It was a while away, yet, because he was only forty-five years old.
Malgard went around behind the desk and settled into the soft leather of his chair. Picking up the handset of the telephone color-matched to the room, he punched the memory button for Rick Chambers’s number.
Chambers was listed on the organization chart of Advanced Marine Development, Incorporated as an assistant vice president. Malgard himself was at the head of the chart, president and chief executive officer.
When the phone on the other end was picked up, the voice was alert, but irritated. “What?”
“Rick, this is Justin.”
The voice softened. “Justin? Yeah, what do you need? I’m in the middle of somethin’ here.”
“Did you see the news?”
“Hell, no! I ain’t got time for that.”
“Well, listen up.”
“Can’t we do this in the morning?”
“No, damn it!” Malgard erupted. “Are you listening to me?”
A long sigh. “Okay. I’m sittin’ up.”
“My two Sea Spectre prototypes were stolen this morning.”
“No shit? The Navy call you?”
“Not yet, and I’m pissed that they haven’t. Damn it, I’m the prime contractor, and the media got it first. As soon as we’re done, I’ll call the Pentagon.”
“What happened?” Chambers asked.
“It’s difficult to tell from what the news had, but apparently they’ve identified a body they found as Middle Eastern. From the dental work or some damned thing.”
“Arabs stole your boats?”
“That’s what it sounds like. Or that’s what it is supposed to sound like.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Let’s say that I harbor a doubt,” Malgard said.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about.”
“This body they found could have been just a hired hand. There’s Middle Eastern people looking for work all over the country. No, I think the Navy’s jumping to a conclusion they want to jump to.”
“You know somethin’ they don’t?” Chambers asked.
“Of course, and you do, too. I think I know exactly where those boats are headed, and I want you to be there when they arrive.”
Chambers’s voice showed a little excitement now. “Bonus time?”
“Yes, Rick, it’ll be a nice bonus.”
Chapter 4
Ponce de Leon Inlet’s marker buoys were clearly visible in the moonless night. The moon had dipped below the horizon an hour earlier. A pale glimmer of dawn was cracking the eastern horizon, but McCory only saw it in the rearview screen on the instrument panel.
McCory saw no other marine traffic, either entering or leaving the Intracoastal Waterway. There were a few night-lights visible in Ponce Inlet, on the northern point.
He scanned the instrument panel, having become accustomed to the placement of its blue lettering, identifying the readouts — and its red, green, orange, and yellow numbers and lines — the indicators of activity. Then he retarded the throttles until the readout showed him thirty knots. Once he had cleared the marker, he turned the wheel and headed south along the eastern side of the waterway. Within minutes, the lights of New Smyrna Beach appeared on his right oblique, somewhat diminished by the tinting of the windscreen.
McCory felt invisible. The invisible man, as well as boat. The SeaGhost made the waterway seem a few miles wider than it actually was.
As he passed New Smyrna Beach, a large cruiser, running lights ablaze, left port and made a wide turn to the north. McCory instinctively gave it room, easing the helm a few points to the left. The cruiser passed him half a mile away, and there was no indication that he had been spotted.
Three miles further south, he saw the lighted public pier of Edgewater, then shortly after that, the dock lights of his own place, Marina Kathleen. McCory had never known his mother, but he thought Devlin would have approved of using her name again.
He continued on a southerly heading for another five miles, then spun the helm to starboard, crossed the waterway, and closed in on the mainland. Captain John Barley’s Marine Refitters was dark except for a tall, hooded lamp in the graveled yard near the office. It was a chaotic place of five acres, with shanties, sheds, and cradled boats spotted where they had been needed at the time. There were eight dry docks lined up on the shore, three of them enclosed by gargantuan structures built of wood that had lost its paint years before. The wind and water and salt had eroded every board and every plank within the chain link boundaries of Barley’s to a silver gray that gleamed in the night. John Barley didn’t care how it looked. He was seventy-four years old. He worked when he felt like working, and if one of his sheds collapsed, he figured he would not be needing it again.
McCory had leased one of Barley’s enclosed dry docks when he took on the hull-refinishing of Pamela Endicott’s Mimosa. She was fifty-two feet in length, four feet more than he could comfortably get out of the water at Marina Kathleen. The rented dock was empty now, but McCory still had an active lease because John Barley would not lease for less than a year, a point of honor, and income, for him. He wanted the hundred bucks a month. At any other place on the East coast, McCory would have paid twelve hundred for a two-week rental.
With the SeaGhost’s engines barely whispering and still in gear, McCory nudged the bow up against the closed door of the dock, slipped out of his seat, and hurried back to open the hatchway. The original drawings of the SeaGhost had had a hatch from the cabin to the bow, but some engineering jerk had eliminated it.
With the hatch lifted, the predawn air on the water was cool. It refreshed him after the long trip and made him feel more positive about what he had done. Gripping the edge of the hatchway, McCory worked his way around the raised door and pulled himself onto the top of the cabin. The surface was slick under his bare feet, and he was cautious as he moved forward and slid down over the windshield onto the steeply inclined foredeck. He sat down, dangled his legs off the bow, and searched the wooden face of the door for its handle. When he found it, he tugged upward.
The door hardware had been stiff when he first rented the dock, but McCory had reconditioned it, and now the sectioned door panels rose easily and silently. As he raised the lower edge of it above his head, the SeaGhost obediently inched forward. Water dripped from the door, splattering McCory and the deck.
McCory rose to his feet and stayed with the door, hanging onto it, and walked backward up onto the cabin and back over the cargo hatch until he reached the stern, where he finally let go of the door, shoving it downward.
He slid his way back to the hatchway and inside but not before the SeaGhost traveled the full eighty-foot distance of the slip and banged into the dock head.
As he killed the engines, he thought about motorizing the boat house door and installing a remote control. It might preclude his killing himself or severely denting the boat, either event undesirable.
After securing all of the SeaGhost’s electronic systems, he found a coiled line in the cross-corridor and used it to rope a stanchion on the dock and pull the boat close enough to step ashore. It took several tries, since he was working in the dark.