Fallen Tide: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 8)

by Wayne Stinnett

  “He’ll be thrilled,” Charlie said, standing up. “I have to go get dinner ready.”

  Kim was on her feet quickly. “I’ll give you a hand.”

  Once they were down the steps, I turned and started to ask Linda what sort of conspiracy was going on between her and Kim, but she spoke before I could get a word out.

  “Don’t be angry.”

  “Me? Angry? About what?”

  “She called me last week and asked about scholarships for criminal justice majors. Even if she doesn’t maintain your three point eight, her tuition is paid. As long as it stays above a three point oh.”

  “So my negotiations were for naught?”

  Linda smiled. “I doubt you’ll have to worry about that. I’d be surprised if she didn’t make straight As. I’m sorry, Jesse. But she asked me not to say anything until she talked to you.”

  “She really looks up to you,” I said.

  “Me? I thought she was doing it to be closer to Marty.”

  Taking Linda’s hand, I looked down at Kim and Charlie picking a few vegetables for supper. “She says you draw a line and stand on it to protect others.”

  Linda laughed. She has a hearty, infectious laugh. “She told me nearly the same thing about you. Only she said that you’re the kind of man that draws the line behind where he’s standing.”

  Following my gaze, she added, “We think our kids never notice what we do.”

  It was still dark when I woke. The smell of Costa Rican coffee was the first thing I noticed. Rusty kept me well stocked with a dark roast from a little farm called La Minita, way up in the Costa Rican mountains. The gentle rustle of the curtains as a light breeze stirred them was the second thing I noticed. I gently rolled out of my big bed, careful not to wake Linda, and quietly pulled open the top dresser drawer for a clean pair of boxers.

  Looking out the south-facing window, I saw the stars glittering off the water all the way to the horizon, not a cloud to obscure them. Yet the breeze was out of the north. The easterly trades were so constant, whenever the wind changed direction, it meant weather approaching. The northerly breeze meant a low-pressure system was building over Cuba.

  I was nearly to the bedroom hatch when I heard Linda softly mumble, “Bring me a cup?”

  I turned around. In the dappled light, I saw her sitting up in the bed, propped on her elbows, naked except for the bedsheet tangled around her long, tanned legs. Her hair hung wild and loose on her shoulders. Feeling a stirring in my groin, I began to walk back to my bed.

  She held a hand up. “Not without a mug in your hands.”

  I grinned and headed out to the galley. Pescador was waiting patiently by the door, and I let him out. As I filled two mugs, I heard the shower come on and hurried into the head, carrying them both. Linda was already in the shower, facing away from the stream of hot water, lifting her hair with both hands, rinsing it. Sliding the clear shower door open, I slipped off my boxer shorts and stepped into the shower in front of her.

  I handed my lady one of the mugs, and we each sipped at the strong brew, looking at one another over the rims as the hot water splashed over her shoulders and traced little rivulets over her breasts, down her belly and over her wide hips.

  “Mmm, I needed that,” she said with a sparkle in her eyes.

  I didn’t try to disguise the lust I felt. We’d moved well past that marker many months ago. “Me too.”

  Taking her half-empty mug, I placed them both on the high shelf and took her in my arms. I backed her under the full force of the water and into the corner of the large shower stall, as we embraced passionately.

  Thirty minutes later, dressed for a day on the water, we joined Kim and the Trent family at the big table for more coffee. The west side of the western bunkhouse is partitioned off and used as kind of an office. It has two sets of bunk beds and Kim stays there when she comes to visit.

  “Kim said y’all are going offshore,” Charlie said. “Breakfast before you leave?”

  “No, thanks,” I replied. “We’re meeting Rusty and Jimmy for breakfast at the Anchor.”

  “Hope you catch some dolphin,” Carl said. “Haven’t had any in over a week.”

  “Exactly why we’re going. Can you make a little room in the freezer?”

  “No problem,” Charlie replied.

  Finishing our coffee, we said our goodbyes and started to leave. Pescador looked up at me expectantly. “You wanna go fishing today, buddy?”

  He barked once, which I always assumed meant yes. “Well, let’s get a move on.”

  Like he had been shot out of the proverbial cannon, Pescador charged across the clearing. Making a beeline toward the house and the docks beneath it at a dead run, he sent sand and leaves flying up from underneath his paws.

  “Looks like he really wants to go,” Linda said.

  Ten minutes later, with the sky just beginning to turn purple, we idled out into Harbor Channel and turned northeast toward the light on Harbor Key Bank. I brought the big boat up on plane, and minutes later we turned east and then southeast.

  While the Revenge is equipped with state-of-the-art electronics and navigation, I’d become less and less reliant on them over the years. I’d made this run from my island to Marathon so many times, it’d become second nature. Whether on the Revenge or one of the other boats, I usually kept at the same sedate speed. The turns in East Bahia Honda Channel were timed subconsciously, and now I only occasionally checked the sonar.

  Being only a degree or so north of the Tropic of Cancer, a lot of the southern constellations are visible here. Before dawn, in fall and early winter, the Southern Cross is setting after its short arc across the southern sky. It was this constellation that I was now navigating by, keeping it about fifteen degrees off the starboard bow.

  With the lights on the bridge turned off and only the faintest glow coming from the forward-scanning sonar, I relied more on the visual cues the stars provided, knowing that the sonar alert tone would sound if the water ahead became too skinny, or there was some new obstruction on the bottom.

  The shallowest part of the channel was five feet at high tide, and it was just before the tide now. As long as we didn’t stray too far out of the natural channel that sailors have used for hundreds of years, we’d have at least five feet under the keel, and the Revenge only needed four. Not a lot of room for error, but as long as the tide was high, I’d take this shortcut. Other than that, the channel was a fairly constant ten feet in depth and would take us straight to Moser Channel and the high arch of Seven Mile Bridge.

  “More coffee?” Linda asked as we cruised across the five-foot shallows at Horseshoe Bank without incident.

  I nodded, watching the sonar for anything on the bottom. As she filled my mug, the sonar showed the bottom dropping away once again as we entered the main part of the channel.

  “This is your favorite time to be on the water, isn’t it?” she asked, handing the mug back to me.

  “Yeah, I guess it is,” I replied. “The start of a new day, a fresh, clean slate.”

  “Mine too,” Kim added. “Sunsets are pretty, but the dawn brings with it the chance to start all over and forget about the mistakes of the previous day.”

  I chuckled as we passed East Bahia Honda Key on our starboard side. “When did you become such a philosopher?”

  When we arrived at the Anchor, Jimmy was already there. Rufus was out in his little open-air kitchen, cooking, and entertaining a few of the locals and liveaboards. Kim took our orders and went out the back door to tell Rufus, while Linda and I joined Jimmy at the bar.

  While most people would look with disdain at eating breakfast at a bar in a boat-bum beer joint, the Anchor was different from most. Tucked back in the mangroves and the gumbo-limbo and banyan trees, completely invisible to cars passing by on Overseas Highway, it was a hangout for locals. A place to catch up on the goings-on around the islands, make plans for the future, or just be with friends that were as close as family.

  Rusty
placed two more mugs at the end of the bar and filled them with the same strong, black La Minita coffee. “You feel the wind this morning?” Rusty asked.

  “I’m sure we’ll be back before the storm gets here,” I said.

  “Storm?” Linda asked. “What storm?”

  “Wind’s outta the north this morning,” Jimmy said, nursing his own coffee. “Sure sign of bad weather down south, man.”

  “I didn’t hear anything about a storm,” Linda proclaimed.

  “Old Fidel,” Jimmy mused, “he just never seems to share very much with us.”

  Minutes later, Kim came back in, balancing three plates loaded with omelets and fried potatoes. “Y’all go ahead,” Rusty said. “Me and Jimmy already ate.”

  Linda and I joined Kim at a table. “Rufus said to give you this,” Kim said and handed me a small vial. “He said it would dull your sense of smell for about an hour.”

  I took the vial and looked at it. There was a clear liquid inside, thick and clinging to the sides. Leaning over the plate in front of me, I inhaled deeply, savoring the spicy aroma. “Why wouldn’t I want to smell this? What is it?”

  “Janga and wild onion omelet,” Kim replied. “He said the vial was for later, while we were out on the boat.”

  I shook my head and shoved the little bottle into my pocket as I dug into the omelet. “Sometimes I just don’t get that guy.”

  Kim grinned. “He also said the janga were for Linda.”

  “Then why’d you give it to me?”

  Linda elbowed me in the ribs. What Rufus calls janga are actually the freshwater crawfish we raise on the island. In Jamaica, freshwater crawfish are called janga and are considered an aphrodisiac.

  “What?” I said as I looked from one to the other.

  Kim grinned again and said, “His exact words were, ‘Di gods of di cosmos smile upon your daddy and his lady. Dey tell Rufus to help di mon.’”

  Linda nearly choked, trying to swallow a bite and stifle a laugh. She quickly brought her napkin to her mouth, and finally she said, “He doesn’t need any help.”

  “TMI,” Kim said, laughing.

  We quickly finished breakfast as Rusty and Jimmy carried coolers down to the boat, loaded with baitfish, drinking water, and beer. When the three of us joined them, Jimmy already had the engines running and the sun was just beginning to peek above the mangroves to the southeast, not a cloud in sight.

  As Kim and Linda climbed up to the bridge, Rusty and I cast off the lines and stepped aboard. “Take us out, Jimmy,” I called up to him. Pescador took up his now-usual spot on the deck by the transom door as Rusty and I emptied the live bait into the bait wells and turned on the aerators. For a year, when Pescador first came to live with me, he’d always ridden on the foredeck, as if looking out for something. I figured he liked this new spot because he was getting older and a little less active.

  Rusty and I joined the others on the bridge before we reached the end of the canal. Kim looked longingly at my airplane, sitting near the top of the boat ramp. “Can we do some flying this weekend?”

  “I doubt we can today,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll have good weather this afternoon.”

  Jimmy started to get up from the helm and I nodded to Kim. “Why don’t you pilot us out to the Stream, kiddo?”

  Before she could answer, I went forward and sat down next to Linda on the forward-facing bench seat, putting my feet up.

  “Weather’ll be fine for flying tomorrow,” Rusty offered.

  “Yeah, maybe we can stay over at the Anchor tonight and take Island Hopper up in the morning,” I said. “Meeting a prospective client there in the afternoon, anyway.”

  Island Hopper is the name painted on the cowling of my 1953 deHavilland Beaver float plane. I’d bought her from a friend last year, when he’d decided to move back to Kentucky.

  I felt the familiar surge of power as Kim throttled up and the big twin props pushed water out from under the stern, lifting the bow. In seconds, we were up on plane, heading due south. The light south wind carried a slight aroma on it. The smell of the tropical jungles of western Cuba.

  In less than an hour, with the sun barely fifteen degrees above the horizon, we neared the swift-moving Gulf Stream. It carried warm water from the Gulf of Mexico through the narrow Florida Straits between the Keys and Cuba. Then the Stream turned north, carrying it all the way up the Eastern Seaboard. Off Nova Scotia, it turned east, carrying the warm water across the cold North Atlantic. England’s mild weather is due to this movement of billions of gallons of warm tropical water.

  Jimmy and Kim set up the outriggers and got the rods and reels ready. Within a few minutes of putting the bait in the water, Jimmy yelled, “Fish on!”

  Kim was between him and the fighting chair, and Jimmy quickly took up the rod, set the hook, and handed it to her as she sat down in the chair.

  Throttling back, I stood and put my back to the wheel as Linda leaned on the rail to my left to watch. “There he is!” Linda shouted, pointing astern as a big bull dolphin broke the surface fifty yards behind the boat and did a little tail dance across the water, trying to throw the hook from his mouth.

  Kim needed no coaching, but Jimmy and Rusty both stood next to the chair, cheering her on as she fought the big fish. Pescador added barks of encouragement, while I used the throttles to keep the stern of the Revenge toward the fish.

  The fight lasted fifteen minutes, but Kim finally had the big bull alongside, where Rusty was able to gaff it and pull it through the transom door. Most of the bright colors had already drained from the dolphin’s skin.

  Linda began to squeeze past me, her breasts crushing against my chest. “I better get down there, before she catches them all.”

  For the next three hours, everyone had a turn in the chair, and we boated seven good-sized dolphin and quite a few amberjack and king mackerel. Linda even caught a small white marlin, which we released.

  As we were preparing to head back in, Rusty pointed off to starboard and said, “Wonder what they’re doing?”

  Where he was pointing, about a mile away to the north, lay a large luxury yacht on the edge of the Stream. Not the kind of boat to be fishing the Gulf Stream, it seemed as though it was adrift. I knew there were usually lines of sargassum floating along the edge of the Stream.

  Maybe they’ve fouled their water intakes, I thought.

  “I’ll see if they need help,” I said, reaching for the microphone of the VHF radio. Keying the mic, I spoke into it. “This is MV Gaspar’s Revenge, hailing the seventy-foot yacht adrift off our starboard side. Do you need assistance?”

  Having finished putting everything away, the others joined me and Kim on the bridge, Linda talking excitedly about the billfish. Pescador turned around a couple of times before settling himself by the transom door for the ride home. No reply came back from my hail. I lifted the seat cushion, took out a pair of binoculars, and trained them on the yacht.

  “I don’t see anyone on deck,” I said. Taking the mic, I double-checked that I was on channel sixteen and hailed them again.

  When I didn’t receive a reply again, I turned to Linda, beside me at the helm. “Are you carrying?”

  She nodded toward her purse, hanging on the backrest of the second seat. “Always.”

  Turning to my daughter, the only other person with the combination to my box under the master bunk, I said, “Kim, go below and bring me my Sig.”

  “You think there’s trouble, Dad?”

  “Probably not, kiddo,” I replied. “But it looks like something’s wrong, and you know I don’t like to take chances.”

  “Bring two,” Rusty said, stepping over to the rail.

  Nodding to Kim, I saw her hurry down the ladder as I turned the Revenge toward the other boat. I throttled up, just enough to get up on the step. A moment later, Kim handed up not one but two large watertight Penn Reel boxes before climbing up the ladder.

  Rusty opened one of the boxes and withdrew a Sig Sauer nine-millimet
er semiautomatic handgun and a magazine. He racked the slide back to check that the chamber was empty, released it, and slid the magazine into the grip. He then handed it to me as I slowly started to throttle back. I took the Sig and quickly chambered a round, then slid it into the waistband of my cargo shorts.

  Rusty took a second, identical handgun out of the box while Kim opened the second box and she and Jimmy both armed themselves with a third Sig and a Glock forty-caliber.

  The yacht was a very expensive Italian-made Pershing 76. It appeared to be a few years older than the current models, but seemed to be meticulously maintained. As we idled toward the bow, which was facing north, I sounded the big air horn mounted on the roof and shifted to neutral. We all watched, Rusty using the binoculars.

  “No movement on deck,” Rusty said. “And I don’t see nothing through any of the portholes.”

  Reengaging the transmissions, I steered around the port side, making my way to the yacht’s stern and trying to stay clear of the sargassum floating on the surface. As I looked through the smoked glass, the only silhouettes I could make out were the backs of the two seats at the helm on the top deck. The long afterdeck appeared empty as well.

  “Where is everyone?” Kim asked.

  Suddenly, Pescador started barking as I began to spin the Revenge around. I wanted to have the bow pointed away from the yacht and the sargassum, in case anything happened, and have the stern toward it, in case they needed help.

  I looked down in the cockpit, and Pescador was standing with his paws on the gunwale, barking repeatedly and wagging his tail, obviously very excited. He jumped up onto the side deck and went forward, still barking at the yacht.

  “What’s with him?” Jimmy asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I replied, backing toward the yacht’s huge swim platform. “He’s never acted like this before.”

  “Oh my God,” Kim said as we came astern the big luxury yacht. “What’s that smell?”

  I got quickly to my feet, as did Rusty. “Kim, take the helm,” I ordered. “Bring the starboard side up to their stern.” Rusty was right behind me going down the ladder. The stench became stronger as Kim maneuvered the Revenge up to the stern of the other boat.