When she glanced up at his face, his sea-green eyes were alight, daring her to ask about the tattoo.
She handed him the water instead and watched his Adam’s apple bob as he drained half the bottle. What sort of person would get a tattoo of the phrase “Seize the day” in Latin?
When he tilted his head back to drink from the water bottle a second time, she leaned in and examined the coin he wore. The words on it were French; Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
“So, how’d you wind up out here swimming in your birthday suit?”
He smacked his lips in pleasure, handed her the empty bottle and shook his head. His brown hair curled on his neck well below his ears. “Stupid.”
She waited for him to add more. If he thought he could get away with that short an explanation, he was mistaken. She waited him out.
“I was in a runabout,” he said at last. “Fishing. Was gonna run down to the Iles des Saintes. I was, you know, enjoying the clothing optional lifestyle when I stepped to the rail to take a leak and –” He shrugged.
“So, what happened to your boat?”
“Beats me. Last I saw her, she was headed that-a-way.” He pointed west. “Rental boat.” Shrugging, he said, “I guess it may wind up in Yucatan.”
She thought she heard something Southern, a little redneck-like in his speech. “And your name?”
He paused for an almost imperceptible beat before answering her. “Robert – Bob Surcouf.” He held out his left hand for her to shake.
“Something wrong with your other hand?”
He cradled it against his body and did not offer to show it to her. With a shrug, he said, “I must’ve cut it on a barnacle climbing aboard.” He smiled at her then, revealing a pair of deep dimples.
She smiled back, but didn’t say anything at first. She had cleaned her boat’s bottom back at Nelson’s Dockyard, Antigua. She knew there wasn’t a single barnacle growing anywhere on the Bonefish. Dimples or no, she needed to keep her distance from this guy. There was something about his story that didn’t track.
“Well, welcome aboard, Bob,” she said at last reaching out to shake in one of those back-handed handshakes. “I’m Maggie Riley. Most people just call me Riley.”
He couldn’t sit still. She saw the bloody footprints as he shuffled his feet across the white paint of her cockpit floor.
“Pleased to meet you, Miz Riley. You singlehanding?”
He was fishing – wanted to know if there was anyone else aboard. She considered lying but decided against it. She nodded, then reached down, turned the key and started the engine. There was only one of him, and she was confident she could handle him if she needed to. After all, he certainly wasn’t carrying any concealed weapons.
CHAPTER SIX
The Atlantic south of Bermuda
February 12, 1942
Woolsey lay sprawled out on the cold steel deck in utter darkness. The pain in his head and shoulder where he had slammed down onto the deck seemed almost to glow in the black hold. He wasn’t sure if he’d lost consciousness, or for how long, but it was several minutes before he could clear his head enough to think through the pain. The noise of his own breathing was so loud inside his head, it nearly drowned out the throb of the diesel engines. Then he sensed the change in the vibration of the steel plate that pressed against his cheek. No more idling. The screws were turning. Surcouf was heading out to sea. He felt the sour taste of panic climbing up his throat.
No. Not him. He would survive. Gohin’s words kept repeating, like a chant inside his head. À l’enfer avec toi. No. He wasn’t one of them.
In twenty-three hours, if he didn’t figure a way out of this hole, they’d all go to hell.
Woolsey pushed himself up into a sitting position, and he realized he was sucking in mouthfuls of the foul air. He crawled forward until he found steel, and banging his fists on the bulkhead, he began to shout.
“Hey! Let me out of here! Stop this boat!” He beat on the steel until his throat burned and the bones in his hands ached. He fell back on the steel deck with a sob. It was useless.
He’d hated the goddamn Surcouf since the first day he came aboard. She looked like a bloody coffin, and the few times they’d taken her below the surface, he had suffered inexplicable panic attacks, sure he was going to drown. He felt the panic welling up in him now. The cold sweat dampened his armpits, his breathing grew shallow.
Closing his eyes, he attempted to slow his breathing. He had to get himself under control. His fingers explored the rising knot on the side of his head where Gohin had frapped him with the pistol. The hair on the side of his head was matted and sticky with warm blood. Damn scalp wounds bled like mad. The smell of the blood was almost stronger than the stink of the cheese.
Through the bulkhead he heard the muffled sound of a voice on the speaker. Even if there had been a speaker inside the hold, he would not have understood a word. Stupid bloody French. When the distant voice stopped issuing orders, the hold seemed quiet in spite of the rumbling engines.
The darkness was so complete he felt the vertigo of not knowing which direction was up or where the walls were. At least, he hoped it was just the darkness and not a concussion. Control, man, think! He’d been in bad spots before this – thought he was going to die and hadn’t. He couldn’t just lie down and wait for the boom.
He’d heard about this compartment but never been inside since he came aboard. It was a cargo hold of sorts, designed originally to hold up to forty prisoners of war. Surcouf could sink some good-sized ships with those guns of hers, and she was designed to pick up the survivors afterwards, shut them all in here. They hadn’t been firing any guns this trip – or for years before for that matter. The cook stored some foodstuffs in here, but as far as Woolsey knew, Captain Lamoreaux was the only one who had a key. The Frenchie had always been a bit touchy about it when he’d asked. Woolsey had figured the Captain was using it as a sort of private wine cellar for his better stock – better than the plonk the rest of the crew got out of the tanks. That was a detail he’d once found amusing — only a French sub would have tanks designed to carry wine.
He ran his fingers in an arc across the deck on either side of him. He felt nothing but the fine grit of dirt on the cold steel. He rolled onto his hands and knees and began to crawl forward, reaching out and patting his fingertips against the steel plate ahead of him like a blind man tapping his cane. He inched forward expecting at any moment to come up against something, but he kept moving. He tried to sense where the bulkheads were, but he had no concept of the size of the compartment, nor whether there was anything in it. Odd because his personal radar usually worked better than that. The thought flashed in his head that there were no sides to this darkness, that he had fallen into some infinite black hole. He shuddered, shook his head, and told himself to stop thinking such foolishness. He kept on creeping forward.
After what seemed like a ridiculously long time, his knuckles brushed against rough wood planks. His fingers crawled over the surface and he found it to be a box, roughly two feet square. Between the slats, he felt the cool smooth surface of glass. And there was another box, and another after that. Wine. Cases of it. The captain’s private reserve.
The wooden cases were stacked one on top of another three high. He came to one spot where a single case was out of alignment, and he tried to slide it back out of his way. The thing would not budge. Heavy buggers. He went around it.
He followed the cases of wine, fairly certain he was moving aft, until, at last, he reached a bulkhead. Steadying himself with one hand on the wall, he stood. Then he slid one foot forward several inches, followed by his other foot. The hold could only have four sides, and of course, there was a door. He would find a way out of here. He had to.
He slid his foot forward again and his shoe came to a stop against something solid. It didn’t have the firmness of the cases of wine. Cheese, he thought. The stink had to be coming from somewhere. It was probably sacks of the stuff, the round ripe ch
eeses the Frenchies had to have on the table at every meal. He prodded at it with the toe of his shoe, but it did not move. He bent his knees and squatted down into a crouch, swinging his outstretched fingers in the cold dark air, feeling for the object in his path.
There was something about the darkness in front of him. It was denser, somehow. His radar seemed to be clicking back on. Though he could not see anything, he sensed more than saw there was something large there on the deck. He slid his leg forward and kicked at it, a little harder this time.
“Bugger off.”
The deep, menacing voice startled him, and when he yanked his leg back, he lost his balance and toppled onto his backside.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Aboard the Bonefish
March 25, 2008
12:50 p.m.
“Thanks for picking me up. I really wasn’t sure I was gonna make it to shore.” Cole looked back at the island, his left hand at his throat, his thumb caressing the coin.
He had been almost a mile offshore already and still swimming hard by the time their dinghy rounded the point. They had searched the coastline for almost an hour, but they never turned around, looked behind, never figured he’d head out to deep water.
He turned to face the woman. She looked to be in her early thirties, maybe five foot five, and with a body that showed she worked out often. But there was something different about her, too, like a cool air of competence.
“Where you headed?” he asked her.
“The capital, Pointe-à-Pitre.” She’d been looking at him with a guarded stare since he’d let out that little laugh, but now she pointed at the small GPS chart plotter affixed above her compass. “It’s a little over thirty miles. I can drop you off in town once I clear customs and immigration.”
“I sure would appreciate that, Miz Maggie.” After all the years he’d spent on the Outer Banks, he could imitate their southern speech and manners. Given that he hadn’t a stitch of clothing, there was little else he could use as a disguise. “And after you clear in, where you headed?”
She engaged the autopilot, set her course, and then climbed back down the companionway. He could see her wariness. She didn’t trust him. Smart woman.
“The Saintes, probably, for a day or two,” she said. “It’s where most cruising boats go. And please, it’s just Riley.”
He nodded, then looked back at the island. There was no sign of the boat or the men. For now.
“Don’t know many women who go by their last names. Especially when they got such a nice name as Miz Maggie Magee.”
The woman had disappeared into her cabin and she didn’t respond. In her absence, he checked out her boat. He didn’t know much about sailing, but he knew boats well enough. She kept a tidy ship. A handheld VHF radio sat in a bracket within reach of the helm, she had jack lines for securing her safety harness, and a pod of navigational instruments surrounded the helm. Up on the foredeck, a canister containing an inflatable life raft was bolted to the deck. From the water, as her boat approached, he had noticed the radar, wind generator, and the insignia on the mainsail: a large letter C with the number forty.
She reappeared in the companionway with a first aid kit and was about to hand him the box when she paused, set the box down and took out the bandages and a tube of antibiotic cream. She tossed them to him.
“For your hands and feet,” she said.
“Thanks.” He knew what she was thinking. She didn’t want to give him the box because it contained sharp implements. She was very savvy for a civilian. Surely, they wouldn’t have thought ahead and sent a woman? No, they were good, but not that good. Besides, his instinct told him she was not one of them.
When he rested his ankle across his knee, he saw the sole of his foot was criss-crossed with white, puckered lacerations. Most of the bleeding had stopped, but his feet still left faint pink footprints on her white decks. It stung like hell when he massaged the cream into the cuts. He began to wrap his foot with the white gauze bandage. Walking was going to be a bitch for a while.
She was standing on the companionway ladder, her elbows resting on either side of the hatch, watching him.
“What kind of boat is this?”
“A Caliber 40.”
“That’s a lot of boat for one person to handle.”
“Yeah.”
“Must be nice just sailing around the Caribbean without a care in the world.”
“Yeah, must be.”
She turned to look across the water toward the point they were approaching. She crossed to the far side of the cockpit and began pulling on one rope and easing out another. The sail at the front of the boat unrolled like a window shade, and the boat leaned over a little. They picked up speed.
“Sailboats don’t go very fast, do they?”
“Nope.”
“Four hours, you said?”
“Yup.”
“Guess you’d never outrun anybody on a boat like this.”
She turned and looked him straight on, no blinking, no fear. “You don’t like the speed we’re making,” she said, “you could swim instead. I’d be happy to drop you off right here.”
“Seems you really don’t want to talk to me, do you?”
“Nope.”
He woke with a start. He had not intended to fall asleep, but when he stretched out on the foredeck with the sun warming his face and the trade wind breeze riffling his hair, he had started again trying to figure out where he had gone wrong in his calculations. He thought he had deciphered the text correctly, but if so, he should have found the wreck by now. Something wasn’t right, he’d thought. And that was the last thing he remembered.
He sat up and looked past the bow. He massaged the muscles at the back of his neck and rotated his head around in a circle.
The tall buildings of the capital city of Guadeloupe lay a few miles ahead, spread out against the backdrop of the lush green highlands of Basse Terre on one side, the rambling cane fields of Grande Terre on the other. If one looked at the chart of this island, its shape resembled a butterfly, and Pointe-à-Pitre, a combination of bustling commercial port structures and crumbling colonial architecture, lay on the body where the wings joined. He had thought the place was a dingy, dirty backwater at first, but in the months he and his mate Theo had spent around the island, he’d grown to like the city with its combination of French and Creole cultures. Off to the east stood the pink and white hotels and condos on the beach at Le Gosier, the resort the European tourists flocked to by the thousands. Few Americans visited the island of Guadeloupe at all, and Cole had decided that was one of the place’s principal charms.
When he glanced aft, he saw the woman, Riley, was sitting behind the wheel holding the binoculars in front of her face. Her short-cropped auburn hair accentuated her long, graceful neck, and the white T-shirt she wore fit tight enough to show the swell of her breasts above the flat belly. Her hips were slender, almost boyish, and the skin of her upper arms was carved around her taut biceps. As the boat rolled and a shaft of sunlight struck her hair, he noticed fiery streaks of gold. She was a fine-looking woman to be out here all alone. After watching the way she handled herself and her boat, though, he suspected she was pretty damn good at protecting herself.
In the shadow of the binoculars, he saw her lips moving. She was talking to herself, and he decided he liked that. Maybe she wasn’t quite the hard-ass she was pretending to be.
Off in the distance, behind her, he saw a large white sportfisherman pushing a big wave and churning toward them at nearly twenty knots. The man who stood on the side deck looked familiar, even at this distance. He hoped he was wrong, but there weren’t many people as funny-looking as this dude. Cole hobbled back to the cockpit on his bandaged feet and slid onto one of the cockpit cushions. He picked up the binoculars from the seat where she had just set them down, and he focused on the big fishing boat. It was him. Things were starting to make sense. Did they know he was aboard the woman’s boat? No way. Damn!
CHAPTER EI
GHT
The harbor at Pointe-à-Pitre
March 25, 2008
3:35 p.m.
Riley did not like having this stranger down alone inside her boat, but after they had been motoring for over four hours, when he’d asked to use the head, she couldn’t refuse him.
Bonefish was passing the entrance buoy at the start of the long channel leading into the harbor off the capital city when a big Bertram sportfishing boat with gleaming stainless steel rails and the name Fish n’ Chicks in gold letters on her transom cruised past at twenty knots throwing a monstrous wake. She’d wondered at first if it had been the same boat she’d seen anchored that morning, but the Yank fish boats all looked pretty much the same. The man on the bridge deck had long hair under a baseball cap pulled low on his head. She figured him for a mechanic taking the owner’s boat out for a sea trial. Another weird character with a white Afro and dressed all in white stood on the side deck holding tight to a railing, looking like a seasick ghost.
Riley gripped the steering wheel as their wake rocked her little boat, but the ghost didn’t even turn to look at them.
She wondered if Bob was still in the head getting rolled right off the toilet.
The sun was angling in under the Bimini top that shaded her cockpit. She slid her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose, trying to make out the channel ahead. Between the binoculars, the GPS, and the paper chart spread out on the cockpit seat, she was still having a time making out the ship channel markers.
She was glad she had moved the dive knife on her last trip below. And she’d slid her rigging knife into her pocket. He seemed harmless enough, but she was not about to drop her guard.
During the last few hours, he had tried several times to start a conversation. Each time, she’d answered him with curt, one-word replies, hoping he’d get the message. Eventually, he’d given up on conversation and walked to the bow where he stretched out on top of the cabin and seemed to fall asleep.
Circle of Bones: a Caribbean Thriller Page 4