SeaGhost

Chapter 4

Ponce de Leon Inlet’s marker buoys were clearly visible in the moonless night. The moon had dipped below the horizon an hour earlier. A pale glimmer of dawn was cracking the eastern horizon, but McCory only saw it in the rearview screen on the instrument panel.

McCory saw no other marine traffic, either entering or leaving the Intracoastal Waterway. There were a few night-lights visible in Ponce Inlet, on the northern point.

He scanned the instrument panel, having become accustomed to the placement of its blue lettering, identifying the readouts — and its red, green, orange, and yellow numbers and lines — the indicators of activity. Then he retarded the throttles until the readout showed him thirty knots. Once he had cleared the marker, he turned the wheel and headed south along the eastern side of the waterway. Within minutes, the lights of New Smyrna Beach appeared on his right oblique, somewhat diminished by the tinting of the windscreen.

McCory felt invisible. The invisible man, as well as boat. The SeaGhost made the waterway seem a few miles wider than it actually was.

As he passed New Smyrna Beach, a large cruiser, running lights ablaze, left port and made a wide turn to the north. McCory instinctively gave it room, easing the helm a few points to the left. The cruiser passed him half a mile away, and there was no indication that he had been spotted.

Three miles further south, he saw the lighted public pier of Edgewater, then shortly after that, the dock lights of his own place, Marina Kathleen. McCory had never known his mother, but he thought Devlin would have approved of using her name again.

He continued on a southerly heading for another five miles, then spun the helm to starboard, crossed the waterway, and closed in on the mainland. Captain John Barley’s Marine Refitters was dark except for a tall, hooded lamp in the graveled yard near the office. It was a chaotic place of five acres, with shanties, sheds, and cradled boats spotted where they had been needed at the time. There were eight dry docks lined up on the shore, three of them enclosed by gargantuan structures built of wood that had lost its paint years before. The wind and water and salt had eroded every board and every plank within the chain link boundaries of Barley’s to a silver gray that gleamed in the night. John Barley didn’t care how it looked. He was seventy-four years old. He worked when he felt like working, and if one of his sheds collapsed, he figured he would not be needing it again.

McCory had leased one of Barley’s enclosed dry docks when he took on the hull-refinishing of Pamela Endicott’s Mimosa. She was fifty-two feet in length, four feet more than he could comfortably get out of the water at Marina Kathleen. The rented dock was empty now, but McCory still had an active lease because John Barley would not lease for less than a year, a point of honor, and income, for him. He wanted the hundred bucks a month. At any other place on the East coast, McCory would have paid twelve hundred for a two-week rental.

With the SeaGhost’s engines barely whispering and still in gear, McCory nudged the bow up against the closed door of the dock, slipped out of his seat, and hurried back to open the hatchway. The original drawings of the SeaGhost had had a hatch from the cabin to the bow, but some engineering jerk had eliminated it.

With the hatch lifted, the predawn air on the water was cool. It refreshed him after the long trip and made him feel more positive about what he had done. Gripping the edge of the hatchway, McCory worked his way around the raised door and pulled himself onto the top of the cabin. The surface was slick under his bare feet, and he was cautious as he moved forward and slid down over the windshield onto the steeply inclined foredeck. He sat down, dangled his legs off the bow, and searched the wooden face of the door for its handle. When he found it, he tugged upward.

The door hardware had been stiff when he first rented the dock, but McCory had reconditioned it, and now the sectioned door panels rose easily and silently. As he raised the lower edge of it above his head, the SeaGhost obediently inched forward. Water dripped from the door, splattering McCory and the deck.

McCory rose to his feet and stayed with the door, hanging onto it, and walked backward up onto the cabin and back over the cargo hatch until he reached the stern, where he finally let go of the door, shoving it downward.

He slid his way back to the hatchway and inside but not before the SeaGhost traveled the full eighty-foot distance of the slip and banged into the dock head.

As he killed the engines, he thought about motorizing the boat house door and installing a remote control. It might preclude his killing himself or severely denting the boat, either event undesirable.

After securing all of the SeaGhost’s electronic systems, he found a coiled line in the cross-corridor and used it to rope a stanchion on the dock and pull the boat close enough to step ashore. It took several tries, since he was working in the dark.

Making his way around timbers and braces, McCory reached the front of the building and found the switchbox. He turned on several overhead lights.

It took a couple of minutes for his eyes to adjust to the radiance.

It was a utilitarian structure. A twenty-foot wide dock head crossed the front of the building, supporting workbenches, heavy tools and a latrine stuck in one corner. Overhead, a steel-legged rack contained the winches that lifted canvas slings that went under a hull. Once a boat was elevated above water level, the side docks could be cranked out under it. Everything was old. Most planks had splintered, and some had large chunks broken out of them. Any moving surface requiring grease was coated with both grease and dirt. The casings, rods, drive shafts, and bolts of ancient machinery were tinged with rust. The tops of wooden beams and steel I-bars had once been layered with dust, but McCory had washed it out before refinishing the Mimosa’s hull two months before.

There wasn’t a pane of glass left intact in a window, and fortunately, McCory had simply boarded them over with plywood. It made the interior private.

He went back to the side dock and rigged several spring lines to secure the boat, then walked out to the end and made sure the door was locked in its down position.

Then he walked back to the front of the building and lifted the telephone from its wall mount. It was connected to the same number as the Marina Kathleen.

He dialed.

“Mmmpf?”

“Good morning, Ginger.”

“Mmmpf! You mmmpf!”

“Me?”

“Bastard!”

“It’s 5:10 in the morning. Beautiful day. You should be getting up, anyway.”

“Your memory is fading, Kevin. I don’t get up until noon,” she said, and hung up.

He dialed again.

She let it ring three times before picking up.

“I need a ride, hon.”

“Where are you?”

“You know John Barley’s Refitters?”

“That’s only five or six miles. Walk it.”

“I don’t have any shoes.”

“Why?”

“It’s a long story.”

“If I get out of this bed, you have to tell it to me.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Good-bye.”

“I’ll tell you.”

“Give me ten minutes. Oh, hell no! Give me twenty minutes.”

Rick Chambers smiled at the waitress, who was too tired to notice. She placed the coffee cup in front of him with a weary clatter and turned away, stifling a yawn.

Chambers didn’t like being ignored, especially by women. He almost said something to her, then thought better of it.

He was on an operation, and attention was the last thing he needed, even in an airport restaurant.

There hadn’t been many interesting operations in the last few years. Sometimes, it seemed like he’d become nothing more than an errand boy. He didn’t like the feeling, though the salary and the free time were acceptable.

And he wasn’t a boy. Richard Chambers was fifty-one years old. He’d done his twenty years as a Special Forces trooper, rising to master sergeant, after a couple of demotions, before his retirement. If he cared about proving his competency in the Green Berets, he could point to a stack of blue, flat, cardboard boxes somewhere in his mother’s house that contained a Distinguished Service Medal, a couple of Silver Stars, three Bronze Stars, two Army Commendation Medals, four Purple Hearts, and a few other trinkets with his name engraved on the backs.

He didn’t much care about the jewelry anymore. A Silver Star didn’t buy zilch. Greenbacks were better. He had become a little complacent, enjoying the restaurants around D.C. a bit more than he should have, lolling around his Arlington Heights condominium, taking long weekends at AMDI’s hospitality condo in Palm Springs.

There were maybe fifteen pounds around his waist that shouldn’t be there. Otherwise, he was still fit enough. The shoulders and neck were as thick, hard, and strong as ever. His hair was a trifle longer than in his military days but still maintained in a brush cut. His cheeks and jaw were slightly padded with new flesh, but the hard angles of his cheekbones and the somewhat sunken sockets gave his hazel eyes a menacing appearance. His nose had been broken a couple of times and wasn’t quite lined up with the rest of his face. On the left side of his neck was a thin, angry white scar, the result of a 7.62 round that had passed a little close.

Chambers wore thousand-dollar suits that were tailored to his six-four, 240-pound frame. This morning’s suit was a silver-gray with thin, dark red stripes, and as customary, he didn’t wear a tie. On the table beside his plate — wiped clean except for the sprig of parsley — was a thin leather portfolio. It contained all of the paperwork that Malgard had given him. There wasn’t much there.

He had sent his carryon through Delta’s baggage check, because he didn’t want the magnetometer sounding off when he entered the concourse.

Checking the time on the stainless steel Rolex strapped to his wrist, Chambers tossed a couple of bills on the table, stood up, and strolled back into the terminal. He never gave anyone the impression that he was in a hurry or late for an appointment. He sauntered his way down the concourse to his gate in the Delta Airlines section, leaned against a post, and studied the Boeing 737 parked on the ramp.

When the girl at the counter called the flight and the people clambered out of their chairs and scrambled for a place in line, Chambers remained where he was. He didn’t like fighting mobs. Besides, he had reserved a first-class ticket. Window seat. He always got a window seat.

The line dwindled down, and Chambers joined the end of it, passed down the skyway, and entered the aircraft. He pulled his ticket and boarding pass from the inside jacket pocket and handed it to the girl.

“Good morning, sir. Off to Tallahassee?”

“Right.” Connecting to Pensacola. He hadn’t been down that way in years.

“Fine, sir.” Glancing at the boarding pass, she said, “You’re in row three, on the right, aisle seat.”

“No.”

“Sir?”

“I reserved a window seat.”

She checked the ticket, then the boarding pass. “Oh, I believe there’s been a mistake. The window seat’s been taken.”

“Then correct it.”

“Sir?”

“Correct your mistake.”

She studied his face for a moment, then said, “Just a moment, sir. I’ll see what I can do.”

Rick Chambers always got his way.

The Antelope was holding position some two miles off the western coast of the bay. Nearby, a salvage barge had been anchored, and a hill of fiberglass chunks was slowly growing on its deck. The two V-8 engines and part of an outdrive from the once-proud Scarab were lashed down near the gunwale.

Several small boats and launches chugged about. Sailors in blue work uniforms scampered about the decks or leaned against railings, grabbing a smoke. Infrequently, a diver’s head popped free of the water’s surface.

The gunboat was not large enough to take a helicopter, and James Monahan was lowered to the aft deck by the helicopter’s winch. He was met by a chief petty officer and led forward to the bridge.

He heard a triumphant shout and looked over the railing. A scuba diver was treading water, holding aloft a bottle of Chivas Regal. Treasure from the deep.

The sun had come up hot and gotten hotter. The armpits of Monahan’s khakis were already stained after the long flight from Norfolk in the back of the Sea Knight.

The CPO rapped on the door of the captain’s quarters aft of the bridge, then opened the door for him. He found Commander Martin Holloway and Admiral Aaron Stein inside. Holloway was bleary-eyed and a little bedraggled and, like Monahan, young for his rank. Stein was in whites, the space above his left breast pocket rainbowed with ribbons picked up in Vietnam and Grenada. He was of medium build but sported a beginning paunch.

“Come in, Commander,” Stein said.

“Thank you, sir.” He had met Stein several times before but shook hands with Holloway for the first time.

In the cramped cabin, the admiral had commandeered the sole chair at a built-in desk, and Holloway and Monahan sat on the bunk.

“Bing tells me you’re coordinating the search effort,” Stein said.

“Yes, sir. I thought I’d better take a look at the scene here, then run by your base and look around Pier Nine.”

“Unfortunately, you’re not going to see much at Pier Nine,” the admiral told him. “The bastards even helped themselves to two of our three spare engines. Plus a full stock of replacement parts.”

“Spare engines?”

Stein nodded. “Those rotaries aren’t common, of course. We have, or had, the only ones in existence, as far as I know. Somebody thought this thing out.”

“Somebody who is planning to use those boats, rather than just copy them,” Holloway suggested.

“Anything out of Walter Reed?” Stein asked.

The body found in the water off Pier Nine had been transferred to Walter Reed Army Hospital for autopsy.

“Definitely Middle Eastern,” Monahan said, “from the word I got around ten o’clock. His head was caved in, and the forensics people seem to think he was run over by a boat. He died by drowning.”

“Shit. Well, those stealth boats would be useful in the Persian Gulf. With their capability against oil tankers and even small warships, damned nearly any nation could be held hostage.”

“I haven’t even seen them,” Holloway said. “May I ask why we had them?”

“Sure, Commander,” the admiral said. “When we got tied up in Vietnam, we found out we didn’t have anything in inventory that was suitable for coastal and river fighting. We ended up using old LCMs until we could get Antelope class boats, like the one you’ve got here, built. After that nonwar, we gave away a few gunboats to friendly nations, because we knew we wouldn’t need them again. Then, we ran into a bunch of zealots in the Gulf, attacking tankers with anything from rowboats to high-power ski boats. The Sea Spectre was envisioned as a counter to those kinds of threats. They’re small, maneuverable, and very fast.”

“As well as being useful for reconnaissance and infiltration,” Monahan added.

“Extremely useful. We want them back.” Stein looked very determined. Recovering the boats would go a long way toward easing the censure he was bound to get for losing them in the first place.

Monahan was not going to say anything about the security measures that had been utilized. Bingham Clay had already ordered that investigation.

He turned to Holloway. “Are you finding anything of value here, Commander?”

Holloway looked directly at him. “Puzzles, maybe. It was a Scarab, but it was blown up on purpose.”

Monahan raised an eyebrow.

“The aft sections of the hull are peppered with shrapnel. We think they used a grenade to blow it.”

“After boarding the Zodiak?”

“Must have been,” Holloway said. “We thought we were chasing a guided boat, from the maneuvers it made. Hell, I still think it was manned. But from the other evidence, I guess they climbed out, set a timed grenade, shoved the throttles all the way in, and let her go.”

Monahan felt a little uneasy at Holloway’s indecision, but before he could pursue it, the commander continued. “The boat belonged to a man named Theodore Daimler. He’s a Washington lawyer, the way I heard it, and he has a cabin on the bay somewhere south of here. He had reported the Scarab missing this morning.”

Unbuttoning his shirt pocket, Monahan retrieved his small notebook and entered the information. “You know anything else about him?”

“No.”

“I’ll ask the FBI to check him out.”

They talked for a few more minutes, then Monahan said, “I think I’ll go on over to Ship R&D.”

Admiral Stein stood up. “You have room for me in your chopper?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, I’ll ride along.”

After they had been lifted aboard the Sea Knight and were en route to the Research and Development Center, Stein pulled his headset aside and leaned over to almost shout in Monahan’s ear.

Monahan pulled his own earpiece back. The racket of the turbines made nonintercom conversation difficult.

“You got your search grid set up?”

“Yes, sir.”

“As if they’re going to sneak those boats back to the Middle East.”

“That’s correct, Admiral.”

“You’d better tell Bing to check his back door.”

“Sir?”

“The Sea Spectre would be an effective guerilla weapon anywhere in the world, Commander. It doesn’t have to be in the Persian Gulf.”

“Newport News coming up, Captain.”

“Contact the Mitscher, Evans, and tell her we’ll join her outside the bay.” Captain Barry Norman’s voice was particularly raspy this afternoon, after spending the night and the morning overseeing the search efforts in Carr Bay.

“Aye aye sir.” The seaman crossed the Prebble’s bridge to an intercom station.

Norman could see the Chesapeake Bay Bridge coming up about five miles away. It was starkly outlined in black against a blue sky.

He turned to Commander Owen Edwards, his first mate. “Owen, you have the conn. I’m going down to my cabin to sack out for a couple hours.”

“Aye sir. Do you want me to notify you when we rendezvous with the Mitscher?”

“No. Just put us on the course CINCLANT designated.”

He scanned the instruments on the bridge’s forward bulkhead once again, then went aft and descended to the officer’s wardroom. He filled a mug with steaming coffee, added one cube of sugar, and carried it to his own quarters.

Inside, he sat on his bunk and unlaced his shoes, kicked them off. He was tired. Barry Norman was sixty-two years old, with over forty years in the Navy. His hair was short and gray, almost matching the color of his eyes. There was more sag to his jowls than he liked, more softness around his waist. He found that fatigue crowded him more easily.

Norman was a man of the sea. He had served on more classifications of ships than he bothered remembering. Only aircraft carriers and battleships had eluded him, but Bingham Clay had promised him at least a year on the New Jersey before he retired, now just three short years away.

Norman would never make flag rank, not that he cared. He did not have the ability to kowtow to either Navy or civilian politicians. On each of his shore-based assignments, he had managed to offend as many admirals, senators, and congressmen as possible, ensuring a return to sea duty.

He belonged on the bridge of a warship, especially since cancer took Elizabeth twelve years before. His instinct for unhesitating and appropriate command decisions was well known among his superiors. They could trust him with an expensive ship and a few hundred lives, though not with a congressional hearing room and thin-skinned legislative staffers. Norman’s comfort with naval strategy and tactics was the sole reason he was still in the United States Navy after being passed over for promotion so many times.

He shrugged out of his uniform jacket, tossed it toward a chair, and swung his feet up onto the bunk. Leaning back against the bulkhead, he sipped his coffee.

Norman had been rethinking his desire to command the New Jersey. Sure as hell, some admiral would have his flag aboard her, and Norman would not really have full command.

Besides, in the two years he had been aboard the Prebble, he had come to appreciate the competency and loyalty of her crew. Even Susan Inge, his second mate. He had damn nearly rebelled when Inge had first been assigned, but after a couple of months, he had also rethought his position on women aboard warships and changed it.

Additionally, the last ten months working out of Ship R&D had been interesting. The Navy was not totally stupid. When they developed a weapons system, they also considered a counter system. For almost a year, the Prebble had been serving as a test platform for weapons systems that could cope with the Sea Spectre.

High-power, sea-level radar had been tried, but without success.

Enhanced infrared sensors mounted on the Prebble’s two Seasprite helicopters had been able to detect the heat of the Sea Spectres at five miles.

The Sea Spectre engines and exhaust systems had been altered with coolant wraps to decrease the heat radiation.

The helicopters’ infrared sensors had been boosted once again, and they were able to locate a stealth boat that was within a range of four miles, providing the boat was operating on both engines at over two thousand RPMs. They were great boats.

The five-inch guns — one forward and one right aft — were computer controlled but were now linked, not only with radar but with laser designator and night-sight targeting systems. In computer-controlled games in the past three months, the Prebble had sunk four Sea Spectres in simulation. Of course, the Prebble had lost five encounters. Still, Norman thought that, given more training, his people would change those results.

If any ship in the U.S. Navy could locate and destroy the Sea Spectres, it was the destroyer Prebble.

Which was why CINCLANT had pulled her out of the northern Chesapeake and sent her on the search for the missing assault boats.

Barry Norman had taken a few rides in the Sea Spectre to acquaint himself with her weapons and capabilities. He had liked the boat.

He did not want to blow it out of the water.

But he would.

Kevin McCory remembered that his father had often taken late-night walks through the marina at Fort Walton Beach, acting as his own security guard, stopping to talk to the live-aboard residents, checking for safety violations, yanking on the padlocks attached to storage cabinets placed along the docks.

It was something he liked to do, too. Marina Kathleen was not a large enterprise. It would not be described as thriving. Still, in the eighteen months he had owned it, he had made some transformations. The office, storage buildings, and docks had been repainted white. Slowly, as he could afford it, he was replacing sections of the floating docks that had rotted or canted due to corroded metal. The original docks floated on empty fifty-five-gallon drums. The replacement sections were attached to foam-filled fiberglass canisters.

There were a hundred slips available, and seventy of them were rented, mostly to people who weekended aboard small cruisers, sailing boats, and ski boats. Twenty-two people lived aboard houseboats, sloops, fishermen, and cruisers that would not be called yachts. Six charter fishing boats operated out of Marina Kathleen.

On the south side was a storage yard for boats on cradles or trailers, a maintenance building, and a small dry dock. McCory employed a super-mechanic and a lazy, but expert, hull and fitting man. Dan Crips and Ben Avery. He also employed two high school girls who tended the office-cum-general store after school hours on alternate days. Marge Hepburn, who was sixty-six years old and lived aboard an old Cape Hatteras, watched over the office — and everyone else — in the mornings and early afternoons in exchange for her slip rental, her groceries, and an occasional six-pack of Dos Equis.

Debbie Trewartha, a green-eyed senior at Edgewater High, was sitting on the counter talking to Hanna Wilcox when Ginger arrived.

Ginger Adams’s parents had named her before she was born, expecting a redhead. What they got instead was a platinum blonde, hazel-eyed package of frenetic energy. Though she was now twenty-eight, five-ten, and proportioned along the lines Hugh Hefner demanded, she had not lost any of the energy. It did go dormant in the mornings, which was a problem, since McCory was a morning person.

She was sometimes irritatingly independent, maintaining her own apartment and working her twelve-to-eight shift at the Edgewater Bank and Trust, where she was a vice president and assistant manager. She had been almost married once, when she was eighteen. The union had faltered when she discovered the groom was not planning on letting her go to college. Ginger took on causes. Whales, seals, environment, politicians, bureaucracies, Kevin McCory. Nothing was sacred to her.

Ginger came through the front door like she owned the place, said hello to Debbie and Hanna, and leaned on the counter to stare at McCory. Her eyes were full of fire and ice.

McCory got up from behind his beat-up, ancient teacher’s desk, crossed to the counter, and kissed her lightly on the lips.

“Hi, hon.”

“I’m awake now.”

“How was your day?”

“Fine.”

“Nobody robbed the bank?”

“Not illegally, anyway.”

“Want a beer?”

“Not now. You have a story to tell me.”

“Story?”

“You promised, damn it!” She pouted.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ve got to make my rounds. Deb, you can go ahead and lock up. Leave a note for Marla, will you? The back windows could use some Windex.”

Debbie slipped off the counter. “Gotcha, Mac.”

Hanna said, “I’ll walk down with you youngsters.”

Hanna Wilcox couldn’t have been more than fifty years old, but she thought of anyone younger as an agile teenager.

The three of them went out the back door, took the ramp down to the floating docks, and strolled toward the end of it. The night was balmy, a nearly full moon on the rise, and the stars clear. A light breeze kept the insects offshore. At the second cross-dock, Hanna turned off for her Indigo, a new thirty-six-foot Trojan sedan.

McCory and Adams walked out to the end of the dock, then turned and came back. He eyed the locks on storage lockers. They turned off on the fueling dock, and he checked the pumps for leaks and locks.

“You’re not eager to tell me tales,” Ginger said.

“I’m organizing my thoughts.”

When they reached the Kathleen, moored in Slip 1, McCory took her hand and guided her up the three steps to deck level. They stepped aboard, and McCory hooked the safety cable between the railing gap back in place.

The Kathleen was the first boat Devlin McCory had designed, a tribute to his far-sighted vision. She was forty-six feet long, and though she had been built in 1954, her lines were as sleek as any motor yacht produced currently. A long, rakish bow, gunwales that swooped downward toward the stern. The foredeck was long, the cabin had large side windows and windshields, the stern deck was raised to accommodate the master’s cabin below. From the stern deck, a short companionway on the left rose to the flying bridge and another, centered, companionway descended to the salon. The hull was wooden, but every piece was hand fitted. Her chrome fittings gleamed in the moonlight. The teak deck was polished to a high luster. Except for updated electronics and two new Cummins 320 diesels that McCory had installed, she was as his father had built her. As far as McCory was concerned, the craftsmanship could no longer be found. Similar, new boats could bring better than a quarter of a million dollars.

McCory followed Ginger down the companionway and reached around her to push open the door. She turned on the salon lights.

“Now, a beer?”

“Is it a long story?”

“I can make it that way.”

“White wine.”

McCory went to the galley and opened the overhead wine cabinet. Devlin McCory had built the racks from teak. He pulled a bottle of Chablis from its cradle.

“It’s not cold,” he told her.

“That’s okay. I can live with it.”

Ginger was wearing a white summer cotton dress, hemmed just a fraction above her smooth knees. The belt matched her shoes and was pale aqua. To maintain her banker’s image — what there was of it — she also wore a pale blue scarf tucked into her collar.

She kicked her shoes under the helmsman’s seat, then went around pulling the off-white drapes over the windows.

McCory got himself a bottle of Michelob from the refrigerator, then found two glasses, one stemmed, in another cabinet.

Ginger unknotted her scarf, slipped it from her neck with a whisper, and tossed it on the dinette table. She unbuckled her belt, zipped through a half-dozen buttons, and peeled off her dress.

Clad in panties and a half-cupped bra, she settled into the corner of the sofa under the windshield and watched him fumble with the glasses.

He nearly dropped the stemmed glass.

Unplugged the Chablis and filled her glass.

Unscrewed the top of the beer bottle and filled his own glass.

“I can see this is going to be a tough story to tell,” he said.

“Want me to get dressed?”

“Unh-uh. I’ll struggle.”

Handing her the wine, he sat down beside her.

“Start at the beginning,” she suggested.

“Let’s see. At one o’clock yesterday morning, the U.S. Navy tried to board me.”

Ginger almost spilled her wine. “What!”

“That was just before the boat blew up.”

Eyes wide, she asked, “That was the damned beginning?”

“Well, not quite.”