He remained that way until a deep cold began to seep into his muscles, telling him it was time to head back. Lifting his head for a deep draught of air before starting the long swim home, he was surprised to see a small pleasure yacht silhouetted against the sky, a darkened cabin cruiser, perhaps forty feet in length. She had neither running lights nor navigation lights illuminated, her motors were silent; she was drifting with the current just like Hawke, treading water some five hundred yards off her port beam.
Curious.
He swam towards her, instinctively pulling himself slowly and quietly through the waves. As he drew closer, he saw that she was one of those luxury picnic boats. They were built along the lines of a Maine lobster boat, and if you had a million dollars burning a hole in your pocket, she was yours for the asking. He’d swum to within fifty yards of her when he saw someone switch on a flashlight down below. The curtains were not drawn in the main cabin, and he watched the yellow glow bobbing about, moving forward towards the bow.
The moving flashlight gave him a fairly good mental picture of the layout below. A salon amidships and a small v-berth stateroom all the way forward. He’d guess a complete power failure except most boats of this size were equipped with gensets, diesel or gasoline powered generators. So what was this strange duck doing floating around out here in the dark in one of the east coast’s major shipping lanes?
He paddled quietly around to her stern. There was just enough ambient light from the fingernail moon and few visible stars to make out her name and hailing port, emblazoned in gold leaf on her dark blue transom.
RUNNING TIDE Seal Harbor, Maine
He swam up to the swim platform at the stern, grasping it with both hands, trying to decide whether to hail the owner and see if he could offer assistance or slip aboard quietly. The main cabin was dark once more. Whoever was down there had either extinguished the flashlight, or taken it forward out of sight. That’s when he saw the small electric motor jury-rigged on a swivel mount to the swim platform. Twenty horsepower. A tiller for steering. A man standing on the platform had enough power to maneuver the forty-footer anywhere he wanted without making a sound.
Slip aboard quietly.
He timed the waves slapping under the boarding platform at the stern, waiting for one to lift the boat, waiting for the precise moment when he would swing his weight aboard. With any luck, the rising water would disguise the additional weight suddenly added to the stern. Go! Heaving himself up, he sat on the outer edge of the platform, legs dangling in the water, waiting to slide back into the water instantly if anyone took notice of his arrival. After a minute, he got to his feet, slipped over the transom, and stood on the aft deck looking forward.
The door to the enclosed pilothouse was hanging ajar. He crossed the teak deck and stepped inside, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness.
To his right, seated behind the wheel at the helm seat, the figure of a large man in a dark watch cap facing straight ahead, not moving. Asleep? Drugged? Alex edged cautiously forward, waiting for the man to swing around with a gun leveled at him. Why was he so paranoid? Ah, right, someone was trying to kill him. When the man made no move to turn and see who was approaching, Alex reached out and put his hand on the man’s shoulder.
The man, dressed in yellow foul-weather gear, slumped backward, and his head suddenly fell back upon the seat cushion with a soft thunk. His mouth gaped in a rictus of death, his eyes were a faint dull gleam under the lowered lids, and the skin of his collapsed cheeks was bluish-white. There was a neat black hole in the middle of his forehead, powder burns around the entrance wound; the coagulated blood puddled in his sunken eyesockets was black in the moonlight.
There was a gun lying on the seat beside him.
He saw that it was a Browning nine, the sidearm favored by the U.S. Army and also a number of American police forces. He patted him down, felt a bulge in a breast pocket under the slicker, reached inside and pulled out an alligator wallet. The man was Alan Outer-bridge, age fifty-five, according to his Maine driver’s license. Lived at some place called The Pines on Seal Point, Maine. This was, had been, his Hinckley Talaria 44. And Mr. Outer-bridge was now very dead.
Roughly a thousand dollars cash was in the wallet, credit cards, a picture of a young girl. He put the back of his hand against the man’s cheek. Guessing, he placed the time of death about two hours earlier.
Hawke turned toward the companionway. The man down below with the flashlight had hijacked this yacht at gunpoint, then murdered the owner and not for his money. Whatever brought the killer to Nantucket, it wasn’t robbery. And it wasn’t tourism. There was a strong possibility that the blood of Deirdre Slade and her two children was on his hands.
Alex ducked out through the pilothouse door and quickly retraced his steps back to the transom. He ejected the mag in the grip of the Browning, saw that it was full of hollow-points, reinserted it, and jacked a fresh cartridge into the chamber. He was counting on the wind to carry the sounds away, still, he kept his eye on the pilothouse. If someone should suddenly appear there, Hawke now had a rough idea who it might be, and he would shoot that man without a moment’s hesitation.
He slipped inside once again and had almost reached the companionway leading below when the flashlight went on. Hawke froze, crouched down beside the dead man, the gun extended at the end of his right arm, waiting for the silhouetted figure in the opening. He heard a door slam and a muttered curse. All quiet, he moved forward again, feeling his way down the companionway.
The main cabin was dark, with shadowy outlines of furniture and a banquette to port. He padded silently down the four steps leading to the salon, ready to shoot anything that moved, and stopped dead in his tracks. There was a man lying on the floor, face down. The upper half of his body disappeared through an engine room hatch in the cabin sole.
There was the sound and flash of sparks and more cursing from the prone man. A MAC-10 machine gun lay on the floor beside him. Hawke eased himself down to a sitting position on the top step, a good ten feet from the prone figure, and gave the thing a few moments. No noise coming from the forward cabin or the closed head to starboard. One still alive down below anyway, Mr. Outer-bridge having departed this mortal coil.
“Jara!” the man halfway into the hold said, Arabic for shit, Hawke thought.
“Deputy Savalas, I presume,” Hawke said, by way of breaking the ice. “Good shooting.”
“What? Who—”
“Engine trouble, old boy? Boats are a bloody bitch, aren’t they? If it’s not one damn thing, it’s another.”
“Shit!”
The startled young man’s head came up too quickly and he banged it smartly on the underside of the metal deck. He craned around, eyes wide.
“You!” he said, eyeing Hawke and rolling towards the MAC-10.
Hawke pulled the Browning’s trigger and a bullet tore into the expensive cherry woodwork inches above the man’s head. The crack of the nine was deafening inside the small cabin. The man flattened once again on the deck.
“Itchy trigger finger, Nikos,” Hawke said, “Sorry. Lifelong problem. Slide that machine gun over here. Easy. Now, then, you can sit up and toss me that flashlight like a good little scout.”
Deputy Nikos Savalas shoved the automatic weapon in Hawke’s direction, then sat up, sullenly rubbing the back of his head. He pitched the flashlight. Hawke caught the torch and set it beside him on the top step, aimed at Savalas.
“I see you’ve shaved off your moustache, Deputy,” he said.
The deputy was out of uniform, wearing torn blue jeans and a loose-fitting black rubber slicker. He glared at Hawke who was sitting quietly at the top of the steps, elbow on one knee, chin propped in the upraised palm of his left hand, smiling. He held the gun in his other hand, loosely, but ready.
“How did you know—” he said.
“It was you? Saw the DHYC burgee up on the bow. Dark Harbor Yacht Club. Wasn’t completely sure until I saw the ‘DHPD’ on the butt of your service Browning. I caught a whiff of you when it took you three times to toss me that line at the Slade’s dock. A kid from the Maine coast who doesn’t coil a line prior to tossing it? And who else had access to my airplane all night? You cut those aileron cables all by yourself, did you?”
