That Way Lies Madness: A Florida Action Adventure Novel (Scott Jarvis Private Investigator Book 8)

by Scott Cook

  “Yeah, I saw it,” He said, coming back on deck with one of his night vision monoculars. “Not sure what that was… might be somebody shot off a firework or something…”

  “I see smoke!” I said, pointing.

  “Yeah… me too…” He said absently as he adjusted the device. “Take her off auto and steer for it. Give me twenty-five hundred RPM.”

  “What do you see?” I asked as I did as instructed. The boat was already at a little over two thousand. The increased fuel bumped our speed up to seven knots.

  “There’s a boat out there,” he reported. “Looks like a trawler or cruiser or something… about four miles off. I think… I think she’s on fire.”

  Oh balls… I thought. Here we go again…

  Chapter 14

  There’s nothing more maddening than waiting for action to start. When you know that you’re going to have to take a risk or engage an enemy or whatever… and yet there’s a considerable time between making your decision and acting on it. It’s a frustrating period of time in which all you can do is prepare and worry.

  It took us twenty-five minutes to reach the burning vessel. In that time, I got on the radio and reported it to the Coast Guard. They said they’d get a bird in the air and a rescue vessel underway. However, even approaching the boat at about eight terrestrial miles per hour, I knew we’d cover the distance before they’d arrive.

  As we drew closer, I saw that the boat was indeed a trawler. A trawler is a slow-moving power boat that usually has a fairly low freeboard and a railed deck that encircles the super structure. This structure rises sharply from the deck and contains the main saloon and galley and has a flying bridge and lounging area on top. They’re sort of the powered version of a sailboat, in a way. Cruising at seven or eight knots but being fairly fuel efficient.

  This one was well over forty feet long and her after deck was already awash before we even got close. There were flames rising from the stern of the upper cabin, but the bow and forward end of the deckhouse seemed free of fire. Probably the flames would be extinguished soon once the stern slipped further below the waves.

  “Anybody on deck?” Lisa shouted to me.

  I stood against the mast, scanning the wreck with my monocular. I turned back to her, “No… no movement at all.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  I shrugged, “I hope that I just can’t see anybody. It could mean people are dead or injured below. There’s only one way I can be sure.”

  Lisa was silent but I could see the frown on her face. I wasn’t happy about it, either. Intentionally going aboard a burning vessel or getting near a burning vehicle was not comforting. If the fuel hadn’t ignited already, then it could at any time once the flames reached it.

  In this case, though, there were two things that reduced the risk of explosion in my mind. First, the trawler was almost certainly diesel powered. Diesel fuel was much less volatile than gasoline and less likely to explode, even if it did ignite. It would burn, for sure, but the spectacular flash over you got from gas didn’t usually occur.

  Usually…

  Second, the boat’s fuel would be stored in tanks below the waterline and probably aft. From the angle of the boat as she slowly sank, those tanks were probably already submerged.

  There was a third consideration, too. There had already been an explosion. So that meant that the fuel may have already been burning. The flames I could see weren’t very large, so there was at least hope. Which meant I had to try.

  “Starboard bow to starboard bow,” I instructed Lisa. “I’ll go aboard forward and make my way aft.”

  “You want me to come?”

  “Repeatedly!”

  She laughed, “Dammit, Scott, be serious!”

  “I am,” I said with a smile. “We should deal with this boat first, though… Okay, after you drop me off, back away and standoff fifty feet or so, just in case. I’ll call you back when I need you.”

  I ducked down below and unhooked two of my own fire extinguishers. They were small, but they’d have to do. I then ran up to the foredeck and pulled a fifty foot length of half-inch triple twist nylon line from the anchor locker. You never know when you might need a good rope.

  “Hello the boat!” I hollered and then alternately: “the boat ahoy!”

  No response.

  I tucked the extinguishers under my right arm, gripped the coil of line in my right hand and swung my legs over Slip’N’Out’s lifelines. I was standing on the starboard chain plate gripping the rolled up jib with my left hand.

  “Nice and easy!” I called back to Lisa.

  She turned us and came in slowly, nosing our boat up to the derelict’s bow just aft of the bow pulpit. I grabbed the varnished teak rail and leapt up and over and landed solidly on the teak decking.

  I heard my boat’s engine rev and saw that Lisa was backing off, her stern swinging to port and away. I took a step and tried to open the hatch that led into the v-berth but it was dogged tight from below.

  I made my way aft on the sloping deck, looping the rope around one shoulder and pulled the pin on one of my extinguishers. As I drew near the flames, I aimed the nozzle toward the deck and squeezed. It only took a few seconds for the small cylinder to empty itself. Some of the fire had gone out, but not enough to get me to the aft-facing saloon door. Also, part of the upper deck overhang was still burning above me.

  I dropped the cylinder and repeated the process with the second one. Again, I made progress but not enough. I could probably wait, but it felt to me that I could sense the boat slipping below the surface. If I waited for the water to put out the fire, I might lose whoever could still be alive inside.

  I walked forward and stopped by one of the large windows near the forward end of the cabin. I took the extinguisher in both hands by the nozzle end and swung it hard against the port. The window was made of Plexiglas and it took several hard blows for it to crack. Once it did, though, I was able to bash the window open and clear the shards of plastic away fairly easily. The big port was about three feet long and tall and opened right onto the inside steering station.

  Even as I dropped the cylinder to the deck, I could smell the acrid scent of burning fabric, plastic and wood and even the bitter tinge of melting fiberglass. I removed my shirt and wrapped it around my face, leaving my eyes exposed and tied it behind my head.

  “Finally got me to wear a mask…” I mumbled as I climbed inside.

  There was a man lying on the deck in the saloon. He lay face up, the front of his body peppered with debris that had lodged there, impelled by the force of the explosion. Even if he hadn’t been laying in a puddle of blood, I would’ve known he was dead instantly. There was little left of his face, but what there was I didn’t recognize.

  I turned away from this grisly sightand made my way down the companion to the lower staterooms forward. The smoke was heavy but less so than aft. I quickly did an inspection of the v-berth and the starboard cabin and the head. Nobody there. When I looked into the portside stateroom, though, I found the remaining occupants of the vessel.

  A man and woman lay in a jumbled heap on a large bed. Both were naked and both were unconscious. Based on the way they lay, I had to guess that they’d been enjoying one another’s company in a very intimate way when the explosion rocked the boat violently and both lovers had been flung hard enough to hit their heads on something and pass out.

  The man lay half on top of the woman, his face buried in the sheets. There was an evident gash on the back of his head that was oozing blood. I touched my index and middle finger to his neck and felt a pulse. I rolled him off the woman.

  It was Greg Foster!

  The woman lay splay-legged on her back, her long brown hair covering her face. Even as I did a quick visual inspection of her body, I couldn’t help but be impressed. She was tall, athletic and very well shaped. Her breasts were large and full and her limbs toned. For some odd reason, she seemed familiar.

  Like Foster, her hair too was mat
ted with blood. I pushed her hair out of her face and touched her throat. Again there was a steady pulse. I gingerly inspected the wound on her head and it seemed superficial, at least in the sense that there was no skull damage. However, both had received a blow hard enough to render them unconscious.

  I looked into her face. The woman was gorgeous. Finely shaped brows, a pert nose, high cheekbones and a flawless complexion. Then I did recognize her.

  “Cynthia…” I muttered.

  In January of the previous year, right at the time I’d first met Lisa, I’d been working on three cases simultaneously. One was Lisa’s, one a local grocery store and the final was for an Orlando billionaire named Jonathan Bartlett. Bartlett’s wife, in conjunction with several others, had contrived to steal a private journal from Bartlett. I’d managed to unravel the very complex puzzle and the last I had seen or heard from any of them was in a rookie private detective’s office where I’d explained the case to all involved in something of a classic Agatha Christie sort of ending.

  Cynthia was about thirty-six and highly over-sexed. She played around a bit on her husband. She had tried it on me, in fact, but I wouldn’t bite. Now here she was, lying naked beneath Orlando’s most successful private investigator. Will the world ever stop shrinking?

  I put those thoughts aside and began to wonder how to get them out. The smoke down here wasn’t bad, but too much longer and they’d die from smoke inhalation if they didn’t drown. I could already hear water gurgling just aft of me under the deck.

  I pulled several pillow cases off the scattered pillows and tied these around the two lovers’ heads to quell the bleeding. Then I slapped them both, trying to revive them.

  “Greg!” I shouted. “Cynthia!”

  Nothing.

  Cynthia wouldn’t be that much of a problem. She was about five-foot eight or nine and weighed maybe a hundred and thirty pounds. Foster, on the other hand, was six feet or so and close to two-hundred.

  The boat shifted, as if struck from below by a giant’s hand. That was a bad sign. I had to move and do what I could as quickly as I could. I pulled Cynthia up by her arm and heaved her over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry. I was too focused and too worried about moving fast enough to consider the oddity of the situation.

  I made it up into the saloon and saw that water was already halfway up to the galley. The flames astern had gone out, which was a blessing. A back handed one, though, as this meant that the stern was now several feet underwater and sinking quickly. I made my way past the now floating body and found that I could get through the open saloon door. This was fortunate because I didn’t know how I was going to get Cynthia through the window I’d broken.

  The water was over my waist by the time I got through the sliding door. It was slow going, as the water and the sloping deck beneath my feet were making progress not just laborious but precarious.

  I used my left hand to grab the doorframe and heave my way around the outside starboard aft corner of the super structure. I could then grab onto the rail with my right hand to help propel me back up the deck toward the bow. Lisa was hovering just to starboard, the sailboat’s running lights and mast-mounted spotlight glowing in the darkness.

  “Come on over!” I called to Lisa.

  The boat moved slowly over and I opened the entry port in the trawler’s starboard railing. Lisa came to rest with the portside of my boat touching close to where I was standing.

  “What the hell?” She asked indignantly. “Is that a naked woman?”

  “Hey… she came onto me, what was I s’posed to do?” I said, grabbing one of the portside shrouds and heaving myself and my burden onto Slip’N’Out’s side deck. I went aft and down into the cockpit where I laid Cynthia out on the portside bench.

  “Wow,” Lisa said. “You certainly have high standards. What the hell??”

  “Later,” I said. “Her dance partner is still down below. It’s Foster. I don’t know how the Christ I’m gonna get him up here. I can carry him, but…”

  “You want me to wait here?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah… and put a towel or something over her.”

  “Is he naked too?”

  I chuffed, “Yeah, they were… in flagrante delicto when the bomb went off.”

  Lisa grinned at me and even in the darkness, lit only by faint starlight and a rising moon could I see it.

  “Does this qualify as a threesome?” She chuckled.

  “Oh, har-dee-har-har,” I grumbled as I swung back over onto the trawler. “Maybe you’d like to change places with me.”

  “Nah,” Lisa gybed. “I don’t want to get all sticky.”

  “Jesus…” I groaned and chuckled. Lisa’s laughter followed me back through the broken window and I was grateful for it.

  When I got down into the stateroom again, Foster had shifted position. I thought I saw him move in the near total darkness.

  “Foster!” I said loudly. “Greg, can you hear me?”

  He mumbled something unintelligible. That was a good sign, anyway. Having no choice at the moment, though, I pulled him to a sitting position. Knelt beside the bunk and hauled his solid mass onto my shoulders.

  Foster was around fifty or so. He’d been in the military when he was younger and like so many veterans, he’d kept up with his physical training. He had a solid body with little body fat. This made him lean for his size but also heavier than he looked.

  I struggled up the leaning companion step by step. Even as I did, water began pouring over the lip and down the stairs. By the time I made it into the saloon, the water was up to my knees even at the steering station. The saloon door was almost underwater and I could feel the boat tilting downward right under my feet.

  She was going to sink and take us with her. Not a pleasant scenario, yet I took comfort from the fact that even if she took us all the way down, the bottom here was only about twenty-five feet deep.

  “Fruuumph…” Foster muttered.

  “‘Oh, this is just fuckin’ dandy…” I cranked.

  The only way out was either to swim out the open door or go through the port that I’d broken out. Even as I took a second to ponder my best course, the trawler began to list to port and list rapidly. Within a few seconds, the broken window which had been beside me was tilting up over my head.

  I grabbed the wheel in my left hand and held on for dear life. There was only one thing I could do now, and I had to wait until the boat actually sank in order to pull it off.

  “Scott!” I heard Lisa shout from not far away. “She’s going down!”

  Yeah, no shit Dick Tracey, I wanted to shout… but I didn’t. I was too busy taking several deep breaths. The warm summer water rose up to my chest and I let Foster down off my shoulders. I put my right shoulder under his left arm and waited. This would be a good trick. If I could pull it off…

  “Foster!” I shouted, shaking him. “Wake the Christ up”

  “Wha…” He muttered. “Who…”

  “It’s Jarvis,” I said as water rose up to our necks. “We’re about to go under, hold your damned breath!”

  Foster floated against me, not seeming to respond. Not much I could do now. The boat gave a lurch and suddenly we were beneath the surface. I still had my hand on the wheel and my foot braced against something. I used my other hand to propel Foster’s body upward and out through the broken window. As his ass passed close by my face, I gripped his legs with both hands and pushed again, kicking off the helm and pilot’s chair and guiding us out through the smashed out port.

  I broke the surface and for a brief but terrifying moment, I’d lost contact with my charge. I flailed wildly in the darkness, almost panicked that I’d lost him and he was even then sinking to his death.

  It only lasted a second, though. My hand found bare skin and I grabbed an arm and pulled it toward me. I tilted partly onto my back and heaved Foster onto my chest, my right arm under his right armpit and around his chest. I then began to spin in a circle, looking for my sailboat.
r />   “Hey!” Lisa shouted from only twenty feet away. “How you doing?”

  “Oh, just delightful,” I said. “You should join us, the water is fab.”

  “Scott…” Foster said a little more clearly. “Where… wheres…”

  “She’s aboard my boat,” I said. “Can you swim?”

  “Don’t… know…”

  Fudge.

  “Lisa, listen,” I said as I half back-stroked toward her. “I don’t think he can get himself up the ladder and I sure as hell can’t carry him up all slippery.”

  “Plus the dink is in the way,” She pointed out.

  “Plus the dink is in the way,” I said wearily. “So here’s what I need you to do. Rouse out a length of dock line from below the helm seat. Tie a good sized bowline in it, large enough to go around a man’s chest, ya’ hear me now?”

  “I got it,” She said, lifting the lid to the locker under the helm seat.

  “Okay…” I continued as I made my way around the stern to the starboard side, “tie another smaller bowline in the other end and clip the halyard to this.”

  “We’re gonna crank him up?” She asked as she released the clutch on the halyard and went and unclipped it from the starboard chain plate. She then clipped the snap swivel on the halyard to her prepared line.

  “Right… a punky Reggae party…” I mused wryly.

  “Can’t climb,” Foster said softly, starting to move now.

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “All you have to do is hang on to this.”

  Lisa dropped the line over and I had her ease a little more of the halyard out. With this slack, I was able to slide the loop over Foster’s legs and up until it was beneath both his armpits.

  “It’d be more comfortable under your butt, like a boatswain’s chair,” I commented, “but this’ll have to do. Just clap on with both hands above the knot and if you can, brace yourself off the hull with your feet. Think you can do it?”

  Foster nodded. He seemed to be getting his strength back a bit, “I think so. My legs and arms feel like wet spaghetti, though.”