Shoot First (A Stone Barrington Novel)

by Stuart Woods

  Cutting through the quarry fence, then using the crowbar on the shed’s hasp was simple enough, and Joe took half a dozen sticks of dynamite, some fuses and detonators, and they were back aboard the boat before midnight.

  Joe sat down and spread out the chart of Penobscot Bay. He tapped the chart. “That’s our target area,” he said.

  23

  The following day at noon, the yacht’s tender pulled up to Stone’s dock, and the three of them handed their things aboard, and the dogs scampered willingly into the launch.

  Ed Rawls’s gear included a long gun pouch. “I thought we might shoot some skeet,” he said to the crewman.

  “Of course, sir. We have all the equipment aboard, including the shotguns.”

  “Thanks, I prefer my own gun,” Ed said.

  They motored quickly out to where Breeze lay at anchor, her boarding steps lowered, and soon they were seated in the sunshine on the fantail, enjoying Bloody Marys.

  The anchor rattled up and was secured, as were the steps, and the yacht glided away from the harbor.

  * * *

  —

  DIRTY JOE CROSS stood in the cockpit of his chartered picnic boat and watched her depart through his binoculars. “Well, shit,” he said.

  “Surely we can keep up with something that size,” Jungle Jane said.

  “I guess that’s our only choice,” Joe said. “We have no idea how long they’ll be aboard.”

  “I hope they’re not doing a transatlantic,” Jane said.

  * * *

  —

  ONCE THEY were under way, the captain, Bret Todd, came aft. “Did you have a destination in mind for today?” he asked Stone.

  “It’s a calm day, why don’t we go out and have a look at Monhegan Island? Maybe we could anchor off for the night, if conditions allow.”

  “Certainly we can, if the seas remain calm. As I expect you know, there’s no sheltered mooring at Monhegan.”

  Stone nodded, and Bret went back to the bridge.

  “Where’s Monhegan Island?” Meg asked.

  “Pretty far out. We may not be able to go ashore, but we can get a look at it. It’s where Andrew Wyeth did many of his paintings.”

  Ed Rawls seemed more interested in other boats than Monhegan. He used binoculars to scan each one as he sighted them.

  “What are you looking for, Ed?” Meg asked.

  “Pirates,” Rawls replied.

  * * *

  —

  DIRTY JOE FELL in half a mile behind the yacht and set the autopilot to their heading.

  Jane handed him a sandwich and a beer. “How fast are we going?”

  “Twelve knots or so. I guess that’s cruising speed for them.”

  “Well, we’ve got a nice day for a hunt.”

  “Couldn’t be better. If the wind doesn’t come up, we might get a shot at them when they anchor for the night. You’d better make up our bunk, I guess.”

  * * *

  —

  “SO THIS FELLOW, Gino Bellini, doesn’t like doing his own shooting, huh?” Rawls asked Meg over cocktails, late in the day.

  “He doesn’t have that kind of guts,” Meg replied. “He prefers to do his damage at his computer keyboard.” She told him about the testing of the driverless cars that was about to start.

  “If you’re a passenger in one of those things, how do you tell it where you want to go?”

  “You press a button and speak to it,” Meg said, “or if you prefer, you can type your request on a rear-seat keyboard.”

  “What’s the range, before you have to plug in again?”

  “We’ve got it up to around three hundred miles, now, about what it would be for an engine-powered car. If you’re in town you’ll use less power, of course. The idea is more for commuting than long trips.”

  “How does it avoid collisions with other vehicles?”

  “With very precise radar. The car can change directions or stop faster than a human driver. Its reactions are just about instantaneous. You’ll never hit a pedestrian or a deer while being driven, and, of course, it has all the seat belt and airbag protection that any modern car does.”

  “What’s the top speed?”

  “Well, if you’re on the German autobahn, about a hundred and twenty mph. In the States, a hundred, and the car will automatically slow to the speed limit if it detects police radar within half a mile.”

  They were approaching Monhegan now, and Stone noticed that there was a small swell running in from the Atlantic.

  “We’ll anchor in the lee of the island,” Stone said, “and with the stabilizers running, we should be comfortable for the night.”

  * * *

  —

  JOE SLOWED DOWN. “They’re headed for Monhegan Island,” he said to Jane, pointing ahead. “I expect they’ll anchor for the night.”

  “What will we do?”

  “We don’t want to anchor in this swell, we might get dumped out of bed in the night, and we can’t get too close to them. We’ll run down to the next island and find some shelter there.”

  * * *

  —

  STONE TOOK MEG up forward for a look at the bridge. “It’s getting hazy,” he said, and noted that Bret had the radar on.

  “We might be in for some fog as the day cools,” Bret said.

  “Do we have any problem with anchoring if we’re fogged in?” Stone asked.

  “Not really. We can set a radar alarm to go off if another boat gets too near us. That turns on the foghorn and warns them off.” He slowed the yacht and made ready for anchoring. The sea was a little flatter in the lee of the island. “There’s been a boat showing in our wake on radar,” Bret said, pointing at the screen. As he did so, the other boat made a turn to the left. “He’s a lot smaller than we are. He might be looking for shelter on another island.”

  “How long was he following us?” Stone asked.

  “I first noticed him a few minutes out of Dark Harbor. He could just be letting us do his navigating for him.”

  Stone stepped off the bridge and onto the port deck and scanned the horizon. The haze was getting worse, and he could see nothing.

  Stone and Meg went to dress for dinner, and when they came up there was no more than a hundred yards of visibility. They lit a fire in the saloon and closed the doors to keep out the fog.

  “I didn’t get much of a view of Monhegan Island,” Meg said.

  “Maybe it will be better in the morning,” Stone said, but he hoped not. He didn’t like the news of a following boat, and the lack of visibility was to their advantage.

  They had a drink, then were called to dinner.

  24

  Stone was nearly lifted out of his berth by Breeze’s foghorn.

  Meg sat up in bed. “What the hell was that?” she asked.

  “Our foghorn going off,” he replied.

  “I thought a boat only used a foghorn if under way,” she said.

  “Normally, but our radar has an alarm that blows the foghorn if another vessel gets too close to us in the fog.”

  “How close is too close?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Stone was pulling his pants on and looking for his deck shoes. Pulling on a polo shirt, he trotted up the companionway, then walked forward to the bridge. The fog was thick and heavy, with almost no visibility, and the sea was calm. Captain Bret was already there.

  “Good morning,” Stone said. “How close is he?”

  “A quarter of a mile and closing,” Bret replied, gazing at the blip on his screen, the only one moving. “He has radar, too,” he said. “He’s avoided a couple of anchored boats to the west. I’ve turned off the stabilizers. The swell died during the night.”

  Stone looked at the blip; it was still closing from astern. He left the bridge and walked to the fantail, where he found
Ed Rawls on his knees on the built-in seat, looking astern. He was clutching an extraordinary rifle with a fat silencer screwed into the barrel, a big scope on top, and a banana clip that Stone reckoned held thirty rounds. “See anything, Ed?”

  “My hand before my face,” Rawls replied, “but only barely.”

  Stone could hear engines now. “Radar shows he’s closing.”

  “I don’t need radar to get that,” Rawls replied. “I’ve got ears.”

  “It doesn’t sound very big,” Stone said.

  “No, and it’s too quiet for a lobster boat.”

  Suddenly, the engine noise stopped.

  Stone peered into the fog. “I still can’t see him.”

  “Well, that means he can’t see us, either. Thank God for small favors.”

  Stone heard a metallic click from the fog. “What was that?”

  Ed took hold of the banana clip on his weapon, released and extracted it, then slammed it home again. “That answer your question?”

  “I guess it does,” Stone replied.

  “You should either take a seat or get down on the deck,” Rawls said.

  Meg walked up behind Stone, startling him. “What’s going on?”

  Stone got down on one knee and pulled her down beside him. “There’s another boat out there, nearby.”

  “I can’t see a thing,” Meg said.

  “Be quiet and listen,” Stone whispered.

  There was nothing for a full minute, then the engine noise came up again and, gradually, seemed to fade a little. “Is he leaving?” Stone asked Rawls.

  “He is. I think he must have heard our response,” Rawls said.

  The departing engines made more power, and the boat seemed to be moving away.

  “I expect he’s got radar that allows him to move around in this fog,” Rawls said. “That, or he’s just nuts. I expect there are other boats anchored out there.”

  “Not in that direction,” Stone said, “from what I saw on our radar.”

  Bret joined them at the fantail, and Stone and Meg got to their feet.

  “He’s left us,” Bret said.

  “How close did he get on the radar?” Stone asked.

  “Thirty meters.”

  Rawls unscrewed the silencer and returned the rifle to its scabbard. “That’s close enough,” he said. “The fog was on our side.”

  “Are you expecting an assault?” Bret asked.

  “It’s a possibility,” Stone replied. “We came up here to get rid of somebody who took a shot at us a few days ago, in Florida.”

  “All we’ve got aboard is two shotguns for skeet, but I do have some buckshot, if it’s needed,” Bret said. “And I’ve got a nine-millimeter handgun in my cabin, but I think Mr. Rawls is better armed for the occasion.”

  “It would seem so,” Stone said. “Anybody hungry?”

  “Everybody, I expect,” Rawls said.

  “The cook’s at work on breakfast,” Bret replied. “I think we’d better serve it at anchor, and wait for the sun to get a bit higher and burn off some of this fog before we weigh anchor.”

  “Agreed,” Stone said.

  * * *

  —

  A MILE or so away, Joe cut the engines to idle and set the Jetstick to “Hover.” “There, that will keep us pretty much in the same spot,” he said.

  “What about current?”

  “The GPS will communicate that to the boat’s computer and it will be taken into account.”

  “How close did we get to them?”

  “Fifty, sixty yards, maybe. If the fog had been a little less thick, we might have gotten a shot off.”

  “She’s probably still in her bunk,” Jane said.

  “I heard a couple of male voices, once, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I heard somebody ram a magazine home, though, so I can’t say they weren’t expecting us.”

  “That’s bad news,” Jane said. “What do you want to do?”

  “They’re just on the edge of my radar screen,” Joe said. “We’ll wait here for them to make a move, then we’ll follow very, very discreetly.”

  “If we can see them on radar, then they can see us,” Jane pointed out.

  “Yeah, but when the fog lifts they’ll be easy to find, given their size, which is something over a hundred feet. We’ll be harder to pick out among the pleasure boats and lobstermen. How many days’ food do we have aboard?”

  “Three, unless you want to go on a diet.”

  “If they go a lot farther afield, we’d be better off to reprovision somewhere, then just pick up a mooring at Dark Harbor and wait for them to come back.”

  “Agreed,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER BREAKFAST STONE sat down to read the Times online and wait for the fog to clear. Meg came and sat down beside him.

  “What’s our plan?” she asked.

  “Wait for the fog to lift, then continue our cruise,” Stone replied.

  “Won’t they follow us?”

  “Maybe, but they know we’re armed now, so they’ll be cautious. They might even drop the chase.”

  “I hope so,” Meg said.

  “We can hope.”

  25

  By lunchtime the fog had been reduced to a haze, and they had, maybe, a mile of visibility. Rawls resumed his position on the fantail and unsheathed his weapon again, this time affixing a small tripod under its barrel.

  A steward brought him a Bloody Mary, but he declined it. “I love ’em, but they don’t improve my accuracy,” he said.

  “Do you shoot a lot?” Stone asked.

  “I’ve built an indoor range in what used to be a swimming pool on my property, which is good for handguns, and I bulldozed myself a big berm in the woods that gives me up to two hundred yards of clear shooting with the rifle. With the silencer, I don’t disturb the neighbors. I’ve shot a few moving targets, deer that have wandered onto my range, and I’ve distributed the meat to my neighbors, and that helps keep them calm. As I recall, you have a handgun range in your basement in New York.”

  “True, but I haven’t fired a rifle for a long time, and I’m not sure what I could hit with it.”

  “Firing a rifle accurately is pretty much having the time and patience to sight properly—and especially with a telescopic sight, it’s easier than a handgun.”

  “What is this firearm you’ve got here?” Stone asked.

  “A few dozen were made for the Agency a while back, and I managed to ‘lose’ this one on an operation. It’s sort of a combination sniper/assault weapon. A guy named Teddy Fay, who worked in Tech Support, designed it and built the prototype. As I recall, you knew him.”

  “A little,” Stone said.

  “The combination of extreme accuracy and the ability to go full automatic make it possible for a man to hold off an assault by, say, a platoon, if he has enough ammo. It has a nice feature I hadn’t seen before—you can set it to fire two rounds with one trigger pull. I think it increases the chances of getting a hit on a target, especially one that’s moving.”

  “I’ll go check the radar,” Stone said. He went forward to the bridge and found Captain Bret making 12 knots again. Stone checked the radar. “Any sign of our pursuer?”

  “He seems to be in and out of the picture, or it could just be more than one boat back there. It’s hard to know if we’re being followed. Stone, I hope it doesn’t get to be necessary to kill somebody. The state cops would be all over us for a week, and your cruise would be over.”

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that, Bret, but we’re not going to set ourselves up as targets. And having spent a lot of years as a cop, I know how to deal with them.”

  “I’ll leave it to your judgment, then,” Bret said.

  They dropped the hook off a small island for lunc
h, then Captain Bret came to ask where they wanted to go next.

  “I think we’ll go home,” Stone said. “There’s no point in continuing if we’ve got somebody in our wake, ready to take a shot at us. The situation doesn’t lend any pleasure to cruising.”

  “Right,” Bret said, “and I take your point. We’ll have you back on your dock by, say, six o’clock this evening.”

  “That sounds good,” Stone said.

  * * *

  —

  JOE TOOK another look through his binoculars at Breeze. “They’ve weighed anchor and are headed back in the general direction of Islesboro,” he said to Jane.

  “Then why don’t we use our speed advantage to get back there and be waiting for them?” Jane asked.

  “I think that’s the thing to do. They obviously know we’re trailing them, and they know we’re armed. As you say, just one clear shot is all we need.” He turned the boat and shoved the throttles forward. Soon they were making 32 knots.

  * * *

  —

  STONE AND MEG went below for a nap after lunch but didn’t get much sleeping done.

  “I don’t remember the last time I made love in the afternoon,” Meg said.

  “Well, if we can keep you from working too hard, we can do more of this.”

  She pulled him on top of her. “Let’s start now,” she said.

  * * *

  —

  BY HALF PAST FIVE they were approaching Dark Harbor, and they dropped anchor on one side of the approach to get the tender in the water. Stone gave their bags to a crewman and went up on deck. To his surprise, Ed Rawls was still on the fantail, his weapon at the ready.

  “We’re about home now,” Stone said.

  “Right now is our most vulnerable time,” Ed replied. “We’re dead in the water, and there’s no fog to protect us. I can see four Hinckleys from here, any one of which could be the one shadowing us. They could just be lying in wait, ready for a clear shot. I think it would be a good idea if you got Meg into a jacket with the hood up. Her blond hair would be too easy to spot.”