The boat was abruptly shoved broadside, in a nauseating rotating movement, totally in the grip of the sea. Gideon hung on to the wheel for dear life. It was all he could do to stay on his feet. The lights flickered.
Amy’s voice came over the intercom, supernaturally calm. “Go forward to the chain locker, deploy the drogue.”
“Drogue—?”
“The sea anchor. It looks like a big canvas parachute. Throw it overboard, run the line out a hundred feet, and cleat it off. Then come back and help me.”
He abandoned the wheel and exited the pilothouse. Outside, the full force of the storm slammed into him, staggering him, the rain lashing his face, the deck heaving. Beyond, he could dimly see the ridges and foaming peaks of a mountainous sea rising above his head in all directions.
Gripping the rail, he crawled forward to the chain locker set in the bow. The boat was wallowing, each swell tilting it up and throwing it down sideways, almost like a bucking horse, the hull shuddering. Water erupted over the rubrail and surged along the deck. Each time it did, he had to grip the rail with both hands to keep from being washed overboard.
He made it to the bow, undogged the chain locker. With no light, he reached in and felt his way around blindly. There it was: something bulky made of thick canvas, to the left.
A swell burst over him, knocking his body sideways and sliding him over the deck until his legs dangled over the side. With all his strength, he pulled himself back by gripping the rail. As soon as the swell had passed, he hauled the canvas thing out of the locker. It was all folded up and there was no way to be sure of what it was, but it was attached to a rope and he threw it overboard. Here goes nothing. It hit the water, the rope running out fast. It burned his hands as he arrested its headlong rush. He managed to tie it off to the mooring post, his fingers feeling fat and stupid.
It was almost like magic. The line went taut; there was a groaning sound; and then the Turquesa began to swing around, bow pointing into the wind and sea. In a moment the boat was riding better — much better.
Gideon crawled back into the pilothouse, soaked to the skin, hit by a series of dry heaves. Head pounding from the effort, anxiety, and nausea, he went below to where Amy was working on the engine. The compartment panels were off and she was on her back, her head and torso deep in the mass of machinery.
“What now?”
“Shut down those fuel lines, there.”
Gideon turned the levers perpendicular to the lines.
Amy continued issuing orders as she worked. The boat was riding much better, the big combers hissing past on either side. It was terrifying enough, but at least they weren’t broadside and spinning out of control.
“Okay,” Amy said at last. “See if you can start the starboard engine.”
Gideon went up, set the throttle and shift, and pressed the button. A few coughs and the engine roared to life. He felt a rush of relief.
A moment later Amy appeared — covered in oil, her hair matted. She took the helm. “Raise the drogue. Wrap the line around the anchor windlass and I’ll winch it in. Leave it cleated in case we need to re-deploy.”
Gideon did as instructed and a moment later the motorized windlass was hauling in the drogue. He manhandled it back into the locker.
The boat swung around, a wave slamming over him as he crawled back toward the pilothouse.
“We’d better get back to Bahía Hondita,” he said, coughing and shedding water. “Ride it out there.”
“We’re two miles from Jeyupsi,” said Amy, quietly. “Let’s finish what we started.” She reached down and flipped a batch of circuit breakers, plunging the boat into darkness. The only light came from the dim glow of the electronics.
Gideon stared at the isolated cay on the chartplotter, an irregular shape in the middle of nowhere.
“We’re going to circle it at a mile, looking for our friends. If they’re not there, we go in and turn on the outside floodlight so we can verify it’s the right landmark. You’ll document it with photographs and video. And identify whatever might be meant by clue seven, the Devil’s vomit.”
“And if they’re there?”
“We turn and run.”
“We only have one engine.”
“We’ll see them before they see us. We’ll lose them in this sea. The crests of these waves are higher than our boat.”
“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.”
The boat rumbled on, thrown back and sideways again and again. They circled the cay, seeing nothing on radar that might be a lurking boat.
“Okay,” Amy said. “We’re going in.”
She brought the boat closer to the cay. As they approached, Gideon could hear the roar of surf, like a continuous barrage of artillery, growing increasingly in volume. And then, dimly emerging from the darkness, a patch of ever-shifting, ever-boiling white.
She slowed, circling until they were in the lee of the cay. The outline on radar sharpened, beginning to take on the approximate shape of the image on the map. Amy slowed still further, keeping the engine going just enough to keep the boat oriented.
“Get ready with the floodlights,” she said. “Aim them at the rock. We’ll want to do this quickly.”
Gideon grabbed the handles of the floodlights in the roof of the pilothouse and maneuvered them toward the vague outline, white with surf. The surf was so violent, the thunder of it shook the very air.
“Now.”
He threw the switches, and the bank of lights blazed into the darkness, brilliantly illuminating the cay. It was stupendous — a huge arch of black rock rising out of the water, lashed by surf, streaming white water. A long rocky shore extended along one side, about a quarter of a mile, raging with surf.
But it was the arch itself that transfixed Gideon. With each wave, the sea rushed through the hole in the arch, cramming in and boiling into a violent maelstrom — and then vomiting out the other side, leaving a long trail of white spume on the surface of the sea that trailed off in a straight line into the darkness.
Gideon grabbed the camera and began taking photos as the boat moved past, then switched it into video mode.
“That trail of sea foam,” said Amy. “It follows the current. And we’re supposed to follow it. I’m taking a bearing now — that’ll be our new heading.” She gunned the engine, the boat swinging around to slip past the cay…
Just as — suddenly, out of the darkness from behind the cay, churning at high speed — there came the Horizonte, its 50-caliber deck gun pointed directly at them.
29
At the helm of the Horizonte, Linda Cordray gripped the wheel with whitened knuckles. There they were — right where she wanted them. Her men would hold their fire, as she had instructed.
The ruse had worked perfectly. She had positioned the Horizonte in the lee of the cay, in a sheltered cove close enough to shore so their radar image would merge with that of the cay itself, causing them to look like just another rock.
As she stared at the Turquesa, now turning in an ineffectual attempt at escape, a white-hot rage lanced through her. In the cabin below, wrapped in a blood-soaked canvas, lay her husband’s lifeless body. He had bled to death, screaming and sobbing before lapsing into the final coma as they chased the Turquesa. Cordray told herself, yet again, that even had she headed straight to the nearest port, he never would have made it. Nothing she could have done would have saved him. She told herself that several times.
They’d shared a unique bond. Living outside the rules, two against the world. They were remarkably alike in their thirst for adventure, their loathing for the settled life. He was the velvet fist in her iron glove. They complemented each other perfectly. Ironically, the great physical difference between them just cemented the relationship.