Clear and Present Danger

something that you noticed much on the Columbia River bar, where the enemy was still wind and wave. The same enemies lived in the Gulf of Mexico, but added to them was a new one. Drugs. Drugs were not something that Wegener thought a great deal about. For him drugs were something a doctor prescribed, that you took in accordance with the directions on the bottle until they were gone, and then you tossed the bottle. When Wegener wanted to alter his mental state, he did so in the traditional seaman's way - beer or hard liquor - though he found himself doing so less now that he was approaching fifty. He'd always been afraid of needles - every man has his private dread - and the idea that people would voluntarily stick needles into their arms had always amazed him. The idea of sniffing a white powder into one's nose - well, that was just too much to believe. His attitude wasn't so much naivete as a reflection of the age in which he'd grown up. He knew that the problem was real. Like everyone else in uniform, every few months he had to provide a urine sample to prove that he was not using 'controlled substances.' Something that the younger crewmen accepted as a matter of course, it was a source of annoyance and insult to people of his age group.

The people who ran the drugs were his more immediate concern, but the most immediate of all was a blip on his radar screen.

They were a hundred miles off the Mexican coast, far from home. And the Rhodes was overdue. The owner had called in several days earlier, saying that he was staying out a couple of days extra... but his business partner had found that odd, and called the local Coast Guard office. Further investigation had determined that the owner, a wealthy businessman, rarely went more than three hours offshore. The Rhodes cruised at fifteen knots.

The yacht was sixty-two-feet long, big enough that you'd want a few people to help you sail it... but small enough that real master's papers were not required by law. The big motor-yacht had accommodation for fifteen, plus two crewmen, and was worth a couple of million dollars. The owner, a real-estate developer with his own little empire outside Mobile, was new to the sea, and a cautious sailor. That made him smart, Wegener thought. Too smart to stray this far offshore. He knew his limitations, which was rare in the yachting community, especially the richer segment. He'd gone south two weeks earlier, tracing the coast and making a few stops, but he was late coming back, and he'd missed a business meeting. His partner said that he would not have missed it unnecessarily. A routine air patrol had spotted the yacht the day before, but not tried to contact it. The district commander had decided that something smelled about this one. Panache was the closest cutter and Wegener got the call.

'Sixteen thousand yards. Course zero-seven-one,' Chief Oreza reported from the radar plot. 'Speed twelve. He ain't heading for Mobile, Cap'n.'

'Fog's going to burn off in another hour, maybe hour and a half,' Wegener decided. 'Let's close in now. Mr. O'Neil, all ahead full. Intercept course, Chief?'

'One- six-five, sir.'

'That's your course. If the fog holds, we'll adjust when we get within two or three miles and come up dead astern.'

Ensign O'Neil gave the proper rudder orders. Wegener went to the chart table.

'Where do you figure he's headed, Portagee?'

The chief quartermaster projected the course, which appeared to go nowhere in particular. 'He's on his most economical speed setting... not any port on the Gulf, I'll bet.' The captain picked up a pair of dividers and started walking them across the chart.

'That yacht has bunkerage for...' Wegener frowned. 'Let's say he topped off at the last port. He can get to the Bahamas easily enough. Refill there, and then anyplace he wants to go on the East Coast.'

'Cowboys,' O'Neil opined. 'First one in a long time.'

'Why do you think that?'

'Sir, if I owned a boat that big, I sure wouldn't run it through fog with no radar. His isn't operating.'

'I hope you're wrong, son,' the captain said. 'How long since the last one, Chief?'

'Five years? Maybe more. I thought that sort of thing was all behind us.'

'We'll know in an hour.' Wegener turned to look at the fog again. Visibility was under two hundred yards. Next he looked into the hooded radar display. The yacht was the closest target. He thought for a minute, then nipped the set from active to standby. Intelligence reports said that druggies now had ESM gear to detect radar transmissions.

'We'll flip it back on when we get within, oh, say, four miles or so.'

'Aye, Cap'n,' the youngster nodded.

Wegener settled in his leather chair and extracted the pipe from his shirt. He found himself filling it less and less now, but it was part of an image he'd built. A few minutes later the bridge watch had settled down to normal. In keeping with tradition, the captain came topside to handle two hours of the morning watch - the one with the youngest junior officer of the watch - but O'Neil was a bright young kid and didn't need all that much supervision, at least not with Oreza around. 'Portagee' Oreza was the son of a Gloucester fisherman and had a reputation approaching his captain's. With three tours at the Coast Guard Academy, he'd helped educate a whole generation of officers, just as Wegener had once specialized in bringing enlisted men along.

Oreza was also a man who understood the importance of a good cup of coffee, and one thing about coming to the bridge when Portagee was around was that you were guaranteed a cup of his personal brew. It came right on time, served in the special mug the Coast Guard uses, shaped almost like a vase, wide at the rubber-coated bottom, and narrowed down near the top to prevent tipping and spillage. Designed for use on small patrol craft, it was also useful on Panache , which had a lively ride. Wegener hardly noticed.

'Thanks, Chief,' the captain said as he took the cup.

'I figure an hour.'

' 'Bout right,' Wegener agreed. 'We'll go to battle stations at zero-seven-forty. Who's on the duty boat section?'

'Mr. Wilcox. Kramer, Abel, Dowd, and Obrecki.'

'Obrecki done this yet?'

'Farm boy. He knows how to use a gun, sir. Riley checked him out.'

'Have Riley replace Kramer.'

'Anything wrong, sir?'

'Something feels funny about this one,' Wegener said.

'Probably just a busted radio. There hasn't been one of those since - jeez, I don't even remember when that was, but, yeah. Call Riley up here?'

The captain nodded. Oreza made the call, and Riley appeared two minutes later. The two chiefs and the captain conferred out on the bridge wing. It only took a minute by Ensign O'Neil's watch. The young officer thought it very odd that his captain seemed to trust and confide in his chiefs more than his wardroom, but mustang officers had their own ways.

Panache rumbled through the waves at full speed. She was rated at twenty-three knots, and though she'd made just over twenty-five a few times, that was in light-ship conditions, with a newly painted bottom on flat seas. Even with the turbochargers pounding air into the diesels, top speed now was just over twenty-two knots. It made for a hard ride. The bridge crew compensated for this by standing with their feet a good distance apart, and in O'Neil's case by walking around as much as possible. Condensation from the fog cluttered up the bridge windows. The young officer flipped on the wipers. Back out on the bridge wing, he stared out into the fog. He didn't like traveling without radar. O'Neil listened, but heard nothing more than the muted rumblings of Panache 's own engines. Fog did that. Like a wet shroud, it took away your vision and absorbed sound. He listened for another minute, but in addition to the diesels, there was only the whisper of the cutter's hull passing through the water. He looked aft just before going back into the wheelhouse. The cutter's white paint job would help her disappear from view.

'No foghorns out there. Sun's burning through,' he announced. The captain nodded.

'Less than an hour until it's gone. Gonna be a warm one. Weather forecast in yet?'

'Storms tonight, sir. The line that went through Dallas around midnight. Did some damage. Couple of tornadoes clobbered a trailer park.'

Wegener shook his head. 'You know, there must be something about trailers that attract the damned things...' He stood and walked to the radar. 'Ready, Chief?'

'Yes, sir.'