“God dammit,” she shouted, flinging the device out into the black waves. “How stupid could I be?”
Then she felt her stomach jump and the soup nearly backed up her throat. Was that a light? To the east, off her beam.
The stalker was behind her — not off her starboard side. From the glimpse she’d had of the bright white light, it looked like the masthead navigation light of a commercial ship. Again, it appeared for a moment before it slipped behind a wave. She waited, searching the horizon. There it was again, brighter this time. And here she was running with no navigation lights at all. That was all she needed now — to get run down by a freighter.
Riley grabbed the binoculars off the low seat and climbed back up to the high side of the cockpit. She couldn’t see a thing because the binocular’s lenses were covered with spray. She slid back down off the seat, reached around into the cabin and pulled a paper towel off the roll that hung on the bulkhead. She climbed back up and hooked one elbow around the winch to hang on to the heeling boat. The light was growing bigger. She rubbed harder at the glass, but she was just smearing salt water on the lenses in a greasy-looking mess. She looked up again.
And she froze.
Oh no, she thought. She felt some of the tension release as her shoulders sagged. Then Riley started laughing as she made out the curving top half of the scimitar moon that was climbing up out of the sea. Already, the sea to the east looked brighter as the bottom of the moon cleared the horizon and began to climb higher in the sky. She looked up at her sails and the laughter died on her lips. Her white main and jib seemed to glow with an inner light, as though they sucked in the moonlight, collecting every last ray.
Riley looked aft. Still no sign of her stalkers, but one thing was clear now. All her efforts of the last hour were for nothing. They wouldn’t need lights or radar or a GPS tracker to follow her now. But if she were to lower her sails and motor, her speed would be cut in half.
Down at the chart table Riley made her decision. She knew that she wasn’t Dig’s only target. If she was all he wanted, he could have come alongside hours ago. He and his crew of half-wits were following her to stop Cole, and she was not about to lead them to the Shadow Chaser and hence to Surcouf.
The closest port on the chart was Grand Bourg on Marie-Galante, now about fourteen miles distant, which was half the distance to the Surcouf dive location where Cole and Theo were headed. Given her current rate of speed and the need to feel her way into what looked like a very tricky night entrance, she figured she might make it by four or five in the morning. There was a good sized village there. She’d go ashore, find people, knock on doors, get herself out of the picture so Cole and Theo would have time to find what they were looking for by morning. She had a plan.
Four hours later, with the sky starting to lighten in the east, Riley dropped her anchor inside the sea wall off the village of Grand Bourg. Her GPS had brought her through the narrow entrance into this quiet little harbor, and once her anchor was well set, she stood on deck and glanced around the waterfront. No sign of any new boats yet. She figured she had time to try Cole one last time before lowering her dinghy and heading in to the village. She ducked down the companionway and slid onto the chart table seat.
She grabbed the single sideband radio mike and pushed the button to transmit. “Shadow Chaser, Shadow Chaser, this is Bonefish.”
She heard pops and crackles through the radio’s speaker, but nothing more. She twisted her fingers in the coiled microphone cord. There were many different frequencies to choose from and some worked better than others, depending on the location. They had chosen a frequency that was rarely used by sailors because they had wanted to be able to speak without fear of being overheard. Maybe there was a good reason nobody much used this frequency.
She brought the microphone to her mouth, pressed the transmit button and tried them again. “Shadow Chaser, Shadow Chaser, this is Bonefish.”
In the distance, she heard the low rumble of a high performance engine running at idle. The noise grew louder.
Riley jumped up from the navigation station and grabbed the knife from the scabbard that hung inside the companionway. Just as she reached the top step, she was thrown sideways when a large black racing boat came hard alongside, slamming into her hull with a loud crunch. She saw a man on the other boat, and he jumped, or was half-thrown, onto the foredeck of her boat. She struggled with her bulky foul weather gear to climb out of the cockpit when she heard a man shouting.
“Goddammit, Pinky,” he said, “turn off the engines and tie her up. Can’t you do nothing right?”
Standing on the foredeck of her boat wearing a one-piece full-body red racing suit was Spyder Brewster. He was pointing a gun at her midsection.
“Hey bitch,” he shouted over the deep rumbling of the racing boat’s engines. “Wassup?”
At the moment, the breeze had pinned the racing boat to the side of her boat. She knew they would soon swing apart. “Get off my boat!” She gestured with the knife toward the other boat.
“You ain’t happy to see me? Drop that knife for your boy here. You and me, we gonna party.”
The strangest looking man Riley had ever seen emerged from the powerboat’s cockpit in a matching red suit carrying a coil of black line. His hair looked like a cumulous cloud, and though he had a broad nose and African features, his face was white aside from freckles across his nose and a few patches of darker skin. He wobbled and held on to the windshield for support, and since he was upwind of her, she got a strong whiff of vomit as he steadied himself.
“Dammit Pinky,” Spyder shouted. “Gimme that line. I told you to shut down the fuckin’ engines.”
The odd man ignored Spyder, then knelt on the deck of the racing powerboat, and cinched the two boats together.
Spyder waggled the gun in her direction. “Hey bitch, the knife. I said, drop it.”
“I’m not dropping anything, you idiot.”
The man jumped a step toward her and thrust the gun forward, holding it sideways like the gangsters in the movies and aiming it at the center of her forehead. “Don’t call me an idiot or I will fucking blow your head off,” he shouted.
From where she was standing next to the cockpit dodger, she heard radio static, then a faint voice. “Bonefish, this is Shadow Chaser, do you read me?”
Riley erupted with noise and Spyder staggered back a step. Waving the knife, she began shouting at both men to get the hell off her foredeck. She kept shouting even as Spyder grew red in the face. He screamed at her, “Drop the knife or I’ll shoot you, bitch!”
At least they couldn’t hear the radio.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
Aboard the Shadow Chaser
March 31, 2008
5:10 a.m.
“We’ve been at this three hours now, Cap,” Theo said, his arms leaning on the bulwark at the stern of Shadow Chaser. The big trawler was operating on autopilot while the two men paced the deck. “We’ve covered more than a square mile with the magnetometer, and we haven’t even had any false readings. Maybe your man’s information wasn’t so good after all.”