Rising Force: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 13) Read online

  “You might have a point,” I said, “but a dead man’s boat?”

  Tony shrugged. “He didn’t die on board. And under good wind, that ketch can match just about any trawler.”

  He was right on that count. Having sailed Victor’s Formosa, even without it being under full canvas, I could feel the speed and power in the helm. With her waterline length, nine knots wasn’t out of the question. That’s fast for a blowboat.

  We rode in silence for several minutes. The audible and visual equivalent of the doldrums soon fell over me again. I tried to keep my mind busy, by reading the Miles to Destination on the GPS and calculating in my head how long it would take at our current speed. The TTD was right there on the display, too. But running the numbers in my head kept me alert.

  “I think they’ve had enough sun,” Tony said.

  I looked down at the foredeck; one of the girls was turned around waving. The Revenge’s handrails were low, meant for moving around at anchor, or approaching a dock; not while running at thirty knots. Considering their minimal boating experience, I’d told them to let me know when they wanted to return and I’d slow down. As I started to pull back on the throttles, the smaller woman, who called herself Moana Kapena, pointed out over the bow.

  I glanced up just in time to see swirling water around something large, flat, and barely above the surface. Gulls took flight, crying and wheeling overhead, as I spun the wheel to starboard. We just barely missed the thing, and both girls slid partway to the side deck, before I straightened the wheel and brought the engines down to idle speed.

  “Go down to the cockpit,” I ordered Tony. “We need to turn around and see what that was.”

  Tony and I were both civilians now, and friends, but he understood the need for a chain of command aboard a vessel. I was the captain; everyone else followed orders quickly and without question. The why could be discussed later.

  He climbed down the ladder, as the girls hurried along the side deck. I started a slow turn, bringing us back to a reverse heading as I stood and looked all around in front of us.

  The girls came up to the bridge and, before either said anything, I pointed them forward and told them to keep an eye out. Switching on the sonar, I changed it to forward scanning, in case the thing had slipped just below the surface. I had a pretty good idea what it was going to be.

  “There!” Fiona Russo shouted, pointing just off the port bow.

  I saw it then; the dimensions, shape, and boxed corners sticking up and out from the sides confirmed what I thought I’d seen.

  Container ships carry huge metal freight boxes to ports all over the world. The containers are then lifted from the ship by crane and placed on a truck or trailer chassis to be transported over land. I’ve seen them stacked six high on the decks of some ships, and probably ten deep below deck. If caught in a bad storm, many containers have been known to break loose and go overboard.

  “It’s a container!” I shouted down at Tony. “I’ll come up on the lee side, see if you can get any numbers off it.”

  “What’s in it?” Moana asked, just as a waft of wind carried the unmistakable, sickly odor of decomposing flesh up to us.

  I held my breath, pushed the throttles forward and turned away from the container. “Maybe you girls should go down into the cabin.”

  “What are you going to do?” Fiona asked, covering her nose.

  “Gotta report it, at the very least,” I replied, watching a fin slice through the water near the giant tomb.

  Moana looked as if she were about to retch. “What’s that stink? A dead fish?”

  “Or just take off,” Fiona argued. “That’s what I’d do.”

  “Leave it for some other sap to run into?” I asked, removing my shades. “What if it’s a family with little kids?”

  Tony came up the ladder. “We can’t dive it. See that tiger?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “We’ll circle around and come up on the windward side, but I won’t be able to get as close.”

  “Get me within reach of the boat hook,” he said. “Maybe I can get an EPIRB lashed onto it.”

  An Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon broadcasts its location on the distress frequency via satellite. The ones I had on board were GPS enabled and could bring rescue services to within fifty yards. The trouble was, EPIRBs are identifiable to a specific boat, and Tony hadn’t cleared through Bahamian customs.

  I plucked the mic from its holder. “Let me call Royal Bahamas Defence Force first, so they don’t activate a full-on rescue.”

  “What was that awful smell?” Moana asked again.

  Tony didn’t attempt to sugar-coat his response as I switched frequencies. “There’s a dead person or persons inside that box.”

  The container had less than a foot of its top above water and could likely sink to the bottom any minute. Human traffickers sometimes used them to smuggle people—slaves really—from one place to another. The smell was unmistakably that of death. The container was probably eight feet in height and rode too low in the water for anyone inside to still be alive. There were already light threads of algae blooming on the sides. It had been in the water for at least a week.

  Using the single-sideband radio, I reached the RBDF and explained what we’d found and what we believed was inside the container, making sure he understood it looked like it had been in the water for a long time and this was a recovery, not a rescue. I also asked if we should attach an EPIRB, since one of my charter clients had to meet a plane in three hours, and I couldn’t really wait around.

  The Bahamian officer asked all the pertinent questions; my name, boat name, home port, current GPS location, destination, and who the EPIRB was registered to. After I gave him the information, he told me to wait. I’d given him the story Tony and I had already discussed for when he got to Customs; we were transiting Bahamian waters from Miami, headed to Turks and Caicos, but one of my passengers had an emergency call and we needed to get to the airport on New Providence as quickly as possible. The radio was silent for a few minutes. I knew he was running my name and my boat through their computer to see if I was a known drug trafficker or something. After that, he’d have to get permission from higher up the food chain to allow me to activate the EPIRB in a non-emergency situation.

  Finally, the officer came back on the air. “Royal Bahamas Defence to Gaspar’s Revenge. Yuh have permission to attach di EPIRB and continue on yuh way.”

  I looked blankly at Tony, surprised at how easy it had been. He shrugged.

  “I have two patrol boats heading toward di location,” the Bahamian officer continued. “How sure are yuh of di contents?”

  “It’s a forty-foot container,” I replied, “with sharks around it. We didn’t get in the water to open it, so I’m only going on the smell. No idea what else is inside, but I know the smell of death.”

  “Roger dat, Cap’n McDermitt,” came the reply. “Yuh clear to proceed, suh. Di patrol boats will wait on di scene for a freighter to bring di container to Nassau. If yuh like, yuh can retrieve yuh device dere.”

  I knew that was an invitation to sit in a conference room for hours on end, answering the same questions over and over. I figured it would be a better idea to kiss off the five-hundred-dollar piece of equipment; I had several on board.

  Tony was in the cockpit with two boat hooks in hand, a dock line looped over the end of one of them. I stood with my back to the wheel, using the throttles for steerage. The wind, what little there was, was now over our bow. I slowly backed down on the metal container.

  The slightly raised boxes on the corners of these containers have holes for securing the containers to a trailer or one to another while in transit. Tony deftly handled the boat hooks, as I tried to keep the wind from pushing the Revenge against the metal box. Steel and fiberglass don’t mix, and I’d seen the results of a ’glass boat hitting one of those things. I
t took Tony a few minutes, but he finally got the loop down through the top hole and then managed to fish it out of the side with the other hook. He quickly hauled the looped end of the dock line aboard, slipped the bitter end through the eye, and pulled the slip knot tight to the container. Then he tied the EPIRB’s lanyard to the end of the dock line and tossed it overboard, knowing that it would activate on contact with water.

  “What’s our time look like?” I asked Tony as he climbed up and sat beside me at the helm.

  He took a moment to tap at his phone screen, then leaned over the chart plotter, shielding the sun’s rays with his hand. “Still plenty of time at thirty knots. I’ll be two hours early.”

  “Good,” I said. “It’ll take an hour to clear customs and get a cab to the airport.”

  “Was it just me?” Tony asked. “Or did that whole thing with the Defence Force go a little too easily?”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes the windshield.”

  Tony shook his head. “Activating an EPIRB? Leaving the scene where someone might be dead? Sounds suspect to me, man.”

  The girls were sitting on the port bench seat. “Just in case the Bahamas officials stop us on the way in,” I said to them, “maybe you two oughta go below and change.”

  “Do you think they will?” Moana asked.

  I grinned at her. “It’s doubtful, but sailors are sailors. If they see you two in bikinis, they just might. When we head into port, you’ll want to stay inside. We’re only gonna bump the dock long enough for Tony to step over, then it’s about an hour to where we’ll meet Charity.”

  “What will happen to us then?” Fiona asked.

  I merely shrugged. “Just spend a little time with Charity and get to know her better. She’s good people, and you three have a lot in common. Lay low with her for a while. If the Pences have the kind of reach you think they do, she can keep you hidden and safe better than anyone. Then the three of you can figure out what to do with the rest of your lives.”

  I waited until the girls were down the ladder before I brought the Revenge back up on plane. When I looked back, the gulls were landing on the container again. I doubted there were more than one or two bodies inside, not a container full of refugees or anything; the smell wasn’t that strong.

  Nudging the throttles back when we reached thirty knots, I again considered Charity’s offer. Even if I agreed, it’d probably take months for everything to go through. By that time, I might find Savannah. Then what would I do with a sailboat? For that matter, I hadn’t given a whole lot of real thought to what I’d do if I found her. Move her and Florence into my little stilt house? Join them on the trawler? And do what with my island, business, and boats? I had a ton of questions, but less than an ounce of answers.

  An hour later, I steered Gaspar’s Revenge around the eastern tip of New Providence Island and turned into Nassau Harbour. It was still a couple of hours before sunset, and there were boats and ships of all sizes transiting the waterway. I slowed to twenty knots, just fast enough to stay up on top of the water.

  Radioing the port authority, I told them I had a client aboard who had to get home to an emergency and he hadn’t cleared in with customs yet. I told him the same lie that we were transiting Bahamian waters, out of Miami. Tony couldn’t show up at the airport for a flight out of the country with no entry stamp. The customs man was very helpful and said his entry would be expedited. He also said that there was a long line of cabs waiting; a cruise ship was due to arrive within the hour.

  Tony climbed back up to the bridge after securing most of his gear down in the cockpit. He handed me a sheet of paper torn from a small notepad. “Here, I jotted the container number on my phone and then wrote it down for you.”

  I glanced at it. There were four letters and seven numbers, the last of which he’d drawn a box around.

  “What’s the box for?”

  “Search me,” he answered. “There was a box around the last number on the container, so I figured it meant something.”

  I folded the sheet and put it in my pocket.

  Where the harbor narrowed, we passed under the high bridge carrying tourists over to Paradise Island. A few minutes later, we idled up to the customs dock. Tony had his small pack over one shoulder. He’d left his guns with me, and I’d stashed them along with my own.

  Reaching out, Tony grabbed the rung of the ladder and climbed up the few steps to the pier and waved. “Hope you find her!” he shouted before turning and walking toward the customs building.

  Maneuvering away from the dock, I continued west past the cruise ship terminal, toward the western harbor entrance. Twenty minutes later, we cleared the harbor mouth and I pointed the bow toward Bond’s Cay.

  Somewhere ahead was Charity’s antique sloop, Wind Dancer. She’d likely be sailing a little more northerly from Nassau for greater speed, then tacking west and running before the wind for the last few miles.

  “Is it okay to come out?” a voice asked over the intercom speaker.

  I punched the button next to it. “Yeah, and would you bring me a thermos of coffee? Tony put it on a few minutes ago.”

  “Sure,” came the reply, though I couldn’t tell which one of the women it was.

  They climbed the ladder to the bridge a moment later, both dressed in lightweight, baggy clothes designed to shield the sun and still keep them cool. Once both women were seated on the bridge and I’d refilled my mug, I pushed the throttles up just a little beyond cruising speed. The Revenge dropped down at the stern, the big props displacing the water under the boat. She climbed up on top of the surface in seconds, as we roared out onto the TOTO.

  Call me a power or speed junky; I just like the feel of a big boat powering through the chop.

  “Didn’t Charity say her boat was in Nassau?” Fiona asked. “Why couldn’t we have just switched here?”

  “Better if nobody sees you,” I replied. “She left Nassau over an hour ago and we’ll be at Bond’s Cay in about an hour.”

  “She’s already there?”

  I chuckled. “No, it’ll take her a good three or four hours. Her top speed is about what this boat’ll do at an idle.”

  “So we’ll see her along the way?” Moana asked.

  I adjusted the radar to its maximum range. “Maybe, but I doubt it. Wind’s out of the east, so she’ll take advantage of that and sail a more northerly course for speed.”

  More than a dozen echoes began to populate the screen, many moving toward the Berry Islands, as we were.

  “What did Tony mean by he hoped you found her?” Moana asked. “Don’t you know where we’re meeting her?”

  I glanced over at the diminutive Polynesian woman. “He wasn’t talking about Charity.”

  “Who was he talking about, then?”

  She held my gaze, her light brown—almost yellow—eyes seeming to convey innocence of all things. Her past told a different story. If what she’d claimed was true, she’d been kidnapped by pedophiles at the age of ten, then killed them some years later to escape. I knew she was probably the same age as my oldest daughter, Eve, who’d turned twenty-five just after I’d left the Keys; but, mentally, Moana was still little more than a ten-year-old girl.

  “I’ve been looking for someone for a few weeks,” I said. “I’ll be getting back to that when we meet Charity.”

  “Someone who broke some law?” Fiona asked.

  “No,” I replied. “It’s personal.”

  An hour and many questions later, the sun was nearing the cloud bank that still stretched across most of the horizon to the southwest. It tinged the clouds a rusty shade of red. Apparently, they were moving north also.

  As we approached the southern end of Bond’s Cay, I slowed and reached for the VHF mic. I hailed Wind Dancer three times on channel sixteen, with no reply. I didn’t really expect one, though. She was likely still b
eyond the horizon to the east or southeast. I could probably reach her on the SSB radio—sidebands have a longer range—but opted for the satellite phone instead.

  Charity answered on the third ring. “I’m under power,” she said, by way of a greeting. “What happened to the wind?”

  “We’re just off the south end of Bond’s,” I said, looking at an echo on the radar screen. “How far out are you?”

  “Ten miles,” she replied. “I had decent wind on the first leg, but just a few minutes after tacking west, it died. It’ll take me at least two hours to motor in.”

  “Want me to head east?”

  “No need,” Charity replied, her voice sounding distant somehow, though she was barely over the horizon. “You were going to anchor there anyway, right?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, though I had considered heading over to Chub Cay. “We’ll be in the second cove on the lee side. You can’t go much shallower than that, can you?”

  “Roger that,” Charity replied. “I grabbed some steaks at the marina store before I left.”

  “It’s like you read my mind. We can grill on the Revenge before turning in.”

  “See you in a couple of hours, Jesse.”

  I ended the call and placed the phone on the dash.

  An echo I’d seen on the radar had been pacing us, five miles back, for the last fifteen minutes.

  I switched off the radar and turned to the girls. “Either of y’all familiar with boats?”

  “I’ve done a little boating,” Fiona replied. “Nothing as fast as this.”

  “Can you handle releasing the safety chain on the anchor? I can do everything else from up here.”

  “No problem,” she said, as I brought the speed down to an idle and turned north into the natural channel on the west side of Bond’s Cay.

  There were two sailboats anchored in the first cove we came to. When we passed the next spit of land, I was glad to see that the second cove was empty. I turned toward an empty beach, watching the sonar. When we reached four feet of water, I reversed the engines, bringing the Revenge to a stop.