“Sounds like a great way to usher in the summer,” he said. “Will you need anything from the marina?”
Charity relaxed a little and smiled. “No, I don’t believe so.”
“A hand casting off?”
She thought about it a moment. He’d seen her arrive, probably knew her car and, even with the shades on, knew what she looked like. There was nothing she could do now but go along.
“If you could give me a hand with my luggage first, I would very much appreciate it.”
“Un placer, señorita.”
Charity turned up the smile and the charm, figuring that’s what was expected. “Hablas español?” she asked as she climbed up onto the deck of the cockpit.
The young man smiled broadly, and Charity knew that behind his sunglasses, he was looking her up and down. “Not a lot, but everyone in South Florida speaks a little.”
Pointing behind the man, she said, “I am parked there.”
As they walked toward the minivan, the man said, “I’m Kevin. I don’t remember seeing you around.”
“I am Gabriela,” Charity said, using her alias. “My father had the boat brought here. I only flew in last night.”
She opened the hatchback and started to stretch for one of the larger bags, but Kevin reached in and took both of the larger ones. “Allow me. It’s quite a beautiful boat.”
Picking up the overnight bag, Charity closed and locked the car. “Yes, it is, thank you. It is a John Alden design, built in 1926. You are familiar with Alden?”
“I’ve heard of him,” Kevin replied, “and seen pictures of boats he designed, but yours is the first I’ve seen up close.”
Walking toward the dock, Charity decided the man wasn’t a threat to either her or her mission. “He was probably the best naval architect America ever produced,” she said, reciting her uncle’s familiarity with the man. “His designs are clean and simple on the outside, yet very elegant. Most Alden-designed boats were built to be single-handed. I learned to sail her when I was only a child.”
When Charity stepped aboard, Kevin stopped and started to place the luggage on the pier.
“Would you hand them down to me please?” she asked and, without waiting for an answer, stepped quickly through the hatch and down the ladder.
In the salon, she put the overnight bag on the counter and picked up her purse, taking out a crisp twenty-dollar bill and putting it in her pocket. She returned to the hatch, where the young man squatted, peering inside. Removing his sunglasses, he said, “Wow! This is absolutely beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she said, noticing his bright blue eyes as he handed her the first suitcase.
Already very familiar with her cover story, she told it just as she’d rehearsed. “My family made our escape from Cuba in this very boat during the confusion of the Mariel boatlift. Father recently had her completely refitted before he gave her to me. Tomorrow will be her first day in the open ocean since he sailed her from Cuba when I was a small child.”
“That was before I was born,” Kevin said, handing down the second bag. “Why did he never sail her again?”
“Oh, we sailed a lot,” she replied. “We just never sailed in the ocean. Father was always afraid the Cuban government would catch him.”
“You were probably too young to remember anything about Cuba,” he said. Charity knew he was trying to be flattering and making an advance.
She smiled as she started up the ladder. “Yes, I was only four years old,” she lied, adding a few years. “But I remember some things.”
Kevin stood and stepped back as Charity emerged from the cabin. “I’ll disconnect the shore power, if you’ll untie the lines and hold her fast for a moment.”
A moment later, the boat was free of its tethers, Kevin holding the rail as she stepped back aboard. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Kevin,” Charity said, extending her hand with the bill tucked in it.
He took her hand and casually palmed the bill, putting it into his own pocket. “El placer ha sido todo mío, Señorita Gabriela.”
Charity smiled as she slid onto the narrow bench behind the helm and opened the control panel in the wheel pedestal. The wheel itself was mounted forward the pedestal, and there were hooks on either side to tether the pilot in foul weather. Inside the pedestal was an array of gauges and switches, with a large compass mounted on top of it.
She nodded to the young man, who released his hold on the rail and gave the heavy boat a gentle nudge away from the pier. Charity engaged the transmission for a few seconds to start the boat moving out of the slip. Flipping a switch on the console, she waited a moment while the watertight covers on the bow thruster opened, then toggled the control to shove the bow around. Closing the thruster doors, she then reengaged the transmission, idling slowly around the end of the piers toward the canal that led into Biscayne Bay.
Clearing the point where the marina office was located, she glanced over. Kevin was standing on the fuel dock and waving. She smiled and waved back before throttling up slightly, anxious to get to the deeper water of the bay. At just four knots, it took nearly half an hour to reach the outer markers at the channel entrance.
Though the old wooden boat could be single-handed fairly well back when it was new, it was much easier to do so now, with the aid of the new electronics and automatic systems that had been installed. Once clear of the last marker, she used the automatic controls to raise the mainsail and unfurl the staysail. Although the mast was original and as big as a tree trunk, reaching sixty feet up toward the sky, the boom was aluminum, with a fully automated boom furler.
With the main and forestay close hauled and in irons, both sails luffing in the light wind, she turned slightly off the easterly breeze to the north and shut off the engine. The sails snapped as the light air filled them. The weight of the wind on the sails heeled the boat over, and Charity felt a rush of adrenaline, the same feeling of elation she’d felt as a young woman, sailing with her father and uncle, whenever their boat’s sails had filled.
The heavy boat slowed momentarily in the turn, losing the momentum the engine provided, then gaining it back as the sails filled. The winches for the running rigging could be controlled automatically by the computer, constantly adjusting sail position for changing wind conditions to maintain the most efficient attitude. But Charity preferred to sail by feel and hadn’t engaged the automated system. The winches were completely under her control, and she adjusted the main, moving the boom outboard until the mainsail began to luff slightly, then hauling it back in a few inches.
Her destination for now lay just across Biscayne Bay, seven miles due east, but with the easterly wind, she’d tack northeast to the halfway point, then jibe back to the southeast. The crossing would only take a couple of hours, then she’d anchor in the lee of Boca Chita Key. There she intended to spend the rest of the day familiarizing herself with the boat and its two million dollars’ worth of upgrades while waiting for the early-morning high tide. Then she’d retire to the forward berth for a good night’s sleep.
In the morning, two hours before daylight, the tide would peak and the outgoing current through Lewis Cut would help carry the boat into the Atlantic Ocean, under cover of darkness.
Halfway across the bay, Charity made the tack southeast, the boat responding beautifully. She took her satellite phone out of her pocket, pulled up the director’s secure number and punched the call button.
“Are you aboard?” Stockwell whispered as the connection was made.
“Just departed the marina,” she replied. “How’s the search going?”
“McDermitt signaled us using a laser bore sighter, if you can believe it.”
“He’s safe, then?” she asked, relieved.
“Yes, everything was wrapped up within a couple of hours of your disappearance. A few bad guys were killed, but none of the team was hurt. Agent Rosales killed Tena Horvac.”
The tension she’d felt about leaving the group in the way she had was suddenly lifted. �
�Thanks, Director.”
“And that will be the last time you call me that,” Director Stockwell said. “From now on, you call me Uncle. Now go. Sail away and do what you’ve been training for.”
It was midafternoon when Charity dropped anchor at Boca Chita Key, a tiny island about ten miles south of Key Biscayne. Though uninhabited, it was part of the Biscayne National Park and used as a rustic campground by boaters. The island had a small harbor, but Charity chose to anchor on the west side until she could be sure the water was deep enough to enter.
The entrance to the harbor was only seven feet deep at high tide. Dancer’s draft was six feet, much too close to take the risk except at the peak of high tide. Even with the sophisticated forward- and side-scanning sonar system on board, she didn’t want to chance it.
The large Danforth anchor bit into the sandy bottom as she backed down hard on it. With the wind blowing from the island and the tide rising, there was little chance of the boat swinging around.
Searching several yachting sites online, she soon learned that the tide here peaked an hour and twenty-four minutes after the high tide shown for Government Cut in Miami. Checking the tide chart for the Cut, she calculated that it was still an hour from the tidal peak. The next high tide, then, would be twelve hours and thirty minutes later, just before sunrise.
Standing on the cabin roof in front of the mast, Charity looked over the island through her binoculars. There was one boat tied up to the concrete dock that encircled the harbor, a pilothouse trawler about forty feet long. Being a deep-draft boat, it probably wouldn’t be leaving before high tide, if at all.
She decided to hail the boat, knowing they had to be aware she was anchored just outside the harbor. Pulling her handheld marine band VHF radio from the clip on her belt, she keyed the mic. “This is Wind Dancer calling the pilothouse trawler in Boca Chita Harbor.”
She waited a moment and then a woman’s voice answered back, “This is Sea Biscuit. Are you the sloop anchored just outside?”
“Yes, I’m waiting for high tide before entering. Will you be leaving on the tide?”
“No, Wind Dancer. We’re here for a couple of days. Feel free to come in whenever you want. The channel’s deeper than the charts say. It was eight feet on the morning tide.”
“Thanks, Sea Biscuit.”
Charity waited a moment longer, looking at the boat through the binoculars. Finally, a woman and a young girl about nine or ten stepped out onto the dock. The woman was tall and athletic. She turned and waved before following the girl down a trail and disappearing into the brush.
A moment later, Charity sat at the nav station, familiarizing herself with the many upgrades in the boat’s automated systems. After an hour of reading over the files, she started the engine, certain she could sail the boat anywhere she wanted to go.
Back at the helm, Charity nudged the boat forward as the windlass pulled the anchor free of the sandy bottom. Switching the sonar to forward scan, she saw the bottom and sides of the channel displayed in full color on the small screen, showing more than a foot of clearance to the bottom, with no irregularities.
Navigating the channel proved to be very easy, using the bow thruster for minor corrections. Not wanting to be intrusive, she chose a spot thirty or forty feet behind the trawler and brought the boat to a stop, the fenders still a foot from the black rubber bumpers on the concrete seawall.
Leaping the short span with both the stern and bow lines in hand, she pulled on both until the fenders lightly bumped the dock. The woman had reappeared, sitting alone on the fly bridge of the trawler. Charity finished tying the lines off, fore and aft, then stood and looked around.
“You made that channel look easy,” the woman shouted from the sundeck of the trawler.
“Thanks,” Charity called back. Remembering how cordial the cruising people she’d met in her youth had been she started walking toward the other boat. “The bow thruster helps. I’m Gabriela.”
The woman quickly descended the ladder and vaulted the low wooden rail that ran the length of the boat. Striding toward her in bare feet, she extended her hand. “Savannah. Savannah Richmond.”
Charity took the woman’s hand and said, “Gabriela Fleming. My friends call me Gabby.”
“Then that’s what I’ll call you, Gabby. Are you sailing alone?”
“Yes, for now. I’m meeting friends in Key Biscayne in the morning, but I don’t like crowds.”
“Same with us,” Savannah said. “It’s just me and my daughter, Flo. She’s over on the beach, looking for clams.”
Savannah was older than Charity first thought, by probably a decade. Tall and slim, with broad shoulders and a deep tan, she had naturally blond hair streaked by years of sun and water. Dressed in a pair of well-worn jeans and a lightweight white long-sleeved top, she was taller than Charity by a few inches, even in bare feet.
“Care to come aboard and get out of the sun?” Savannah asked. “I just put some beer in the cooler up on the fly bridge.”
Not wanting to seem uncordial, Charity accepted, and the two women stepped over the gunwale and climbed a short ladder to the covered sundeck. Besides the captain’s chair, there was ample seating and reclining room for several people.
Savannah handed Charity a cold beer from the cooler, then sat down on the full recliner aft the captain’s chair, stretching her legs out and nodding toward the recliner opposite. “Have a seat, Gabby. I like to sit up here, where I can see better. Last night’s sunset was spoiled by a storm out over the Glades. Tonight should be better.”
Charity sat down and relaxed a little. “Where are you from?” she asked casually.
“I’m originally from Beaufort, South Carolina. But since Flo’s first birthday, this boat and wherever we anchored has been our home.”
“Is Flo short for something?” Charity asked, already guessing what it was.
“Family tradition,” Savannah replied with a grin. “Mom and Dad are Madison and Jackson, my sister’s name is Charlotte and now we have Florence.”
Looking out to port, Charity could see the beach on the far side of the island and the little girl wading in the shallow water collecting clams. She surmised that the fly bridge was Savannah’s favorite spot so she could keep an eye on her daughter, more than to watch the sunset.
“Your boat is beautiful, Gabby,” Savannah said after taking a long pull on the cold beer bottle. “Looks like an Alden design.”
“It is,” Charity replied, keeping to her slight Cuban accent. “She was built in 1932, but recently refitted. I love this old trawler of yours.”
“Thank you. It’s a Grand Banks forty-two-foot Classic. Also, refitted recently. My husband and I split up several times, but for some strange reason, I always went back to him. The last time was just after Flo was born. While he was out sowing his oats again, I packed up and went home to my folks. Dad gave me Sea Biscuit and said if I stayed away from the asshole for a year, his words, he’d do a complete refit. I did, and when the divorce was final, Flo and I moved aboard and hoisted anchor. I don’t think I could ever go back now. What about you? Ever married?”
“No,” Charity replied. “A couple of boyfriends, nothing serious. I thought one might be the right guy, but he died several months ago.” She regretted saying it as soon as the words left her mouth.
Savannah sat up and looked deeply into the younger woman’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Gabby.”
“It is alright. Perhaps one day, maybe.” Then, changing the subject, Charity asked, “Where are you heading?”
“We just returned from the Bahamas,” Savannah replied. “We’d been cruising there for two years. Now we’re heading to the Keys. Maybe look up an old friend or two.”
The faraway look in Savannah’s eyes told Charity that the old friend was a long-lost lover. “When were you last there?” Charity asked, sipping her beer.
“It’s been a long time,” Savannah replied. “Late 1999, but still hurricane season. My sister and I were on our way
to Key West in our dad’s boat. We’d hired a captain, so we could just enjoy the cruise. Char ended up skipping out on me, so I decided to send the captain home and stayed over in Marathon for a while. Nice place, with friendly people. I wound up having to take refuge deep in the Everglades during a hurricane with some new friends.”
“Sounds very exciting,” Charity said.
“What about you? Where are you headed after Key Biscayne?”
“The friends I’m picking up are accompanying me to the Bahamas for a few weeks.”
Just then, Savannah’s daughter returned with a bucket full of clams, joining them on the fly bridge. A beautiful little girl, Charity realized she’d misjudged her age. She was tall already, but only about seven or eight years old, with sandy brown hair and a deep tan. Like her mother, she was barefoot.
“Will you join us for dinner, Gabby?” Savannah asked. “Nothing special, just grunts and clams.”
“Thanks, but I’ve already eaten,” Charity lied. “I was planning to go to bed as soon as I got into the harbor, to catch the morning tide.”
The three of them climbed down to the dock and said their goodbyes, before Charity returned to her own boat. As she started down into the cabin, she waved at the two of them, thinking that the little girl looked vaguely familiar.
Back aboard the Dancer, Charity sat down at the nav station and switched on the batteries. Though she’d been using some of the electronics, automated winches, and both the FM and weather radios during the crossing, the batteries still showed fully charged. Besides the gen-set, there were several small solar panels on the cabin roof and a wind generator aft the cockpit on a short mast. They’d produced enough electricity to keep the batteries charged during the short two-hour crossing.
She switched on the air conditioner, even though she knew the interior would rarely get hot. The waterline outside the hull was several feet above the cabin sole, and she remembered her uncle’s boat staying cool in the summer and warm in the winter, just from the surrounding water.
Merciless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 1) Page 5