"Unless you want to hold the wheel steady, you’re gonna have to move forward and pull the jib down."
"What do I need to do?" Jo asked, already clambering her way forward on her gimpy leg.
"We don't need anything fancy," Reese yelled as a small wave slapped the hull amidship and sent a wall of foam into their faces. "Just grab the sail, and bunch it together as it comes down—there’s bungee cords attached to the mast, use those to cinch the sail.”
"Got it!" Jo yelled, but her voice sounded faint.
Once the jib came down, Reese lowered the main enough for him to tie the first reef. As a result, Intrepid immediately righted herself and slowed to a sedate 4 to 5 knots. Reese hated losing so much speed. If it were just him, he’d have every inch of sail up—including the spinnaker—and capsizing be damned. He wanted to get home. Now.
Reese glanced to his left and narrowed his eyes as the wind hit him full in the face and whipped his salt-wet hair over his forehead. There was a gap in the clouds out to sea. The edge of the little squall they'd run into was passing directly overhead and would soon be fully ashore. But off in the distance, way out to the horizon, the clouds that had appeared gray in the morning, now seemed black.
Jo gasped as she found her seat in the cockpit again, resembling a wet cat in temperament. "Them clouds out yonder don't look any better than the ones we just went through," she said.
Reese nodded. As they slowed, the wind became manageable, and he was able to talk in a normal voice. "Agreed—I love the speed we were getting, but we certainly wouldn't be able to handle that,” he said with a nod toward the oncoming weather, “with all the sails we had up."
He adjusted their course and ran between parallel waves, slicing through the troughs to keep their speed fairly constant. "Enjoy the smooth sailing while you can," Reese said as he eyed Intrepid’s little GPS screen flecked with water drops. "According to this, we’ll be coming up on Nags Head soon enough. Then we’ll be almost on the Outer Banks. At that point...things’ll get fun."
Jo ripped the sodden, floppy campaign hat off her head, then wiped the water from her face. "I don’t know how much more fun I can handle," she groused.
"Oh, come on, it's not that bad," Reese argued with a smile. "Look at it this way—for every wave we take in the face, we’re making better and better time." He glanced toward the clouds on the horizon. "I don't know about you, but I don't want to be anywhere near the open water when that hits.”
“So, what do we do, head back to shore?” asked Jo.
Reese nodded. “We need to angle back toward the coast. We should pick up speed again in the calmer water..."
"Is there any way you can do this without having us tilted all the way over? I thought my fat butt was gonna fall out a few times," she grumbled.
"Once we change course toward shore," Reese said, never taking his eyes off the waves in front of them, "the wind will be mostly at our back, and it'll be easier to maintain a steady pace. We might even be able to raise the jib..."
"No! I see that look in your eye!” Jo snapped. “Every time we raise that little sail up front, you start thinking you’re a pirate captain..."
Reese laughed again. "Well, who wouldn't? We've got saltwater in our faces, a hurricane bearing down on us, and we’re coming up on the area of North Carolina where pirates used to ply their trade. I don't know how many shipwrecks there are off the Outer Banks...”
Jo looked up at him and squinted. "You sure know how to make a girl feel safe...anybody ever tell you that?" She muttered under her breath and slapped her sopping wet campaign hat back over her gray hair. “If I never have to get on another sailboat, it'll be too soon."
"Oh, come on," Reese teased. The rudder jerked as the current shifted slightly, and he kept the boat mostly steady. It was enough of a jostle to send Jo sprawling forward. She caught herself on the bench and gave him another evil look.
"You did that on purpose," she said tersely.
"Did not," Reese replied defensively, but he couldn't help but laugh. "Okay, okay, no more fun and games. We'll just set a nice conservative pace, and I'll try to keep the wind at our backs." He looked down at Jo. "But that means I'm raising the mainsail as high as we can. Seriously, we need to pour on as much speed as we can before we turn south and follow the coast. That squall line out there is...concerning."
It was Jo’s turn to snort. "If this is your idea of concerning, I really don't want to find out what the hurricane looks like."
Reese took another long look at the horizon as he turned the wheel to starboard and pulled Intrepid up over the crest of a small roller. "Trust me, neither do I. If this thing’s half as bad as Ortiz told me back in New York, it's gonna be a monster."
"Just how bad is a Cat 4?"
"Like hell on earth for a sailor. Probably got a storm surge of 20 feet or so, not to mention sustained winds between 130 and 156 miles an hour. That's enough to tear Intrepid into matchsticks and blow us halfway to Houston."
Jo went pale. "I mean, I knew they were bad...but..."
"Yeah, y'all have some nasty nor'easter's up in Maine now and then, but they ain't nothing like a Cat 4, trust me."
Jo shook her head. "Join the Park Service they said...come see Maine they said..." she muttered.
Reese laughed again and reached for the mainsail halyard. "All right, break time’s over. I'm gonna raise the main and bring us closer to shore."
"Here goes nothing," Jo said as she wrapped her arm around the starboard railing and braced herself.
Reese suppressed another chuckle and hauled on the halyard. The mainsail dutifully rose to its peak, and he lashed it off on the cleat next to the steering column. The sail snapped taut instantly, and he turned the wheel ever so slightly to bring their new course to west-southwest. With the wind mostly at their back, Intrepid surged forward.
Reese grinned. "That's more like it."
***
For the next couple hours, Reese maintained a steady course. The wind, though gusty, was fairly steady at their backs. It was enough for Intrepid to cut through the rollers like a knife. Reese trimmed the mainsail, so he was able to keep the deck mostly level, which satisfied Jo enough that she pulled out the binoculars and scanned ahead, searching for the shoreline.
"Wonder how that football patch is holding up on the other boat?" Jo muttered from behind the binoculars.
Reese grunted. "Well, they're probably not getting weather like this," he said with a glance up at the clouds that raced overhead, pregnant with malice. "Everything we got here is just the north-west corner of the storm. The wind patterns will be shifting up in the Chesapeake for sure, which’ll make things tricky, but they won't be dealing with squall lines. And they’re heading away from it, to boot."
"What do you give their chances of making it to Baltimore?"
"Oh, they'll make it,” Reese allowed, “as long as Byron doesn't push her too hard. Tiberia’s still plenty sound. That is...unless they run afoul of something submerged under the water or find themselves being chased by pirates or something...they should make it to Baltimore, all things considered. I'm more worried about what they're going to do once they get there."
"You think the tidal wave damaged the shoreline around the Chesapeake much?"
Reese squinted and looked at the far horizon, where just out of sight lurked North Carolina. "Hard to say..." he reasoned. "The model Cami sent me the day it hit only showed the Northeast in any detail. I have no idea what the waves would've done once they hit a giant peninsula like the Delmarva. I have a feeling the water went up the Delaware Bay as well and flooded through that canal we were thinking about going down. In fact, the water may have come halfway across Delaware. I just have no idea."
"Well, for their sake I hope it's not too bad. I'm just worried that Baltimore's gonna look like Boston or New York..." Jo muttered.
"I sure hope not," Reese commiserated. "Baltimore can be a rough town on a good day."
Jo lowered her binoculars and looke
d over her shoulder at him. "Are you ready for what we’re going to find in Charleston?"
Reese shook his head without looking at her. "Not a chance. No matter what we find, I'm going to do my best to ignore it. Once we hit Charleston...or what's left of it...we’re only 15 miles or so from home. I can walk that in a day."
"Yeah,” Jo countered, “but remember that's 15 miles over stuff like what we went through up in Maine once we got off Mount Desert Island."
Reese nodded. "I haven't forgotten—I'm fully expecting it to take us a couple days to get through all the wreckage and work our way inland."
Jo grunted and put the binoculars back to her eyes. "Well, I got good news for you on that front..."
"Oh yeah? What's that?"
She lowered the binoculars and looked back at him with a grin. "There's a lighthouse peeking up over the horizon out yonder," she said as she pointed toward the bow.
"Welcome to Nags Head," Reese said with a grin. "We’re almost to Cape Hatteras, where the waves’ll be going every which way."
"Oh, wonderful, something to look forward to," Jo muttered as she settled herself behind the binoculars once more.
Reese laughed and felt the moisture in the air and the wind in his hair. He decided at that moment that he felt more like a Viking than a pirate, laughing as he rode through a North Atlantic storm on his way to either meet the enemy or Valhalla.
Chapter 5
Braaten Forest Preserve
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
Juan Eduardo de Francisco—Cisco to both friend and enemy—stalked to the boundary of his camp in the middle of the forest preserve like a caged predator. His back slightly hunched, his legs coiled and loose, his arms tense…he needed to fight, to hit something…to do something.
He looked around and held his pistol ready. There was never a snake around when he wanted one—the vile things had been coming out of the woodwork since the tsunami and scared the devil right out of Cisco. They were fun and challenging to shoot, though. Finding a nice copperhead to blast would go a long way to releasing his pent-up anger.
He sighed as he searched around the clearing, peering into the underbrush. Of course there weren’t any snakes around. They were probably all waiting for him back in his tent, hoping he’d take a nice nap so they could crawl up one of the posts on the big bed he’d brought from Rolling Hills…
“Gaah!” Cisco yelled, pressing his hands to his head. If he thought about snakes any longer, he’d have nightmares again—that would make him look weak in front of the men. And he couldn’t afford to look weak, not now.
When the megatsunami struck and gave him the opportunity to escape a lifetime sentence in prison for a string of robberies, home invasions, and two attempted murders—that the authorities knew of—he'd taken it in his typically swift and violent style. He and Aiden Lopez, a fellow inmate whom he considered more of a brother and close confidant than any other person on the face of the earth, gained their freedom in a spray of blood.
Cisco stopped at the southeast edge of the clearing that housed his ruined trucks and the bulk of his loot, taken in the past two weeks from several neighborhoods northwest of Charleston. Lopez had been through a lot with him. It'd been almost a week since his death after Darien Flynt led them on that suicidal mission against the Bee’s Landing neighborhood—and yet after losing half of their crew, Flynt managed to ingratiate himself with the residents and even help defend the place when Cisco himself came back with a much greater force.
He shook his head in confused frustration and worked his hands into fists. None of it made any sense. Flynt was used to getting his own way and being in charge, but Cisco had convinced himself he would be able to browbeat Flynt into submission. He never expected the man to jump ship and join the...targets.
For targets the civilian population were in the new post-tsunami world. Anyone strong enough to wield a gun, with enough adjustable morality to use it, could set himself up as a king. Law enforcement ceased to exist less than a week after the eastern seaboard of the United States had been crushed under the weight of the biggest tsunami in recorded history. Governments, from the lumbering federal behemoth down to the smallest hamlet, had vanished or fled for high ground. In time, Cisco figured they’d regroup, but it'd been two weeks with no sign of that at all—in fact, everything he'd heard suggested the entire country was falling apart.
Cisco relaxed his thickly muscled shoulders and shook himself out to clear his mind. The wind tossed the upper branches of the trees around the clearing back and forth as heavy clouds, pregnant with rain, danced overhead, seemingly just over the treetops. There was an electric charge in the air that set his teeth on edge, but Cisco had more things to worry about than a passing storm.
For starters, he had no idea what to do with the woman. Her capture, after the dramatic escape of her daughter, had been a stroke of luck that he never could have anticipated. The problem was, Cisco had the tiger by the tail—as soon as he let go, he'd be mauled. Or worse.
Cisco swallowed. Judging by the look on the woman's face, she might very well eat him alive. He shoved the momentary lack of confidence into a dark recess of his mind and locked the door. He wasn’t afraid of anyone, man or woman, Cisco told himself as he marched off to the north, keeping a wary eye on the tree line where the recent surprise attack had erupted.
He’d lost almost half his effective fighting force in that debacle by the creek and retreated only to find the base camp under attack, and his prize captive gone. He clenched his hands into fists again. Everything he did after coming in contact with Bee’s Landing again had gone right down the crapper.
First Flynt stymied his advance into the neighborhood, then the devil woman tied up in his tent had stopped his men in their tracks. The entire neighborhood had rallied to the cause, and unlike every other place they'd visited for supplies and a little fun, the people of Bee’s Landing had put up a wall of resistance that so far, he'd been able unable to crack.
It was infuriating.
"Flynt...” he told the uncaring trees that swayed in the wind. “This is all your fault." He kicked at a loose rock in his path. His prisoner, Cami Lavelle, according to Flynt, was smart and capable, but she was still just a woman. Flynt was streetwise, had a reputation among his followers, and had a ruthless streak Cisco recognized as similar to his own—yet Flynt was able to control it better.
Cisco grinned. He enjoyed letting the beast out, and the looks of terror on his victims’ faces. But when it came out, he lost control. Not so for Darien Flynt.
The smile faded as he thought of the look of terror on Lopez's face seconds before he perished, choking on his own blood as Cisco cradled his head in his arms. Lopez's death was Flynt’s fault as well. Cisco intended to repay that debt 10 times over, but first he had to crack Bee’s Landing wide open and exact punishment for their ill-advised resistance.
Cisco had been forced to take a daily walk around their perimeter to clear his mind—before he killed one of his own men—after the two new guys decided they were going to be tough about the dwindling food supply. It was bad enough that he had to cut short Lavelle’s interrogation to deal with the brief, and poorly planned, insurrection, but it stung that Cisco had to admit to himself they had legitimate grievances.
Several of the vehicles destroyed in the raid to rescue Lavelle's daughter had been loaded with supplies and spoils taken from Rolling Hills. He turned and glanced at the parking lot, where a couple trucks continued to burn, sending up inky black plumes of smoke to swirl in the wind. The loss of those supplies hurt. Badly.
At first, he was tempted to leave and lick his wounds after the debacle at Bee’s Landing. They’d lost a lot of men, but still had all their vehicles. It would've cost him some street cred among the troops had he simply ordered them all to go to a different neighborhood, but he hadn’t backed down. That wasn’t Cisco’s way. It was only when he’d had the idea to go after Flynt directly, and the morons he'd sent brought back Lave
lle's daughter instead—the situation changed too quick for him to adjust. That added more frustration into the mix which drove his anger deeper.
“Flynt probably would've figured it out and come out smelling like roses anyway," he grumbled.
Instead of delivering a crushing defeat, Cisco found himself leading a demoralized group of ragtag thugs with one working vehicle, a few days’ worth of supplies, and a prisoner likely to cause more problems than she was worth—not to mention a nagging faction among his own men who wanted to see payback against the neighborhood at all costs. Just so happened it was the only neighborhood thus far that was able to stop them in their tracks.
Movement out of the corner of his eye drew Cisco's attention back toward the center of the camp. His lieutenant strolled purposely toward him, weaving around the smoldering vehicles with a dirty bandanna over his mouth to block the noxious fumes and smoke.
Cisco’s personal time was up. He had two options: one, press on and strike Bee’s Landing once more, hoping to take them by surprise and finally breach the neighborhood. Or two, move on to better pickings. He could load up the men he had left into the big Army troop transport, take all the weapons and food they could carry, and roll into the next neighborhood they found.
Cisco stopped and crossed his arms as he waited for his second in command to approach. The lanky, skeletal man from swamps around Myrtle Beach had taken Lopez’s place, but he’d never fill his role. Cisco frowned. Both options were risky and carried with them the chance of taking more casualties, losing more men, or possibly even the precious transport truck itself.
He knew they'd put a hurting on Bee’s Landing with the last assault. The kidnappers had reported back that the party they'd stumbled upon a few nights back had been a way to mourn the dead. They certainly wouldn't have had such a big event if it'd only been a couple people killed. But his men had also said there were an awful lot of people that remained defiant, and almost all of them were armed.
If he went back to attack the troublesome neighborhood again, his men wouldn't be able to make a frontal assault. The locals were too well entrenched and knew he might be coming. No, he concluded, if he were to strike Bee’s Landing once more, he'd have to be sneaky about it and use his brain.
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 4