Beth and Tripp jumped off onto the fuel dock and filled the boat with diesel fuel and then filled the two portable fuel containers that Max kept on board for extended use. After filling the fresh-water tanks, they loaded a half dozen cases of bottled drinking water on board plus the food that Max had ordered from the supermarket in town. There were 315 miles of open seas between Antigua and Barbados, and with storm warnings still up for the next few days, he had no intention of creating an emergency by running out of basic supplies.
While Max skillfully weaved Red Sky on a path out of the harbor, Beth checked the firearms in the storage locker and Andi programmed the onboard navigation electronics to give them the sailing routes to Barbados. She also anticipated the bad weather by programming an additional set of courses for diesel power instead of sails.
Once Red Sky cleared the harbor and entered the turbulence of the Caribbean, all aboard put on life vests and hooked up their tethers to a safety line they rigged from bow to stern. They then raised sails and Max headed her directly south toward their intended interdiction with Gartenberg, believed to be heading to Barbados on Tanks Banks. Depending upon the weather, her first waypoint would be the island of Guadeloupe, about 130 miles away. According to Beth’s plan with Luis Benetez, Madre de Oro would leapfrog ahead directly to the second waypoint off Dominica. In a perfect world, Gartenberg and his yacht would then be trapped between them.
Still in the cabin below, Andi dialed up the tracking frequency for Tanks Banks, and for the first time finally picked up a signal in response. She plotted the signal and identified its source about forty miles ahead on the same course to Guadeloupe as they intended to take. With a head start like that, Gartenberg must have started sailing late the night before.
Andi was the onboard worrier. As far as she was concerned, Gartenberg’s lead was insurmountable, particularly in this kind of miserable weather, so there was no point in risking life and limb trying to catch him. As far as Beth the competitor was concerned, however, they could sail circles around Gartenberg no matter what the weather, and she was determined to catch him.
Things became more complicated an hour later, when Beth and then Tripp each received an email, one right after the other. The first was to Beth from Pam Gartenberg telling her that Gartenberg was threatening to kill her unless Beth released his money and stopped chasing him. The second was to Tripp from his nephew, telling him that Chord was in the hospital after being mugged yesterday by two guys who made the same threat to him as he lay beaten and bleeding on the sidewalk.
Chapter 74
It was still dark on Friday morning when Beth got up to relieve Tripp on deck for the 5:00 A.M. watch. She pushed back the curtain on the porthole in her cabin and saw the remnants of a full moon lowering into the western sky. The waves were three to four feet, and a mile off their port bow, she saw a sailboat running on a course nearly parallel to theirs. She went into the main cabin, took a look at the radar screen, and saw it was the only blip within fifteen miles of Red Sky.
With five minutes still to spare before relieving Tripp, she grabbed a yogurt from the fridge for breakfast, put on her foul-weather jacket, and out of an abundance of caution, loaded her Glock and put it in her jacket pocket.
As she left the relative comfort of the cabin, she heard a gunshot followed by a loud thud on deck and scrambled up the ladder to find Tripp in a dazed and confused condition, sitting on the floor of the cockpit. He had a nasty-looking gash bleeding on his forehead, and there were traces of blood on the winch he had probably smashed into.
On her port side, she saw the sailboat disappearing into the mist. She grabbed the pair of binoculars off its hook on the binnacle and identified the name Tanks Banks painted on her stern. She saw a man on the bow holding a rifle and arguing with a woman who might be Pam Gartenberg. The man at the wheel had his back to her, but from his enormous size, she was sure it was Gartenberg.
Andi was topside in a minute with her emergency medical kit, followed by Max. The three of them lifted Tripp off the cockpit floor and onto the cushioned bench, where Andi quickly stopped the head wound bleeding and began to examine him for other injuries.
As soon as she took off his safety harness and unzipped his jacket, she saw blood all over his shirt. Two tours in Iraq as a navy nurse had given Andi plenty of experience dealing with gunshot victims, and that’s what had happened to Tripp. He had been shot in his shoulder. The possibility of damage to a main artery was of paramount concern, but fortunately her examination failed to turn up any major blood loss, so at least the danger of bleeding to death was off the table. The bullet had passed through his shoulder.
After she finished treating Tripp’s bullet wound, Andi gave him two codeine tablets to control the pain and covered him with a blanket that Max had brought up from the cabin.
As far as Andi was concerned, Tripp needed to be transported to a hospital immediately. He was in shock and suffering from potentially life-threatening wounds. He couldn’t afford to wait for treatment until they docked in Guadeloupe later in the day.
Max immediately went below and contacted the coast guard on Guadeloupe with an urgent request for medical evacuation. When he mentioned that Tripp’s gunshot injury involved Tanks Banks, a yacht already involved in one shooting, the coast guard immediately dispatched a helicopter and a cutter to the scene.
Chapter 75
The coast guard helicopter arrived from Guadeloupe in ten minutes and maintained security above Red Sky until their cutter arrived fifteen minutes later. As the cutter approached Red Sky, Max and Beth heard the order to lower her sails and prepare to be boarded. The young lieutenant on the cutter ordered all on board Red Sky to remain on deck while his armed crew thoroughly searched her.
When they were satisfied that there was no danger, he sent over his corpsman to minister to Tripp and prepare him for transport to the hospital in Guadeloupe. The helicopter hoisted him up, and he was on his way in minutes while the cutter left in pursuit of Gartenberg.
For Beth and her parents, the shock of the attack finally had time to sink in. They had used the autopilot to help with the steering the previous night, but one of them had always been on watch topside.
They had drawn cards to decide the watch hours. Tripp had ended up with the 3:00 A.M. to 5:00 A.M. watch, so he’d been on deck when Gartenberg began shooting at Red Sky. In reality, any one of them could have been on watch at that time. The bloodstain on the teak deck would be a constant reminder of the murder Gartenberg had attempted.
As soon as the cutter left, Andi took the wheel while Max and Beth raised the sails back up. When everything was set, Beth replaced her mother at the wheel, and Red Sky sailed off toward Guadeloupe in the same direction taken by Gartenberg and the cutter. There were only two blips left on her radar screen; one was the coast guard cutter and the other was Tanks Banks.
When the screen showed the cutter suddenly making a ninety-degree turn to starboard, Max called them on the radio and was told the coast guard had an emergency on the other side of Guadeloupe that required them to abandon the search for Gartenberg. That left Tanks Banks as the only blip on their screen.
Beth tried several times to reach Benetez on Madre de Oro, but there was no response. Once it sounded like someone had answered and then disconnected. Beth had no idea where they were, or even if they were still proceeding according to plan. She didn’t even know if they were still allies.
That question was answered in the negative shortly afterward by an email from Luis Benetez advising that they had video conferenced with Gartenberg the night before and had completed their business with him so they were heading back to Venezuela. He thanked Beth for her help and said he looked forward to working with her law firm in the future.
Beth was inclined to write back and tell him where he could shove his business, but resisted the urge. Instead she reminded Luis that he and his father had agreed to help her catc
h Gartenberg, not merely chat with him.
It seemed that the crew of Red Sky was now alone in its search for Tanks Banks, but they were more determined than ever to find her and get Gartenberg.
Chapter 76
Red Sky plowed through the waters of the Caribbean all night and sighted Guadeloupe in the early morning on the final Saturday of race week. The heavy seas began to calm down for the first time since the chase began but were soon replaced with another obstacle: dense fog. As visibility closed down , Guadeloupe disappeared from view.
Beth was at the wheel when she heard the alarm on the radar shrieking. It meant an invisible boat somewhere in the fog was on a collision course with them. When Andi confirmed that Tanks Banks was the only boat on the radar screen, Beth knew that Gartenberg was hunting for them, and it was now time for all hands to come on deck.
Andi estimated they had less than a half hour before he arrived and that he would be appearing on their starboard side. She then called the coast guard to see if they could be of any assistance, but they were still involved in the emergency rescue from the day before.
Max opened up the firearms locker and took out their two 12-gauge shotguns and all their ammunition. After loading up their magazines, he took out their flare gun and all the signal shells they had available for it. He brought everything topside, put one shotgun on the port cockpit seat behind Andi, and put the other one on the starboard bench next to him.
Beth gave him the wheel and went below to get the extra clip for her Glock from under the mattress in her cabin. Then she went into Tripp’s cabin and looked around until she found his pistol in the same place. Finally, she got their foghorn out and gave it a test blast. They were now ready for Gartenberg, as ready as they would ever be. Beth turned on the diesel engine for extra mobility just in case they needed it; she left it in neutral, and so they just sailed and waited for Tanks Banks to appear.
Chapter 77
They didn’t have long to wait. Andi came up from the cabin and reported that the blip on the radar screen had closed to less than a half mile. They could expect a sighting in three or four minutes coming at them broadside from the right.
“As soon as we see them,” Beth said, “I’m going to steer directly into them to narrow the target in case they have ramming in mind.”
“Sounds like a plan,” replied Andi.
“Then when we’re out of danger from being rammed,” Beth continued, “I’m going to pass them port side to port side at about seventy-five yards away, so they come within range of our shotguns.”
“First, let’s make sure it’s actually Tanks Banks we’re shooting at,” Max added.
“Okay, Max, we do that first. Then you fire at their cockpit, and Mom, you fire at their hull: Give them a couple of good holes below the water line.”
Max grabbed his shotgun and chambered a round. Beth took the other shotgun, gave it to her mother, and put her Glock in the drink holder on the binnacle. If they needed her extra firepower, she would have one hand for the steering wheel and one hand for the Glock. Max and Andi both crouched down behind the starboard side of the cabin roof for protection, shotguns pointed toward her port side.
Chapter 78
Tanks Banks appeared out of the fog right on schedule about a hundred yards away with the clear intention of ramming Red Sky broadside. Beth immediately shifted their engine into drive and made a ninety-degree turn, minimizing the target they presented and the risk of collision.
Her determination merged with horror when she recognized the struggling body of Pam Gartenberg tied to the bow rail of Tanks Banks. Water buried her every time the bow dug into a wave. Gartenberg was behind the wheel and a bare-chested Lance Sturrman, gun in hand, was crouched behind Pam, using her body for cover.
Beth saw him aiming at Red Sky and heard him fire twice. One shot hit the compass on the binnacle, splattering Beth with shards of glass, and the other tore through the mainsail, creating a large rip.
At that point, Beth spun Red Sky’s steering wheel hard back toward Tanks Banks’s port side, and Max and Andi opened fire in tandem. The slugs from Andi’s shotgun made several holes in Tanks Banks’s hull. Max then saw one of his shots cause Gartenberg to collapse in pain behind the wheel, and when he stood up again, there was an unmistakable bloodstain spreading over his right leg through his shorts. Red Sky then passed out of range and into the safety of the fog.
When the alarm on the radar went off again, Andi went below to check and came back up to report another blip on the screen, a large motor boat heading directly for Tanks Banks. She called the coast guard, who advised it wasn’t one of their cutters but that one would be sent as soon as possible.
The fog chose that moment to clear. Beth picked up her binoculars and saw Madre de Oro enter the picture at full speed, and on a collision course with the port side of Tanks Banks. Gartenberg tried to swerve, but it was too little too late. The crushing sound of Madre de Oro’s steel hull slicing into the wooden hull of Tanks Banks was sickening. She backed off with little damage to her own hull, but Beth could see that the damage to Tanks Banks was terminal.
The warm turquoise water of the Caribbean poured through the gash in her side. She had only minutes to live. Her bilge pumps were incapable of keeping up with the rising flood. Her sinking was imminent.
Through her binoculars, Beth could see Gartenberg abandon the yacht and jump into the water with a life preserver and no concern for anyone else’s safety. A trail of his own blood followed after him as the fog again diffused part of the scene. Beth briefly allowed herself to visualize sharks finishing the job Max had started.
When it appeared that Pam had been able to free herself from the mast, Lance Sturrman suddenly pointed his gun directly at her. Beth turned the wheel over to Max, and began firing at Sturrman. One shot hit him in the arm. He immediately dropped his gun, lost his balance, and fell overboard. That left Pam as the only one on board. She finally managed to jump into the water as Tanks Banks slipped quietly below the surface.
As Max steered Red Sky into a rescue effort, Beth didn’t need binoculars to see the horror of what happened next. Gartenberg swam the short distance over to Pam, who was struggling in the water. He grabbed her shoulders, turned her around, and forced her down into the water with his good arm, intent on using her for ballast. When he finally released his grip, she did not resurface for what seemed like an eternity. When she finally did, Gartenberg remained close, but no longer threatened her.
Max slowed Red Sky to a stop as they reached Pam struggling in the water. It was clear to Beth that Pam was exhausted and in danger of drowning, so she handed her Glock to Max, grabbed a life preserver, and jumped overboard to help her.
As soon as Beth hit the water, she gave the life preserver to Pam. At the same time, Andi screamed, “Watch out, Beth, Gartenberg’s getting too close.” Beth spun around and saw Gartenberg swimming out of the fog toward her, nothing but fury in his eyes.
On hearing Andi scream, Max pointed the Glock at Gartenberg and was about to fire when Beth shouted, “No, Max, no! We’re too close. He’s mine.” Andi could only stare at the tragedy she feared was about to happen.
Gartenberg lunged at Beth. Without a second thought, her defensive training dictated her reaction. She took a breath, ducked under water, and came up behind him. She grabbed him around the neck with her right arm and thrust her left knee up into the small of his back.
Gartenberg struggled, but to no avail. He couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t move. Beth pulled with her right arm and pushed with her left knee. As soon as he stopped resisting, Beth released him, and he slowly sank under the water with only a few air bubbles rising to the surface to mark the end of his miserable existence. The last vestiges of the fog lifted as Beth swam toward Red Sky.
Chapter 79
Max dropped the emergency ladder overboard. He and Andi helped Beth and Pam climb aboard, and then
Andi took Pam below for some dry clothes. The first thing Pam did after she changed was give Beth a thumb drive carefully wrapped in a waterproof container.
“What’s on it?” asked Beth.
“I heard Herb and Luis Benetez discussing it during a video conference a few days ago,” Pam said. “It has records of every dollar Herb was hiding for Benetez all over the world. The FBI will go nuts to have this information. I know that Benetez paid Herb a bundle to email him a copy of it.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“I took it from Herb’s pocket last night while he was in Lance’s cabin getting a massage. I figure some payback is in order for what he put me through.”
“If he’s dead, it may be a little late for that,” Max said.
“I know, but if I can screw up Benetez for a while, I’ll get some satisfaction,” Pam replied.
“What did Benetez do?” Beth asked.
“It’s what Luis and Herb both did. I heard them talking on the phone last week about how much fun they had when they were roommates at BMI. Herb said that my brother Terry used to sleep in their room every night.”
“Pigs!” Andi exclaimed.
“Why don’t you turn the thumb drive over to the FBI yourself?” asked Beth.
“Herb gave me half of what Benetez gave him for it, and I don’t want the FBI probing into that. Payback is good as long as it doesn’t bite me on the butt, too.”
“Well, okay, then,” Beth said.
“It’s yours to do with as you see fit, Beth. Herb owes it to both of us.”
“What can I say, Pam, except thanks. I won’t be representing the Benetez family anytime anyhow.”
At that point, Beth saw Luis Benetez helping Lance Sturrman out of the water and onto Madre de Oro. That was the end of the rescue effort because the fog rolled back in. Both boats searched the surrounding water for Gartenberg until the coast guard arrived about an hour later, but he wasn’t found.
Alumni Association Page 18