Merciless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 1)

by Wayne Stinnett

  Ten days, she thought, munching on an apple. Not much time.

  If she stopped in Progresso, even for only the night, that meant she’d have only three days after arriving in Alvarado to acquire transportation to the interior and scout out the terrorists’ location, then come up with some way to get close enough to take out the leader and still get back out.

  Deleting the message, she created a new one to save in the draft folder.

  Please advise with utmost expedience any further chatter involving this attack threat and any update on the group currently camped at the San Martin Tuxtla volcano.

  Taking her lunch and three more bottles of water, Charity returned to the helm. She ate slowly, reading the file for at least the sixth time, only occasionally looking forward or checking the radar. The system had an alarm that would warn her of any boat traffic within two miles, plenty of time to disengage the autopilot and take evasive action. It would come in handy during the night, when she’d sleep in hour-long intervals at the helm.

  Fourteen hours after leaving the Dry Tortugas, with the sun sinking slowly toward the horizon directly ahead, Wind Dancer had covered a hundred and twenty miles of ocean. The sun turned a russet shade of red, bathing the clouds to the south in pastel hues of pink and lavender.

  Charity had actually cooked a hot meal an hour earlier. The seas were so calm, she had no trouble broiling a chicken breast with sautéed onions and sliced potatoes. Standing on the ladder to the cockpit, she could see all around the Dancer and keep watch on the food as it sizzled. While it wasn’t a four-star meal, she didn’t think it half bad and allowed herself a single bottle of beer afterward. Just to celebrate the end of the day.

  The sun, red and enormous, began its daily dance with the sea. At the same time, the moon began to rise behind Wind Dancer, presenting its own beautiful shade of red. The two pirouetted together, one setting, the other rising at the same pace, moving in a surreal dance of light that gave greater depth and texture to the water’s surface and Dancer herself. Light played across the bow and sails, bathing them in the warmth of a sun and giving everything it touched a strange sort of enigmatic power. The sun itself appeared larger than usual, as if Charity could almost reach out and touch it.

  Suddenly, it looked as if the water just reached up and grabbed the huge red disc. Charity gasped lightly as she saw this, her breath catching in her throat, and for a moment it was so beautiful she thought she would cry.

  The water continued pulling at the sun, grasping ever upward at the sides, seeming to stretch it horizontally. The sun flattened itself along the horizon, as if resisting the steady pull of the sea.

  In just a few minutes, as Charity watched the display in awe, the water’s surface finally reached over the top of the sun, embracing the last of it and pulling it down as a small inverted teardrop, bright orange against the purple sky, escaped its grasp. The teardrop leaped from the sea, hovering just above the horizon for an instant, before it blinked out and darkness fell over the water.

  Within a minute, the purple light in the west disappeared and stars twinkled all across the sky, right down to the horizon. Dusk in the open sea was nonexistent. Day turned into night in the blink of an eye.

  With the light of the moon behind her, the stars shining everywhere she looked, Charity was again reminded just how small and insignificant one person, even one boat, really is in the vastness of Earth’s ocean. Her eyes adjusted quickly, as the last light from the sun faded and disappeared. By the light of the nearly full moon and the billions of stars reflecting in her eyes, she could easily see for miles out across the empty ocean.

  The automatic lighting system turned on the running lights, casting an eerie green-and-red glow on the water on either side of the bow. Dancer seemed not to notice the change, but sailed steadfastly onward.

  Rising, Charity went below to put the file away and check for an update. With nothing in her draft folder, she went to the hanging closet and put on a sweater against the chilly night air. She also picked up one of the water-resistant pillows from the settee and carried it to the cockpit.

  It would now be nearly eleven hours of darkness before the first rays of the sun would snatch the darkness away from night, just as quickly as a lamp being turned on.

  Back at the helm, alone with her thoughts, Charity thought about her friends, the members of her team. The people she’d been training with, some of them for over a year. She hoped that one day, the truth about her disappearance would be told. She didn’t know why it mattered, but it was important to her that these people knew why she’d left them.

  In particular, she hoped her boss, Deuce Livingston, would be told and that he’d understand. Charity respected his quiet leadership. She knew Andrew would understand. If and when he learned the truth, he’d laugh, and with that deep foghorn voice of his, he’d proclaim that he had known better all along.

  Jesse McDermitt, the team’s part-time transporter and close friend of both Deuce and his father before him, would certainly understand. After twenty years in the Marines, he’d gone to the Keys to escape everything. On his wedding day, a year and a half ago, his bride had been kidnapped and murdered by people involved in bringing terrorists into the country. Charity said a silent prayer that life would bring peace to the man.

  As the night wore on, Charity became tired. She planned to sleep one hour on and one hour off, from ten to an hour after sunrise. Tomorrow night would be more difficult. She planned to take at least an hour’s nap after lunch, then start her hour-long naps as soon as she started feeling drowsy.

  Setting the alarm on her watch to sound in an hour and then repeat every two hours after that, Charity curled up in the corner of the starboard bench, making sure to shorten her safety line and attach it to the eye hook on the side of the console.

  Her conscious mind tried to fight sleep. It wasn’t natural for her to sleep while moving. She’d always had trouble doing it in a car with someone else was driving.

  She finally convinced herself that there wasn’t anything within the twelve-mile limit of the radar, and it would alert her if another boat was close. Besides, in an hour, Dancer would only travel seven or eight miles. Exhausted, she fell asleep.

  It only felt like a minute or two passed before the alarm on Charity’s watch sounded. She hadn’t slept long enough to enter the dream state, and she awakened sluggishly.

  Checking the radar and plotter, she saw that she’d actually traveled nearly seven miles from the location she had checked just before lying down. The radar screen still revealed an empty ocean, nothing within twelve miles. Beyond its range, a fleet of mega tankers could be bearing down on her, but due to the curvature of the Earth, neither her eyes, nor the radar could see them.

  As the Dancer rode up the back of the slower-moving little swells, then settled deep into the trough, the steady swish of the bow wave was hypnotic. The steady rhythm soon lulled her into closing her eyes again.

  Snapping her head up, Charity checked her watch and position. This time, it really had only been minutes. She kept her mind busy, checking the distance to Progresso and calculating in her head how long it would take to get there.

  At eleven thirty, she went below to get a couple of oranges to snack on later. Leaving them in the cockpit, she clipped her safety line to the cable on the port side and went forward, inspecting the rigging and gear.

  At the bow, she stood motionless a moment, as was becoming her habit, and looked out beyond the Wind Dancer to the horizon. The moon had passed its zenith and was now slightly ahead of her as they both raced toward the coast of Mexico. Somewhere over the horizon was a man who only had a week or so to live, but didn’t know it.

  The small swells throughout the day had diminished to occasional ripples, the nearby water’s surface shimmering with the moon’s reflection. The only sound was the now-constant swish of the bow, cutting through the water at a steady seven knots.

  By midnight, Wind Dancer had covered just under two hundred miles sin
ce leaving the anchorage in the Dry Tortugas that morning. Charity checked her position, dropping a waypoint on the plotter again. It would tell her how far the boat had traveled when the alarm woke her again. This time, her conscious mind didn’t fight it and Charity fell asleep almost instantly, curled up on the padded bench seat.

  Shouts and excited voices woke Charity. She jumped to her feet, but the shortened tether caused her to stumble, and she went down to one knee on the deck.

  A scraping sound brought her fully awake as more shouts, just over the port rail, filled the air. Charity quickly lengthened the safety line and stood up, flipping off the autopilot.

  A woman screamed behind her in the darkness. Charity cursed to herself. Dammit! I hit a boat. Engaging the electric furling system, she quickly had the sails furled and started the engine, turning the Dancer around.

  Charity took a powerful spotlight from under the bench and pointed it to where she thought the other boat should be. Scanning the water back and forth with the light, she finally saw it. But it wasn’t a boat—at least, not any kind of boat she’d ever seen before.

  Cuban refugees, she thought.

  Approaching the derelict-looking raft, keeping it on the starboard side, she cast the light all around, looking for anyone that might have been flung overboard in the collision.

  Not seeing anyone in the water, she called out to them in Spanish. “Are you alright? I did not see you.”

  To her surprise a woman answered. “Yes, we are not hurt, but our boat is sinking!”

  “How many are you?” Charity shouted, reaching under the bench again and pushing against a portion of the deck at the bottom. The spring released, just as the file on the computer had said it would, and a small section lifted up slightly. Charity pulled it full open and withdrew a Colt .45-caliber handgun. Quickly, she ratcheted the slide, chambering a round.

  “We are four,” the woman shouted back as the Dancer slowly approached. “Myself, my little boy and my parents. Please hurry, we’re sinking, and my mother and son do not swim!”

  Thrusting the pistol into her pants behind her back, Charity pulled her shirt and sweater down over it. Steering closer to the raft, she saw that it was built out of long pipes of some kind, each about eight inches in diameter. They were lashed together, and it appeared the raft had a small engine mounted right in the middle, but it didn’t sound like it was running.

  The collision had severed the ropes binding the makeshift hull together. At the stern, the pipes on the port side were askance, hanging in the water, with the deck awash and their belongings about to slip into the sea. A dark-haired woman in jeans and a white long-sleeved blouse clutched a small child of about three or four. Behind her, an elderly couple cowered, hanging on to the sides.

  Charity shut off the engine as the Dancer came alongside. She moved quickly to the rail at the front of the cockpit and unhooked the rail cable. Strapped to Dancer’s cabin roof was a folding ladder that could be hung over the side. She grabbed it and placed it over the low gunwale.

  “Hurry,” Charity shouted as she used a grapple to pull the failing raft alongside. “Grab anything that will not float and climb up the ladder.”

  The old man moved to the ladder and helped a frail-looking woman climb up. He followed quickly, faster than most men his age could move. Halfway up, he turned on the steps and took his grandson from his daughter. Passing the crying boy to his wife, he scrambled briskly up the ladder and reached down to his daughter.

  The daughter handed several containers and a suitcase up to the old man before grabbing the ladder and hauling herself up, just as the raft came completely apart. The engine and the section of deck it was attached to sank into the black abyss.

  For the next thirty minutes, Charity maneuvered Dancer around the flotsam, while the younger Cuban woman used the grapple to hook belongings and pull them out of the water.

  Finally, everything that could be salvaged was now dripping in a soggy pile on the cockpit deck and the cabin roof. Charity introduced herself, using the maiden name of her alias, Gabriela Ortiz. The young woman introduced herself as Isabella Villanueva. Her little boy was Roberto, and her parents were Alonzo and Rosina Montoya.

  “You have saved my family,” Isabella said. “Our motor quit running halfway through the day, and the raft was beginning to fall apart.”

  “Saved your life?” Charity asked in flawless Mexican Spanish. “I’m so sorry I hit you.”

  “You’ve been sent by the angels,” the elderly man said. His hair was snowy white, skin a dark brown, with deep furrows in his brow and cheeks. Shorter than his daughter, he was slightly built, his hands gnarled and bent, probably from decades of pulling on fishing nets, Charity guessed.

  “I built that raft myself,” the old man said. “The crossing to America was only to take two days and a single night. I fear it would have fallen apart and the sea claimed us all before this night was through. Isabella told me that an angel would come and deliver us.”

  “Please,” Charity said, “let us go into the cabin where it is warmer. I will make you something to eat.”

  Charity went down first and helped Isabella down with the boy clutching her neck. “There’s a bunk forward,” Charity said. “And blankets to keep the boy warm.”

  As Isabella carried the boy to bed, Charity helped her aging parents down the steep ladder. Standing on the cabin sole, the old man looked around, eyes wide with wonder. “Santa Madre de Dios,” he said in a hushed voice.

  Charity beckoned toward the center-facing couches in the salon. “Please, sit.”

  As the old couple moved forward, the man gingerly traced his crooked fingers along the polished woodwork, marveling at it. He took his wife’s hand in his own, helping her to a seat on the starboard side, then he turned slowly, taking it all in.

  “I know this boat,” he said in slow Spanish, his eyes sparkling. When they finally fell on Charity, he said, “I once sailed on a sloop designed by the legendary John Alden. It was a lifetime ago. Long before…” His voice trailed off as he made a movement with his hand meant to mimic the stroking of a long beard.

  “No está en Cuba, señor,” Charity said. “It is alright to say his name.”

  “You are going west?” he asked, obviously concerned for his family.

  “Yes, I am going to Mexico. It is where I was born, but I live in America now.”

  His head fell, and he sank onto the couch as Isabella came back into the salon. “Roberto fell into a deep sleep,” she said.

  Charity knew there was no choice. She couldn’t have continued sailing on without picking these people up, and she couldn’t continue on with them. She sat down at the nav station and plotted a course for Key West. The sudden sound of the winches unfurling the sails and the snap of the canvas as they filled brought the old man out of his gloom.

  “There are others aboard?” Alonzo asked, bewildered.

  “No,” Charity replied. “Wind Dancer can sail herself.”

  Charity pulled up the radar display on the laptop and saw nothing to the northeast. She moved to the small galley, put a pot on the stove and opened three cans of vegetable soup. “I will take you part of the way to America,” she said. “Close enough that you can get there on your own, using my dinghy.”

  The delay would cost her dearly and may cause her to fail in her mission. The alternative was to march these refugees up on deck and shoot them.

  Isabella helped Charity prepare sandwiches, thanking her repeatedly for her help. Once they’d eaten, Charity told Isabella to take the forward bunk with her son and together they made up the two couches for her parents.

  “I will consider it an honor and a pleasure if you would allow me to help you sail,” the old man said. His eyes shown with a sparkle of life that wasn’t there earlier.

  “Rest with your wife,” Charity said, smiling. “You can take the watch in two hours.”

  Once everyone was bedded down, Charity returned to the helm. Wind Dancer was living up to her
name, dancing through the water once again, quartering the light easterly breeze, her sails close-hauled and making twelve knots toward Key West.

  Her inflatable Zodiac was plenty large enough to carry the four people and their meager belongings. The engine was a nearly new Johnson fifteen-horsepower two-stroke. It used about two gallons per hour at ten miles per hour. The trouble would be having enough gas to get there. Charity only had two gas tanks, each one holding five gallons. If seas were calm, the little dinghy could make it about fifty miles and arrive on Smathers Beach on reserves.

  Charity plotted a new course, aiming the boat like an arrow toward Key West’s tourist gathering spot, one of the few sand beaches in the Florida Keys. It was the nearest place the Zodiac could land safely.

  Isabella climbed up through the hatch. “May I join you?” she whispered in heavily accented English.

  Without waiting for an answer, she sat on the starboard bench, close to Charity. “You are not going to visit Mexico,” Isabella said.

  Charity just stared at her in the dim light emanating from the cabin. Was that a challenge? she thought.

  “You are running,” Isabella said. “How you say? Fleeing?”

  The woman said it as though she was no stranger to the concept. Not just fleeing Cuba, though, Charity thought. She decided that she could trust this woman who had been through so much. At least a little.

  Charity spoke in Spanish with a fluent Cuban inflection. “No, Isabella. I am an American citizen. My husband died two years ago. If anyone in America asks who helped you, this is what you must tell them.”

  Isabella was startled at the change in dialect. She thought for a moment, glancing at the sophisticated navigation equipment hidden in the old wheel pedestal.

  “May I ask why you are going to Mexico?”

  “Yes, but if anyone in America asks about me, what I just told you is all that you know. Do you understand?”

  Isabella studied Charity’s face a moment through dark brown eyes. She’d found one of Charity’s hair ties, and her thick, wavy black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Isabella’s eyes sparkled in the moonlight, and she seemed to come to some conclusion.