A Blast to Sail - A Connie Barrera Thriller: The 3rd Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series (Connie Barrera Thrillers)

by Charles Dougherty

  "So what about this Patuxent Naval Air Station? Where do we go?" Connie asked.

  "If you look on your charts, you'll see a marked channel that leads into a basin that's marked 'prohibited area,' okay?"

  "I remember that from last night," Connie said.

  "Good. That's where you're going. Just head for the channel; you'll be met. They're expecting you. Give me a call once you're settled, if you haven't heard from me before. I'll keep you posted on our friend in Oxford."

  Rashid was angry; he vented his emotion through the throttle of the motorcycle as he raced back toward the Bay Bridge and Annapolis. He had sent Boutros a text almost an hour ago and had no response. He was frustrated, but he had no alternative except to try to position himself to cover either side of the Chesapeake Bay. He couldn't track the yacht and ride at the same time; he needed Internet access.

  Racing west on Route 50 in the morning traffic, he spotted a place in a strip shopping center that advertised Wi-Fi and breakfast 24 hours a day. He glanced at his wristwatch and decided to pull over; he needed something to eat, anyway. After he parked the bike and dismounted, he opened the pannier, took out his backpack, and went inside. There were two rough-looking, sunburned men sitting on barstools at a counter, hunched over the remains of their breakfasts. They were having a passionate conversation about something called "arsters," that were apparently difficult to get these days.

  One of them glanced at Rashid and turned back to his coffee without pausing. "It's them shitheads over to Washin'ton what done it," he said.

  "Yup," his partner agreed. "Arsters was ever'whar until them assholes decided to perteck 'em. Communisses, that's what they are."

  Except for those two, the place was empty. Rashid took a booth in the back corner and pulled out his laptop, setting it on the table. He would check on the yacht before he tried Boutros again. While he was waiting for the computer to boot up, a frazzled, bleary-eyed woman came from the kitchen and picked up a pot of coffee that was on a hotplate behind the counter. Rashid could smell the sour odor even from a distance as she sloshed the burned liquid into the cups in front of the two men.

  "How's come y'all ain't out catchin' crabs, Leroy?" she asked.

  "Damn near ain't none this year," one of the men said.

  "Near 'bout as bad as the arsters, Sybil," his friend said.

  She made a sound that was midway between a grunt and a groan and brought the coffee over to Rashid's booth. "Mornin', sugar," she said, flipping one of the chipped mugs that was inverted on the table to an upright position and filling it with the foul-smelling brew.

  "Yes, please," Rashid said.

  "Yes, please, what, sugar?"

  "Right," Rashid said, thinking lots of sugar would be necessary for coffee that smelled so bad.

  "Right, what?"

  "Sugar," he said, looking up, puzzled.

  "Ye ain't from 'round here, are ye?" she asked.

  "Just passing through. Why?"

  She looked at him for a minute. "I call ever' body sugar. Don't mean nothin'. But you thought I was axin' did you want sugar in yer coffee, didn't ye?"

  "Right. Sorry."

  "No problem, hon. Sugar's on the table. Getcha somethin' t'eat?"

  "Scrambled eggs and toast, please."

  "Comin' right up, sugar." She scribbled a note on her pad and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Rashid navigated to the tracking website and logged in. As he had feared, the yacht was still on a southerly course. They appeared to be closer to the west side of the Chesapeake, but there were many places they could be going. For all he knew, they might be sailing, blown off course. He'd have to wait until they committed themselves. He felt the cellphone in his pocket vibrate; he had a text message. He shut down the computer and worked his phone out of his pocket. Before he was able to check his inbox, the waitress returned with his breakfast.

  "Thar ye go, sugar. Getcha anything else fer now?"

  "No, thanks."

  "Jes' holler if ye change yer mind," she said, going back behind the counter to chat with the two men. They had moved on from 'arsters' to discussing the other things the 'assholes in Washin'ton' were doing wrong.

  Rashid checked his phone, seeing that Boutros had acknowledged his message. "Sorry for delay. Phone battery dead. Ready now." He shook his head and put the phone down on the table, picking up his fork. The eggs were good; he was surprised. As he ate, he studied the map that was printed on the disposable placemat.

  It didn't provide a lot of detail, focusing on tourist attractions. There were small advertisements printed around the edge that were keyed to locations on the map. The lack of detail drew his attention to Solomons Island on the western shore, a few miles upstream from the mouth of the Patuxent River. Given that the man and woman seemed to be sightseeing, Solomons Island was a strong possibility for their next stop. If they were sticking to short, four-hour sails, it was about the right distance, too. Now that Boutros was available, he could send him to Solomons Island. He would wait in Annapolis until the yacht committed to a destination. From there, he would have good access to any of the likely stops, in case they didn't go to Solomons Island. Satisfied, he picked up the phone and sent a four-word text to Boutros. "Go to Solomons Island."

  In less than a minute, his phone vibrated. He verified that Boutros had agreed, and decided he wasn't comfortable in this place. There weren't enough people around, and the waitress was too curious. Reading the menu on the billboard behind the counter, he estimated his tab at five or six dollars. He slipped a ten-dollar bill under the edge of his plate, caught the waitress's eye, and pointed at it. She nodded her understanding and continued chatting with the two men at the counter, giving Rashid a careless wave as he walked out the door.

  22

  Paul and Connie sat in the cockpit as Diamantista II swung to her anchor near the fish traps along the Patuxent River's south shore. They were a few hundred yards from the entrance to the restricted area; they had spent the afternoon in the West Patuxent Basin, part of the Naval Air Station, while a crew of people in civilian attire had swarmed over the boat. No one was surprised when they located the tracking device attached to the forward side of the main mast, right at the top. It was a commercial product, one of several marketed to boaters who wanted their friends and family to be able to keep up with their whereabouts. It had been painted to match the mast, and was invisible from deck level, even with good binoculars.

  They had been invited to stay for the night at the dock where the search had been conducted, but Connie and Paul had both wanted to get back out into more open water. There was no breeze in the basin, and even before dusk, mosquitos were annoying them. When they left, it was late enough so that they would have had to anchor in the dark by the time they worked their way into the harbor at Solomons Island, so they dropped their anchor a few hundred yards out into the river. There was a little breeze, and they were far enough from shore not to attract the mosquitos.

  "I'm still not sure about this," Connie said.

  "Which part?" Paul asked.

  "Leaving the tracker aboard. I understand that ditching it would have alerted whoever put it there, but ... "

  "Yeah, I understand that," Paul said, "but O'Brien's right. If we ditch it, whoever it is will know they've been found out and disappear."

  "That's my point; I'd like for them to disappear. Being followed is driving me nuts. Why are they doing this?"

  "If we scare them off, we'll never know. That's O'Brien's whole point."

  "I can see that, but I still don't like being watched, Paul."

  "By tomorrow evening, they'll have an undercover DHS detail in place to keep an eye on us."

  "I don't like being watched by them, either. This whole thing is creepy."

  "It shouldn't be a lot longer. Once they figure out where all the players are, they'll arrest them, and it'll be over. Then we can get back to business. It'll be nice to have this wrapped up before we pick up our guests."

  "B
ut they could have put the tracker on a different boat, or something, while they round up whoever this is."

  "Wouldn't have worked, if the guy we saw in St. Michaels and Oxford is one of them. They know the boat by sight."

  "I can't believe they didn't get him, either. That doesn't make me confident about these DHS people."

  Paul shrugged. "The fact that he skipped out so early makes it look like he's part of it. If he was an innocent tourist, why would he have left as early as we did?"

  "Especially since the motorcycle was gone, too," Connie said. "He has to be the one, doesn't he?"

  "Odds are," Paul said, glad that she was on a different path now. "But there was no Gabriel Ferraras staying there, and that's the bike's registered owner, remember. The people at the inn said the sketch from the boatyard guys could have been the man who was staying there, but they weren't positive. And they didn't have any license plate number or vehicle description. The manager said they didn't worry about people parking in the lot; they've got plenty of room. She couldn't say if the motorcycle belonged to a guest or not, remember?"

  "Okay, Mr. Paranoid. Are you suddenly cured, or what? Where's your suspicious nature now?"

  "I'm still suspicious, but I work at keeping suspicion and fact separated. He's probably the guy, and it's probably his motorcycle, but we don't have proof."

  Connie nodded. She took a deep breath and let it out as she focused on their surroundings. It was almost sunset, and the shoreline off their starboard side was bathed in golden light. "Look," she said, in a soft tone. She pointed to a great blue heron wading in the shallows, stalking his supper.

  Paul shifted to sit next to her and put an arm around her shoulders as they watched the four-foot-tall predator freeze, head to one side. There was a flicker of movement, and the bird pointed its spear-like beak to the sky, a wriggling fish several inches long held securely. The bird's head whipped from side to side a few times, and then he tipped it back again, flipping the fish and positioning it head-down in his gullet. They watched the bulge in the impossibly slender neck as the heron worked the fish down his throat.

  "They look so gangly and awkward until you see one do that," Connie said. "Then they're as graceful as a ballerina. He was so fast I never even saw him snatch that fish from the water."

  Paul nodded. "Like a lightning strike."

  They sat, admiring the changing colors as the sunlight faded.

  "Should I fix supper?" Paul asked, after a minute or two. "What sounds good?"

  "Would you give me a hard time if I wanted peanut butter and jelly?"

  "Never. You cooking? Or am I?"

  "Silly man. You're a fine chef, but you know nothing of the art that goes into a gourmet peanut butter sandwich."

  "I thought you said it was jam that made it a gourmet version," Paul said. "I can do jam."

  "On, there's more to it than that. Come on below with me, and I'll show you one more time."

  Rashid and Boutros were sitting at a window table in a seafood restaurant that looked out over the Solomons Island harbor. Boutros had arrived in the town several hours before Rashid. He had scouted the area, learning that there were several spots where visiting yachts anchored. There was no one place that afforded a view of them all, but he had found that several of the restaurants along this stretch of shoreline offered an unobstructed view of the entrance from the Patuxent River. Having failed to find the yacht and not knowing how to track it, he had picked a waterfront bench near this restaurant and kept watch until Rashid arrived.

  Rashid had waited in Annapolis until the tracker showed that the yacht had turned to enter the Patuxent. Then he sped down the busy highway, arriving at about the same time he projected the yacht would come into the harbor. Using a map from one of his tourist guides, he had found the same vantage point that Boutros had discovered earlier. He spotted Boutros watching the harbor entrance. They shared the waterfront bench, saying little, until Rashid sensed that he had miscalculated.

  He left Boutros to keep watch and retrieved his computer, wandering until he found a coffee shop that offered Wi-Fi. Logging onto the tracking website, he had been upset to see the yacht had been stationary for a couple of hours. He couldn't tell from the crude map on the website exactly where the boat was, other than that it was on the other side of the river from Solomons Island. He made note of the latitude and longitude and switched to Google Earth, where he discovered that the boat was within the confines of Patuxent Naval Air Station. Alarmed now, he looked up the Naval Air Station on Wikipedia. Nothing that he read reassured him. Before he left, he checked the tracking website again and found that the vessel had moved outside the military reservation and was stationary, apparently anchored near the southern shore of the river.

  Guessing that the boat was stopped for the night, he had booked two rooms at a motel near a marina farther up Back Creek before he went back to where he'd left Boutros. They had a brief discussion and decided to eat while they were where they could see the harbor entrance. It wasn't fully dark yet; the boat might yet come into the harbor. By the time they had eaten a leisurely dinner, there was no sign of the boat and it was late enough to make its arrival unlikely, in Rashid's estimation. They retired to the motel for the evening.

  Once alone in his room, Rashid sent a message to Kareem Abdullah outlining the facts and his suspicions. After two hours, he checked back, not surprised to find a response berating him for his failure to keep track of the vessel. He ignored that and read the rest of Kareem's instructions. He was to board the vessel at the next opportunity and determine whether their weapon was intact. Kareem suspected that it had been discovered earlier, and by now had either been removed or disarmed somehow by technicians at this military base. As much as he wished otherwise, Rashid for once agreed with the man.

  Perhaps tomorrow the boat would come into the harbor. If the people went sightseeing, as they seemed to do at every stop, he could have Boutros keep watch while he slipped aboard and ran the diagnostics on the weapon.

  Kareem Abdullah prayed to Allah for guidance. In spite of having criticized Rashid for his carelessness, he knew that what happened was no more Rashid's fault than it was his own. He also knew that to the Caliph, fault was unimportant. Failure was not tolerated; it was to be punished by death. This was a key tenet of the Caliph's leadership style. Jihadists were destined to die. Death as a martyr might still be death, but it held the promise of reward in the afterlife. Death by execution for failure to carry out the will of Allah as expressed through his worldly representative held no such attractive promise. He didn't want to share this latest development with the Caliph, but the consequences of being caught deceiving him were as dire as those of failure.

  Rashid had involved Boutros, Amal's younger brother. Kareem didn't know who the Caliph's spy in the U.S. was, but Amal was at the head of his list of suspects. If Amal told the Caliph about this latest problem and Kareem didn't, Kareem would pay with his life. If Kareem told the Caliph what had happened, there was still a high probability that the Caliph would order his death as an example to the faithful. Still, as Kareem knew well, there were many ways for a man to be executed. It would be best not to add deception to his list of offenses.

  He summoned his driver and stepped out into the night. He glanced at his watch as he waited for his car. At least he would have the satisfaction of waking the old man up to give him the bad news.

  23

  Rashid awakened with a start, blinking his eyes at the bright sunlight that bathed his room. He had not closed the curtains. The second-story window faced east and there was no walkway outside it, so no one could see into the room. He had expected to sleep fitfully; he usually did. He had wanted the dim light from the window to orient himself when he awakened during the night. He reached for his watch on the nightstand; it was after seven o'clock.

  He got up and went into the bathroom, relieving himself and splashing cold water on his face. Somewhat more alert, he loaded the small coffee maker with both of the
complimentary packets of coffee and dumped a carafe of water in, waiting for it to finish as he contemplated the day's activity.

  Coffee in hand, he booted up his laptop, worried by his memory of the yacht's dawn departure from Oxford yesterday. He relaxed as he saw that the yacht was heading toward Solomons Island. He threw on his clothes and left the room, pausing in the hallway to knock on Boutros's door. When there was no answer, he went downstairs and found Boutros in the self-service breakfast area. As Boutros noticed him, he started to rise, but Rashid waved him back into his chair.

  "Stay here until I text you; the yacht is coming," he said, speaking softly. There was one older couple having breakfast a few tables away, but they were arguing in the loud voices of the nearly deaf and paid no attention to Rashid and Boutros.

  Boutros nodded his understanding, and Rashid went outside and mounted his motorcycle. He drove to the spot where he and Boutros had kept watch yesterday afternoon, parked the bike, and sat down. He was rewarded a few minutes later as the yacht came through the entrance channel under power. It paused briefly as the woman swept the harbor with a pair of binoculars. Rashid put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. There was no reason that she should recognize him, but there was also no reason to let her see his face. Sneaking a glance through his fingers, he watched as she put down the binoculars. She and the man spoke for a few seconds, each pointing around the harbor, and then the yacht began to move again.

  He watched as they turned and went behind the small island in the middle of the harbor. He sat up, no longer able to see the yacht itself, but the tall masts were visible over the island as they entered Back Creek. He opted to walk along the main road that paralleled the waterfront, turning onto a side street that he thought would take him to the street that ran parallel to Back Creek. He could see the yacht's masts moving over the housetops and he caught an occasional glimpse of the yacht itself between the houses.