Copyright © 2024

Published by DOWN ISLAND PRESS, LLC, 2024

Beaufort, SC

Copyright © 2024 by Wayne Stinnett

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express, written permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication Data

Stinnett, Wayne

Dominica Blue/Wayne Stinnett

p. cm. - (A Jesse McDermitt Novel)

ISBN: 978-1-956026-89-4 (eBook)

Cover, graphics, and interior design by Aurora Publicity

Edited by Marsha Zinberg, The Write Touch

Final Proofreading by Donna Rich

Published by Down Island Press, LLC

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Many real people are used fictitiously in this work, with their permission. Most of the locations herein are also fictional or are used fictitiously. However, the author takes great pains to depict the location and description of the many well-known islands, locales, beaches, reefs, bars, and restaurants throughout the Florida Keys and the Caribbean to the best of his ability.

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Also by Wayne Stinnett

The Jerry Snyder Caribbean Mystery Series

Wayward Sons

Vodou Child

Friends of the Devil

The Charity Styles Caribbean Thriller Series

Merciless Charity

Ruthless Charity

Reckless Charity

Enduring Charity

Vigilant Charity

Lost Charity

Elusive Charity

Liable Charty

The Young Jesse McDermitt Tropical Adventure Series

A Seller’s Market

Bad Blood

Cocaine Cowboys

The Jesse McDermitt Caribbean Adventure Series

Fallen Out

Fallen Palm

Fallen Hunter

Fallen Pride

Fallen Mangrove

Fallen King

Fallen Honor

Fallen Tide

Fallen Angel

Fallen Hero

Rising Storm

Rising Fury

Rising Force

Rising Charity

Rising Water

Rising Spirit

Rising Thunder

Rising Warrior

Rising Moon

Rising Tide

Steady as She Goes

All Ahead Full

Man Overboard

Cast Off

Fish On!

Weigh Anchor

Swift and Silent

Apalach Affair

Dominica Blue

Rainbow of Collars Motivational Non-fiction Series

Blue Collar to No Collar

No Collar to Tank Top

Dedicated to Milli, who brings us such joy.

“Dogs’ lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you're going to lose a dog, and there's going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can't support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There's such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware that it comes with an unbearable price. Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and the mistakes we make because of those illusions.”

― Dean Koontz

The Lesser Antilles

Commonwealth of Dominica

Basse-Terre Island, Guadeloupe, Windward Islands

Sunday, November 17, 2024

The marina was small. There was only room for twenty or thirty boats, depending on size, all tied closely together. There were no amenities available—no electricity, no water, no finger piers, nor any other kind of dock. Just mooring posts set twenty feet apart and twenty feet from the sides, all the way around the small, square hole.

That was the only thing it had to offer— a deep hole and dredged channel, both blasted out of the shore’s bedrock around the middle of the last century, with the rubble used to create a seawall on the exposed western side. But it was deep, with vertical sides that went down ten feet.

The ever-present sound of the surf could be heard, though where it was breaking on the rocky southern coastline was nearly a mile away, across mostly flat, inhospitable terrain.

Large ocean waves crashed against the southern coast, driven by the perpetual easterly wind blowing steadily across the whole Atlantic Ocean. The sound of the roaring surf was ever-present in the area, but the marina and anchorage were protected by a rocky point of land that stood out several hundred meters from the southwestern point of Basse-Terre Island.

Most of the boats that utilized the marina were working boats, either sailing charters or small commercial fishing boats. There were also a few locally owned sport-fishing machines, available to take anglers out for a day or half-day of fulfilling their fishing dreams on a budget.

It was the southernmost marina on the sheltered western side of Guadeloupe, and there were always dozens of sailboats anchored just outside the marina, some waiting on weather to make the mad dash south across unprotected waters to the next island, Dominica.

Other boats had just arrived from there, seeking safe anchorage before continuing north.

For a few of the sailboats anchored outside the marina, it was their turnaround point, the place where they loaded illegal contraband.

The secluded location was a very good option for such illicit activities, and much closer than Dominica.

It was almost sunset, and there were few people around the marina at that hour, except a night watchman, who mostly just listened to the radio while reading American crime thrillers.

A lone figure stood on the seawall, looking toward a dazzling display of light as the sun neared the horizon.

But Juaquin Esteban’s attention wasn’t on the sunset.

A twelve-meter sportfisherman was approaching the marina, the driver perched way up at the top of the boat’s high tower. It moved slowly through the anchorage, avoiding the other boats’ anchor rodes as they lay quietly bobbing in the last minutes of daylight.

Juaquin was a slight man with sharp, angular features, a hawk nose, and dark skin, weathered by years in the sun. His dark eyes missed little as he looked around the marina.

Most of the charter boats were gone, since new guests had boarded, headed out for a week of sailing as soon as they arrived.

Saturdays were turnover days for the sailing and fishing charters, when guests packed and left in the morning, and the flotilla then spruced up for the next family or group of frat boys to arrive in the afternoon.

The fishing boats were as they’d been the previous day, tied up and waiting for the workweek to begin on Monday.

Sundays were always slow, and the marina was quiet, which was why both Juaquin and the arriving fishing boat were there. Not to mention a few of the sailboats at anchor.

Juaquin walked down the seawall to where he knew the boat would tie up, getting a nod of recognition from the man in the tower.

Sirena moved close to the inner bank as it made the left turn, then the captain reversed for a moment and shifted into forward again with the wheel turned, kicking the back of the boat around and in line with his mooring spot.

Two crewmembers fended the boat away from the poles as it entered between them, both dropping lines over the poles, which were already tied to the midship cleats at just the right length. Then one of them went forward to tie off the bow.

The crew quickly disappeared inside the boat as soon as Juaquin approached.

The man in the tower, Benito Juarez, was a local with family in Venezuela, where Juaquin was from. More importantly, he was married to Juaquin’s sister, which made him family.

Benito smiled as he strode to Sirena’s bow and easily jumped down to a sandy spot among the rocks.

“How did it go?” Juaquin asked him.

Benito smiled. “The same as the last four times,” he replied. “It was a brilliant idea, Juaquin. I have twelve packages stashed aboard, just as before. Got all of them on one pass, again, the same as the last three times.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t go this time,” Juaquin said. “There was no getting out of the meeting.”

Benito looked past Juaquin at the anchorage. “Two of the buyers will be coming in to load shortly. The packaging has changed; come aboard and see.”

Juaquin climbed onto Sirena’s foredeck after Benito, then followed him into the boat’s cabin, which had seating all around the back part. Ahead, he could hear voices down in the forward cabin.

Benito raised one of the seat cushions, then the plywood beneath it, to reveal two white bundles, each with the Cartel de los Soles marking on them.

“Whatever it is wrapped in is highly reflective,” Benito said. “That may come in handy if we ever miss one and have to send a diver down.”

“Where are the others?” Juaquin asked.

“There are six under these seats,” Benito said, closing the minimalistic hiding spot. “And six more in the engine room under the floor. Not the best hiding places, but for the short trip from the seamount, I think it will work. Every police and coast guard boat around here knows my boat, and everyone knows I fish out there.”

Each of the packages contained fifty kilos of marijuana, fresh from the fields in Central Venezuela and bound for the busier tourist destinations in the Virgin Islands. Six hundred kilos in all.

“Very good, Benito,” Juaquin said with a broad smile. “This is excellent, and our friends will be very happy.”

He paused a moment as he grinned at his brother-in-law and childhood friend. “The next delivery will be more.”

“More?” Benito asked, worried. “It is already a great risk, storing these under the seats and in the engine room. There are no more places to hide it from casual lookers.”

“Not more volume,” Juaquin said. “More weight and a far greater value, which we won’t first have to buy.”

Benito’s eyes widened. “They agreed?”

“Si, amigo,” Juaquin replied. “The next shipment will be worth more than everything we’ve moved for the cartel this year.”

“How much?” Benito asked.

“The first delivery will be six packages,” Juaquin explained. “Each one will be the same dimensions as these, but one hundred kilos each, so the six of them will be the same weight as these last five loads of weed. After that, at the end of this month, we will be consigned 2,400 kilos, worth more than a hundred million U.S. dollars.”

Benito’s eyes widened in shock. “A hundred mil— Wait, we don’t have to pay for it?”

“No, we will be asociadas del Cartel de los Soles.”

“How much will we make?” Benito insisted.

“For next week’s load,” Juaquin replied. “We will both be paid twenty thousand American dollars.”

Benito arched his eyebrows. “And the one after that? When we carry twice as much?”

Juaquin smiled. “Doble, amigo.”

Windward Islands

December 1, 2024

It’d been a long and sometimes arduous journey, full of adventure, fun, and a few close calls, but we were nearly there. Just sixty nautical miles more, maybe fifteen hours, and we’d arrive at our destination, the city of Roseau, on the island of Dominica.

I was looking forward to not just diving the mountainous walls the island was famous for, the rock rising straight up from the depths, but also to venturing inland, to explore the 365 rivers on the island, the many hot springs, and the surrounding emerald-green jungle.

I’d planned to arrive a few hours after sunset, anchor near the customs house and run up a quarantine flag until they opened the next morning. Then we could be cleared into the country, where we planned to stay for at least a month as we prepared Taranis to cross the Atlantic in the wrong direction, a true test of her go-anywhere sea-going capability.

They were called trade winds because early mariners had used the funnel of wind between the equator and thirty degrees north latitude to carry their ships westward, laden with trade goods from Europe, bound for the New World. They were also called the easterlies, because the wind at those little latitudes blew predominantly from the east, which would be right in our face the whole way across.

Taranis wasn’t dependent on wind direction. The crossing would be easier by going north along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and following the westerlies and Gulf Stream in the northern latitudes.

But in the middle of winter, that wasn’t my idea of fun and it didn’t sit well with any of us. So, we planned to buck tradition and head against the trade winds for a true test of ocean-crossing ability.

It’d be warmer in these lower latitudes, and we’d arrive in the Azores well before hurricane season started.

Northern Europe and the Mediterranean were also on the list, through spring and summer. And Mount Olympus was on the horizon.

Neither Savannah nor I had ever been to Dominica, and both of us had always wanted to see it, so it became the first long-range destination on our combined bucket list.

Over the last two months, we’d stopped in many places, mostly off the grid, where we didn’t have to deal with other people. The longest we’d stayed in one place was two whole weeks on Grand Turk, while we’d provisioned, and Alberto went through his PADI training and certification as an Open Water Diver. I’d taken the same training through the Professional Underwater Dive Instructors when I was just a year older than him and had taken much more advanced classes later as a Marine.

My friends, Boone Fischer and Emily Durand, had recently started a new dive op on Grand Turk, and both were eager to take him under their wings, though their operation wasn’t fully open.

I studied the sky, enjoying the night crossing as I always did. The wind and sea state were usually calmer, and the surface of the water was empty for miles in any direction, while billions of stars guided our way… and my thoughts.

The sun would soon be up; the sky to the east was already beginning to get lighter, as one by one, the stars in that direction winked out.

The island of Guadeloupe was out there somewhere, only thirty miles away, so the brightness in that direction was partly the glow from lights on the island.

We’d left Montserrat at noon the previous day, after spending nearly a week diving remote sites from Taranis. We settled easily into a four-on and eight-off routine for the short night crossing, with Savannah and I taking the 2200 to 0600 watches. She’d awakened me at 0200 for the last night watch and reported seeing nothing but a tanker shortly after midnight, far off on the horizon.

We were well ahead of schedule but couldn’t possibly cover the distance before nightfall on electric propulsion only. But making the crossing under diesel power had been an option everyone nixed right away. There just wasn’t a need to hurry.

It had quickly become our habit, traveling all the way across the Caribbean from the Florida Keys, to plan our departure from one place based on what time we’d arrive at the next. We found it easier to cruise at night and get there early in the morning, so we’d have a full day to decide if we were going to stay for a while and recharge the batteries or continue on.

So far, we’d barely used any fuel at all—another reason to not be in a hurry on this last leg. And this time, I wanted to arrive at night.

We already knew we’d be staying, and I wanted everyone to get a good night’s sleep at anchor before the customs house opened the next morning.

I had a mooring reserved for the next week and would use a dinghy dock to come and go with provisions. Then we planned to explore and dive Dominica’s western shoreline all the way up to Portsmouth at the northern end of the small island.

When we’d returned from Apalachicola several months earlier, we’d remained close to home until the equinox. Then we’d moved Taranis to a face dock in Boot Key Harbor. For the rest of September, we provisioned and prepared for the 1,500-nautical-mile trip to Dominica.

Rusty threw a big party for us the day before we left, with friends from all up and down the Florida Keys chain coming to see us off. Rufus and his great-grandniece, Kyndall, cooked a whole 200-pound hog for the occasion.

Out of the whole two-month trip, there were just a few days when it’d been just the three of us aboard. Looking back, Alberto had been right. All our friends started planning their vacations based on where we’d be. Deuce and Julie had joined us on the first leg, bringing their two boys, Trey and Jim, and we’d set off at mid-morning the day after the party.

We had very little on our actual agenda, other than swimming, diving, and playing in the Bahamas for a while.

And visiting some old friends.

The first two days of our journey had been the roughest sea state we’d encountered during the whole trip, as we hitched a ride on the Gulf Stream, which flowed east through Florida Strait, directly into an easterly wind. The opposing forces created some fairly rough sea conditions, but nothing that Taranis couldn’t take in stride.

The boys had enjoyed going up on the foredeck with me and Deuce, getting drenched in the sea spray that was quickly whipped away by the stiff, twenty-knot wind we were headed right into.

From an efficiency standpoint, the current was more powerful than the wind blowing on Taranis’s nose, and four knots of boat speed was four and a half knots, speed over ground.

Our first port of call had been Morgan’s Bluff on Andros Island, to check into the country as soon as the customs office at San Andros Airport opened and could send someone over, but we left that same day to circle back around to the west side, where we’d anchored for three days in a small, protected cove and explored the vast West Side National Park, snorkeled and free-dived the walls of the inland blue hole there, and visited friends Savannah and I knew separately.

We made several stops in the Bahamas, revisiting familiar anchorages and seeing old friends, some for just a day or two, anchoring in tranquil coves to rest up and let the kids and Tank explore empty beaches. But in a couple of places, we stayed longer.

We had no itinerary for that first part of the passage, and no new places to explore, since Savannah and I were both quite familiar with the Bahamas. We enjoyed each day, never knowing what the next one would bring.

From there, it’d been another two hundred nautical miles along the Bahama Bank, in absolutely ideal sea conditions, overnighting here and there all the way to Long Island, where we’d anchored off a pristine, white sand beach for a whole week and never saw another person— not even footprints in the sand. Three boats sailed by, and might have anchored in another cove, but we never saw them.

Deuce and Julie stayed aboard for five weeks, all the way to the Turks and Caicos, and all four of them left tanned and healthy after the boys earned their Open Water certifications.

Alberto had said Taranis was a “vacation destination,” and maybe he wasn’t far off the mark. It was easier with more people, not harder.

As long as they were the right people.

We motored on electric nearly all the time, so that over the last two months and fifteen hundred nautical miles, we’d burned a total of just over ten gallons of fuel. One hundred and fifty nautical miles to the gallon, and I thought that was way too much, since we were traveling at the speed of mud.

Rusty and Sid were on Grand Turk when we arrived, planning to spend two weeks there with everyone, then sail with us for a couple weeks more. Even with nine people aboard, it wasn’t cramped. Alberto even abandoned his cabin to camp out with Trey and Jim in the wheelhouse, turning the big lounge seat on the port side into a tent.

We spent a good bit of the two weeks on Grand Turk provisioning and making minor repairs. With nine people aboard, it was difficult to keep fresh food on hand, especially fruits and vegetables, so we were making daily trips to a little market within a short walk of the marina.

Protein was never a problem. We caught at least one fish a day and wherever we stopped, we found ample spearfishing and lobster.

So when we arrived in Grand Turk, we had enough fish in the freezer to last all nine of us for a month.

Except, three of the nine were adolescent or teen boys.

Two things of note happened while we were in Grand Turk. All three boys learned to dive, and we had our first ugly encounter with people.

A couple of drunken Hispanic sailors had accosted the boys on the beach, and from what Trey had said, they’d teased Alberto about hanging around with two white kids. He said the two men fled quickly when Tank came lumbering out of the shadows, hackles up, and teeth bared.

Trey called Tank’s canine teeth “mouth knives.”

Our nearly one-year-old puppy weighed 115 pounds, so the description was appropriate.

It was the first time Tank had showed any sort of aggression toward anyone.

Logistics was the bigger problem when it came to provisioning the boat. We had no car or means of getting around on shore, so grocery runs were limited to what could be carried by hand, and it took multiple trips to stock up for weeks of off-the-grid living.

Boone was over-the-top helpful, offering the use of a beat-up old Ford Ranger they’d be using to haul tanks and gear to the boat once the dive-op actually opened. It was red, with white diagonal stripes on both doors like a dive flag.

Trey and Jim had joined Alberto in getting certified, and we did some great first-timer dives around the area, using Taranis as our base, refilling tanks as needed, and moving to a new dive site whenever things got crowded— and by that, I mean when the first boat showed up.

We had a lobster dinner up on the flybridge the evening the boys graduated, under a glorious blue sky, with the sun slowly sinking toward the horizon.

That’d been mid-November, so we’d also celebrated Rusty’s birthday, as well as the Marine Corps birthday.

It’d been a very comfortable eighty degrees every day we were there.

From the Turks and Caicos, we “roared” across the Windward Passage at four knots, encountering slightly rougher seas than we’d had in the last several weeks, but still not as bad as the first day in the Gulf Stream. Sid didn’t mind it, and Rusty seemed to enjoy it.

We explored Old San Juan for a few days, checking out the history of the old Castillo San Felipe del Morro, its high ramparts on a cliff overlooking the entrance to San Juan Bay.

There was a younger couple anchored nearby, and they’d joined us on the tour, along with their daughter and son. Alberto really enjoyed that, after not having Trey and Jim around for the previous week and being stuck with just a bunch of old folks.

In the Virgin Islands, we anchored in a number of places, including Jost Van Dyke, where we’d swum ashore and enjoyed the original Painkiller cocktail at the famous Soggy Dollar beach bar. It’d changed a lot since I was last there, with a hotel just beyond the bar and at least forty people on the beach.

We’d left at noon and crossed over to Norman Island, arriving the next morning, to see an old friend, John Wilson.

Then, we explored the U.S. and British Virgin Islands for another week, finding anchorages with few or no other boats. With her shallower draft, Taranis could get into places a cruising sailboat couldn’t.

Savannah and I had talked a few times about a full-time hired crew, even if it was just one person. She’d brought up the idea of another married couple and I had to admit, if one was a qualified skipper and the other a chef, it would be ideal.

But for the time being, I thought it was a bit pretentious and unnecessary since we could both cook, pilot, and navigate, and we had Alberto in a pinch.

Besides, we had no clock to answer to, so most of our crossings were short, less than fifty miles, taking less than half a day. We stopped and rested when we were tired, explored serene coves when we had the energy, and motored through the night when and where we could. The ocean was a magical place at night.

If Taranis had a flaw, it was access to the flybridge. From the lower helm, you had to go aft about forty feet to the cockpit, up the ladder to the flybridge deck, then forty feet forward. But at four knots, she only traveled the length of a football field in a full minute, and I could stop and grab a beer on the way in less time.

Rusty and Sid had flown home from St. Thomas when we’d stopped in to visit with Jerry and Alicia Snyder for a few days. They’d also left tanned and relaxed.

From there, it’d been just the three of us on a one-hundred-mile crossing from the Virgin Islands to Marigot Bay in St. Martin, where we picked up our new “crew” and continued that night to Gustavia Harbor on the island of St. Barts. We spent several days there provisioning again and exploring the many shops.

While standing on the high overlook above Gustavia, I once more felt a strange, almost mystical connection to the island. Jimmy Saunders would insist that it was a past life trying to open its memories to my mind.

During the long crossing to St. Martin, Alberto had worked as a full crewman, sharing equally in all the chores and watches. Tank stayed with him during the early watch, then Savannah took over from 2200 to 0200.

He was starting to come into his own now, physically as well as mentally. Come summer, he’d be a teenager, and he was already gaining muscle.

I couldn’t help comparing him to where I was at that age, just moving up into junior high, my first crush, and seventh grade track and field. It had been my sprinting ability on the track that had gotten the football coach’s attention.

But Alberto already had nearly a fourth of the required high school credits he’d need to graduate, and was on track to do just that when most kids his age would be finishing their sophomore year.

His schooling was beginning to reach the point where we had to study to help him study, so maybe a tutor with boating experience would be a good first crew to hire.

Alberto had come to me one day after leaving St. Thomas and pointed out that the motor compartments in the amas had been getting hot. Not too hot to trigger an automatic shutdown, but close on some days. He’d gone a step further and shown me where over the past month, had those motors been slightly smaller, we’d have been able to not only cover the same distance in the same time frame, but would have used considerably less energy and produced far less heat.

We ordered a set of forty-kilowatt replacement motors to be delivered and installed in Dominica, and in the meantime, a higher output cooling fan.

While in St. Kitts, the discussion had turned to college options. At just fifteen, we didn’t think Alberto would be prepared to become a dorm-dwelling, full-time student at a major school.

We hoped to be back before then, so he could do his senior year in a semi-private school in the Keys, then look at a local college for a couple of years until he matured more.

If he kept on the trajectory he planned for himself, with no input or prodding from us, he’d graduate college at the age of nineteen.

That gave us two years before he’d be academically ready for a senior year in high school, and five before he’d start a senior year in college, when his peers would be freshmen.

So we had two more years to see how far around the world we could go, add more places to our bucket list, and then tick them off.

I was hoping for halfway—through the Med, then the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, and across the Indian Ocean. Looking at latitude and longitude, the opposite side of the world from the Keys was off the northwest coast of Australia, the farthest place on Earth we could go before we started getting closer to home again.

My plan was to drop anchor in Shark Bay near the town of Denham, Western Australia, not too far from that point, before flying home so Alberto could go to school.

We spent two weeks leisurely hopping around the Leeward Islands southward, stopping in many beautiful places where cruisers were the only tourists and were welcomed by the locals.

The whole way, Taranis performed almost perfectly. The only mishap was when one of the inverters actually did overheat and fail, and I hadn’t been paying attention. That was the reason for most of the fuel consumption—we had to run both generators for several hours to recharge the batteries, and the big diesel main engine had to remain underway.

We were in the tropics, getting down into the “little latitudes,” less than sixteen degrees above the equator. The water was warmer and the air was hotter, so the inside of the motor compartments were overheating, and, as Alberto had pointed out, we were overpowered, making things even hotter down there.

Alberto’s recommendation had been a good one and would end the overheating problem simply by virtue of the smaller motors producing less heat.

When we arrived in Roseau the next day, there would be a box waiting for us—a pair of higher output cooling fans. I hoped that would keep the heat at bay while we waited for the new motors. A temporary fix, but we didn’t want to just sit in Roseau and wait.

Having almost constant internet connection through Starlink, I was able to communicate the problem with the engineers of the company who’d designed the electrical propulsion and cooling systems, and we’d come up with a precise, bolt-on replacement fan that provided more air movement around the inverters.

They also agreed completely with Alberto after seeing the last fifteen-hundred nautical miles of data. We just didn’t need the power of the bigger electric motors. The engineers determined it would only affect our top speed on the electric motors, and then only by one or two knots.

Over the last couple of months, cruising fifteen hundred miles across the Caribbean, the fastest we’d ever gone was five knots, and that was only for an hour to dodge a rain cloud. The shower started building as I was preparing to grill on the flybridge, so the change in course and speed were needed to keep from grilling in the rain.

Okay, maybe “needed” is the wrong term. I just didn’t feel the need to get wet.

Our final destination, a place none of us had ever been, was now less than a day away. I’d wanted to reach Dominica in time for the Waraka Séwinal Festival, and we were nearly a week early. It’s an annual event featuring some of the best local jazz and creole musicians and performers, which I’d heard was one of the best music festivals in the Eastern Caribbean.

Every time we visited a populated area, which wasn’t often, people stared at Taranis. Her dark-blue hulls, polished aluminum rails, teak decks, glistening white bulkheads, and dark tinted glass turned heads everywhere. We now expected it.

I let out a soft sigh. “Back to civilization…”

The sky to the east was beginning to get lighter and I heard the sound of a dolphin blowing. I stood just in time to see it disappear to the left of the bow, followed almost instantly by another one to the right.

The pair stayed with us for about five minutes, riding what little bow wave we created, then they were gone. A moment later, I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Dink Wilcox coming up the steps in the predawn light.

“You’re up early,” I said. “Coffee’s on.”

He grunted and moved behind the long, stainless-steel countertop and grill area. “Need a refill?”

“Just did,” I replied, lifting my mug.

A moment later, he sat down on the lounge seat to port. “Old habits are hard to break,” he said, looking ahead into the darkness. “How the hell you even see where we’re goin’?”

I tapped the monitor, mounted in the overhead. “Night optics. The camera’s on the roof. Hannah not up?”

Hannah Parker was Dink’s new girlfriend, almost twenty years younger than him, a former model, and currently a bartender at the Brass Monkey in Marathon. And before he and Jimmy split a king’s ransom in jewels they found in the trunk of an old car, twenty feet under water in the middle of the backcountry, she was way out of Dink’s league.

“She’ll probably sleep until ten or so,” Dink replied. “I don’t know if you noticed, but she tends to sleep a lot.”

I turned to face him, the red glow from the instruments highlighting his profile. Dink was a good, hard-working, honest man. And he was being taken advantage of. I saw it, Savannah saw it, even Alberto saw it.

“Dink, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” I said. “And I’m only saying this because you’re a friend.”

“What’s that, buddy?” he asked, his face drawn up in a serious expression that didn’t look right for him.

“Do you think maybe…? Well, I get the sense that Hannah’s only after you for your money. Sorry to be blunt, but there it is.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Jesse, I’m a simple fisherman, and Hannah don’t fish. What the hell else would she find interestin’ in a guy like me?”

“So, you’re not worried about her getting⁠—”

“She likes me ’cause I buy her stuff and take her places,” he said. “I have fun, she has fun, and nobody’s hurt.”

“What if she said she wanted a car?” I asked. “Or a bigger house?”

“I’d tell her to hit the bricks,” he replied with a grin. “I’m only in it for the fun, Jesse, and I’m careful not to overdo it. I’ll be back on the poling platform by the time the tarpon and cobia start runnin’ in the spring, and she’ll be off with the next sucker.”

“Smart man,” I said with a nod.

“How far away are we?” he asked, looking out over the bow again.

I checked the chart plotter. “Fifty-seven nautical miles. We’ll arrive about two hours after sunset.”

“So today’s our last day to fish, huh?”

“Until we get checked in tomorrow morning,” I replied. “I arranged for tourist fishing licenses for all of us; you just have to show your passport.”

“Ya didn’t have to do that.”

I looked over and grinned. “Gotta pay you something for helping crew these last couple of weeks.”

He laughed loudly. “I oughta be the one payin’ you! This is the nicest boat I’ve ever been on. And that cabin! Off the hook, man.”

Savannah and I had the owner’s stateroom on the main deck, just behind the helm, as well as most of the starboard ama for our head. There were two staterooms in the port ama, Alberto’s first-mate’s cabin forward, and a guest cabin aft.

On the lower deck, forward in the main hull, was another, more luxurious guest stateroom, complete with its own head.

“Want me to go down and get a coupla rods ready to troll?” he asked.

I nodded. “I have two waypoints set between here and Roseau. A couple of seamounts that rise to within a few hundred feet of the surface.”

“When do we reach ’em?” he asked eagerly.

I checked the chart plotter again. “We’ll pass over the first one just after sunrise, and the second one around noon.”

He rose and looked out toward the eastern sky, now more of a pale pink than the magenta from just a few minutes ago. “It’ll be hard gettin’ wahoo or mahi to come to the surface at this speed this early in the day, so I’ll set up your downrigger on one of ’em. The second one at noon won’t be no problem at all, and we can put three or four lines out.”

“There’s plenty of room in the freezer,” I said, as the sun peeked over the horizon. It reflected off the water, setting the surface ablaze with dancing light, and turning twilight to full day in a matter of minutes.

Dink rose from his seat. “I’ll go down and get the rigs ready.”

As he headed down the steps, the overhead speaker clicked, and Savannah’s voice came over the intercom. “How many eggs do you want?”

I smiled and pressed the button. “You’ve asked me that several times a week for the last two months.”

“Just checking,” she said with a laugh. “As soon as I don’t ask and make four for you, you’ll want more.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Four works for me. Very uneventful night.”

“That’s good,” she replied, as I rose and picked up the binoculars again.

I scanned the sea ahead of us and saw nothing, then slowly moved the glasses in a circle all around. There wasn’t anything on the horizon in any direction.

Alberto was probably up and moving around, which meant that Tank would be heading out to the port swim platform at any time.

In two more weeks, Tank would be a year old. Though already over 100 pounds, he was still gaining about half a pound a week as he developed more lean muscle mass and depleted the last of the puppy fat.

He was big and powerful and provided me with a great workout whenever we played tug-of-war.

I’d picked up an old motorcycle tire from a beach on Long Island in the Bahamas, and he learned the commands “hold” and “pull” very quickly. Having a much lower center of gravity than me, even though I was almost twice his weight, he nearly yanked me off my feet a few times. And it was his favorite game.

His trainer, Warren Kennedy, had said he’d still be a puppy emotionally until about fourteen months, typical for both his Lab mother and Tibet mountain dog father, and he’d likely gain another five pounds by then.

A 120-pound puppy.

Before we’d start across the Atlantic, Tank would be returning to Warren’s facility in South Florida for two months of intense protection training. Warren would arrive in Dominica right after the new year and I’d hired a corporate King Air to fly them both back to Florida.

It was going to take us at least thirty days to reach the Azores, much too long for a dog to be stuck on a boat. Then a month to rest up there, provision the boat, see some sights, and make our way into the Med.

Warren was going to bring Tank to Marbella, Spain, where we planned to spend some time, and he would stay aboard with us for a couple of weeks. He wanted to go over Tank’s training in depth and in person before flying back home again.

After that, Tank would be a permanent fixture in our family and able to share in the responsibility that brought.

I heard the slider open and close, then Alberto shouted, “He’s gotta go, Dad.”

“I’ll be down in a second,” I replied, then pulled both electric motor controls back to zero.

If he absolutely had to, Tank could do his business using the fake grass on the port ama’s swim platform. But while we were underway, that just wasn’t a good idea. Besides, he liked whatever time he could spend in the water.

I hurried down the steps as Taranis slowly drifted to a stop in the middle of a calm sea. Tank was excited, dancing around as I put his vest on. Not that he needed it. He was a great swimmer, but the vest had a convenient handle on the back.

I opened the transom gate and walked with him down to the swim platform. “Go ahead,” I told him. “Swim.”

He bounded two short hops and dove clumsily into the water with a great splash.

Alberto laughed, then looked over at Dink on the main hull’s swim platform, where he was mounting the heavy downrigger.

“We’re fishing today?” Alberto called over to him, as Tank swam around at the stern.

“Your dad says we’re crossin’ a coupla seamounts in a little while,” Dink replied. “We might get lucky with the downrigger.”

A downrigger consisted of a heavy, electrically operated reel that lowered a ten-pound lead weight to a desired depth. The weight had a quick-release clip to attach the line from a rod and reel, which kept the bait at the desired depth.

“How deep are you going to set it?” Alberto asked, watching Tank swim back toward us.

“About a hundred feet down,” he replied. “If they come up to see that one, we’ll have a coupla skirt teasers and a second line out, runnin’ near the surface.”

I stood at the edge of the swim platform, my feet all the way out to the sides, and waited for Tank to get closer.

“Ya ready?” I called to him, as he headed toward me.

He turned and swam away, and Dink laughed. “Guess he ain’t.”

Finally, Tank returned to the swim platform, and as soon as he got his big front feet on the edge, I reached down and grabbed the handle of his vest, my other hand gripping the handrail, then heaved his hind quarters up as he scrambled between my legs.

“We need to come up with a better way,” I said, arching my back and stretching. “He’s only going to get heavier.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, Dad,” Alberto said, as Tank began shaking the water from his dense coat.

The shaking started at his head and went all the way back to his tail, slinging a mist of water from his fur as Alberto held his hands up, fruitlessly trying to shield himself.

Dink and I both laughed.

“What’d you come up with?” I asked him.

“He can’t ride on the flybridge on the Revenge because the steps are too steep, and Taranis’s swim ladders are like the steps on the Revenge.” He pointed to the steps up to the flybridge. “He can go up there easy, because they aren’t steep. What if one of the swim ladders was like regular stairs?”

Dink beat me to the obvious question. “Where would ya store it when he ain’t usin’ it?”

“Make it so it folds flat when pulled up,” Alberto replied, crossing his arms confidently. “With AstroTurf on the back.”

I stared at him a moment, then cut my eyes to the fake grass. I’d seen a picnic table at one of those big box hardware stores that folded into a single bench seat for three, or out into a full table with two benches and seating for six.

It wasn’t hard to imagine a set of folding aluminum steps that could deploy in a more gradual rise, locking into position below the surface and then folding up into a flat piece no more than a couple of inches thick.

Or maybe telescoping steps that locked in place at an angle instead of straight down like conventional swim ladders. Then it could just replace what was there, which was recessed into the swim platform.

“I think you’re onto something, Son,” I said. “While we’re here in Dominica, let’s break out my mechanical design software and see what we can come up with.”

“Teak, to match the steps and deck, would be cool,” Dink offered.

I joined them in the cockpit and closed the small gate to the sugar scoop steps.

Alberto simply toweled off, then used the same towel on Tank before we went inside. If he, or we, for that matter, dripped water on the inside decks, it was okay. We lived on the water, and wet went along with that.

Taranis’s main deck cabin sole was also teak, and any water that dripped on it eventually found its way into the bilge to be pumped out, which made mopping the decks easier, with scuppers in convenient spots that drained to the bilge below the lower deck. And because of the bilge design, along with a high-pressure wash down, cleaning it wasn’t very difficult.

The decks and bilge were one of my responsibilities, and they were kept clean. Maybe not always spotless, down in the bilge, but at least functionally clean.

“Go have a seat,” Savannah said. “Are we just going to drift?”

“No,” I replied, as I moved forward to the wheelhouse. “But I’ll eat down here. The horizon’s clear for an hour in any direction.”

With the touch of my finger on the screen, the electric motors started spooling back up to the previous output. Then I re-engaged the autopilot and we were once again underway and on course, with “Otto” doing the steering.

Dink carried two plates forward, offering me one as I spun the helm seat around. Alberto and Savannah joined us, each carrying their own plate. Alberto paused and looked at the chart plotter.

“Forty minutes to the first one,” he said, sliding in next to Savannah.

“First what?” she asked.

“We’re going to drive over a couple of underwater mountains,” Alberto replied. “Dink and I are gonna catch something big.”

“No guarantees,” the fishing guide said with a smile. “They’re pretty deep, and we’re reachin’ this first one so early, the angle of the sun won’t reach our lure at a hundred feet.”

“Eat quickly then,” Savannah told Alberto, quite unnecessarily. “Tuna have really good eyesight.”

“Could be tuna,” Dink said, then stuffed a bite of sausage in his mouth, chewed it a couple times, then swallowed. “Odds are more likely we’ll scare up some dolphinfish or wahoo.”

“Anything edible,” Savannah replied. “The more we have when we get there, the less we’ll have to carry back to the boat by hand.”

“Hey,” Dink said, looking over at me. “I heard Rusty floated that sub a coupla days ago.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say they floated her,” I replied. “But after cleaning the ballast tanks out, the replacement pumps were able to purge the water, which dislodged it from the muck. So it’s technically floating, but it’s still mired in a deep hole with shallow water all around.”

“Where they at with gettin’ the dredgin’ permits?” he asked, then shoved the rest of the sausage link in his mouth.

I chuckled. “I don’t think it’ll be any time soon. The National Park Service is requiring all kinds of studies, bogging the state and the Seminole Nation in even more red tape, not to mention Rusty’s not the most patient man in the world.” I shrugged. “Next year, if they’re lucky.”

“Your friend Billy seems a whole lot more rational,” Dink offered.

“They’ll just continue to try to get some of the systems to work,” I said. “It was sealed up, air-tight, for nearly eighty years, but there was still a lot of damage and deterioration. The diesel’s frozen up, but the sealed electric propulsion might only need battery replacement.”

As we were finishing breakfast, I heard a snap from the cockpit.

Tank, Dink, and I looked aft as one.

The rod with the downrigger line was standing straight out, quivering. The tension from the downrigger had been released.

Dink and I were on our feet instantly.

“Fish on!” he yelled, moving quickly and agilely through the galley, with me right behind him.

The line from the rod and reel to the downrigger had unclipped, releasing the tension on the rod and two hundred feet of line—but only for a couple of seconds.

The rod bent again, vibrating.

“Ain’t a shark,” Dink said, as he pulled the rod from its holder and began fighting the fish.

We’d caught and released a couple of sharks during the trip. The difference was most noted in the pull. Game fish thrashed wildly, trying to dislodge the hook, but a shark would just pull straight away or down, trying to snap the line, break the rod, or pull the boat under.

I scrambled down the middle steps and hit the retrieval button on the downrigger. The electric motor began whining, pulling the heavy lead weight up as I glanced at the teasers and the line from the second rod.

“He’s deep,” Dink said, the rod handle wedged under his left arm as he hauled up on it with both hands.

The fish thrashing around two hundred feet down would attract the attention of anything deeper, closer to the seamount.

“Get the teasers in, Son,” I instructed Alberto, as I went back up the steps. “No telling what Dink’s fish’ll bring up.”

The teasers were hookless artificial baits, trolled closer and outboard of the boat, designed to entice fish up and into the strike zone, where the hooked lure from the second rod trailed just below the surface and farther astern.

He quickly retrieved two, and I got the two on Dink’s side, careful not to entangle him.

We watched the line from the second rod as Dink continued fighting the fish.

Suddenly, there was an explosion of water in our wake, and the second rod bent. The reel began screaming as a wahoo broke the surface a hundred feet astern.

“This one’s yours,” I yelled to Alberto, noting that it wasn’t a huge fish.

I pulled the rod out and held it for him as he gripped it like Dink was doing, being no stranger to catching game fish.

But this was his first wahoo.

Alberto’s rod doubled as the fish continued his run, stripping more line. He braced himself against the transom bulkhead and its cap rail, and for a second, the fish almost pulled him off balance, just as Savannah came out of the salon.

“Wa-hooo!” Alberto shouted, regaining his stance and raising the rod tip. “Wahoo!”

Dink was all the way over on the starboard side, trying to muscle whatever he had up from the depths as it fought to go deeper, slowly stripping line from the reel.

The downrigger had been a hundred feet down, and at just four knots, the heavy weight had been suspended almost straight below the boat, where the line then extended back another hundred feet from there to the lure, trailing straight out behind the weight. So, when the fish hit the lure, unclipping the line, it sounded toward the bottom and was two hundred feet below us.

“Tighten your drag a little,” I coached Alberto. “He’s not running so hard now. Try to get some of that line back before he makes the second run.”

Alberto didn’t need any coaching; he’d fought many a mahi over the last couple of years and had caught his first billfish last spring. He knew what to do. Though the wahoo on his line was small, pound-for-pound, the species was one of the strongest fighters in the sea, and rarely gave up without a second fight.

Little by little, Alberto was gaining some line back, his young muscles flexing to bring up the fish, which was half his weight, then quickly cranking the handle as he lowered the rod tip again.

The reel started screaming once more as an additional thirty feet of line was stripped.

“Wa-hoo!” Alberto yelled again, holding the tip of the rod up as the fish bent the rod nearly double.

“You’ve got him, Son,” Savannah said encouragingly. “Stay on him. He’s tiring.”

I went back down to the main swim platform and seized the gaff Dink had wisely put in one of the rod holders mounted to the handrail.

Then I opened the small storage box at the bottom step, grabbed a heavy left glove made of thick leather and put it on.

“Keep at it,” I called up to Alberto. “I see the leader.”

The wahoo flashed its side, the low light from the morning sun catching the silver and blue bands on its flank as the steel leader came out of the water.

When it was within reach, I grabbed the leader with my gloved hand and pulled while striking with the gaff.

The barb caught the fish just behind the head and I hauled it onto the swim platform, where it began thrashing wildly.

“Another one!” Dink shouted as an even larger splash erupted far behind us.

His wahoo had surfaced, and was at least twice as big, leaping and dancing on its tail across the surface.

I hurried up the steps with what I estimated to be a thirty-five-pound fish, now totally spent and dying.

Tank began barking at the wahoo when I laid it on the deck and removed the gaff, something he’d never done before.

Alberto quickly got a pair of fishing pliers from the tackle drawer and expertly removed the lure’s hooks from the fish’s mouth.

Savannah opened the fish box in the deck, and I put the fish in, where it gulped twice more before its eye glazed over and it died.

Tank danced around Alberto excitedly as the boy stood breathing hard and looking down at his catch.

He glanced up at me, smiling triumphantly. “How big is he?”

“That’ll have to wait a minute,” I told him, heading back down the steps to the swim platform.

Dink’s fish had finished its second run.

The water was so clear, I saw the fish thirty feet down as it rolled on its side, pulling downward again, but with far less energy.

He was a leviathan. His long, torpedo-shaped body reflected the morning sun, and his elongated mouth, full of sharp teeth, gnashed at the steel leader.

Though he was primarily a backcountry guide, taking fishermen out to the skinny waters for bonefish and permit, Dink was no stranger to offshore fishing, and had often filled in for Jimmy when we were chartering Gaspar’s Revenge.

A few minutes later, Dink got the great wahoo near the surface, and I was able to gaff him. It took everything I had just to get him onto the swim platform while Dink put the rod in a holder and hurried down to where I stood with the gaff.

“Open the fish box!” I yelled up to Alberto, as the fish made its final violent thrashes.

Dink and I carried it up to the cockpit and dropped it in the fish box with the other one. It was twice as long and probably weighed close to a hundred pounds.

“Wow!” Alberto cried out. “Wahoo!” he yelled, raising his arms and dancing around the cockpit.

That got Tank jumping around and barking again.

Dink retrieved the fish scale from the tackle cabinet and secured it to the larger one’s lower jaw. Then he lifted it by the scale, straining to press the whole thing over his head to get it off the deck.

I looked up and read the dial. “Ninety-one pounds!”

“That’s more than me!” Alberto exclaimed. “What’s the record?”

Dink lowered the wahoo back into the fish box, chuckling. “Just about double that.”

“Weigh mine!”

“Okay,” he replied, fixing the scale onto Alberto’s fish and lifting it with much less effort, though he did grunt a couple of times for Alberto’s benefit.

“Forty-five pounds,” I said. “That’s dinner for a week, Son! Great job!”

“Mine’s bigger than yours,” he said to Dink, grinning, and crossing his arms defiantly.

“How you figure?” Dink asked. “Mine weighs double.”

“But you’re almost three times as big as me!”

“Ya got me there, little man,” Dink said with a grin. “Hey, I seen you fightin’ that fish. You’re a natural.”

“What’s with all the noise?” Hannah asked, coming out of the salon wearing a short robe and bed hair. “I could hear y’all, all the way up in the front.”

“Me and Alberto done caught the first catch of the day, baby,” Dink replied, grinning, and opening a hand toward the fish box in an overly theatrical way to amuse Alberto.

“Are we gonna get there today?” she asked, a bit of a whine in her voice.

“Later tonight,” Savannah replied. “And we’ll have fresh wahoo for dinner once we anchor.”

“Anchor? We’re not going into town?”

“I told ya, babe,” Dink said. “We can’t go ashore until we clear customs tomorrow mornin’. Then we’ll hit the shops and clubs, okay?”

“All right,” she said, then turned and went back inside. “I’m going back to bed.”

I turned toward Dink, surprise evident in my face.

He shrugged. “Like I said, the girl don’t fish.”

Just before noon, we set the downrigger, lines, and teasers out a second time to try to fill more of the freezer at the second seamount.

Trolling the deep waters was at best hit and miss. Pelagic fish move constantly and the chances of an encounter in the open ocean were slim, unless we passed over or near some kind of structure that we knew would attract them.

Every leg of our long journey was planned with that in mind, and at least we never lacked for protein on the plate.

Hannah had joined Savannah on the foredeck, lying on the huge sun pad to take advantage of the midday rays, and Dink and Alberto were in the salon playing chess.

From the flybridge helm, I had an unobstructed view of the horizon in every direction around Taranis for nearly five miles. Over five, if I stood up, adding a couple more feet to my viewing elevation.

The second seamount would be shallower, rising to within two hundred feet of the surface. And it was wider, with nearly half a mile of water at that depth, which would give us a good chance at multiple hookups.

And with the sun directly overhead, we knew the lure that trailed behind the downrigger would be clearly visible and silhouetted against the light at the surface, where the second lure trailed behind teasers dancing in our wake.

All through the morning, our last morning at sea, we’d seen only one other vessel. It was at around 0900; a tall, ship-rigged, four-masted barquentine that was at least three hundred feet long. It was headed north, about a mile west of our course as we continued south.

We’d all gathered on the flybridge to watch the majestic ship sail past, the rising sun and strong easterly wind filling her sails.

Our AIS identified her as the Star Flyer, a sailing cruise ship, and Alberto looked her up. At 366 feet, Star Flyer, and her sister ship, Star Clipper, were the little sisters to the 442-foot Royal Clipper, the three tall ships being operated by the cruise line Star Clipper.

“They’re in the Caribbean in winter and the Mediterranean in the summer,” Alberto had explained.

Other than that, the morning had passed very quietly at fifteen minutes for every nautical mile traveled. We’d grown accustomed to the slower pace over the months, and with only the slow, mellow swish of the triple bow waves, the silence was mesmerizing.

What she lacked in speed while under electric propulsion, Taranis more than made up for in economy. Except for the one time we’d had to run the gensets and main engine to recharge the propulsion batteries when the inverter failed, we hadn’t used any more fuel during the last 1,470 nautical miles.

At four knots, everything moved slowly, and if anything did impede our progress, we had several minutes, at the very least, to react to it.

Seeing another boat on the horizon, dead ahead, meant it was more than an hour away. Half that, if it was coming toward us at the same speed. Even a very fast boat, moving straight toward us at forty knots, would offer a full minute of reaction time.

That was long enough to go aft and pour a cup of coffee, then return to the helm seat and have a drink before changing course.

We’d been able to relax more in the last couple of months than at any time we’d spent on land. Taranis, our floating oasis, carried us steadily onward, with very little in the way of day-to-day maintenance. The motors required none at all and had a lifetime warranty, unlike a diesel engine that you could expect to do a major overhaul on after 5,000 hours, and at least 5,000 minor repairs before then.

The long, slow crossings allowed time to think, and each person on board had found their own place to be alone with themselves.

I liked the flybridge, whether I was on watch or not. I grilled several times a week right behind the helm, and could monitor everything on the boat from there; just by reaching over the seat and scrolling through the multi-display in the overhead, I could check and control all the systems and cameras with ease.

Besides the forward-looking camera on the roof, and those on either side looking aft, there were cameras in the wheelhouse, the galley, and two in the mechanical room.

Savannah liked the shade of the cockpit when there was little else to do, which was most of our waking hours, and she spent a good part of our passages quietly reading or listening to audiobooks.

Alberto enjoyed looking out through the inboard porthole of his cabin at the main hull’s bow, where dolphins often played. He also liked to just sit on one of the benches built into the side decks with Tank and watch the ocean go by.

With the depth still reading over two thousand feet on the sonar display, and the waypoint just half a mile ahead, I switched it to forward scan, to see if it could pick up the topography of the seamount, but its vertical limit was three hundred feet at a range of one thousand, so I didn’t expect to see much. I just wanted to maximize our time over it without turning around for another run if it proved to be productive.

A wide dome of green, yellow, and red appeared, dropping steeply at the sides. The range display said it was a half mile away and four hundred feet wide at the nearly flat top.

I toggled the intercom switch to the salon. “We’re less than ten minutes from the edge of the seamount, Dink.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Alberto answered. “We’ll head back there now.”

I stood, leaned over the low windshield, and called down to Savannah, “With luck, Dink and Alberto will be on fish in a few minutes.”

She tilted her head back and removed her sunglasses. “Thanks.”

Then she leaned over and said something to Hannah I couldn’t make out and the two of them swung their legs off opposite sides of the sun pad, rose, and headed aft on the port side.

A ridge of sorts began to appear on the display, slightly off our course, so I adjusted the autopilot a few degrees to follow the longer route across the seamount.

Several large, white echoes appeared not far above the seamount—a school of fish hovering together just off the bottom at about 100 feet. There was no way they wouldn’t see the lure trailing the downrigger.

I adjusted course again, so the lure would go right through the school, then removed the remote docking controller from its charger and went aft to the rail.

I could easily see the display in the shaded overhead and could adjust course again if need be.

“Looks like quite a few fish on the sonar,” I called down. “Big ones. About the same depth as the down-rigged lure.”

I’d no more said it than one of the rods bent and the reel began to whine. In our wake, a smallish bull dolphin leaped from the water, flashing its yellow and green flank and dark blue head.

“Mahi!” Alberto shouted, grabbing the rod as Hannah appeared next to him.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the rod in her hands. “Put the long end of the handle under your left arm and use your right hand to crank the handle.”

She was so surprised that she gripped the rod without thinking, and just stood there a second, until the mahi jumped again.

“What do I do?” she shouted at him.

“Keep the tip of the rod up!” Alberto coached her excitedly. “Use both hands to raise it up. When he doesn’t pull as hard, lower it as you crank the handle and reel in the line. But always keep it tight.”

With Alberto coaching Hannah, I quickly retrieved the teasers to keep from fouling her line.

The fish was small and tired quickly, and with Alberto, Dink, and Savannah giving her instructions and encouragement, Hannah soon got the fish close to where Dink waited at the bottom of the steps with the gaff.

With deft hands he easily hooked the fish and hauled it aboard, then carried it up the steps to where Hannah stood, gasping.

“I caught it!” she squealed. “I caught a fish!”

“Not just any fish, babe,” Dink said, dropping it in the fish box and hugging her. “That’s a dolphinfish, or dorado—what Hawaiians call mahi mahi.”

“Mahi means strong in their language,” Alberto added. “And they don’t have a word for ‘very,’ so they repeat the word to mean ‘very strong.’”

She looked down at the fish, which had lost much of its iridescent coloring in death. “I caught a mahi mahi fish? I’ve never caught anything.”

Alberto looked up at Savannah. “We should have mahi tonight,” he said with great conviction. “In honor of Hannah’s first catch.”

“I love mahi mahi,” Hannah said, smiling at him.

“Tradition says,” I called down, “that you’re supposed to eat the heart of the first catch.”

She looked up at me in shock. “Eww.”

Alberto shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not so bad. Just a tiny bite, and it’s fried. I’ll do it with you. My wahoo this morning was my first one.”

The rod with the downrigger line snapped out straight, quivering as the tension was released from the clip a hundred feet below.

“Fish on!” Dink exclaimed, and grabbed the rod, since he was closest.

The tip bent double as the reel screamed. The line didn’t shake, just a steady pull, stripping it away at an alarming rate.

“Stop the boat!” Dink shouted, as he held on with all his might.

I tapped the All Stop button on the remote and Taranis came to a stop faster than normal, with the added drag of what I was sure would be a large pelagic shark species, probably a tiger or hammerhead.

“I don’t think it’s a fish,” Dink mumbled, obviously thinking the same thing.

He hauled the rod up, then cranked down on it, keeping the line taut.

Taranis was dead in the water, but the steady tension on the line started moving her backward.

It was big, whatever it was.

Suddenly, Dink’s rod jerked up straight and he stumbled backward, the tension on the line gone.

“Great white?” I called down to him, knowing the serrated, triangular teeth of that species could make short work of my steel leaders.

“I don’t think so,” Dink said, as he started reeling the line in. “Felt more like it snagged on the bottom or some⁠—”

Suddenly, there was a splash fifty feet astern and a square, white object bobbed to the surface.

Dink raised his sunglasses to his forehead. “Uh, Jesse,” he called out, without turning. “I think we got a problem.”

The package was at least two feet square and likely just as deep. It was hard to tell with only a few inches above the surface. It was wrapped in heavy fabric and apparently sealed with waterproof tape.

Dink and I had both seen our share of “square groupers” and recognized it for what it was—a package of illegal drugs that had probably been dumped from a boat before it was intercepted by the law.

Most likely, the package contained marijuana or cocaine, but judging from the size, my guess was pot. That much coke would be worth a whole lot of money to someone.

“What do we do?” Dink asked me, as I came down the steps to join him and Hannah on the swim platform. “I ain’t never seen this much weed before.”

“Weed?” Hannah asked, as Savannah and Alberto joined us.

I grabbed the steel leader and glanced at her. “Probably. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

Pulling whatever it was closer caused it to bob and turn around.

The lure was hooked in the fabric on the side of the bundle and had torn it slightly with Taranis’s sixteen tons of momentum moving at four knots.

“It’s floatin’ now,” Dink said in a puzzled tone. “But that lure was runnin’ at a hundred feet.”

The two of us got hold of it and tested the weight.

“It’s at least two hundred pounds,” I offered, letting go, then examining the torn spot closer. “But it’s not marijuana.”

“Huh?” Dink said, leaning over to have a look.

I stood and turned toward Savannah. “Cocaine. A lot of it.”

“But why’s it floating now?” Alberto asked. “Dink’s right, it had to be near the bottom when we snagged it.”

“First thing we should do is call the authorities,” Savannah suggested. “Let them tell us what to do with it.”

Dink and I both gave her a look that was less than enthusiastic.

“We’re a good two hours from the nearest ‘authority,’” I said. “That being the coast guard in Roseau, if they have a fairly fast boat.”

Alberto reached around under the bottom of the package and pulled a lanyard of some kind out of the water that was attached to the bottom.

“Look,” he said, holding up a clip attached to the end. “It’s just like the release on the downrigger.”

“What else can we do?” Savannah asked. “We can’t just leave it for someone else to find or run over.”

“Shove it away and continue on, if you’re askin’ me,” Dink replied earnestly. “That’s ten million bucks worth of heartache right there.”

“Ten million?” Hannah asked.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said, then looked into my wife’s eyes.

She didn’t have to say anything more. I opened the little door by the steps where the controller was for the dinghy garage. We usually didn’t need it, but the whole swim platform could be lowered to make launching and retrieving the tender easier.

The hydraulics started humming as the swim platform began dropping lower.

“Help me roll it onto the platform,” I said to Dink, as water began washing over the edges.

The others ascended the steps to make room, and when the platform locked out, six inches below the surface, Dink and I were able to roll the heavy package onto it. Then I pressed the button to raise it again.

“Go call it in,” I told Savannah. “And put Taranis in station-keeping so we don’t drift.”

We couldn’t anchor; we didn’t have enough rode to get adequate scope in two hundred feet of water. But with the autopilot in station-keeping mode, Taranis would turn into whatever wind and current were acting on her and maintain a precise location based on GPS.

Though we were well out of VHF radio range, our Starlink internet connection carried voice calls, and Savannah only needed to look up the number for the Dominica Police Force’s coast guard section.

“Is it really going to take them two hours to get here?” Hannah asked Dink. “That means we won’t get there until a lot later.”

“Let’s figure on midnight at the earliest,” I replied. “Once they get here, they’ll be here for a while asking questions.”

Dink shrugged. “Then I might as well get to cleanin’ that fish.”

I was fine letting him handle the fish-cleaning chores. It was something he did daily for his clients and his skill with a fillet knife was unmatched in the Keys, leaving far less meat on the bones than I could.

Savannah returned and came down the steps to where I was studying some markings on the fabric.

“They said not to leave,” she advised. “They’ll be here in a little over an hour.”

I looked up, surprised. “An hour? We’re thirty-two nautical miles from Roseau.”

“I guess they’re not just tied to the dock waiting for a call,” she said, stating the obvious. “Or they have a really fast boat. How much do you think it weighs?”

“Probably a hundred kilos,” I replied. “Over two hundred pounds.”

She sat on the last step and watched me for a moment. “You’re already three steps into the first phase, aren’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, glancing her way.

“Ever since Apalach,” she said quietly, “any time drugs have been mentioned, you withdraw and get irritable while you plan some scheme to get vengeance.”

I grinned. “The word’s curmudgeon. I don’t tolerate fools and idiots like I used to.”

“Ha! You’ve never tolerated either and you know it.”

As it turned out, Savannah was right on both assumptions about the Dominican coast guard, because no more than fifty minutes after making the call, I spotted a large center console through the binos, racing toward us from the south.

It only took the boat ten minutes to cover the distance from the time I first spotted it on the horizon, meaning it was probably going thirty knots, a respectable speed for what was basically a near-shore vessel.

I put two large, cylindrical fenders over the side of the port ama, one at the stern, and the other fifteen feet ahead of it. I also attached dock lines to the same two cleats, leaving the coils on the deck, ready to hand off to those aboard the approaching coast guard boat.

It swung around and approached slowly from the stern, until they were within talking distance. There were four men aboard.

Dink stood ready at the forward line, and I positioned myself on the port ama’s swim platform with the second dock line in hand.

There were two men in the front of the boat, both in uniform and armed, and both staring at the package on our stern. At the helm were two more, one of them in uniform and the other in pants and a button-down white shirt, no tie.

As they came alongside, one of the guys in front moved aft, to take the line I was holding. In minutes, they were tied off and the helmsman, wearing what appeared to be sergeant’s chevrons, killed the twin outboards, then stepped up onto his boat’s gunwale.

“May I come aboard?” he asked, in a slight French Creole accent.

“Please do,” I replied.

“My inspector, also?” he asked, stepping down lightly.

Another, less agile-looking man stood ready to step over. I offered him a hand and he took it, dropping awkwardly to the deck.

“I am Sergeant Castillo,” the first man said. “And dis is Inspector Alexander.”

The inspector looked down at the package. “Where exactly did you find this?”

“Right here,” I replied. “Or more precisely, a hundred feet astern.”

“And it was floating on the surface?” he asked, bending to examine it more closely.

“We snagged it with a lure on a downrigger while fishing,” I replied, as he pulled the lanyard up and looked at the clip. “It must have been a hundred feet deep, but when it broke loose from whatever was holding it down there, it bobbed up to the surface.”

He looked up at me, surprised. “You snagged it deep, and it floated to the surface?”

“Yes,” I replied. “It’s positively buoyant. Several inches were above the surface. But there’s no doubt we hooked it a hundred feet down.”

“Perhaps it sank and…” Castillo began.

The inspector, an older white man with a receding hairline, glanced at him, ending the sergeant’s train of thought.

“That clip at the end is sort of like the ones used on a downrigger,” I explained. “We were using one to keep our lure at a hundred feet.”

“How does it work?”

I put a hand on the thick, stubby rod’s electric reel. “We lower a heavy lead weight with this,” I explained, pointing out the clip on the weight. “The clip automatically releases the line when a fish hits the lure and greater tension is applied.”

The inspector looked up at me. “You think this package was anchored to the bottom? How deep is it here?”

“We’re over a seamount,” I replied. “Probably a long dormant volcano. Just a quarter mile away, in any direction, the bottom’s over two thousand feet down, but the ridge below us is just two hundred feet below the hull. How this bundle got here or how it was secured, I have no idea.”

“How many others are aboard?” the sergeant asked.

“Me, and four others,” I replied. “My wife and son, and two guests. They’re in the salon.”

He nodded toward the name plate affixed to the third step. “You are from Marathon, Florida? Where is that?”

“The Florida Keys,” I replied. “We left there over two months ago.” I pointed at the package. “To get away from stuff like this.”

“And how is it you know what ‘stuff’ this is?” the inspector asked.

“I’ve been a fishing and dive charter captain for over twenty years in the Florida Keys.”

He rose and faced me, measuring me for the first time. “It is cocaine, as you already suspected, Captain. The marking on the side, though faded, tells me it is from the Cartel de los Soles, of Venezuela.”

“Cartel of the Suns,” I said thoughtfully. “I’ve heard of them.”

I’d had a run in with them once, but wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Dominica is a known staging point for drugs and arms,” the inspector offered. “But there has been no report of any engagements with suspected drug boats operating in this area, so there should be no packages thrown overboard in an attempt to elude.”

I could see where he was going and was already a step ahead. “It was dropped there to pick up later.”

“That would be very risky, considering the amount.” He looked around at the empty expanse of calm sea. “It would be very difficult to find one small package like this.”

I nodded. “Yes, it would. But not so hard if there were a lot of them down there all bunched together.”

Taranis was equipped with the latest technology, including sophisticated sensors, probes, electronics, and cameras that monitored and recorded everything. Unless programmed otherwise for a specific reason, everything was recorded in a two-hour loop. In the event of a mishap, we could go back and study not just what the cameras recorded, but radio traffic, engine performance, radar, weather data, and sonar.

I took the inspector up to the flybridge to review the recording of the forward scanning sonar, and we agreed that there were twelve individual echoes, which I’d first thought was a school of tuna, all clustered fairly close together.

“I changed course toward them when they first appeared,” I told him, “thinking it was a school of large fish, maybe tuna.”

“And this is some sort of underwater mountain?” he asked.

“All the way here from Florida,” I explained, “we moved from one anchorage to another, with structures like this, or an old wreck or reef, as waypoints, either to fish or dive. We occasionally catch pelagic fish in open water, but most are caught around structures that attract them.”

“I never knew this was out here,” he said.

“It’s thirty-two nautical miles from your island,” I said, sitting back at the helm. “Even fishermen from your island might not know it’s here, but it’s on nautical charts. We crossed over another this morning and caught two nice wahoos. We put a mahi in the fish box just before hooking that square grouper down there.”

He stared at the frozen image on the screen, thinking.

“I said earlier that Dominica was a known staging area for drugs,” he finally said. “Small quantities, ten kilos here, five there, all belonging to the cartels. They forced the people to hide it.”

“But that’s not been going on in a while?” I surmised.

He looked over at me, and I knew his thought without his speaking a word.

We’d stumbled onto a drug cartel’s offshore staging area.

We went back down to the cockpit, where he conversed with Castillo for a moment in a low voice.

Then he asked me to have my other passengers come out to the cockpit, as Sergeant Castillo ordered his men to don scuba gear.

I found them all sitting at the forward lounge. “The inspector needs to get statements from everyone,” I told them. “We shouldn’t be much longer.”

They followed me out and joined the inspector at the cockpit dinette as I went down to the port swim platform, where the coast guard boat was tied up.

Castillo was helping the other two men gear up behind the boat’s helm. “If you need it,” I offered, “I have a compressor and tank-filling station in the starboard ama.”

“Ama?” he asked, looking up at me.

“It’s Polynesian, but has carried over to modern multi-hulls,” I replied. “The outer hulls or outriggers of a trimaran are called amas.”

“Thank you for offering,” he replied. “But we have six full tanks aboard. Nitrox.”

“They won’t have much bottom time at that depth,” I said. “Mixed gas or air. It’s deep, and whatever those things are anchored to are really deep.”

He started to untie the stern line and looked up.

“Tell them to not waste time trying to yank them to release the clip like a fish would,” I advised him. “The one Dink snagged nearly pulled him in.”

“So they are not exactly the same as the one you use for fishing?”

I shook my head. “Either a heavier release tension is needed, or they’re not designed to release at all.”

“How would they retrie…”

The water-wise cop had already concluded the same thing the inspector had on the flybridge.

“They’re all at about a hundred feet and grouped close together,” I said. “And the bottom’s almost a hundred feet below that. A wide net or maybe two boats with downriggers at one-fifty, and a line stretched between them.”

“That is for the inspector to figure out,” he replied. “My men and I just happened to be getting ready to go on patrol when the report of this came in.”

“Do me a favor,” I said, my curiosity piqued. “Tell them to cut one line away from whatever it’s attached to. I’d be interested in what it is.”

I’d made a lot of dives, many of them quite deep, and all too often in formidable conditions. I didn’t have to consult the dive tables to know that more than two dives to over 100 feet was dangerous, and I told him so.

“I will do that myself,” he replied. “I will be dropping them in two locations, and when the first comes up, he will drive the boat as I go down. With luck, we can find them all with the three of us making two dives and having a short surface interval between.”

“Dink and I are both qualified deep-water recovery divers,” I offered, though I would have preferred they just released us to go on our way.

“We will take care of it,” he replied, then moved in front of the helm seat, and started the two outboards.

Having seen the way his two men had eyed the package that was now on their boat’s foredeck, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if one of those bundles didn’t remain down there after we all left.

The water was as clear as anywhere I’d ever seen, but very little light reached beyond a hundred feet, and at two hundred, the only color left in the spectrum that could be seen was blue. So everything below a hundred feet had a bluish tint, and looking down through even the clearest water, on the calmest and sunniest day, seeing the bottom at two hundred feet was rare.

When he was satisfied with everyone’s answers, the inspector came to the back of the cockpit, where I was watching Castillo’s boat as the first diver entered the water.

“Did you notice the material the package was wrapped in?” he asked.

“Some kind of heavy rubber or something,” I replied. “Sealed with waterproof adhesive and tape.”

“And highly reflective,” he said. “Their underwater lights will pick them up before Castillo’s men descend fifty feet.”

The divers were easy to spot by their streams of bubbles, which could be seen like sparkling glitter rising up in rolling clouds from each exhalation. It was several seconds from the time a cloud first became visible until the bubbles erupted on the surface.

Suddenly, another package popped up just twenty feet behind Castillo’s boat.

I recognized the problem immediately, even if the inspector didn’t.

How would they get a 200-pound bundle out of the water and onto their boat? They had no hoist, and with a dinghy garage, Taranis didn’t need a davit.

It’d taken four of us to lift the one we snagged over their gunwale and onto the deck. Even if they could get them out of the water, a dozen 200-pound bundles could sink their boat.

We’d counted twelve individual echoes on the sonar replay. If each was the same hundred kilos, they were looking at loading more than a ton onto a boat designed for eight people max. And there would be four people already on it. The boat would be maxed out with the addition of just three or four packages.

One by one, more of the square white bundles surfaced, and the problem became apparent to everyone as Castillo went from one to another, tying each one’s lanyard to a cleat at the stern.

“I suppose you could tow them in,” I said, watching with the inspector. “I imagine you’ll arrive about the same time we will, after midnight.”

“You’re not anchored,” he observed, turning to face me. “And I hear an occasional whirring sound, then propwash from the stern. Are you electrically powered?”

I nodded. “Electric motors in both outer hulls—currently in station- keeping mode, using GPS. We cruised at four knots for the last two months, only running the generator for a few hours several weeks ago, when one of the inverters failed.”

“I could commandeer your vessel to haul the drugs,” he said. “But you are right. If you can go no faster than our boat towing the packages, there is no point.”

Shut up, McDermitt, I told myself, to no avail.

“I didn’t say four knots was all Taranis was capable of.”

He arched a graying eyebrow.

“And you don’t have to commandeer,” I added. “We’re happy to help. We can load them all right here on the cockpit deck. But I’d request you resume your tow operation when we’re within sight of shore.”

“Why is that?” Inspector Alexander asked.

I nodded toward the center console, which was now retrieving the second diver. “That’s over a hundred million American dollars’ worth of cocaine you’re wanting to bring aboard my vessel, Inspector. Whoever it belonged to won’t be very happy about that.”

“You seem to know quite a lot about the cocaine trade, Captain.”

I looked away from him as Castillo turned his boat and began slowly coming toward Taranis, towing eleven white packages.

“I used to be part of America’s Department of Homeland Security,” I told him. “I know how ruthless this cartel can be.”

“We’re not going to be able to get them all on the boat, Inspector,” Castillo called out, angling toward Taranis’s port side again.

“Bring the packages close to the center steps,” Alexander called back. “The captain and I are negotiating a deal to transport the drugs on his yacht.” Then he turned to me. “How fast can you go?”

“Your boat is probably an even match,” I replied. “But I’d prefer to keep it at no more than twenty knots; the diesel engine is barely broken in. And of course, the fuel I use will be calculated from the time I start the main engine, to be reimbursed by your government at the fuel dock in Roseau.”

He smiled. “But you are going there anyway.”

I grinned back at him. “At the same four knots we did in crossing the Caribbean, using free stored energy from the sun… if that’s the way you’d rather go.”

“I am authorized to reimburse,” he replied. “Up to a certain point.”

Nodding toward the center console, I said, “Those outboards will burn more fuel than Taranis will.”

“Then it is agreed,” he said. “Will you need anything else?”

I knew that whether I volunteered Taranis, or he commandeered her, a paper trail would be created at the next level above the inspector. He was bringing in more than a ton of cocaine on a private vessel, and his department would have to have someone from customs there to meet us. I wanted that paperwork expedited as soon as possible.

I turned toward Alberto and Savannah, standing in the open sliding hatch. “Go hit the Thunder Button, Son. We’re going to make port before dinner and the inspector will have a customs broker waiting for us when we arrive.”

Then I turned and faced Alexander again. “You can make that happen, right? This is a big haul, Inspector. Over three hundred million Eastern Caribbean dollars.”

“I can get the customs broker there,” he replied with a nod. “But I must insist the unloading be at the coast guard dock in that case. It is secluded and away from prying eyes, and we will help expedite your entry.”

Away from the eyes of everyone except those of your two guards, I thought. And whoever would meet us at the dock.

Maybe I was reading more into their attitudes than I should have. For all I knew, they were stalwart, upstanding members of Dominica’s police force.

I glanced back at Savannah, who barely nodded her head.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” I told him. “But I also want you to provide me with five tickets to the Waraka Séwinal Festival.”

He smiled broadly. “My daughters and I will be playing! You and your family and friends will be our guests.”

I extended my hand, and he shook it. “That’s a deal, Inspector.”

“Please, call me Joseph,” he said, as Castillo’s boat stopped at our stern.

Dink and I helped get their boat tied off, nosed in between the port ama and main hull, so we could lower the swim platform to pull the packages up onto it.

Castillo pulled three bundles around for his men to roll onto the platform, and then carry up the steps, then he stepped over and pulled a piece of line from his pocket.

“This is how the package was connected to the anchor,” he said, offering it to me.

It was actually two lines, joined by an aluminum carabiner. One line looked just like the one on the first package we’d brought up, right down to the loop that was spliced into the end. The other line was heavy monofilament, probably 200-pound test leader line, if I had to guess. It was more than strong enough to hold a package down that was only slightly buoyant.

“I pulled on it before cutting the package free,” Castillo said. “The weight on the other end was very heavy.”

I joined the inspector in the cockpit just as Savannah stepped out from the salon with Tank following her. “You’ll be riding with us then, Joseph? Have you had lunch?”

“Oh my,” he said, looking down at Tank. “I wasn’t aware you had such a large dog aboard. Um, yes ma’am, I am afraid it will be necessary for one of us to stay aboard. But I do not wish to impose. You are already being very accommodating.”

“Nonsense,” she said with a smile and a dismissive wave of her hand. “We haven’t eaten either. I’m sorry, it’s nothing special, just grilled sandwiches. I’ll bring them up to the flybridge in just a few minutes."

I waved a hand to the stairs, then followed Joseph up, Tank and Dink right behind me.

“He scared me at first, too,” Dink said when we reached the flybridge. “But he’s really just a puppy.”

“He is rather intimidating,” Joseph agreed. “Our dog is three years old and is often a pup at heart.”

Dink slid over to the second seat, and I sat down at the helm, motioning Joseph toward the adjacent lounge.

“He meant that quite literally,” I told him, disengaging the autopilot and taking the electric motors offline. “Tank will only be a year old in two weeks.”

He looked at me, surprised, as I clicked the intercom for the galley and said, “Moving slowly up to twenty knots.”

I checked to make sure both electric motors were offline, and the props folded and recessed, then put the big Cat diesel in forward, slowly accelerating, the muffled exhaust barely audible.

Taranis chewed through the light chop with almost no rolling or pitching, just quiet acceleration as the coast guard boat climbed up on plane and moved up alongside, throwing up a moderate spray and bouncing over the small rollers.

It was at times like this, when the difference was visible, that I truly appreciated how Taranis rode. I could place a mug on the dash, fill it with one hand from the pot behind me, and not spill a drop. But on the other boat, they’d likely get wet drinking from a water bottle.

I nudged the throttle slightly forward.

It’s said that any time two boats were going in the same direction, they were racing. It hadn’t escaped my attention that although the coast guard boat had twin outboards, they weren’t big powerful engines; just a pair of Suzuki 140s.

Castillo began to slowly fall back, but then sped up again, looking up at me.

“This is a very impressive yacht,” Joseph said, leaning back in the seat as I nudged the throttle again.

“Thanks,” I said. “I designed much of it myself.”

“Now this is more like it,” Dink said, grinning, then leaning past me to speak to Joseph. “All the way down here from St. Martin, we never went more’n five knots.”

The coast guard boat moved up beside us again, Castillo now smiling through the spray the boat was kicking up. The three men, plus the bundle, probably weighed seven hundred pounds or more. But the boat was trimmed neatly, and the occupants were dry, all three standing behind the console and windscreen, knees bent to absorb the shocks.

“A boat such as this must have a very specific purpose,” Joseph said, then noticed the splashing from the other boat. “One is obvious. Castillo is getting beaten to death.”

“Actually,” I replied, nudging the throttle once more, “I think he’s enjoying it.”

Castillo openly laughed as his boat started to fall back again, though we couldn’t hear him. But he soon came alongside once more, a hundred feet abeam.

I glanced at the knot meter on the chart plotter. We were going twenty-five knots, speed over ground.

Tank rose onto his hind legs and put his big paws on the forward rail, the wind catching and flapping his jowls and ears.

Joseph laughed. “Auto window or boat deck,” he said, “it’s all the same to a dog.”

Alberto came up the steps, followed by Savannah and Hannah, each carrying two baskets.

I looked over at Castillo’s boat and he glanced up, then pumped a fist in the air and pushed his own twin throttles to the stops.

The coast guard boat began to pull ahead.

I couldn’t resist the challenge and did the same.

Then I set the autopilot and turned the helm seat around to face the small table.

Dink grinned and leaned in as he came around me. “You’re just bein’ mean to that guy.”

As Taranis overtook, then began to pass the slower boat, I caught Castillo’s face through the churning sea spray and lifted a bottle of water in a mock toast.

“Are you racing him?” Savannah asked, passing me a plate with a sandwich on it.

Joseph looked over, then back to the coast guard boat. When he looked at me again, he smiled. “I am not armed, Captain. It would be unwise to leave our escorts behind.”

My first month after retiring to the Keys, my buddy, Rusty, had advised me to never go out on the water unarmed. I’d taken his advice to heart.

Joseph didn’t need to know that there were no fewer than ten weapons aboard Taranis, currently all secreted in a watertight compartment in the underside of the main swim platform.

“Bring her back down to twenty knots,” I told Alberto, who was standing at the forward rail with Tank.

Once again, Castillo’s boat came alongside, and he saluted.

“What are the other purposes for a boat such as this?” Joseph asked.

“We’re running on the auxiliary engine, now,” Alberto said, taking a seat beside me. “We only use the diesel engine for emergencies, but we can go slow for thousands of miles without using any fuel, and Taranis can get almost to the beach on some islands.”

“We can store enough food to cross the Pacific Ocean,” Savannah added. “Which we plan to do one day. And we can make enough drinking water to supply a small village. Dominica is our departure point for the Azores.”

“Against the wind?” he asked.

I grinned. “I’m older now, but still running… against the wind.”

The inspector gave me a puzzled look, but Dink and Savannah both had amused expressions, probably the only two within fifty miles who’d catch the song lyrics from the Bob Segar classic.

“It’s what Taranis was designed to do,” I said to Joseph. “Go any place, at any time, under almost any conditions, and do it efficiently and safely.”

“And in true trawler style,” Savannah added.

“There is Dominica,” Joseph said, looking past me.

When I’d set the autopilot, we were twenty-five miles away, with only a low cloud visible in the direction of our destination.

When I turned, I saw that the cloud was actually the mist-shrouded mountaintops, with lush green foliage below. But I knew that, due to the curvature of the surface, the lower thousand or so feet of the island was still below the horizon.

“How high is that?” Hannah asked.

“Morne Diablotin,” Alberto replied. “You can’t see the top from here. It’s 4,747 feet above sea level.”

Joseph nodded. “That is right. Surprisingly, diablotin is French for what you would call an imp.”

“An imp?” Alberto asked.

“A mischievous little devil,” Savannah said. “Like you, sometimes.”

“You have been to the Commonwealth of Dominica before?” Joseph asked me.

“This is the first time for all of us,” I replied, admiring the lushness of the tropical landscape, still far in the distance. “A bucket list item, if you will.”

“On a clear day, the top of the mountain can be seen from seventy miles away,” Joseph said. “There is a river or stream on Dominica for every day of the year, which all feed into thirty-five different watersheds.”

“And a boiling lake!” Alberto added.

“It is not quite boiling,” Joseph said. “Although that is its name. The water is between eighty-two and ninety-two degrees.”

“That’s not very hot,” Hannah said.

“He’s talkin’ Celsius,” Dink said. “That’s around one-ninety for us.”

“It is very hot,” Joseph agreed with a nod. “And it is the source of the mist surrounding the tops of Morne Trois Pitons National Park.”

“Three hundred and sixty-five rivers and streams,” Dink said, staring off toward the island ahead. He turned to Joseph. “Any trout in those streams?”

Joseph looked over at him. “You are a fly fisherman?”

“Dink’s one of the best backcountry fly fishing guides in the Keys,” I told him.

“There are eels and small fish in the headwaters, higher in the mountains,” he replied. “But most of the streams of Dominica cascade down as far as they travel horizontally, so are very difficult to get to. In the estuaries and not so far upriver, it is possible to catch fat snook.”

“Them little old rooster fins?” Dink asked.

“You will find them up to about thirty centimeters in length and two or three kilos.”

“Is ’at right?” Dink replied. “That’s a bit bigger’n the ones back home.”

“I have a couple of fly rods on board,” I said to Dink.

He nodded and took the last bite of his sandwich. “We’ll have to give it a go, then.”

Joseph sat back, his sandwich gone. “You will need to get a license first.” Then he turned to Savannah. “That was very good, thank you. What do you call it?”

Alberto’s head snapped up. “Baloney and cheese on toast!”

An hour passed as Taranis powered effortlessly ahead at twenty knots, her passengers barely noting the movement. Unless we glanced over at Castillo’s boat. The town of Roseau appeared, and as we got nearer, the seas calmed, and even his ride became smoother.

We slowed as we approached Woodbridge Bay, with the capital city of Roseau expanding up and out from the beaches, the structures becoming more scattered with elevation. Then an emerald jungle rose up into the mountains beyond.

The bay itself wasn’t much on protection, just a bit of a depression in the leeward side of the island’s coastline, which, in some places, seemed to rise straight up out of the water.

But it didn’t need protection. The massive island, which was twenty-nine miles long, north to south, and sixteen wide, with peaks reaching over three thousand feet, was a natural barrier to the prevailing easterlies, and here on the west side, the seas were calm and the breeze light.

A few small boats were anchored near shore, none more than a hundred yards from the beach. We were just a quarter mile out and the sonar indicated a steep bottom six hundred feet below. Judging from the tightness of the contour lines on the chart plotter, I could probably put Taranis’s nose on the beach and still have six feet at the stern.

“Welcome to the Commonwealth of Dominica,” Joseph said, then pointed straight ahead. “Do you see the dock ahead? We will tie up on the outside. There is a patrol boat on the inside that will block any view.”

I could see a number of people on the dock, many wearing the same dark pants and light-blue shirt Castillo wore. A large patrol boat was tied to the inside of the main dock, sheltered by the face dock, which extended beyond it a good fifty feet. The patrol boat would partially block the view of anyone directly on shore or in the buildings clustered at the end of the pier.

“How about we dock on the inside of the face dock?” I suggested. “Stern to the dock and bow alongside the patrol boat.”

“It is only thirty meters or so from the inside of the dock to the beach,” he warned. “With little room to maneuver.”

“Piece of pie,” I said, aiming the bow a little to the right of the face dock. “Taranis is only twenty meters. Once we’re in, have Sergeant Castillo tie off to the end of the face dock, with his bow blocking any view of our cockpit from the south.”

Joseph took a cell phone from his pocket and made a call to Castillo, who was trailing just behind and to our left.

I brought the electric motors online, shut down the diesel, and switched the control over to the joystick. Using just the two ama motors, I slowly brought Taranis past the end of the T, then used the bow and stern thrusters to move her sideways toward the main dock and the patrol boat tied to it.

The patrol boat was about thirty-five feet, with a big wheelhouse, and it was docked with its high bow near the face dock, which worked well in blocking any view from the north. And Taranis’s cabin blocked anyone seeing into the cockpit from ahead.

Plucking the docking controller from its charger base, I went to the stern rail and began maneuvering Taranis backward toward the dock.

Savannah and Dink were on opposing ama swim platforms with dock lines in hand, ready to jump off.

As soon as the fenders on the sterns made contact, I held the electric motor controllers, slowly turning in reverse as the two stepped over to the dock and quickly tied us off with our starboard side barely inside the dock space.

Castillo brought his boat in bow first, with one of his men in the front, offering Dink a dock line, which he tied off to a midship deck cleat.

The sergeant docked the boat with his T-top and console blocking the view of our cockpit.

There was one woman among the four men on the dock. She wore business casual, unlike their uniforms, and stood apart from them, next to a stack of gray tarps or blankets.

That brought the number of people who knew Taranis was used to bring in what was probably the biggest coke bust in the island’s history up from four to nine.

“Nicely done, Captain,” Joseph said, standing beside me. “May my people come aboard?”

“The quicker we can get this stuff off, the better,” I replied, scanning the hillside.

“Cover each one before removing it,” Castillo ordered several men on the dock. “As quickly as possible.”

Three armed men stood at the junction of the face dock and the main pier, an obvious indication something big was going on. And there were two more at the foot of the pier.

Fourteen people now, I thought. Nothing like drawing attention.

“Let us go down to the cabin,” Joseph said. “The young lady in the white shirt is the customs broker. Her name is Anabel George, and she will join you, while I supervise the men unloading. Normally, she does commercial entries but, it being late on a Sunday, she was the only one I could reach.”

Savannah and Dink were in the cockpit, standing by the closed slider, through which I could see Tank sitting patiently just inside. He would probably need to go ashore soon. Or go for a swim.

“Captain McDermitt?” the cinnamon-skinned young woman asked, coming up the steps after the men. “I am your customs broker, Anabel George.”

She had a melodic island accent that was pleasant to the ears, and she was young, probably not thirty yet. She was tall and very beautiful, with light brown, almost yellow eyes, high cheekbones, and a warm smile.

I nodded and motioned toward the hatch. “Would you like to come inside?”

“Yes, thank you,” she replied. “Dis won’t take very long.”

She carried a small briefcase inside, and Savannah and I followed, leaving Joseph and Castillo to supervise the unloading.

“We can sit here at the dinette,” Savannah offered.

We all gathered at the table and sat down as she opened her briefcase and smiled at Savannah. “Welcome to de Nature Island, and t’ank you for taking care of all de paperwork in advance. It makes everything much smoother.”

“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” Alberto said with a smile.

She laughed lightly. “I will have to remember dat.” She took out a small folder and opened it. “I have all your records here for your pet, and it has met all de necessary requirements and vaccinations.”

She removed an envelope from the folder and handed it to Savannah. “Keep dis wit you whenever you take de pet off de boat.”

“His name’s Tank,” Alberto said, then grinned at her. “And he’s still a puppy.”

She looked over at Tank, still sitting by the sliding hatch, watching the men outside. “Dat is no puppy, young man.”

“For a bit longer,” Savannah said. “He’s not a year old yet.”

She smiled at Alberto. “What you been feedin’ dis puppy?”

Alberto burst into laughter as she removed several more folders from her briefcase and closed it.

“If I may see all of your passports now, please.”

I already had everyone’s together on the counter and reached over and grabbed them.

She took one at a time, matched each to a folder, and checked the papers in it. Then she returned each passport and file folder to each person in turn.

“Dese are your documents for entering de Commonwealth of Dominica. Please sign dem for me.”

She passed out several pens, then, opening another folder, she handed me a document.

“Your cruising permit is approved for tree months,” she explained. “And de fishing licenses are in each individual folder, as well.” Her smile rivaled any I’d seen in a toothpaste commercial. “Did I not say dis would just take a moment?”

Savannah hugged Alberto. “Besides being first mate, you’re the official ship’s purser from now on too.”

“Can I take Tank outside now?” Alberto asked.

“Not until they finish up,” I replied. “It’s only been an hour since his last swim.”

The slider opened and Joseph came in. “They will be finished in just a moment, Captain, and the fuel man wants to know where you fill your tank from.”

“You have fuel here?” I asked, tallying the fifteenth person who knew.

Joseph smiled. “Trust me. You do not want to carry jerry cans back and forth from one of the commercial locations to a dinghy dock.”

No more than twenty minutes after tying off, we said our goodbyes to Castillo and to Joseph, promising to see him at the festival, and we were underway again, heading south around a low point of land to Newtown.

“Know what that point is?” Alberto asked, as we cruised slowly past.

I glanced at the chart plotter, though I knew unless it was a navigable waterway, it wouldn’t show any detail. Nautical charts mostly just show the crunchy stuff around the edges of the water.

“A lava flow?” I asked, looking up at the high peaks.

“Nope,” he replied. “It’s the Roseau River delta. Even in the tender we could only get a little way up. There’s a series of waterfalls through town.”

The contour lines on the chart were bunched closely together, and ahead, I could see the beach and the mouth of the river emptying into the Caribbean side over a deep ledge.

As we passed the mouth of the river, a low bridge became visible, just a hundred yards in. Beyond it, I could see a small waterfall tumbling over a three-foot ledge.

A few kids played on a sandbar just before the bridge, and above it was a parking lot with colorful shops stacked along the road.

At least there were 364 other rivers to explore over the next month.

Having been escorted in by the coast guard, we never even bothered to raise the quarantine flag, and now that we were cleared in, I had Alberto run up the Dominican courtesy flag as we entered the mooring field.

With plenty of daylight left, I guided Savannah, who was at the helm, through the mooring field to the right ball, hooked it and secured our bridle to it before dropping it back into the water.

Then I stood and looked around, taking a deep breath.

The high mountains blocked the easterly wind, funneling it around the north and south ends of the island, leaving the waters to the west as calm as a pond and the deepest shade of blue I’d ever seen.

There was a light, onshore breeze, which probably had more to do with an updraft the sheltered western side of the island created than any wraparound effect of the steady easterlies.

There was also a bit of a south-flowing current along the beach, and Taranis slowly began to swing around to find a comfortable spot between the two forces.

A white sand beach was less than fifty yards away, and the dinghy dock was at the northern end of it.

Savannah joined me in the pulpit, leaned against the port rail beside me, and gazed out at the scene before us.

“I’ve never seen any place like this,” she whispered.

“What shade of blue would you call this water?” I asked, slipping an arm around her. “We’re so close to shore, but it’s very deep.”

She hugged me back, then looked up and smiled. “Dominica blue, of course.”

I heard the clicking of Tank’s claws on the deck and turned to see Alberto following him around the wheelhouse.

“We’re finally here!” Alberto shouted.

“Finally here, Son,” I confirmed with a grin. “One thousand, six hundred, and thirty-eight nautical miles.”

“I don’t know what I want to do first,” he said, sitting on the big sun pad and looking at the island over the starboard ama’s rail. “Boiling Lake is a pretty tough hike, so maybe we don’t need to do that right away.”

“I think you’re right,” Savannah agreed, as we joined him on the sun pad. “The priorities for the rest of the day should be dinner, showers, and rest.”

“Or…” I began, “Alberto and I can take Tank ashore, while everyone gets ready for dinner, and then we can all go find a restaurant.”

“A restaurant?” Savannah asked, surprised.

“There’s no better way to soak up the ambiance of a new place,” I replied. “Just walk down the streets and pick one at random. We still have more than two hours of daylight left. You go get ready, we’ll walk Tank, and then get cleaned up when we get back. It’ll be after dark when we return to the boat, but we’re only a stone’s throw from the dock.”

“’Allo!” a deep voice called out from the stern.

We walked aft along the side deck to find a light-blue rowboat with a bald, dark-skinned man in a red shirt aboard.

He stood and smiled. “I am Jeffery, wit’ Newtown Association of Yacht Security and Services. Are you Captain McDermitt?”

“I am,” I replied, walking down the center steps.

“I see dat you found your mooring okay,” he said. “We were not expecting you for several hours, or I would have helped wit’ dat. Is dere anyt’ing else I can help you wit’?”

“We had a pretty good tailwind,” I said. “Would you like to come aboard?”

I’d read that the people of Dominica were very friendly, as were most of the folks we’d met in the Windward Islands. And people who worked in keeping tourists’ yachts well-stocked and running were a special kind of friendly.

He nodded, then sat and deftly moved his oars, rowing the boat in the non-traditional forward-facing manner.

I grabbed his painter and tied it off to a recessed cleat in the swim platform, then welcomed him aboard.

When I’d made our arrangements here before leaving the Keys, I learned that NAYSS was a new yacht service, and their model was based on a similar and more established one in Portsmouth, in Prince Rupert’s Bay on the northwest coast. We’d be utilizing both services while in Dominica.

It was more than just renting a mooring ball. They provided day and night security, guide services, garbage collection, shore excursions, even shuttle trips.

The security portion was merely someone awake at the dock, where the whole anchorage was in view, and they had a boat that could come out quickly if there was trouble, like a dragging anchor or drifting dinghy.

The downside to the service here in Newtown, unlike the one in Portsmouth, and not really of concern for us anymore, was that the nearest fuel was a ten-minute walk from the pier.

I’d told the inspector how much we’d used, but the fuel man had kept pumping, filling our tanks. We’d only used a small amount on the long two-month voyage, plus what we’d used going to Apalach and back, which was also very little. We’d probably used four times that amount on the fast run to the coast guard dock.

His topping our tanks meant we’d crossed the Caribbean without spending a penny on fuel.

The two yacht services were about as close to a marina as you’d find on Dominica. Otherwise, it was over twenty-five miles to either Guadeloupe or Martinique, where more dockside services were available.

“This is my wife, Savannah,” I said, as we ascended the steps. “And our son, Alberto, and guests, Dink and Hannah.”

“And this is Tank,” Alberto said, barely bending over to put an arm around the pup’s neck.

“Welcome to de Nature Island,” he said with a broad smile. “As I said, I am Jeffery Shillingford, and I will be your point of contact for whatever you may need during your stay. We are a small island, and if I don’t know dem, dey do not live here. So I can get you whatever it is you need.”

“Please sit down,” Savannah said. “Maybe you can help us pick a restaurant and plan some excursions.”

He pointed toward the north. “De better restaurants are up in Roseau, ma’am. I can get you a car to take you dere and pick you up. Or just a short walk down de beach in either direction from here, you will find Evo’s or Standardz. Good food, but not so fancy.”

“Good food trumps expensive linens,” Dink said.

“Den you cannot go wrong wit’ either one, and since dere are five of you, de decision is easy.”

“How?” Alberto asked.

“From de pier dey are about de same distance either way,” Jeffery explained with a grin. “When you get to de end of de pier you say ‘one, two, t’ree,’ and everyone raise either deir left or right hand, and whichever is most, dat is de way you go. Left to Evo’s and right to Standardz.”

“How difficult is it to get to the Boiling Lake?” Savannah asked.

He glanced around, giving each of us a look as if he were assessing abilities. “It is a long and arduous hike,” he said seriously. “But some have been moved to tears to see it.” Then he grinned. “Of course, dat could just be de sulfur smell.”

“How far?” Alberto asked.

“De hike begins at Titou Gorge, at about sixteen hundred feet above sea level. From dere, it is eight miles to get to Boiling Lake and return on foot. For de first hour, it is hard, until we reach Trois Pitons River, de last source of water for de next hour of hiking.”

“And that next part gets easier?” Hannah asked dubiously.

His smile returned. “No, Miss. From de river onward, it becomes harder. De trail is steeper as we climb to almost t’ree t’ousand feet, to an overlook where you can see most of Dominica.”

“Wow!” Alberto exclaimed. “And that’s where the Boiling Lake is?”

He made as if he were about to nod emphatically, then shook his head. “No, dat is another rest stop.”

He laughed exuberantly at his own joke, which was infectious. Then he continued, now having everyone’s attention.

“From dere, we will climb down into de Valley of Desolation, where almost not’ing grows or lives. We will have to be very careful. One misstep, and you could fall into boiling mud.”

“Boiling… mud?” Hannah asked flatly.

Jeffery had the rare gift of storytelling; I could see that already. Even in just describing a long hike, he was spinning it into a tale of adventure.

“Hot and cold springs come toget’er dere,” Jeffery continued. “Some spewing up right by de trail. And dey bring minerals from deep inside de eart’. You just be sure to walk where I walk. And once we get across de valley, we will arrive at Boiling Lake. Bring some eggs if you like. I will show you how to cook dem in de water wit’out burning yourself.”

“What about lobster?” Alberto asked. “We have lots in the freezer.”

Jeffery laughed. “If you can stand de smell long enough. It will take quite some time for dat.”

“Will the sulfur hurt the meat?” Alberto asked.

“Let’s stick to an egg, Son,” I said. “Remember, we’ll still have to hike back out. And you know how lobster makes me sleepy.”

“It is a hike to plan for,” Jeffery said. “Including de stops to rest, it will be eight hours.”

“Eight hours?” Hannah exclaimed, practically whining.

I looked over at Dink. “I’m in if you want to give it a try.”

When we’d returned from Apalachicola, a mutual friend who’d accompanied us on the trip had given Dink a walking stick and asked him to try it out. It was intricately carved cypress wood, long and sturdy, and it actually did help him to be less accident-prone on land.

On a boat, even though he was a big man, Dink could move around effortlessly. But on land he’d always been the proverbial bull in a china shop.

“Alberto’s convinced me, man,” Dink said. “There ain’t many times in a man’s life he’ll get a chance to see a lake that’s boilin’.”

“Why does it boil?” Hannah asked.

“It is a flooded fumarole,” Jeffery replied. “De top of de volcano.”

“Uh-uh,” Hannah said, shaking her head. “A volcano? A boiling lake and boiling mud? No way.”

“Aw, c’mon, babe,” Dink said. “It’s the second biggest one in the world.” Then he looked at me. “And you’re gonna be hittin’ the biggest in New Zealand next year, right?”

I nodded. “If all goes according to plan.”

“Count me in as crew,” he said, then turned back to Hannah. “I know you can do it, babe. You’re a lot tougher than you think.”

She gave him a puzzled expression. “You think I’m tough?”

“Sure,” he replied earnestly. “Remember Irma?”

“That was me being dumb,” she retorted. “Not tough.”

During Hurricane Irma, Hannah had chosen to ride the storm out in her stilt house on Ramrod Key instead of evacuating and her home had been virtually destroyed.

She’d been seeing someone else at the time, and he’d decided to leave suddenly, then never came back.

Dink, as well as many others, had holed up at Rusty’s place, which was built on a limestone ridge almost twenty feet above sea level, one of the highest spots in the Keys.

“I mean the days after we did the stupid thing,” Dink said, becoming serious. “Helping each other and rebuilding. If surviving that and rebuilding ain’t tough, I don’t know what is. Me and my stick will be right beside you all the way. Okay?”

She agreed, then asked, “What about nightlife?”

“If you choose dinner at Standardz,” Jeffery suggested, “de Drop Anchor Bar is right next to it.”

Jeffery then asked what day we might be interested in doing the hike.

“I will be your guide,” he said proudly. “Among other t’ings, I am a botanist and know every plant we will encounter on de hike.”

“What other things?” Dink asked.

“I have degrees from de University of de Caribbean in geology and vulcanology,” he replied. “De plants I just picked up on my own by living here and having an inquisitive mind as a boy. And a granny who knew evert’ing dere is to know ’bout horticulture.”

“Tomorrow for the Boiling Lake?” Savannah asked.

“I would wait one more day,” Jeffery said. “Get your land legs back by walking around town. Will you need fuel? Fetching it is a good warm-up for de hike.”

“Taranis is electric,” I replied. “All we need is sun.”

His smile broadened. “Den you have come to de right place, and at de right time. It is de start of de dry season. But on de hike, we will get wet going t’rough de rain forest. Dat you can count on.”

It was late. The sun had gone down more than an hour earlier, and Juaquin was beginning to worry. Every Sunday for the past seven weeks, Benito had come in before sunset, just as he’d done for countless years as a fisherman.

And every week, the buyers were ready.

Juaquin could see a couple of them on their boats, also waiting. They weren’t the same boats and men who’d transported the marijuana.

The network had been set up long ago, and many of the buyers had been running drugs from the southern Windward Islands for years, buying large quantities through go-betweens to transport up to more lucrative markets in the Leewards. Some sailed all the way to Miami for an even greater return on their investment.

In the past, they’d made their pickups farther south, on Dominica, where drug boats from Venezuela unloaded tons of marijuana and cocaine to be stored in the homes of certain individuals that the cartel controlled.

Juaquin had been one of those individuals and had mentioned his idea to his contact in Maracaibo more than two years ago. Only after three safe houses in Roseau were raided by police did anyone listen to his alternative.

For decades, the cartels had relied on people to safeguard their shipments while awaiting transit, when there was a much more trustworthy guardian all around them.

The underwater volcano had always been there, though very few people knew of its existence, and even fewer could explain what it was.

Juaquin’s grandfather had told him once that it may have been above sea level long ago, even before Dominica rose up out of the sea spouting lava and steam, but wind and water had worn it down until only the top remained, almost sixty meters below the waves.

His grandfather’s father had known about it, as had his grandfather, all Dominican fishermen. The underwater mountain was a productive fishing site, but far out of the regular ship routes.

The islands of Guadeloupe and Dominica were barely thirty kilometers apart, and the seamount was equally distant from each, at about forty kilometers.

Few fishermen ever ventured so far out. But when local fishing spots became scarce, some did, and they rarely returned without full holds if they knew where the seamount was.

Juaquin had enlisted the help of his brother-in-law, Benito, and they’d dropped numerous containers to the bottom, attached to long, weighted tethers, then used Benito’s sophisticated fish finder to locate them.

They’d tried several methods of retrieving the containers, short of making a deep dive on scuba, and Benito had hit on an ingenious plan to drag two lines held far apart and deep underwater by his outriggers.

Doing that, they’d only had to drag the weighted lines over the location shown on the fish finder, but much deeper, to snag the package’s anchor tethers, pulling it and the weight at the end of the line up off the bottom.

They’d experimented over weeks, using multiple containers, and found that trying to retrieve more than a dozen was too risky; the equipment wouldn’t handle the load, and speed was of the essence.

Juaquin had used his and Benito’s combined savings to buy a large quantity of marijuana directly from the cartel, to prove it could be done.

The load was delivered, already paid for, and dumped in a tight group at the specified GPS coordinates of their secret spot on the seafloor.

Then the delivery ship went on its way and Juaquin and Benito retrieved the packages from the sea floor the following day, with one of the cartel jefes on board.

The demonstration had been so successful, the cartel had asked if he would be the middleman for future drop-offs, eliminating the need to store product in so many peoples’ homes.

After five successful deliveries, Juaquin had been offered a job, a position in the cartel, and would no longer have to risk his own money.

The cartel would send the delivery, drop it on the seamount, and Benito would recover it the next day and bring it to the marina, where buyers would be waiting and where more would arrive throughout the week.

Though he was no longer financially responsible for the drug shipment, he was responsible for its safekeeping.

And what safer place was there than the bottom of the ocean?

To the southwest, Juaquin saw a green light becoming visible and hoped it was Benito. Soon it became two lights, green and white—a boat angling toward the marina’s channel from the southwest. Then the red light appeared next to the green one, telling him the boat had turned and was headed straight in.

He recognized it when it got closer. It was Benito.

The boat entered the marina, just as it had every evening, though it was two hours late this time. The crew went about their task of tying up, just as they’d always done. Except this time, instead of disappearing inside the boat, both crewmen jumped down and left without a word.

Benito climbed down from the flybridge and came out to the foredeck. “There was trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Juaquin asked, climbing aboard.

“There were no packages to pick up,” Benito said. “Are you sure you got the coordinates right?”

“Show me the numbers I gave you,” he replied, pulling his phone out and feeling a deep dread. “Hopefully that is all it is.”

“We searched the area all around the numbers you gave me,” Benito said, leading the way to the back. “My fish finder picked up nothing.”

They went inside to the navigation desk, where Benito turned on the chart plotter and pointed to the GPS numbers he’d entered on the screen.

“There is more,” Benito said, as Juaquin checked the numbers against what he’d been given.

The numbers matched.

Juaquin felt as if he couldn’t breathe, like a giant snake was constricting his chest. “What more?” he croaked.

“I sent a man down,” Benito began. “On the exact spot. It is a very deep dive, over fifty meters. He only had a few minutes on the bottom, but he found one of the anchor lines used for the packages.”

Juaquin looked up, the color draining from his face. “And?”

“It was clipped to nothing,” Benito said. “Just the weight and thirty meters of line with the release clip, undamaged at the end.”

There was a tapping sound, and the brothers-in-law looked forward, through the lower helm windshield.

Two of the buyers were waiting on the jetty.

As on most beaches I’d walked, little could be seen of the town or houses beyond the dune. But above that, I could see homes and buildings extending slightly up into the mountains, then dense foliage, topped with mist-shrouded rocky promontories.

We passed a few other people walking the beach, mostly locals, if I had to guess. Everyone smiled and said hello, and one couple with a young boy stopped to pet Tank.

He was very friendly to the boy, who was no more than seven, and I again wondered how Warren was going to train him to be aggressive when needed, and hopefully not lose the side of his personality he normally exhibited toward strangers—one of openness and sociability.

“I like it here,” Alberto said, once we’d turned and started back. “I can’t think of anywhere we’ve been that’s like this.”

I gazed up at the high peaks, shrouded in mist, the low angle of the sun turning the thin veil to a shade of gold I’d never seen—liquid gold.

I felt the same alluring connection here that I’d experienced on St. Barts—not like it was somewhere I’d been, but more like a place I’d been destined to see.

“Yep,” I agreed. “I think you’re right.”

“Why are some places like that? More special than others?”

I looked down at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, like, it’s really pretty here,” he began, sorting the words in his adolescent mind. “But we’ve seen a lot of places that were prettier, and where people haven’t messed it all up. But for some reason, this place seems… I don’t know. Just more special, somehow.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, as we approached the pier. “And I know the feeling. But I can’t explain it, either. Maybe it’s just because we’ve talked about it so much over the years.”

“Jimmy would say it had something to do with a past life,” he replied with a laugh.

“It almost feels that way,” I said, looking up at the mountains again.

There was a small trash can with a lid on it by the pier and I dropped Tank’s bag in, noting that the heavy-duty canvas bag inside the can was almost empty.

I’d read that Dominica had outlawed all single use plastic and Styrofoam containers over five years ago, and supplied free, eco-friendly garbage bags to its citizens. I wondered how often the canvas bag was replaced.

“Load up,” I said to Tank. “The admiral’s waiting for her launch.”

Tank knew “load up” and “boat ride” meant the same thing, and he had no trouble jumping into the small boat. But with his ever-increasing weight, he was still adjusting to what effect it had on the boat. So lately, he’d simply drop down on his belly as soon as he got in and wait for someone else to counter the rocking.

“Good boy,” Alberto said, stepping over to join him, then guiding him to his usual spot beside the console, where I would counterbalance his weight.

I got in and started the engine as Alberto untied the painter from the dock and pushed us away. Then he moved to the middle of the seat, so Tank could put his front paws up on it beside him.

Dropping the jet-drive into reverse, I backed away enough to turn, then shifted into forward and spun the wheel, nudging the throttle up a little higher than an idle.

The little tender responded instantly, swinging the stern around, and I straightened the wheel, pointing the bow toward Taranis, just a couple hundred yards away.

Our tender was a twelve-foot, rigid-hull, inflatable boat, or RIB, with an inboard thirty-five horsepower Yanmar diesel engine tucked neatly under the short console, and a water jet under the helm seat. It was wide and stable, seated six adults on two benches, and with no prop or outboard, it fit neatly inside Taranis’s dinghy garage with room to spare.

The garage took up a good bit of room on the boat, thirteen feet by eight feet, directly aft of the mechanical room on the lower deck, which might seem extravagant at first, but otherwise, the dinghy would have to be on the upper deck or hanging off the stern, either of which would require a davit to lift it. I didn’t like the idea of mounting a dinghy davit at the stern, because the RIB would have to be launched to be able to use the steps and swim platform. Putting it on the flybridge would be okay until it needed to be launched in rough conditions, and besides, I liked the huge deck space. We still had a massive amount of storage in both amas and all through the main hull.

During the ride to Taranis, which took only a couple of minutes, I once more marveled at how beautiful the mountains looked, bathed in the light of the setting sun.

“I was about to send out a search party,” Savannah called from the main swim platform, then smiled. “But I could see you, we’re so close to shore.”

I glanced toward the beach. Fishing from a lot of different boats, some able to traverse super-skinny water, or anchor almost on the beach and still float, it didn’t hit me at first. But yeah, for a sixty-six-foot vessel, displacing over twenty-five tons, we were really close.

“Sorry,” I replied, noting that she was dressed up. “It was a nice beach and Tank wanted to stretch his legs. It does get deep really fast here.”

Alberto scrambled forward and handed her the painter, which she quickly tied off. Then he jumped out and held the boat sideways so Tank and I could get out.

I let Tank go first.

“You’re looking good,” I said, as Tank chased Alberto up the steps.

“Thank you,” she replied. “It occurred to me, after hearing Hannah ask about nightlife, that you and I haven’t had a night on the town in a long time.”

“A night on the town?” I asked dubiously. “A Boomer and Gen-Xer with a twelve-year-old?”

She smiled. “Within reason, of course. Besides, you’re not a Boomer anymore. You’re ‘Generation Jones’ now.”

“You want to hit the bar after dinner?” I asked flatly.

“I don’t plan to dance on the table, Jesse, but I texted Jeffery and he’s agreed to be our designated driver this evening. So, put the dinghy in the garage and go get ready. He’ll be here to pick us up in thirty minutes.”

When Jeffery arrived, he wasn’t alone. Anabel George was sitting in the seat in front of him. They faced one another as he rowed, and I realized the backward rowing style might be so he could talk to his passengers.

“’Allo,” he called out, as they drew near.

His smile was broad and genuine, and his teeth rivaled the grill on Trufant—my neighbor Mac Travis’s first mate.

“Jeffery,” I said, as Savannah and I went down the steps to greet them. “Good to see you again.”

“And Anabel,” Savannah said. “How are you?”

She turned and grinned up at us as I fended the boat away and turned it sideways.

“When I realized you were staying here,” Anabel said, “I called Jeffery to see if I could help you with anything, and he told me he was taking you to Standardz for dinner and dancing after.”

“I think we’re all set,” I replied, wondering how much she’d shared with the guide. “But you’re welcome to join us.”

“Since dis is your first time on our island,” she began, deftly stepping out of the boat in bare feet, “I would like to treat you for dinner.”

“You don’t⁠—”

“Please,” she insisted, raising a hand and nodding politely. “It was an oversight on my part. A complimentary meal in Newtown is included with your stay here.”

“You work for Newtown Yacht Service, as well as being a customs broker?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest?”

“Not at all,” she said. “On Dominica, our interest is in seeing dat visitors have an enjoyable stay on our island.”

“I’m glad you came,” Savannah said. “I’m not real sure Jeffery would be able to advise me on a little shopping trip while we’re here.” She smiled and winked at him. “To get my land legs back.”

The big oarsman laughed, standing effortlessly in the gently rocking rowboat.

“Would you like to come up?” I asked. “Hannah’s not quite ready yet.”

He stepped over easily, grabbed the bow line and tied it off to the same recessed cleat I’d used earlier.

Jeffery and I followed the women up to the cockpit and I motioned toward the flybridge steps.

“Let’s go up topside,” I said. “The view’s better.”

“Oh, dis is quite beautiful,” Anabel said, as she and Savannah reached the flybridge. “I didn’t realize there was so much room.”

“How is it you two know each other?” I asked Jeffery.

He flashed the big smile. “I know everyone on de island.”

Anabel took his arm. “I am fairly sure dat he does. But Jeffery and I have lived together for five years.”

If he didn’t already know that Taranis had been used in helping the police bring in 1,200 kilos of coke, then he would by the time his head hit the pillow beside hers.

We’d had many great weeks aboard Taranis completely unplugged from society and able to live on our own, untethered to shore. She had all we needed for weeks at a time, supplemented with what we could catch or spear. We had access to the internet and communications through Starlink, but aside from Alberto’s studies, we’d become less and less interested in what was going on in the world around us.

For a while, anyway, we’d escaped the unpleasantness of shore- bound living, but here it was again, lifting its ugly head like the kraken rising up from the dark depths.

A part of my mind was curious how the cartel was retrieving the drugs from the ocean floor, and another part was measuring the risk of involvement. But mostly I wanted to put it astern.

And do what? I asked myself. We’re heading to the Med in a month.

Like it or not, our plan was to remain here until after the first of the year, while we made minor repairs and upgrades, provisioned the boat for the long crossing, swapped out our electric motors, and got Tank safely back to Florida.

“Would you like something to drink?” Savannah asked Anabel. “A glass of wine, water, anything in between?”

“A white wine?” Anabel asked.

They moved toward the bar, and we followed.

Anabel was dressed similarly to Savannah, sort of island casual, with a colorful flair. Jeffery and I both wore cargo shorts and button-down shirts over a T-shirt. The collar made my neck itch and reminded me I needed a haircut.

Trivial thoughts entered my mind as the big-picture ideas withdrew.

“And you, Jeffery?” Savannah asked.

He smiled and raised a large water bottle. “I am fine, thank you.”

Alberto and Tank came up the steps.

“Is dat great big dog coming to dinner with us, as well?” Anabel asked.

“He’s just a puppy,” Alberto insisted.

She smiled at him. “I still want to know what you feed him.”

Alberto crossed his arms and replied theatrically, “Anything he wants.”

Tank walked toward her, then nuzzled her hand. I knew how soft the fur was on his neck and ears and her hand soon found it.

“His fur is so velvety and warm,” she said, smiling brightly. “We have mostly pot hounds on Dominica. Dey are a mix of everything dat’s ever been brought here.”

“I’ve heard of pot lickers and pot cakes,” Savannah said. “They probably mean the same thing on other islands we’ve visited.”

Dink and Hannah came up the steps then. She was dressed for a Miami dance club, heels thankfully clutched in her hand. Dink looked ready for an evening of somewhat stylish fishing.

I moved around behind the bar and grabbed a couple of Red Stripes for me and Dink and a root beer for Alberto, while Savannah poured another glass of wine for Hannah.

Jeffery moved toward the aft rail, and Dink and I followed him. In other anchorages, back home at the Rusty Anchor, or really just about anywhere, when couples gathered, they usually broke up into groups of men and women, to discuss topics men and women don’t usually have a common interest in, like diesel engines and clothing styles.

“Anabel told me what happened at de dock,” Jeffery said, keeping his voice low. “I commend you for dat, but Cap’n, dat was a dangerous t’ing to do.”

I knew it was, but I wanted to know why he thought so.

“Oh?” I asked, attempting an innocent look.

“Being so close to de mainland of Sout’ America,” he confided, “Dominica has been a layover for drug shipments for many decades.”

“Is there a drug problem on the island?” I asked.

“No, not here,” he replied. “Some of de younger people smoke marijuana dat is grown locally, but it is illegal and hard to get here any other way. It would be very rare for anyt’ing from dese shipments to get used here on Dominica.”

“Sort of a warehousin’ area for drugs in transit to the States?” Dink asked.

Jeffery glanced back at the others again for a moment before replying. “No, not bound for America. And not really warehouses. De marijuana transiting t’rough Dominica is going to Guadeloupe or de Virgin Islands.”

“If they don’t use a warehouse,” Dink began, “where do they store the stuff?”

“It is not something I should talk about,” Jeffery replied. “But you are already involved. Dere are some people on de island who are associated wit’ de Sout’ American cartels and dey store de drugs in deir homes for a small fee. Dat’s what makes it dangerous. You never know who is watching.”

“Are there a lot of these type people?” I asked.

“Not so many,” Jeffery replied. “But dere are others who will sell information. And dere are some who are forced to store it, as well. Five kilos here, ten dere. It is not hard to hide.”

“Or twelve hundred on the ocean floor,” Dink said, thinking, as he stared out over the water. “A whole lot less risk.”

Jeffery’s eyes widened. “She said it was only a dozen small bundles of marijuana,” he whispered. “Dat is over a ton!”

“And it wasn’t weed,” Dink said, turning to face him. “It was coke.”

Jeffery’s head snapped around. “Cocaine?”

“Probably not meant for Guadeloupe,” I said. “Or even all the Windwards and Leewards combined.”

“How many know about dis?” he asked in a serious tone.

I turned and met his gaze. “Counting you and Anabel, sixteen.”

“Who?”

“The two of you,” I replied, watching his eyes. “Inspector Joseph Alexander, Sergeant Castillo, two of their men who dove to recover the packages, four more who unloaded them at the dock, and maybe five guards on the dock. An older guy working the fuel pump saw it being unloaded, but if he knew what it was or not, I don’t know.”

“Do not worry about old Carlos at de dock,” Jeffery said. “He is my father’s cousin and a good man. So are Joseph and Manuel.”

“Manuel?” I asked.

“Manuel Castillo,” he replied. “He is Joseph’s grandnephew, but Joseph and I are only related by marriage.”

“Are we ready to go?” Savannah asked, coming toward us.

“Let’s get this show on the road!” Alberto exclaimed.

Jeffery’s rowboat was large and stable and could easily have fit several more than the seven in our group. He told us, as I’d guessed, that it was designed for tours, with the oarsman, also acting as tour guide, seated in the back, with the oarlocks in front of him, so he could row while facing forward.

“Wit’ a tour boat,” Jeffery explained, as he easily pushed the handles of the oars away from his chest, “speed is not required. Dis boat can go quite a way up some of de rivers, carry ten people across shallow sand bars, and go into de backwater of de lagoons and estuaries.”

I’d left Tank in the salon to watch over things while we were gone, which gave me a good excuse to call it an early night if I wanted to. And the more time I spent around other people, the more I preferred the simple companionship of a dog.

Present company excluded, of course.

Tank had taken his usual watch position before we left, on the lounge seat, where he could see most of the exterior of the boat and hear everything. I’d left the master stateroom open, which gave him a partial view of the starboard side as well.

I didn’t expect there to be trouble. But we were in a new port for the first night, and I was still jittery from the events earlier in the day.

The alarm was set, exterior motion sensors were activated, and if need be, I could access every camera and system on the boat using my phone. I could even see and talk to Tank through the overhead video display.

We’d worked with him a lot on that, getting him to understand that even though he couldn’t smell our presence nor see us three dimensionally, it really was us talking to him in real time on the monitor.

Most dogs typically ignore a two-dimensional image on a screen.

All my tactile senses told me things were safe here, but the discovery of the coke still had me feeling a little edgy.

I decided that later, I’d go for a swim and unload a couple of “toys” from the compartment under the swim platform. If trouble came, I preferred to be ready for it.

Savannah leaned closer. “Let it go, Jesse,” she whispered.

“Let what⁠—”

“Battle plans, risk assessment, whatever it is going through that military mind of yours,” she explained. “Just let it go for a few hours and we’ll talk tonight.”

I looked over at her and she smiled. The sun, now setting behind her, created a halo effect on her hair.

I smiled back. “Okay.”

When we reached the pier, Jeffery quickly tied up as everyone climbed out. Then we walked to the foot of the pier with Alberto leading the way.

Using his long walking stick, Dink was actually moving quite normally. Maybe Maddy had been right about his subconscious knowing he had grab-rails on the boat.

“One, two, three!” Alberto shouted, turning toward us and raising his right hand.

Grudgingly, I raised mine along with Savannah and the others.

“Standardz it is,” Alberto said, stepping off onto the sand in the same direction we’d walked with Tank.

The sun sank lower as we made our way along the shoreline, and we all stopped to watch when it reached the horizon.

“I remember my gran’papa saying he could hear de sun sizzle when it reached de water and he was still out dere,” Anabel said. “He was a fisherman and never missed watching it.”

Savannah smiled. “My daddy used to say the same thing. And he was a fisherman, too.”

In a matter of seconds, the sun disappeared over the horizon and the sky began to quickly darken.

“Look!” Alberto exclaimed, pointing shoreward.

I glanced up at the mountains, their peaks still bathed in the sun’s rays, and the mist around their tops glowing a bright pink.

“It’s beautiful,” Savannah breathed softly, holding me close.

We continued down the beach, until we came to a small restaurant on the water.

I’m sure it was a huge letdown for Hannah.

There were about a dozen small wood tables with wood chairs, each table lit by a flickering candle for ambiance, and likely also serving as insect repellant. Which reminded me, as close as we were to shore, we might need a candle or three for when we were in the cockpit or up on the flybridge.

As we entered the restaurant, a young woman, probably still in her teens, approached quickly and gave both Anabel and Jeffery a warm embrace.

“Dis is my sister, Maria,” Anabel said.

“Welcome to Standardz,” Maria said with a bright smile. “Please follow me.”

So far, I knew only six people by name on the whole island, and all six were related to at least one of the other five.

Lawrence, an old Jamaican friend who drives a cab in Key West would say, “It a beenie island, mon!”

And Dominica, at just 290 square miles, was a lot more “beenie” than Jamaica, almost fifteen times as large.

A beenie island with beefy problems.

As it turned out, the food was nothing like the dive vibe the restaurant exhibited, both inside and out. The seafood was fresh, but that was a given, considering the locale. It was highly likely my blackened grouper had been swimming earlier in the day.

The use of exotic Caribbean spices and the almost continental presentation were unexpected, though. They had a bar and stayed open till after midnight, and of course, the drinks were mostly rum-based, but had only one cube of ice and probably three shots of rum to one shot of cola or other mixer.

In the islands, rum was cheaper than Coke, and ice was a luxury.

We lingered after dinner, looking out at the boats moored in the bay, most with interiors and decks lit up, and all with mast or anchor lights visible. A thin crescent moon was on the horizon, chasing the sun over the edge.

“Oh, my,” Jeffery said, then turned to me. “I almost forgot. A package arrived for you dis evenin’.”

“About ten pounds?” Alberto asked. “From Miami?”

“Yes,” he replied. “It must have arrived when I was out to your yacht de first time. We can pick it up when we return.”

“Guess you know what that means, Son,” I said to Alberto.

“The new cooling fan,” he replied. “We’ll be installing it tomorrow?”

I got a disapproving look from Savannah.

“Maybe when it cools off in the afternoon,” I said with a shrug. “Or the next day; we’re on island time now. Besides, Mom wants to go shopping in the morning.”

“How far is this club?” Hannah asked.

“I don’t think it’s going to be quite what you’re thinking,” I told her, as Dink and I rose. “But I could be wrong.”

I wasn’t.

I’d been to enough beach towns to know what the typical island bar would probably be like here. A thatched or metal roof, a wooden bar, possibly resting on old beer kegs—I remember one being an antique longboard—and maybe a steel drum or guitar player in the corner.

We got lucky, though. There was a steel drum and guitar.

The wood floor was one step up from the beach, with the back of the structure wide open to a sunset view over the Caribbean, but now just a cool breeze off the water.

A few empty tables sat outside on the sand, and a dozen more were inside, with a long bar that took up the whole back wall.

It might not have been to Hannah’s liking, but it was exactly my kind of place.

There were more than a dozen people inside, including a burly bartender with skin the color of obsidian. The patrons were a mix of locals and visitors. The locals sat at the bar, and a group of obvious cruisers sat together to the right of the small stage, where the guitar player was tuning up.

When we stepped onto the wood floor, I could tell why nobody was seated at the outside tables. Though it was open to windward, the air inside was much cooler.

One man in the group saw us and motioned to Jeffery. “Is this our trimaran crew?” he called across the small dance floor.

There were three couples and three single guys. One couple was older than the next by a good many years, and by decades over the third couple, a young blonde and a Hispanic man. The three guys flying solo were also Hispanic, and young, probably in their twenties. By the way they were seated, I couldn’t tell which of the two men sitting close to the young blonde she was with.

Another large table was adjacent to the group and Anabel guided the others toward it, as Jeffery and I went over to greet the cruisers.

“Captain Hollister,” Jeffery said, “dis is Captain McDermitt of de trimaran, Taranis.”

The older gentleman rose and extended his hand. “Quite a beautiful and unusual vessel, Captain,” he said in a slight British accent as we shook hands. “Ginger and I are on the Orion—the Majesty 72 just to your south, with our guests, Mick and Diane Andrews, and their daughter, Jean.”

So much for my pairing. I assumed since he didn’t go any further with introductions, that the young woman wasn’t with either man.

“And dis is Captain Zayas,” Jeffery continued, moving toward the others, as the dark-skinned man seated between Jean and her father rose and extended a hand.

“A pleasure, Captain,” he said. “My friends and I are aboard the Swan ketch, just beyond Orion from you. We were just discussing the pros and cons of sail versus power, but your arrival has changed the equation. I heard no motor. Are you electric?”

His accent, what little he had, was Hispanic, though I suspected any dialect or nationality had been erased by English-speaking ancestors for at least one generation before him, if not more.

I nodded. “Solar during the day and batteries at night.”

One of the “friends” huffed. “Bet that makes it hard to outrun a storm.”

I caught his gaze and nodded. “It makes power planning almost as important as a sail plan.”

I nodded at Zayas and turned back to Hollister. “A pleasure to meet you all. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my guests.”

Savannah’d be proud, I thought, as I turned toward our table.

Three of the men laughed at something one of them said, just as I reached our table.

“What’s their story?” Savannah asked as I sat down, noting that Alberto was avoiding looking in the cruisers’ direction.

“Older Brit couple on the big motor yacht, Orion,” I replied, keeping my voice low, “with another couple and their daughter as guests. The four Hispanic men are on that big Swan ketch.”

“Threat level?”

I looked at her and grinned. “Zero from Orion.” Then I glanced past her at the four men and shrugged. “Maybe a three from the sailboat. One of them tried to goad me with a wisecrack.”

“Good for you, not rising to the bait,” she said. “We’ll check them out when we get back to Taranis.”

From years of cruising alone with Florence, Savannah was cautious when it came to anyone or anything that gave her a bad vibe, whether it was a combination of unfavorable sea conditions or just a negative feeling about an anchorage or person.

Like me, she’d learned to trust that little reptilian part of our brains that senses danger. For the last two months, if either of us felt the slightest unease about an anchorage, person, or situation, we merely paused there before moving on.

There wasn’t any moving on from here, though. Dominica wasn’t like other places where you could just move to another marina or anchorage to get away from someone. When Colombus described it to the king and queen of Spain, he crumpled a sheet of parchment and placed it on a table, saying, “That is Dominica.”

There were very few places where it was shallow enough to anchor, as the mountain literally rose up out of the water in many areas.

We’d be on the mooring ball for five more nights while getting provisions, seeing the Boiling Lake, then relaxing before we moved north along the coast, drift-diving the steep walls. With her electric motors and station-keeping ability, Taranis didn’t need a dock or anchorage.

For the time we were going to be on the mooring ball, I didn’t want any trouble. So, when the waitress came and took our drink orders, I added a round for the other two boats’ crews.

Savannah and I both had a few drinks, but we weren’t driving. And we danced a little, with Alberto recording it for posterity. But seeing Hannah pull Dink out on the dance floor with the walking stick was the highlight of the evening’s entertainment.

However, I was yawning by 2230, and Savannah suggested we call it an evening so we could get an early start in the morning.

Hannah was buzzed from the potent drinks, exhausted from the day’s events, and in probably the best mood she’d been in since they’d joined us, which made Dink particularly happy.

On the way back to the pier, Jeffery retrieved our package from the little boat house, and we boarded his rowboat, all laughing and talking at once.

The ride back to Taranis, which was lit from below with blue underwater lights, was short and the talking continued all the way.

As everyone climbed out of the boat, Jeffery asked if we’d need anything more.

“No, thanks,” I told him, shaking his hand with a palmed hundred-dollar-bill. “It’s been a great first night in port, Jeffery. Thank you both for your hospitality.”

He quickly pocketed the bill without looking at it and smiled. “Will you need a ride to de pier in de mornin’, Cap’n?”

“No, I don’t think Savannah’s going to be buying that much,” I replied. “We’ll just use the dinghy. But if you have access to a car I could rent, later in the week, we can fill our boat with provisions in one trip.”

He smiled. “I have an old truck you can use any time. An International Scout.”

I laughed. “What year? I drive a ’73 Travelall!”

“Mine is a 1967,” he replied. “It can carry up to seven people; I changed out de back seat for two bench seats dat face inward.”

“It’ll be a day or two after the hike to Boiling Lake,” I said. “But I understand prices are lower here in Newtown than up in Prince Rupert’s Bay, where we’re going next.”

“It is a lot less distance here,” he said. “Since everyt’ing comes into Roseau. I would be happy to help you get provisions.”

“Great! And just before we head across the Atlantic after the first of the year, we’ll come back down here for a day or two to do it again if you’re available.”

“Across de ocean?” he asked. “It be against de wind all de way, Cap’n.”

I grinned. “The difficult, Taranis does with ease. The impossible takes a little longer.”

I thanked them again and went up to the cockpit, where Savannah waited.

“I like them,” she said, then turned to face me. “And you….” She slipped her arms around my waist. “It was good to see you unwind and let loose.”

“I had fun,” I admitted, as Alberto and Tank came out and headed for the port side.

“He’s gotta go,” he said, opening the gate and following Tank down.

I called after them. “Make him use the harn⁠—”

The splash as Tank’s body hit the water cut me short and set in motion certain things that needed to be done.

I was going to need a towel and probably another shower.

And Tank would need a few towels. We’d found that if he didn’t get the saltwater rinsed completely from his fur, his skin would dry and flake, and this was his second swim of the day. So he’d need a full freshwater rinse-down after swimming.

“I’ll get the towels,” Savannah said, turning and heading inside.

I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it off, then removed my T-shirt and dropped them both on the table before I headed down to where Alberto stood on the swim platform.

Tank was swimming in lazy circles, then stopped and floated, barely moving his front legs as he relieved his bladder.

“You didn’t get the harness on him,” I said, stating the obvious.

“He was too fast,” he replied. “Sorry.”

As we waited, I heard an outboard start and a moment later, an RIB pulled away from the pier and sped off to the south, hugging the shoreline.

Getting Tank back aboard without the harness was no easy task, and impossible to do without getting wet.

The procedure was the same, except instead of grabbing the handle, I had to bend lower and get my hands under him.

By the time we got Tank aboard and started the washdown procedure, which he thoroughly enjoyed, I could hear the dinghy slowing and glanced across the mooring field to see it arriving at the Swan ketch belonging to Zayas.

“I hope they leave,” Alberto said.

I glanced up at him while rinsing Tank’s neck. “Why’s that?”

“Two of those guys were on Grand Turk while we were there,” he replied, helping work the water into Tank’s dense fur.

I squinted toward the ketch. “Which ones?”

“The big guy with the muscles,” he replied. “And the younger one who was sitting next to him. They were the two guys on the beach who were giving me and Trey and Jim a hard time.” He bent and kissed Tank’s forehead. “Tank scared them away.”

“What exactly did those men say?”

Alberto shrugged. “They said mean things on account of Trey and Jim are white and I’m brown.”

Trey was the oldest of the three, but he was only fourteen, and Jim was a year younger than Alberto.

I felt a deep burn in the pit of my stomach. “What happened?”

“Tank came out of the bushes,” he replied. “You shoulda seen him, Dad. He was just like you.”

“Like me?”

“He never made a sound, but anyone could tell he was ready for a fight. He stepped between us and those men, then started walking toward them, real slow, with the hair all down his back standing up and his fangs bared.”

Tank looked up and chuffed, and Alberto hugged his neck.

Maybe Warren wasn’t going to have such a hard time after all.

There’d been no more wisecracks from the Swan’s crew at the bar, but now and then I’d caught Zayas staring at us. Me in particular.

I paused at the hatch and looked over toward the ketch. It was moving.

With Tank completely salt free and mostly dry, we headed inside to find Savannah sitting with Dink and Hannah in the forward lounge.

The whole interior of Taranis was waterproof, and any liquid that dripped on the hardwood sole eventually found its way into the bilge and was pumped overboard. So Tank being a little damp wasn’t a concern.

“I’m tellin’ ya,” Dink said, “that was the first time I’ve done that since Hurricane Wilma in ’05.”

“That was the summer Savannah and I met,” I said. “First time you did what?”

“That was the last time I danced before tonight,” he replied, looking up at me with a crooked grin. “I was just happy to still be alive and I mighta danced a little jig in Rusty’s backyard.”

Hannah gave him a light shove, then sat back and smiled. “Oh, come on… almost twenty years? You move pretty good with that stick.”

He grinned at me. “Jesse’s been showing me some moves.”

“Dad?” Alberto asked, incredulously. “Dance moves?”

“Bo…jusu?” he tried, looking up at me again.

“Bojutsu,” I corrected. “Literally, staff technique, an ancient Japanese form of self-defense using a staff, or bo.”

“If we’re getting up early,” Savannah said to Alberto, “then you’d best go get a shower and get to bed.”

“Us too,” Dink said. “I’m whopped.”

Hannah stifled a yawn. “Yeah, it’s been an exciting day.”

Alberto slid out and headed for the port ladderwell. “Where are you gonna sleep, Tank?”

The pup was already moving before he’d spoken and jumped immediately into the seat Alberto had just vacated.

“G’night, everyone,” Alberto said before heading down the ladder.

Dink and Hannah rose and headed for the forward ladderwell to the main hull’s lower deck. “We’re gonna sleep in,” he told me. “Anything you want me to do while you’re gone in the mornin’?”

“We should be back before noon,” Savannah said.

“Just relax and unwind,” I told him. “Drop a line in the water if you feel like it.”

“I have something to show you,” Savannah said, crossing toward our stateroom as Dink and Hannah went down the steps.

I followed her in and she went around the bed to the auxiliary nav desk and opened the laptop, then turned on the chart plotter.

“While you were dealing with Tank, I grabbed my laptop just to get a little info. The Swan had their AIS turned on up until just a few minutes ago,” she said, pointing to the laptop monitor. “I got a screen shot. It’s the Knot Guilty, out of Miami, Florida.”

“Owner and captain Cameron Zayas,” I read from the screen. “That’s what Jeffery called him. The name sounded familiar then.”

Savannah clicked to reduce the image, revealing a website behind it, a news headline from the Miami Herald.

“He’s a disgraced former Dade County assistant district attorney,” she said, scrolling to his picture. “He was fired two years ago when he was arrested and charged with possession of five kilos of cocaine, with intent to sell.”

I debated telling her. Savannah could be unpredictable where kids were concerned.

Finally, I sat down on the bunk. “Two of his crew were the ones who hassled Alberto and Deuce’s boys back on Grand Turk.”

“What?” she exclaimed, sitting down next to me. “Which ones?”

“The gym rat,” I replied, taking her hand. “And the younger-looking kid who was sitting next to him. Tank scared them away.”

Later that night, with the others in their cabins, Savannah and I slipped out and went down to the main swim platform. It extended six feet beyond the bottom of the sugar scoop steps and was as wide as the hull, with three sets of rollers in the center to make easing the tender in and out of the garage easier, and with toe room on either side for two people to load or unload it.

But we weren’t taking a romantic ride around the bay.

As we stood on the swim platform, I paused and scanned the anchorage.

An hour earlier, Savannah and I had watched from the flybridge as former DA Zayas and his crew aboard Knot Guilty sailed west, out of sight. But our radar showed they’d turned north, still running with their AIS turned off.

It was almost midnight, and quiet as I sat down and extended the swim ladder, then climbed down into the water.

Savannah knelt at the edge. “Be careful.”

I nodded and slipped under the edge. The platform itself was eighteen inches thick, about normal for one that would hold the weight of half a dozen people or the dinghy. However, like most of the boat, it was made of carbon fiber over a framework of titanium and was hollow on either side of the rollers, with the underside less than a foot above the calm surface.

Just enough room to get my eyes and nose out of the water, with my forehead pressed against the underside.

Right in front of my face was a rubber, waterproof black button, which I pressed. The two hatches whooshed as the vacuum was released and they dropped down slightly at the middle seam. Then a small hydraulic pump, mounted inside the forward part of the platform, began to whir and the gap grew as the two sides opened downward and out.

Low-level red LED lights around the interior came on, illuminating my “war room” concealed inside the swim platform.

I grabbed a handhold in the center divider and first examined the interior for any moisture intrusion. The whole platform had been submerged many times since I’d last opened the hidden hatch.

Once the vacuum pump sucked the air out, a rubber seal around the edges of both doors compressed, preventing water from getting in.

Everything was dry. Not even any condensation.

My weapons were all individually clamped into place, but I had to be very careful. The bottom was fifty feet below and sloped at an angle of greater than forty-five degrees. If I dropped anything, it could tumble down to a hundred feet or more before becoming wedged deep in a crevice.

This wasn’t the only hiding spot on the boat for weapons. It was just the primary one, used for when a boarding or inspection might be foreseeable, which is about any time you’d check into a new country.

I carefully released the clamps on three handguns, one at a time, and handed them up to Savannah. Last was my SIG Sauer XM7 rifle. There was a custom hiding spot for it under the flybridge helm, and it’d be safe there and available if needed.

After handing it up to Savannah, I pressed the button again and waited until the hatches closed and I heard the vacuum pump seal the two sides tight before I climbed up the swim ladder.

“Your Glock and my SIG in our nightstands,” I whispered, as we headed up the steps. “I’ll put the Kimber in the flybridge kitchen spot and the rifle in its hiding place under the dash.”

“Kinda late for a swim,” Dink said, sitting in the shadowy corner of the cockpit. “I see you got a bad feelin’ off those sailors, too.”

There was nothing I could do or say to explain the fact that I had a rifle in one hand and a handgun in the other.

“Come with me,” I said to him, then nodded to Savannah to continue inside.

“Where’s Hannah?” I asked, heading up the steps to the flybridge.

“In the shower again,” he replied. “I seen your ammo. Last week, when I was helpin’ ya down in the engine room. I was wonderin’ where ya kept the guns.”

“You’re right,” I said, laying the rifle on the forward lounge seat, next to the helm. “I didn’t get a good feeling about Zayas and his crew. Not a bad one either. But… something. Then they sailed off anchor a few hours ago and turned off their AIS.”

“Where ya think they went?” he asked. “And whatta ya gonna do with those?”

I went behind the grill and pressed the two far right ignitors at the same time. “They sailed west, out of sight,” I replied, as a panel under the counter, just above the warmer, opened and a tray slid out.

I put the Kimber into its spot. “Then we saw them turn north on radar, about eight miles offshore.”

He leaned over the counter as I closed the hiding spot. “That’s pretty slick, right there.”

“What tipped you off about the ammo closet?” I asked bluntly, as I went to the helm and pressed down on both sides of the false panel for two seconds.

Dink’s eyes actually bulged as the lid came up and I put the rifle into its custom cradle.

“It’s a, uh… blank space where they shouldn’t be one.” He grinned as I closed the panel. “Prolly nobody but me woulda noticed.”

“A blank space?”

He nodded. “Looked hollow, and the release was easy to find, knowin’ that there had to be one. Maybe put a few dummy sight tubes in the door panel; make it look like a fuel line chase.”

I sat down at the helm and motioned to the lounge seat. He sat facing me, elbows on his knees.

“Obviously,” I began, “I don’t have to tell you to forget what you just saw.”

He gulped and sat up a little straighter. “You on some kinda mission or somethin’? No, never mind. You’d hafta kill me, so I don’t wanna know.”

“I’m just cautious,” I told him. “And no, I’m not on any kind of secret spy mission. I wouldn’t know a spy if he kicked me in the ass.”

“Cautious, yeah,” he said, nodding. “Who do you think they were?”

“The captain’s name is Cameron Zayas,” I replied. “He’s a former district attorney in Miami. I don’t know anything about his crew.”

“If ya need me, man, I got your back.”

I looked over at him in the darkness. Dink was a good man, a hard worker, and though he was as big as an ox, he had the temperament of a Key deer.

“Probably won’t ever come to anything,” I said. “But if it does, Savvy and I can handle it.”

“Sav… wait. You mean she’s in on it too?”

“In on what?” I asked with a crooked grin, then stood. “She’s capable, Dink, and the epitome of calm in a dicey situation. Just don’t mention anything about the guns or those guys on the Swan to Hannah or Alberto, okay? No sense in alarming them over what’s probably nothing, and definitely none of our business.”

He glanced at the dash. “That hardware ain’t nothin’. And that ain’t the greatest hidin’ place. All the seams are visible.”

I bent to the helm and pressed and released the latch on the front of the chart-storage access. The lid rose once more, but this time, the false bottom remained in place, concealing the rifle below it.

Dink looked down inside. The four-inch-deep compartment contained several chart books, a cruiser’s guide to amenities in the Windward Islands, and a pair of binoculars.

“Pretty slick,” he said again. “Don’t worry. I won’t say nothin’ to Hannah.”

We went back down and through the salon. Tank lifted his head and looked at me, cocking it in curiosity. I scratched his neck for a second, then went to the helm and switched the low-level red accent lights from the ON position to motion-activated.

“G’night,” Dink said, heading down the steps.

I said goodnight, then stood for a moment in the wheelhouse, allowing my eyes to adjust. The sea was glassy calm, and the anchorage was quiet, nothing moving.

I heard the forward cabin hatch open, then Hannah giggled and said something in a sultry voice I couldn’t make out before the hatch clicked closed.

I looked over at Tank. “If you hear anything unusual from down there,” I told him. “Just ignore it.”

I moved over toward Savannah’s and my stateroom and opened the hatch. The lights were low, and candles flickered on the sill of the full-length glass wall. Savannah had her back to me, wearing a very short, blue nightie, and, backlit by the candles the way she was, it was almost transparent.

“That goes for in here, too,” I said to Tank, then closed the hatch.

When I opened my eyes, I could see that the sky outside the full-length windows was lighter toward the stern. That told me two things. It was near dawn and the wind hadn’t changed, so we hadn’t swung around on the mooring.

The typical trade wind was out of the east and brought early explorers across the Atlantic from Europe. But the island was so high, surface winds wrapped around it, leaving the waters on the western side, where we were, very calm. The island itself created an updraft, which pulled a light, westerly sea breeze off the water, little affected by the easterlies.

I’d gotten less than six hours of sleep, but it was that good, totally exhausted kind of deep sleep. Rising quietly from our bunk, I went down to the head to take a leak, then came back up and sat down at the auxiliary nav desk.

When I opened the laptop, it cast a blue glow around our room. I pulled up AIS and did a search for Knot Guilty. Her past positions were available, but nothing since 2241 the previous night, when Savannah noted they’d turned it off.

Over the last four days, Knot Guilty had sailed down from Puerto Rico, stopping only twice—once in St. Kitts, after what looked like a two-day and one-night crossing, and again in southern Guadeloupe a day later, then arriving here in Dominica yesterday.

It just seemed odd. Four men on a luxury cruising sailboat, stopping here for two days, then heading back the way they’d come. But then again, Alberto said we were going to stop and go around the world in the opposite direction one day.

Who knew?

I pecked quietly with two fingers, doing an internet search for Cameron Zayas. I found a lot, but nothing recent.

He was born in Little Havana in 1989, making him thirty-five years old. His father was Venezuelan and his mother Cuban, but just as I’d figured, both were natural-born American citizens.

He’d prosecuted a few high-profile cases against gang leaders and local drug dealers, won two murder convictions, and was probably on his way up in the highly political and equally competitive legal world.

On the night of his arrest, reporters had swarmed his home in Miami Beach, seeking a statement from his wife. But she and their two daughters had left their home without a word and moved in with her parents in Little Havana, never to return.

Less than a week later, before Zayas was released on a technicality, his wife and daughters were shot to death in a drive-by shooting that left her Lexus riddled with more than a hundred bullet holes.

When he was released three days afterward, Zayas sold everything he owned, except the yacht, and promptly disappeared.

That was in 2020, just four years ago.

“Mm,” Savannah murmured.

I looked over at her as she rolled onto her side and propped her head on one hand.

“Hey,” I whispered. “Sorry if I woke you.”

She smiled in the dim light. “I slept so peacefully.” She leaned over to see the screen. “What are you doing?”

I turned in my seat as I closed the laptop, then told her what all I’d found out about the former DA.

She shuddered when I described the drive-by shooting.

“Sounds like a retribution hit,” I told her. “The cartels won’t even take getting busted as an excuse. Lose five keys of blow and you pay the price in a big way.”

“Did you check their boat’s⁠—”

“Nothing on AIS since you saw them turn it off last night,” I replied. “But based on her past movements, eighty to a hundred miles a day is a stretch. They seemed to have been island-hopping.”

“Inspector Alexander said Dominica was a staging area for drugs moving north,” she said. “And they went north.”

I shrugged. “Supposition,” I replied, though I had thought the same thing. “And the AIS going off could’ve just been a malfunction.”

“He kept staring at you,” she said. “Last night at the bar. Did you notice?”

“Yeah,” I replied, just as a light scratching could be heard at the hatch. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before tonight, though.”

“Better take Tank out,” she said, as I stood and pulled my cargo shorts on. “And make sure to put his harness on him. I don’t need you wrenching your back.”

I looked down at her in mock disbelief. “Since when have you ever known me to wrench my back?”

“Go on,” she said, throwing the sheet off and swinging her long legs off the bunk. “I’ll get breakfast started in just a minute.”

She wore the nightie and a lilac scent. Nothing else.

I went to the hatch and opened it. Tank stepped in and rubbed his big head on the side of my hip.

“Hey, Tank,” I said softly, barely leaning to rub his neck. “Quiet night?”

He chuffed.

“I think I’m going to take him to the beach,” I called after Savannah, as she went down to the head.

“Probably the same amount of time,” she replied. “When you add in bathing and drying him. Don’t be long. Breakfast is in thirty minutes and we’re leaving an hour later.”

“C’mon, Tank,” I whispered. “Let’s go for a… boat ride.”

His head and ears came up and he trotted past me to the sliding hatch.

“Can you hold it till we get to the beach?” I asked him, as I turned off the alarm, grabbed the dinghy key, and opened the slider.

He chuffed again, stepping out into the warm morning air.

I glanced at the weather station mounted on the bulkhead by the slider. It was seventy-six degrees, the humidity was just over fifty percent, and, from glancing all around, there were no clouds in the early morning sky, except the ever-present mist in the mountains.

Back home in the Keys, mornings were usually overcast and brisk in early December, with lows a good ten degrees cooler than here.

I grinned, remembering a weather report I’d seen a couple of nights ago on an American news station. An early snow was predicted for the Tennessee Valley and northern Georgia. The cold front was expected to push as far south as Orlando by mid-week, which was tomorrow.

I opened the gate and followed Tank down to the platform. He wanted to jump in the water, but he wanted to ride in the boat more, so he patiently waited while I pressed the button on the fob to open the garage, lifting his ears and cocking his head in wonder at the sound of the hydraulic pump.

Just as it started to rise up, Alberto appeared at the rail. “Where ya going?”

“To the beach so Tank can stretch his legs,” I replied, as the stairs rose higher. “You wanna come with us?”

“Yeah!” he replied. “I’ll just be a minute.”

“Tell Mom you’re coming,” I called after him.

Launching the dinghy was a simple task. Anyone on board could handle the job. The keel was on rollers, built into the garage deck and swim platform, and I only needed to grab the handle on the port side and give it a pull, then inertia and the slight downward slope of the rollers did the rest. I simply grabbed the painter off the bow as the dinghy slid into the water.

Tank and I climbed in, and I started the engine, then lowered the steps back into place with the fob just as Alberto came running out.

“Did you tell your mom?” I asked.

He stopped and looked back.

“Hurry up,” I said. “Tank’s gotta go.”

He bolted inside and I heard him knocking on our cabin door, then shouting, “I’m going with Dad!”

I let the engine idle for a moment as Alberto came rushing back out and down the steps.

“She said okay.”

“You drive,” I said, as I untied the painter.

He jumped in, grinning ear to ear, and took the helm as I sat on the seat directly in front of it and a little to starboard, giving Tank room to put his front paws up on the bench beside me.

Alberto backed away and turned the dinghy around, then just let the little diesel jet-drive idle straight toward the beach. The sea state was calm and flat and there was little surf action at the shoreline. He timed the approach perfectly, just as a small swell lifted us. Then he gunned the engine for a moment before we grounded on the sand and the little wave receded, leaving the dinghy high and dry.

At least at the bow, anyway.

The stern probably had a couple of feet under it.

Alberto shut off the engine as I climbed out first. Tank vaulted the side, and I heaved the dinghy forward a little onto the beach.

“Help me pull it up a little,” I said.

“Not too far,” he advised. “High tide was an hour ago.”

We pulled from both sides, then Tank grabbed the painter and began tugging as Alberto and I stepped back and started laughing. The dinghy inched higher on the beach with every tug.

“Thanks, buddy,” I told him, clipping the leash to his collar. “If the tide drops too much, you can tug it back into the water.”

We started walking toward the foot of the pier, just a hundred yards up the beach, and when we reached it, Tank lifted his leg beside the post holding the trash can, which I opened. The canvas bag inside was empty.

“Why do we gotta go shopping every time we get to a new place?” Alberto asked, as we turned and started on past the pier. “Mom hardly ever buys anything.”

“It’s more social than need,” I told him. “And she’s bought at least one thing from every town we’ve stopped at.”

“Social?”

“She needs to interact with others,” I replied. “Shopping is her way of getting to know the people and culture. She talks to the merchants, asks questions, and whether she buys something or not, she makes a new friend and learns something about the people of that area.”

We continued another hundred yards. Some mornings it took more walking for Tank’s digestive process to kick into gear. Finally, he started sniffing around a spot, arching his back, and I got a bag ready.

Fifteen minutes later, we pulled quietly up to Taranis’s stern. Alberto jumped over to the swim platform with the painter and tied it off before pulling the dinghy broadside so Tank and I could get out.

Savannah met us in the cockpit. “Breakfast is ready. I want to get going as soon as possible.”

Alberto opened the slider, yelling. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

Savannah followed him and Tank inside, but I paused and looked back toward the beach for a moment. There was a lone figure standing next to a palm tree near the dune.

The person was in the shadows of the vegetation so I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, or even which direction they were facing.

But unless they were studying the plants up close, they were looking at Taranis.

Cameron Zayas studied the anchorage as they approached, and picked a mooring ball away from the few boats already there. The anchorage outside the small marina was half empty, as were most of the slips in the marina itself. Typical at sunrise on a weekday in the Eastern Caribbean. The fishermen had left before dawn, as had the cruisers who’d stopped for the night.

The sixty-five-foot ketch idled toward the ball, with Manuel Cortina on the bow to catch the mooring line with a boat hook. Cameron considered him a good man to have around in a pinch, but he wasn’t much of a sailor.

“Ten meters,” Manuel called back.

Cameron shifted to neutral and let the big Swan drift toward the mooring ball.

“Got it,” Manuel yelled.

He quickly hauled the scummy mooring line aboard, clipped Knot Guilty’s bridle to it, and dropped it overboard with a splash. Then he stepped back, raising his hands like he’d roped and tied a calf.

His antics irritated the smuggler and sometime cartel enforcer.

We are in no rush, Cameron thought. Why do you always act like you’re in a fucking hurry all the time and make so much noise?

None of the boats in the anchorage had interior lights on, and he couldn’t see anyone on shore around the marina. But still….

Once Cameron shut off the engine, Jorge Jiminez came up the companionway, shirtless as usual, showing off his powerful physique. He was neither tall nor exceptionally heavy, but his arms and chest muscles rippled with every movement, the product of long hours of weightlifting while in prison.

“Why did they change the pickup location, jefe?” Jorge asked, his Puerto Rican heritage very apparent in his accent. “And why did nobody tell us?”

Though his whole crew was Hispanic, Cameron insisted that they speak English. His father’s parents were Venezuelan and his mother’s Cuban, but both his parents had been born in Miami, and spoke little Spanish. Cameron spoke even less.

“It was changed for security reasons,” Cameron replied. “The safe houses on Dominica were raided recently. And we didn’t check in for nearly a week to find out. That’s all on me.”

Jorge looked around. “We were just here three days ago.”

The loss of time hadn’t escaped Zayas. In their business, time was money, and three days wasted sailing farther south and waiting to meet their usual contact was a financial loss, but Cameron’s man in Roseau had assured him that their new exchange point was even better and would result in a shorter turnaround time on the next run.

He also knew his men were wound tight. Perhaps too tight. Jorge, especially. He’d been chased from the beach two months earlier on Grand Turk by the large black dog they’d seen on the big trimaran. When they’d seen the boat again in Dominica, Jorge had wanted to swim over and cut the dog’s throat as it slept.

But getting into altercations in their line of work was just stupid. So Cameron had put a stop to that right away, distracting the man with the offer of a bonus for the lost time.

His cartel contact had politely offered to compensate Zayas for that same loss of time, but Cameron declined. It was never wise to take advantage of the cartel’s generosity.

So he would eat the cost and give his crew an extra two percent for the trouble.

Going to the rail, Cameron scanned the marina, then pointed. “The lone fishing boat,” he said. “With the tuna tower.”

“Are you sure?” Manuel said, coming aft on the side deck and wiping his hands on his pant legs.

“It’s the boat that was described,” Cameron replied, staring at it. “We won’t know for certain until we take the dinghy in. It will have the name Sirena on the back.”

Ten minutes later, Cameron and the two of his four crewmen who were awake got into the small inflatable and Cameron drove it toward the marina. He slowed as they passed the jetty and then turned left behind the sea wall.

Then he saw the name of the boat on the transom—Sirena.

“That’s it,” Manuel said, looking around.

Cameron did the same as he idled the small inflatable toward the fishing boat’s stern. There wasn’t anyone around.

He’d been told there was never much activity at this marina, and when they’d stopped here on the way down on Saturday, just three nights earlier, it had been just as dead as it was now.

He patted the small waterproof box at his feet, which was no bigger than a fishing tackle box but weighed over twenty pounds. One million dollars in American currency was stashed inside the box—the agreed price for one hundred kilos of uncut cocaine.

Once they were underway, the hundred kilos would become two hundred with the addition of a fifty percent “cut” of baking powder. In its pure form, cocaine was far too potent for the street, and could be deadly, so the baking soda saved lives.

The final product, weighing 200,000 grams, would have a street value of sixteen million, but Cameron had a buyer in Miami who would take the whole lot, and the risk for distribution, for a cool eight million dollars.

A $7,000,000 profit for the 3,000-mile, month-long, round-trip.

Coming down here usually took them eighteen to twenty days, stopping often to get provisions and fuel. But the return trip was all downwind, and sailing non-stop, straight through, they could cover the 1,500-nautical mile return trip in a little over a week.

He gave his crew a month off with pay between runs, as any maintenance and repairs were made to the Swan, and then they’d do it all over again.

Six runs a year, for the last two years. He’d piled up nearly a hundred million dollars in offshore accounts since his wife and daughters were gunned down in their car. It would be enough to have the man who gave that order killed.

Then he would disappear in the Swan and live on what was left.

Cameron killed the engine as they neared the small swim platform on the back of the boat.

Manuel rapped on the side of the hull. “Ahoy, Sirena.”

A man came out of the cabin, looking toward them with a worried expression.

“I was sent by Malcolm,” Cameron said quietly to the man, using the pass phrase he’d been given.

“We have nothing for you,” the man on the boat said.

“What do you mean?” Cameron asked, going suddenly tense. “It has already been arranged. One package.”

“There are none,” the man insisted.

“What is your name?”

Another man emerged from the cabin as the first looked down and gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I am Juaquin Esteban. I am afraid there are no packages.”

Cameron glared up at the two men. Then, without taking his eyes off them, he reached back and reversed the small outboard, letting the dinghy back away.

He kept his eyes on the two men as he turned the boat and headed back out, with Manuel and Jorge doing the same.

“What the hell, jefe?” Jorge muttered, his hand finally releasing the grip of his pistol under his lightweight jacket.

“Be quiet,” Cameron said. “I will make a call when we get to the boat.”

Five minutes later, with his men down inside the cabin, Cameron used his satellite phone and made a call.

“This is Zayas,” he said, when a voice answered. “There is a problem with my consignment.”

“What problem?” the man asked.

“There is nothing here to pick up.”

There was silence for a moment, then another voice came on. “This is Garcia. Who is this?”

Antonio Garcia was the head of security for Cartel de los Soles in Caracas, and a distant cousin of Cameron’s.

“It is your cousin, Cam Zayas,” he replied, staring toward the marina. “This man here, Juaquin Esteban, he tells me there is nothing to pick up.”

“They have two thousand kilos of coca del los Soles,” Garcia growled. There was a moment of silence. “Or they are supposed to.”

“What should I do?” Cameron asked.

“Go back and tell Esteban you are going to search the boat,” his cousin growled.

Cameron glanced over toward the marina again. “And if we find nothing?”

There was a short pause before Antonio spoke again. And when he did, his voice was dark and menacing. “If they no longer have our shipment, kill them all and blow up the boat.”

Our first Dominica shopping excursion netted five purchases, and only two of those were Savannah’s. Alberto found a T-shirt he had to have, which was fine since he was growing out of his clothes fairly quickly.

And in a small hardware store, I found some stainless-steel elbow fittings and clear plastic tubing that I could use to create a few dummy site gauges on the ammo closet hatch. Then, in an antique shop, I found an old Swiss-made analog ship’s chronometer that was self-winding, and mounted on a small ship’s wheel. The slightest motion kept it wound and on a boat on the water, it would never wind down. I figured it’d look good on the outer bulkhead in the cockpit, just above the weather gauges.

Surprisingly, Savannah didn’t argue.

Aside from fishing and diving gear, I didn’t splurge on much. Well, except the occasional gun or boat.

We were back aboard Taranis by noon, and when we arrived, Dink and Hannah were both lying on the sun pad on the foredeck.

“Have a good shoppin’ trip?” Dink asked.

“Dad bought a cool old clock,” Alberto offered.

“And some clear tubing and stainless-steel fittings,” I added.

Alberto looked up at me, squinting his eyes. “What’s that for, anyway?”

“Just some replacement parts Dink noticed we were short on,” I replied. “Have you had a chance to read up on how those cooling fans are supposed to be installed?”

“We’re gonna do that now?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Why don’t you carry the box down to the mechanical room and get the tools we’ll need set up.”

He disappeared, and when Dink looked up at me, I nodded toward Hannah and cocked my head aft.

“Hey, babe,” he said to her. “It’s after the noon hour. How about you go grab us a coupla beers.”

After she disappeared, he sat up. “What’s goin’ on?”

I sat on the wing seat beside the sun pad. “Twice, while we were in town, someone paid too much attention to us. Well, not us. Savvy draws attention wherever she goes. But I caught a couple of men watching me a little too closely.”

“News flash, Jesse,” he said with a grin. “You draw attention too.”

“Not like this,” I said. “It was like they were studying me, or… I don’t know, measuring me up to see if they could take me.”

“You’re gettin’ paranoid in your old age.”

I gave him a serious look. “Being paranoid doesn’t always mean there isn’t someone out to get you. I’ve left a few enemies in my wake.”

“You really think someone’s plannin’—”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just, when you go into town, be wary, okay?”

“Shit, man. Now ya got my bonefish sense all tinglin’.”

“Whatever you call it,” I said, “listen to it.”

“Think someone here knows you?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never been here before.”

He gave me an almost sheepish look. “People from your past pop up very often lookin’ for payback?”

“Not very,” I replied, standing again. “And I don’t think these two were from my past, anyway. It’s probably nothing. I figured you ought to know, but there’s no reason for worrying Hannah.”

“Worrying me about what?” she asked, just as I heard footsteps behind me.

“Aw, crap, Jesse,” Dink said, jumping to his feet. “Now ya done ruined my surprise.”

She looked from him to me, waiting.

“I told him I was gonna pretend not to be able to do the hike,” Dink explained. “So me and you could go clubbin’ in Roseau tomorrow night, but he thought you’d worry if ya thought I was sick or hurt.”

“To be honest,” she said with a smile, offering a stubby Red Stripe to him, “I’m a lot more into dancing than hiking.”

He looked over at me and grinned. “Then it’s all settled and we ain’t gotta pretend nothin’. Y’all go hikin’, and we’ll make out all day and maybe hit a coupla night clubs after ya get back.”

Not the best story, considering the person I’d seen on the beach and the two I saw in town. But it got her off the scent. Besides, it was highly doubtful, given Dink’s cheerful attitude about life, that he could possibly be a target.

“So, what are we doing this afternoon?” Hannah asked, going around to the other side and stretching out. “I mean besides this.”

“I told Jesse I’d help him with a plumbing issue down in the engine room,” Dink replied. “And then give him and Alberto a hand putting that new blower in.” He leaned over and kissed her. “You just soak up as much of this warm sunshine as you can stand, baby doll. It feels good against my skin.”

She giggled and said, “Oh go on and do your guy stuff.”

He rose and followed me back along the side deck and into the wheelhouse.

“What was that all about?” I asked him, as he followed me down the steps.

I could see Alberto through the open mechanical room door and stopped on the steps.

“There’s somethin’ else,” he said. “Some guy’s been watchin’ the boat for the last half hour. I didn’t think nothin’ of it, till you told me what happened in town. Folks are always lookin’ at your boat.”

“I saw him as we boarded,” I replied, looking in at Alberto, arranging tools.

He looked up and saw me. “All set, Dad. It looks like a pretty easy job, I think.”

I stepped off the stairs and entered the mechanical room, with Dink following me.

Alberto glanced at him, then back at me. “Um, I don’t know if you saw it,” he said. “But when we were in town, some guys were looking at you like they were mad.”

A thousand thoughts ran through my head at once. These past several months, Alberto had really stepped up. Helping with anything and everything he could, even standing solo watches during night passages on several occasions. I’d left our stateroom hatch open during his watches, and just cracking one eye, I could see the back of his head as he stood at the helm, as well as looking out at the sea ahead. If he’d needed anything, I was less than two seconds away,

But he hadn’t needed any help. On several occasions, he’d had to change course and had even gone so far as to keep a written log of his watch, what he’d seen, and what he’d done. It was a better idea than just telling the next person verbally, who was likely half asleep. So we’d started requiring it from then on.

At twelve, a boy wasn’t a man, but it happened too many times that boys were suddenly caught up in very adult confrontations, whether that was with an older boy or a grown man, and all too often weren’t ready for the encounter.

The difference between a twelve-year-old and thirteen-year-old wasn’t much, chronologically—just from sixth to seventh grade in most cases.

But physically, the average twelve-year-old would be giving up three inches and fifteen pounds, so it was rarely an even match. And though he was growing, Alberto was still on the smallish side.

My dad and grandfather had made sure I was ready to step into a man’s role if need be. And not just physically. They’d prepared me emotionally and psychologically, as well. Knowing that there was always someone bigger and tougher was one thing. Measuring the size of the fight in the man was a whole lot different.

At twelve, I was already mastering several different forms of martial arts, and now Alberto was also learning to defend himself. I also had my own pistol and rifle at twelve, and knew how to handle them in a responsible way.

Not an air rifle or BB gun either; I’d had those since I was six or seven. But an honest-to-goodness Remington 700 hunting rifle, chambered for the .30-06 Springfield cartridge. Pap had given it to me for Christmas and my friend Billy Rainwater got the same thing that year from his dad, Leaping Panther.

But we hadn’t received those before we’d each proven ourselves responsible and ready.

So, I decided it was time.

I sat down on a stool next to the diesel engine and looked up at Dink, then Alberto. “Yes, Son. I saw those men. And there was someone watching the boat from shore just as we came back.”

“What should we do about it?” he asked, in as serious a tone as a twelve-year-old could muster.

He was ready. It was my decision to make.

Savannah and I had agreed long ago that she wouldn’t interfere when I thought Alberto was ready for more responsibilities. He’d grown a good bit over the previous summer and the hard work over the last several months had put some meat on his bones.

But more than anything, it was the emotional and psychological changes I’d witnessed. He understood ethics and morals and what the difference between the two were, and he could be relied on to make good decisions.

I handed the bag with the plumbing parts to Dink. “You had a great suggestion, so now you can get to work, my friend. You’ll find everything you need at the workbench. There’s a cordless drill motor in the top drawer, port side, aft the gen-set. Drills are in the drawer below it. And Dink… make them look real.”

Dink nodded his understanding and carried the bag of parts around the Cat to the workbench.

“Make what look real?” Alberto asked.

Alberto had earned the right to know everything, and I knew he was responsible enough with firearms. He’d had a pretty good instructor.

So, I reached over and pressed a small button on the underside of the inverter panel, and the latch for the ammo closet next to it clicked. I opened it, revealing its depth, and the more than two dozen boxes of handgun and rifle ammunition on shelves, plus four ammo boxes on the deck, each containing one hundred rounds of linked .50 caliber machine gun ammo.

He glanced inside, unsurprised. “I already knew about that.”

“You already—” He’d been alone in the mechanical room many times and was curious about everything. Of course he’d snooped. “And you never asked about it?”

From the back of the mechanical room I heard a chuckle from Dink.

Alberto shrugged. “I figured you’d tell me about it when you thought I was ready. Just like diving.”

“You’re ready,” I told him. “I’d planned to wait a few weeks, but tonight, you and I are going swimming for your early Christmas present.”

“Huh?”

“Let it be a surprise,” I said, as Dink began cutting the clear tube with a hacksaw. “In the meantime, in case of dire emergency, I want you to know something.”

“What?”

“In my and your mom’s nightstands are a pair of handguns,” I told him straight up. “My SIG and Mom’s Glock. You’ve fired them both before, and I know you know how to handle a weapon responsibly. My Kimber is hidden in a secret compartment on the flybridge. I’ll show you when we finish the cooling fan.”

“You think those guys in town mean trouble,” he stated, but I knew he meant it as a question.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “But knowledge and preparedness are like a cast-iron griddle.”

He grinned. “Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it?”

“Exactly,” I replied. “You know where they are if needed.” I took his shoulders in my hands. “But I promise you this. As long as I can draw a breath, you won’t need it.”

One corner of his mouth came up, making him look clever and wise beyond his years. “Let’s get the fan changed out.”

“How’s this look?” Dink asked, coming around the engine with a tube in one hand, a cordless drill motor in the other, and a pencil behind his right ear.

“What’s that for?” Alberto asked.

“Watch,” Dink replied, producing a tape measure.

He looked inside the cabinet, holding up the tube with elbow fittings on either end, estimating where to put it so the unconnected fittings on the inside wouldn’t hit the shelving. Then he held the tape measure across the door and made three marks equidistant from each other and the edges of the false door panel.

Then, using a carpenter’s square, he drew three vertical lines through the marks he’d already made.

Dink looked over at me, the drill motor in his hand. “You’re sure, man?” he asked. “Once I poke holes in this here door, there ain’t no goin’ back.”

I nodded. “Do it.”

With the cordless drill motor and a half-inch paddle bit, he quickly drilled three holes.

Alberto looked over his shoulder. “They look kinda like the sight gauges in the side of the fuel tanks.”

Electronic gauges were great, until they didn’t work. Each fuel tank had built in sight gauges to read the level of fuel in the tanks. Likewise, the main engine and generators had regular analog oil pressure and coolant temperature gauges, with electronic sending units sending data to digital gauges at the upper and lower helms.

“That they do,” I agreed. “Only shorter.”

“Call ’em fuel filter vacuum gauges,” Dink said, inserting one of the elbows in the hole, then using the one on the other end of the tube to make a mark.

“There aren’t any vacuum gauges on the fuel filters,” Alberto said.

“I just made that up,” Dink replied, then drilled a hole. “But if you put some brass caps on these fittings and pour a little olive oil and red dye in them tubes, they’ll look kinda like sight gauges. Water cops ain’t noted for being boat mechanics, especially a boat like this. You could call ’em warp drive dilithium crystal separators, and they ain’t gonna know any different.”

I chuckled, and used my best Irish brogue, though Mr. Scott was Scottish. “I’m givin’ ’er all she’s got, Captain!”

Dink laughed. “Figured you were a Trekkie.”

In minutes, he had all three “dilithium crystal separators” installed and the excess pencil marks erased. They looked seriously legit.

The cooling fan change-out was even easier. The new one was the exact dimensions of the old, with mounting holes, hardware, and electrical connections identical. The only difference was the motor size, with the new one pushing two hundred cubic feet per minute more air.

I closed the inverter access panel, brought the system back online, and heard the fan ramping up to high speed in test mode, then slowing again.

“It’s working!” Alberto exclaimed, checking the control panel readout. “More power!”

I chuckled. “But it’s gonna be less power when the new motors come.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, toning it down a bit. Then he leaned on the yellow tubular rail around the big Cat engine. “As long as we have the Thunder Button.”

I glanced through the open hatch. “There’s a bottle of olive oil in the lower pantry,” I said to Alberto. “Run and fetch it.”

He returned a moment later, and held out a large bottle and a tiny one. “I found this, too. Mom was gonna make a red velvet cake.”

The smaller bottle was red food coloring.

“Let’s give it a try,” I said.

Though we didn’t have brass caps for the fittings, there were a number of PVC caps in a parts drawer that did the trick, and in minutes, we had the tubes filled to within an inch of the top.

“Just one drop in each,” Dink said, as I uncapped the food coloring.

That was all it took. The oil in each tube darkened to a rusty red.

“It looks right to me,” I said.

Offroad diesel fuel doesn’t have a road tax applied to it, and is dyed red. Using it in a truck on the highway was illegal, but farm tractors, generators, and boats don’t drive down roads.

“Why olive oil and not water?” Alberto asked.

“Watch,” I replied, then reached over to the Caterpillar control panel, turned the ignition switch on, and pressed the starter button.

The engine cranked up, with the typical big Cat rattling diesel sound filling the engine room.

I closed the ammo closet hatch, pressing it firmly until it latched. The engine vibration caused the liquid in the tubes to dance and splash onto the insides of the tubes, coating it with an oily film.

I had to admit, it looked like diesel fuel being sucked through a vacuum tube.

Alberto grinned, looking at the dummy sight tubes. “Looks real to me,” he shouted over the diesel engine.

I shut off the engine, and the olive oil in the tubes settled once more.

“What’s wrong?” Savannah called out from above.

I went to the open hatch. “Just checking the warp drives,” I replied.

“Oh, okay. Let me know next time. It startled me.”

I glanced back at Alberto and Dink, who were both trying hard to suppress laughter.

“Come on, Alberto,” I said. “Let’s go up to the flybridge.”

“I’ll put the tools up,” Dink offered. “Then I’m gonna head back up to join Hannah.”

Alberto followed me up the steps and we went through the salon, finding Tank lying on the lounge seat. I could hear Savannah running the vacuum cleaner in our stateroom.

“Wanna go up top?” I asked Tank.

We continued past him, and he jumped down, falling in behind Alberto.

When we reached the flybridge, Tank headed straight to his usual spot on the forward lounge seat as I moved behind the aluminum counter and grill to the far end.

“Press these last two ignitors at the same time,” I explained, pressing them. To my right, the panel above the food warmer opened, and the tray slid out, revealing one of several hiding spots on the upper deck. “This is where we’ll keep my Kimber hidden.”

“Why are you showing me all of this now?” he asked.

I closed the panel, then leaned against the rail. “Well, Son, I think you’ve earned the right to have more grown-up responsibilities, and along with that comes more knowledge and insight.”

“What did you mean by going swimming tonight?” he asked.

I grinned down at him and crossed my arms. “That, you’re just going to have to wait for. It’ll be a while.”

Tank chuffed.

Jeffery stopped by in his rowboat, just to check if we were still on for the morning hike to Boiling Lake, and to see when I’d want to make a run to the store.

“Looking forward to it,” I replied. “And if you’re available Thursday morning, we can make that supply run.”

Then I casually asked about the Swan, Knot Guilty.

“Cap’n Zayas been comin’ here for a long time,” he replied. “Sometimes two or t’ree times a year. Two of his crew been wit’ him for many years. De other two are new, maybe a year wit’ him.”

“Four crew?” I asked. “There were only three crewmen and him at the bar.”

He shrugged. “Dey always leave someone on de boat.”

Not typical for cruisers, but who was I to judge another person’s security risk meter?

“Any of them ever start any trouble?” I asked, once more trying to seem casual.

He smiled broadly. “You mean dat crack ’bout your boat? Don’t take dat personal, Cap’n. Dese young boaters are always goin’ on ’bout whose boat is faster.”

“Passive aggressive, huh?” I pressed. “Never anything more?”

He cocked his head slightly. “Like what?”

I shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”

“Okay, den,” he said with a smile. “I’ll see ya in de mornin’, just after sunrise.”

I thanked him again and he started rowing away, headed toward Orion, Albert Hollister’s very British Majesty 72 motor yacht.

“What did Jeffery want?” Savannah asked, coming out of the salon.

“Just confirming our schedule tomorrow,” I replied. “He’ll pick us up at sunrise.”

“Did you learn anything from him about Zayas?”

Like any two partners who worked together a lot, she knew my ways.

“He’s been coming here two or three times a year for several years,” I replied. “Consistent crew and they rarely cause trouble. One of them always stays on board when they leave the boat.”

“How long would it take a boat like that to sail to Miami?” she asked.

I grinned.

Our old Formosa ketch, Salty Dog, was about the same length, and though much heavier, full displacement monohulls are more limited on how fast they can go by their length, rather than by how heavy the boat is, and boats with longer waterlines were capable of higher hull speeds. So, in the same wind, with the right sails, a sixty-foot sailboat, weighing twenty tons or more, could go faster than a thirty-footer that weighed just three or four tons. It took a huge amount of power for any boat to climb over its own bow wave and ride on top of the water. Far more than could be produced by sail power.

“You know as well as I do,” I replied. “At least two weeks getting here, sailing upwind, and ten days in a downwind run going back. Actual sailing time, that is.”

“And how much time would the boat need after a 3,000-mile round-trip passage before they could do it again?”

“Probably a lot,” I replied, understanding where she was headed, and aware of the myriad things that could and did break and need to be temporarily rigged to continue. “For the boat, as well as the crew. And they’d likely take their time getting here.”

“For appearance’s sake,” she agreed, nodding. “Just a bunch of guys out cruising. Did Jeffery happen to mention if they ever had women with them?”

“He didn’t,” I replied, wondering the same thing and kicking myself for not asking him. “Not real weird, but yeah, kinda.”

“What were you and Alberto doing upstairs?”

“I told him where the handguns are hidden,” I replied. “It’s time he knew.”

“It took you long enough,” she said, surprising me. “He might still be a boy, but he’s a lot more mature than a lot of men three or four times his age.”

“And I’m giving him his Christmas gift tonight.”

“What on earth for?” she asked. “He can’t shoot it around here.”

I shrugged. “I figured when we head up the coast to do some diving, we might run offshore a few miles so he can try it out.”

Her eyes widened. “You just want to show him all that’s down there!”

“I think it’s time to go all in,” I said with a nod. “He already knew about the ammo closet in the engine room. And everything in it is clearly marked, so he knows about the Ma Deuce.”

The Browning .50 caliber, belt-fed, heavy machine gun was affectionately known by troops in the field as a “Ma Deuce” for its nomenclature—M2, and when the rounds went downrange, hit or miss, it was one helluva deterrent and demoralizer to enemy troops. The large rounds could punch holes through an eight-inch concrete wall, and still have enough velocity to kill the enemy standing behind it.

“It’s your decision,” she said. “I don’t know how you think you can get that thing out of there if it were ever needed, anyway.”

“Paddle board,” I replied. “Keeping it there is just for security, then it’d come out at the first whiff of sketchiness. It’d only take about two or three minutes working alone.”

“You’ve done it before?”

“Not in the water,” I admitted. “But I did a simulation on the hard at the boatyard, using a wheeled cart for the paddle board.”

“When it’s time,” she said, “I’ll help you. Are we doing anything this afternoon?”

“Resting up for tomorrow,” I replied. “Did you have something in mind?”

“I was going to suggest the same thing,” she replied, then looked forward. “I’d like to get some of this afternoon sun.”

I grinned. “Then go get your bikini on. That pad’s big enough for at least six people.”

“You don’t think they’d mind?”

“It’s our boat,” I reminded her, then switched to a piratical voice. “If the scallywags complain, I’ll keelhaul ’em.”

Later that night, when I was certain Dink and Hannah were asleep, I clicked the intercom for Alberto’s cabin and told him to meet us in the cockpit.

Though we’d escaped most of the madness, the world was still a dangerous place and evil lurked everywhere, even paradise. If anything were to happen to me and Savannah, Alberto needed to be able to defend himself. And not in an equal fight.

I was taught by my father, grandfather, martial arts instructors, and the Corps to always fight from a position or situation that gave me the upper hand, and not hold back anything—overwhelming force until it was over.

Bringing a knife to a fistfight, or a gun to a knife fight, just wasn’t enough. The key was to overpower the enemy and destroy the ability and desire to fight. No enemy is so strong that it can’t be brought to its knees through liberal and judicious use of heavy artillery and high-level bombing.

If someone has set their mind to hurt you, it’s up to you to defend yourself, and the best way to do that is give them double what they dish out. Calling 911 will bring help—in several minutes. When the cops arrive, it’s usually to determine how the victim was killed and to look for clues as to who killed them. If the attacker becomes the victim, it makes the cops’ work easier.

When he came up the steps from the port ama, Alberto was wearing his swimsuit and had a towel around his neck. “Will I need my mask?” he whispered.

“No,” I replied, then held a hand up to Tank as he started to rise from the lounge seat. “Stay, Tank. Watch the boat.”

We’d all gone to sleep right after dinner, and Alberto and I had set our alarms for midnight. Once our little chore was finished, we’d go back to bed for a few more hours. It was going to be a long and challenging day tomorrow and I wanted everyone to get as much rest as possible.

“Where are we swimming to?” Alberto asked, following me down the steps.

“Just under the platform,” I said. “Mom will help from up here.”

“Both of you be careful,” Savannah whispered.

I pulled the telescoping swim ladder out and let it drop with a splash before I simply stepped off, turning as I did so, and plunged into the dark water, one hand on the top rung.

I surfaced next to the edge of the platform and waited for Alberto, who then jumped in and swam to the ladder, grabbing it also.

“Watch your head,” I said, pulling myself under the platform and pressing the release button for the war room.

He joined me, and as the doors opened and the LED lights inside came on, his eyes grew wider.

“Grab hold here,” I said, reaching up and taking hold of one of the hand grips in the center divider running fore and aft down the middle.

“I didn’t know this was here,” he said, grabbing hold and looking all around. “I didn’t see any of this on the plans.”

“Billy built it for me,” I said. “Then had it shipped to Stuart for final paint and installation. You, Mom, Billy, and I are the only ones who know what’s in here.” I pointed at the waterproof button. “You press that to open and close the hatch, and when it closes, an air pump creates a vacuum inside, sealing it watertight.”

“What’s that big boxy thing?” he said, pointing.

“That’s the receiver assembly for an M2 heavy machine gun, Son.”

“A machine gun?”

“The mount and barrel are next to it,” I replied. “The main shaft of the mount inserts into the deck receiver where the dinette table is.”

He turned and looked at the other side. “How many guns are in here?”

“Besides the three handguns and my SIG rifle, which your mom and I stashed last night, there’s another three handguns and two more rifles in here, plus the M2.”

Having heavy firepower aboard could be the difference between being a victim of piracy and being able to escape.

The electric minigun was smaller, the ammo was lighter, and it was definitely more fear-inducing, but its rate of fire was so high—2,000 rounds per minute at its slowest speed—that carrying enough ammo for it would be impossible.

By contrast, though the big fifty-cal rounds were heavier, the M2’s slower rate of fire at just 450 rounds per minute meant it could stay in action longer than the terrifying minigun, with a fixed weight limit on ammo.

Besides, the scare factor of the minigun over the Ma Deuce lasted only until the larger projectiles found their mark. Where the minigun punched holes in fiberglass, the much larger .50 caliber BMG rounds obliterated what they hit with utter disregard, be it a reinforced outboard transom, an inboard engine block, armor plates, or people.

All the hardware hanging above us in individual mounts and clamps was tactical, and either gray or black, except the wood stock of the Remington, which his eyes soon locked on.

“Is that your⁠—”

“Not anymore,” I replied, reaching up and releasing the latch.

I lowered the antique rifle and moved it toward the end of the platform, where Savannah waited.

“It’s yours now,” I told him, as Savannah grabbed the barrel and lifted the rifle.

“You and Billy had a matched set,” he said, bobbing next to me in the water. “I remember shooting it when we visited him last summer.”

“Billy and I got them for Christmas when we were twelve,” I said, hanging by one hand. “I had him ship it to me just before we left on the trip. It’s yours now.”

The three of us were up before dawn, had breakfast, and were waiting out in the cockpit when Jeffery arrived. Once more, he had Anabel George with him. I got Tank back inside and told him to watch the boat before I closed and locked the slider. Dink and Hannah were both still asleep.

“Are you coming with us to Boiling Lake?” Alberto asked Anabel, taking a line from her.

“Oh, no,” she replied. “It is too much time away from work for me.”

She wasn’t dressed as she had been before. She wore very short exercise shorts and a Spandex top that left her flat belly exposed. From what I could see, it didn’t seem like there was much that would be beyond her physical ability.

“I am going to de gym,” she offered, patting a bag at her feet as we climbed aboard. “I’ll do my ten kilometers on de treadmill.”

“There’s a gym?” Savannah asked.

“Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “Quite a few, in fact. I go to Fitness University in Roseau. I can see you take care of your body; would you like to go as my guest while you are here?”

“We’d love to,” Savannah replied. “Can you take three?”

“Of course,” she replied. “We love having visitors.”

“What all is available there?” I asked. “I haven’t been in a gym in years.”

Jeffery laughed heartily as he began to row. “From de look of you, Cap’n, I would t’ink you have a private gym on de boat.”

“Make a note for the next build, Alberto,” I said. “Half a ton of gym equipment.”

“Or we could convert the dinghy garage,” he countered. “And put a cradle and a crane on the flybridge.”

“That might work for you and for now,” I replied. “But in a couple more years, you won’t be able to stand up in there.”

Anabel turned toward me. “Our gym is not very large, but we have quite a few weight machines, free weights, mobility equipment, cardio and yoga classes… even a sauna.”

“Now that, we do have on board,” Savannah said. “The shower in our bedroom doubles as a sauna.”

Jeffery, who was facing me as he rowed from the stern, caught my eye. “I t’ink dat is not de only t’ing on your boat dat is not what it seems.”

The short row to the pier was made shorter by Jeffery’s powerful arms and shoulders. But his cryptic statement hung in the air for several minutes.

“Here we are,” he finally said, deftly turning the boat and pulling hard on the starboard oar to reverse it and bring the stern over to the pier.

Alberto scrambled over the gunwale and quickly tied off the painter, and then the rest of us climbed out and walked toward the foot of the pier, where I spotted Jeffery’s Scout.

“It’s a mini beast!” Savannah said, as we walked toward it.

Anabel opened the trunk of a much newer Toyota parked next to the old Scout and tossed her gym bag in before turning to Savannah.

“You just let me know what day you’d like to go,” she said, “and I will make arrangements at my gym.”

The Scout was completely open, with no doors, no windows, and only a bimini top, stretched from the windshield over a roll bar behind the front seat, and secured to a second one in the back. It was the only protection from the elements, though at this latitude, little was needed.

It was painted a mustard-yellow color, with the black Newtown Association of Yacht Security and Services logo on the side, just below the Scout badge.

Five minutes later, with Alberto riding up front with Jeffery and Savannah and me in back, we started out through Newtown.

“It is just a little over seven miles to de trailhead,” Jeffery said, guiding the open truck through narrow streets. “But it will take us nearly half an hour to get dere.”

I noticed that Jeffery used miles and feet instead of kilometers and meters, like probably ninety-five percent of the rest of the world did, and I asked him about it.

“De Commonwealt’ of Dominica adopted de metric system long ago,” he replied. “But de standard measure is still used by many Dominicans, especially dose of us who interact wit’ Americans.”

“That makes sense,” Alberto said. “A lot of Americans can’t convert in their heads.”

He turned toward Alberto. “You have learned de metric system in school in America?”

Alberto grinned. “Well, I’m ‘boat schooled,’ but yeah. Mom and Dad know distances in meters and kilometers pretty good.”

“Well, I just pretend you’re saying yards instead of meters,” Savannah added with a laugh. “I’m not the best judge of distance anyway. But I do like saying I only weigh a little over sixty kilos.”

Savannah often made fun of her inability to judge distances accurately. But you didn’t need to know how close something was to know when it was danger-close. Her eyes were sharp and missed very little, and her aversion to risk was greater than my own, so that distance for her was much farther away than for me. Whether it was ten kilometers away or ten miles didn’t matter.

“For dis first part,” Jeffery explained as we crossed a low bridge, “de road stays close to Roseau River.”

Looking downstream, I could see how the river had been straightened through town, with low bridges crossing it, and rock dams creating pools of calm water before the water spilled over to the next level.

Turning my head, I saw more small waterfalls. The river probably dropped fifty feet or more as it flowed calmly through town.

We headed north through the outskirts of Roseau and caught occasional glimpses of the river to our right, often spilling over more falls. Then the road began winding through patches of dense jungle and sparsely populated areas with small clusters of homes and businesses.

The road was narrow, with no shoulder in most places, and the homes and businesses were brightly painted, set in a rich green backdrop.

Finally, we reached a fork in the road and Jeffery turned left.

“Now we start to climb,” he said, as he downshifted and we left civilization behind.

The homes and other structures became fewer as the nimble Scout climbed higher, tropical foliage turning day to dusk. It would be an impossibly steep grade back in the States, at least on any major highway, but here, steep seemed to be a common characteristic.

At one point, we slowed for a very sharp series of switchbacks, and I could see the coastline to the north.

Columbus hadn’t exaggerated when he’d tossed that crumpled sheet of paper on the table.

Just as Jeffery had predicted, it started to rain. It was a warm rain, and the day was warm. When I looked over at Savannah, she was smiling.

We’d long since grown accustomed to occasional rain while under way, and in these little latitudes, there was no reason to seek shelter. It was neither cold nor uncomfortable. Just wet.

I looked up, and through occasional gaps in the jungle canopy, I could see blue sky.

“It isn’t actually raining,” Jeffery said over his shoulder, before I could ask. “Dere is so much moisture in de air at dis elevation, it condenses on de leaves above us.”

The road made a couple more switchbacks, meandering along the side of a mountain, steadily climbing. We passed through patches of warm, dense fog, and sometimes the jungle crowded in on us, giant leaves dripping with water.

Jeffery pulled over onto a widened part of the shoulder and shut off the engine. The exhaust made a tinking sound as the metal instantly started to cool.

“Are we there?” Alberto asked.

“Come,” Jeffery replied. “You look t’irsty.”

We climbed out of the Scout and followed him to the edge of the turnoff area, then onto a short path. Several giant leaves had been carefully positioned and tied loosely in place to surrounding branches, each one dripping condensation onto another from twenty feet up, creating a constant flow from the end of one colossal leaf at the bottom, which grew at waist level.

Jeffery stood to the side and gently lifted the leaf to his lips, drinking deeply.

“Ahh,” he sighed, straightening. “Dat is de purest water on de planet.”

Alberto stepped up and took a drink. “Hey! That is good.”

Water was dripping all around us, but it was still a clever trick, and the flow from the last leaf was impressive, probably equal to a household faucet.

But I could hear running water just a few yards deeper into the jungle—a creek or stream.

“Dis is an alocasia plant,” Jeffery explained. “It is called de African mask plant here because de shape of de leaves looks like a mask. De leaves can get four feet long, and two wide.”

We got back in the Scout and continued up the mountain, with Jeffery pointing out geological formations to Alberto and discussing local lore.

When we came to a turnoff with a sign pointing to the right, showing the way to Trafalgar Falls, Jeffery pulled over again.

“You really should see de falls while you are here,” he said, turning in his seat to face us. “It is two waterfalls combined, about 125 feet tall, and de Emerald Pool is nearby, where hot springs and cold mix.”

“I assume it’s green?” Savannah asked.

“De water?” he asked. “No, it is crystal clear. But algae and moss grow on de rocks all ’round de pool. You can climb up de side of a shorter waterfall dere, about fifteen feet up, and you will find a small bubbling pool of hot water, but not too hot for t’ree or four people to sit in. Some say it is like a hot tub, about 110 degrees. When you get too hot, you just dive into Emerald Pool. It is very deep at de base of de waterfall and de water in dat pool is seventy-four degrees.”

We got back on the road and soon turned off at a sign showing the way to Titou Gorge in Morne Trois Pitons National Park.

“We can cool off in de gorge after de hike,” Jeffery said, as he parked the Scout next to a couple of other vehicles that seemed to have a similar purpose.

“From here, we will go on foot,” he said, climbing out. “It is very important to stay hydrated during the hike, but do not worry, dere are a number of places where we can get more clean, fresh water.”

Each of us had a backpack, and each one held two large water bottles, along with lunch. Mine also contained a first-aid kit, a large survival knife, a hundred feet of eight-millimeter line, a hundred feet of paracord, two dozen protein and energy bars, and two dozen MRE packages, or “Meals-Ready to Eat,” along with my Kimber, which was stashed in a concealed bottom with two extra loaded magazines.

Go prepared or don’t go at all.

The first part of the hike was easy— the trail was fairly flat and well-maintained, and we made good time. Then came the climb to the summit of Nichols’s Peak, an elevation of 3,168 feet above sea level.

Negotiating the steps was a challenge, as no two seemed to be the same height or length, but it was better than scrambling up the rocks and boulders.

When we reached the summit, we could see the Caribbean and the city of Roseau far below. The climb to the peak was arduous, but not overly taxing—The drive up had been most of the climb, with the trailhead a good two thousand feet high.

But I was already feeling it in my hips and knees. Savannah didn’t seem too exhausted, but then, she was nearly ten years younger than me and ninety pounds lighter.

Alberto had the advantage of youth and boundless energy and kept a continuous dialogue going with Jeffery about literally everything we encountered, from parrots to gurgling steam vents. And I knew that he’d retain every scrap of information he learned.

“Dere are twenty-one active volcanoes in de Lesser Antilles,” Jeffery replied, when Alberto asked about the vents. “From Puerto Rico to Grenada. And of dose twenty-one, five of dem are here on Dominica. We are de youngest island in de Caribbean.”

“When was the last eruption?” Alberto asked, scampering up a root- tangled wall about four feet high.

Jeffery stopped and pointed toward the south, slightly to the right of the direction we’d been moving. “Dat was twenty-seven years ago,” he replied. “Morne Watt erupted in 1997 and before dat in 1880. Dat explosion was in de Valley of Desolation, which we will be crossing soon.”

“Was it bad?” Alberto asked.

“Dere was a little flow of lava from de most recent one,” Jeffery replied. “And de 1880 event was more of a gas explosion. But a long time ago, not so long, geologically, but about 700 AD, Morne Watt was de site of a major eruption. It created a pyroclastic flow. Do you know what dat is?”

Alberto shook his head.

“It is a fast-moving cloud of super-heated gas and debris,” he explained. “De temperature can reach 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, and it moves along de ground at more dan sixty miles per hour.”

Alberto stopped and looked up at him, eyes wide. “There’s no way to get away from that.”

“No,” Jefferey replied, slowly shaking his head. “Dey say dat all life on Dominica ended on dat day.”

After summiting Nichols’s Peak, the going got a little easier as we started our descent into the Valley of Desolation, a very appropriate name.

Aside from moss and some sort of lichen, there was little life in the lower part of the valley. But there was an abundance of color, as steam and boiling water bubbled out of cracks literally all around us, creating small pools of water surrounded by rocks stained in varied hues.

In several places, thick mud bubbled up from fissures in the rock, the water seeping downhill.

It was desolate, but far from boring.

Jeffery led us through the valley, following a well-worn rocky trail that was unmarked, and probably changed from time to time as nature changed the landscape.

Three long hours after leaving the parking lot, we crossed a low sand dune, and there it was below us in the distance—Boiling Lake.

Between where we stood at the top of the dune and the edge of the lake were hundreds more colorful springs, with water and steam welling up. The coloration, I assumed, was from the different minerals the boiling water carried up from the depths of the earth.

The middle of the lake itself was a roiling cauldron of super-heated water and the air above it shimmered with waves of distortion from the hot gases bubbling to the surface and rising into the air.

“It smells like the depths of Hades,” Savannah said. “Is it noxious?”

“It can be,” Jeffery replied, “wit’ long exposure and high concentration, but we will not be here long enough. What you smell is sulfur-dioxide in de air. Before an eruption, levels can be deadly well before de pyroclastic flow or de lava gets you.”

“It’s like living next to a powder keg,” Savannah said. “How do you handle the stress?”

He shrugged. “As a person of faith, I am ready any time my God calls me. But Morne Watt is a very small volcano compared to others.”

“You mean like in the Pacific Islands?” Savannah asked. “Or Mount St. Helens?”

“No, ma’am,” he replied. “Dose are big, yes. But nothing to de supervolcanoes.”

“Supervolcanoes?” she asked, staring out over the lake, which was literally kept at a near boiling temperature by the volcanic activity beneath the surface.

Jeffery nodded. “Your own Yellowstone National Park would be one of de worst if it erupted.”

She turned and gave him a surprised look. “In Wyoming?”

“De Yellowstone Caldera is de youngest and largest of only six supervolcanoes in de world,” he replied.

“I didn’t know that,” she said. “How big is it?”

“De caldera measures about forty-five miles long by t’irty miles at its widest,” Jeffery replied. “And it has not erupted in hundreds of t’ousands of years.”

“What if it did?” Alberto asked.

“When it does,” he began, quite seriously, “all life within two hundred miles will die instantly, and de Rocky Mountains and de Great Plains will be covered in several feet of heavy ash hot enough to ignite whatever it touches. In de middle part of your country, death will be slower but inevitable. De ash will reach as far as Los Angeles and New York and from Canada to Mexico, up to several inches. Electricity, water, food… it will all be destroyed, poisoned, or contaminated all across most of Nort’ America, and an ash cloud would block out de sun worldwide, for years, maybe decades. Ninety percent of de world’s population will perish from starvation within a few months and de global temperature will drop ten degrees. A decade later, less dan one percent of life on Earth will remain.”

He turned to Alberto, and, at the boy’s stricken expression, quickly changed the subject. “But enough of dat.” He smiled broadly. “Did you bring your eggs?”

Alberto shrugged out of his backpack and opened it, pulling out a small box. Inside, he’d carefully packed four eggs, each wrapped in a hand towel from Taranis’s galley.

Jeffery removed his pack and rummaged through it for a moment before producing a small net.

“Place dem in here,” he said, then looked around. “We need a red pool.”

“A red pool?” Alberto asked, as I glanced around.

Most of the small pools of bubbling water were yellow, with some that had tinged the surrounding rock blue or green. The whole landscape was a painter’s palette of color with no living thing in sight.

“De red ones will contain iron oxide,” Jeffery replied. “A little extra iron in de diet would be better dan de sulfur.”

Alberto stepped up onto a rock and looked around. “Over there,” he finally said, pointing.

“Follow me very carefully, young mon,” Jeffery said, giving me a wink, and moving in that direction. “Put your feet where I put mine.”

Savannah grasped my arm but said nothing as Alberto followed the guide to the rust-producing fumerole. I doubted it made any difference, since the edible part of an egg is inside the shell, but it did make for a better adventure for Alberto.

We watched as they made their way gingerly from rock to rock, then squatted down on either side of a small, red pool.

The rocks around the pool, except for the two they were on, were covered with rust. Those two were more orangish, as if well-worn.

Jeffery used those rocks often, I assumed.

He handed the full net to Alberto, who then dipped it into the pool as Jeffery looked at his watch. The two of them talked but were too far away for me and Savannah to hear. At one point, Jeffery had to lift the net slightly, as Alberto got distracted and his hand moved too close to the hot water.

Occasionally, Jeffery would point to something, and they’d talk about it. Finally, after a good eight minutes, Alberto lifted the net from the water and handed it back to Jeffery.

Then they started back, with Alberto carefully putting one foot then the other on the rocks Jeffery had just vacated.

“That was fire!” he exclaimed as they got close.

Both of them had beads of perspiration rolling down their faces, no doubt from squatting so close to the fumerole.

Savannah laughed. “Yes, I’d say that in this case, that expression is appropriate. Were you afraid?”

“A little,” he admitted. “After all, we’re in a volcano’s crater.”

“Here you go,” Jeffery said, pulling a towel from his pack and laying it across a flat stone before kneeling and carefully dumping the four eggs out of the net.

He looked up at Alberto. “Dey should be just a little shy of hard-boiled, just like you said you wanted.”

Alberto picked the eggs up, one at a time, handing one to each of us.

I gave mine a couple of taps with my middle knuckle, then rolled it on my leg. The shell came off very easily.

“Mmm,” Alberto hummed as he chewed.

I didn’t taste anything except egg with the first bite, as I suspected, and the yolk was soft but not runny. I popped the other half in my mouth as Savannah took a tentative nibble of hers.

She nodded exuberantly. “Delicious, Alberto. You certainly have a way with eggs.”

He smiled, flecks of yellow on his teeth.

The return hike wasn’t as difficult, since it was mostly downhill. But by the time we got back to where the Scout was parked, we were once more soaked with sweat and had streaks of mud all over our skin and clothes.

We’d stopped at a mud pool on the way out of the Valley of Desolation, where Jeffery applied warm mud to our faces and skin. Most of it had crusted and fallen off, or been washed away by sweat, but Savannah still had a thick streak across her forehead.

“A dip in de cool water of de gorge?” Jeffery suggested.

“I’m all for that,” she said. “Lead the way.”

We followed Jeffery along a path that wound its way through a lush jungle of exotic tropical plants and colorful flowers as the sound of moving water grew louder.

Emerging from the jungle, we came to a large pool below us that we would have to climb down rocks and boulders to reach. One side had a stone or concrete retaining wall, covered in green moss. The water was moving slowly, and the roar of a waterfall could be heard.

“De water will feel cold at first,” Jeffery advised as we started down the cliff. “It is about seventy degrees but will feel comfortable after a minute or two. Dose little trickles along de side are warm water from Boiling Lake if you feel too cold.”

We followed him out onto giant boulders, stepping from rock to rock, then down several more natural steps to the water’s edge.

Savannah squealed as she stepped off into the hip-deep stream, and Alberto laughed. Surprisingly, the water wasn’t moving very fast.

I went for instant submersion, falling forward and exhaling to sink to the bottom. After being overheated for the last seven or eight hours, it was like an Arctic plunge.

I came up laughing and Savannah wrapped her arms around me, also laughing uncontrollably.

“Let me get the mud off you,” I said, lowering myself again and pulling her down with me.

“Wooo!” she yelled, then started laughing harder. “This is frigid!”

I gently washed the mud from her forehead with the cold water, working my fingertips down her cheeks and making sure to get it all off. Her skin felt unusually soft.

“Feel this,” I said, taking her hand and putting it to her cheek.

She did the same to me, washing the mud with the cool, clear water, then gently caressing my forehead and temples.

“They should bottle that mud,” she said. “It’s amazing.”

Looking all around, my eyes drifted toward the spot where the stream disappeared between massive rock walls that were producing the roaring sound we were hearing.

The rock was smoothly polished and rounded below the water’s surface and up to about ten feet above it. Then it became more jagged up to the cliffs forty feet over the gorge.

Obviously, this whole area was underwater when it flooded.

“Can we get to the waterfall upstream?” I asked Jeffery, feeling like a kid on some great adventure.

He wiped the water from his face and smiled. “Dere used to be pirates up dere.”

“Pirates?” Alberto asked excitedly.

Jeffery smiled. “In de movie Pirates of de Caribbean,” he replied. “De Dead Man’s Chest one. Part of it was filmed right here in Titou Gorge.”

“Let’s go see it,” Savannah said with a grin. “Is it a difficult swim?”

“For you t’ree, I don’t t’ink so.”

Jeffery led the way again, swimming upstream between walls that quickly closed in around us, narrowing above our heads to a mere crack in the earth at the top. Long tree roots grew down the sides in places, searching for water.

It wasn’t a long swim, perhaps fifty yards, but against the flowing current, it felt like double that.

We finally reached a wider and deeper area, where the water was moving more slowly. The waterfall, pouring over a ledge maybe forty feet above our heads, was deafening in the confined space, though it wasn’t very large,

Savannah and I scrambled onto a narrow ledge on the left side, looking up at dappled sunlight on one wall above us.

“Hey, Dad!” Alberto yelled.

I turned to see him struggling to stand in the faster current flowing over a large boulder ten feet above the pool. Jeffery was with him, also fighting to stay on his feet. He said something to Alberto, drowned out by the rush of water, then they both sat down and were immediately swept over the boulder, falling not quite feet first into the deep pool below.

Alberto surfaced and swam to the shallows, where he stood up, rubbing his hip.

“I hit my butt on the bottom!” he yelled, laughing.

“Dis whole gorge is de result of cooling lava,” Jeffery explained. “Look at de walls.”

All around us, the walls were black, as dark as obsidian, and at this level, smoothly polished by time and the elements. I imagined that over eons of heavy rains, the gorge often flooded, scouring the lava walls and rounding off the jagged edges that were there when it formed.

“Dis lava flow was created during de big eruption in 700 AD,” he went on, his voice booming off the rock walls. “De flow was massive and added many feet to de mountain. But here, it filled a valley dat was a hundred feet in depth. As de lava cooled, it cracked open and dis gorge is de result. Since dat time, de water has smoothed the rocks to what we see today.”

Savannah and I held hands as we back-floated feet first downstream, with Jeffery and Alberto ahead of us. The water level was only about four feet in some places, and our shoes skipped across the bottom.

“I think this is a magical place,” Savannah said, as we floated through one of several “rooms” that made up Titou Gorge. “Not just this spot, but the whole island.”

“Alberto and I were discussing the same thing just the other day,” I agreed. “Some places are just different.”

When we reached the pool where we’d entered the gorge, we climbed out and found a sunny spot on a large boulder to let the radiant heat of the stone and the sun dry our clothes and skin as we lay flat on our backs. Above was a beautiful blue sky, framed by tall coconut palms, with a few puffy white clouds drifting by.

“If we should ever go back to a land-based lifestyle,” Savannah said, then let out a slow sigh, “then let’s have more than one house.”

“If we did,” I replied, “and including our island in the Contents, Dominica would easily be in the top five places for a vacation home.”

She turned her head toward me. “St. Barts would be another. You were so relaxed there. Where else?”

I closed my eyes. “A little stilt hut over a shallow lagoon on some tiny Polynesian island would be an easy fourth, and maybe one of those barrier islands off Belize.”

I opened my eyes and turned to see her still smiling at me.

“But we haven’t been to the Greek Islands yet,” she said.

“Then let’s wait until we’ve seen it all,” I replied with a chuckle. “Then we can decide with informed minds.”

Zayas and the crew of Knot Guilty waited until the middle of the afternoon before making their return to the fishing boat, Sirena. They’d watched it the whole time and the two men they’d encountered earlier hadn’t left. It was almost as if they were either resigned to their fate or they just weren’t afraid.

Not fearing the wrath of the cartel was troublesome for Zayas and made him wonder what they were up to. He knew firsthand how ruthless the cartel could be if you failed them. Surely, they knew they couldn’t just not deliver and get away with it.

It was almost as if they were waiting for something.

While they remained in the mooring, Zayas learned all he could about the two men—who they were, where they were from, how they were connected to the cartel and each other, and especially any past history of violence.

The boat’s owner, Benito Juarez, was the younger of the two, a local fisherman of Venezuelan descent, who appeared on paper to be just what he was pretending—a law-abiding fisherman. He was married, had two children, and had no connection to the cartel that Cameron could find.

The older one was Juarez’s brother-in-law, a low-level cartel smuggler, or mule. His name was Juaquin Esteban and he’d been a cartel associate, or hawk, for several years before that.

Ultimately, it was Esteban who was responsible for the bulk consignment and distribution to other, more experienced and reliable smugglers, like Cameron and his crew.

In this case, they’d been consigned a huge bulk, since shipments had been slowed due to the discovery of the Dominican safe houses. And it was now gone—whether seized by the police, as both men had adamantly insisted, or stolen by them and moved somewhere else.

Either way, Juarez and Esteban’s fates were sealed. At their low level, you couldn’t afford even one mistake.

Cameron had his men search the boat, tearing out wall panels, gauges, seats, anywhere that could be a hiding place, while he held the boat’s owner and the mule at gunpoint, tied to a pair of wooden chairs in the salon.

The sound of things being broken and ripped apart could be heard down below for nearly thirty minutes. Juarez looked desperate, seeing and hearing his boat being torn apart.

The two men had been contrite and had offered an explanation. They said they’d been waiting for word from their cartel contact about what to do after the shipment had turned up missing.

Their pleas fell on deaf ears.

They said they’d recently learned about an American who’d helped the authorities on Dominica locate the packages on the bottom of the seafloor and bring them into Roseau.

That interested Cameron, but he didn’t let it show. He felt no pity for the two men, nor would he feel any remorse when he and his men left the boat.

He’d long since given up caring about anything or anyone, except one man. And now he was angry. This shipment would have put him over the top. He’d already spoken to a man from Germany who was interested in the contract and they were close to negotiating a deal.

The cartel had beaten any empathy Cameron might have had out of him. And they’d never even touched him.

The two men were caught in a similar situation, having lost something belonging to the cartel. Cameron had suffered greatly for it.

When they’d learned all they were going to from the two men, and it was obvious the packages weren’t on the boat, Cameron had simply given a nod to Jorge.

Their orders were clear.

The psycho had then stepped up behind the first man, grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. With great glee, he’d sliced the man’s throat from ear to ear, relishing in the massive bloodletting, then pulling his tongue out of the gaping wound to dangle like a necktie when his body finally stopped twitching.

The mule had convulsed, retching at the sight of all the blood and his brother-in-law’s wagging tongue, until Jorge started toward him, the large knife dripping blood on the deck.

He’d died the same way, begging for his life before the blade crossed his neck.

The only things they’d found of any value, besides the boat itself, were a stash of American currency totaling a little over $4,000, and a gold pendant that the boat’s owner had worn around his neck.

Once they were sure nobody was around to see them leave, they set a small fire in the engine room, and quietly left the boat, which would soon become a funeral pyre.

When they reached Knot Guilty, Cameron could already see a flickering light inside the fishing boat as they quickly raised the anchor and got the engine warmed up.

The fire was catching too quickly.

But there still wasn’t anyone around to see them as the flames began to erupt from the windows of Sirena and black smoke rolled up into the sky. They set the sails, heading west to deeper water, and Cameron turned his back to the inferno, standing at Knot Guilty’s helm with his second-in-command.

“Back down to Dominica?” Jorge asked.

Cameron nodded. “Yes… but this time we’re on the clock.”

“And what about our shipment?”

“You worry too much,” Cameron said. “The cartel has always taken care of us in such matters. Trust me. We’ll be well compensated for this job. So it may take another week to get our shipment. We’ll spend it having fun in Roseau on the cartel’s dime.”

Jorge bent and looked at the chart plotter. “We will be there by early morning,” he said. “And all we know is that an American helped the police bring the packages in.”

“We’ll find out more when we get there,” Cameron replied. “And if possible, locate the shipment.”

“We know of one American that arrived at that time,” Jorge said.

“Perhaps,” Cameron said. “But we won’t know for sure until we get there.” He gave the man a stern look. “You just want to kill the dog, yes?”

Jorge glanced over at him for a moment, then turned his eyes back toward the sea ahead. “I hate dogs,” he said, then turned back to face him. “You should get some sleep, jefe. I’m still too jazzed up.”

With all the excitement of the search and the blood that was spilled still fresh in their minds, it was unlikely that any of them would get much sleep.

“We’ll all stay on the alert until we are far enough away,” Cameron said, looking back. “But I would rather have been long gone before the boat blazed.”

They were a mile offshore and sailing away at seven knots. The fishing boat was now fully engulfed, as was a sailboat that had the misfortune of being tied up in the slip next to Sirena.

But the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle were approaching the marina. He hoped they were far enough away to not be noticed, or perhaps seen as a sailboat passing by. But in the end, it wouldn’t matter.

Jorge zoomed the chart plotter out to see the distance between the two islands.

“We’ll be out of the lee of the island soon,” Jorge said.

Like Cameron, Jorge knew that once the island no longer blocked the steady easterly wind, the open water between the two would be full of large waves and heavier winds.

“As soon as it picks up, we’ll take a reef,” Cameron said. “Right now, we need all the speed we can get. She can take the rough seas.”

He switched on the AIS to see if there were any other boats around, and noticed nothing of concern, just a freighter a few miles to the south, so he turned it back off again, coming up with an idea.

They would get the fire out quickly. Diesel fuel didn’t burn very hot, but the melting fiberglass would. But the emergency vehicle was arriving just as the fiberglass above the windows began to buckle.

When the bodies of the two men were found, charred they might be, they’d still be identifiable, and the manner in which they died would be apparent. There’d be no need for the cartel to claim responsibility or even acknowledge what happened.

Everyone would know.

“It can’t possibly be true what they said,” Jorge mumbled. “The cartel wouldn’t intentionally dump that much coca in the ocean, would they?”

Cameron knew about the seamount and had been thinking about what the mules had told him. He reached over to the chart plotter and switched the display to forward-scanning sonar.

“Watch,” he said, pointing to the cone of red and yellow on the screen, a line sweeping from side to side in a forty-five-degree arc ahead of their course.

They were already in very deep water, too deep for forward-scan to show the seafloor. It was used primarily to allow them to pick routes through a reef or make their way through an uncharted channel. Usually at night.

“There,” he said, when a small, white dot appeared, followed quickly by two more. “Those are large gamefish, maybe dolphins. The sonar system Juarez had on his boat could find an apple suspended off the bottom the way they described, and probably tell you how many bites the fish had taken out of it. You saw the rig they used to retrieve the packages.” He slowly nodded his head. “Yes, my friend. When they said how many times they’d done it, I believed them. It’s genius, actually. Relying on safe houses to store the consignment before shipment poses much greater risk.”

“So that means the Dominica cops have the shipment, then,” Jorge muttered. “That’s gone forever, man.”

“We will also figure that out when we get there,” Cameron replied, already thinking of what would happen if they could somehow recover the shipment, or even part of it.

Just a one percent finder’s fee would be ten million dollars.

“Recovering it would be ancillary to our directive,” Cameron continued, his voice turning cold. “And we will do what the cartel tells us.”

“Which is?” the mercenary asked.

“Public retribution on whoever took the shipment.”

By the time we got back down from the mountains and drove through the dense rain forest, we were once more soaked. It didn’t matter to me in the least, and from Savannah’s contented expression, framed with wet strands of disheveled hair, she didn’t care either.

The air was warm, the rain was warm, the Scout never exceeded twenty miles per hour, and we’d experienced an adventure like no other.

I’d already paid Jeffery for the tour and gave him another hundred when we reached Taranis.

“That was really incredible,” I told him. “And you say Trafalgar Falls is equally awesome?”

“If not more so, Cap’n,” he replied. “Just in a totally different way. I personally t’ink Emerald Pool is de most beautiful and serene place I have ever seen. Will you be up for a grocery run in de mornin’?”

“As early as possible,” I replied. “What’s your schedule look like?”

“De farm market is set up at sunrise.” He glanced off toward the north. “I am takin’ Cap’n Hollister and his guests into Roseau at noon.”

“We can be ready at dawn,” Savannah suggested. “Dink and Hannah said they were going to go into town tonight, so it’ll probably just be the three of us.”

“I think we can get everything in one trip in your Scout,” I added. “Shouldn’t take more than two or three hours.”

Jeffery smiled. “Dat’s perfect, Cap’n. Be glad to help you get what you need, and at a fair price.”

“We’ll see you in the morning, then,” I said, and helped him shove off.

“How was the volcano?” Dink asked, coming out of the salon.

Savannah glanced down at Alberto, then grinned at Dink. “It was fire!” she exclaimed.

“Don’t say that word on a boat,” Alberto admonished her, wagging a finger, then bursting into laughter.

“It was very impressive,” I told Dink. “And Jeffery being a geologist and a local was able to give us an understanding of what it’s like living on the edge of a knife blade.”

“We just got back from taking Tank to the beach,” he said. “I bet we walked three miles with him fetching that old tennis ball.”

“I appreciate that,” I told him, then arched an eyebrow. “See anything interesting?”

He winked discreetly. “Nothin’ out of the ordinary.”

The glass slider opened, and Hannah stepped outside with Tank.

“Hannah caught a big ol’ grouper while y’all were gone,” Dink added. “Over twenty pounds. If it’s okay with you, we’d like to make supper tonight.”

While Hannah had been a polite guest during her stay aboard Taranis, that was pretty much it. She’d pitch in with chores if asked, and stood watch with Dink, but she never offered to do anything.

“What about going into town?” Savannah asked her.

“We’re flying home in four days,” she replied. “And to be honest, I’m not into diving. So, we rented a little place up in Portsmouth until you guys get up there on Saturday.”

Savannah smiled. “That sounds like just the thing. When are you going up there?”

“First thing in the mornin’,” Dink replied. “I thought maybe we’d ride with you to shore in the mornin’ and see if Jeffery could get us a ride up there. Sorry for the short notice.”

They were holding hands, something I’d not seen them do in the last couple of weeks, and I noticed they were both wearing different clothes from what they’d had on this morning. Maybe they had spent the whole day “making out” like he’d said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I replied. “You’ve been a great help getting us here and now, well… we’re here.”

“Cool!” Hannah said, taking Dink’s arm. “Why don’t y’all go rest until dinner. An eight-hour hike up a mountain and back had to be exhausting.”

“It was,” Savannah replied. “But so worth it.”

We went inside and I followed Savannah into our stateroom, aft the wheelhouse, where she went to the auxiliary nav desk on the other side of our bunk and opened the laptop.

“That’s odd,” she said, sitting down in the chair and sliding the laptop closer. “Look.”

The machine was still on the last website, the one showing the past AIS routes of Knot Guilty. She switched to the live setting, and the route disappeared.

“What am I looking at?” I asked.

She clicked back to past routes and pointed. “It looks like they turned their AIS on for a few seconds about two miles off the southern tip of Guadeloupe. It’s too deep to anchor there, and it wasn’t on long enough to determine course.”

“What time was that?”

“Less than an hour ago.”

I glanced at my watch; it was 1730. Between their last location and Roseau was a good fifty nautical miles. The wind and sea state between the islands would be disadvantageous for a fast crossing. They’d have twenty-plus knots of wind almost on the nose. I knew sailing upwind would take them about ten hours, and even longer if they were bearing away on a port reach before tacking and come in on a starboard reach.

“They might’ve gone up to Portsmouth for the night,” I said. “Then on up to Basse-Terre, and still headed north. We don’t know anything.”

She looked up at me. “They could be headed back here for some reason.”

“If they are headed back to Roseau, they won’t arrive until early morning.”

“Very early,” she agreed, looking back at the screen. “A couple of hours after midnight. I don’t like this, Jesse. Something about Cameron Zayas and his crew bothers me.”

“What?” I asked, though I felt the same way. “They gave no indication of being troublemakers, and Jeffery said they’d been here many times before without incident. If we didn’t know about his past, we’d think nothing of them.”

“That’s not true, and you know it,” she replied, shifting her gaze to me as I looked over her shoulder. “There was a reason we dug into his background. You yourself said, ‘threat level three.’”

She was right. We’d both felt it. Some sort of suspicion I couldn’t put a finger on.

“I’ll get up at zero-two hundred,” I offered. “Relieve me at zero-five?”

She nodded and closed the laptop. “All the more reason to call it an early night after dinner.”

Savannah told the others we were worn out after the hike and we’d gone to bed early. It was mostly true. My alarm woke me at 0200, and I dressed in clothes I’d already placed on the chair at the nav desk. Then I slipped quietly out of our stateroom.

The low-level red lighting came on, and Tank lifted his head.

“Shh,” I hissed quietly. “Go back to sleep.”

I made my way aft toward the galley. The coffeemaker was all set up, so all I had to do was switch it on and wait. While it did its thing, I went forward and brought the chart plotter online, to see if Knot Guilty was visible on AIS.

She wasn’t.

Tank’s big dark eyes followed my every move, though his head was resting on his paws.

While I waited a few minutes for the coffee to finish, I used the laptop at the primary navigation desk on the port side to check Knot Guilty’s past routes once more, hoping they’d turned AIS on again, which would at least tell me which direction they were headed.

Nothing.

So I filled a mug and Thermos and headed up to the flybridge. The moon had set four hours earlier, but the sky was clear, and there was ample starlight.

I could see the whole bay and the boats moored in it.

Not a sketchy ketch in sight.

I hadn’t expected there to be. They’d been on AIS, off the southern part of Guadeloupe, at 1630. If they were returning to Roseau, and maintained five knots, the earliest they might arrive would be in another half hour. I doubted the Swan could do more than that, heading upwind in even moderate seas.

Pulling my phone out, I checked on local news service websites for anything unusual happening recently in either St. Kitts and Nevis or in Guadeloupe, and the third headline caught my eye, the first two being resort ads.

Marina Fire Kills Two Men

The dateline was yesterday evening, just eight hours ago.

It was a small marina on the southern tip of Guadeloupe with few amenities besides a place to dock boats and a good anchorage. Two charter boats were burned nearly to the waterline, a fishing boat and a small sailboat.

The fire had been noticed by a passing captain, and when help arrived, the boats were almost fully engulfed, but a foam sprayer was able to snuff it out quickly.

The two men weren’t identified, but the story said that the authorities suspected foul play.

I looked to starboard, toward Guadeloupe, the next island in the chain, fifty miles to our north. Even though I had nothing at all to go on, my gut told me that Zayas was involved in that fire.

I’d met enough smug drugglers and killers to recognize the scent.

The story went on to say that the two men had been aboard the fishing boat but gave no other details about them, pending identification and notification of next-of-kin.

A picture was included, showing the smoldering remains of the two boats. The sailboat was a sloop, probably around thirty feet, and the fishing boat was a sport fisherman, slightly longer, but not as big as my charter boat, Gaspar’s Revenge.

The shot was taken from across the water, probably from the other side of the fairway, and the name Sirena could be seen on the transom of the fisherman, but the sailboat’s stern was completely melted. Dangling at a precarious angle on the sloop’s stern was a small outboard, mounted on a swing arm that could raise and lower it in case of main engine failure. Or maybe it was the main engine.

The presence of an outboard meant gasoline, which was probably the reason it’d burned so much more. Diesel fuel is far less flammable.

Sirena’s outriggers were still intact, as was a large downrigger on the stern. I pinched the screen, spreading my fingers to zoom in on the heavy tackle.

The downrigger was very large. It looked capable of pulling a huge great white up from the depths with the same ease it could retrieve a Volkswagen.

Or maybe a bunch of bales of coke, I thought.

Again, nothing concrete, but that little reptilian brain was kicking my cerebral cortex, telling it to wake up.

I switched on the radar, set it to its maximum range, then let it warm up for a moment.

Line of sight, or the distance you can see to the horizon, was about three-and-a-half miles when standing at the water’s edge. From my position about ten feet higher, it was still limited to about five miles, and from the radar antenna on the roof, a few feet above my head, maybe half a mile farther.

Being able to visually study the water for five nautical miles in all directions on a boat that rarely exceeded five knots meant that anything you could see, you could run into within an hour. Plenty of time to change course.

A container ship six miles away would be almost completely below the horizon and invisible to the naked eye, and even with the most powerful binoculars or telescope, you might see the raised pilothouse, looking like a little buoy.

Taranis’s radar could “see” up to twenty-four miles by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere. But it couldn’t see over Dominica, and we were tucked into a small bay. The part of the sea that was visible to both my eyes and the radar was a sweep less than half a circle, maybe 160 degrees.

There was a single echo on the screen, which coincided with the AIS location of a cargo ship on the chart plotter, which AIS identified about two miles off the coast, headed south.

I sipped my coffee and put my feet up.

Sure, Savannah and I had both gotten a bad feeling about Zayas and his crew. But maybe Savvy had just picked up on my own unease. That didn’t make them dirty, and that primal response that had caused my apprehension had been wrong before.

A few times.

But it’d also saved my ass more than once, and once was enough.

I put my mug down and stood, my subconscious already deciding before my conscious mind knew it as I was headed to the cockpit.

We’d cleared into the country, even helped the police bring in a drug seizure, so the odds of being boarded and searched were minimal. And there were more than a dozen hiding spots on Taranis, which had been built into her.

What good was it to have superior firepower if you couldn’t get to it in a hurry?

Once the port steps and aft deck locked open at the top, I descended into the lazarette, went forward and pulled one of the stand-up paddle boards from the rack. It was wide, and very stable, and I hoped it would work. Just in case, I also grabbed a couple of short dock lines, just long enough to wrap around the SUP.

As I carried everything back up the steps, the slider opened and Savannah stepped outside.

“Will you need help?” she asked, taking one end of the long board.

I didn’t have to guess if she knew what I was up to. Of course she did. “It’d be easier with two people,” I replied. “But I’ll have a couple of dock lines to lash it down with.”

“If it’s easier with two, I’m going with you.”

Without another word, she led the way down the center steps, carrying the front of the paddle board. We placed it on one corner of the swim platform, lowered the swim ladder, then quietly descended it.

Once we got the board in the water, I pressed the button to open the war room doors and heard the now familiar hiss as the vacuum was released. The doors swung down and out as the inside lights came on.

“Wait till they’re fully open,” I whispered. “Then we’ll slide the board between them, close to the port side.”

When the doors locked out, we maneuvered the board under the swim platform and between them while we both hung from the center support.

“It looks like a horizontal gun cabinet,” Savannah said, looking at the hardware over our heads.

Once the SUP was in position, I reached up and turned the switch that released the catches on either end of the whole port-side rack, containing the M2, its mount, and the barrel. An electric motor whined as the rack came down slowly.

“Billy built this,” Savannah stated flatly, though I knew she was asking.

“Based on detailed drawings he was provided,” I replied.

“That you drew or James Bond?”

I nodded, moving the board slightly so the weight would be more centered. “None of this was in here when the swim platform was mated to the boat,” I replied, as the rack came to rest on the board. “Just the bolts imbedded in structural carbon fiber. He shipped the racks and locks to me at the Rusty Anchor, and Rusty and I installed everything before we left the Keys.”

I handed her the bitter end of one of the dock lines. “Pull this under the board and hand it over. If this thing rocks a little, we could lose it.”

She looped the line around the end of the board, then brought it up over the rack. I tied the ends tightly, then we did the same thing at the other end. Even if it did flip over, the rack and gun would hopefully stay strapped to the board.

“Who all knows about this?” Savannah asked.

“Me, you, and Alberto,” I replied. “And Billy of course. And several of the workers at the yard know it’s here because they had to connect the electrical, but nobody ever asked what it was for.”

With the M2 and its parts safely tucked away in two false bottoms under the port side cockpit bench seat, I told Savannah to go back to bed, and I returned to the flybridge.

The fact that she hadn’t protested bringing the Ma Deuce aboard told me all I needed to know about her suspicions. They were the same as mine.

If they were cartel, they’d have guns. And if they were coming back here, they’d be here soon. And if they posed a threat to me or my family… well, they shouldn’t bring guns to a machine gun fight.

It would only take me a couple of minutes to remove the table, mount the tripod, attach the receiver assembly, then lock the barrel in place, even if we were underway. I’d done it many times before on the Revenge, and countless times in training.

So far though, I had no solid reason to worry about anything or anyone. Yes, drugs were shipped through this area. Yes, Cameron Zayas had once been arrested for possession of a large quantity of cocaine. And yes, the fishing boat in Guadeloupe was capable of retrieving the square groupers hidden on the seamount.

A lot of ifs and yeses.

Then I thought of two more. Yes, a machine gun on a private vessel was very illegal. And if I were caught, I’d face serious jail time.

Did my suspicions mean Zayas was a smuggler? He was a victim of circumstantial evidence, at best.

Did it mean he’d gone to Guadeloupe to seek vengeance against the guys who were supposed to bring up the drug shipment? I had to assume someone had planned to pick it up from the seafloor before we accidentally snagged one, and that meant someone failed in their job.

What if all my suspicions were correct?

Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.

But I didn’t know enough about the inner workings of the Cartel of the Suns to guess if they would go after someone who’d simply failed at a task. It seemed like overkill, but they were known to be ruthless, and if the headlines were to be believed, they’d killed Zayas’s wife and kids for a much lesser transgression.

But the amount? A street value that approached a billion bucks was something to kill over.

I looked at AIS again. The cargo ship was still there, still headed south, and still two miles offshore, but the range was now only five miles north.

A second echo suddenly appeared on the radar, much smaller than the ship and astern of it. Then as quickly as it appeared, it was gone.

Probably just a wave colliding with the ship’s wake, I thought as I poured another cup of coffee.

I looked at my watch. It was a little after 0315, almost eleven hours since Knot Guilty had turned their AIS on and off, fifty nautical miles to the north. Where they’d done that just happened to be a few miles from the marina where the two men were killed and at about the time the fire was reported.

Another tiny white spot appeared and disappeared on the radar screen, this time about four miles north, and halfway between the cargo ship and shore.

I sat up and watched the screen closely for a moment, then it appeared again.

“That’s no wave,” I muttered, putting my mug down and retrieving the binos from the overhead.

I trained them in the direction of the cargo ship first. It was right on the horizon, lit up inside and out. I moved the glasses toward shore, not knowing what to look for, except for the general direction the smaller radar hit had appeared to be going.

The binoculars weren’t night vision, but the light of the stars illuminated the white water crashing against the rocks along the shoreline.

There!

As soon as I saw it, it was gone. Just a flash of whitewater near the shore. Then it appeared again.

An inflatable boat!

I moved quickly, going behind the upper galley island and pressing the two ignitor buttons. The cover above the warmer opened and the tray slid out. I lifted the Kimber and slid the magazine out, though I knew it was loaded with .45 ACP rounds. I reinserted it, then press-checked the slide, confirming a round in the chamber.

Why would a cargo ship deploy a dinghy to run to shore? I wondered, as I started down the steps to the cockpit. Especially while underway.

Tank stood just inside the closed glass slider, head up, ears cocked, and eyes alert.

I ignored him and went to the starboard rail, careful to stay close to the corner of the house. Scanning the water to the north, I found the dinghy again. It was less than two miles away and close to shore, but it’d soon have to swing out around the empty cruise ship pier if it was continuing south.

A moment later, the small boat did just that, then slowed as it continued following the coast. Finally, when it was between us and shore, it turned and started very slowly toward Taranis.

I glanced back at Tank. He was untrained for protection, but he had already shown that he considered us his “flock,” and Tibet mountain dogs were bred to protect flocks of sheep. He was very well trained for general obedience and was learning new things at a very fast rate. More than anything, he was patient, and the word “stay” wasn’t much of a challenge for him to learn.

I slid the hatch open and squatted in front of him.

“Arbeiten,” I whispered. “Work.”

His expression changed and he looked past me, ears coming up higher. I looked aft and didn’t need the binos to see the dinghy approaching stealthily at idle speed. I couldn’t hear it yet, but I knew Tank could.

“Kommen,” I whispered. Then repeated it in English. “Come.”

Staying low, I moved to the stern rail on the starboard side, and to my surprise, Tank did the same, practically crawling on his belly beside me.

I squatted once more, close to the solid bulkhead. “I need you to be ready, Tank. And stay here. Bleibe. Bereit.”

He chuffed lightly as the sound of the little outboard reached my ears. I told him to stay once more, in both German and English, then moved past the aft center steps to the other side of the cockpit.

The roof shadowed the whole cockpit, so there was little chance the man in the dinghy could see me.

I knelt on one knee with the Kimber in my right hand and thumbed the safety off.

Peering through the two-inch gap between the top of the bulkhead and the cap rail, I could see the dinghy clearly.

There was only one man aboard, hunched low.

The intercom panel was right beside me. Should I alert Savvy? Dink?

No. Having them exposed was more of a liability with just one assailant, whether he was armed or not. I intended to give him no chance to use it if he was.

I watched Tank watching me. Then his head jerked as I heard the soft thud of the inflatable against the swim platform.

He took a hesitant step forward, eyes coming back to me.

“Shh,” I hushed very lightly so only he could hear. “In a little while.”

The guy came up the steps very quietly. I had to assume he was armed. And I had to assume he knew there were innocent women and a child aboard.

His actions in boarding someone else’s vessel was his own personal responsibility and put his life in jeopardy. Something most criminals just never thought of.

I wanted to take him down alive, but if he forced my hand, I’d have no compunction about taking his life, strapping him to his dinghy, and sinking it.

A steep drop-off like we had below us meant the current down deeper was probably away from shore as waves washed in. We were in deep water, and the dinghy would drift even deeper with the current as it sank, maybe even over the ledge and into the abyss.

He’d never be seen again.

The man stepped up into the cockpit, passing between me and Tank, heading toward the hatch, unaware of our presence.

I rose and aimed the Kimber at his head as he reached for the latch and when his hand touched it, I switched on the red overhead lights, catching him in its glow, quite literally red-handed.

“Make one move,” I snarled, cocking the hammer, “just one. And I’ll put a hole in your head the size of your thumb. Entiendes Inglés?”

He froze. He knew English. And the sound of a weapon being readied probably wasn’t a foreign concept.

“Take your gun out very slowly,” I said. “Use your left hand, thumb and middle finger only, then slide it all the way across the table. Do it now.”

Very slowly, the man reached across in front of himself with his left hand and then slid a handgun across the table, where it tumbled onto the bench cushion.

I took one step forward and brought the butt of the Kimber down on the right side of his neck.

The man crumpled and Tank sprang forward.

“Bleibe,” I said, putting a knee on the back of the man’s neck. Then, with nothing close by to tie him with, I rolled his torso so I could get at his belt buckle.

The blow I’d delivered was meant to stun and incapacitate, not kill or render unconscious. I wanted to talk to him.

He began to stir as I rolled him roughly onto his belly and used his belt to tie his hands behind his back.

When I rolled him onto his back, I recognized him. It was one of Zayas’s crew.

“Hold, Tank,” I said, and, remembering our tug-of-war games, he did just that.

The muscle man’s eyes went about as wide as they could possibly go when Tank opened his massive jaws and lowered them over his throat.

And no wonder. Tank was probably the biggest dog the guy’d ever seen. His canines were nearly two inches long and were almost at the back of his neck.

If I gave Tank the command “pull,” this guy would die a horrible death.

“If you stay real still,” I said, not wanting to subject Tank to that as I started going through the man’s pockets, “then my friend won’t eat you.”

The guy had boarded my vessel uninvited and unannounced. It was no different than a home invasion. He’d been armed and deserved whatever fate he met in choosing the wrong boat.

He had a cell phone in his pocket, along with a gold pendant on a heavy gold chain. No wallet, no ID, and a wad of cash.

I pocketed what he had and while Tank had him under control—the guy was literally frozen in fear—I got a dock line from the storage compartment and tied his feet as well.

Then I had Tank let go, and I dragged the gym rat by the feet over the slider’s tracks, with Tank dancing around his head like he’d been given a new toy he could demolish and rip apart.

I called Inspector Alexander directly, using the number on the card he’d given me, and probably waking him up, telling him I was holding an intruder aboard. He’d said it would take at least thirty minutes for him to reach us.

“No hurry,” I replied, looking back at the guy lying perfectly still under Tank’s watchful eye. “He’s not going anywhere.”

Only then did I activate the whole boat intercom to wake everyone up. Savannah was out of our cabin in a shot. She stopped at the galley and looked down at the man.

“Who is he?” she asked, as the others came up from the lower deck.

“He’s one of Zayas’s crew,” I replied, checking the radar. “He just tried to sneak aboard, but Tank and I altered whatever he had planned.”

“He’s one of the men from the beach in Grand Turk,” Alberto said, looking back at the intruder. “Who Tank scared away.”

I glanced back at the guy, feeling a rage rising in my gut.

Tank chuffed, his jowls spitting saliva, which landed right on the man’s face.

I grinned and turned back to the radar. There was nothing else on the screen except the cargo ship, which was now northwest of us, less than three miles away and clearly visible.

I’d asked the man his name and where he’d come from, but he hadn’t uttered a single word since boarding.

Why had he been on the cargo ship? I’d realized, almost too late, that it was his dinghy that’d caused the intermittent reflection on the radar, being too small and too close to pick up clearly. There was no doubt he’d come from that direction though.

But did he come from the ship?

I reached up and retrieved my night vision monocular from the overhead to get a better look at the cargo ship.

“What is it?” Dink asked, stepping up beside me.

“I don’t know,” I replied, studying the ship closely. “He came from that ship out there, or near it, and…”

Then I saw it.

The ship was riding low in the water, laden with cargo, so it wasn’t rocking or rolling in the least. But its masts were definitely swaying.

Only cargo ships didn’t have masts.

“Knot Guilty is hiding behind that ship out there,” I said, looking at the radar again.

“Not what?”

“Knot Guilty, with a K,” I replied. “It’s the name of that Swan ketch whose crew was at the bar night before last.” I jerked a thumb aft. “He’s one of them.”

Dink looked back at the guy, lying uncomfortably on his back on the deck, with Tank standing watch at his head. “So… what’s he doin’ here?”

“My guess is,” I began, looking over at Dink, “he’s looking for your square grouper.”

“Huh?”

The radar alarm began beeping and I looked down at the screen. The return echo showed a blip depicting a boat moving inside the radar’s one-mile setting. It was a boat leaving the Coast Guard dock.

I switched off the alarm and turned to Dink. “That’s Inspector Alexander headed our way. If my guess is right, Zayas and the crew of that Swan are smug drugglers… and maybe more. Keep an eye on him.”

Dink looked back again and chuckled. “I think the only movin’ that old boy’s gonna be making’ will be in his bowels.”

The coast guard boat reached us in minutes, and I went down to meet it at the swim platform. Sergeant Castillo was at the helm, with Alexander standing in the bow holding a line.

“This better be good,” he said, handing it to me as Castillo reversed the outboards for a moment to stop the boat.

I took the line and quickly tied it off to one of the recessed cleats, then pulled the boat alongside.

Castillo stepped up onto the gunwale. “May I?”

“Come aboard,” I said.

They stepped down to the platform as I pulled my phone out. “I need to show you some things before we go inside.”

“What is it?” the inspector asked.

I turned my phone so he could see the picture of the two burned-out boats. “What do you know about the two men who were killed in the boat fire on Guadeloupe yesterday afternoon?”

He looked up at me. “That is an ongoing investigation there. It has nothing to do with Dominica.”

I zoomed the phone in on Sirena’s downrigger and showed it to Castillo. “How big of a fish do you think that can lift?”

It was like a light coming on in his eyes. “I would think at least a thousand kilos.”

Alexander looked again, then glanced up at me.

“Was it a cartel hit?” I asked him point-blank.

“You did not hear that from me.”

“According to the news story I read,” I began, as I opened another app, “the fire was spotted at 1630 by a passing boater. This is a past history of the sailing yacht Knot Guilty’s AIS positions.”

He looked at it and I continued. “Note the time stamp when they were just off southern Guadeloupe. They only turned it on for a few seconds.”

“Circumstantial,” he replied. “There were many boats in the vicinity at that time.”

“The owner and captain of Knot Guilty is a former Miami district attorney by the name of Cameron Zayas. I say former DA, because two years ago, he was busted with five kilos of cocaine.”

“Still circumstantial,” Alexander replied stubbornly.

“It gets better,” I said, offering Castillo my night vision monocular. “Take a close look at that freighter out there.”

He turned and raised the instrument to his right eye. “Whoa! This is night capable?”

“Yes,” I replied. “See how the ship’s riding rock steady? So, why are the masts rocking back and forth?”

“Freighters don’t have…” He paused. “There is a sailboat on the far side of the ship!”

“It’s at least a ten-hour sail from where those murders took place to here,” I said. “A little longer if you shadow a slow-moving cargo ship so nobody sees you. It happened more than eleven hours ago.”

Alexander looked at his watch, then out toward the passing freighter.

“It’s still⁠—”

“Circumstantial,” I finished for him. “Yes, I know. Remember, I have a DHS background. And I also never forget a face. One of the crew of that ketch out there is tied up in my galley. All of us, along with Jeffery Shillingford, can attest to his being with Zayas the night we arrived. Too many coincidences.”

“How did this man get aboard?” Castillo asked.

“Just idled up in that dinghy,” I replied, pointing at it, then up to the cockpit. “Fortunately, I was awake and waited up there behind the bulkhead and managed to get the drop on him. He was armed.”

Alexander’s eyes moved quickly to the cockpit. “Armed?”

“A Zamorana nine-millimeter semi-auto,” I replied. “It’s a pistol manufactured in Venezuela.”

Castillo moved toward the steps. “Entering Dominica with a firearm,” he began, then looked back at me and Alexander, “without express permission from the government, can be punishable by up to twenty years in prison. Why did he come here?”

“I’m afraid to consider that,” I replied. “The answer puts my family and friends at great risk.”

“I am afraid you may be right, Captain,” Alexander said. “If it is true what you say, that Captain Zayas and his crew are part of the cartel, and if it was they who killed the two men on Guadeloupe, and if word has gotten out that you were involved in the retrieval, then yes, I would say there is a certain risk. Perhaps you should leave Dominica.”

I grinned at him. “I’m on vacation here, Inspector. And I don’t run from anyone.”

“We’re talking about Cartel de los Soles, Captain,” he said. “Not a couple of Miami street thugs.”

“The Iranian Republican Guard, the Taliban, al Qaeda, MS13, Cartel of the Suns…” I shrugged. “They’re all thugs, Inspector.” I dropped my voice menacingly low. “I don’t have a reverse gear. I don’t back down. And I never quit. Many have thought they could out-think or out-fight me and they paid the price. I’m still standing.”

His eyes met mine sternly. “Are you some kind of mercenary?”

“I was a Marine Recon sniper before DHS,” I replied. “I’m just a guy who wants to be left alone and I won’t be bullied.”

The sound of the rhythmic rise and fall of the boat’s bow wave had lulled Cameron into a deep sleep. He’d kept the crew on deck and alert until night fell, and they’d reached the open channel between Guadeloupe and Dominica, where they’d caught up to the slow-moving freighter.

He'd ordered the crew to reef the main and wind the headsail in to match the ship’s speed, knowing Knot Guilty would be in the radar shadow of the larger ship.

The sound of his cabin door slowly opening woke him and Cameron sat up in his bunk instantly.

Manuel Corina stood in the doorway. “We are passing Roseau, jefe.”

There was something in his voice that told Cameron there was more.

“And?”

“Jorge is gone.”

Cameron threw his legs over the side of the bunk and stood. “What do you mean he is gone?”

“He woke me early, jefe,” Manuel replied. “When I got up on deck, he was already ripping away in the dinghy.”

“That fool!” Cameron shouted, as he brushed past the man and headed for the cockpit.

“I think he went to kill the dog,” Manuel said, following after him.

“Get the others up,” Cameron ordered, then headed up the companionway.

There was nobody on deck. Knot Guilty was on autopilot, and the cargo ship they’d been sailing with was still there, less than a quarter mile from them, blocking anyone from seeing them from shore or even on radar. It was an old-school smuggler’s trick, and the captain and crew of the freighter knew better than to report suspicious activity in these waters.

The head sail was still half-furled, and there were now two reefs in the main, to better match the speed of the slow freighter.

The youngest of the crew, Raul Fernandez, was first to come on deck.

“Let go the reefs and hoist the main fully, Manuel,” Cameron ordered, as the other two appeared. “Unfurl the headsail and prepare to tack.”

Jorge was a hothead; he always had been. But this was over the top. A dog belonging to the tall American had growled at him and Manuel over a month ago, and for that, the fool was going to fuck up everything.

He took the helm and switched off the autopilot. “How long ago?” he asked Manuel.

The man gulped. “Nearly an hour.”

“An hour?” he shouted. “Why did you wait to wake me?”

“I was there on the beach with him, jefe,” Manuel replied. “That big dog could have killed us both.” He looked down at the deck. “Jorge said he would kill me if I woke you too soon.”

“I’ll deal with you later,” Cameron said, looking up at the wind vane on the main masthead.

The foresail quickly unfurled.

“Tacking!” Cameron shouted as he spun the wheel.

The large ketch turned toward the freighter, the bow passing through the wind, and the boom above their heads swept to the other side as the self-tacking headsail traveled across the foredeck.

The wind snapped them both full and Knot Guilty heeled over, now on a beam reach, with full power in the sails, increasing speed as she headed toward the stern of the much larger freighter.

“It’s going to get bumpy!” he shouted, as they approached the wake of the ship.

“What do we do when we get there?” Manuel asked.

Cameron’s eyes blazed as the boat began tossing in the ship’s large wake.

“If he’s made contact with the Americans, we’ll kill them all,” he replied. “Including Jorge.”

Before they left, Alexander said that once he got the prisoner to the dock, he’d have Castillo and two of his men head out and check on the sailboat.

I wasn’t holding my breath.

They couldn’t stop them on the information they had, even with one of their crew in custody. The most they could do would be a safety inspection.

Savannah stayed with me in the wheelhouse after the others went back to bed.

“Do you think Sergeant Castillo will go back out?” she asked.

“Probably not,” I replied, looking down at my watch. It was almost 0500. “Jeffery will be here in an hour or so to take us grocery shopping, but if that’s Zayas out there sneaking around, that might be canceled.”

“I’ll make some more coffee then,” she said. “But you’re going to be a grumpy Gus to go shopping with.”

“It’s all set up,” I replied, heading for the aft hatch. “Just hit the Brew button. Tank and I are going topside.”

I slapped my thigh, and he jumped off the settee and followed me aft.

“Uh, Jesse,” Savannah said.

When I stopped and turned around, she was looking at the radar screen on the multi-display over the windshield.

“What’s that saying about Mohamed and the mountain?” she asked, then looked back at me. “There are two radar returns to our southwest now, not just the freighter.”

I looked through the windshield. The cargo ship was easy to spot with all the lights on. Pulling my monocular out, I looked through it.

“Dink!” I shouted. “Get up here! Savvy, get all systems online. It’s definitely the Swan, and he’s sailing right toward us.”

I had an evil thought. One I’d had before.

“What’s goin’ on?” Dink asked, coming up the steps shirtless.

“Get up on the bow,” I ordered, as I started aft. “Unhook the bridle from the mooring line. We’re out of here!”

“What can I do, Dad?” Alberto asked, coming up from the port ama.

“Stay in here and keep an eye on Tank,” I said.

“Which way?” Savannah yelled, as I slid the hatch open.

I paused, the plan unfolding in my mind. “Northwest,” I replied. “Out to sea. Six knots.”

“That boat can go faster than that,” she said, then her voice trailed off as she comprehended. “Once he’s out of the lee of the island.”

“I’m counting on it,” I replied, closing the hatch and turning on the intercom. “Can you still hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” she replied. “Dink has the bridle off.”

“Northwest at six knots,” I repeated, then pulled the table out of its two mounting sleeves. “Oh, and text Jeffery and tell him we’ll have to reschedule our provisioning trip.”

The table was lightweight, as was just about everything aboard Taranis. I just set it aside, then opened the storage compartment under the bench seat on the port side. There was a selection of long and short dock lines inside, all neatly coiled, and arranged by length.

With the press of a hidden button under the back edge, the tray the lines were stored in popped up slightly. I lifted it out and placed it on the deck by the table. Then I did the same thing for the second seat.

Removing the titanium tripod mount first, I opened it and locked the three legs in place. Then I inserted the center shaft into the aft sleeve that’d held the table and locked it in, as well. Standing just four feet high, it was as rigid as the boat.

I lifted out the receiver assembly of the heavy machine gun and mounted it to the gimble on the tripod. Then I retrieved the barrel and locked it into position, just as Dink came back along the side deck.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, eyes bugging wide.

“We’re going to lead them out to sea,” I replied. “If they start shooting, I’ll shoot back.”

His face became grave. “What do you need me to do?”

As I checked the weapon over, I nodded toward the small lazarette hatch aft the slider. “Go down there and through the aft mechanical room hatch. Bring up two boxes of ammo marked .50 caliber. They’re heavy.”

He opened the hatch and disappeared. Through the glass slider, I could see Savannah at the helm, with Alberto and Hannah standing beside her.

“Here,” Dink said, lifting one of the large ammo boxes to the deck.

I took it and moved it over to the starboard side of the tripod, then opened it. Pulling the loose end of the ammo belt out, I opened the cover on the receiver and laid the belt into the feed, then closed and latched the cover.

We were headed away from Newtown, with the coast of Dominica stretching away to starboard. If Zayas bit, he’d turn and follow, but he’d have a light wind on his port bow until we got farther from the island.

The prevailing easterly wind wrapped around Dominica, creating a calm pocket on the lee side, and the heat of land, being greater than the water, caused an updraft, creating a shore breeze for a couple of miles out. Then it’d get erratic before becoming a strong southeasterly. Farther out, it’d be dead out of the east.

We were going faster than the Swan could sail in these conditions, but if Zayas was as experienced a sailor as I thought, he would know my advantage would be lost once out of the lee of the island, and wind put more power to the sails. I guessed his waterline length was sixty feet or less, so his hull speed would be no more than nine knots. More than enough to overtake us, going just six knots. But it would take several miles.

And distance was my friend, not his.

Using the monocular again, I scanned the horizon to the south and west and found them easily. They were tacking and giving chase, almost two miles back.

“Perfect,” I said, as Dink hefted the second ammo can up.

“What’s perfect?” he asked, climbing out of the lazarette.

“Come inside,” I told him, then turned and headed forward.

The Swan was nearly two miles back and falling farther behind. We had time to consider options.

“Can you still see him?” Savannah asked.

“They’re turning and coming after us,” I replied calmly. “About two miles back. Dink, I want you to take Hannah, Alberto, and Tank down to your cabin when they get within half a mile.”

“What are you going to do?” Alberto asked.

“What I always do, Son, Fix things.”

We gathered at the helm, watching the radar. With each passing minute, the range between us and the ketch was getting longer as we slowly pulled ahead of it. Escaping them by heading out to sea was an illusion, one which I’m sure Zayas saw through, but Taranis had an ace up her sleeve, ready and waiting below our feet.

And a deuce on the aft deck.

I reached up and switched the multi-view to the aft camera and then changed it over to night optics. The ketch came into view, and I locked the camera on her and zoomed in so we could see her decks.

“We’re outrunning them,” Hannah said. “How long before they give up? And why are we being chased?”

“Jesse thinks those are the guys who were supposed to pick up the nose candy I snagged,” Dink replied. “And I guess that dude trying to get aboard, and now the others chasing us… well, I’d say he’s right.”

“They won’t give up,” I said. “And in another mile, they’ll reach good wind and will start gaining on us.”

“So, why ain’t you using that big diesel?” Dink asked. “We can easily outrun ’em. Or callin’ for help? That coast guard boat is almost as fast.”

“They’ve matched our speed, Dad,” Alberto said, studying the screen. “And they’re 2.2 nautical miles behind us.”

“Come left,” I said to Savannah. “Make your heading two-two-five degrees and increase power to the ama motors to one hundred percent.”

She looked up at me, concern and apprehension evident in her expression. “Are you sure? That will be the fastest point of sail for them.”

She understood what I was doing but not why. Our max speed on electric was about eight knots and the Swan’s hull speed was nine. A decent rifleman would have us in range in less than ninety minutes.

If they had a rifle and a decent shooter.

But they’d be within range of the Ma Deuce well before that.

I nodded my head. “I want more distance from land.”

Then I pulled the guy’s phone from my pocket and headed aft. Dink followed me.

“What’re you gonna do?” he asked.

“Hopefully, make a phone call while we’re still within range of the towers,” I replied. “Maybe make him think I’m too cocky, don’t know anything about sailing, and don’t think I need anyone’s help.”

“That guy chasing us?” I nodded and he dug his phone out. “Put him on speaker and get him to say something. I’ll record it.”

I tapped the phone’s screen, then swiped up. Fortunately, the muscle guy didn’t have it locked. I scrolled through his recent call log, mostly girls’ names, until I found one that was listed as CZ—Cameron Zayas.

I hit the redial button and put the phone on speaker.

“Where the hell are you?” a voice asked.

I recognized his “no-accent” accent immediately.

“Me?” I asked. “About two miles ahead of you. Or did you mean the gym rat you sent last night? I imagine he’s either in a jail cell or at the hospital before going there.”

“Who is this?” Zayas demanded, as I watched the lights of Roseau slowly getting smaller.

“Just a guy in an electric boat,” I replied, then dropped my voice an octave. “A guy you don’t want to fuck with. If you break off and go away, I won’t hurt you.”

Laughter came over the phone’s speaker. “I will take great pleasure in killing you,” he replied. “Maybe not your wife and the other girl for a while, though.”

“Like you killed the two mules on Guadeloupe?” I asked. “I know you did it. So do the cops.”

I wanted him angry. People make mistakes when they’re mad, and sooner or later, he’d start to wonder why I hadn’t radioed for help.

He laughed again. “You have no idea who you are dealing with, you fool. Those idiots ripped off my boss, so yeah, I did the cartel a solid, for which I will be generously compensated. You, I will kill for free.”

He’d admitted it.

Dink’s eyes grew wide as he looked over his phone at me.

“Like I said,” I growled, holding the phone close to my lips, “break off now and go away, and I won’t be forced to hurt you.”

He started to say something, but the call was dropped. I checked the screen, noting zero bars, then chucked the phone into the water.

“Ya think that’s gonna make him leave us alone?” Dink asked, after stopping the recording. “Cuz, ya know, it kinda sounded more like a challenge. Just sayin’.”

I turned to face my old fishing guide friend. “He killed two men in Guadeloupe yesterday—just admitted it. And he’s probably killed others too. He’s a smug druggler, Dink, and the product he carries ruins lives and kills even more people. We’re roughly a mile and a half ahead of him and three miles from shore. He’s gaining a mile every hour and if they have a rifle on that boat, we’ll be within range when they’re a quarter mile from us, in a little over an hour.”

Dink looked astern into the darkness. “And in an hour, we’ll be almost ten nautical miles from shore?”

He turned and put a hand on the heavy machine gun. “What’s the range on this thing?”

I got behind the handle grips and moved the sights in the general direction I thought the ketch would be but couldn’t yet see. Then I grabbed the charging handle and racked a round into the chamber.

“I can hit them from here,” I replied, looking over at him. “If I could see them.”

He looked aft again, beyond the small triple ripples Taranis left in the dark water. “You’re setting a trap—luring them farther from shore.”

“Like you said, in one hour, we’ll be ten nautical miles from Dominica,” I replied. “There’s nothing on the radar out there, and the way I see things, we’re just taking out the garbage.” I paused and looked deep into his eyes. “This is what I do, Dink.”

An hour later, just past 0600, when the sun finally broke over the horizon, only the highest peaks of Dominica were still visible, ten miles to our stern. The nearly thirty-mile-long island was nothing more than a bulge on the horizon without detail. Nobody up in those mountains could see us at all.

I told Savannah to hit the thunder button to let the sleeping Cat warm up, stretch, and move her jaw.

The radar showed only one return within twelve miles, aside from the island itself. It was Knot Guilty, now less than a mile behind us, and clearly visible in the early morning sun. We were headed southwest, and she had a southeasterly wind blowing close to twenty knots, right on her beam.

The sea state was big but consistent, with rollers of four to six feet, also on the beam, lifting the Swan up and settling her in the trough without impeding her forward speed.

In these conditions, a casual cruiser would at least take a reef, but Zayas pressed on, overpowered, hell bent on catching us.

I could imagine him at the helm, spray coming over the bow, confident that he’d soon catch us and kill us. But the big Cat was purring quietly below deck, producing energy from its dual alternators to charge the batteries, so they hadn’t dropped much, and we were maintaining eight knots.

Dink was playing chess with Alberto down in his and Hannah’s forward stateroom and Savannah was at the helm, keeping a close eye on the goings-on aboard the ketch using the roof-mounted aft camera.

“Something’s happening,” Savvy said over the intercom.

I raised my binoculars for a look. A man was on the windward side deck, which was high out of the water, carefully making his way forward to the pitching foredeck.

Taranis was taking the same waves on the port side, but with the gyro stabilizer at one hundred percent, there was very little deck roll.

The port ama would dig deep as a roller went under it, then the wave would pass beneath the main hull, lifting both amas almost clear of the water before the starboard one dove deep into the exiting roller and Taranis settled gently into the trough.

The man on the foredeck had a rifle, but at that range, he’d be lucky to hit an aircraft carrier.

“Gun on the foredeck,” Savannah advised calmly over the intercom.

“He’s way out of range,” I replied, as I rose and began inspecting the machine gun again. “It’ll be another ten or fifteen minutes before he could even get a lucky shot.”

I was ready, Savannah was ready, and the M2 was ready.

But I wasn’t going to open fire unless fired upon.

The men on the Swan didn’t deserve the courtesy they didn’t know I was extending, but I had warned him, and I’d have no regrets sending their souls straight to Hell without even so much as a warning shot.

But I had warned them. And I would wait.

Maybe it allowed my subconscious to justify my actions and, in some way, made living with the fact easier. I don’t know—I’m just a dumb grunt, not a psychologist.

“Shot fired!” Savannah exclaimed.

A second later, I heard the crack of a bullet zipping past at super-sonic speed.

The handheld VHF radio crackled, resting in its charger by the docking station.

“You can’t outrun us, you fool,” came Zayas’s voice over it, slightly garbled. “Give up and I promise to kill you painlessly.”

He was transmitting on low power so only we could hear.

I picked up the handheld and opened the slider. “Hey, Babe,” I called forward. “How about engaging the main engine? Give me twenty knots.”

A moment later, the triple ripples merged into a single large wake as Taranis accelerated away from the chasing sailboat. She plowed through the waves, leveling out even more, and creating a very stable platform once she reached cruising speed.

I pushed the button on the side of the radio and held it close to my mouth. “Do you remember what I said about careful planning? You’ve fired on me and my family. Look how far from help you are.”

Placing the radio on the bench, I flicked the M2’s safety off and aimed the sights at the top of Knot Guilty’s main mast. She was nearly a mile away and falling back.

Zayas said something over the radio, but it was drowned out by the heavy chug of the machine gun as I began to send rounds flying downrange.

“And the lie detector said… you are guilty,” I snarled, holding the paddles down.

The deck was barely rolling as I moved the tracers to the sailboat. The big .50 caliber rounds ripped the sails to shreds in an instant, parting some of the rigging, and snapping the mizzen mast.

The boat rolled upright, the wind spilling from her ruined sails as the stream of rounds moved lower, chewing through fiberglass, wood, metal, or anything else in their path.

The man on the foredeck rose, then took a bullet through his upper body that jerked him backward like a puppet, kicked by an angry child, then pitched his body into the water.

Having seen the results of a .50 caliber BMG round firsthand, I had no doubt that he was dead before he hit the water, or even the rail he’d toppled over.

It was done in an instant and I ceased fire, breathing heavy from the adrenaline rush. I’d killed at least two men, probably four.

They weren’t the first, but I’d hoped the meth gang in Apalach were the last. Such was not for me. I let out a long breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, as I stood erect.

There’d be more.

Dink came running out of the salon. “Holy crap!” he shouted, looking astern and seeing the now foundering ketch all shot to pieces.

I turned and glanced inside to see Savannah looking back at me. She knew as well as I did that this was the only possible outcome with people like Zayas and his crew, but I hated making her a part of it.

“Give me a wide turn to starboard,” I ordered. “Slow to ten knots and return to the mooring field. We’re done here.”

Dink turned to face me. “You’re not gonna check for survivors?”

There was a muffled blast, dulled and distorted by distance, like a faraway thunderstorm, but which still caused us to duck reflexively.

We looked aft to see an orange fireball rising from Guilty, turning quickly to rolling black smoke as parts and pieces of the yacht rained down around it.

I looked at Dink, my expression cold and hard. “There aren’t any survivors.”

I remained in the cockpit, watching the fire for several minutes as Dink went back inside. Through the binos, I saw the Swan finally slip beneath the waves and the fire was out.

Some men relished carnage and violence, and felt jubilant in putting down a lesser opponent. Others claimed to be peaceful but were in fact simply harmless. To me, being peaceful meant that a person was capable of extreme violence but chose nonviolence.

If left alone, I was a peaceful man.

I began disassembling the M2 and stand, cleaning the receiver assembly and running a brush rod through the barrel. I worked silently, alone, and Savannah knew to leave me that way for a time.

Zayas had freely admitted to killing two men. Or at the very least, he’d ordered it. The fact that the two men they killed were also criminals meant nothing to me, except that he and his crew had probably done the same to innocent people.

I knew the drugs they transported had.

And he’d threatened to kill us… and more.

I felt no remorse.

An hour later, with Dink on the bow and me controlling Taranis from the flybridge, we picked up the same mooring ball, and I shut down the propulsion systems.

Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was 0700; we’d been gone for two hours.

The anchorage was quiet, and I saw no movement on the beach.

Every boat in the anchorage appeared deserted; people were still asleep. But the distant sound of traffic could be heard from shore.

It was like nothing had happened.

Savannah came up and joined me, sitting quietly on the lounge seat and looking out over the water.

Finally, she turned her head. “They never had a chance.”

She was right. Zayas and his crew had sealed their own fate when they turned and came after us.

“Would they have given us one?” I asked somberly.

She looked down at her hands for a moment. “No, I guess not.”

I let my eyes drift away. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to the Med,” I said with a sigh. “There’d just be more people there.”

I heard a splash and turned to see Jeffery rowing out.

“He’s going to ask questions,” Savannah said. “Where should we say we went?”

I shrugged. “To watch a sunrise at sea?”

He saw us and waved a big hand. “Good mornin’, Cap’n!” he shouted jovially. “Are you and de admiral ready to go into town?”

I glanced over at Savannah. “He seems upbeat. Did you send the text?”

She looked at her phone. “Yes, but it doesn’t say if it was delivered or if he’s read it.”

Together, we went down the steps to the cockpit, then down to the swim platform just as he turned the big rowboat broadside and extended a line.

I took it and tied it off to a cleat.

“Didn’t you get my text?” Savannah asked, as Alberto and Tank came out.

“No, ma’am,” Jeffery replied. “What text?”

She shrugged. “Not important. We just overslept.”

“No trouble,” he replied, with his trademark smile. “I have not’ing else to do until noon.”

“Come aboard,” I offered. “Coffee’s on.”

He followed Alberto and Tank inside, but Savannah paused and turned to me.

“We don’t have to go into town,” she said. “In fact, we can leave now and reprovision in Martinique, or go back north to St. Kitts.”

“Dink and Hannah are flying out of here,” I said. “They already paid for the tickets.”

“So we’ll pay for new ones,” she said. “I’m sure it wouldn’t make any difference to them where they fly home from.”

I knew what she was doing. It’d been over an hour, but the adrenaline was still coursing through my system, making me highly alert, easily set off, and dangerous. When it wore off, I’d be tired, sullen, and dangerous.

“We’ll go,” I said. “But yeah, soon after, I think a change in plans might be in order.”

Dink was pouring coffee for Jeffery, and everyone looked on edge when we walked in. I forced a smile.

“We can probably cut it short,” I said. “Since we’ll be coming back here after Portsmouth anyway. We can stock up then, for the long Atlantic crossing.”

It was a lie, and Savannah probably knew it, but she went along.

“In fact,” she said, “except for fresh fruits and vegetables, we don’t really need much of anything.”

“De farm market is not far,” he said, then turned to Dink. “Will you still need de ride to Portsmouth?”

“No!” Hannah said, a bit too abruptly. “I mean, I think we’re going to cancel that and stay here on the boat.”

“Are you sure?” Dink asked her.

She nodded. “I think we should.”

“Give us three minutes,” Savannah said to Jeffery, then pulled me forward to our stateroom, closing the hatch behind us.

She turned to me and whispered, “I think Hannah’s afraid of who on the island might be helping the cartel.”

“A valid concern,” I replied. “I think it might be safer⁠—”

“No,” she said, cutting me off. “You and I are going ashore. If there’s trouble, it’ll show itself and we’ll know if it’s okay to stay or go.”

“And what?” I asked pessimistically. “Should I beat the crap out of any guy who looks at us for too long? News flash, Babe, that happens anywhere you go.”

“That’s sweet, but you know what I mean. If Zayas got word to someone before they went down, we’ll probably know from peoples’ reactions. Word travels fast on an island this small.”

“We should just get out of here,” I said, as she pulled my T-shirt off over her head. “We can make St. Barts before morning.”

She tossed the old Gaspar’s Revenge shirt on the floor, then went down into the head in the starboard ama, calling over her shoulder, “And then what?”

I looked down at what I was wearing, deemed it suitable, and shrugged. “I want to look at a house there.”

She came up buttoning a clean blue blouse. “A house?”

I followed her back out into the salon.

“Yeah,” I replied. “One with a really big dock.”

The market wasn’t very big, just two small buildings where I figured the stall keepers kept their things, and about ten tables in two long rows between them.

The hilltop was otherwise devoid of trees, shrubs, and basically anything. The ground around the market was dark gray and mostly flat, with clumps of grass here and there, growing in cracks in the lava.

But there was a good selection of produce, and everything seemed very fresh.

We’d left the others aboard Taranis, including Tank, just in case we encountered any trouble, and we’d taken Jeffery’s Scout to avoid having to carry a lot back to the pier. I’d ridden up the hill in the back in deference to Savannah’s hair, and aside from Jeffery pointing out various landmarks and points of interest along the way, there’d been little talk.

When he parked the truck, Savannah got out with a canvas tote bag clutched under one arm, which held more bags. Jeffery and I climbed out and started to follow, but he stopped me as Savannah headed straight for the corn.

“I know dat you left de mooring field,” he said quietly. “And I saw dat big sailboat follow you.”

I met his gaze and lied. “I didn’t notice it.”

“I also heard dat one of de crew from dat sailboat tried to get ’board your vessel very early dis mornin’.”

Word of the man’s arrest had probably reached a lot of peoples’ ears.

“It’s probably best if you just forget all about what you saw and heard,” I replied. “Nothing good will come of it.”

I turned and followed after Savannah, instantly feeling bad about putting Jeffery on the spot like that. He knew something wasn’t right.

When I stepped up beside Savannah, she didn’t react.

“What were you two talking so seriously about?” she asked, without looking up from the two ears of corn in her hands.

Over the years, she’d become much more situationally aware, picking up things without needing to look or listen.

I let my eyes scan the marketplace for anything out of the ordinary or someone being overly observant of us.

Nobody was watching.

“Jeffery knows we left the mooring,” I said quietly, picking up an ear of corn and pretending to examine it. “And he saw the Swan go after us.”

“That’s not good,” she said, just as my phone chirped in my pocket.

I pulled it out and looked at the screen, then at Savvy. “It’s Inspector Alexander.”

“You’d better answer it,” she said then looked up at me. “Nobody knows what happened out there, Jesse. There wasn’t another boat around for ten or eleven nautical miles.”

I glanced all around once more, then tapped the Accept button and held the phone up to my ear. “McDermitt.”

“Yes, Captain,” he replied. “This is Inspector Alexander.”

“What can I do for you, Inspector?” I asked, looking at Savannah.

“Since you and your crew were involved,” he began in a worried tone,” I felt I had to inform you. The man we arrested this morning, Jorge Jiminez… he has escaped custody.”

“What happened?” I asked. “How’d he get away?”

Savannah looked at me with alarm, so I turned the phone and bent closer to her so she could hear. She put her head next to mine.

“He was being transported from hospital to the jail about an hour ago,” Alexander explained. “He somehow got loose from his bindings and overpowered the orderly in the back of the ambulance, forcing the driver to stop.”

“Did anyone get hurt?” I asked, concerned.

“The orderly, a young woman from the Netherlands, was taken to hospital in another ambulance.”

“How bad was she hurt?” Savannah asked.

“She has a dislocated shoulder,” he replied. “Otherwise, she will be fine. There is one thing, though.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“One of my officers, who was with the driver in the front of the ambulance, said the prisoner kept ranting that he was going to kill a dog.”

“Tank?” Savannah asked, looking up at me, worried.

“He did not say a name,” the inspector replied. “Why would he want to hurt your dog?”

“He and another man had a run-in with Tank about a month ago,” I replied. “They were harassing our son and my friends’ two boys on a beach on Grand Turk and Tank chased them away.”

“You should be careful,” he advised. “Until we can locate and recapture Jiminez again.”

“Does he have friends or family in the area?”

“A cousin who lives way up in the mountains,” Alexander replied. “I have already sent two men up there to watch the house in case the prisoner tries to make contact.”

“Thanks for letting us know, Inspector,” I said, then ended the call.

I turned to see Jeffery looking down at his phone, and when he looked up, he had a troubled expression as he started toward us.

I also noticed that most of the shoppers had retreated, as well as many of the stall keepers.

“We must get back to de boat, Cap’n,” Jeffery said as he approached us. “Somet’ing has happened.”

“I know,” I replied. “I just got off the phone with your in-law, Inspector Alexander.”

“Good,” he said, looking around. “Den I won’t have to repeat it.”

“Let’s go back,” Savannah said, as more people turned their backs and walked away. “He might go to Taranis to find Tank.”

As we started to head quickly back to Jeffery’s Scout, I felt a cold chill, as if someone had a rifle’s sights trained on me.

There’d been a dozen or more people milling about when we’d arrived, and now there was nobody in sight.

The realization of what that might mean came to me just as we passed the corner of one of the buildings.

Suddenly, I saw a blur of motion to my right. Then something hit my forehead, snapping my head back.

The power behind the blow bowled me over and dazed me. I went down sideways in a heap.

“Jesse!” Savannah yelled.

I rolled onto my back, my vision starting to go gray.

Half-conscious, my head spinning, I heard a scuffle and Savannah screaming. Clenching my eyes shut, I shook my head slightly. It moved, but felt like there were rocks rattling around inside, and I could feel something warm and wet on the side of my face.

Slowly, I rolled onto my side, moaning as the sound of a struggle continued.

I had to get up. I had to get to Savvy.

I shook my head harder and opened my eyes as I struggled to get up to my hands and knees. My vision was double, and the distance between the images was great.

I closed my non-dominant left eye and looked around, slowly trying to process what I was seeing.

Jeffery lay on the ground beside me, his face a bloody mess, and a four-by-four post on the ground beside him.

I heard a shriek and looked to my left.

The guy who’d come aboard our boat, the man Alexander had called Jorge Jiminez, had an arm around Savannah’s neck from behind and was trying to get his other hand up to lock the choke hold.

I blinked my eyes and they came into focus, just in time to see Savvy drop her weight down, forcing Jiminez to bend to maintain the choke hold.

A part of my mind recognized the move I’d taught her.

Suddenly, she shot straight up, driving her hips forward, and throwing her head back as she did so.

As dazed as I was, I recognized the sickening crunch of bone.

Blood sprayed from the impact of her head on the man’s nose, and she quickly followed the reverse head butt with a hard elbow jab to the man’s midsection as she turned in his grasp.

Air whooshed from Jiminez’s lungs, and he let go of her, doubling over as he tried to get a breath.

As I got to one knee, Savannah spun away from him, continued the turn, and then front-kicked him in his bloody face, straightening him.

I realized the fight was all but over, and as I struggled to my feet, the guy’s lights were already going out.

Savannah was starting to follow through with a spinning back kick when I heard an unearthly growling howl behind me.

Suddenly a large black mass flashed past me at the speed of a freight train going downhill with the throttle stuck wide open.

Tank?

The giant dog went airborne when he was still ten feet away, the sound from his throat growing in ferocity as he lunged at probably thirty miles per hour. To someone unprepared for the impact, he might as well have been a Buick.

When Tank collided with Jiminez, his teeth were bared and all four legs were extended like he was going to run up the side of a wall.

Instead, his jaws clamped down on the man’s shoulder as he began raking his hind claws downward, a predator’s instinctive attack to eviscerate their prey.

He toppled the man to the ground, shaking his head violently.

I staggered a few steps as Savvy called to Tank, “Aus, Tank! Off!”

Stumbling, I moved toward her. She heard my footsteps and turned suddenly, fists raised, ready for another attacker.

“Jesse!” she called out, rushing toward me.

Tank moved away from Jiminez, those usually soft brown eyes locked with laser-like rage on the man’s inert body. His head was down, and his neck and back hair was standing on end, making him appear even more massive. And even more ferocious, his large white canines were bared like a pair of curved mouth knives.

Savannah embraced me firmly. And I held onto her just as tight. My head was still swimming, and I needed the support.

“How’s Jeffery?” I croaked, trying to turn my head.

She let me go and turned. “Tank, watch Jesse.”

Then, with Tank’s attention diverted from the body, she hurried to our guide, who was just beginning to stir.

I wobbled over toward them, grabbing some kind of cloth from a stall’s table, and dropping to one knee beside her.

“Here,” I said, handing it to her.

She gently wiped the blood from his face as he started to come around. Finding the gash, she pressed the cloth to it, then put his hand on top of it.

“Press down hard to stop the bleeding,” she ordered him, then grabbed another piece of cloth from the table and started working on me.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “Can you walk?”

“I’m not leaving Jeffery,” I said, taking the cloth and holding it to where I knew the fence post Jiminez had swung at us had made contact.

“I be okay, Cap’n,” the big Dominican said, struggling to get up to one knee. He put a hand on the four by four, then flung it aside. “Take more dan a fence post and one man to take a Shillingford down.”

Suddenly, Dink came running up to us. “Oh Lord! Are you okay?”

I helped Jeffery to his feet, both of us holding cloths to the right sides of our foreheads.

“What are you doing here?” Savannah asked Dink.

“Tank jumped ship!” he replied. “We was walking on the beach and suddenly he just up and tore off up the hill.”

I looked down at Tank, now sitting docilely at my feet. Then I looked over at Jiminez.

Savannah’s voice came out broken. “Is… is he…”

I took two steps toward the body, already knowing. The way his head was positioned told me his neck was broken. And there was a pool of blood soaking into the sand under his left shoulder. Even if he hadn’t broken his neck with the violent thrashing, Tank had punctured the carotid artery.

Reaching down, I took his collar and pulled him away from the scene, already heading down the hill.

“Come on, Tank,” I said, but I was talking to the others as well.

My head was throbbing as we all climbed into Jeffery’s Scout, with Savvy behind the wheel.

In minutes, we made it to the beach, where Dink had left the dinghy, and she parked on the side of the road.

“We’ll bring you back for the truck in a little while,” Savannah said to Jeffery, as she guided me down the path, the double vision coming and going.

Dink helped Jeffery, who was also stumbling a little.

Tank ran out onto the sand, barking, and making a beeline for the tender. Reaching it, he turned his back to the water, dark brown eyes scanning the beach.

Dink pushed the dinghy out into the water and then helped Tank get aboard as the rest of us climbed in. Savannah started the engine, and with Jeffery and I practically lying on the forward deck, Tank standing between us, she ripped across the water at full throttle.

When we reached the swim platform, I saw Alberto standing in the cockpit, his Remington in both hands.

Twenty minutes after we got aboard, Anabel arrived in a small open boat powered by what looked like a little antique Mercury outboard but sounded like a lawnmower.

By then, Savannah had cleaned both my and Jeffery’s wounds, closing them with a few butterfly stitches, and bandages.

My vision had returned to normal, but my head felt like I’d been hit by a meteor, which I guessed a swinging fence post in the hands of a gym rat would do.

Dink went down to catch Anabel’s line and bring her aboard. Then she rushed into the salon to her man’s side.

“Oh, Jeffery,” she whimpered, hugging him tightly. “Oh, I t’ought I lost you this time. You promised me.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Savannah said. “He got hurt because he was with me and Jesse.” She turned to me. “I should have known something was going on. Did you see how everyone disappeared?”

“We were both a little slow on the uptake,” I admitted.

In hindsight, it’d been comically obvious, and I’d failed to pick up on it. Like something you’d see in a movie, where the bad guy shows up and everyone sees and hears nothing out of fear.

“I am always in de wrong place at just de right time to get myself clobbered,” Jeffery said. “I never look for it. But trouble’s always comin’ my way.”

“That’s been our problem for some time,” Savannah said, then looked down at Tank. “What’s going to happen now? Tank killed that man.”

“De dog?” Jeffery asked, giving me a puzzled expression. “I t’ought it was you who beat dat man up.”

“He knocked both of us out with that post,” I replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever been hit that hard in my life.”

Jeffery gingerly touched his face. “Same here, Cap’n.”

“Savvy had him beaten before Tank even got there,” I said, looking over at my wife. “She can be a real badass when she gets angry.”

“Still,” he said, looking down at Tank. “Dis not so good for him.”

“What do you mean?” Savannah asked, suddenly nervous.

“De wild dog problem on Dominica has grown worse in recent years,” Anabel said. “A law was recently passed saying any dog dat attacks a person must be put down.”

Savannah gasped

Alberto put a protective arm around Tank’s broad shoulders. “He was defending my mom!”

For another half hour, we waited, knowing that eventually, they’d come. Finally, I heard the distant sound of outboards racing at full throttle and looked toward the cruise ship pier. The coast guard boat was coming around it, lights flashing.

“I think we have trouble,” I said. “Let me do the talking.”

Much to my surprise, Sergeant Castillo was alone. When he got closer to Taranis, he slowed the boat and turned off the lights, then idled alongside the swim platform.

Savannah and I met him, and I tied off his bow line while Alberto waited at the top of the steps, an arm draped around Tank.

“May I come aboard?” Castillo asked, stepping up onto the center console’s gunwale.

It was a courtesy question. He didn’t have to ask permission, and I couldn’t refuse.

“Yes,” I replied. “We know why you’re here.”

“It looks like you must have hit your head on somet’ing,” he said, looking at my bandaged forehead as he stepped down.

He followed us up to the cockpit, where Tank was slowly backing away.

Savannah turned to face Castillo. “He didn’t mean to,” she said. “He was only trying to protect me.”

“May we sit down?” the sergeant asked, nodding toward the table, now back in its place once more.

I’d carefully policed all the brass and belt parts while watching Guilty sink, so there was nothing out of place for him to see.

We all sat down, and Castillo looked around at each of us, finally settling on Savannah. “I am afraid I have bad news for you.”

“It was my fault,” Dink said. “I let him off his leash.”

Castillo looked at Dink, then over at me, bewildered. “We know from statements given by witnesses dat you did not kill Jorge Jiminez.”

“My wife wasn’t referring to me,” I said, starting to feel the emotion welling up inside me. “Our dog’s just a puppy; he’s not even a year old yet.”

He looked at me even more confused. “Your dog did not kill him, either. He only attacked a corpse.”

Savannah’s eyes widened. “You mean… I did it? I killed that man?”

I put my arm around her and looked at Castillo. “He blindsided me and Jeffery, knocking us both out with a four-by-four, and was trying to choke Savvy. She only defended herself.”

“Yes, sir,” Castillo replied. “All witnesses said de same t’ing.”

“Wait… witnesses?” Savannah asked. “Everyone there scattered and disappeared before he attacked.”

“People here are afraid of the cartel,” Castillo explained, looking at her with sad eyes. “They are afraid to stand up to them, as you did. But they still see.” He paused for a second. “There will be no charges against you.” He paused again, looking very grave. “But ma’am, you killed a man.”

I could see the emotion welling in her eyes. It wasn’t her first time.

She sniffed once, then shook her hair back defiantly. “I stepped on a roach bug, Sergeant Castillo.”

One corner of his mouth turned up slightly, then he nodded. “And the people of Dominica are in your debt.”

Savannah looked at me for a moment, then Castillo. “Does this mean we are free to leave? There won’t be an investigation or trial?”

“Witnesses said Jiminez struck your husband and my cousin with a large board.” He paused and looked at Jeffery. “And I know how hard dat head is.” Then he turned and faced Savannah. “Everyone said dat he den attacked you. They said you broke his nose with the back of your head, knocked his wind out, then when he was bent over, you kicked him in the face. Is that what happened?”

I nodded. “I was struggling to get up and that’s what I saw.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what happened,” Savannah replied. “I was afraid he’d recover. He was much bigger than me.”

“Jorge Jiminez died from a broken neck, ma’am,” Castillo said. “It is what I put in my preliminary report based on the position of his head when I arrived at the scene. No doubt caused by the kick in the face. I am certain after the autopsy, the doctor will confirm it. All witness statements corroborate yours and your husband’s. Once the doctor confirms it, you are free to leave Dominica any time you wish, or to stay if you like. He should finish in a few hours.”

“What about de cartel associates?” Jeffery asked. “We both know there are many in Dominica who are in deir pocket.”

“Word has spread, cousin,” Castillo replied. “Men are being shamed by their wives because a woman visitor has stood up to the cartel, while they cowered. Even as we speak, the people are pointing the associates out.”

I looked the sergeant in the eye. “Have you ever heard of Armstrong Research?”

He looked at me and grinned.

Even though Castillo said it was safe, I decided we needed a change in location. But where? Taranis turned heads everywhere she went and by virtue of that, she was memorable. I didn’t trust that all the cartel associates on the island were being rounded up, nor did I discount that word would reach the cartel bosses in Venezuela about the American with the big, three-hulled electric boat.

Taranis made it easy for us to disappear, but she also made us easy to find.

In just a few weeks, we were planning to fly Tank back to Miami for protection training, and then we’d be heading across the Atlantic. I knew the Azores would be spectacular, beautiful, and tranquil, with plenty of bays and coves to disappear in, and not very many people.

But what about after that?

The plan was for Warren to bring Tank back when we reached Marbella, Spain, and spend some time with us there, where quiet, tranquil places were fewer and there were far more people.

The law of averages alone dictated that anywhere there were more people, then there would be more morally bankrupt individuals, unethical practices, unscrupulous souls, and those whose sense of right and wrong wouldn’t align with my own.

Who the hell was I to solve all the world’s problems?

I’d dedicated a lifetime to standing up against bullies and other miscreants, or roach bugs, as Savvy had called them.

I wanted my time in the sun.

I deserved it.

Sitting alone on the flybridge as the sun moved closer toward the horizon, I considered our plans. Savannah had brought me lunch, and Alberto brought Tank up for a few minutes, but I think all three of them knew I wanted to think, so I’d been mostly left to my thoughts.

Not so deep in thought that I was oblivious to the goings-on around me. Every movement on every boat, each person walking the beach and what they wore, even the number of dinghies at the pier, were all noted, catalogued, and filed in my mind.

Threat assessment—zero.

The adrenaline had run its course, and as predicted, I was tired, spent, and thoroughly exhausted. I’d been awake for sixteen hours, killed at least two men, and watched my wife kill a third.

I didn’t have any idea how many of Zayas’s crew were aboard the Guilty, so I might easily have killed more.

I didn’t really care.

They were the type who were always looking for trouble. Well, this time they’d found it in spades. I’d lured them into a trap and crushed them into a watery grave in the deep abyss. They’d never be seen again, and I doubted anyone would miss them.

It wasn’t the first time I’d intentionally trapped some turd fondler in a no-win situation.

Each of us is responsible for our own actions, and choosing to live outside the law would always lead to one day running up against someone more dangerous, crazier—someone who was bigger, better, stronger, or smarter.

When that happened, it was nobody else’s fault. Those men chose a life of crime, and they’d picked the wrong boat to go after. It was that simple.

I heard footsteps on the stairs and turned to see Savannah coming up with Tank right beside her. He’d stayed next to her pretty much since we’d returned to Taranis.

She’d cared for him and fed him, mothering him like a child, and calming him during a particularly nasty storm. I couldn’t imagine what went through his canine brain when he’d heard her screams from all the way down on the beach

That had to have been what had driven him. How else could he have known we were in danger?

“Hey,” Savannah said softly, waving a hand demurely.

“Are you alright?” I asked. “I’m sorry. I’ve been ignoring you when you need support.”

She shrugged and sat down on the lounge seat. “You’ve been ignoring everyone. But that’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

Tank laid his big head on my knee, and I softly stroked it as he looked up at me with warm eyes.

“I thought… we were going to lose him,” Savannah said, her voice catching in her throat a little. “And regardless of how big he is, he’s just a puppy.”

“He shouldn’t have been exposed to what went down any more than you or Alberto,” I said, then took her hand in mine. “But he was, and like us, he rose to meet it.”

“Evil is out there, Jesse,” she said, softly putting her other hand on the side of my forehead. “We can’t hide and pretend it isn’t there. Yes, we killed today. But like you always say, those men chose their path long ago and their end was inevitable.”

Tank lifted his head and looked out over the bay, as though he could hear something far out in the Caribbean.

He chuffed.

I looked at him, then at my wife, and I grinned. “Roach bugs, huh?”

Savannah smiled.

“We’re not going to the Med,” I said, making my mind up then and there. “And Tank’s not going back to school.”

The End

I really had to dig deep in my memories from the early 1990s to adequately describe the sights and feelings of Dominica. A friend and I flew to Martinique to sail his father’s boat back to Florida in late winter in 1992 or 1993. We spent almost a week in Martinique, getting the boat ready before sailing north, and promptly ducking in behind Dominica ahead of a storm, then deciding to take a few days there, to see some of the sights, including Boiling Lake, before sailing north, then west. What an adventure that was. But one for another day.

As always, I never know where my stories will take me. I, personally, want to climb Mount Olympus, just like Jesse. But I don’t think it’ll be in time for the next book, and I’ve never been to Greece. Maybe it will happen before I start writing that thirtieth Jesse story, but it looks like he knows me better than I know myself.

Besides, the guys still have a submarine to raise.

This is my fourth and final novel for 2024, and I can promise you this; I won’t schedule myself so tightly again. It seemed so easy when I created the master schedule nearly a year ago, with the intent of writing and publishing four novels in one year. We hit all the marks and deadlines, but aside from a week off in the spring and another in the fall, I didn’t allow myself any time off, which put undue strain on my family.

Thank you, Greta, for being so supportive throughout this year, and the last twenty-three before this. I know it’s not been easy and that’s all on me. Now, let’s pack for that river cruise.

Thanks also to our kids and grandkids. I promise I’m still here.

Much appreciation to my technical advisors, Dana Vihlen, Alan Fader, Mike Ramsey, Katy McKnight, Deg Priest, Jason Hebert, Drew Mutch, and Ron Ramey, who provided valuable feedback on the manuscript’s first draft.

Thanks also to my editor, Marsha Zinberg, my proofreader, Donna Rich, and my narrator, Nick Sullivan, who helped me mold the words to the story I wanted to tell.

I haven’t written anything since finishing this story, and that’s by design. I wanted to take some time off after this one, and though the next two books are planned out, no dates have been entered in my schedule to start them. But I’m not sure how long I can quell the voices in my head.

Wayne