The Stronger Chase

by Cap Daniels

  I watched the radar screen and saw Crude Awakening sail across our course line and continue eastward. She was making good speed into the wind and waves, but she was still headed away from the finish line. I almost felt sorry for Kip . . . but not quite.

  As the distance between us grew and I became solidly convinced that we couldn’t lose, I brought down the mainsail to keep the race interesting.

  “Getting cocky, are we?” said Clark.

  “No, not cocky. I don’t want to have to wait too long for them at the finish line. We have them by over ten miles right now, and no matter what they do, that distance is going to keep increasing.”

  “I like cocky Chase.”

  “I told you it’s not cocky.” I scanned the radar. “Look, they’re . . .” The target I’d tagged as Crude Awakening was gone from the screen.

  “Where are they?” Clark asked.

  “I don’t know. They must’ve figured out we were watching and lowered their reflector. Either that, or the sea is picking up and they’re behind a wave. Be patient, though. If that’s it, they’ll be back on the screen in a second.”

  Seconds turned into minutes, and they never reappeared.

  The VHF radio crackled. “. . . ay . . . may . . . this is . . . kening . . .”

  “Get the main back up!” I yelled.

  I killed the autopilot and tacked to the southeast. By the time I got the genoa fully unfurled and trimmed on the starboard side, Clark had the main up and making power. I brought both engines to life and firewalled the throttles, pushing Aegis as hard as she could be pushed into the then eight- to ten-foot seas. I cranked up the volume on the VHF and turned off the squelch.

  I yelled into the microphone. “Sailing vessel Crude Awakening, this is sailing vessel Aegis, over!” I waited impatiently for a response until I could wait no longer. “Crude Awakening, Aegis, do you read? Over! Crude Awakening, Aegis, over!”

  Finally, a crackling response came. “. . . gis . . . ening . . . fire . . . elp us.”

  “We’re on our way, Kip. Is anybody hurt?”

  “. . . es . . . it’s bad . . . hurry, Chase . . . it’s ba . . . you’ll see . . . moke . . . black . . . oke.”

  I knew what a burning sailboat looked like. I’d watched my first boat burn and sink in the Florida Straits southeast of Key Largo. It was after Anya had landed an incendiary grenade in the cockpit to send Suslik to the bottom of the ocean. I knew a plume of black smoke would be rising into the heavens and drifting westward. I knew it wouldn’t be hard to spot—and I was right.

  “There they are!” I yelled at Clark. “Get the Coast Guard on the sat-phone. Here’s our position.” I pointed to the latitude and longitude on the chart plotter as Clark dialed.

  “Kip, I see you,” I yelled into the microphone. “We’ll be on site in ten minutes. We’re calling the Coast Guard. Get off that boat, now!”

  As we grew closer, the radio reception improved dramatically. “We’re off the . . . oat . . . ife raft . . . orange . . . but seas ten feet . . .”

  “Hang on, Kip. We’ll find you. Do you have any flares?”

  I heard Clark giving our coordinates to the Coast Guard.

  The radio crackled again. “Yeah . . . okay for . . . orange . . . smoke . . .”

  I grabbed the mic. “Not yet, Kip. Wait ’til I tell you to pop the flare. We’re not close enough to see you yet.”

  “Roger.”

  “Clark, get up top and start looking for an orange life raft. It’s going to look like an orange inflatable pyramid. I’ll get the headsail out of your face.”

  Clark bounded up the ladder with the binoculars in his hand. I furled the headsail. It was worth sacrificing the speed the sail was giving us for unrestricted forward visibility. Finding a fifty-foot boat in ten-foot seas is challenging, let alone a tiny life raft.

  The billowing black smoke rising from the burning catamaran was beginning to diminish, as what was left of the boat slowly began to sink. I marked the approximate position of their boat on my chart plotter and prayed we’d be able to find the life raft. I tried to calculate how far the raft would’ve drifted in the high wind, but there were too many variables.

  I keyed the mic. “Okay, Kip, let’s see a flare.”

  “Popping smoke . . . smoke away!” came crystal clear across the radio.

  We were close. Kip was on a handheld VHF marine radio, and he was coming in loud and clear for the first time. He had to be close enough for Clark to see the orange smoke.

  “Look for orange smoke,” I yelled up the ladder.

  “Looking!” answered Clark.

  I grabbed the spare pair of binoculars and began my own scan, scouring the horizon for a plume of orange smoke.

  “I see your mainsail!” blared from the radio.

  “Pop more smoke,” I said.

  “Roger! I think we’re at your three o’clock. We’re in the same trough.”

  I focused my binoculars down the wave trough due south, and I caught a glimpse of a barely visible puff of orange smoke.

  “I got ’em!” Clark and I yelled in unison.

  “Don’t take your eyes off of them,” I shouted. “I’m bringing the main down.”

  I popped the clutch on the main halyard, and the enormous sail came plummeting to the boom and landed in a heap in the lazy jacks. I slammed my hand into the throttles, begging for another knot, another half knot, anything.

  Aegis plowed through the massive waves, powering toward the life raft being tossed about like a cork on the angry ocean.

  “We’ve got you, Kip. We’ll be there in less than a minute. Just hang on!”

  Clark slid down the ladder, still pointing directly at the raft.

  “I see them,” I said. “Get a line. We’ll have to try to secure them alongside to starboard.”

  I positioned Aegis upwind of the raft as it was being beaten to a pulp in the pounding waves. Aegis provided a minimal protection, but anything was better than the torture they’d endured before we arrived.

  Clark threw a line with all of his strength, and the bitter end landed directly on top of the raft. Kip hauled himself up and out of the opening, grabbed the line, and secured it to an eye near the opening. Clark wound the line around an electric winch and began hauling in the raft. When the raft was ten feet away, Kip hurled a line toward us, but the wind and waves knocked it down. Clark gathered the end of the line he’d been using to haul the raft and tossed it toward the opening. Kip caught it and hauled himself toward us, hand-over-hand.

  Clark pulled the bobbing raft to the stern as I tried to keep our bows into the waves to break up the rough water. After I was finally convinced I’d placed Aegis in the perfect position, I saw Kip and Penny passing Teri into Clark’s arms at our stern.

  Teri was almost unrecognizable. Her hair was singed, and the skin on her face, shoulders, and arms was black. She didn’t appear to be conscious. I set the autopilot and ran to help get her aboard. Clark and I laid her on the cushioned settee and Clark began checking for vitals.

  “Her pulse is weak, but she’s breathing,” he said calmly.

  I headed back for the stern while Clark retrieved the medical kit. Kip and Penny were trembling, but apparently unhurt. Teri had taken the worst of it.

  I started a cursory examination of the two of them while Clark started an IV in Teri’s left arm and wrapped her upper body in soaking wet towels. Penny and Kip were scared and cold, but neither had any serious injuries. They knelt at Teri’s side, unsure of what to do.

  I glanced up to see the orange and white Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk approaching from the southwest at well over a hundred knots, maybe two hundred feet above the waves.

  I grabbed the radio mic. “Coast Guard helicopter responding to the boat fire northeast of Charleston, this is sailing vessel Aegis. I’m the catamaran at your twelve o’clock. I have all souls from the burning vessel aboard. One twenty-five to thirty-year-old female unconscious and badly burned, and two others unhurt.”

&nb
sp; “Roger, SV Aegis, this is Coast Guard seven-seven. Lay your bow in the wind. We’re deploying a rescue swimmer upwind, and we’ll recover downwind.”

  I turned back into the wind and keyed the mic, “Roger, seven-seven.”

  The chopper came to a hover ten feet above the water and a hundred feet in front of our boat, just before an orange-and-black-suited rescue swimmer slipped from the door and fell gracefully into the water. He disappeared beneath the waves and foam as the pilot flew the chopper to a position fifty feet behind Aegis.

  In seconds, the rescue swimmer was climbing up the starboard sugar scoop onto our stern, black fins in hand, with his mask and snorkel hanging around his neck. He tossed his fins to the deck and wordlessly went to work assessing Teri.

  “Nice job on the dressing and IV, but I can’t lift her with the IV bag,” he said as he disconnected the clear rubber hose from the bag, leaving the IV catheter in place. He placed a C-spine collar around her neck and fitted an inflatable life jacket around her torso before pulling his mask and snorkel back onto his face and donning his fins.

  He hefted Teri’s small frame into his arms and shuffled backward toward the stern. I watched him slide effortlessly back into the water, keeping Teri’s head above the surface, and pulling her gently toward the helicopter. A metal basket was on its way out the door of the chopper as the rescue swimmer made his way through the turbulent water.

  The four of us watched in silent awe as the basket slowly rose skyward with Teri nestled inside. No sooner than the basket had made it through the door, the helicopter turned and disappeared into the distance at top speed.

  The rescue swimmer returned to our boat, and once again climbed aboard, depositing his fins on the deck and pulling off his neoprene hood.

  “I’m Petty Officer Broadway,” he said, wiping the saltwater from his face. “Who else was aboard the accident vessel?”

  “We were,” said Penny, pointing toward Kip and herself.

  Petty Officer Broadway went to work assessing each of them for injuries, and I turned back for Charleston. Clark passed out bottles of water and towels.

  When Broadway had declared Penny unhurt, she ran into my arms in tears. “Thank you for coming for us, Chase. It was horrible. You can’t imagine. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, it was like one second everything was fine, and the next, there was this huge boom and the whole world was on fire. I’ve never been so scared. Is Teri going to be all right? Thank you for coming for us.”

  Even terrified and dripping wet, she was still high-energy Penny.

  “Here,” I said, lifting her onto the captain’s chair. “Sit here and watch the compass. We need to be heading two hundred forty degrees. If we get more than fifteen degrees off, let me know.” I knelt beside Broadway as he examined Kip.

  “Nice job giving her something to focus on,” he said. “She was a little excited.”

  I glanced back at Penny. “Believe it or not, that’s her normal state.”

  He bent his neck forward and widened his eyes. “No way.”

  Kip and I raised our eyebrows. “Yes way.”

  Broadway patted Kip on the shoulder. “I think you’re going to be just fine. There’s a patrol boat on the way out. He should be hailing us on channel sixteen anytime now. He’ll take us back to Charleston, and we’ll sort all this out.”

  Kip was wringing his hands. “Is Teri going to be okay?”

  “She’s burnt pretty badly, but her vitals were good. She’ll be in the ER any minute now, and they’ll take very good care of her.”

  “Here comes the patrol boat now,” I said, pointing ahead.

  I turned back into the wind and waves, and deployed every fender I had over the starboard hull. The patrol boat pilot laid gently alongside, and a pair of Coasties took up a position on the gunwale to help Kip and Penny aboard.

  Penny stepped from Aegis and into the arms of the waiting patrol boat crew. She turned to me. “You’re coming with us, right?”

  16

  Mistaken Identity

  Clark and I watched the patrol boat speed away toward Charleston.

  “What does your gut tell you?” he asked.

  I watched the ocean swells rise and fall over the spot where Crude Awakening had burned and finally succumbed to her wounds. “There’s only four things that make sailboats—or any boat—burn: electrical short, cooking accident, engine room heat, and sabotage.”

  “They weren’t motoring or cooking,” he said, “so that only leaves two possibilities.”

  “Right.” I hated where my mind was taking me. “But that boat was a few months old, so an electrical issue is hard to swallow. I’m sure you noticed how similar that boat looked to this one.”

  “Are you saying somebody thought that boat was Aegis and sabotaged them?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I want to ask Kip what he remembers before the fire started. I also need to talk to Teri when she wakes up. She must’ve been near the spot where the fire began. Maybe she’ll remember something.”

  “If they were after us, they were sloppy. That doesn’t sound like SVR to me. They’re rarely sloppy,” he said.

  We had chosen to fly only our headsail on the downwind run back to Charleston. There’d be plenty of time to think on the way.

  “If it was the Russians, and if they had meant to target our boat, why would they try to kill me?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Clark. “If they’re trying to kill you or us, that would mean Tornovich is dead. I don’t think he wants you dead yet. If he’s still alive, he’s not finished questioning you, and he owes you a couple bullets in the gut. I don’t think he’s the kind of guy to let a debt like that go unpaid.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right, but I think we’re jumping to conclusions before we have enough facts.”

  “Yeah, but we have to start somewhere.”

  We sailed back into Charleston Harbor and back into the same slip we’d left hours before. After making arrangements with the harbor master for a few more days in the marina, Clark called his brother Tony back in St. Augustine to find out where the Coast Guard would’ve taken Kip and Penny.

  We learned that all three of them had been taken to a hospital walking distance from the marina. When we reached the hospital, it occurred to me I didn’t know any of their last names, but that didn’t make any difference; they were the only patients who’d been admitted by the Coast Guard in the past several hours. We were shown to the waiting room where we found a young, sharply dressed Coast Guard officer waiting to talk with the same people we wanted to see.

  He introduced himself as Lieutenant Dover and quickly began questioning Clark and me. He had a lot of questions that I couldn’t answer, so I said, “Why don’t I tell you what I know instead of playing twenty questions all day?”

  “That sounds like a good plan to me,” he said. “Feel free to start anywhere you’d like.”

  I told him everything I knew about Teri, Kip, and Penny, but I left out the part about our suspicions over who might be behind the sabotage. In fact, I left out the word sabotage, too.

  As we were wrapping up the interview, a woman in green scrubs and a Winnie-the-Pooh do-rag on her head came through the heavy double doors.

  “I’m Doctor Campbell. Are you waiting to see Ms. Huddleston?”

  Lieutenant Dover quickly stood. “Yes, I am. May I see her now? I have some questions.”

  Clark stepped between the doctor and Dover. “Is Teri going to be all right?”

  “Are you family?” asked Doctor Campbell.

  “Yeah, brother. We pulled them out of the water and called the Coast Guard.”

  The doctor placed her hand on Clark’s forearm. “Her burns weren’t as severe as they initially appeared. If you’re the one who started the IV and wrapped the burns, you did a wonderful thing for Teri. You made my job a lot easier, but she’s still going to have to endure some painful healing, and probably some cosmetic surgery down the road, but
yes, she’s going to be fine.”

  Clark’s creative use of brother worked.

  “That’s fantastic, doctor. Thank you,” said Clark. “I think Lieutenant Dover needs to talk to Teri, but if it’s okay, we’d really like to see her before he gets her upset.”

  Wow, Clark is really good at this.

  Doctor Campbell clearly wasn’t immune to Clark “Baby Face” Johnson’s charms. She opened her arms and leaned into him for a hug. “Of course. Go see your sister, and I’ll keep the lieutenant busy for a few minutes.”

  Clark embraced her warmly. “Thanks, Doc. You’re the best.” He pulled back, took her left hand in his, and rubbed her ring finger between his thumb and index fingers. She blushed.

  How does he do that?

  We walked into Teri’s room to find her sitting up in bed with loose gauze bandages around her head, face, and upper body. She tried to smile, but the painkillers made it look more like a stoner’s gaze. She did manage to mouth, “Thank you.”

  Kip rose from the windowsill where he’d been sitting, and Penny leapt from her seat and ran into my arms.

  “Oh, Chase, I knew you’d come. I knew it. See, Kip? I told you they’d come. He didn’t think you’d come. He said, ‘They won’t come. They have important things to do,’ but I knew it. Didn’t I tell you? I told him. Oh, Chase, I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for rescuing us and for coming back.”

  Some things never change.

  “Of course we came. We had to make sure everyone was okay. Besides, Teri’s brother here”—I gestured toward Clark—“would never let his sister be in the hospital without coming to check on her.”

  Penny wrinkled her brow and Kip smiled. Teri looked stoned.

  “It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that Clark made quite an impression on Doctor Campbell.”

  “I’m sure he did,” said Kip.

  Clark took him by the elbow. “Can we talk to you out in the hallway for a second?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure.” Kip faced Teri. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart. I’ll only be gone a minute.”

  Sweetheart? Ah, so that’s the dynamic.

  “So, what’s the prognosis?” I asked before launching into what we really needed to know.