“What was her name?”
“Tish—Patricia.”
“How long were you—”
“Year and a half. Then she was just ... gone. I never expected it. 1 mean. I put my time in, did some dangerous stuff, but that’s all over, and that was me. not her. I never thought—” His voice cracked again. Pam looked down at him in the muted light of the salon, seeing the scars she’d missed before and wondering what their story was. It didn’t matter. She brought her cheek down to the top of his head. He should have been a father right about now. Should have been a lot of things.
“You never let it out, did you?”
“No.”
“And why now?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
“Thank you.” Kelly looked up in surprise. “That’s the nicest thing a man has ever done to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes. you do,” Pam replied. “And Tish understands, too. You let me take her place. Or maybe she did. She loved you, John. She must have loved you a lot. And she still does. Thank you for letting me help.”
He started crying again, and Pam brought his head back down, cradling him like a small child. It lasted ten minutes, though neither looked at a clock. When he was done, he kissed her in gratitude that rapidly turned to renewed passion. Pam lay back, letting him take charge as he needed to do now that he was again a man in spirit. Her reward was in keeping with the magnitude of what she had done for him, and this time it was her cries that canceled out the thunder. Later, he fell asleep at her side, and she kissed his unshaven cheek. That was when her own tears began at the wonder of what the day had brought after the terror with which it had begun.
2
Encounters
Kelly awoke at his accustomed time, thirty minutes before sunrise, to the mewing of gulls and saw the first dull glow on the eastern horizon. At first he was confused to find a slender arm across his chest, but other feelings and memories explained things in a few seconds. He extricated himself from her side and moved the blanket to cover her from the morning chill. It was time for ship’s business.
Kelly got the drip coffee machine going, then he pulled on a pair of swim trunks and headed topside. He hadn’t forgotten to set the anchor light, he was gratified to see. The sky had cleared off, and the air was cool after the thunderstorms of the previous night. He went forward and was surprised to see that one of his anchors had dragged somewhat. Kelly reproached himself for that, even though nothing had actually gone wrong. The water was a flat, oily calm and the breeze gentle. The pink-orange glow of first light decorated the tree-spotted coastline to the east. All in all, it seemed as fine a morning as he could remember. Then he remembered that what had changed had nothing at all to do with the weather.
“Damn,” he whispered to the dawn not yet broken. Kelly was stiff, and did some stretching exercises to get the kinks out, slow to realize how fine he felt without the usual hangover. Slower still to recall how long it had been. Nine hours of sleep? he wondered. That much? No wonder he felt so good. The next part of the morning routine was to get a squeegee to dispose of the water that had pooled on the fiberglass deck.
His head turned at the low, muted rumble of marine diesels. Kelly looked west to spot it, but there was a little mist that way, being pushed his way by the breeze, and he couldn’t make anything out. He went to the control station on the flying bridge and got out his glasses, just in time to have a twelve-inch spotlight blaze through the marine 7 x 50s. Kelly was dazzled by the lights, which just as suddenly switched off, and a loud-hailer called across the water.
“Sorry, Kelly. Didn’t know it was you.” Two minutes later the familiar shape of a Coast Guard forty-one-foot patrol boat eased alongside Springer. Kelly scrambled along the portside to deploy his rubber fenders.
“You trying to kill me or something?” Kelly said in a conversational voice.
“Sorry.” Quartermaster First Class Manuel “Portagee” Oreza stepped from one gun’l to the other with practiced ease. He gestured to the fenders. “Wanna hurt my feelings?”
“Bad sea manners, too,” Kelly went on as he walked towards his visitor.
“I spoke to the young lad about that already,” Oreza assured him. He held out his hand. “Morning, Kelly.”
The outstretched hand had a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee. Kelly took it and laughed.
“Apology accepted, sir.” Oreza was famous for his coffee.
“Long night. We’re all tired, and it’s a young crew,” the coastguardsman explained wearily. Oreza was nearly twenty-eight himself, and by far the oldest man of his boat crew.
“Trouble?” Kelly asked.
Oreza nodded, looking around at the water. “Kinda. Some damned fool in a little day-sailer turned up missing after that little rainstorm we had last night, and we’ve been looking all over bejazzus for him.”
“Forty knots of wind. Fair blow, Portagee,” Kelly pointed out. “Came in right fast, too.”
“Yeah, well, we rescued six boats already, just this one still missing. You see anything unusual last night?”
“No. Came outa Baltimore around ... oh, sixteen hundred, I suppose. Two and a half hours to get here. Anchored right after the storm hit. Visibility was pretty bad, didn’t see much of anything before we went below.”
“We,” Oreza observed, stretching. He walked over to the wheel, picked up the rain-soaked halter, and tossed it to Kelly. The look on his face was neutral, but there was interest behind the eyes. He hoped his friend had found someone. Life hadn’t been especially fair to the man.
Kelly handed the cup back with a similarly neutral expression.
“There was one freighter coming out behind us,” he went on. “Italian flag, container boat about half full, must have been knocking down fifteen knots. Anybody else clear the harbor?”
“Yeah.” Oreza nodded and spoke with professional irritation. “I’m worried about that. Fuckin’ merchies plowing out at full speed, not paying attention.”
“Well, hell, you stand outside the wheelhouse, you might get wet. Besides, sea-and-anchor detail might violate some union rule, right? Maybe your guy got run down,” Kelly noted darkly. It wouldn’t have been the first time, even on a body of water as civilized as the Chesapeake.
“Maybe,” Oreza said, surveying the horizon. He frowned, not believing the suggestion and too tired to hide it. “Anyway, you see a little day-sailer with an orange-and-white candystripe sail, you want to give me a call?”
“No problem.”
Oreza looked forward and turned back. “Two anchors for that little puff o’ wind we had? They’re not far enough apart. Thought you knew better.”
“Chief Bosun’s Mate,” Kelly reminded him. “Since when does a bookkeeper get that snotty with a real seaman?” It was only a joke. Kelly knew Portagee was the better man in a small boat. Though not by much of a margin, and both knew that, too.
Oreza grinned on his way back to the cutter. After jumping back aboard, he pointed to the halter in Kelly’s hand. “Don’t forget to put your shirt on, Boats! Looks like it oughta fit just fine.” A laughing Oreza disappeared inside the wheelhouse before Kelly could come up with a rejoinder. There appeared to be someone inside who was not in uniform, which surprised Kelly. A moment later, the cutter’s engines rumbled anew and the forty-one-boat moved northwest.
“Good mornin’.” It was Pam. “What was that?”
Kelly turned. She wasn’t wearing any more now than when he’d put the blanket on her, but Kelly instantly decided that the only time she’d surprise him again would be when she did something predictable. Her hair was a medusalike mass of tangles, and her eyes were unfocused, as though she’d not slept well at all.
“Coast Guard. They’re looking for a missing boat. How’d you sleep?”
“Just fine.” She came over to him. Her eyes had a soft, dreamlike quality that seemed strange so early in the morning, but could not have been more attractive to the wide-awake sailo
r.
“Good morning.” A kiss. A hug. Pam held her arms aloft and executed something like a pirouette. Kelly grabbed her slender waist and hoisted her aloft.
“What do you want for breakfast?” he asked.
“I don’t eat breakfast,” Pam replied, reaching down for him.
“Oh.” Kelly smiled. “Okay.”
She changed her mind about an hour later. Kelly fixed eggs and bacon on the galley stove, and Pam wolfed it down so speedily that he fixed seconds despite her protests. On further inspection, the girl wasn’t merely thin, some of her ribs were visible. She was undernourished, an observation that prompted yet another unasked question. But whatever the cause, he could remedy it. Once she’d consumed four eggs, eight slices of bacon, and five pieces of toast, roughly double Kelly’s normal morning intake, it was time for the day to begin properly. He showed her how to work the galley appliances while he saw to recovering the anchors.
They got back under way just shy of a lazy eight o’clock. It promised to be a hot, sunny Saturday. Kelly donned his sunglasses and relaxed in his chair, keeping himself alert with the odd sip from his mug. He maneuvered west, tracing down the edge of the main ship channel to avoid the hundreds of fishing boats he fully expected to sortie from their various harbors today in pursuit of rockfish.
“What are those things?” Pam asked, pointing to the floats decorating the water to port.
“Floats for crab pots. They’re really more like cages. Crabs get in and can’t get out. You leave floats so you know where they are.” Kelly handed Pam his glasses and pointed to a bay-build workboat about three miles to the east.
“They trap the poor things?” Kelly laughed.
“Pam, the bacon you had for breakfast? The hog didn’t commit suicide, did he?”
She gave him an impish look. “Well, no.”
“Don’t get too excited. A crab is just a big aquatic spider. even though it tastes good.”
Kelly altered course to starboard to clear a red nun-buoy.
“Seems kinda cruel, though.”
“Life can be that way,” Kelly said too quickly and then regretted it.
Pam’s response was as heartfelt as Kelly’s. “Yeah, I know.”
Kelly didn’t turn to look at her, only because he stopped himself. There’d been emotional content in her reply, something to remind him that she, too, had demons. The moment passed quickly, however. She leaned back into the capacious conning chair, leaning against him and making things right again. One last time Kelly’s senses warned him that something was not right at all. But there were no demons out here, were there?
“You’d better go below.”
“Why?”
“Sun’s going to be hot today. There’s some lotion in the medicine cabinet, main head.”
“Head?”
“Bathroom!”
“Why is everything different on a boat?”
Kelly laughed. “That’s so sailors can be the boss out here. Now, shoo! Go get that stuff and put a lot on or you’ll look like a french fry before lunch.”
Pam made a face. “I need a shower, too. Is that okay?”
“Good idea,” Kelly answered without looking. “No sense scaring the fish away.”
“You!” She swatted him on the arm and headed below.
“Vanished, just plain vanished,” Oreza growled. He was hunched over a chart table at the Thomas Point Coast Guard Station.
“We shoulda got some air cover, helicopter or something,” the civilian observed.
“Wouldn’t have mattered, not last night. Hell, the gulls rode that blow out.”
“But where’d he go?”
“Beats me, maybe the storm sank his ass.” Oreza glowered at the chart. “You said he was northbound. We covered all these ports and Max took the western shore. You sure the description of the boat was correct?”
“Sure? Hell, we did everything but buy the goddamned boat for ’em!” The civilian was as short-tempered as twenty-eight hours of caffeine-induced wakefulness could explain, even worse for having been ill on the patrol boat, much to the amusement of the enlisted crew. His stomach felt like it was coated with steel wool. “Maybe it did sink,” he concluded gruffly, not believing it for a moment.
“Wouldn’t that solve your problem?” His attempt at levity earned him a growl, and Quartermaster First Class Manuel Oreza caught a warning look from the Station commander, a gray-haired warrant officer named Paul English.
“You know,” the man said in a state of exhaustion, “I don’t think anything is going to solve this problem, but it’s my job to try.”
“Sir, we’ve all had a long night. My crew is racked out, and unless you have a really good reason to stay up, I suggest you find a bunk and get a few Zs, sir.”
The civilian looked up with a tired smile to mute his earlier words. “Petty Officer Oreza, smart as you are, you ought to be an officer.”
“If I’m so smart, how come we missed our friend last night?”
“That guy we saw around dawn?”
“Kelly? Ex-Navy chief, solid guy.”
“Kinda young for a chief, isn’t he?” English asked, looking at a not very good photo the spotlight had made possible. He was new at the station.
“It came along with a Navy Cross,” Oreza explained.
The civilian looked up. “So, you wouldn’t think—”
“Not a chance in hell.”
The civilian shook his head. He paused for a moment, then headed off to the bunk room. They’d be going out again before sunset, and he’d need the sack time.
“So how was it?” English asked after the man left the room.
“That guy is shipping a lot of gear, Cap’n.” As a station commander, English was entitled to the title, all the more so that he let Portagee run his boat his way. “Sure as hell he doesn’t sleep much.”
“He’s going to be with us for a while, on and off, and I want you to handle it.”
Oreza tapped the chart with a pencil. “I still say this would be a perfect place to keep watch from, and I know we can trust the guy.”
“The man says no.”
“The man ain’t no seaman, Mr. English. I don’t mind when the guy tells me what to do, but he don’t know enough to tell me how to do it.” Oreza circled the spot on the chart.
“I don’t like this.”
“You don’t have to like it,” the taller man said. He unfolded his pocket knife and slit the heavy paper to reveal a plastic container of white powder. “A few hours’ work and we turn three hundred thousand. Something wrong with that, or am I missin’ something?”
“And this is just the start,” the third man said.
“What do we do with the boat?” asked the man with the scruples.
The tall one looked up from what he was doing. “You get rid of that sail?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we can stash the boat ... but probably smarter to scuttle. Yeah, that’s what we’ll do.”
“And Angelo?” All three looked over to where the man was lying, unconscious still, and bleeding.
“I guess we scuttle him, too,” the tall one observed without much in the way of emotion. “Right here ought to be fine.”
“Maybe two weeks, there won’t be nothin’ left. Lots of critters out there.” The third one waved outside at the tidal wetlands.
“See how easy it is? No boat, no Angelo, no risk, and three hundred thousand bucks. I mean, how much more do you expect, Eddie?”
“His friends still ain’t gonna like it.” The comment came more from a contrarian disposition than moral conviction.
“What friends?” Tony asked without looking. “He ratted, didn’t he? How many friends does a rat have?”
Eddie bent to the logic of the situation and walked over to Angelo’s unconscious form. The blood was still pumping out of the many abrasions, and the chest was moving slowly as he tried to breathe. It was time to put an end to that. Eddie knew it; he’d merely been trying to delay the inevit
able. He pulled a small .22 automatic from his pocket, placed it to the back of Angelo’s skull, and fired once. The body spasmed, then went slack. Eddie set his gun aside and dragged the body outside, leaving Henry and his friend to do the important stuff. They’d brought some fish netting, which he wrapped around the body before dumping it in the water behind their small motorboat. A cautious man, Eddie looked around, but there wasn’t much danger of intruders here. He motored off until he found a likely spot a few hundred yards off, then stopped and drifted while he lifted a few concrete blocks from the boat and tied them to the netting. Six were enough to sink Angelo about eight feet to the bottom. The water was pretty clear here, and that worried Eddie a little until he saw all the crabs. Angelo would be gone in less than two weeks. It was a great improvement over the way they usually did business, something to remember for the future. Disposing of the little sailboat would be harder. He’d have to find a deeper spot, but he had all day to think about it.
Kelly altered course to starboard to avoid a gaggle of sports craft. The island was visible now. about five miles ahead. Not much to look at, just a low bump on the horizon, not even a tree, but it was his and it was as private as a man could wish. About the only bad news was the miserable TV reception.
Battery Island had a long and undistinguished history. Its current name, more ironic than appropriate, had come in the early nineteenth century, when some enterprising militiaman had decided to place a small gun battery there to guard a narrow spot in the Chesapeake Bay against the British, who were sailing towards Washington, D.C., to punish the new nation that had been so ill-advised as to challenge the power of the world’s foremost navy. One British squadron commander had taken note of a few harmless puffs of smoke on the island, and, probably with more amusement than malice, had taken one ship within gun range and let loose a few salvos from the long guns on his lower deck. The citizen soldiers manning the battery hadn’t needed much encouragement to make a run for their rowboats and hustle to the mainland, and shortly thereafter a landing party of Jack Tars and a few Royal Marines had rowed ashore in a pinnace to drive nails into the touch holes, which was what “spiking guns” meant. After this brief diversion, the British had continued their leisurely sail up the Patuxent River, from which their army had walked to Washington and back, having forced Dolley Madison to evacuate the White House. The British campaign had next headed to Baltimore, where a somewhat different outcome resulted.