Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

“It’s Anna’s only chance.”

“You’re so sure he’s going to Haiti, why not fly there and be waiting on the dock?”

I shook my head. “He’ll be expecting that. He’ll be ready, or Anna will already be over the side. Anna’s best chance is if I get to him before he gets to Haiti. And my best chance is to board him at sea, when he’s not expecting it.”

“You’re not the U.S. damn Marines, Billy. You’re not Rambo.”

“Deacon,” I said. “I’m doing this.”

“It’s piracy. He can have you hung for piracy.”

“Who are you now, Deacon?” I said, meeting that icy stare.

“What does that mean?”

I leaned a knuckle on the workbench and moved my face a few inches from his. “It means I know you must have heard those words before. From your superiors, when they’re chewing you out for something you did when you knew it was right but it broke some rules. You ready to sit behind a desk and say that stuff to other guys now, Deacon? Turn in your white hat for a grey suit? Or are you still one of the good guys?”

He didn’t blink. He just kept looking at me. His expression didn’t change. It was like looking down the barrels of two big Colt Peacemakers. “All right,” he said at last. “All right.” He frowned at his knuckles. “Just jealous, I guess.”

Rick cleared his throat. We looked at him and he blushed again. “Uh,” he said. “I mean, as far as the how part goes. I got radar. But if there’s a good-sized sea it might not pick up anything unless you’re close enough to see it anyway. It’s mostly for weather. Can’t really see anything too low.”

I nodded and looked back at Deacon. “You better show me the boat.”

• • •

The Gulf Stream in late August can change quickly. It can be smooth and flat and flowing along at five knots and then suddenly, with no warning, the weather blows up and you’re fighting for your life. And just as suddenly the squall passes and you come out of a thick wall of water into moonlight, peace, and the calm, steady flow of the Stream again. Because it is always there, always moving at its unchanging pace.

I kept telling myself that last part. The Stream was calm out there, not too far away, just on the other side of this squall. But I had been in a cocoon of rain for the last fifteen minutes. The storm had swept across the flat empty water at me just as the sun went down. Just when I was almost out of hope and thinking things couldn’t be any worse. And of course, they could. They always could, especially lately. And now they were.

I had been scanning the horizon so hard my eyes hurt, glaring at the fuel gauge and trying to make it stop moving towards the big red E at the left side. And suddenly I was inside rain so thick I had to turn my head to the side to breathe. The sunset vanished. The ocean was gone. I was all alone. I might as well have been in a very wet closet.

As my world shrank to a couple of inches around me, I throttled back and started thinking. I pushed the ugly unwelcome thoughts away but they kept coming back.

I remembered a girl I had found once, a few years back when I was still a working cop. She was fifteen. An outlaw motorcycle gang had her for six days. By the time they threw her out there was no one left inside. She had been doped and raped almost non-stop for the whole six days. She couldn’t identify a single one of her attackers. She couldn’t even identify herself.

I had to find Anna. I had to find Patrice and his Black Freighter. They were out here with me, had to be.

But I couldn’t find them. I had been running on a zigzag course through the corridor where they had to be, and they weren’t there. It was the Caribbean counterpart of a big game trail, the route all the freighters took between Florida and Haiti. It was a narrow band of water, only a few miles wide. There was no other way to go. They had to be in it somewhere.

But they weren’t. I had passed plenty of traffic, each time running Rick’s fine fast boat up to the stern to read the name, each time dropping back again, disappointed.

Now I was running low on fuel, time and hope.

Hopeless. It had been a stupid idea to begin with, but the only idea I could come up with. From the start it had depended on speed, close figuring, and luck. The squall took away the speed, the close figuring could easily be wrong, and the only luck I’d had was that so far I hadn’t rammed anything in the rain.

Maybe this guy, this Patrice du Sinueux, really was a sorcerer. Maybe he could make his ship invisible.

Or maybe he was making me blind. If so, he was doing it to the radar, too. The screen was backlit and if I bent over I could just make it out. It had showed nothing for the last forty-five minutes and now, in the middle of the squall—

I blinked and tried to wipe the rain from my eyes. Then I wiped the radar screen and looked at it again.

Something was there.

It was about the right size and shape for a freighter and, if I was reading the radar right, it was about five miles away.

A gust of rain hit my face, driving harder than the storm around it. That must mean it was blowing out. Any moment now I was going to come out of it, I was sure, but until I did there was nothing I could do but throttle back and watch the radar.

Then the squall went up another notch and the rain was so thick I couldn’t see the bow of the boat and the wind drove the rain into my face hard enough that it felt like gravel. I hunkered down and squinted. It seemed to blow even harder, and go on for several minutes, and then it stopped.