Rising Force

by Wayne Stinnett

“That’s what? About a thousand miles from here?” Kat asked.

  “Seven days,” Brayden said. “Cruising non-stop, day and night.”

  “But I don’t think she was in a hurry,” Lea said, “and her daughter was so bright and fun.”

  Three weeks to cover what could be an easy ten-day run at six knots, I thought. Sounds just like her. She’d probably have to stop for fuel at least once, I doubted her boat had a thousand-mile range.

  After dinner, banana leaves and remnants of food were brushed into the fire and the boards tossed shoreward for the next time. Brayden produced a joint and lit it, passing it to Macie.

  I leaned toward Kat. “Is his the same as yours?”

  “No,” she whispered back. “It’s better and will make you feel all happy inside.”

  Kat accepted the joint from Macie and took a small puff, inhaling deeply. Then she passed it to me. Knowing that it would have a whole hell of a lot more pot in it than the little tube Kat had given me, I took a very small puff and then sucked in as much air as I could. I nearly coughed, as my chest began to expand, but following Kat’s example, I let the smoke out quickly.

  The initial feeling was the same as earlier in the day. Like a rush of warm water, it radiated across my face, then up and over my head. I passed the joint to Gaston. As he’d done with the rum, he handed it to Cory. I was surprised that Cory and Lea both smoked it, him being a doctor. So I asked him about it.

  “There are far more benefits to marijuana than there are detriments, Jesse,” he said. “Well, aside from the delivery method, that is. Smoke damages the lungs, no doubt, but one or two inhalations a day does a lot less damage than sitting next to this fire for an hour. Besides, it’s fun, and aside from the smoke, it doesn’t hurt anyone. In my learned opinion, as a practitioner of the ancient art of healing, it’s more harmless than rum.”

  When the joint got back to Brayden, it was half gone. He pinched the end quickly with his fingers, crushing out the ember. I understood why. The effect was immediate and deeply satisfying, like a double shot of smooth, over-proof rum. Just without the burn. I felt pleased about everything: my full belly, the company I was in, the feeling of the damp sand under my leg. Even the stars in the sky seemed to be dancing merrily.

  Topics of conversation came and went, like the waves on the beach. We laughed and told stories about ocean crossings and islands visited. I mostly just listened. Now and then, someone would request a song and Kat would pick up the guitar and sing. The songs were a mix of reggae, folk, and what she called trop-rock. Most were tunes I’d never heard before, but I recognized a couple of them. The others seemed to know them all and some sang along. Kat explained where and how she picked up some of the songs. A few she’d learned from cruising musicians in tiny, out-of-the-way bars on some faraway islands.

  This whole community seemed to be highly mobile, yet traveled at a snail’s pace, stopping for days, weeks, or months, whenever the situation warranted it. They talked of other cruisers they knew, where they were, and the last time they’d been heard from. Many of the same names kept popping up. Indeed, they were a tight-knit community, talking regularly with others over SSB radios. I somehow felt relaxed and happy to be in their midst.

  The Pusser’s bottle went around again, and more beers were plucked from the icy depths of the cooler. At some point, Brayden relit the joint, and it went around again. In the back of my mind, I knew that it was illegal. But, I’d done a few things in the past that stretched the bounds of the law, things that I’m far less proud of but would do again given the same circumstances. We weren’t hurting anyone.

  Somewhere around midnight, with the moon halfway down the western sky, The Bourgeau brothers excused themselves, saying they had work to do tomorrow. I considered that a moment. I had something to do, as well. I had a good idea where Savannah was going to be, and when she’d be there. It was a big ocean to search, and Tortola was a very small island. Part of me was wishing I still had the Revenge nearby. But another part was looking forward to the challenge: ten days at sea, sailing solo. I could easily be in Tortola ahead of her.

  “Did you call that in?” Cory asked Brayden. “That turtle thing?”

  “I did, mate,” Brayden said, sitting forward. Discussion of the poaching brought my mind back to the present. The pot was starting to wear off, but the haze of the rum was still there. “After a bit of ducks and drakes, being shuffled from one department to another, I reached the Bahamian interior. They’re sending someone out in the morning to take statements.” Brayden looked across the fire at me. “Will you still be here, Jesse?”

  “Yeah,” I said, reaching a decision. “I think I’m gonna stay a few more days.”

  Kat smiled and put the guitar in its case. “I’m tired,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”

  It was late when I woke. Bright sunlight streamed through the overhead porthole. By the angle, I could tell the morning was nearly half over. The previous night’s events were hazy after midnight. I don’t drink to excess very often, but I’d felt at ease last night and probably overindulged. Add to that the fact that yesterday was the first time I’d ever gotten high on pot. At least, the first time I’d willingly done so.

  My mouth was dry, so I put on a pair of shorts and a faded yellow Rusty Anchor tee-shirt, then stepped up to the pilothouse to get a bottle of water from the fridge.

  Kat was just turning on the stove. She was wearing my shirt from last night. It looked huge on her little frame, and I couldn’t tell if she had anything at all on beneath it.

  “Sleep okay?” she asked, handing me an empty mug, then filling it with coffee.

  I took a tentative sip. It was strong, the way I like it. “I don’t think I moved an inch after laying down.”

  “Thanks for letting me borrow your shirt,” she said, as she placed six trips of bacon in a pan. “I usually sleep nude and don’t have anything clean.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said, looking around. “Where’s Finn?”

  “Bill came to get him an hour ago. They’re around somewhere.”

  “You didn’t have to make breakfast.”

  “It’s the least I could do,” she said. “If you hadn’t been there the other night, I’d still be in Nassau. God, I hate that place.”

  I took another sip of coffee. “Is this the place you and Benny were headed to?”

  After several minutes, Kat placed the bacon on a straining rack and poured the grease from the pan into a glass.

  “Yeah, sort of,” she replied, adding what looked like half a dozen whisked eggs to the skillet. “Benny was coming from Puerto Rico. He bought a bunch of scrips and was taking them to Miami to sell to a guy he knows there. Truth is, he never planned to come here. He just said that to get me to go with him.”

  “Scrips?”

  “Prescription drugs,” she offered. “Vicodin… Darvon… Demerol. I don’t really know what kind, and he didn’t tell me any of that until we were underway.”

  “And he was taking them to sell in Miami?” I asked. “Why?”

  Kat shrugged, as she moved the eggs around the skillet. “Higher price, I guess. Or just for the thrill of being a smuggler, maybe. Benny was like that.”

  There was obviously more she wasn’t saying, due to the incident on the dock in Nassau. I knew there was a huge epidemic of prescription drug abuse in the States, and assumed it was probably the same all over the world. The pharmaceutical companies made far more than could possibly be prescribed, and out-of-date meds were often sold on the black market.

  As she scooped the eggs onto two plates, I sat down at the dinette with my coffee. Kat slid the plate with the larger mound of eggs in front of me then sat down across the small table.

  “Anyway,” she said, shaking a little salt onto her eggs, “when I found out, I told him I didn’t want any part of it, or him. I convinced him to sail straight through. Hi
s boat doesn’t have autopilot, so one of us had to be at the helm. I didn’t even want him touching me anymore.”

  “So you jumped ship in Nassau?”

  Kat placed her fork on her plate and looked at me. “It worked great for two days. Near Nassau, he suggested we do it at the helm. That’s when I told him I didn’t want anything to do with him.”

  “You don’t have to tell me what happened,” I said.

  “I kicked his ass,” she said, conviction in her eyes. “Bloodied his nose and blacked his left eye. Then I sailed into Nassau.”

  I nearly choked on a mouthful of bacon. Perhaps there had been more to the reason Benny didn’t let me see his face than what he let on.

  “You beat him up?” I finally got out.

  “I’m no easy target, Jesse.”

  Hearing a chirping noise, I rose and went aft to my cabin, with a newfound respect for the girl. The idea of her whipping Benny, as small as he was, then commandeering his vessel was sort of swashbuckling.

  My sat-phone was on the charger. I had a text message from Andrew telling me that he was under way and would arrive at the Rusty Anchor before sunset to meet up with Jimmy. My first mate’s knowledge of the local waters surpassed even my own. Jimmy would take the Revenge the last thirty miles to my island. The message was time stamped nearly three hours ago. I’d slept through the alert tone and several reminders. I sent a quick reply, thanking him again, though I knew he wouldn’t get it for another hour, when he got within cell range of the Florida coast.

  “Anything important?” Kat asked, when I returned to the pilothouse.

  “Just my friend telling me he was leaving Nassau on my other boat.”

  We ate in silence. I could tell Kat had something on her mind, so I ate unhurriedly to give her time to collect her thoughts.

  “What do you really do?” she finally asked.

  I glanced up, arching an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “This boat’s one thing,” she said. “It’s beautiful, but it’s older. So probably didn’t cost more than a house back home. But that other boat is big money. I’ve met a few charter guys; most couldn’t rub two pennies together after making the payment.”

  “I work because I like to, not because I have to; I owe nobody. And because I don’t have to work, I often don’t. I live frugally, living mostly off of my retirement and investments.”

  “Yeah, I asked Cory about that. He’s smart. He said your retirement couldn’t be enough to live on and I should watch out.”

  Taking a deep breath, I placed my fork on the table, and looked deep into Kat’s eyes. I was unaccustomed to discussing how much money I had, or where it came from, with someone I didn’t know very well. Or, for that matter, even trusted friends.

  Opening my phone, I pulled up the internet and did a search for a news story in the Abaconian, the local paper of the Abaco islands. When I found it, I opened the story to the group photo that was taken at the stern of the Revenge, with chests of emeralds and gold coins, all propped up in front of my friends. I was on the bridge, just visible behind them.

  “A few years ago, me and some friends found something that’d been lost for over four hundred years.”

  Kat picked up the phone and looked at the picture, zooming it in. Then she scrolled the screen, stopping to read here and there.

  “You found a treasure ship?” she asked.

  “Yeah. So, like I said, I work because I enjoy working.”

  Picking up her mug, Kat swallowed the last of her coffee. I could tell by the look in her eyes that there were more questions.

  “When you were in the military?” she said. “What was your job?”

  Drinking down the last of my own coffee, I looked at her over the rim. The difference between us was vast, I could see. There were career military people, like myself, then there were those who served one or two tours. Others might have had a sibling, parent, or child in the military. Others still might have had a sibling or parent who served, or known a veteran or two, or remembered Billy from high school who left for the Navy and never came back. Then there were the sheltered few.

  I kind of figured that Kat, and maybe some of her friends were in the last group. Those who have never had contact with someone in the military, or a veteran. And that’s okay. Less than half of one percent of the population serve. The other ninety-nine-and-a-half percent are protected by those serving, and many don’t even know to what degree that protection extends, or at what cost to that half percent. Those who serve do so for that reason: so people like Kat would never experience a night without peace.

  “I was an infantryman, Kat. Just before I retired, I taught promising young Marines how to shoot straight.”

  “Brayden said you were a sniper. Said he could tell by the way you sat down at the fire.”

  Having worked with Deuce and his team, and now owning part of a security company, I felt a bit ashamed that I had let something like that give me away.

  “How would Brayden know?”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied. “I think he was in the New Zealand army or something.”

  “I was a Marine, Kat. The Marines have a motto: Every Marine a rifleman. Even the cooks and clerks had to know how to shoot. Now I’m just a former treasure finder who likes boats—a boat bum with a little coin saved up.”

  Picking up my fork, I continued eating nonchalantly, hoping that would be the end of it.

  “Are you really gonna do what you said last night?” she finally asked.

  Swallowing a bite of eggs, I thought back on last night’s impromptu gathering on the beach while I chewed. I couldn’t remember saying anything about anything I had planned that would concern Kat.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “You got pretty wasted,” she said, pushing the eggs around her plate some more. “Do you remember coming back to the boat?”

  I didn’t. I remembered some of the conversation after the French brothers left, and remembered Kat saying she was ready to turn in. But, I got the feeling that we didn’t leave right away, and I definitely couldn’t remember walking back to the boat, or anything after that, until I awoke. Had anything happened once we got back? After all, she was wearing my shirt.

  I took a swallow of my coffee before answering. “Yeah, I guess I did have a bit too much. I don’t usually get that bad off, especially around people I barely know. I’m sorry if I said or did anything out of line.”

  Her face took on a mischievous expression. “What if I told you we did it in that big bed of yours?”

  I felt my face redden, and she laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Nothing happened between us; but I did nearly carry you back here.”

  I took a sip of coffee and raised it to her. “Thanks. So, what kind of alcohol enlightened pearl of wisdom did I drop last night?”

  “You said you were going to find the people who were killing the turtles and reefs and make them pay.”

  “Reefs?” I asked.

  She laughed again. “You really were bombed, huh? Brayden told us about reporting the turtles and then David brought up an ongoing problem they’ve had around here. Someone’s been breaking off huge portions of reef and live rock. Brayden thinks they’ve hauled away tons of live rock in just a couple of weeks. You seemed very interested.”

  That’s a lot of material to haul off, I thought. Coral reefs are slow growing communities of tiny animals. They can’t move about, and the calcium skeleton of hundreds of years of growth is as hard as rock and doubly treacherous to boaters. The collection and sale of limestone rocks with attached corals, tube worms, and other organisms is strictly regulated, and most of it is grown in artificial farming tanks.

  “That was just the Pusser’s talking,” I said. “I’m just one harmless old guy.”

  But, she’d piqued my curiosity. A cou
ple of years ago, someone had intentionally destroyed many patch reefs in the backcountry of the Keys, near my home. They’d done it intentionally, to flush me out.

  “Yeah,” she said, drawing the word out. “Older, maybe. But, I get the sense that you could be miles away from a harmless guy, if you set your mind to it.”

  “So, what are your plans for today?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “Cleaning out my loft. In fact, I told Macie I’d be there at nine and it’s nearly half past that now.”

  “Need some help?” I asked, then quickly shoveled down the last of the eggs.

  We cleaned up the breakfast dishes, then Kat went below to change clothes. When she returned, she was wearing a tight-fitting workout top that ended before her ribcage, and a pair of cutoff jeans.

  “If you need to wash some clothes,” I offered. “There’s a machine in the aft passageway.”

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling. “This is the last of my clean clothes, so I’ll take you up on that when we get finished.”

  We walked up the dock to the marina office and went inside. There wasn’t anyone around. Kat went to the drink cooler and took two bottles of water, tossing me one before making a note on a pad sitting on the countertop.

  “That’s about all I can offer for pay,” she said. “Macie must be out back.”

  “Payment accepted,” I said, following Kat out the back door.

  I glanced down at the pad. Names were scribbled, along with items like water and canned corn. The honor system.

  Behind the building, under the shade of what was left of someone’s mainsail, Macie, Brayden, and Cory McKay were sitting around a small table, with a portable single-sideband radio in the middle of it. Two cords extended from the radio; one was connected to a heavy extension cord that went through the door we’d just come out of. The other cord, an antenna coax, snaked around a mast attached to the side of the building, and soared at least fifty feet above the ground.

  A woman’s voice was coming over the radio, and Macie put a finger to her lips and motioned us to sit. I held a chair for Kat and then dragged a bucket over, flipping it to sit on.