Rising Force

by Wayne Stinnett

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Panama City.”

  “I thought your passengers didn’t want to go to Florida?”

  “The other Panama City,” she said. “We’re stocking up for a long crossing.”

  “You’re going to the South Seas?” I asked in complete dismay.

  “Yeah, and maybe a little beyond that. How’s Salty Dog?”

  “I’m on Chub Cay and heading to the Virgin Islands next week.”

  “The worm has turned, huh? So, what can I do for you?”

  “I admit I do enjoy being under sail, and you were right; other cruisers have been more open. Savannah is headed to the BVI late this month.” I paused for a moment, unsure of how she’d react to what I wanted. “Can I borrow your Huey?”

  “Sure,” came her instant reply. “I’ll call the FBO at San Andros and tell them. But the Virgin Islands is barely a two-week sail, taking your time. Remember what I told you? The trip is the destination.”

  I did remember. And even though it was only a short jaunt under canvas, I knew I was hooked.

  “That’s not what I need it for.”

  “When do you need it?” she asked. It didn’t escape my attention that she hadn’t asked what I needed it for.

  “This afternoon.”

  “Consider it done,” she said. “I’ll call them as soon as I get off with you. Anything else?”

  I hadn’t been expecting her to be so receptive. Her voice sounded light and cheerful, a far cry from the woman who had sailed Salty Dog to my island not all that long ago. Then, she’d been wary, constantly looking over her shoulder.

  “You’re really taking Moana all the way home?”

  “Fiona is coming, too,” she said. “But not for a few days. They’re both fast learners and we made it here in eight days of straight-through sailing. We have to provision and rest up. Maybe in a week, if the weather’s good.”

  My head reeled. I had no idea how far it was to French Polynesia, but I knew it was a long-damned way. “How long will it take you?”

  “Thirty-five to forty days sailing time, plus a stop in the Galapagos Islands for a few days. So at least six weeks.”

  “I’m seriously jealous,” I said. “Fair winds and following seas. And thanks.”

  “Jesse?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s good to hear from a friend,” she said hesitantly. I waited. “Would it be okay if I call you now and then?”

  It had only been about two weeks since she’d lost Victor. Charity had no family to speak of. Now she was off on a humanitarian mission of sorts. She didn’t have many friends, and I was honored that she thought of me as one of them.

  “Please do,” I said. “Check in with me every week on Friday morning, if you want. And text me your location every day or so. I’d like to keep up with this adventure.”

  “I will,” Charity said, then she ended the call.

  Going back down the companionway, I went to the coffeemaker and set it up. Somewhere between here and Tortola, there was a coffeemaker with a timer that had my name all over it.

  While I waited, I went to the nav-desk and started rummaging through the charts. I didn’t find one showing just the Berry Islands, but Vic had a large scale Northern Bahamas chart that showed some sounding details of the area I was interested in.

  Locating the spot where I’d seen the barge, I was amazed to see that it was barely five feet in many places. Most tugs have a very deep draft, mostly due to their massive propeller. So, what I saw must have been a very small tug or maybe not a tug at all. With the right rigging, almost any shoal draft boat could push a barge.

  The machine beeped, and I poured a mug while studying the chart. The course the barge had been on was probably the same way Savannah had come here last week. A shallow, meandering one-fathom pass through the banks.

  The barge had looked pretty big, probably fifty feet or more. That was something that really couldn’t be hidden easily. And to lift large amounts of live rock and keep it alive meant an onboard dredge and a partially flooded hold. But if the live rock and coral were broken up into smaller pieces that could be covered by a foot or two of water, a barge with a four-foot draft could probably handle a couple of tons.

  Whoever was operating the tug was either way off course or knew the water better than the charts. Even at high tide, there would be spots with only six feet of water in the area I’d seen the barge.

  “Time is it?” Kat asked, nearly stumbling up the steps from the lower salon.

  “About six,” I replied. “Coffee’s on.”

  She helped herself, then sat down at the dinette. “Why are you up so early?”

  “I’m going to Andros,” I replied.

  “Oh, yeah. But the mailboat won’t be here till nine. You said you know a helicopter pilot on Andros or something?”

  “I’m going to borrow a friend’s helicopter and fly out over the Berry Islands to see if I can find that barge.”

  “You know how to fly one?” she asked, yawning.

  I turned toward her and grinned. “No, I figured I’d just learn on the way there. Can’t be all that difficult.”

  She seemed confused for a moment, possibly because of the hour. Then her dark brown eyes sparkled, and she smiled. “You made a joke.”

  “I’m not completely devoid of humor.”

  She rose and crossed the deck to where I was sitting. “So, you do think it was the poachers.”

  I looked up from the chart. The bags under her eyes were nearly gone and she no longer looked like a starving waif; perhaps she’d even gained a couple of pounds. She wore a loose-fitting tank top and high-waisted khaki shorts. Altogether, she presented a much healthier appearance than when we’d first met, just two days before.

  “No,” I said. “It just fits the equipment needs, to do what they did. But a deep-draft tug looks suspicious out there in those shallow waters. What valid reason would there be for a boat like that out there?”

  Kat leaned over the chart, one hand on my shoulder. When she pushed her hair behind her left ear, I barely caught the scent of jasmine, one of my favorite flowers.

  “Where did you see it?”

  I stabbed a finger at the chart. “Somewhere here, between Cockroach and Whale Cays.”

  “There’s another low island in between there,” she said, brushing my hand aside. “It’s not shown on this chart, because it’s barely above sea level at high tide. The only way past it is on the south side, right here.”

  I looked closer at the spot. There were no lines showing depth.

  “The cut’s flat and sandy,” Kat said. “In the deepest part, I can touch bottom with my toes and still have my eyes and nose above water. So, maybe six feet, max. It’s protected on all sides from the wind and waves.” She stood and leaned against the bulkhead. “That’s catamaran country. What’s the draft on a tug?”

  “A lot more than six feet,” I replied. “I’ve seen some smaller ones on the hard that would need eight feet or more, because of their big props.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a tug you saw.”

  That was the tack my brain was already taking. For some reason it pleased me that Kat thought the same way.

  “I only saw it for a second and it was in that area, roughly. We were halfway back from Bird. The barge was on the horizon at five o’clock.”

  “Wait,” she said. “You were back here long before that.”

  I was confused for a second, then realized I’d confused her. “I meant that the barge was at our five o’clock, the bow of Brayden’s boat being twelve.”

  A light seemed to go on in her eyes. She traced her finger from Bird Cay to Chub Cay, stopping in the middle. “You mean they were in this direction?” she asked, moving her finger from that spot toward where the imaginary five o’clock would be.
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br />   “Exactly,” I replied.

  “That’s nearly four miles,” she said. “Even as tall as you are, the horizon’s at least three miles Maybe it was over the horizon and all you saw was the upper part of whatever it was.”

  “Good point. It was barely a speck in the distance. I was already thinking it might be some other kind of boat, adapted to working in shallow water.”

  “A power cat, maybe?” She leaned over the chart again. There was little obstructing my view down her top. “Rigged to push a barge?”

  “Could be,” I said, standing and moving away from her.

  Kat was frustrating. She seemed at times to be an innocent girl, and at others an experienced seductress. Whether the latter was intentional or accidental, I didn’t want to find out. I went across to the coffeemaker and poured another mug.

  “Take me with you,” she said, holding her cup out.

  I filled it, shaking my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Kat. Besides, Brayden is going with me.”

  “Six eyes are better than four,” she said. “It’s a big ocean.”

  “It might be dangerous. I don’t want to have to be responsible—”

  “Nobody is responsible for me, except me,” she said, defiantly. “I don’t need anyone looking out for me.”

  “Everyone needs a six,” I said.

  “Then let me be your six, whatever that is.”

  I chuckled. “Six o’clock. At your back.”

  “Behind you,” she said. “Watching that way?”

  It was just a two-hour boat ride to Andros, then a few hours flying out over the Berries. Even at just five-thousand feet, it could all be seen in a matter of a couple of hours. I knew how Charity maintained her bird, and she’d told me a kid at the FBO took excellent care of it in her absence. So there really wasn’t much danger.

  “You really don’t like Mayhew and Gaston, huh?”

  She leaned against the bulkhead, her left hand on her cocked hip and right hand holding it. “It’s not really that I don’t like them,” she said. “I just can’t put my finger on it. Usually, I get a quick feeling about people I meet and can pick out the negativity pretty easy. Those guys just give me a sort of yucky feeling that I can’t define. Does that make sense?”

  I’d certainly met my share of people who gave me a yucky feeling. Far too many. Maybe that was why I felt attracted to this group of ex-pats. They didn’t pry or ask too many questions. For the most part, they allowed life to happen on its own terms, reacting to what was right in front of them now, and not worrying about what tomorrow would bring.

  Like Kat, I hadn’t been able to get much of a read on the Bourgeau brothers. During the day, they’d been gone, off somewhere in their dinghy. At both beach parties, they’d left early. Maybe they weren’t much for socializing. They seemed harmless enough, but I wasn’t a single woman.

  “Okay, you can go,” I told her. “But change clothes. It’ll be cooler up there.”

  “Can I use your—”

  “I already told you, Kat; make yourself at home. Mi barca es su barca. The machines are apartment-sized, so you can do a good-sized load. If you don’t mind washing everything together, it’ll do three days’ worth of clothes in about forty minutes. I have a desalinization unit and solar with a genset. So, don’t worry about using anything up. The detergent’s in the locker to the left of the laundry closet. Sorry, no bleach.”

  She stood on her toes and kissed my cheek. “Thanks, Jesse. I promise I won’t be in the way.”

  While she busied herself with her laundry chore, I prepared pancakes, or as Pap called them, flap-jacks. We ate quickly, and I did the dishes while she moved her clothes up to the propane-powered dryer.

  In an hour, she was changed into jeans and a lightweight, long-sleeved shirt that looked expensive. They say horizontal stripes make the body look wider, but the blue-and-white stripes looked great on her. With her dark eyes, hair the color of butterscotch, and deep tan, she looked very wholesome. Until I remembered that she had no tan lines.

  “Do you have a small bag you can put a change of clothes in?” I asked. “Just in case.”

  “In case of what?” she asked, somewhat alarmed.

  “Coffee spill, grease stain, fall in a puddle…”

  “Oh,” she said, moving quickly back down to the lower salon.

  A moment later, she returned carrying a cloth backpack with simple drawstring closures that doubled as straps.

  “All set,” she said.

  The sun was above the horizon. “We have better than an hour to kill before the mailboat arrives.”

  “Go for a walk?”

  Finn and Bill found us as we walked past the fire pit everyone had congregated around for dinner the last two nights. The dogs trotted out ahead of us, both zig-zagging, noses to the ground.

  “They do that every evening?” I asked. “Dinner and a fire on the beach, I mean.”

  Kat glanced up at me. “Yeah. At least whenever I’ve been here. Brayden’s good at catching fish, lobster, and crabs, and at least one other person in the anchorage will bring something, even if it’s just a can of beans or a big bag of chips.”

  “And it’s usually just Brayden supplying the main course?”

  “Macie said that David went out with him a few times but wasn’t much help. Brayden says you out-dive him.”

  “I doubt I’d have his stamina,” I said, picking up a shell and throwing it into the water. “And he definitely knows the spots.”

  “He and Macie have been here a couple of years. And he spent a lot of time here when he was a kid. His parents were cruisers.”

  “That explains it,” I said, as we continued walking. “As a kid, I knew every patch reef and limestone ledge within twenty miles of where I grew up.”

  “You grew up in the Keys?”

  “No,” I replied, tossing another shell. “I was raised by my grandparents on Florida’s southwest coast. Fort Myers.”

  “I grew up in Tampa, but never been to Fort Myers. Dad rarely took time off from work. Is it nice there?”

  “I suppose. I left when I was eighteen, though. Pap was a Marine, and so was my dad. He was killed in Vietnam.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Kat said, taking my arm.

  I shrugged. “Anyway, the Corps seemed to be our tradition. I remember before Dad died, he and Pap would argue about the Old Corps and the New Corps. Pap and I ribbed each other like that in later years, too. But it was all in fun.”

  “Is he still living?”

  I took a few more steps before answering. I’m sort of a private man and don’t talk much about my past, especially with people I hardly know.

  “Mam and Pap both died before I retired from the Corps nearly a decade ago.”

  “So, you joined before I was born?”

  “I told you I was old,” I said with a chuckle. “Yeah, I served twenty years. Anyway, I sold their house and bought a boat in Marathon. Instant home and a job, chartering tourists. What about you?”

  “My folks still live in the same house in Tampa, with my little brother. I left when I was eighteen and lived in Palm Beach for a while, waiting tables. Met a guy who sailed, but he was mostly a day sailor. I wanted to see what was across the horizon.”

  “More horizon,” I said, bumping her shoulder.

  She smiled. “Then you get to someplace like this. Where time slows down to a crawl.”

  “I’ve felt that already,” I said. “Time is a misused commodity, anyway. It doesn’t really exist. It’s always the tomorrows and yesterdays. Plans and regrets.”

  “Right?” she said. “I live for today. Always in the moment.”

  “Not a bad way to live, for as long as you can get away with it. Do you stay in touch with your family?”

  “I call Mom whenever I get the chance. Which isn’t often.
Dad’s almost always at work, though.”

  I dug my phone out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Call your mom.”

  “Satellite time is expensive.”

  Grinning, I winked at her. “Remember that picture of me and my friends with the treasure? That was only part of what we found that day. Don’t worry about satellite time.”

  Her eyes sparkled as she accepted the phone. We walked, she talked to her mom, and I threw more shells into the ocean, distancing myself to give her privacy. Finn and Bill trotted up and down the beach past us, playing their own game of tag, or whatever it is that dogs do.

  Kat finished her call and handed me the phone. “Thanks. It’d been a couple of weeks since we talked.”

  “Any time,” I said, putting the phone back in my pocket. “We’d better get back. I doubt the mailboat skipper will wait.”

  “It was good to hear her voice,” Kat said, falling in beside me. “Dad was already at work, of course.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “Mid-level corporate management,” she said, as if the words tasted foul. “Don’t ask where. He ran at least a dozen small companies before I turned eighteen. So I’m sure there have been a few since then.”

  “How come he couldn’t hold a job?”

  “Oh, it’s not that,” she said. “Every company he left was in better condition than it was when he arrived. He was a fixer—but would never go out on his own. Great security, but zero adventure.”

  “And you like adventuring.”

  “Don’t you? I bet the military sent you a lot of places in twenty years.”

  I laughed as we continued walking. “Nothing even close to this.”

  As we approached the docks, nearly everyone was there, some holding packages or envelopes. Macie was coming out of the marina carrying several small canvas bags, neatly folded.

  Brayden took one of the bags from her and opened it. One by one, the others in the group dropped their mail in. It was kind of surprising, in today’s modern age.

  “No internet,” Kat explained, as if reading my mind. “And like I said, satellite time is expensive. Most cruisers rely on regular mail for a lot of things, using a mail forwarding service.”