Rising Force Read online

  The sun was a few degrees above the hilltops, between a derelict schooner with used tires hanging off the side for fenders, and a newer sport fisherman, the tuna tower nearly as tall as the schooner’s foremast. Beyond them, downtown Nassau was silhouetted against a rose-colored sky with the hills rising up behind it. The view was like something you’d see on a tourist postcard as the dark red sun slid down between the two boats, setting behind the hills of Nassau.

  “Pretty anti-climactic for the buildup,” I said, scratching Finn’s neck as the sky quickly grew darker.

  Finishing my beer, I put the chair back in the storage box. Finn bounded over to the side deck and down to the dock, jumping toward the Revenge in a halting gait.

  “No, buddy,” I said. “We need to go below and unpack some stuff.”

  The hatch to the pilothouse was forward of the helm and to starboard. I waited there until Finn reboarded, then I went below. The steps were steep, but not straight down like a lot of other boats. The companionway was more like the stairway in a two-story house, and the seven steps to the bridge deck got wider as you went down.

  I figured that I could live out of my seabag and boxes until I got familiar with the boat’s layout. But there were a few places I needed to locate: places to hide my valuables. Charity probably knew all of them and had certainly taken all of Victor’s personal stuff off the boat.

  All boats have hiding places. She’d told me of one, under the main engine. Knowing where it was and how to open it made it a simple matter. I was impressed at the simple ingenuity of it. The panel simply snapped into place with a spring-loaded stainless-steel ball, which was fitted into a brass sleeve and machined into the wood panel. Once it was in place, you could barely see it with a flashlight, and it looked and felt just like a part of the cross-bracing under the engine.

  Remembering a pair of Pelican boxes I’d seen on the workbench, aft the cramped engine room, I carried one of them up to the pilothouse and unpacked a few things. One of the Pelican boxes was large enough for the four Penn reel boxes, but I only put three in it. Then I took the watertight box down and stashed it in the starboard hiding spot, below the engine.

  I also remembered something else. Something that had seemed odd when I’d been aboard before. Opening the fourth box, I took the Sig Sauer out and checked the chamber, though I knew it was empty. Taking one of the magazines from the box, I slid it in and put the gun and the second mag in my cargo pocket, before going up on deck.

  I knew that the top of the helm raised up, and beneath it was a suite of high-tech navigation instruments. But on the starboard side, I remembered there being too much of a gap below the tilt-up lid and the cabinet door below it.

  Kneeling beside the wooden pedestal, I opened the cabinet. Inside were an assortment of cleaning and polishing items, lubricants, and neatly folded rags. I reached my hand inside, palm up. There was a panel above the drawer, about four inches below the countertop. I couldn’t feel any release or anything, but when I pushed against it, there was a click and the panel gave slightly. When I lowered my hand, the panel dropped down with it, hinged on the inboard side. It was a perfect hiding spot for my Sig.

  I looked through the contents of the drawer again and found a bottle of mineral oil. I opened it and sniffed, just in case. Satisfied, I took one of the rags, unfolded it, and poured a few drops of the oil onto it. Then I refolded the rag and rubbed it together to distribute the oil better.

  Looking around to make sure nobody was watching, I pulled the Sig and spare mag from my pocket and wrapped them together in the rag. Placing it inside, I raised the false panel and it clicked into place. Then I closed the drawer and went around to the helm seat.

  The cockpit wasn’t completely recessed into the deck like some sailboats; there was a low fiberglass rail around it and the benches were nearly flush with the deck. Only the footwell was recessed. In my mind, I traced the belowdeck area and guessed that the footwell was over the engine room and the helm seat was above the workshop, allowing a bit more head room down below. The helm seat was high enough to allow the captain to see over the heads of his passengers, even while seated.

  The seating in the cockpit wasn’t cushioned, and both the port and starboard benches were hinged with recessed stainless-steel latches. Lifting both sides, I located the cushions, along with extra dock lines and what looked like several neatly folded tarps, undoubtedly to keep the sun off the cabin roof in the summer. Rummaging under the tarps, I found a long, heavy-duty electrical cord.

  There was an electric pedestal on the dock, so I dragged the shore power cord out and looked around the cockpit. The plug was on the port side of the helm. Going below, I checked that the main breaker was off, then returned to the cockpit and connected the shore power and water line, turning both on.

  Back in the pilothouse, I turned off all the breakers, then turned on the main. Satisfied, I switched on the breakers I’d need for the night and heard a low hum behind the panel. When I opened it, I found an inverter with the red light on showing that the batteries were being charged.

  Going forward, I switched on lights in the lower salon. Ahead were two hatches, each with nautical scenes carved into the wood. Opening the one on the port side, I looked through the cabinets in the head and found nothing. A hatch on the far side led to the forward stateroom. The starboard hatch opened into a short gangway with a closet to starboard and another hatch beyond. Opening the closet door, I found a hanging locker large enough for an extensive wardrobe.

  I continued forward, opening the hatch at the end of the gangway and switching on the light. There had probably been a guest stateroom there, but now instead of a bunk it had a desk built against the starboard hull with a large storage area in the bow, aft the chain locker. An old guitar case lay on a wide shelf against the port side, with a tool box and bench under it. In the forepeak, several sails lay neatly folded and stacked on the deck. I assumed they were spares, since all the sails on the masts were on rolling furlers.

  Leaning over the sails, I opened the small hatch to the anchor locker, the foremost part of the interior of the boat. Though it was dimly lit from the single overhead light in the cabin, I saw nothing but two chain rodes, each piled up in separate compartments with a divider between them.

  I turned my attention to the tool chest and the drawers beneath the workbench; it struck me as odd to have a separate work area in the bow. The one aft the engine room seemed more than adequate.

  Opening the drawers of the toolbox, instead of the usual assortment of wrenches, sockets, and screwdrivers, I found large sewing needles, spools of lightweight braided line, pieces of leather, grommets of assorted sizes, and other sail repair items. Checking the drawers below the workbench, I found more of the same, along with several rolls of sail fabric.

  “I didn’t know I’d have to learn to sew,” I said aloud.

  Turning, I opened the guitar case, only to find an old acoustic guitar. As I lifted it out, the strings vibrated, making a deep, resonant tone. There wasn’t anything hidden below the guitar, except some sheets of paper and a battery-powered tuner.

  Mom had played guitar when I was a kid. I’d tried to teach myself by watching her, and she’d taught me a few simple chords, but I didn’t get very far with it before she died. Then I’d just given it up.

  I strummed the guitar’s strings. It sounded good, with a mellow resonance that reminded me of long ago times. Finding the right finger positions on the frets, I strummed one of the two chords I remembered. It sounded like it had been recently tuned. But, then again, I was hardly the guy to make that call.

  I put the guitar back in its case and turned toward the little office. As an afterthought, I picked up the case and moved it through the narrow gangway and leaned it against the bulkhead by the lower salon hatch.

  The little office space was just what it appeared to be. There was a laptop computer on the desk and a small print
er next to it. Opening the big bottom drawer on the left, I found neatly labeled hanging files. I thumbed through them. They seemed to be bios on people.

  Victor Pitt had once been a covert CIA operative, so it didn’t strike me as unusual that he kept reports on people. I pulled one out at random and looked it over. Oddly, it didn’t contain much more than a physical description. Looking through several more, I saw they were the same, with an occasional one having more detailed information about where the person was from and what they did for a living.

  Closing the file drawer, I opened the drawer above it. It held nothing more than blank printer paper. The one above that had typical office stuff: a stapler, a box of paperclips, two boxes of pencils, and a couple of pens. The top two drawers on the right were practically a mirror image of the left, except that instead of blank printer paper, there were hundreds of printed pages. I took out the top twenty or so sheets and thumbed through them. It looked like a book, minus the binding and cover.

  Was Victor a writer? I wondered.

  I opened the laptop and turned it on. It took a moment to boot up and when it did there were only three icons on the desktop. I double clicked on the first one and a document opened. It too appeared to be a book. I looked down at the page count and it was just over a hundred pages long.

  Too short for a novel, I guessed. I scrolled to the bottom and the end of the lengthy document was hung in mid-sentence, as if he’d been called away from his desk while writing.

  Carrying the guitar case aft, I laid it on the large sofa in the lower salon. Across from the comfortable-looking seating area was a large-screen television with speakers mounted in custom carpentry below it. The TV was flanked by two cabinets. I opened the one on the left and found four racks of CDs. The two racks on the left held music CDs, and quite a few of them were Jimmy Buffett. The other two racks seemed to be filled with movies. I looked back and scanned through the music collection, not recognizing many names. Then I saw two CDs by Eric Stone.

  That kind of surprised me. He was a bar singer in Marathon, or so I thought. I’d met him a couple of times when he’d been working at the Rusty Anchor, just before I left. I took one out and looked at the cover. It was the same CD that Kim had bought just a month ago.

  I opened the cabinet on the right, found a stereo system, and turned it on. Pushing the eject button on the CD player, I put the Eric Stone CD in and hit play.

  Eric began singing about a magnetic compass, a northern girl who escaped from the snow, and the sailing life. It sounded pretty good, so I let it continue as I looked through the other cabinets.

  There were no hiding places in the cabinets that I could find, but I didn’t expect there to be; a little too obvious. I hide stuff in plain sight on the Revenge. Rod and reel boxes are common on a fishing boat, and most of the ones under my bunk are just what they appear to be. Others, not so much.

  In the deck were two large hatches. I opened the first and found it to be nearly full of canned food. The second one was less than half full of boxes of dry foods. No hidden latches or false bottoms. I was reminded that I’d need to pick up a few things before departing, but there seemed to be enough food for at least a week.

  Turning, I looked at the guitar case on the couch. The couch itself looked like a regular living room sofa, but it had been carefully trimmed and redesigned to fit the contour of the starboard hull. I removed the cushions, saw that it was a sofa bed, and pulled it open. The foot of the bed almost reached the custom cabinetry of the entertainment center on the port side. The thin mattress didn’t look all that inviting, but if someone needed a place to crash, it would work in a pinch. I’d slept on worse many times. Raising a corner of the mattress at the head, I saw that there was space below it. I peeled back the mattress and removed two slats that snapped in place.

  The false bottom below the mattress didn’t look obvious and had I not been searching for hiding places, I might have overlooked it. I felt around inside but couldn’t find a latch of any kind. Remembering the three spots I’d already found and how they were simple snap-type panels, I pushed against it. The panel clicked and rose up a fraction of an inch, just enough to get a fingertip under the edge.

  I lifted the panel out and found a black towel wrapped around something. The familiar scent of gun oil reached my nostrils. I pulled it out and unwrapped the towel, revealing a Mossburg Mariner shotgun. The stock was glossy and all the metal parts were finished with a marine grade coating that shined like chrome. The short barrel extended no farther than the tubular magazine. I pumped the forestock slightly and saw that the chamber was empty but the magazine was loaded. Turning the extraction port toward the mattress, I racked out eight shells. They were alternating slugs and double-aught buckshot. The ultimate deck sweeper.

  The shotgun had been cleaned and oiled recently. It’s a chore, but living in a salt air environment, I clean all of my weapons every week, and keep them stored in zip-lock bags when I can.

  There appeared to be enough room below the false panel for my fly rod case also.

  The second song on the CD began, with accompanying gulls calling during the intro. Eric sang about a cold day in Nashville and playing in a lounge, before heading south because ballads, beaches, bars, and boats are what he’s all about. It was a sailing song, and I found myself enjoying his laid-back style.

  Going up to the pilothouse, I retrieved my rod case and put it under the sofa bed along with my new chrome-plated Mariner. After closing it up, I went back up to the bridge deck and brought two boxes of dry goods down and refilled the deck storage areas.

  Stepping back up to the upper salon and galley—or bridge deck, or pilothouse, depending on whether you were anchored or underway—I went straight to the lower helm on the starboard side. The woodwork was beautiful and well maintained. The throttle controls were simple, and the wheel much smaller than the one in the cockpit. Sitting at the raised helm seat, I could easily see through the low windshield, but the view over the bow left a lot to be desired. In fact, the horizon would be obscured by the hull for a good fifteen degrees to either side of the bowsprit. I didn’t expect to be piloting from here much, though it was good to have in the event of a sudden storm.

  Above the helm was a slim cabinet with VHF and single-sideband radios. VHF radios have a limited, line-of-sight range, but with the antenna mounted on the masthead, it would have a range of nine or ten miles. Twice that to another boat with its antenna at the same height. The SSB radio was different. It bounced a high-frequency radio wave off the ionosphere and, depending on the power and frequency used, its range could be thousands of miles.

  On the dash in front of me, clustered in a diamond pattern in the middle, were the usual engine gauges for temperature, oil pressure, and voltage output, with the tachometer at the top. On either side of the gauges were a combination radar and depth finder on the left and GPS chart plotter on the right.

  I searched the upper salon carefully and found another hiding place built into the bulkhead on the port side, just above the navigation station. It was only a few inches deep and opened with the same spring-loaded ball bearing that the others had. Closed, it wasn’t noticeable in the least. Inside were shelves spaced six inches apart from the top of the desk to the trim around the cabin top. The shelves were empty. A good place to stash money or more guns, but little else, due to its shallow depth.

  Aft the nav station was a small dinette for four. Aft that was the galley, which extended beyond the companionway, ending in a large pantry. That took a while to search. My earlier estimation of being off the grid for a week was off by at least a month.

  Continuing aft from the bridge deck on the starboard side, I went through all the drawers above the combination workbench and laundry table and found nothing. Next to it was a stacked washer and dryer, like you’d find in an apartment. Small, but still a lot bigger than what I had on the Revenge. I’d already searched the engine room and atta
ched tool and parts storage area, so I continued aft.

  Opening the hatch at the end of the gangway, I was amazed. The master stateroom was nearly as big as the salon on the Revenge. And the bed was practically double the size. At six-three, bunking on a boat has always been a problem for me, but here I’d be able to stretch my arms and legs out fully and not reach the sides of the hull. The bunk was full-beam width, narrowing at the stern, where the three large, rectangular portholes allowed a lot of natural light in. I guessed the bunk to be nine feet at the forward edge, and at least as wide as a king-sized bed. Over the bunk was a large portlight hatch, tinted to keep the sun out.

  Outside, I heard a commotion: voices raised in anger. My hand went to my cargo pocket, but I’d stashed the Sig at the helm. I’d brought over two other handguns, but they were in the Pelican box under the engine, and the Mossberg was forward, under the sofa bed.

  When I stepped up to the bridge deck, I could hear the voices a lot more clearly through the open companionway hatch. Finn stood in the middle of the pilothouse, ears up and the hair all down his neck and back standing on end.

  I was tied off on the port side of a finger dock, bow to the pier, putting the hiding spot and my Sig on the other side of the boat, away from the dock and the direction of the commotion.

  I held my hand up, palm toward Finn. “Stay here.”

  Halfway up the companionway, I stuck my head out into the night air. The voices were coming from the other side of the Revenge. I moved quickly to the helm and opened the cabinet, cursing myself for not stashing another gun down below where it could be quickly accessed.

  Retrieving the Sig, I inserted the mag. As quietly as possible, I racked a round into the chamber and decocked the gun, before putting it in my right cargo pocket.

  I looked back down into the cabin; Finn sat at the bottom of the steps, looking up. I quietly closed and latched the bat-wing doors to make sure he stayed down there.