SeaGhost

Chapter 1

The light from a three-quarter moon left a blue-white trail on the black water to starboard. A mile ahead on the right, sodium vapor lights floated on the shoreline like yellow polka dots. A foggy haze obscured similar lamps on the coast to the left. Low-lying clouds hid the stars from the western horizon to almost directly overhead. Black on black.

The Scarab gurgled along, piercing the bay and the blackness at less than ten knots, but McCory could feel the subdued vibration of the 350-cubic-inch V-8 engines in the steering wheel. A light breeze plucked at his shirt sleeves.

White light of a marker buoy a quarter mile to starboard.

“Jesus, Mac. Turn on the running lights.”

“And have somebody spot us?”

“And get out of here,” Daimler told him. “We get caught, it’s my ass.”

“And mine.”

“My boat. They’ll confiscate it, and I paid sixty grand, damn it!”

“Not so loud, Ted. Sound carries.”

“Shit! Look… ”

The night filled suddenly with halogen light off the port side, starkly bright. McCory was on stage again, high school production of The Man Who Came to Dinner.

A bullhorn blared. “This is the U.S. Navy gunboat Antelope. You are in restricted waters. Heave to, and prepare to be boar… ”

McCory slammed his palm at the twin throttles, and the Scarab surged forward, leaped to the plane, and shot out of the floodlight.

“Mac! Goddamn it, Mac! Shut her down!”

He spun the wheel slightly and rolled into a broad turn to the right as the searchlight chased him, missing, going far to the left.

The instrument panel was unlit, but McCory figured he had forty knots by the time he swung back to the left. The engines screamed, rising close to maximum revolutions. The coast on the starboard was much closer.

The man controlling the searchlight would be looking for a wake.

Whipping his head around, he saw the running lights of the gunboat illuminate as it rose to the chase. Sneaky bastard had come up on him unlit in the darkness of the fog. Probably had him on radar.

Searchlight sweeping back, probing.

Forty-five knots? The windstream tore at his shirt sleeves.

“Goddamn it, Mac!”

“We can outrun him!” McCory had to shout over the scream of the wind.

“Not in here!”

The gunboat was behind them to port and had the mile-wide mouth of Carr Bay covered. The bay would narrow rapidly on him from here on in. Already, the dim lights in the mist on the left coastline were becoming sharper.

Daimler was right.

A siren started to scream from the Antelope.

“They’ll sink my boat!” Daimler yelled. He was getting panicky.

Fifty knots? The Scarab could do it.

The gunboat could only make a bit over forty knots, but it had time and space and angle for advantages. Probably calling his friends on the radio, too.

McCory reached below the helmsman’s seat, found his blue plastic bag, and pulled it up onto his lap. Probing with his left hand, he located a fragmentation grenade, removed it, and rezipped the bag.

He pulled the pin and tossed it overboard.

The searchlight swung close, passing just off the port side. The coast was about a quarter mile off the starboard bow. Shallow waters ahead.

McCory turned the helm left as soon as the light went behind him.

Tapping Daimler on the right shoulder with his left hand, he held the grenade close enough for him to see.

Daimler’s face was not visible, but McCory heard the man groan.

“Hey, Ted!” McCory called. “What say we get out right here?”

“You son of a bitch! Sixty thousand bucks!”

The searchlight found the boat’s wake and raced toward them.

McCory dropped the grenade.

It bounced once, then rolled aft down the incline of the deck.

He scrambled out of his seat listening to Daimler’s screams as the boat’s owner did his own scrambling. Hanging on tight to his plastic tote, McCory pulled himself up to the gunwale, rolled over it, and hit the bay on his back.

At sixty miles per hour, he skipped like a flat stone six times before the water caught his leg, flipped him over, and dragged him down.

When it came, the concussion hurt his ears.