“To help Megan? How could they?”
When they heard what had happened to Megan, Matt’s parents were a hundred percent ready to help.
Matt led the way to his room and warmed up his computer system, giving Winters voice access.
“Computer!” the captain snapped. “List, in order of distance from Reston, Virginia, and the Watergate complex, all yacht clubs, marinas, and private docking facilities for small craft.”
“Processing,” the computer responded.
Matt looked at Winters in surprise. “I thought you’d be going after ship’s registries, or whatever you call them.”
Captain Winters shook his head. “This is Mike’s ace up his sleeve, his line of retreat if everything goes wrong. The country place in the mountains is a very expensive distraction, something to divert the attention of the law from his real getaway route. He won’t call attention to his boat by keeping it under his own name.”
“Then how are we going to find it?” Matt asked in dismay.
“I’m afraid that will be up to me,” Winters replied grimly. “I’ll have to go through the names of the boats, one by one, hoping to spot some connection to Steele.”
“That’s a long shot,” Matt couldn’t help saying.
Winters nodded. “Which is why I wouldn’t even mention it to Net Force. I can’t see Jay Gridley disrupting his search pattern in mid-deployment, just on my say-so.”
“Information retrieved,” the computer announced.
“Let’s see just how big a haystack we’ll be digging through,” the captain said. “Display on visual.”
The closest Washington marina was on Buzzard’s Point, an area in the throes of redevelopment into a trendy neighborhood. The docks were closed, being rebuilt to service more expensive yachts.
Next closest was a marina south of National Airport. It was located right where the Potomac widened as it approached Chesapeake Bay. Then it seemed that every Virginia town on the coast had boating facilities. And across the bay were more towns in Maryland, not to mention the port cities of Annapolis and Baltimore.
“Small needle, pretty fracking big haystack,” Matt mumbled. Louder, he said, “Are you sure there’s no way I can help?”
Winters unhappily shook his head. “Since I don’t really know what I’m looking for, I don’t see how I can teach you to look for it. Steele used to call this part of the job ‘playing cowboys and Indians.’ It’s fishing for the crucial fact among a sea of possibilities, guided by your instinct and experience.”
He gave a reminiscent laugh. “Mike loved to mix his metaphors. Cowboys and Indians, all that Viking stuff…” He suddenly straightened up. “You know, if you want to give this a try, get a listing of the boats docked at each town on the Virginia shore. Look for Western or Scandinavian connections. I’ll do the same across the water. It’s a long shot—”
Matt nodded. “But we have to try.”
Heading out to the living room, Matt called up his part of the list. He couldn’t believe how many vessels were out there — pleasure craft, fishing boats, sailboats…
“I feel like I’m getting pretty waterlogged, just sitting here,” Matt muttered, unreeling yet another section of the seemingly endless roster of nautical names.
No, this was a particular kind of waterlogged feeling. Between his car rides and computer work, he hadn’t seen the inside of a bathroom since before he’d left school. His back teeth were practically floating.
Returning back down the hall, much relieved, Matt paused to stick his head into his own room. Maybe Captain Winters could go for a drink or something. Matt felt pretty thirsty, all of a sudden.
He blinked. A list of names hung in the air in holographic projection. But the captain was nowhere to be seen. Had he been struck with the urge, too? Maybe he was a step before Matt and had gone to the kitchen for something to drink.
But when Matt checked, the captain wasn’t in the spare bathroom or in the kitchen.
He seemed to be…gone.
Baffled, Matt dashed back to the system in his room. Yes, there was the list of boats. It was some marina in Annapolis — apparently Winters had decided to check the big cities first.
Could he—?
Matt ran an eye down the displayed listing. He stopped beside the entry for a fair-sized cabin cruiser….
The good ship Skraelling.
21
Considering the circumstances, Matt wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t able to get hold of Jay Gridley. The head of Net Force was directing an all-out effort to find Megan O’Malley.
Matt should probably feel glad he’d managed to contact the Net Force Explorers’ liaison, Agent Len Dorpff. That, however, had been the easy part of the job. Now he faced the uphill task of convincing Dorpff to believe in Captain Winters’s theory — and getting him to act on it.
Dorpff frowned in the display over Matt’s computer. “So, you’re saying that Marcus Kovacs’s home in the Blue Ride — and the preparations for an extended stay in the mountains — these are a blind of some sort?”
Matt nodded eagerly. “He wants us to put our resources and attention there while he makes his escape by boat. That’s how Mike Steele got away the last time. He even faked his death in a boating accident. Look at the baby gift he had made for Captain Winters — a rattle in the shape of an anchor. The guy is obviously crazy over boats.” He extended his hands toward the image. “It’s not my idea. Captain Winters figured it out, and he probably knows Steele better than anybody in Net Force. The captain may even have found the boat and gone there on his own to stop the getaway.”
“Yeah. Can you explain this sudden inspiration to me again?”
“We were checking the names of boats, looking for certain connections. It seems that Steele saw law enforcement as a sort of grown-up game of cowboys and Indians. He was also into the mystique of the Vikings. The boat he disappeared on was called the Knorr. That’s the Scandinavian name for a Viking long ship.”
“I’m with you so far,” Dorpff said. “So what about this new discovery?”
“I came in to my room to find Winters gone and the list of ships scrolled to a listing for a big cabin cruiser called the Skraelling.” Matt took a deep breath. “In the old Viking sagas there are stories of captains who sailed to what we now know is North America. They had fights with the people who lived there, whom they called skraellings. We’d call them Native Americans — or Indians.”
Would Dorpff see the connection? “Mike Steele thought of his Net Force job as cowboys and Indians,” Matt said. “So if he went over to the other side—”
“He’d become an Indian — or in Viking-talk, a skraelling. Is that where you’re going with this?” A frown of indecision twisted Dorpff’s thin face. “Interesting. But you’re hanging a lot on a single word.”
“A single very uncommon word, attached to a powerful boat, close but not too close to Washington, that would serve as a perfect getaway vehicle.”
“I’ll pass it up the line,” Dorpff said. From the sound of his voice, he was impressed but still dubious about the Winters-Hunter theory.
“I expect this is the last thing you’ll want to hear,” Matt said, “but I’ve got to say it. When you took over the liaison job, you said you hoped you’d do as well as Captain Winters. Well, one thing he always did was go the extra mile for any of his Net Force Explorers. If Captain Winters had heard this from one of us, and thought it might possibly help save Megan, he’d take it right to the top.”
Len Dorpff stared at him for a moment, speechless.
Guess I pushed it too hard, Matt thought.
But then the young agent slowly nodded his head. “You’re right, you know,” Dorpff said. “When I took this job, that put the Net Force Explorers under my care. I can’t hold back when one of my people is in trouble.”