###
Three hours later, after the sun had set, one of the Marines relieved Norton at the helm. Norton educated him on how to operate the forward looking infrared and read the instruments. The Argosy was steaming on autopilot, and it was programmed to maintain a constant bearing on their target.
The yacht was illuminated, not because Norton wanted to advertise its presence but because it helped reduce the risk of a nighttime collision with another vessel. And the radar display had revealed other traffic. Channels nine and sixteen on the VHF were quiet, as were all the higher band frequencies he monitored.
It took an hour to walk the man through everything, even though all he had to do was sit in the helm chair and monitor the instruments. The seas were mounting, and travel was getting a little snotty, but so far, everything was going as well as could be expected.
Norton spent thirty minutes with his parents, ensuring they were as comfortable as they could be under the circumstances. His mother was still in severe pain, but there was nothing that could be done for her beyond the simple medications the Navy corpsman had available.
Norton then gathered some fresh clothes and ducked into the master head for a quick shower. The hot water felt good, but he made a note to switch on the watermaker later to replace whatever had been used.
Clean and dressed, he walked around the yacht, checking everything out. He had to wear some foul weather gear due to the wind and the spray, and standing on the bow was a bit dicey despite the rough texture of the surface that allowed for some extra grip. The Argosy was a little dirty and becoming more salt-encrusted by the hour, but she was fine.
He had given Danielle and her father access to the crew area, and even though it was noisier and not as lushly appointed as the rest of the yacht, they had more privacy. With more than thirty-five people aboard, space was at a premium. He was glad he’d already had full stores in place because running out of provisions five hundred miles from anywhere would be a tough spot to be in.
He made his way to the rear, then slipping on his earphones, he checked out the engine room. Despite the pounding diesels, the temperature wasn’t extreme. Fuel was clear, oil viscosity was as indicated, and all systems were functioning properly. The freshwater tanks were still full, and the wastewater tanks were not. He checked the blackwater system, and all was well.
Even though the Pacific Mariner wasn’t technically an expedition yacht, it had the capability to perform that mission. Norton passed some time in the engine room, going over equipment manuals to refamiliarize himself with some of the processes and procedures he might need to enact in the event of an emergency.
At eleven, he returned to the crew quarters. Martin Kennedy was sleeping in one of the deckhand berths, snoring loudly. Norton didn’t have to check on him to know the man was in great shape. Anyone who could fall into a deep sleep less than ten feet away from thrumming diesels didn’t need a bedtime story or hot toddy.
Danielle was lying on the double berth in the captain’s stateroom. Her earbuds were plugged into her iPhone, most likely playing some loud music in a bid to keep the engine room noise at bay. Norton regarded her for a moment as he closed the stateroom door behind him. The bed wasn’t that roomy, but with her in it, it was all he needed.
She looked up at him and smiled. She had showered, and he could smell her clean skin from where he stood. “Don’t worry about sleeping,” she said. “I take up less space than a normal girl.” She pointed to the bulkhead beside the door. Hanging from one of the coat hooks, her prosthesis swayed from side to side.
Norton laughed, as in really laughed, for the first time in weeks. He felt the stress drain out of him. He climbed into the berth next her. She reached for him as he slipped an arm around her waist.
###
Corbett sat in the semidarkness on the dining settee at the rear of the pilothouse, swaying in rhythm with the Argosy as she plowed through the water. He’d never been much into boats, and aside from a speed boat he had owned when he was twenty-five years younger, he hadn’t really thought much about them. But he was impressed with Norton’s choice. He had to admit the film producer had made some good equipment choices.
Sleep wouldn’t come to him for days, he knew. When stress was high, rest wasn’t something Corbett could reliably entertain. So he just sat there, getting up every now and then to help himself to some of Norton’s Earl Grey tea. He’d been there ever since coming aboard, even while the others fixed meals and talked and cried. No one really tried to engage him in conversation. He didn’t mind. He had nothing to say anyway.
The Marine sitting in the helm chair a few feet away moved his head from time to time, scanning the displays, but that was it. He hadn’t spoken to Corbett, and Corbett hadn’t spoken to him.
Don’t be such an old war horse, Kemosabe. The voice in his head was Victor’s. Corbett smiled wryly. Victor Kuruk, still poking Corbett in the eye even from the grave. So typical of him. Even though they’d come from different places, they would wind up in the same one when it was all said and done. Corbett found he was looking forward to it. Life was for the young, even though they squandered it relentlessly.
“Barry?” Sinclair said from the doorway.
“What is it, Sinclair?” Corbett asked, hiding his surprise.
“May I sit?”
“It’s not my boat. Do whatever you want.”
Sinclair slid into the settee and rested his elbows on the lacquered table. He studied his dim reflection in the tabletop for a moment then looked over at Corbett. “It appears I was wrong about you the entire time. You’re nothing like I thought you were.”
“What did you think I was like, Jock?”
“A selfish, self-interested bastard who saw the opportunity to lord over a town and mold it into something more to your liking. I thought it was going to be All Hail King Barry. Instead, you turned out to be one of the most selfless people I believe I’ve ever met. You spent a lot of treasure doing what you did.”
“What, money? That doesn’t mean a damn thing.”
Sinclair reddened a little. “Well… except to those who don’t have it.”
“You asking for a handout? Sure, I’ll write you a check for a hundred million, if you’ll only leave me alone. Deal?”
“No need for that.” Sinclair reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the plastic baggie with the SD card inside. “Here it is. Sixty-four gigabytes of footage. I have four more of these, over eighty hours of imagery. Some people, when they view it, might see you as I did before. They might overlook the good you did, the sacrifices you made. They might just see what they want to see, a raging egoist with too much money and too much ambition treating a small California town like his personal fiefdom.”
“So they might,” Corbett said, nodding.
“Shall I throw them overboard?”
Corbett eyed the journalist. “What?”
“I said, shall I throw them overboard? No one will ever recover them, not out here,” Sinclair said. “No questions, no commentary, no inquisition into what you did, and who you might have done things to.”
Corbett grunted. “A deal’s a deal, Jock. This’ll make you, if things get back to what was once normal. You’ll be able to write your own ticket. That little piece of hardware is going to be worth, oh, forty or fifty million. Easy.” He took a sip of his tea, which had cooled to barely lukewarm. “I gave you the opportunity to do with that whatever you wanted. So do it. Whatever you want.”
“Even if it means throwing it over the side of the boat?”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Corbett said. “I’d rather you take it as far as you can. I want people to know Single Tree. I want them to remember the people and how they lived. And yeah, how they died.”
“Some viewers—powerful viewers—might have you strung up, Barry.”
“Let them.” Corbett rubbed his eyes. “Please let them,” he added softly. “There has to be a final accounting.”
Sinclair sat ther
e for a few minutes, then quietly got up and left.
LATITUDE 32.511639, LONGITUDE -130.589518
The sea deteriorated considerably on the second day. Norton stayed at the helm for nine hours straight, overseeing the yacht’s transit. A lot of the people were seasick from the fair-sized rollers that crashed over the bow, and he dispatched two of Lennon’s Marines to the crew compartment to keep an eye on the systems in the companionway outside the engine room. The Argosy fought its way through the weather without complaint or failure, her fiberglass hull slicing through the mighty Pacific like a knife through butter. Norton couldn’t have been happier with his choice in yachts.
As the weather cleared and the sea subsided, the boat began to make better time. The sun came out, and the temperatures rose. While the breeze was still brisk, the temperature was in the high fifties, which meant those who had a mind to do so could go onto the aft deck and enjoy some fresh air without worry of being swept overboard. Norton told Boomer and Browning to set up the long table on the aft deck. While no one was breaking out of the boogie boards and bikinis, the situation was approaching the kind of yachting Norton preferred.
The radar began picking up substantial returns sixty nautical miles out.
“Hey, Corbett. You know anything about this?” Norton asked.
“About what?”
“About what looks like a couple of aircraft carriers ahead?”
“Just keep going, Norton. See for yourself.”
Norton resisted the urge to increase speed because that meant burning more fuel. It would take hours to close on the contacts ahead, so he settled in for the long wait. Danielle came up and visited for a while. And as the day wore on, Norton heard the laughter of children playing in the salon. Apparently, someone had raised the big screen TV and found the Xbox. Hey, whatever it takes.
Over three hours later, the Argosy got within visual range of the radar targets. Norton was taken aback as he viewed the FLIR picture. He grabbed his binoculars and looked through them for verification. He stared at what lay ahead through both devices for several minutes, until they finally became visible to the naked eye. Lennon stepped out onto the bow, talking into his headset’s microphone.
Norton turned to Corbett, who sat calmly on the settee. “You crusty bastard. You really know how to plan for this stuff, don’t you?”
“On occasion,” Corbett said. “Though this one needed a couple of months to get straightened out. They were in different parts of the globe and couldn’t break free in time for us to go directly to them. That’s why I built up the town.”
Norton raised the binoculars again. Ahead were four gigantic ships, two container vessels and two cargo vessels. And emerging from behind one of the vessels was a cutter. It swung its pointed bow toward the Argosy and accelerated toward her. Helicopters flew from ship to ship. Norton noticed the logos on the sides of the ship pilothouses.
“You own these things?” he asked.
“Yes. Why depend on other people to ship your petroleum product when you can do it yourself and keep the costs down? You know what you’re looking at there, Norton?”
“Aside from really, really big boats? What?”
“Our future,” Corbett murmured. “We can live on those for decades. They’re full of product, full of everything we need. Fuel. Food. Medical facilities. Aviation assets. Kids can be safe there. They can grow up without worrying about a horde coming for them. Maybe even you can grow old and gray and have Dani change your Depends for you.”
Norton chuckled. “Yeah, well, I’m all set as far as living quarters go.”
“The helicopters and the cutter... they’ll be the key, Norton.”
“Huh? Key to what?”
“Those are Sikorsky S-92 choppers, big lifters with a lot of capacity. There are spare parts for them on the cargo ships, along with two fully-assembled helicopters in storage. We can fly them off the cutter when she’s closer to shore.”
Norton frowned. “Why would you want to do that?”
“There are people back in Single Tree. And I’m not going to forget about them.” The old man fixed Norton with his hard blue eyes. “What about you, Norton? Are you ready to leave those people back there? Just stay out here, soaking up some rays on a big ship that has everything you could want on it? Because if that’s your pleasure, you can do that.”
Norton met Corbett’s gaze head on. “No, Corbett, I’m not gonna do that. When do we head back?”
Corbett smiled slowly, and instead of a tired old man, he looked like an angry old wolf, ready to start mixing it up with whatever came his way. “After I’ve had a long, long nap. But get ready, guy. It’ll be soon.” He took a sip of his tea. “Before you know it, it’ll be us against the dead. And we’ll win next time. We’ll win.”
The Last Town Page 63