Norman had been rethinking his desire to command the New Jersey. Sure as hell, some admiral would have his flag aboard her, and Norman would not really have full command.
Besides, in the two years he had been aboard the Prebble, he had come to appreciate the competency and loyalty of her crew. Even Susan Inge, his second mate. He had damn nearly rebelled when Inge had first been assigned, but after a couple of months, he had also rethought his position on women aboard warships and changed it.
Additionally, the last ten months working out of Ship R&D had been interesting. The Navy was not totally stupid. When they developed a weapons system, they also considered a counter system. For almost a year, the Prebble had been serving as a test platform for weapons systems that could cope with the Sea Spectre.
High-power, sea-level radar had been tried, but without success.
Enhanced infrared sensors mounted on the Prebble’s two Seasprite helicopters had been able to detect the heat of the Sea Spectres at five miles.
The Sea Spectre engines and exhaust systems had been altered with coolant wraps to decrease the heat radiation.
The helicopters’ infrared sensors had been boosted once again, and they were able to locate a stealth boat that was within a range of four miles, providing the boat was operating on both engines at over two thousand RPMs. They were great boats.
The five-inch guns — one forward and one right aft — were computer controlled but were now linked, not only with radar but with laser designator and night-sight targeting systems. In computer-controlled games in the past three months, the Prebble had sunk four Sea Spectres in simulation. Of course, the Prebble had lost five encounters. Still, Norman thought that, given more training, his people would change those results.
If any ship in the U.S. Navy could locate and destroy the Sea Spectres, it was the destroyer Prebble.
Which was why CINCLANT had pulled her out of the northern Chesapeake and sent her on the search for the missing assault boats.
Barry Norman had taken a few rides in the Sea Spectre to acquaint himself with her weapons and capabilities. He had liked the boat.
He did not want to blow it out of the water.
But he would.
Kevin McCory remembered that his father had often taken late-night walks through the marina at Fort Walton Beach, acting as his own security guard, stopping to talk to the live-aboard residents, checking for safety violations, yanking on the padlocks attached to storage cabinets placed along the docks.
It was something he liked to do, too. Marina Kathleen was not a large enterprise. It would not be described as thriving. Still, in the eighteen months he had owned it, he had made some transformations. The office, storage buildings, and docks had been repainted white. Slowly, as he could afford it, he was replacing sections of the floating docks that had rotted or canted due to corroded metal. The original docks floated on empty fifty-five-gallon drums. The replacement sections were attached to foam-filled fiberglass canisters.
There were a hundred slips available, and seventy of them were rented, mostly to people who weekended aboard small cruisers, sailing boats, and ski boats. Twenty-two people lived aboard houseboats, sloops, fishermen, and cruisers that would not be called yachts. Six charter fishing boats operated out of Marina Kathleen.
On the south side was a storage yard for boats on cradles or trailers, a maintenance building, and a small dry dock. McCory employed a super-mechanic and a lazy, but expert, hull and fitting man. Dan Crips and Ben Avery. He also employed two high school girls who tended the office-cum-general store after school hours on alternate days. Marge Hepburn, who was sixty-six years old and lived aboard an old Cape Hatteras, watched over the office — and everyone else — in the mornings and early afternoons in exchange for her slip rental, her groceries, and an occasional six-pack of Dos Equis.
Debbie Trewartha, a green-eyed senior at Edgewater High, was sitting on the counter talking to Hanna Wilcox when Ginger arrived.
Ginger Adams’s parents had named her before she was born, expecting a redhead. What they got instead was a platinum blonde, hazel-eyed package of frenetic energy. Though she was now twenty-eight, five-ten, and proportioned along the lines Hugh Hefner demanded, she had not lost any of the energy. It did go dormant in the mornings, which was a problem, since McCory was a morning person.
She was sometimes irritatingly independent, maintaining her own apartment and working her twelve-to-eight shift at the Edgewater Bank and Trust, where she was a vice president and assistant manager. She had been almost married once, when she was eighteen. The union had faltered when she discovered the groom was not planning on letting her go to college. Ginger took on causes. Whales, seals, environment, politicians, bureaucracies, Kevin McCory. Nothing was sacred to her.
Ginger came through the front door like she owned the place, said hello to Debbie and Hanna, and leaned on the counter to stare at McCory. Her eyes were full of fire and ice.
McCory got up from behind his beat-up, ancient teacher’s desk, crossed to the counter, and kissed her lightly on the lips.
“Hi, hon.”
“I’m awake now.”
“How was your day?”
“Fine.”
“Nobody robbed the bank?”
“Not illegally, anyway.”
“Want a beer?”
“Not now. You have a story to tell me.”
“Story?”
“You promised, damn it!” She pouted.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ve got to make my rounds. Deb, you can go ahead and lock up. Leave a note for Marla, will you? The back windows could use some Windex.”
Debbie slipped off the counter. “Gotcha, Mac.”
Hanna said, “I’ll walk down with you youngsters.”
Hanna Wilcox couldn’t have been more than fifty years old, but she thought of anyone younger as an agile teenager.
The three of them went out the back door, took the ramp down to the floating docks, and strolled toward the end of it. The night was balmy, a nearly full moon on the rise, and the stars clear. A light breeze kept the insects offshore. At the second cross-dock, Hanna turned off for her Indigo, a new thirty-six-foot Trojan sedan.
McCory and Adams walked out to the end of the dock, then turned and came back. He eyed the locks on storage lockers. They turned off on the fueling dock, and he checked the pumps for leaks and locks.
“You’re not eager to tell me tales,” Ginger said.
“I’m organizing my thoughts.”
When they reached the Kathleen, moored in Slip 1, McCory took her hand and guided her up the three steps to deck level. They stepped aboard, and McCory hooked the safety cable between the railing gap back in place.
The Kathleen was the first boat Devlin McCory had designed, a tribute to his far-sighted vision. She was forty-six feet long, and though she had been built in 1954, her lines were as sleek as any motor yacht produced currently. A long, rakish bow, gunwales that swooped downward toward the stern. The foredeck was long, the cabin had large side windows and windshields, the stern deck was raised to accommodate the master’s cabin below. From the stern deck, a short companionway on the left rose to the flying bridge and another, centered, companionway descended to the salon. The hull was wooden, but every piece was hand fitted. Her chrome fittings gleamed in the moonlight. The teak deck was polished to a high luster. Except for updated electronics and two new Cummins 320 diesels that McCory had installed, she was as his father had built her. As far as McCory was concerned, the craftsmanship could no longer be found. Similar, new boats could bring better than a quarter of a million dollars.