In Harm's Way (A Martin Billings Story Book 3) Read online

  Paul had trained with US Coast Guard but happily remained an islander in his outlook. “I took advantage of your drunken condition,” I said. “You’d do the same.”

  “Naturally.”

  “No, we’ve come across a spot of bother, as the Brits say. St. Anne is dead ahead of us, and I’m looking at what appears to be an inappropriately parked yacht. She’s sitting hard on French Reef.”

  “Again? Some fool cutting the corner on the run south?”

  “Again. Not normally a crisis, but I’m sure you’ve seen there is a blow headed toward us.”

  “It’s still in the Atlantic. Should be here in a couple of hours, I’m thinking. A good one will rub that boat to bits on those rocks.” He paused. “Me and the boys are headed up island, picking up some medical supplies. I could divert, but that would mean performing a heroic rescue in the middle of the storm. So, I’m just asking but… is this something you could take care of for me?”

  I glanced at Bill. “It’s always nice to have the folks in uniform owe you one,” he said.

  “If you’d like, we can give it a shot. We’ll scoop up anyone still on board and see if we can yuck the yacht off the rocks.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” he said. “If it can still float, park it with the other yachts.”

  “Since we will be busy and are shorthanded, would you call Walter and Mr. Charles and give them a heads up, let them know you asked us to take care of this before checking in?”

  “Sure. Especially that Mr. Charles, eh?”

  “Especially.”

  “All right, then. I gonna be back tomorrow. You owe me a pool game. Same stakes as last time too.”

  When I hung up, Bill snorted. “Well, I guess, seeing as Everett’s ikigai is intact, we got us some hero shit to do.”

  “Just mind your serious face.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Simple. You are going to be driving this tub and when we head over there, try not to scare the shit out of them, okay?”

  “It’s not my fault if they panic,” Bill grinned. “After all, it’s their bad sailing that put them in HARM’S way. I’m just doing a good deed and that should make me look beautiful.”

  “It doesn’t Bill. Not when you do it with your best evil smile.”

  2

  As HARM slowly approached the reef, I was happy to leave her in Bill’s gifted hands. I contented myself with watching with admiration as he skillfully let HARM drift slowly toward the stranded vessel, backing off the throttle at the precise moment that allowed the combination of our forward momentum and let the current take us close enough to touch them.

  Although I’d lied about Bill’s face, I hadn’t been kidding about not scaring them. The sight of a 120-foot freighter looming over their yacht (the tops of the masts barely reach the wheelhouse) and steadily approaching would raise the hackles of any sailor — even if their boat is hard aground. Harm can look huge, and even uglier than Bill.

  I stood out on the bridge wing taking a good look at the yacht, trying to assess the situation, looking to see if I could spot any signs of life. In a situation like this, some sailors get frustrated or frightened, and take off in the dinghy to get help. With the storm coming in, the first order of business was to rescue passengers and crew, if there were any. Once they were aboard, we’d worry about the vessel.

  The sleek yacht, a steel-hulled ketch, probably about 40 feet long, was not a cheap bit of gear as sailboats go.

  “Wanderer,” I muttered, reading the name on the stern and noting it down in the ship’s log along with the time. Everett would need that information.

  “Out of Virginia Beach,” Bill noted, snorting. “How many yachts named Wanderer do you think we’ve come across? I’d be surprised if it wasn’t north of a hundred. Most of them from the States. It pains me greatly to see such continuous evidence that our countrypeople possess so little imagination when it comes to selecting boat names.”

  “You have to admit that the name is appropriate,” I said.

  “For a boat that travels from one marina to another?” he laughed. “That’s hardly wandering.”

  I ran my eye over her lines. “Well, she’s a good-looking craft.”

  “And dame fortune smiles on her owner, as she appears to be made of good German steel. If a plastic fantastic yacht hit that reef at any speed at all, when the keel struck it would tear a huge hole in her. Course, sitting snug on that reef as she is, she wouldn’t sink, immediately, but even a gentle swell would grind her to bits. That far up on the coral it would be tricky yanking one off without tearing her apart. But a steel boat, yessir, I think we can tug her off safely enough.”

  “She’s stuck pretty hard,” I said.

  Floating alongside, the current pushed HARM slightly. As the perspective changed, I caught sight of movement. “Someone is on the reef behind the boat,” I said.

  “Better take a closer look,” Bill said. “I’ll hold her here.” The big diesel roared her objections to changing things as Bill put HARM into reverse and hit the throttles. Nothing happens fast on a boat, except trouble, and now HARM’s forward drift slowed gradually, and then she pulled back again. I heard a crunch as her hull kissed the edge of the reef. “That’s as close as she gets,” he said.

  Walking back out on the bridge wing, I saw a woman’s face peering around the hull, looking out at us. I couldn’t tell if she was afraid of us or glad to see us. But when she stepped out into sight, waving cheerfully, it was a nice sight indeed.

  “Those are encouraging signs of rather pretty life,” Bill said. “I’m beginning to think that this rescue might not be as wrong-headed an endeavor as I first imagined.”

  Even Ugly Bill can be reasonable when it suits him. He waved at the woman, making it a cheerful, friendly hello.

  When she stepped out where we could see her, standing knee deep in the water, I had to agree with his evaluation. The slender black woman, probably in her thirties, wore a blue tank top, bright blue shorts, a red bandanna around her hair, and a broad smile on her face.

  I hoped she was wearing shoes of some kind, as the reef had some sharp edges to it.

  As Bill implied, the reef had chewed more than one fiberglass boat to tiny bits and wouldn’t be any kinder to bare feet.

  “Hello,” I called out. “Looks like you need some help here.”

  She put her hands on her hips and stared at me, grinning. “You think? Do you boys get points for such insights?”

  “Maybe she likes life there,” Bill chuckled. “Woman’s got an attitude.”

  “I’ll be over in the dinghy in a shake,” I called out to her. “I’ll launch Lilly,” I said.

  Bill winced. “Your tendency to anthropomorphize everything under the spacious skies is astounding, even to me, and I happen to like Lilly.”

  Lilly, you see, was the name I’d given our dinghy. She’s a 15-foot rigid inflatable, which simply means the bottom is rigid fiberglass and the hull is inflatable. We power her with a 40hp Suzuki motor, and she is a pretty versatile craft.

  “No rush, the water’s fine,” she called back. With Bill stroking the throttles, holding HARM in place, I went down the ladder and aft to where Lilly sat contentedly in her davits. I used her winch to lower her into the water, climbed down, started the engine, released the lines, and motored over to the reef.

  The woman came to the edge and stepped lightly, almost gracefully, into the dinghy. “I take it this is my taxi,” she said, grinning.

  “At your service,” I said.

  I took her back to HARM and watched her climb up the ladder that dangled from the side. I tied off Lilly and followed her up, leading her to the bridge.

  The lady held out a hand. “Thanks, boys. I’m Donna Devro. It seems this is the end of what was supposed to be a fun sailing holiday.”

  “That’s not a rental boat,” Bill said.

  “What?”

  “Just another of the
great insights we get points for,” Bill said. “No one around her rents fancy yachts like that. They deal in expendable plastic boats.”

  “Oh. It belongs to a friend. He lent it to me and I was off to get some salt up my nose and check out the southern end of the island.”

  “Not much there,” I said.

  “I didn’t know that. Anyway, I lost power coming out of the yacht basin…” she pointed to the north, “and got set down on this reef before I could do anything about it. How nice to have you charming men rescue me.” She looked at the boat. “Can you get her off those rocks?”

  Bill’s face told me that he thought as little of her story as I did. The current didn’t have nearly the strength to put that boat that far onto the reef. “Before we get your friend’s boat off the reef, I better take a close look,” I said.

  “At what?”

  Bill laughed. “At the hull. If you managed to punch a hole in her hull, she’d sink the moment we got her off. Martin wants to take a look see and find out if we need to do any patching before we float her.”

  She smiled. “Good thinking.”

  “I’ll make the lady a cup of coffee while you do your surveying work,” Bill said. He smiled at Donna Devro in a way he has that somehow twists his ugly face into a look that women find charming, or at least intriguing. Or so it seems.

  “Sure,” I said.

  While they chatted, I went back to the yacht to check out the damage the reef might have done to her. Tying the dinghy to her railing, I hopped out and walked around her in the knee-deep water. I didn’t need to dive her — the part I wanted to check was right there in plain sight, out in the open air, which is not how you like a boat to be, unless she’s in dry dock.

  The damage wasn’t all that bad. In addition to a lot of scrapes that would require a lot of sanding and fresh paint, the collision had bent the rudder shaft. That meant we had no way to steer her. The propeller was mangled pretty well too. But she would float. Some water might come in through the packing gland, the pumps should have no trouble handling it.

  When she hit the reef, she’d clearly been under power and moving at nice clip.

  I secured a line to the yacht’s bow cleat and ran it back to HARM, leaving lots of slack and tying the bitter end to the railing. Then, with another line in hand, I got on board the yacht for the first time, climbing aboard the low side and scampering onto the top of the wheelhouse and a way up the mast. Making a loop, I lassoed the highest spreader I could get and tightened the noose. Then I got back down, hopped in the dinghy, and went home.

  “The hull looks seaworthy enough,” I told Bill. “I’ll get on top of the wheelhouse and secure the line and let’s get her off.”

  He nodded, understanding completely. It wasn’t our first time at this rodeo.

  When I got up top, I pulled the line from the yacht’s spreader, taking out the slack and securing it to our mast. Then I stomped on the deck, which was currently Bill’s overhead. He got the message and HARM’S big diesel roared. I saw the backwash from the prop as we backed down, and I watched the line take the strain. The yacht creaked and scraped on the reef for a moment, then started turning in place, spinning around. When she’d turned 180, the mast pointed toward us and she began coming off the reef. I’d tied her off with a bowline, and as soon as she moved toward the water, I released the knot. The hull moved into deep water and she righted, floating.

  I walked the line down and aft and the yacht dutifully came alongside. Before she reached us, I tied a fender to the railing and dropped it at the level of the sailboat’s deck. “Taking her in alongside?” Bill shouted down as I secured the line aft.

  “She’s got no steering,” I said. “Rudder is locked hard over and going to stay that way.”

  He nodded. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

  I dropped more fenders between the two hulls and tied more lines to keep her loosely alongside, then gave Bill the sign. As he started forward, going dead slow, Donna Devro came out to look. “You boys made that look easy enough,” she said.

  “Damn, and I tried to make it look hard, so you’d be properly impressed,” I said, “but we needed to get it done quickly.” I pointed at the black clouds east of us. “There could be some strong winds in that storm.”

  She looked where I was pointing and put her hand on my arm—a delicate, gentle, sensual touch. “Looks like it is a good thing for me you gentlemen came along when you did.” She looked down at the yacht and pouted. “I guess I fucked up Warren’s boat pretty good.”

  “That you did. The boat needs a lot of attention and some of it soon,” I said. “She can’t be sailed, as the steering is damaged and so is the prop. There might be leaks, small ones from cracks I didn’t see. You shouldn’t let her sit unattended.”

  “Then what should I do?”

  “The best thing would be to contact the boatyard and have her hauled out. After something like that, she’ll need a thorough inspection.”

  “Okay. If you anchor the boat safely and take me ashore, I’ll contact the boatyard.”

  “We can radio them for you,” I said. “They monitor the radio all the time for emergencies.”

  She shook her head. “Please, no. That would be embarrassing. I need to go talk to Warren, explain what happened, and let him know I’m taking care of it. He’s probably over at that bar that looks out over the water.”

  “The Barracuda.”

  “That’s the one. After I tell him, we can get the boatyard to tow the boat in and haul it out. He’ll need to sign papers authorizing work anyway, I assume.”

  That made sense. “Well, once the boat is secure, where do you want to go?”

  “Gazele’s guesthouse dock would be perfect,” she said. “I’ll change clothes, get some dry things on and go straight to find Warren.”

  “All right. After we drop you off, we have to go to the commercial port to check in and clear customs.”

  Her hand squeezed my arm, and I warned myself not to read promise into that gesture. “I appreciate all your help,” she said. “You’ve done so much. Can I buy you boys a drink this evening?”

  “I’m sure we will make an appearance at The Barracuda tonight around dinner time. If you were to show up…”

  She laughed, a delightful, sparkling laugh that made it seem as if nothing bad had happened. I guess, when it isn’t your boat, even a mash up like that isn’t a problem. “Why, that’s a lovely place. I’ll be looking for you.”

  “The Coast Guard will want a report from you at some point,” I said. “When they get back from their run. Assuming Paul remembers.”

  “If they show up, then they can have a report and a drink too,” she said.

  “We don’t need to let official business spoil the evening,” I said. “You can do the report later. They won’t be back before tomorrow, I’m sure.”

  “I try to never count on later,” she said. “We’ve got now. Later might not come.”

  “You need to recalibrate,” Bill said. “Later is almost the only time on the island, other than now.”

  “I like now,” she said.

  I wanted to read her eyes, see what might be behind that statement, but her gaze was focused on the darkening horizon, emphasized by a fall in the temperature. “Could be quite a squall,” I said.

  “I love a storm,” she said. “They can really clear the air.”

  “They do freshen things,” I said. “But they can be dangerous for sailors.”

  “And what is life without a little danger?” she asked me.

  The question didn’t sound rhetorical, but an honest answer might have put us on a reef, so I bit my tongue.

  3

  Leaving the yacht floating at anchor with only a slight list that Bill assured me was hardly noticeable, I ferried Donna Devro, dropping her off at the dock in front of Gazele’s guesthouse. I returned to HARM and, with a last nervous look at WANDERER, we departed the yacht basin, chugging back
south to the commercial harbor.

  St. Anne’s harbor isn’t the busiest of commercial ports, and that meant we could tie up right at the customs dock while we took care of the formalities. With Bill watching things, I grabbed up the ship’s papers and our passports, then crossed over to take care of the first order of business, which involves checking in with the Port Captain and completing the obnoxious immigration forms.

  “Seems to be a busy morning for you, Martin,” Walter, the Port Captain said as I handed him the documents.

  “Everett called you?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did that. He said you was helping out, something about a yacht needing to be yucked off French Reef.” Walter scratched his head. “That man was a bit hazy on the details. Care to fill me in?”

  I had to smile. Walter was not only a careful man, but nosy in an inoffensive way.

  “Sure, Walter. Nothing too exciting. We came across a yacht hard up on French Reef. Just one person on board, a lovely lady and she is fine, but she crunched it pretty hard. With that storm heading this way, we thought it would be polite to offer her a ride.”

  “Damn,” Walter said. “And Everett headed the wrong way to help, I imagine.”

  “Steaming up island on some mission. Since the situation with the yacht wasn’t life-threatening, he asked us to take care of it. We took the lady on board. The collision mangled the yacht’s steering gear and bent the rudder shaft.”

  “Leaking bad?”

  “No. It’s a steel hull.”

  His eyebrows raised. “Which boat that now?”

  “Wanderer. An American flagged black ketch.”

  Walter’s eyes rolled up as he ran his list of boats through his memory. “That never checked out and she’s not owned by a woman…”

  “Well, she said it belonged to a friend.”

  He shook his head. Walter had a good memory for boats and who they belonged to and it took just a moment for him to come up with it. “A man name of Warren Davis own that boat. He been staying here some time.”