It wasn’t until after Kevin came home from the Navy that they got into chartering. McCory preferred being around the marina, working on the boats, to putting up with novice fisherman, but Kevin seemed to like it. So McCory had turned the Kathleen over to him until the new boat was finished.
Kevin wanted to build a couple more boats and hire some captains to run them, but McCory was resisting. He didn’t want to infringe unduly on the trade of the charter boats that home-ported in Marina Kathleen.
As was his custom, McCory took a late turn through the marina, checking the locks on the maintenance buildings, making certain kids hadn’t gotten into the boats sitting on cradles in the storage yard and cautioning the party boats to keep the noise within limits.
The new floating docks were complete on the west end, jutting out from the central, raised dock, and most of the permanent residents had been re-installed in their old slips. The crane had been moved to the east side of the marina, and the barge tied alongside it was piled high with old planks, piers, and railings.
The renovation was expensive as hell, more than he’d first guessed, and he’d had to float a couple large loans. Still, the results would keep Marina Kathleen in competition with the bigger outfits. He’d had four or five offers for the marina, since good beach-front property was skyrocketing in price, but he’d turned them all down. McCory didn’t want money, he wanted the freedom to be himself.
McCory walked along the new central dock, patting the steel railing with his hand. It didn’t have the character of the old two-by-four railings, but it didn’t have the splinters either. Out at the end of the “E” floating dock — McCory had placed the younger, louder crowd on “E” — the Darkins were hosting thirty or forty of their neighbors aboard their fifty-foot Hatteras. Tinkly laughter and the guitar of Chet Atkins wafted on the air.
As he walked by the base of “C” dock, McCory looked down to see Jefferson, a young black writer, sitting in the cockpit of his elderly sloop, Muse. He had a yellow light hung from the boom, and he was drinking wine and writing in a legal-size tablet.
McCory stopped and leaned on the railing. “Hope you’re not writin’ about me, Jeff.”
“Oh, hi, Devlin. I’d like to write about you.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Not enough flash.”
“Bet there’s more than you let on. How’d you get that Navy Cross?”
“Short story. My destroyer went out from under me at Midway.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, the lifeboat me and twenty other guys were in was holed pretty bad, and the engine wouldn’t run. I just fixed it before it sank completely. That was my job, that’s all.”
“Hell, Devlin, I think there’s a whole novel in that. Why don’t you and I… ”
McCory was suddenly aware of red-yellow light behind him. He spun around and looked toward shore.
Maintenance Building One was on fire.
The flames leaped from the windows, licked at the old siding, climbing high. Strange shadows flickered on the ground.
“Jesus Christ!” Jefferson yelled.
McCory pushed off the railing and ran toward shore. Damn, there were flammables…
The explosion rocked the marina. The structure disappeared in a yellow holocaust. The concussion knocked McCory into the railing. He rebounded off the steel and landed on his side on the dock.
Shaking his head, trying to clear it.
Up onto his hands and knees.
The flames roared, surprisingly loud, fed by drums of solvents and paint. He could feel the heat.
He regained his feet and stumbled toward the office, thinking telephone.
At the end of the dock, he reached for the screen door handle.
The whole screen door came off as the office exploded.
McCory saw a microsecond of white flash before the door handle embedded itself deep in his chest.
The SeaGhost rocked a little, from side to side, as she cruised eastward at an angle to the swells of the sea. She was making twenty-five knots.
The radio was set to Safari Bravo’s command net, and the chatter between vessels and aircraft was heavy, but terse and vague as a result of all the coded words. McCory had gone active on the radar for one sweep, freezing the screen picture into computer memory. That one sweep on active had intensified the radio traffic. He interpreted some of it to mean that aircraft were moving in on them and had told Ginger to go to top speed for five minutes, removing them from the scene of his radar emanation.
Within minutes, there were three airplanes overhead, but the search pattern drifted away from them after a while.
He put the computer-stored image on the screen and studied it. Thirty miles to the north were at least a dozen ships. Two hundred and fifty miles to the south were another half dozen in a cluster. Sporadically aligned to the east were independent ships, probably commercial, in the normal sea-lanes. Again, he had not had the antenna aimed upward, so he had probably missed most of the aircraft. Along the coast, the ground clutter feedback obscured what were probably additional ships. Coast Guard, maybe.
If he were able to identify a couple of those blips as specific ships, then pinpoint their coordinates by radio reports, he might have been able to recreate the Baker Two map grid. He didn’t, however, think that it was going to happen in this lifetime.
They cruised eastward, again at twenty knots.
McCory had a vision of his sonar signature being picked up by some submarine in the region. Conning tower rising suddenly from the sea, water sluicing off it. Gun crews spilling out of the hatches.
He got up and went to the sonar station, which was set on passive. Pulling the headset on, he listened for a while to sea noises. Big fish, maybe. Nothing that he could identify as man-made.
When he took the earphones off, Ginger asked, “Getting nervous?”
“Hell, yes. You?”
“I’ve been nervous since Ponce de Leon. You want to take the helm while I try out your bathroom?”
They switched places. McCory tried all of the modes on the primary screen. Night-vision video showed him a lot of sea. A few running lights and anti-collision strobe lights on aircraft in the distance. Infrared was cool, except for distant hot spots which he suspected were generated by aircraft exhaust pipes.
There was nothing of particular interest out there.
Badr could be, and probably was, sixty miles away. Getting further away.
The only thing closing in was the United States Navy. If they spotted the SeaGhost, they would probably shoot first and talk later, if there was anything left to which they could talk. If he was in a listening condition, he would be listening to charges of treason.
Ginger came back as he was turning to a heading of 190 degrees. Moving into the swells, the ride evened out.
“Trying another direction?”
“Yes. A direction for home.”
She sat in the radar operator’s seat. He didn’t think there was any disappointment showing in her face.
“It does seem a little futile,” she said.
“If I’m going to do this, I’m going to have to plan a little better,” McCory said. “Racing off to where Badr was doesn’t do much good.”