To the memory of Colonel Roy Shelton, who served our great nation from 1963 to 1993 as a Marine Corps officer. Colonel Shelton passed away suddenly on March 18, 2021, at the age of 79. It was also the day I began writing this novel.

  He and I rode many missions together with Upstate South Carolina Patriot Guard Riders, honoring those service members and first responders who’d fallen before us. He was an easy man to talk to, always making other riders laugh with his sharp wit and sea stories. He always had a ready smile and words of advice or encouragement. He also was a quiet and kind man, and I’m certain he never told an untruth in his life.

  The colonel was a big reason I started writing. In June of 2013, after a ride briefing, he and I were talking. The PGR is a hodge-podge mixture of civilian and veteran bikers. He and I were often the only two Marines in the group and Marines tend to gravitate toward one another. On that particular day, while talking about books we’d read, Roy told me I should write a novel.

  He was a colonel. I was a corporal. The oaths we each swore decades earlier had no expiration date. Part of the oath I swore said, “I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me….”

  So, I told him, “Aye aye, sir,” and started writing my first novel the next day.

  The colonel never ordered me to stop. Thanks for the kick in the pants, sir. Semper Fi, Brother!

  “The highest form of evidence in English Common Law is the sworn word of a person of good repute. This tenet is also the basis of our legal system. In other words, just as one is considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, one is considered to be telling the truth, unless it can be proven otherwise, beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  —Colonel Roy H. Shelton, USMC (Retired)

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  Jesse’s island in the Content Keys

  The Caribbean coast of South America

  Friday, August 6, 2021

  Osmin Mejia stood in the open doorway of his home. Behind him, on the other side of the dirt road, the Essequibo River flowed lazily past, oblivious to all but its steady march to the sea.

  He and his oldest son had just returned from a night of fishing, having caught several hundred kilograms of shrimp—one of their best nights in months.

  They’d met with a ship at dawn to deliver their catch. They did this to avoid the heavy taxes that were levied if the catch were brought to shore and sold at the docks in Parika or nearby Georgetown.

  His house wasn’t much; just three rooms and a roof, but Osmin had built it himself on land that had been left to him by his father. Land that would one day belong to his sons.

  The door to the small house was hanging on one hinge. The room inside was in complete disarray. What little furniture there was had been overturned or pushed around in an obvious struggle.

  His wife, two daughters, and youngest son weren’t there to greet him.

  “Dis is bad bad,” muttered Augusto be
hind him.

  In Guyana Creole, or Guyanese, as the locals would call it, there is no word for “very,” and adjectives and adverbs are often repeated for emphasis.

  Guyana was a poor poor country made infamous in 1978 by Jim Jones and his cult, the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, when they all committed mass suicide by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid.

  Osmin dropped to his knees in the doorway and began to sob.

  His son pushed past him, looking around. He picked up a toy that belonged to his little brother—a handmade stuffed sheep, which little Franco slept with every night.

  There was a sound outside and Augusto turned, dropping the toy to the bare wood floor.

  A neighbor stood beyond the porch, the dark river behind him. He looked at the father and son with deep, sorrow-filled eyes. His name was David Clarke and he walked with the aid of a crude crutch. As a boy, he’d had his left leg mangled by a huge black caiman while netting fish in the Essequibo.

  Osmin turned and saw David, who cast his eyes down at the ground beneath his feet. “Raiders came to de village,” was all the crippled man could say.

  Augusto helped his father to his feet, and they stepped down off the porch together.

  “Raiders?” Augusto asked the man.

  “They came in the middle of the night,” David said. “They took my Mariam.”

  Fire flashed in young Augusto’s eyes. Mariam was a year younger than him—the same age as the oldest of his two sisters.

  “Who were they?” Osmin asked, his voice cracking.

  “From across de border,” David replied. “They came by boat.”

  Augusto took a step toward the man who was supposed to be his father-in-law one day. “How do you know they were Venezuelan?”

  “They knocked me down, Augusto. As if I were just a nuisance to them. They spoke the Spanish.”

  “How long ago?”

  David shook his head. “Late last night. They took a dozen others, including your brother, sisters, and mother. They are long gone and the authorities have yet to arrive.”

  “We must go after them,” Augusto implored his father. “Our boat is the fastest on the Essequibo.”

  “Their boat is much faster,” David said. “A big, open boat, with three motors on the back.”

  Augusto looked over at David. “Did nobody try to stop them?”

  “Andres tried,” David said. “The raiders had guns. Andres is dead.”

  “We must gather the people,” Augusto declared. “Did anyone see or hear anything else?”

  Though young—only seventeen—Augusto was a natural leader. All his peers looked up to him and his father was on the village council, so that gave the young Guyanese some say in the overall community. The older men admired his calm confidence and inner strength.

  And he’d been abroad, working as a deckhand on a cargo ship for all of his sixteenth year. He’d traveled and seen much of the coast of South America and even up to the northern islands of the Caribbean—Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas—islands owned by the United States.

  The crippled man nodded. “They were from Caracas. This was overheard as they took our people away.”

  Augusto thought for a moment. Caracas was a long way—almost a week in his father’s boat. A fast boat like David had described couldn’t possibly make the journey without many stops for petrol, and that was a rare commodity on the desolate coast. Plus, carrying a dozen captives in an open boat would draw suspicion wherever they stopped.

  Augusto turned to his father. “The boat took them to a ship offshore.”

  Osmin looked up at his son. “But which one? Only last night, we saw four ships go by as we worked the nets. There must be many more out there every day.”

  “I must get to a telephone,” Augusto said, already planning what to do and say.

  “You know there are none in the village, my son. And who would you call?”

  “When I was in Puerto Rico,” Augusto began, “I met an American. He used to be a soldier, but he lost a leg.”

  Osmin looked back at their home. “What good is a one-legged cripple?”

  “He told me that he worked for a man who fixes things when the government cannot.”

  “What man is this?” David asked, stepping closer.

  “He said he worked for a man named Jack Armstrong.”

  Monday, August 16, 2021

  Over the past few months, I’d gotten a feel for her—a deep connection and greater understanding of how she behaved in all kinds of situations. When you’re together twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it’d be surprising not to. But the relationship was constantly changing, evolving, as we got to know one another more intimately.

  During the first few weeks we were together, I studied every detail of her; how she moved and reacted, the sounds she made, the subtle nuances she would divulge to me alone.

  Nils Hansen had explained what I should expect from her and what her limitations were. And more importantly, he showed me what she would demand from me at all times.

  “She can be very insistent at times,” he’d told me. “And you will become the only man she will completely trust and rely on.”

  It was a complicated relationship, exacerbated by the fact that I could never completely understand everything about her. She would always keep something hidden from me, something in reserve. Nils had talked about her soul and how she felt right about doing what she was asked to do. He told me I needed to connect with her in an almost spiritual way.

  For the past three months, ever since Nils had left, I’d set aside time for her, just the two of us. Early each morning before dawn. Not for deep meditation or lengthy dialogue, but a few minutes each morning, just for the two of us. Alone, we explored new facets of each other’s innermost beings, and what each of us wanted and expected from the other.

  I talked to her about my feelings, my expectations, even my fears. I told her about my wife and son, still asleep on the upper deck. Slowly, she opened up and showed herself to me and made her desires known.

  Ambrosia was a complicated lady, of that there was no doubt.

  On this particular morning, I was in the mechanical room. I’d asked one of the crewmen, a young Portuguese engineer by the name of Heitor Silva, to show me the water maker and all its parts and accessories.

  Heitor was from Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal, on the Iberian Peninsula, a seafaring town that dated back to before the Phoenicians’ arrival more than three thousand years ago. When we first met, he was quick to point out that though his name was pronounced similarly to Hector, it was spelled Heitor, and pronounced with a very subtle C sound.

  He’d left Portugal at the age of eighteen, attended MIT, earned a master’s in marine engineering, then worked for ten years at a shipyard in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on Buzzards Bay. He’d married and had a son, but his wife and child were killed by a mugger who was never caught. Soon after that, he got a visit from Jack Armstrong.

  Heitor told me that Ambrosia was capable of producing enough drinking water every day to sustain a small village. And with both her generators and main engines running, she could not only provide electricity for the entire ship, but also for a small hospital on shore.

  During bad times, like a hurricane or earthquake, Ambrosia would be a fine lady to have around. A comfort to those in need. But humanitarian missions weren’t what she’d been redesigned for.

  Ambrosia was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  With her twin turbines spooled up, she was capable of sixty-five knots. She’d only reached that incredible speed once in her ten years of operation, and that was during her final sea trials in calm waters.

  After being signed over to the Saudi prince who’d had her built, the prince had been less than enthused that she wasn’t able to duplicate that speed in the open ocean. In even moderate seas, she was limited to no more than fifty-five knots. The prince quickly sold her to Jack Armstrong.

/>   I’d witnessed Ambrosia going nearly full speed only once. It was when I was aboard my fishing boat, Gaspar’s Revenge, along with several friends. We were on our way to meet Jack Armstrong for the first time. Ambrosia had passed us while the Revenge was making forty knots in open water. Witnessing a 199-foot yacht at that speed had left me, and everyone aboard the Revenge, slack-jawed and speechless.

  As Ambrosia’s captain for the past three months, the fastest I’d run her was forty knots, and that was only at fifty percent power from the turbines. The crew and I had done it twice during regularly scheduled run-up and maintenance checks. But it was very comforting to know more speed was there if we ever needed it. With just her diesel engines, she was able to reach twenty knots, which was still incredibly fast for a boat her size.

  Once Heitor left me alone in the mechanical room, I did as I usually did, and found a seat where I could see most of the equipment. I allowed my eyes to roam over the hoses, gauges, and valves, sometimes talking out loud as I traced each or figured out what it did.

  Nils had given me a basic outline of everything aboard and Heitor had provided a more in-depth tour of the mechanical suite, which took up most of the lowest part of the ship. But I liked to be hands-on and figure things out on my own.

  “Ah,” I whispered quietly, while studying a specific set of valves and hoses. “Backflush valves.”

  Heitor had told me that he’d personally installed a system whereby he could reverse the water flow, moving clean, potable water from the storage tanks back through the filters and strainers to the through-hull fitting, clearing it of any debris that might get picked up. He’d said that since installing it, he’d reversed the pumps for three minutes every Monday, and they hadn’t had to send a diver down since.

  There was a static crackle from a speaker mounted over the hatch. I knew what it was before it came.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said, running my hand along the sides of four upright cylindrical filters.

  “Captain McDermitt to the bridge,” my first mate’s voice said over the speaker.