Rising Water

by Wayne Stinnett

  “You’ll never hear me complain, lady.”

  “Good.” She sat up, then swung her long legs off the bunk and grabbed one of my light-weight work shirts from my hanging locker. “Do you have any food on board? I’m famished.”

  I glanced at my watch. “It’s like 0200. You want breakfast or dinner?”

  “Depends on the menu,” she said, climbing up the steps to the galley. Sara knew her way around my boat at least as well as I did. I’d bought Floridablanca from her father, John Wilson, after his accident.

  “Nothing perishable up there,” I called after her. “My plane only landed an hour before you got here. I didn’t even have time to shave.”

  “I like the scruffy look on you.” A light came on up in the galley and I heard the pantry open and close. “You flew commercial?”

  “Yeah, I did, or I’d have never made it in time. Wasn’t too bad. Island Hopper is a great little plane, but she doesn’t have much range. I’d have had to make too many fuel stops; hence the name. Island hopping isn’t something you do in a hurry.”

  A moment later, Sara stood in the hatchway, the light behind her silhouetting her body through the light-weight fabric of my shirt, leaving very little to my imagination. She hadn’t buttoned it. She tossed something toward me, which I caught in my left hand as she came down the ladder and leapt onto the bunk beside me. It was a zippered bag of jerked beef slices.

  I laughed. “You sure know the way to a man’s heart.”

  “It’s still good, right? I mean, it’s dried and sealed.”

  “Yeah, this’ll last a hundred years,” I said, handing her the bag.

  She opened it and took two slices out, handing me one. The scent of exotic Caribbean spices filled the air. “It’ll have to do until morning. We need to keep your strength up.”

  It was well past sunrise when Sara and I finally locked up the boat and went ashore for breakfast and shopping. Any excursion ashore meant multitasking. It usually involved walking, so even if I was just going to the marina store for a six-pack, I loaded up. It was always best to be prepared for anything, so I kept my boats well-provisioned and the tanks topped off. My grandfather had taught me that.

  My parents had died when I was just a kid and I went to live with my dad’s parents. Pap always drove a four-wheel-drive vehicle; pickups when I was young, then later big SUVs. He rarely hauled anything or went off-roading, but I remember after a hurricane, he and I put his old Dodge to work, going around the neighborhood and clearing the roads by dragging trees and other debris out of the way. His four-wheel drive came in very handy that day, as did the truck bed, when we started cutting up fallen trees.

  “What are you grinning about?” Sara asked, as we walked back toward the harbor after breakfast at Pillars.

  “Just remembering back to when I was a kid and spent the entire summer after my sophomore year splitting firewood.”

  “Firewood? You grew up in south Florida.”

  “Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.”

  She looked up at me as we walked the brick path back to the marina. “You’re an odd sort, Jesse McDermitt. How much time do we have?”

  I glanced at my watch, knowing what she wanted to do, but wishing it was what I had in mind instead.

  “I told him 0930, so less than an hour.”

  “This way,” she said, tugging on my hand.

  We spent the next half hour buying clothes at Cotton Club. Sara insisted on keeping my wardrobe fresh. Once we deposited the bags aboard Floridablanca, we went out to the road to wait for the cab ride to the grocery store. It was only two miles away; an easy walk. But the walk back with bags of meat, fish, and vegetables would be grueling. It was already in the mid-80s.

  “So, are you going to tell me?” I asked, as we sat on a bench.

  “Tell you what?”

  “What your dad’s up to in the BVI.”

  Sara looked around casually. But I knew she was checking to make sure nobody was within earshot. “Dad should be the one to tell you. And you really do need to be up there within three days.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing’s been substantiated,” she replied. “There was a huge gun battle down in Venezuela yesterday. Several cartel members were killed, and a narco sub was stolen.”

  “So? Those cartel people are always killing each other.”

  “There was an increase in chatter on a few known terrorist websites. An Islamic State cell seems to have been responsible for the attack and the theft of the sub.”

  Terrorists with a submarine? That was a scary thought.

  “Not that I don’t want to spend the rest of the day with you,” I said, as a cab approached, “because I do. But why the slow boat to China?”

  “It happened two days ago. We think the target is going to be in the Virgin Islands, most likely Charlotte Amalie. If it can run day and night without stopping, it would take them four days. But intelligence tells us they’re following the island chain, possibly to arrange fuel delivery. They can’t possibly be there for at least five days.”

  I stood and waved to the driver. “Targeted? Using what?”

  “Ten tons of Semtex.”

  I stopped at the door of the cab. “Ten tons? Do we really have time for a grocery run?”

  “All I know is that Dad wants you on Norman Island in three days, but not before. My guess is that he and Uncle—er, Mister Armstrong want you out on the water. Others, including the U.S. Navy, are moving into various positions along the expected route.”

  I was tense during the whole trip to the store and back. If what Sara had said was true—that terrorists were out there somewhere in a sub with ten tons of explosives—I wanted to be moving to intercept.

  But experience had taught me that Armstrong’s reach and abilities were many-faceted. I was another spoke in a great big wheel.

  An hour later, we were back aboard Floridablanca, putting the supplies away for my journey. I was anxious to get underway and put Floridablanca to work on her mission. The sophisticated passive sonar on Floridablanca could pick up nearly any sound in the water. Narco subs were usually just subs in name only. Most were little more than partially submerged covered hulls with a noisy engine and a snorkel to provide air.

  “When do you have to get back?” I asked, after everything was put away.

  “Tonight. And you should get plenty of rest. From here to the Virgin Islands, you can stop over in the Netherlands Antilles, or just push straight on and trust the autopilot.”

  “Can’t you come with me?”

  “You still don’t trust technology, do you?”

  “It’s not that,” I said. “I just don’t get to see you very often.”

  “And that’s the way that is, Jesse.” She smiled and started for the lower stateroom. “You just want me to take the night watch, right?”

  Our relationship wasn’t like that of most couples. I’d been divorced twice and widowed once, with a string of unsuccessful relationships between and after. But Sara had lost her husband in Afghanistan just four years ago and I knew she was still in love with his memory. I didn’t fault her. Losing a spouse was like losing a part of yourself. At least with divorce or a breakup, the love died first.

  “Oh, you’re good,” I said, slowly following after her. “Of that there isn’t any doubt.”

  “A good night pilot?” she asked, as she slowly went down one more step.

  “Yeah, there’s that, too.”

  The time we had together was too short, as always. But we’d agreed a long time ago that we wouldn’t interrupt our work for personal pleasure. It was one of the rules that kept our relationship from blossoming into something else—something with deeper emotional connections. Not that we weren’t connected. We were also very good friends and colleagues, and we worked and got along very well togethe
r.

  “I know you’re going to push straight through,” Sara said, standing on the dock by my boat. “And you’re going to be tempted to run fast.”

  “You think you know me that well?”

  “Don’t push it. It would only attract attention we don’t need.” She leaned over the rail and kissed me. “Get some rest, Jesse.”

  And with that, she was gone. I watched her walk down the dock for a moment and then forced myself to turn away. If she did look back, I didn’t want her to see me longing after her like some kind of love-starved pup.

  I went down to the galley, put away the dinner dishes, then climbed up to the command bridge to prepare for the morning’s departure. Looking out through the open starboard hatch, I could see the sun was just going down behind the hillside. It was still more than an hour until sunset, though. At the nav desk, I brought up the chart plotter and laid in a course for Norman Island in the British Virgin Islands. It was almost exactly 200 miles.

  “Huh,” I said aloud. Sara had been dead on. The volcanic islands of the Netherlands Antilles lay just a few miles west of the precise midway point on the chart. A rhumb line from Antigua to Norman Island passed just to the east of Saint Kitts, Nevis, Sint Eustatius, and Saba, so anchoring on the west side of one of those islands wouldn’t add too many miles to the trip. I made a small adjustment on the chart plotter, adding a waypoint. I’d anchor in Gallows Bay on the lee side of the island of Sint Eustatius, or Statia, as the locals called it.

  Exhausted from my encounter with Sara, and looking forward to tomorrow, I went to bed early and was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  u

  It was still dark when I woke. Sara’s scent lingered on the pillow beside me, bringing back the recent memory of our lovemaking. I pushed aside those thoughts and rose from my bunk, padding barefoot up to the galley. The odor there was also enticing, but in a different way. I poured a mug of coffee from my pre-set machine and carried it up to the command bridge, where I started the single main engine.

  Sitting at the helm, I looked over the engine gauges. The old GMC two-stroke diesel was running perfectly. That engine had been manufactured at the outset of the Second World War and put on a shelf in a warehouse for nearly three decades, but it just never failed to do exactly what it was built to do—run for long periods of time. Its simplicity and rugged dependability always comforted me.

  The sky across the bay began to lighten, and after a moment, I went down to the galley and filled a Thermos, then got dressed for the day.

  Ten minutes later, I threw off the dock lines and slowly idled away from Nelson’s Dockyard Marina, pointing Floridablanca’s bow toward the mouth of the bay.

  It was a short distance to open water and once clear of the bay, I engaged the autopilot and pushed the throttle up to Floridablanca’s cruising speed of nine knots.

  With nothing showing ahead of me on radar, I scanned the sea surface with binoculars, looking for anything too small for the radar to pick up. In deep water, that could be anything from a cargo container to a submarine’s snorkel. Seeing nothing, I went aft and opened the hatch to the large lazarette.

  The storage on Floridablanca was incredible. Below the covered cockpit, which measured fifteen feet across and ten from the aft rail to the house, was 150 square feet of storage. It was only five feet down to the hull, but a lot of gear could be stored there. It could even be another cabin.

  After getting what I needed, I climbed back up and closed the hatch. A few minutes later, I had the towed sonar array in the water and trailing 500 feet behind Floridablanca, running ten feet below the surface.

  Passive sonar isn’t directional. It’s simply a way of listening to the sounds in the water. But with “the fish” far behind the boat and connected to the sonar system on the bridge, any sounds it and the transponder in the keel picked up could be compared by the computer. The difference in time it takes the same sound to reach the two transponders would give the direction from which the sound came. Actually, two possible directions at opposing ends of the compass. The human brain does the same thing, using the ears on either side of the head.

  Owning not two, but three large boats, I always had to adjust my expectations. Both Floridablanca and Salty Dog were long-range boats, one power and one sail. The Dog could cross oceans without stopping; a true passage-maker. Floridablanca, on the other hand, needed to stop for fuel, but only every 3000 or so miles. Gaspar’s Revenge was a big offshore fishing boat capable of fifty knots. Her range was considerably less, maybe 400 miles with an extra fuel bladder in the fish box, but she could get there in a hurry. So, planning a trip was different for each boat.

  I spent the morning on the flybridge. Once far enough away from Antigua that I wouldn’t pick up the noise from the busy harbor, I turned on the passive sonar, adjusting it to squelch out my own engine noise. I was listening for anything rhythmic. Normal ocean sounds are sporadic and random, but an engine—even a very quiet engine—made noise. And narcotics-smuggling submarines typically weren’t very quiet.

  By 1100 the heat became oppressive and I went down to the air-conditioned comfort of the command bridge. With the engine running, I could operate the A/C and it was very comfortable below deck. Anchoring out at the end of the day would be a different story. I’d be strictly on battery power.

  The hours and the sea rolled by monotonously. I had the stereo playing and my old Silvertone guitar on my lap. I was trying to keep up with a Kenny Chesney song I liked about a bar at the end of the world when I heard a different rhythm that was throwing me off. I suddenly realized it was coming from the sonar speaker.

  I put the guitar on the watch bunk, grabbed the headphones hanging under the computer desk, and plugged them in. It was a low hum, far off. But it wasn’t steady. It sounded like what a warped record would emit if it played a steady hum, the pitch rising and falling in a regular pattern every half second or so. I only heard the sound for a moment before it stopped. The radar screen was empty; there wasn’t another boat around for twelve miles. But the sound I’d heard wasn’t naturally occurring, of that I was certain. The sonar screen had indicated that the sound had emanated from the southwest, and very far away.

  While I was fiddling with the sonar controls, my satellite phone rang. I removed the headset, grabbed up the phone, and hit the green Talk button. “McDermitt.”

  “Jesse, it’s Jack. Where are you?”

  Jack Armstrong was a billionaire a few times over, as were many of his associates. Together, they funded some of the side operations Armstrong Research did. I worked for the company’s Expeditionary Division. It was my job to look for trouble.

  “Hey, Jack. I’m about eighteen nautical miles due east of the southern tip of Saint Kitts. I just heard something on passive sonar, and there’s not a boat within twelve miles on the radar.”

  “Keep your eyes open. There was a sighting earlier today just off Montserrat.”

  “Is that why you called?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “DJ is in the Turks and Caicos, about to get underway, but you’re the only eyes and ears we have in the area. He’s at least two days away.”

  Jack was speaking of DJ Martin, on the charter fishing vessel Reel Fun, normally out of Key Largo. DJ had been a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne before losing his right leg below the knee in Iraq.

  “He’s a little far from home.”

  “He got underway the same time you did. The Barkleys are up in Chesapeake Bay, too far away to be of any help.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Ambrosia is conducting research in the Windwards and can’t be moved, and several others are working a project in Guatemala. What did it sound like?”

  “Kind of a rhythmic buzz, pulsing a little, but not a diesel engine.”

  “This isn’t your run-of-the-mill sub, Jesse. We’re still gathering intel, but we think it was designed by Russia
n submarine engineers.”

  The narco subs I’d seen on the news and online were usually little more than regular boats, gutted of everything, with flat, water-tight decks. They were loaded with enough drugs or other contraband to nearly submerge their hulls relying on snorkels for air intake and exhaust. They rode so low in the water that they often had no radar signature. But they weren’t true submarines.

  “So, what’s this thing look like?”

  “Like a real sub,” Jack replied. “We think it’s very high-tech, with a reinforced hull, built in the traditional cigar shape with twin screws. Were you able to get a location on the contact?”

  “Didn’t hear it long enough,” I told him. “Somewhere south and west of me, and far off.”

  “Just before I called?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sara just handed me a printout. A Venezuelan cutter just reported that it had picked up a similar sound just minutes ago. They’d reported yesterday that they’d engaged and sunk the sub, but we had our doubts. They were far to the south of you, close to the mainland when they heard it just now. They determined the sound was moving north-northeast and estimated its position about a hundred miles due west of Saint Lucia.”

  “That’s a good two hundred miles from where I am.”

  “That would be about right, given the time since the theft of the sub and the reported sinking. Where are you stopping?”

  “Gallows Bay on Statia.”

  “Good choice. Anchor deep, far from shore. This thing’s high-tech, but it’s slow. You might hear it on sonar again.”

  “Any update on what their target might be?”

  “Originally, we thought it was the cruise ship pier in Charlotte Amalie,” Jack replied. “But somehow someone leaked information. Probably the Venezuelan cartel who built the sub. They have people in the Venezuelan navy. The terrorists may know that we know. We have no idea what a secondary target might be.”

  “Anything else?”