Devil's Harbor (26 page)

But within a minute he was fast asleep.

*   *   *

He dreamed he was in bed with Mona. She smiled and said,
“Cinq
à
sept?”
and gently put her hands over his eyes. When she took them away, he found himself staring at walls made of dirt and a rectangle of blue sky, like he was lying in a hole. Diego's face appeared cut out against the sky.

“Hey. Get out of
my
grave,” he said. He reached an impossibly long arm down to Finn and pulled him out. Now Finn saw that they were in the cemetery and Diego was in full dress uniform. In the center of a row of mourners sat Mona in black, holding a folded Stars and Stripes on her lap.

“I want my pipes and drums,” said Diego. There was a black-edged entry wound in his forehead. Finn, frightened, turned away in time to see the honor guard lowering their rifles at him.

“Please, no,” he said.

He heard the order to fire, and all twenty-one guns erupted.

*   *   *

He woke to the sound of insistent beeping and instinctively jumped to his feet. The dream evaporated and the military part of his mind noted that it was night—he'd slept through the entire day. Linda was staring at the electronic display. Finn hustled over and looked over her shoulder. The weather was throwing up a lot of clutter, but there was nothing ambiguous about the green dot traveling in a straight line at twenty knots directly toward them from San Diego. His heart sank. A boat that fast, at this time of night, heading in that direction, could only be a CBP Interceptor.

“You think they're coming for us?” said Linda.

“Their patrol zone extends to about here,” he said, pointing at an area twenty miles east of their position. “If they get to the end and turn back, they're on routine patrol. If they cross it, then it means they've spotted us and want to know who we are.”

He saw Linda bite her lower lip, her face lit by the display's glow. Finn rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands, then looked at the screen again. The
Pacific Belle
was about twenty miles off the southern tip of San Clemente, an island the navy used as a ship-to-shore firing range. The waters around San Clemente were a no-go zone. The course they'd plotted to Two Harbors took them up San Clemente's eastern side, clear of the island. But if they stuck close to its western shore, he realized, its mass would block them from the Interceptor's radar.

“Set a new course,” he said, pointing at the ocean side of San Clemente.

“We'll be in the no-go zone,” she said.

“Exactly.”

“The navy won't like it,” she said.

“We've just come through a goddamn hurricane. If anyone asks questions, we say it blew us off course.”

Linda nodded. One thing about Linda, he didn't have to explain things twice. She adjusted their course and pushed down the throttle. The engine's rumble, so ubiquitous that Finn's ears had tuned it out, increased in pitch, and the
Belle
picked up a knot and hit her top speed of fourteen, bashing awkwardly through the waves.

Now all they could do was wait until they reached the island. Finn lay back down on the bench.

*   *   *

He woke of his own accord. Or rather, in his sleep, he noted the change in the boat's rhythm, and woke to check it out. He got to his feet and looked at the display. They were running north half a mile off the western shore of San Clemente. The island was refracting the swell, changing its direction, which was why Finn had noticed the change in the roll of the hull.

He peered into the darkness to starboard and just made out the lights of a radio tower high on the island. He checked that the VHF was on channel 16. The navy would want to talk to them; it was important that they could.

“What happened with the Interceptor?” he asked.

“We got around the point before they got to the end of their sector, so I didn't get to see.”

He nodded.

A voice crackled through the VHF: “Unidentified vessel, unidentified vessel, this is U.S. Navy calling, identify yourself, over.”

Finn turned up the volume and picked up the transmitter. “U.S. Navy, U.S. Navy, this is fishing vessel
High Hope,
over.”

“
High Hope, High Hope,
you are in a restricted zone, repeat, restricted zone.”

“U.S. Navy, acknowledge we are in a restricted zone. We were blown off course by the storm; we have an injured crew and are returning to home port of San Pedro, over.”

A moment passed. Finn held his breath.

“
High Hope,
do you require assistance, over.”

Finn laughed and said, “U.S. Navy, no, thank you.”

“
High Hope,
try to exit the restricted zone as soon as possible, over.”

“U.S. Navy, wilco, over and out.”

*   *   *

By ten, they had cleared the northern point of San Clemente. They were on schedule to make their midnight rendezvous with Cutts at Two Harbors.

Finn went out on deck. They were well out of the storm now and for the first time in two days Finn could see stars and the waning moon. He went below and found Navidad sitting up in a bunk.

“You all right, kid?” said Finn.

She looked at him without reacting.
Fucking Linda, with her big heart,
he thought. What if Cutts double-crossed them and killed them both? What would happen to Navidad then? He smiled at the child, and she smiled back. At least that didn't need translation, he thought.

He went into the galley, opened two fifteen-ounce cans of chili, and heated the contents in a pot on the stove. He filled a bowl and devoured it with six slices of bread. He'd had no idea how hungry he was until he started eating. He grabbed a can of Coke and took it with him back up to the wheelhouse.

Linda was at the helm. Finn checked the screen: they were halfway across the stretch of water between San Clemente and Santa Catalina. There was a lot of chatter on the radio—more than there should have been at this time of night. Finn turned up the volume. They were talking about a suspicious boat. He leaned forward and listened carefully until there was no doubt.

“They're looking for us,” he said.

“What's this
Bertholf
they keep talking about?” Linda asked.

“The
Bertholf
is a big coast guard cutter, four hundred twenty feet long with a 57-mm gun on her foredeck. A warship, basically.”

Linda looked at the radar screen. “Where is she? I don't see her.”

She sounded surprisingly calm. Finn wasn't. While the
Belle
could never outrun an Interceptor, she could certainly outrange one—Interceptors burned fuel like they owned their own oil fields. But the
Bertholf
was another matter; the cutter could travel at twice the
Belle
's top speed and, compared to the
Belle,
her range was limitless. If the
Bertholf
started after them, they would never make it to their rendezvous.

He pointed at San Clemente. “She must be in the lee of the island. We won't see her…”

“Till she comes out of the radar shadow. Okay.”

Linda pulled back the throttle, taking all the way off the boat. “Let's go fishing,” she said.

Finn had no idea what she was talking about. “Linda, if she finds us, that's it. We can't outrun her. We'll never make it to Two Harbors, not unless we make ourselves invisible.”

“Exactly.”

*   *   *

Finn followed her out onto the deck. Linda switched on the high-intensity lamp on top of the mast, flooding the deck with white light. She opened the fish-hold hatch and told Finn to steer the gantry crane over the hold. Once the crane was in place, Linda grabbed the hook and told him to lower the block into the hold. She climbed in with it.

“All right, bring it up,” she shouted from below. He hit the rubber-encased Lift button and watched the roll of black neoprene he'd found when he'd searched the
Belle
rise out of the hold. Linda climbed out and wrangled it over the edge of the fish-hold cover.

“What is it?” he said.

She grinned. “An invisibility cloak.”

“What?”

“See those diamond-shaped tiles? They're carbon black. The same stuff the air force covers their Stealth fighters with. We set it just like a seine, except out of the water instead of in it.” Linda was obviously enjoying Finn's amazement. “You'll see. Bring it over to starboard,” she said.

Finn maneuvered the boom over, following Linda's hand gestures, until the roll was hanging over the starboard rail. She signaled for him to hold it there, then ran a line through a series of eyelets along the bottom edge of the material and back through a block at the stern before tying it off. Finn looked on in astonishment. Linda took the crane's control unit from him and expertly hoisted the pole until it was level, then swung it aft. Like a bullfighter's cape billowing out in slow motion, the black material swathed the
Belle
's superstructure and hull down to about four feet off the water, all the way around her stern from one bow to the other.

Linda switched off the masthead light and made the
Belle
dark again. Finn followed her back into the wheelhouse. He looked at the speedometer. They were doing just three knots. Linda explained that they had to go this slowly on account of the sea jumping up and tugging at the
Belle
's skirt. Any faster and the sea could yank it off.

“But it makes our radar profile so faint, no one notices us. Like we're hidden behind a mask.”

Finn could only shake his head in wonder. He looked through the forward window. The skirt blocked their lateral and rear views of the water, but they could still see the narrow track directly ahead of them through the gap between where the skirt began and ended at the bow.

“Where'd you get it?” he said.

“It used to belong to the navy,” she said. “Cutts got hold of it, he says from a materiel guy down in San Diego. Calls it his ‘modesty skirt.'”

Finn had to admit, he was impressed. When he looked at the radar screen, however, he knew that the biggest test of the “modesty skirt” was quickly closing in on them. Linda had made it clear that she'd never encountered the
Bertholf
before. The cutter was the coast guard's newest flagship. Finn knew from talk around the Air and Marine Station that she was equipped with all the latest technology. She had emerged from the lee of the island and was bearing down on them from their stern quarter. Linda had turned off all the navigation and interior lights. The only light in the wheelhouse now came from the navigation-system screen. Finn and Linda stood side by side, watching the green dot get closer. Compared to the
Belle,
the
Bertholf
was racing across the sea, even though she was ten times the
Belle
's size. In no time, she was within a half mile. Had it been daylight, they would've been able to read each other's numbers. Linda dimmed the screens and killed the engine. Its steady throb disappeared and gave way to the sound of the sea slapping at the Belle's hull. Finn stood next to Linda in the dark, listening. She reached for his hand. They drifted together. For two long minutes, all he heard was the sound of his own breath. Then there was the slow crashing of the
Bertholf
's huge bow heaving down on the sea, shouldering it aside. Finn held his breath, as if that were enough to give them away. The four-hundred-foot cutter couldn't have been more than a couple of hundred feet away. And it was getting closer.

Another minute passed. Linda's hand became clammy. He couldn't hear her breathing, and figured she was holding her breath also.

Finally, he heard the regular sound of a ship's twin screws turning. If they could hear the screws, they were behind the boat; the
Bertholf
had passed by the
Pacific Belle
. He whistled. The coast guard's newest, first-in-class cutter had passed within maybe a hundred feet and hadn't looked twice. He thought about Diego, about what he'd have to say about that. He let go of Linda's hand.

“So you're the phantom.”

“What?”

Finn rubbed his chin. “That night. Diego and I were looking for a phantom.”

After a moment, she said, “I'm sorry, Nick.”

Finn was struck; she'd never used his first name before.

She stroked his cheek. “I'm sorry for Diego. For everything. I'm sorry for the whole nightmare.” She put her arms around him.

“I'm sorry, too. But it's almost over,” he said.

She rested her cheek on his chest. “Yes,” she said, “Yes, I suppose it is.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

By eleven thirty, when they were within sighting distance of Catalina, Finn and Linda brought in the radar-absorbing skirt. It had done its job getting them past the
Bertholf
. Now it was just slowing them down.

Finn couldn't see the shore in the dark, but he sensed it from the way the sea behaved differently, and anyway it was right there on the radar screen, a sharp green line against the inky background. He brought the
Belle
in as close to the invisible white cliffs as he dared. It was dangerous, but being spotted by an Interceptor would be worse, he figured. He would use the cliffs for cover.

Two Harbors is just that: an isthmus a few hundred feet across, with harbors on either side. At eleven fifty, Finn and Linda reached the headlands guarding the bay on the southern side. They anchored just outside, in about forty feet of water, in the lee of a promontory called Lobster Point.

Linda went below to check on Navidad and to tell her that under no circumstances was she to leave the cabin. While she was gone, Finn took the AR-15 from the locker, loaded it with a fresh clip, went out on deck, and tucked it beneath the edge of the fish hold. He wanted it somewhere he could get to easily, in case things went wrong during the handover. He had the handgun he'd taken from the cop in Escondido tucked into the back of his trousers. Cutts had Lucy, which meant he was calling the shots. Finn wouldn't make a move against Cutts until he was sure the girl—both girls—were safe.