“I am glad they enjoyed it,” Mayra said. Then she looked at her husband. “Perhaps we should go look at the stars, as well?”
“You have nothing to worry about,” I assured her. “Ross and Axel are fine men, and the girls will likely be back in their cabin shortly. They are excellent conversationalists. They seem well-traveled.”
“We took them abroad every summer,” Mayra said, smiling with pride. “When times were better. To Europe and Asia mostly. Giselle is fluent in several languages and Crystal is nearly so. Kassandra…” She shrugged her shoulders.
“Our middle daughter is more like I once was,” Marcos said. “I was impetuoso until I met Mayra.”
I got the Diplomatico and three glasses, noting that the bottle didn’t look as if it’d been touched. “Let’s drink to our daughters,” I said, delaying their departure.
Marcos rose immediately and accepted a glass. “Mayra does not drink.”
I poured a shot in each, then we clinked our glasses together, and tossed down the rum.
Marcos placed his glass on the table. “And now, Capitan, we must say buenas noches.”
Mayra rose and said goodnight also. Then I was alone.
I sat down on the sofa and blew out a long breath, drawing the dogs’ attention.
“I did my part,” I told them. They both cocked their heads, as if expecting an explanation. “Never mind,” I said, and went to bed.
Matt felt uneasy. He had ever since the helicopter left, carrying the body of the cap’n’s friend home. The cap’n hadn’t said much about it since, but Matt hurt for him. He knew the pain of loss and somehow sensed that his cap’n was no stranger to it, either.
Finally, he rose from his bunk and put his clothes back on. Coming from generations of hard-working Cornishmen who’d scraped out an existence on the bony peninsula at the southwest tip of England, his subconscious told him that if he were awake, he should be doing something productive.
His father, Maddern Brand, Senior, was a fisherman, as was his father before him. The men of the Brand family had earned a living pulling nets and lines from the sea for four generations. Arthek Brand, Matt’s third great-grandfather, or granfer as is said in Cornwall, had been a carpenter. But before him, more fishermen.
He went up to the bridge to check on things. The two older men on Mr. Stockwell’s team were there, both drinking coffee while looking out over the harbor.
“Gorthugher da, mates,” Matt said.
“Don’t you mean nos da?” Oswald said.
“Oye,” Matt replied, nodding. “Technically it is night, but nos da is more of a partin’ sayin’.”
“Ah,” Oswald said, grinning. “That makes sense.”
“All’s well, is it?”
“Nothing at all moving around on the water,” Gerald said, then pointed up at the screens. “And the docks have been clear for over an hour. I guess all the bars closed up.”
“The cap’n and ’is party get back in one piece?”
“He had a dustup with two tourists,” Gerald replied. “The colonel had us post an extra man in the cockpit.”
“Dustup?”
“A fight,” Oswald added.
“Giss on!” Matt scoffed. “Cap’n McDermitt? Takin’ on a coupla young emmets?”
“Apparently, he’s more than a laid-back Florida Keys boat skipper,” Gerald said. “From what the colonel told us about him, he’s had quite a past.”
“Was anyone ’urt?”
“According to Mr. Mosely,” Oswald said, “the captain waded through both men like a tornado and left them unconscious and bleeding on the floor.”
“Bleddy hell, you say!”
“Headbutted one,” Oswald added. “And dropped the other with a single punch. All he got was a little scratch on his knuckles.”
“Ye never bleddy know,” Matt said, grinning. “A right proper brawler, the cap’n, yeah?”
“Apparently so,” Oswald said. “But to look at him, you might guess he’d been in a scrape or two, a big guy like that.”
Matt picked up the binoculars and scanned the inner harbor. “Ross and Axel I can see it ’appnin’ to. But not the cap’n. ’E’s as even-keeled a man as I ever met.”
The digital night optics pierced the dark, turning night into day, and Matt could see into the shadows with little problem. Then he went over to the port side hatch and looked out the window, raising the binoculars to scan the outer harbor and approach. He slowly moved the glasses over the rooftops and trees, looking out into St. George’s Bay and Grand Mal Bay, farther to the north.
A light caught his eye as he scanned past it. When he brought the binos to bear on the light, he could see that it was a cargo ship, lying at anchor.
“When did that ship arrive?” he asked, turning to Oswald.
The man checked his watch. “Less than an hour ago. No AIS, but that’s normal for tramp cargo ships.”
Matt trained the optics on the ship again. It was at least two miles away and barely visible above the taller rooftops in that direction.
“I think I’ll be goin’ topside for a better look, mind.”
From what he saw of the ship, it looked a lot like the one that’d nearly swamped them in the tenders. Going out, Matt moved aft and went up the steps to the flybridge.
“Something troubling you?” Gerald asked, following him.
“Not sure,” Matt replied. “But it’s a fine night for lookin’ around, innit?”
Standing on the highest deck of the ship and feeling exposed to the wind reminded Matt of going to sea with his father and granfer. As a boy, he’d wanted to be a fisherman like them. As a man, he’d seen some of the world beyond the rugged coast of the North Atlantic between Port Isaac and Port Quinn and wanted to see more.
Matt looked through the binoculars in the direction of the freighter. It wasn’t a big ship, as cargo ships went, but it was bigger than Ambrosia. Aft the bow, lumber was stacked on the foredeck, behind that were a number of twenty-foot cargo containers, then the bridge and ship’s house, more containers, and stacks of what looked like large bags, probably produce.
But it was what was going on at the stern that interested Matt. Several men were working to lower a lifeboat into the water. A lifeboat with two outboard engines.
“I think we’d best wake the cap’n, mate.”
It felt like I’d only been asleep for a couple of minutes when the intercom beside my bed buzzed.
“Bridge to Cap’n McDermitt.” It was Matt, and his voice was tinged with urgency.
I sat up and looked at the clock before pushing the talk button. “On my way.”
“Up to the flybridge, Cap’n.”
“Roger that.”
I’d been asleep for a couple of hours. Had the surfer and the bald black guy come looking for payback? I doubted that. Stockwell’s team would have made quick work of moving them along. They wouldn’t need me, except to read the report about it the next day.
I dressed quickly, then went out into the passageway, through the exterior hatch, and was up on the flybridge less than two minutes after Matt’s call.
I found him looking through a pair of night vision binos toward the northwest. Gerald, who was with him, also had a pair, trained to the west.
“What’s going on?” I asked calmly.
Matt handed me his binos. “It’s the Canopus,” he said. “I’m certain of it. She’s anchored two miles out at three ’undred five degrees.”
I looked through the night vision binos, moving them until the little compass at the bottom found the bearing. An island freighter lay a couple of miles off Grand Mal Beach, its anchor light and a couple of deck lights the only ones on.
“The boat’s gone out of sight,” Gerald said. “Five men aboard. Headed toward shore, southwest of here.”
“What boat?” I asked.
“A lifeboat,” Matt said. “Like the one that attacked us. They just launched it from that ship.”
&n
bsp; “And you’re sure it’s Canopus?”
“Nothin’ on the AIS,” Matt said. “But that lifeboat ’ad two engines and the one you blew up ’ad three. Who puts more ’n one bleddy motor on a lifeboat?”
I turned to Gerald. “There were five men on the lifeboat?”
“Yes, sir,” Gerald replied. “I couldn’t make out much, but they looked like trouble. Five big men. Dark features. Maybe Hispanic.”
“Wake the colonel,” I said. “Rally the troops. If that is Canopus, they may think they have a score to settle.”
I trained the binos in the direction Gerald had been looking, while he got on a small UHF radio, identical to the ones all the security team carried. Though it didn’t have the range of a VHF radio, ultra-high frequencies penetrated better and were more suited for communications inside a building or ship.
I couldn’t see anything close to shore—trees and rooftops blocked everything.
Suddenly, a boat appeared. It had twin engines and there were five people aboard.
“The lifeboat’s headed back out,” I said.
There were five people on it, but not five big men. Two were obviously women. The women were struggling but being held tightly by two of the men, while a third man worked the tiller. I couldn’t see either of the women clearly, as the two men had them wrapped in their arms and bent over. One of the men looked up, his long blond hair whipping over his face. It was the surfer guy from the bar.
“The five men you saw, Gerald?” I asked, still watching the boat as it sped away. “Was one black, with a shaved head and another, white with long blond hair?”
“No,” Gerald replied. “They were all dark-haired. None were bald.”
“Have a look now,” I said, handing him the binos.
He scanned the water and found the boat. “They have two women!”
“The two men holding the women. Were they on the boat when you saw it?”
“No, Captain,” Gerald replied. “Definitely not.”
Stockwell appeared at the top of the stairs. “What is it?”
“Canopus has followed us,” I said. “They sent a lifeboat ashore and now it’s returning, along with two female captives and the two men who attacked us in the bar tonight. They left four men behind. A possible raiding party.”
“How long has Canopus been here?”
I handed him my binos. “A little over an hour is what Gerald said.”
Stockwell looked through the binos in the direction I’d been looking, then moved them on out toward Grand Mal Bay.
“Probably not a raiding party, then,” he said. “More likely a scout team.”
Stockwell removed his own UHF radio and spoke into it. “Walt, you and Duster move south, set up near the road and the dock, just past the marina office. Those are the only two ways in here. Oswald, continue past where they stop and set up a listening post between the road and dock.”
“What are you thinking?” I asked, once the three security men confirmed their orders.
“Those two might not have been frat boys,” Stockwell said. “Maybe they work for the Canopus crew and were pissed you intervened in their first kidnapping attempt, so they grabbed two others. Are all hands aboard?”
I moved over to the console and pushed the ship-wide intercom button. “All hands, all hands, this is the captain. Everyone is to report immediately to the mess deck. Yeoman McLarin, give me a head count as soon as possible.”
The seconds ticked by like hours as I watched the lifeboat speeding away toward the freighter in the distance.
“Cap’n,” Matt said, “there’s activity on Canopus’s foredeck.”
I moved my binos out toward the ship. A crane was lifting a container out of the forward hold. The stacks in front of it and behind it were taller than they’d been before. As I watched, the crane moved a container and stacked it precariously on the others. After a moment, the cables were moved back down into the hold.
“They’re moving the containers,” I said, “Making room at the bottom of the hold.”
“Or providin’ access to it,” Matt said.
“McLarin to bridge,” Val’s voice came over the comm.
I pushed the button. “Is everyone aboard, Val?”
“No, sir,” she replied. “We have three not back aboard yet; Jocko Landris, Emma Hall, and Nancy Graves. Al said that Jocko had taken them shopping earlier in the evening.”
Nancy Graves was a new crew member. She’d been hired in the States and had been flown to Bimini just before we’d set sail a month before. She helped Emma in the mess hall.
“Thanks, Val. Tell the others to go back to their quarters.”
A moment later, I heard the distinct sound of dog’s claws on the steps. Woden appeared first, materializing out of the darkness like some kind of apparition. Then Finn joined him.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Val said, as she and the boys appeared at the top of the steps. “Alberto insisted.”
I knelt in front of the two boys. “You can’t be up here right now, Alberto. You know that.”
“I was worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” I told him. “I just have some work to do. You need to go back down and get to bed.”
“Okay,” he said. “But Woden needs to stay here.”
I didn’t have time to argue with him. “That’s fine. He’ll be a great help. Now, you and Fernando take Finn back to our quarters.”
I stood and faced Val. “Would you mind staying with them?”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
I leaned in close and whispered. “Canopus is out there.”
She nodded her understanding, then herded the two boys and my dog back down the steps. Finn was reluctant until I told him to watch Alberto.
When they were gone, I trained my binos on the ship again. The lifeboat was alongside, and the men were lifting the two women up to the deck. I still couldn’t see either one and at two miles away, wouldn’t be able to identify them for sure anyway. But it was obvious they were being put aboard against their will.
“We should call the authorities,” I said, as the captives were shoved forward along the ship’s deck toward the hold.
“Wait one,” Matt said. “What’s that they’re liftin out of the ’old now?”
When I trained my binos on the forward part of the ship, the crane was lifting what looked like a steel deck plate. The women were forced down a ladder and a few minutes later, the plate was lowered back into the hold.
“Oswald to base,” came a voice over Stockwell’s radio. “I have one of our crew members out here. He’s hurrying back toward the ship.”
“Is it Jocko Landris?” Stockwell asked.
“Yes, sir. He’s not walking very steady. Looks like he took a beating.”
“Have Duster escort him back here,” Stockwell said. “Bring him to the flybridge.”
I pulled my satellite phone from my pocket and used the internet to find the number for the Grenadian Coast Guard. When a man answered, I identified myself and explained what had happened and everything we’d seen. He replied that he would have a patrol boat go out to inspect.
“You’ll probably find them in the bilge area,” I told him. “Beneath a removable steel panel in the bottom of the hold.”
A few minutes later, Duster helped Jocko up the steps to where we were watching Canopus.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Jocko said. “But there was two of ’em.”
Jocko was a mess. His left eye was nearly swollen shut and he had a good deal of blood on his shirt. He was a big man, powerfully built, but as gentle as they came.
“A muscular black man with a shaved head?” I asked. “And a white guy with long blond hair?”
“Yes, sir. They jumped us down on Lagoon Road as we were heading back. Maybe an hour ago. I don’t know what happened to Emma and Nancy. They were gone when I woke up. Did they make it back okay?”
“They might ha
ve been kidnapped,” I told him. “Go below and get cleaned up.”
As we continued to watch helplessly, the crane started to move the containers back into place one by one.
“What the bleddy hell is keepin’ ’em?” Matt whispered, as if to himself.
“There!” Stockwell said. “Headed out from the cruise ship pier.”
“That’s where the Port Authority is,” Matt said. “The Grenadian Coast Guard keeps a patrol boat there, mind.”
Sure enough, a small patrol boat headed away from shore just beyond Fort George. It turned to the north and increased speed with three armed men aboard. I hoped it would be enough.
Two quick clicks came from Travis’s radio. He picked it up and spoke into it. “Hear that, Walt?”
“It was Oswald,” Meachum said, his voice a whisper. “Three men on the road just passed his position. There’s another on the dock.”
“I’m close,” Duster said. “I’ll get the guy on the dock.”
Two more clicks acknowledged him.
They were too far away to hear anything short of gunfire, but a moment later, Oswald’s voice came over the radio. “One tango down, three in custody.”
“Bring them here,” Stockwell said. “I’ll meet you on the work deck.”
I started to go with him, but Travis stopped me. “Your job’s here, Captain. I’ll handle the interrogation. You need to find out what the authorities will do with the crew.”
Matt and I went down to the command bridge. As we descended the steps, I heard the hydraulics activate and saw the large hatch open to the garage below the cockpit.
“Looks like the cops have taken the ship without incident,” Gerald said as we entered the command bridge. “The ship’s all lit up now.”
Even without the binoculars, I could see Canopus out on the bay, the lights outlining the familiar shape of the ship that had paralleled our course several nights earlier. Raising the binos, I saw the Grenadian Police had the crew kneeling on the deck, covered with two rifles. Surfer and Baldy were with them.
Another patrol boat was approaching from the north. When it arrived, more police officers swarmed the ship.
Steady As She Goes: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 21) Page 24
