Seaghost

by William H. Lovejoy

  The peanut butter sandwiches were slightly soggy and tasted of salt, but the coffee in the Thermos was almost hot. He sat in the U-shaped dinette booth to eat his breakfast.

  Looking through the tinted windows on the other side of the cabin, he could see stratocumulus clouds building up in the southwest. He might run into some weather — light squalls — in the late afternoon. Right now, the seas were calm, with one-foot swells running, and the SeaGhost took them smoothly.

  McCory thought the boat would also take to heavy weather gleefully. With her smooth topsides, wind and water would sluice right off her. She might even cut right through the tops of tall waves, playing submarine. He would have to calculate her weight and displacement. As far as he had determined, all of the flat surfaces — well, curved surfaces — were comprised of a fiberglass impregnated with a carbon compound for strength. There was almost no flex in the major panels. If the engineers had followed Devlin’s drawings, the keel, structural beams, and ribs would also be cast in carbon-filled plastic, with lots of angles and cutouts to foil radar returns.

  He thought she would be light for a boat her size. There was no armor plating of any kind. A direct hit by hostile fire in the twenty millimeter or larger calibers would be all it would take. But then, hostile fire would have to find her first. Computer-controlled guns, using radar data, would be useless against her.

  The interior fittings, in the cabin at least, were also of fiberglass and plastic, from cabinets to instrument panels. Two ceramic burners on the galley range. Even the sonar, radar, and CRT screens were plastic.

  The interior was navy spartan. The deck was covered in a light gray industrial carpeting — sound-insulating against sonar-seeking footfalls, and the bulkheads were painted a slightly darker gray. The chair and dinette cushions were upholstered in a heavy gray Naugahyde.

  It was comfortable though. Outside the tinted windows, a fierce sun was building up heat, reflecting hot off the water in the far distance, but inside, the air conditioning was doing its job.

  McCory slid out of the booth and walked forward to lean against the instrument panel bulkhead. Through the windscreen, the sea appeared to be a bright blue this morning, but the coloring of the foredeck blended right into it. He scanned the ocean but saw nothing. He was completely alone, a condition that never bothered him. In fact, it was a situation that he often sought for himself.

  The left CRT in the helmsman’s panel, set to rearview, also showed emptiness.

  If anything bothered him, it was being so fully enclosed. McCory had been on boats from the age of six months onward, but he was accustomed to sun and wind in his face. His face demonstrated the history — deep sea-tanned and weathered, with squint lines at his eyes and deepening crevices at the outside edges of his nose. His eyes were Devlin’s, sharp and clear and a radiant blue, but his mother had played a part in his coloring. Her darkness was in his skin tone and his hair — it was a dark auburn and cut short. He didn’t like maintaining elaborate styling.

  He went back to the stations behind the helmsman’s chair. Against the rear bulkhead on the starboard side was the communications console. It was complex and, as far as he could tell, state of the art. Running his finger down the stacks, he noted UHF, VHF, HF, FM, AM, low-power, marine, and ship-to-shore telephone sets. Scanners. A printer recessed in the left side of the desk surface suggested telex and cable capability. On the right side of the desktop, a panel slid back to reveal a computerlike keyboard. There were two scrambler interfaces and what looked to be an encryption device. If for nothing else, the Navy would be very excited about the loss of those top secret black boxes.

  McCory turned on the AM component and searched for a shore-based radio station transmitting news. When he found one out of Atlanta, he turned the volume down and left it broadcasting on an overhead speaker. He could select from a variety of speakers sited within bulkheads of the cabin, and there were a bunch of cushioned headsets lying around.

  Maybe he’d make the news.

  Next to the communications console, facing outboard below the window, was the commander’s station, primarily a chart table. There were drawers in a stack to the left, but they were locked. A shallow center drawer held some drawing instruments, pens, pencils, and now, two fragmentation grenades. On the right, under the table, were tubes for chart storage, and the only navigation chart aboard was for the Eastern Seaboard. There were also two shelves full of manuals. McCory pulled the manual for the radar and, as he did, found the boat’s log.

  He opened it, found a pen, and dutifully entered the beginning of this morning’s voyage. He signed off as “K. McCory, Captain.” He had only made lieutenant in the Navy, but he had captained a lot of boats.

  Then he scanned the radar manual. It was an operator’s manual, rather than a maintenance manual, and he was surprised by what he found. Carrying the book forward, he sat in the radar operator’s chair and experimented with the set.

  One of the drawbacks to radar in a battle or war setting was that, when it was actively seeking, it emitted radiation that could be detected by hostile forces. If a boat commander used his radar, he knew what was out there, but what was out there also knew where he was.

  This radar set had its own computer, and after a few tries with the keyboard mounted to the right of the screen, McCory had it programmed as explained in Chapter Eight of the manual. The range was set for thirty miles and at randomly selected intervals of time to avoid setting up a routine. Between twelve and seventeen minutes, the set would go active, make one 360-degree sweep, utilizing fore and aft antennae that were electronically synchronized, then return itself to an inactive state. If that single sweep picked up a blip, a low-toned alarm would buzz.

  Pleased with his discovery and his new-found computer programming ability, McCory checked on the autopilot, then dialed in a new heading of 190 degrees. He would begin to slowly close with the coast. He was going to enter his safe harbor way after night had fallen once again.

  He reset the air conditioning thermostat to a lower setting, entered the port-side bunk cabin, and sprawled out on the lower bunk. As always, he was asleep within a minute.

  *

  2303 hours, Glen Burnie, Maryland

  The eleven o’clock news caught Justin Malgard by surprise. He and Trish were in bed, but Trish was already in a near-coma. She believed beds were for sleeping or making love, not watching the late news.

  Malgard grabbed the remote control on the bedside stand and turned up the volume. When the piece was over, he turned the volume down and slipped out of bed.

  He slept in the nude, so he grabbed his robe from the chair beside the dresser and donned it as he went out into the hall. Jason’s bedroom was quiet as he went by it, but Patty, who was fifteen, had her stereo going, playing something that would have shattered eardrums if she had not been trying to sneak it past the ordained shut-off time. Malgard stopped, opened her door, and started to reinforce the house rule verbally. Patty, however, was already asleep, on her back with her mouth open and her blonde hair spread carefully over the pillow.

  Malgard went in and shut off the stereo, then closed the door and took the stairs down to his den.

  It was a nice den. Trish was not much of a decorator, and he had paid outrageous fees for a professional to design every room in the fifteen-room house. Patty and Jason did not understand the cost, of course, and it was a constant struggle to get them to maintain their rooms and the recreation room located in the basement.

  The den was his refuge. The deep-pile, rust carpet absorbed sound. The furnishings were finished in dark oak and brown leather. There was a full wall of bookcases housing leather-bound books ranging from classical literature to hard science. It always felt very academic, very intellectual, and very professional to Malgard. When he retired, Malgard intended to read every one of those English, French, and American authors.

  It was a while away, yet, because he was only forty-five years old.

  Malgard went around behind the d
esk 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

  0440 hours, Edgewater, Florida

  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.

  Making his way around timbers and braces, McCory reached the front of the building and found the switchbox. He turned on several overhead lights.

  It took a couple of minutes for his eyes to adjust to the radiance.

  It was a utilitarian structure. A twenty-foot wide dock head crossed the front of the building, supporting workbenches, heavy tools and a latrine stuck in one corner. Overhead, a steel-legged rack contained the winches that lifted canvas slings that went under a hull. Once a boat was elevated above water level, the side docks could be cranked out under it. Everything was old. Most planks had splintered, and some had large chunks broken out of them. Any moving surface requiring grease was coated with both grease and dirt. The casings, rods, drive shafts, and bolts of ancient machinery were tinged with rust. The tops of wooden beams and steel I-bars had once been layered with dust, but McCory had wa
shed it out before refinishing the Mimosa’s hull two months before.

  There wasn’t a pane of glass left intact in a window, and fortunately, McCory had simply boarded them over with plywood. It made the interior private.

  He went back to the side dock and rigged several spring lines to secure the boat, then walked out to the end and made sure the door was locked in its down position.

  Then he walked back to the front of the building and lifted the telephone from its wall mount. It was connected to the same number as the Marina Kathleen.

  He dialed.

  “Mmmpf?”

  “Good morning, Ginger.”

  “Mmmpf! You mmmpf!”

  “Me?”

  “Bastard!”

  “It’s 5:10 in the morning. Beautiful day. You should be getting up, anyway.”

  “Your memory is fading, Kevin. I don’t get up until noon,” she said, and hung up.

  He dialed again.

  She let it ring three times before picking up.

  “I need a ride, hon.”

  “Where are you?”

  “You know John Barley’s Refitters?”

  “That’s only five or six miles. Walk it.”

  “I don’t have any shoes.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “If I get out of this bed, you have to tell it to me.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  “Give me ten minutes. Oh, hell no! Give me twenty minutes.”

  *

  0650 hours, Dulles International Airport

  Rick Chambers smiled at the waitress, who was too tired to notice. She placed the coffee cup in front of him with a weary clatter and turned away, stifling a yawn.

  Chambers didn’t like being ignored, especially by women. He almost said something to her, then thought better of it.