Rising Force

by Wayne Stinnett

  He met my gaze evenly. “And taking down drug lords and terrorists in Cuba on your days off?”

  I could actually feel the blood drain from my face.

  “That struck a chord,” Brayden said with a smile. He brought the little boat up on plane, put his feet up on the gunwale, and shouted over the engine. “Relax, mate. Your secret’s safe here on Chub.”

  Instead of going west, as we had the day before, Brayden turned the little boat east, following the shoreline. The marina and houses quickly dropped out of sight behind us, and the idyllic, natural shoreline was all there was to see.

  I said something about going into Cuba with Deuce? That could be a real problem. It had been nearly three years ago, but I was sure the Cuban authorities would love to know who botched their gun-running operation.

  After ten minutes, we reached the promontory at the east end of the island. There, the long, narrow island turns to the north, like an inverted number seven.

  “It’s gonna be a bit rough for the next couple kilometers,” Brayden said, as he continued almost due east into open water.

  Open water and I were no strangers, and I trusted the man’s ability. But the boat we were in was no more than fifteen feet and nearly flat-bottomed. To say it was a bit rough was an understatement. We both held on as Brayden leaped the boat from one wave top to the next.

  Another island lay ahead; the sparsely inhabited Bird Cay. As we neared the lee shore, the waves diminished; Brayden slowed the boat, looking back toward Chub. He turned north, always watching the point a mile away. I knew what he was doing. He was using the east and west points of Chub Cay’s southern dogleg to line up his course to wherever it was we were going. Finally, he turned due east again and dropped to an idle.

  “Take the bow,” he said. “There’s a wreck up ahead. We’re gonna anchor about fifty meters past it.”

  Kneeling on the forward deck, I looked down into the gin-clear water. The bottom looked to be about thirty or forty feet. I scanned left and right, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Finally, I spotted a dark shape off to starboard and pointed toward it.

  “Good eye, mate,” Brayden said.

  As we passed over the hulk, I recognized it. Lying on the bottom was a huge crane; its boom, twisted and broken, lay off to the left.

  “The victim of an overzealous developer back in the seventies,” Brayden explained. “Or at least that’s what I’m told.”

  We continued another fifty yards into the wind. The boat was so small, the light breeze coming over the island would push it more than the current. When he nodded, I dropped the anchor in about twenty feet of water. Stretching my arms to measure the length of anchor line as the wind pushed us back toward the crane, I measured out an estimated scope.

  “Some developer wanted to dredge this little cove, so he could bring his big yacht in. The Bahamas are carbonate islands, formed when sea levels rise and fall. They’re brittle in some places and pretty damned hard in others. The crane operator on the barge had been drinking and underestimated the load he put on the crane.”

  Brayden held his arm out, elbow crooked so his hand pointed straight up, and let it slowly fall, punctuating the end. “Kersplash!”

  “What happened to the barge?”

  “Who knows?” Brayden said, looking over the side to see the crane just below us. “That’s enough rode.”

  I tied off the anchor line and looked down. The massive body of the crane was directly under the boat. We were within a mile of the shore.

  “People still live on Bird Cay, right?”

  “So how come there aren’t a bunch of other boats here?” he asked rhetorically. “It’s a long swim. Bird Cay folks use nets and lines from shore for the most part.”

  I considered that a moment, in respect to trying to locate the poachers’ big boat. This crane was huge, and easily seen if you came near it. A lot of people don’t realize just how immense the ocean is.

  “So not a lot of people know this thing’s here?” I asked.

  Brayden shrugged. “I guess not very many. You’ve spearfished before, yeah?”

  “I prefer a pole spear,” I replied. “But I have a few spearguns.”

  “Only Hawaiian slings in the Bahamas, mate.” He handed me a hand-carved piece of dense hardwood, about six inches long and half as thick. It was round and had a hole drilled through its length, just big enough for a spear shaft. The wood was old, scratched and dinged, but it was clean. The spear and the surgical tubing that propelled the shaft both looked fairly new. The rubber tubing was attached to both sides of the wood with hundreds of turns of light braided twine. The tube’s loop had a leather pocket to hold the butt of the six-foot spear. He’d probably lost the original steel boot. You shoot it much the same way as you would a bow and arrow.

  “Same as yesterday,” he said. “Enough to feed ten people and maybe one or two more.”

  “You believe me, don’t you?” I asked, slipping on my fins. “About Kat I mean.”

  Brayden eyed me warily. “She’s a good friend, Jesse. If someone hurts her, I’ll hurt them. I’m no pacifist.” Then his demeanor softened. “But she’s an adult and can make her own decisions. Yeah, I believe you’re uncomfortable with the situation. Your problem is, is she?”

  “Well, I’m definitely not gonna smoke any more of your pot.”

  He laughed, perching his mask on his forehead. “Do or don’t, mate. Nobody judges here. And if you blow up the poachers’ boat, nobody here will say a thing about it.”

  Before I could reply, he gave me a thumbs-up, pulled his mask over his face and grabbed his sling and spear. Then he rolled backwards off the boat, causing it to rock. I did the same on the other side. On the surface, I threaded my spear through the hole, holding the shaft and the wooden block loosely in my left hand as I followed Brayden.

  Diving, we finned slowly toward the crane directly below the boat. I kicked slow, clearing my ears with every third stroke. The body of the crane was resting on its tracks, the roof only ten feet below the surface. But that wasn’t what drew my attention.

  The massive boom was a spearfisherman’s dream. It extended away from the mammoth tracked body, broken from its mount, and stretching out more than a hundred feet. It was a honeycomb of twisted and broken metal, with at least a couple decades of soft and hard coral growth along the entire length. Whether the metal frame had broken apart when it fell, or by the constant push and pull of the water, I couldn’t tell.

  All around the boom, a massive school of yellowtail snappers moved in and out of the thousands of openings in the coral growth that was slowly encapsulating the intricate steel structure. Moving around the base of the artificial reef formation, dozens of hogfish cruised the bottom, rooting through the sand for small shrimp, crabs, and worms, the same way their namesake does on land.

  Brayden was finning slowly toward the right side of the boom, his left hand extended and his spear notched and pulled back. I moved diagonally across the boom, heading toward the other side, while bringing my own spear up and notching it in the leather pouch.

  I heard the soft thwap of his sling but was already closing in on a platter-sized hog and kept my attention focused on the fish. My legs moved slowly, allowing the fins to do the work, so I could conserve oxygen. I closed on the big hogfish, my spear out in front of me, pointing at the lighter brown patch just behind his eye. Five feet away, I slowly drew the thick surgical tubing taut, taking careful aim, before releasing the shaft. It hit the fish right where I’d intended. He twitched only once, dead before he felt a thing.

  Retrieving the spear, I headed to the surface, pulling the fish up with me. I took a quick breath, then swam with my face down, back toward the boat. There, I slid the hogfish off the pole and into the bow of the boat.

  Pulling my mask down under my chin, I looked around. Brayden was on the surface, twenty feet away, with his
face down. He arched his body and submerged.

  I put the spear back through the wooden tube and swam to where he’d disappeared. Taking a deep breath, I dove down after him. Apparently, he’d missed on his first dive and was near the bottom, stalking another fish. I again moved to the other side of the boom, and soon found another hogfish that was too busy rooting in the sand to notice the danger he was in.

  In the Keys, getting a couple of hogfish with a speargun in a few hours of diving was fortunate. They’re usually solitary fish. Though I’ve seen them in loose groups, I’d never seen this many in one area.

  We worked quickly and efficiently. Neither of us scored with every dive, but it soon became obvious to me that Brayden was an exceptional free diver. The two of us moved up and down effortlessly, spending more time on the bottom than on the surface. We soon had a dozen fresh hogfish in the boat.

  Levering ourselves into the boat at the same time, we prepared to leave. “Take only what you can eat?” I asked, knowing that the boat limit in the Bahamas was sixty pounds or twenty fish. We weren’t close to either limit.

  “Yeah,” Brayden replied. “That, and most everybody’s freezers are full.”

  “And tonight’s celebration?”

  “Thursday,” he replied with a smile. “How many Thursday’s d’you suppose a man has, mate? It’s a seventh of your whole life. If you live to be seventy, ten years of that life was on a Thursday.” He winked. “That’s a good enough bloody reason to celebrate it in my book.”

  As we started back, I moved the fish into a cooler and centered it in the boat. I didn’t want Thursday’s celebration dinner going overboard on the rough ride back.

  Again, I bent and held onto both gunwales, as the boat bounced over the waves, headed back to Chub Cay. Halfway across, just as we crested a wave, I caught something out of the corner of my eye to the north.

  Turning my head, I watched for it again. It made the ride rougher, not being able to anticipate the waves, and I nearly lost my grip. I saw it again, two miles away. It looked like a barge and small tug.

  “What is it?” Brayden shouted.

  “A barge,” I called back to him. “Off the north end of Bird.”

  Soon, we neared the point on the southeast tip of Chub and the wave action subsided. I took the bow line in my hand and, with my legs spread wide, I stood and looked back over the starboard side.

  “There,” I said, pointing. The tug had her stern toward us, threading the passage between Cockroach Cay and Whale Cay.

  Brayden stood, levering the tiller up and extending the handle.

  “Right on the horizon at five-o’clock. What’s beyond there?”

  “Bond’s Cay,” Brayden replied. “I’ve a friend anchored over there with his family. Let’s get back and I’ll get Cattitude on the radio.”

  Brayden brought the boat up on plane and we zipped along the shoreline in just three or four feet of water. When we arrived back at the marina, there were only a couple of hours of daylight left.

  “Go contact your friend,” I told Brayden. “I’ll take care of cleaning the fish.”

  He took off toward the marina building and I lifted the cooler out. Finn and Bill passed Brayden on the dock, on their way out to greet me. The two dogs met me at Salty Dog’s rail.

  Placing the cooler on the dock, I looked down at them. “So, what are y’all’s plans for this evening?”

  Finn barked, and Bill looked over at him, then he too looked at me and barked, as if to say, What he said.

  I looked back at Brayden’s boat, thinking I might as well leave my flippers and mask on board, as it seemed that Brayden was the hunter for the group. And I’d likely be helping him tomorrow.

  Am I staying another day? I asked myself. Somewhere south and east of here, Savannah was making her way toward the Virgin Islands. There wasn’t anything keeping me. It felt as if the two days here had melded together. I could see how the transients here ended up staying.

  “Yeah,” I told Finn. “We’re staying another day. Go have fun with your new friend.”

  He barked again, then turned and bounded toward the foot of the pier, Bill running right alongside.

  Stepping aboard Salty Dog, I went below and retrieved a long, thin filet knife, then carried the cooler downwind to another dock where no boats were tied up. I placed the cooler on the deck at the end and got to work. Hogfish filet nicely, and then each filet can be skinned with a long slow movement of the blade with the skin side down.

  Hearing footsteps, I turned and saw Kat approaching. “That our dinner for tonight?”

  “And then some,” I replied. “Twenty-four good-sized filets for ten people.”

  “We’ll wrap half a dozen and give them to David and Carmen. They’re leaving in two days.”

  “They’re on that little Hunter? Do they have a freezer?”

  “Cory’s been filling and freezing half gallon jugs of water for a few days for their ice box. Brayden said you guys saw the poachers.”

  “No way to know if it was them,” I said, after rinsing the cooler. “It looked like a tug, pushing a barge toward the northeast.”

  “None of the islands up there are inhabited, except maybe a few people on Bond’s Cay” Kat said, stooping to help me put the fish in the cooler. “At least not until the Abacos.”

  I dropped the last filet in and looked at Kat. “Why didn’t you tell me everything that happened after I, uh…fell asleep last night?”

  “Brayden told you about me sitting on your lap?” she said, standing.

  I picked up the cooler and nodded.

  “Nothing to tell. I was cold, and you were warm. I didn’t mean anything by it. Everyone else had someone to keep them warm.”

  Motioning her forward with my chin, I said, “Stop by my boat. I have some plastic freezer bags we can put some of these in for David and Carmen.”

  In my galley, we put six filets into two bags and dropped them in my freezer. “That won’t last them on a long voyage,” I said. “Where are they going?”

  “Anguilla,” Kat replied. “They have a friend there who owns a little bed and breakfast. They’re going to manage it for a few months. We’ve been stocking them up with supplies for a couple of weeks now.”

  “All for one and one for all, huh?”

  “Something like that,” she replied. “We help and take care of each other.”

  “About last night,” I said, walking toward the companionway. “I really never get like that. Did anything else happen that I don’t remember?”

  “Trust me,” she said, taking a step closer. “If anything else had happened, you would remember.”

  Taking her shoulders in my hands, I held her at arm’s length and looked down into her eyes. “Nothing can happen between us, Kat. I’m way too old.”

  “Jesse, there’s three couples here. The French brothers give me the heebie-jeebies. Then there’s you and me.”

  “They’d already turned in.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking down at her toes for a moment. When she looked back up, she was grinning. “Well, it was just in fun. So, you’re older.”

  “I’ll run interference when the Bourgeau brothers are around,” I said. “But it feels weird. You’re just a kid to me.”

  “All right,” she said, raising her hands to her shoulders, palms out, as she turned and stomped up the steps. “It’s not like I’m begging.”

  While some men might find a younger woman attractive, I think there’s a limit. And I think men who have daughters often won’t see a younger woman any other way. Well, to a degree. Savannah was younger by about a decade. But at my age, that’s a whole helluva lot different than half my life younger.

  Following Kat, I caught up to her at the foot of the pier. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  She stopped and faced me. “And I’m sorry
if I made you feel uncomfortable.”

  I stooped and placed the cooler on the sand. “Friends?”

  “Can we pretend there’s more when the brothers are around?”

  “I’ll be leaving soon, Kat.”

  “They plan to leave on Sunday.”

  “I may be leaving before then.”

  She looked up at me, her dark brown eyes dancing back and forth, as if searching for something in my own. “Can’t you stay the weekend? You already said you know when you want to be in Tortola. There’s at least a whole week to spare.”

  “I’ll stay until they leave,” I said. “But I’ll be gone most of tomorrow.”

  Kat reached down and grabbed one of the cooler handles. “Gone where?”

  I lifted the other side, and we started along the beach toward the fire pit. “I have to call a friend and get the okay, but I may be taking the mailboat to Andros, then going for a helicopter ride.”

  The dinner the previous night was excellent. Cory really had talent when it came to the rusty old grill. The broiled hogfish was delicious, and his wife’s fried conch fritters were as good as any Bahamian mobile kitchen’s.

  Kat had played my guitar and true to my word, I’d let her pretend we were interested in each other; she even sat on my lap to teach me some chords. Once more, the brothers retired early. I drank only a few beers and didn’t smoke any of Brayden’s pot.

  When the brothers left, Kat extricated herself from my chair and sat next to Macie to talk. I got Brayden aside and asked him if he’d go with me to Andros. He agreed, as long as we were back in time to catch the Friday meal. I explained that we’d probably be returning by helicopter.

  It was still dark, but I managed to get down from the big bunk without stepping on Finn or breaking my leg. Flicking on a small lamp mounted on the bulkhead, I dressed in jeans and a lightweight, long-sleeved shirt. It would be warm, but at altitude, the temperature drops.

  I retrieved my sat-phone and went up on deck, Finn’s claws clicking behind me. He trotted off toward shore, while I scrolled through my very short contact list. I clicked on Charity’s number and she answered immediately.