Landfall: Islands in the Aftermath (The Pulse Series Book 4) (3 page)

As best he could tell in the dark when he’d first checked, the
Casey Nicole
hadn’t suffered any major damage, but her hulls had been cracked in two or three places and she was taking on water into some of the lower compartments that were sealed by watertight bulkheads. It would take a lot more than a few minor breeches to completely flood her two hulls, but still, the cracks had to be taken care of before she could sail again. Larry knew they had their work cut out for them—probably days and possibly nearly a week of it. At least Green Cay was off the beaten path, and from what he’d seen of it since they’d been here, they had it all to themselves.
 

He went back below to light the stove for a pot of coffee—a luxury they would be running out of soon, but one that he needed to face a day like the one before him. When the others were awake, they would start working. The first job was to offload as much gear and other stuff from the catamaran as possible to lighten the hulls, so they could winch her high and dry onto the beach. That alone would take half a day, and by then Larry knew the tide would be back and they would have to move fast to prepare for the next steps.
 

* * *

Artie Drager was so happy to see Casey again he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight for long. After they were done setting anchors and mooring lines to secure the catamaran, Artie followed her back to the
Sarah J.
and fell asleep on one of the quarter berths. When he woke to daylight streaming in the portlights of the cozy teak cabin he knew he probably hadn’t slept more than an hour or two. But he was well used to an erratic and often interrupted sleeping schedule after the long voyage from Cat Island. He couldn’t have slept longer if he’d wanted to, restless and worried as he was about what would happen to the
Casey Nicole,
and wondering how they would get her repaired and safely back beyond the reefs guarding the beach.

Artie felt terrible about letting his brother’s pride and joy go aground. The catamaran could have been a total wreck if it had not narrowly missed the worst of the reefs by a turn of luck. The keels had certainly kissed rock in a few places and sustained some damage, but the boat had come to rest in an area of mostly sand bottom inside the reef.
 

Grant had been at the helm simply because it was his turn to stand watch, but Artie knew it wouldn’t have mattered who was steering. None of them could have seen the dark outline of such a low island on a night like last night. The first warning Grant had that something was wrong was the roar of breaking surf. None of them had thought they were anywhere near land, as their dead-reckoning navigation had put them sailing southeast down the middle of the Tongue of the Ocean: the deepest channel in the entire Bahamas Archipelago. But dead reckoning was prone to error, as his brother had pointed out to him time and time again. Scully could have pulled it off without making such a mistake, but Scully had not been aboard. That they’d managed to end up on the same island where the other boat stopped seemed almost miraculous to Artie, but made more sense when Larry told him they had sailed the same route around the north end of Andros before the engine issue forced them to stop. Both boats would have passed within a few miles of the isolated cay anyway, if all had gone as planned.
 

Before they’d hit it in the dark, Artie had never really noticed Green Cay on the chart. It was at the extreme end of a large area of shallow water extending west of the Exumas, which he’d intended to avoid, but his sights were set on the more distant Jumentos Cays and Ragged Islands. That was the only area in the Bahamas of interest to him, because that’s where Larry had said they should eventually go when they set sail from the northern coast of the Gulf. Getting the two boats separated at sea wasn’t in the plan, nor was the unexpected encounter with the U.S. Navy off the coast of Florida. But sticking to a plan in this new reality had proven difficult and once again, Artie found himself separated from his daughter after all he’d been through to sail to New Orleans to find her. He doubted that would have happened though if not for their chance meeting of Tara Hancock before they left. How could his single brother resist a good-looking, divorced woman who knew how to sail and had her own classic sailing yacht? He couldn’t, and he hadn’t, and because of her, their party had been split up, despite Larry’s best intentions to keep the two boats within sight of each other on the crossing. The weather and the whims of Tara’s depressed teenaged daughter derailed that plan, and no matter what Larry said now, Artie knew it was a bit of a miracle they were all back together again in such an improbable place. All of them, except for poor Scully, that is.
 

Artie felt far worse about leaving Scully behind in Florida than he did about the grounding of the
Casey Nicole
. How in the world would he ever get here, left as he was on the wilderness coast of the Everglades with nothing but Larry’s sea kayak? With police or military gunboats like the one they’d encountered aggressively patrolling the coastline, had Scully already been arrested for remaining in the restricted zone? Or worse, had he been shot? If they found him and saw the AK-47 he was carrying, but no passport or any other form of I.D., they would likely assume he was just another looter or bandit out taking advantage of the lawless situation. Artie wondered if they would ever know, but he should have known that as soon as he told his brother what had happened, Larry would say he was going back for him. Of course he was. Scully was like another brother to him, and Artie agreed they needed to do everything they could to find him, but what Larry proposed didn’t involve any of them. Artie didn’t like the idea of splitting up again, but he agreed it didn’t make sense for all of them to risk arrest or worse. It was just that his dream of a safe refuge with all the people he loved together in one place had fallen apart again. And now he wondered if it would ever come true or forever remain just out of reach.

Four

T
HOMAS
A
LLEN
WAS
SO
startled by the shooting and then the voice calling out to him from the dark that he didn’t even think to pick up the dead man’s pistol, lying there in the sand within easy reach. All that registered was that the two men who had attacked them were dead, and that Mindy was in his arms, safe for the moment. He had no way to know if whoever did this would be any less a threat than the two he had just killed, but hearing the unseen shooter’s voice assure him otherwise gave Thomas a bit of hope. Anything else would have been futile anyway. There was no escape other than to try and flee into the impenetrable mangroves. Whoever had done the shooting was approaching from the dark waters beyond their moored boat, leaving them no option to try and board it without making themselves easy targets if he wanted to stop them.

But more shots never came, and momentarily, Thomas saw a long, sleek sea kayak emerge from the gloom. The sound of the paddle was barely perceptible and now he understood why neither they nor the two dead men had heard anything until the sudden gunshots. When the bow of the kayak slid up onto the little beach and stopped, Thomas saw that it was paddled by a shirtless, muscular black man with dreadlocks that hung all the way down to the deck behind him. Just as he’d known when he heard the man’s voice, Thomas could now see that the man was indeed a West Indian islander. His wild appearance might be frightening to many, but Thomas and Mindy saw guys like him every day in Key West, and his friendly smile and another greeting before he stepped out of the boat assured them he meant them no harm. After introducing himself as “Scully”, he checked to make sure the two men he’d shot were indeed no longer a threat to anyone. Then, he bent and picked up the fallen pistol, making Thomas feel stupid for leaving it there when he had no idea if they were still in danger or not.
 

Pointing it away from them though, the stranger did something with it that Thomas correctly assumed involved removing the bullets to make it safe. Then he put the gun and the bullets in his pocket and dragged the man with the shattered skull into the foliage where the body would be out of sight. This done, he was ready to talk, and after finding out Thomas and Mindy had been to the Dry Tortugas, told them that was exactly where he was headed.
 

“You might as well forget about going there,” Thomas said, “The entire area around the anchorage and the fort is completely off-limits. But even if it wasn’t you couldn’t get there in that kayak.”

Scully listened patiently and seemed to accept what Thomas was telling him about the restrictions. He told them of his own encounter with a gunboat on the coast to the north, and how he’d paddled here after his friends were forced to leave him on the beach. He said they were supposed to rendezvous with more friends in another sailboat at the Dry Tortugas, and he seemed undaunted by the prospects of paddling all the way out there in the kayak. But of course this news of the blockade left him doubting the wisdom of that plan now. If his friends couldn’t stop there, what would be the point?

“They didn’t tell us much of anything, really. Except that the entire coast was under a naval blockade.”

“Some of the other boat people out there were saying it was like they had essentially declared martial law,” Mindy said.

“Whatever they are doing, all I know is that they made everyone leave. If your friends were already there, they won’t be now, and if they were still trying to get there, they would not have allowed them to enter the anchorage. They were serious about it.”

“An’ de ship, dem U.S. Navy? Dat fo’ true, mon?”

“Yes, they were U.S. Navy. At least they told us they were, and their small boats had Navy markings on them. But the men who came ashore looked liked soldiers.”

“I think they were SEALs or Marines or something like that,” Mindy said.

“Whoever they were, they were
serious
,” Thomas said. “Some of the boat people tried to argue with them, but they said that anyone who wasn’t out of there within 48 hours would be arrested, and their vessels confiscated. When some people asked them where they were supposed to go, they said they didn’t care, but that they couldn’t stay at Fort Jefferson. They said they were locking down the whole coast and that any boats coming in from offshore would be turned away. They said that applied to all of the Keys and the Florida mainland too, but we came back here by staying closer inshore to the mangroves and shoals, well away from their big ships. We haven’t seen any sign of them in these waters, but we figured we’re going to have to move on to the Bahamas to find someplace safe for the long term.”

“We wanted to go there in the first place,” Mindy said, “but we weren’t sure we could make it in
Intrepida.
She’s only 17-feet long and we haven’t done any real offshore sailing. The trip to the Dry Tortugas was much farther than we’ve ever sailed before.”

“She’s only 17-feet long,” Thomas said, “but she
is
a
Montgomery
17. They are proven boats.”

Thomas nervously watched for the islander’s reaction to this, but he was pleasantly surprised when Scully agreed with him, saying that he could tell by her lines that the little boat could make it to the Bahamas. But what was even more surprising was that he said since his friends had likely sailed on to the Bahamas if they couldn’t enter the anchorage at the Dry Tortugas, he might as well change his plans and go there too.

“In that kayak? Are you completely crazy?”

“Only little bit crazy mon, but de kayak she can go. Only problem is dat place in de Bahamas Larry sailing is very far from de first island. Hundreds more miles after crossing de Gulf Stream, an’ against de wind too. Big problem to take enough watah in de kayak for de drinkin’ all dem days.”
 

“Well, I guess if he can cross the Gulf Stream in a kayak, we can do it in
Intrepida,
” Thomas told Mindy.
 

But much to his surprise, after sitting there staring at the two boats, seemingly lost in thought, Scully turned back to Thomas with a proposal: he would sail with them, and take on the duties of captain, if they would agree to tow the kayak behind
Intrepida
. Thomas countered that the boat was very small for three people aboard, but Mindy liked the idea. After all, this man had just saved their lives and he clearly knew something about boats and offshore seamanship.
 

“Give us a minute to talk about it,” Thomas told Scully.

The islander gladly complied, taking the opportunity to wade into the water beyond his beached kayak to retrieve the weapon from the body of the other dead man, still in the water nearby.

“He saved our lives, there’s no doubt about that, Mindy. But we don’t know anything about this man. How do we know he won’t shoot us both or push us overboard once we’re out at sea?”

“We don’t know, but I’d rather take that chance than stay here in the Keys and run into more men like those two. I think he’s telling the truth. His story makes sense to me, and it makes sense that he would want to help us get to the islands in exchange for a ride. As small as our boat is, it’s a lot bigger than his and it has sails. I think we should go, Thomas, and take him with us. What have we got to lose at this point?”

Thomas couldn’t argue with that. They didn’t have much of anything to lose but their boat and their lives, and if they stayed here much longer they were likely to lose both. At least they might have a chance if they could make it to the Bahamas.
 

“I know it’s going to be crowded and uncomfortable Thomas, but we can make it work.”

“Okay. I’ll tell him. But if we agree to his help crossing the Gulf Stream, we’re going to have to take him farther, to the part of the islands he’s trying to reach. That’s what he wants.”

“That’s fine with me,” Mindy said. “It’s probably a better place anyway. That’s why that captain friend of his wants them to meet there. The farther off the beaten track the better, I say.”

Thomas waved Scully back over to the fire and told him they would take him where he wanted to go in exchange for his navigation and sailing expertise. But when he asked Scully when they would leave, he wasn’t expecting the answer he received, especially since there were still many hours of darkness before dawn.