“Not really,” she replied, with a sad smile. “He said he was just a guy from the Big Sky Country—a simple man with simple needs. He told me that what he did on that one day completely reshaped his life, but he believed it was what anyone else would have done. I didn’t know the ‘Tank’ you knew, Jesse. The man I knew was sweet and gentle and warm and caring. I fell in love with Owen, not the man you stood beside on some rooftop in the desert.
“The first time we were intimate was more than a month after we’d married. It was the day before Valentine’s Day. He took me out to that little boat of his. He’d piled the front of it with pillows and blankets, scented candles, and wine. He’d said that he thought I needed romance in my life, even if it was just make-believe. That’s why he picked the day before. We were just friends—confidants, I guess you could say. We pretended we were lovers and suddenly, I didn’t want to pretend anymore. I know it sounds goofy, but he was actually very sweet and shy, so I had to make the first move. Later that night, I moved into his room.”
I reached over and took her hand. “I guess there’s a side to all of us that only a few people know. I’m glad he found someone to share his inner feelings and thoughts with.”
She smiled again. “And I’m glad you introduced us and I got to know that side of him. I don’t think I’ll ever know someone who cared so deeply.”
The VHF above the helm squawked and Matt’s voice came over the speaker. “Ambrosia, Ambrosia, Ambrosia! Tender Calypso! We are under attack!”
Springing to my feet, I snatched the mic. “What’s going on, Matt?”
“The other boat is under attack!” he shouted. “An odd-looking powerboat with three outboards, Cap’n. I’m turning back to assist!”
I snatched up the binos and scanned the water to the south. I could see our two launches, one turning sluggishly in the swells, both overloaded. The other boat was half a mile behind it. A third boat, looking more like a lifeboat than anything, was bumping the side of Penelope, our second launch. There were four or five men aboard.
I was moving before I realized it. Snatching the handheld radio from its cradle, I went down the spiral stairs as fast as I could go, shouting into the radio, “Negative, Matt! Get your boat back to Ambrosia!”
When I reached the long passageway on the lower deck, I sprinted to the end and punched in the code, then opened the hatch and went straight to the locker where the rifles were stored.
A moment later, I was climbing through the deck hatch onto the foredeck, where I dropped into a prone position, inserted a full magazine, and flipped up the lens covers on the scope.
Through the optics, I saw the other boat ram Penelope again. Ross was at the helm, trying to maneuver away. But the boat was overloaded and seriously off balance, the crew having moved away from the attacking boat.
All but one man.
I saw a brightly colored shirt rise up from behind the helm seat. Travis Stockwell pointed his weapon at the attackers. Suddenly, he went down.
I racked a .50 caliber round into the chamber and estimated the distance at nearly a mile.
One thousand, nine hundred and sixty-nine yards, I heard my own voice echo in my head.
I aimed slightly below the boat’s pilot and squeezed off a round. We called it “Kentucky windage” in the Corps—it was something I tried to teach my Marines when there wasn’t time to adjust the weapon’s sights.
I barely felt the kick, most of which was absorbed by the recoil spring as the spent cartridge was ejected and a fresh one was loaded into the chamber.
The bullet, as big around as a man’s finger, missed its mark but at least hit the boat. I saw a huge chunk of fiberglass fly into the air.
I kept the crosshairs just below the torso of the man at the wheel, trying to predict where the moving boat would be a full second after the round left the muzzle. The wind was light and at ninety degrees. I aimed low and left, then fired three more rounds in quick succession, knowing that there was little chance for a hit at this distance with the way the boat was bobbing and rolling in the swells. But more fiberglass flew up as two of the rounds tore through the boat, splintering everything in their path. At least I was getting the point across.
My crew wasn’t unprotected.
With the fifth round, it seemed as if the pilot were suddenly yanked out of his seat, replaced by a fine pink mist as the bullet tore through his body at nearly 700 miles per hour.
The boat careened away from Penelope. I continued to fire on the now retreating boat. I had no qualms about taking the enemy out as they fled. They sowed it. They could reap it, too.
One of the outboards erupted in a shower of sparks and flame. Even a mile away, the .50 caliber BMG rounds hit like a bowling ball at nearly supersonic speed.
Just as I was about to fire again, the boat erupted in a fireball, engulfing its occupants.
I took my finger off the trigger, laying it alongside the guard, and brought the scope back to Penelope. She was still underway, now running straight. A flash of golden hair appeared, and I saw the side of Savannah’s face, looking out to where the other boat had exploded. Then she turned and looked straight at me, her face a mask of concern.
“Ambrosia, Ambrosia, this is Penelope,” Ross’s voice shouted over the radio that lay beside me. “We have a man down!”
Leaving the rifle on the deck, I snatched up the radio and tore down the side deck. “Who is it?” I shouted into the handheld.
Ross’s steady voice came back. “It’s Mr. Stockwell, Jesse.”
When I got to the stern platform, I raised the garage door and pulled the dollies out to retrieve the launches. Then I activated the hydraulic lift and lowered the whole platform into the water.
With the deck awash, Matt steered his boat into position as I readied the first dolly, locking it into place.
Matt mashed the throttle and brought the twenty-four-foot tender up onto the platform and into its dolly.
“Everyone out!” I yelled. “Get up to the cockpit!”
The crew scrambled over the sides of the launch as Matt helped me get the second dolly ready.
“Was that you doin’ the shootin’, Cap’n?”
“Yes,” I replied, as Ross lined the second tender up. “How’s Travis?”
“Don’t know,” Matt replied, “It was all I could do to keep the bleddy boat from goin’ ass over teakettle.”
With a roar from the small inboard, Ross brought Penelope up onto the platform, bouncing off one side of the dolly before settling a little off-center.
I splashed around to the side as the crew got out. Savannah knelt on the deck, bent over Travis, applying a gauze pad to his shoulder.
“How is he?” I asked her.
“Damned pissed,” Stockwell thundered, trying to push Savannah away. “Let me up, woman.”
She put a hand on his other shoulder and forced him back down onto the deck. “You are not in charge here, Colonel,” she said. “Stay still, till I get this in place or I’ll kick your ass.”
Travis stared at Savannah in utter disbelief, but he did what he was told.
Alberto climbed out and stood beside me. “Is he going to be okay?”
I looked into Travis’s eyes and could see the anger boiling. “Yeah,” I replied. “Only his dignity is hurt.”
“He’s lost a good bit of blood,” Savannah said, then looked up at Ross. “Get over here and help me get him out of this boat.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ross replied, jumping aboard.
Matt didn’t wait for Savannah’s order. Together, the two men got Travis out of the boat and up the ladder to the cockpit.
“Are you okay?” I asked Savannah, noting her blood-soaked blouse.
“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s Travis’s blood. Who were those men?’
“I don’t know,” I said, helping her over the side.
Walt, Travis’s armorer, was starting after the others, but I stopped him. “Get the tenders stowed, Mr
. Meachum. Then meet me on the bridge.”
“I’ll take Alberto and Finn up to our quarters,” Savannah said.
“Finn knocked Mr. Stockwell down,” Alberto said. “He tried to jump in the boat with those men.”
“That sounds like Stockwell,” I said, as Alberto and Finn started up the ladder.
“No, Jesse,” Savannah said. “It was Finn. He was an absolute terror. If one of those men had gotten aboard, I really think he’d have ripped him to shreds after Travis was hurt. If it hadn’t been for whoever was shooting at them, I think Finn would have been the only one to protect the rest of us.”
I looked up at the big, friendly, yellow dog, his tail wagging as he disappeared into the cockpit with Alberto.
I shook my head. “Unbelievable.”
“Where’s Woden?”
“On the bridge with Chyrel,” I replied.
“Oh, dear,” Savannah said. “I must change and go help her.”
We went up to the cockpit, where I found Matt. “Where’s Travis?”
“His security team took him to his quarters, Cap’n.”
“Prepare to get underway,” I told him. “Let me know when the garage and platform are secure. I’ll be on the bridge.”
“Aye,” he replied, then turned and started barking orders at the rest of the crew.
When I reached the bridge, Chyrel was still sitting in the helm seat. Val and Charity were with her, and Woden sat with his head on Chyrel’s lap as she softly stroked the fur between his wide-set eyes.
Val met me at the hatch. “Will Mr. Stockwell be alright?” she asked quietly.
I nodded. “I think so. How’s Chyrel?”
She looked back. “She’s okay,” she replied. “A bit shaken up by everything, I think.”
I went over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up and smiled. “I’ve always been behind the scenes,” she said. “I’d told Owen what I did to help y’all when we worked for Homeland and later with Deuce and Armstrong. He said you and Deuce were ‘men of action,’ which I never realized until now.”
“You should get some rest,” I said, as others began to file onto the bridge, one of them Meachum.
“What are you going to do, Jesse?” she asked, her blue eyes somewhat dull.
“One sec,” I said, then strode across the deck to Meachum. “Travis is okay,” I told him.
I saw the relief in his eyes.
“He’s in his quarters,” I assured the armorer. “Your Barrett is on the foredeck. Go get it, then go to Travis’s quarters and have him make an announcement that all but bridge, security, and op center personnel are to go to their quarters and stay there.”
He gave me a puzzled look.
“I want the crew to hear his voice.”
Meachum smiled. “Aye, Captain,” he said, then hurried off.
I turned back to Chyrel. I needed her head straight.
She looked up at me. “That boat didn’t come from shore.”
She was right. We’d have seen it from the chopper if it had come from the mainland.
Canopus, I thought. The ghost ship.
I looked over at Ross, standing by his electronics system. “Where’s the Canopus, Mr. Mosely?”
He checked the chart plotter, but I couldn’t see her AIS signature there. “No AIS,” he replied, then switched over to radar.
I could see three returns on the screen, all within twenty miles. Ross held one side of his headphones to his right ear and bent over the sonar screen for a moment, adjusting the underwater acoustic sensor.
“She’s eighteen miles south-southeast, Captain. Engines at idle.”
The Canopus could make fifteen knots, slightly less than our cruising speed on the diesels. At full speed, our overtake rate would be barely five knots, meaning it would take almost four hours to catch her. São Luís was less than an hour in the other direction.
Of course, there were the turbines.
Travis needed medical attention.
And then there was Tank.
I leaned on the helm’s armrest and pushed the engine room button on the intercom. “Bridge to engineering.”
“Engine room,” Heitor replied, as though he were sitting there waiting for me to call.
“Start the turbines, Heitor,” I ordered.
Chyrel touched my hand. “What are you going to do?” she asked again.
I turned to Axel, who was standing beside her. “Set your course for São Luís, Mister Troutman.”
“Jesse?” Chyrel said.
“I need your help, Chyrel,” I said.
“What can I do?” she asked, rising to allow Axel to take his position at the helm.
I guided her toward the op center and lowered my voice. “I need to know everything there is to know about the freighter Canopus. I want to know who owns it, who the skipper is, the crew, their wives, mistresses, kids, what damned bars they frequent, and favorite stool. Can you do that for me?”
Chyrel looked into the dimly lit room, the nerve center for Armstrong Research. David had taken a seat at a console, the bottoms of his shorts still dripping from the wade out to the tender. Flo stood behind him as both looked at us.
“Yes,” she replied, with a knowing grin. “Most of it, anyway. What stool will depend on whether the bar has a security camera.”
Chyrel knew what I was up to. She was one of the best computer hackers in the world, and Ambrosia’s operations center contained some of the fastest, most sophisticated equipment on the planet. I wanted to get her mind off her loss, though we’d all known it was imminent.
She started to turn, but I put a hand on her elbow. “But first, I want you to contact Jack and let him know what’s going on, then get his permission to hack the CIA’s computer.”
Her eyes went wide with excitement. “What?”
I nodded toward where David and Flo stood. “Find out what you can about Bud Ferguson and Marcos Santiago.”
On another bridge, Captain Mauricio Gonzales smiled, remembering the fancy yacht and the two motor launches he and the crew of Canopus had seen earlier in the morning. The small boats had been loaded with people, many of them women.
Mauricio had always believed that when good fortune came along, a man must be ready to snatch it before it passed him by. Second chances were rare.
Mauricio saw the yacht as a big score. From the number of people in the two tenders, he doubted there would be enough crew left aboard the yacht to put up much of a fight.
With a boat like that, he could go into business for himself. The only thing that had ever stopped him from hijacking a big yacht in the past had been the knowledge that it would have a lot of people aboard, and he and his men were few.
When he’d seen the women in the tenders, he’d altered his plan, instantly morphing it to include the passengers. Once the yacht was his, he could send his men out to take the small boats, one by one.
The captives could be ransomed or sold. Taking captives to Juan would only add a few more American dollars in his pocket. But with the yacht, he could cross the ocean in style, selling the putas Americanas directly to those who would pay top dollar.
It was the helicopter that had first drawn Mauricio’s attention. Such decadence. As if owning a boat like the one he’d barely seen on the horizon weren’t enough. The rich Americano used a helicopter to get to shore.
Canopus had then passed quite close to the small boats, caught halfway between the yacht and shore, and he’d gotten a good look with the binoculars. There were probably a dozen women on the two boats, many quite beautiful. He’d seen three dark-haired beauties and two blondes staring up at him and his men, who taunted them with their exposed manhood. An exceptionally beautiful girl with thick auburn hair had shouted obscenities at them in Spanish.
He’d immediately devised a better plan.
Canopus continued on for several miles. Mauricio knew that sooner or later, the two small tenders would retu
rn to the yacht. He’d ordered his men to remove the engines from two of the lifeboats and put them on the third. Then he sent them back to wait.
They could easily take the two launches as they returned. Then, using their own tenders, his men could sneak up on the yacht and take it without giving them time to radio for help.
He’d told Miguel that once he had the yacht secure, he was to kill the men and throw the bodies overboard, with the exception of the captain and two of the bridge crew. They would need the captain to learn how to operate the yacht. If he refused, Mauricio would kill one of his crew.
Miguel and his men hadn’t even been gone an hour when his radar showed the helicopter, which they’d seen flying toward the beach earlier, lift off and fly back to the yacht. Minutes later, he’d seen the two small blips on the radar screen moving that way as well, spaced a kilometer apart.
“Perfecto,” he sneered, thinking how easily his men could overtake and commandeer the overloaded boats.
He contacted Miguel by radio and told him and his men to stop the two boats, then use them to approach the yacht. Once they had control of the yacht, Mauricio would bring Canopus alongside, open her seacocks, and order his men into a lifeboat. Then Mauricio would set the autopilot due north and engage the engine before getting into the boat and casting off.
With his men in control of the yacht, Canopus was useless to him, and it would steam north for almost an hour before the lower decks flooded and killed the engine. Then she’d sink in water more than two kilometers in depth.
He watched the radar screen, seeing his lifeboat head toward the boat closest to shore. He would have taken the lead boat first, but Mauricio quickly realized Miguel’s plan as the lead boat started to turn back.
“He’ll lure the other boat back,” Mauricio said.
Suddenly, the radio operator sat up in his seat, holding his headphone tightly to one ear.
“What is it?” Mauricio asked, reading the shocked look on the man’s face.
“They are returning,” Eduardo said, excitedly. “Someone started shooting at them from the yacht. Miguel is dead.”
“Shooting? From the rich Americano’s boat?”
Steady As She Goes: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 21) Page 15