Without Remorse

CHAPTER 2

Encounters

Kelly awoke at his accustomed time, thirty minutes before sunrise, to the mewing of gulls and saw the first dull glow on the eastern horizon. At first he was confused to find a slender arm across his chest, but other feelings and memories explained things in a few seconds. He extricated himself from her side and moved the blanket to cover her from the morning chill. It was time for ship's business.

Kelly got the drip coffee machine going, then he pulled on a pair of swim trunks and headed topside. He hadn't forgotten to set the anchor light, he was gratified to see. The sky had cleared off, and the air was cool after the thunderstorms of the previous night. He went forward and was surprised to see that one of his anchors had dragged somewhat. Kelly reproached himself for that, even though nothing had actually gone wrong. The water was a flat, oily calm and the breeze gentle. The pink-orange glow of first light decorated the tree-spotted coastline to the east. All in all, it seemed as fine a morning as he could remember. Then he remembered that what had changed had nothing at all to do with the weather.

'Damn,' he whispered to the dawn not yet broken. Kelly was stiff, and did some stretching exercises to get the kinks out, slow to realize how fine he felt without the usual hangover. Slower still to recall how long it had been. Nine hours of sleep? he wondered. That much? No wonder he felt so good. The next part of the morning routine was to get a squeegee to dispose of the water that had pooled on the fiberglass deck.

His head turned at the low, muted rumble of marine diesels. Kelly looked west to spot it, but there was a little mist that way, being pushed his way by the breeze, and he couldn't make anything out. He went to the control station on the flying bridge and got out his glasses, just in time to have a twelve-inch spotlight blaze through the marine 7 x 50s. Kelly was dazzled by the lights, which just as suddenly switched off, and a loud-hailer called across die water.

'Sorry, Kelly. Didn't know it was you,' Two minutes later the familiar shape of a Coast Guard forty-one-foot patrol boat eased alongside Springer. Kelly scrambled along the port side to deploy his rubber fenders.

'You trying to kill me or something?' Kelly said in a conversational voice.

'Sorry.' Quartermaster First Class Manuel 'Portagee' Oreza stepped from one gun'l to the other with practiced ease. He gestured to the fenders. 'Wanna hurt my feelings?'

'Bad sea manners, too,' Kelly went on as he walked towards his visitor.

'I spoke to the young lad about that already, ' Oreza assured him. He held out his hand. 'Morning, Kelly.'

The outstretched hand had a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee. Kelly took it and laughed.

'Apology accepted, sir.' Oreza was famous for his coffee.

'Long night. We're all tired, and it's a young crew,' the coastguardsman explained wearily. Oreza was nearly twenty-eight himself, and by far the oldest man of his boat crew.

'Trouble?' Kelly asked.

Oreza nodded, looking around at the water. 'Kinda. Some damned fool in a little day-sailer turned up missing after that little rainstorm we had last night, and we've been looking all over bejazzus for him.'

'Forty knots of wind. Fair blow, Portagee,' Kelly pointed out. 'Came in right fast, too.'

'Yeah, well, we rescued six boats already, just this one still missing. You see anything unusual last night?'

'No. Came outa Baltimore around... oh, sixteen hundred, I suppose. Two and a half hours to get here. Anchored right after the storm hit. Visibility was ptetty bad, didn't see much of anything before we went below.'

'We,' Oreza observed, stretching. He walked over to the wheel, picked up the rain-soaked halter, and tossed it to Kelly. The look on his face was neutral, but there was interest behind the eyes. He hoped his friend had found someone; Life hadn't been especially fair to the man.

Kelly handed the cup back with a similarly neutral expression.

'There was one freighter coming out behind us,' he went on. 'Italian flag, container boat about half full, must have been knocking down fifteen knots. Anybody else clear the harbor?'

'Yeah.' Oreza nodded and spoke with professional irritation. 'I'm worried about that. Fuckin' merchies plowing out at full speed, not paying attention.'

'Well, hell, you stand outside the wheelhouse, you might get wet. Besides, sea-and-anchor detail might violate some union rule, right? Maybe your guy got run down,' Kelly noted darkly. It wouldn't have been the first time, even on a body of water as civilized as the Chesapeake:

'Maybe,' Oreza said, surveying the horizon. He frowned, not believing the suggestion and too tired to hide it. 'Anyway, you see a little day-sailer with an orange-and-white candystripe sail, you want to give me a call?'

'No problem.'

Oreza looked forward and turned back. 'Two anchors for that little puff o' wind we had? They're not far enough apart. Thought you knew better.'

'Chief Bosun's Mate,' Kelly reminded him. 'Since when does a bookkeeper get that snotty with a real seaman?' It was only a joke. Kelly knew Portagee was the better man in a small boat. Though not by much of a margin, and both knew that, too.

Oreza grinned on his way back to the cutter. After jumping back aboard, he pointed to the halter in Kelly's hand. 'Dont forget to put your shirt on, Boats! Looks like it oughta fit just fine.' A laughing Oreza disappeared inside the wheelhouse before Kelly could come up with a rejoinder. There appeared to be someone inside who was not in uniform, which surprised Kelly. A moment later, the cutter's engines tumbled anew and the fotty-one-boat moved northwest.

'Good mornin'.' It was Pam. 'What was that?'

Kelly turned. She wasn't wearing any more now than when he'd put the blanket on her, but Kelly instantly decided that the only time she'd surprise him again would be when she did something predictable. Her hair was a medusalike mass of tangles, and her eyes were unfocused, as though she'd not slept well at all.

'Coast Guard. They're looking for a missing boat. How'd you sleep?'

'Just fine.' She came over to him. Her eyes had a soft, dreamlike quality that seemed strange so early in the morning, but could not have been more attractive to the wide-awake sailor.

'Good morning.' A kiss. A hug. Pam held her arms aloft and executed something like a pirouette. Kelly grabbed her slender waist and hoisted her aloft.

'What do you want for breakfast?' he asked.

'I don't eat breakfast,' Pam replied, reaching down for him.

'Oh.' Kelly smiled. 'Okay.'

She changed her mind about an hour later. Kelly fixed eggs and bacon on the galley stove, and Pam wolfed it down so speedily that he fixed seconds despite her protests. On further inspection, the girl wasn't merely thin, some of her ribs were visible. She was undernourished, an observation that prompted yet another unasked question. But whatever the cause, he could remedy it. Once she'd consumed four eggs, eight slices of bacon, and five pieces of toast, roughly double Kelly's normal morning intake, it was time for the day to begin properly. He showed her how to work the galley appliances while he saw to recovering the anchors.

They got back under way just shy of a lazy eight o'clock. It promised to be a hot, sunny Saturday. Kelly donned his sunglasses and relaxed in his chair, keeping himself alert with the odd sip from his mug. He maneuvcred west, tracing down the edge of the main ship channel to avoid the hundreds of fishing boats he fully expected to sortie from their various harbors today in pursuit of rockfish.

'What are those things?' Pam asked, pointing to the floats decorating the water to port.

'Floats for crab pots. They're really more like cages. Crabs get in and can't get out. You leave floats so you know where they are.' Kelly handed Pam his glasses and pointed to a Bay-build workboat about three miles to the east.

'They trap the poor things?' Kelly laughed.

'Pam, the bacon you had for breakfast? The hog didn't commit suicide, did he?'

She gave him an impish took. 'Well, no.'

'Don't get too excited. A crab is just a big aquatic spider, even though it tastes good.'

Kelly altered course to starboard to clear a red nun-buoy.

'Seems kinda cruel, though.'

'Life can be that way.'Kelly said too quickly and then regretted it.

Pam's response was as heartfelt as Kelly's. 'Yeah, I know.'

Kelly didn't turn to took at her, only because he stopped himself. There'd been emotional content in her reply, something to remind him that she, too, had demons. The moment passed quickly, however. She leaned back into the capacious conning chair, leaning against him and making things right again. One last time Kelly's senses warned him that something was not right at all. But there were no demons out here, were there?

'You'd better go below.'

'Why?'

'Sun's going to be hot today. There's some lotion in the medicine cabinet, main head.'

'Head?'

'Bathroom!'

'Why is everything different on a boat?'

Kelly laughed. 'That's so sailors can be the boss out here. Now, shoo! Go get that stuff and put a lot on or you'll look like a french fry before lunch.'

Pam made a face. 'I need a shower, too. Is that okay?'

'Good idea,' Kelly answered without looking. 'No sense scaring the fish away.'

'You!' She swatted him on the arm and headed below.

'Vanished, just plain vanished,' Oreza growled. He was hunched over a chart table at the Thomas Point Coast Guard Station.

'We shoulda got some air cover, helicopter or something,' the civilian observed.

'Wouldn't have mattered, not last night. Hell, the gulls rode that blow out.'

'But where'd he go?'

'Beats me, maybe the storm sank his ass.' Oreza glowered at the chart. 'You said he was northbound. We covered all these ports and Max took the western shore. You sure the description of the boat was correct?'

'Sure? Hell, we did everything but buy the goddamned boat for 'em!' The civilian was as short-tempered as twenty-eight hours of caffeine-induced wakefulness could explain, even worse for having been ill on the patrol boat, much to the amusement of the enlisted crew. His stomach felt like it was coated with steel wool. 'Maybe it did sink,' he concluded gruffly, not believing it for a moment.

'Wouldn't that solve your problem?' His attempt at levity earned him a growl, and Quartermaster First Class Manuel Oreza caught a warning look from the station commander, a gray-haired warrant officer named Paul English.

'You know,' the man said in a state of exhaustion, 'I don't think anything is going to solve this problem, but it's my job to try.'

'Sir, we've all had a long night. My crew is racked out, and unless you have a really good reason to stay up, I suggest you find a bunk and get a few Zs, sir.'

The civilian looked up with a tired smile to mute his earlier words. 'Petty Officer Oreza, smart as you are, you ought to be an officer.'

'If I'm so smart, how come we missed our friend last night?'

That guy we saw around dawn?'

'Kelly? Ex-Navy chief, solid guy.'

'Kinda young for a chief, isn't he?' English asked, looking at a not very good photo the spotlight had made possible He was new at the station.

'It came along with a Navy Cross,' Oreza explained.

The civilian looked up. 'So, you wouldn't think -'

'Not a chance in hell.'

The civilian shook his head. He paused for a moment, then headed off to the bunk room. They'd be going out again before sunset, and he'd need the sack time.

'So how was it?' English asked after the man left the room.

'That guy is shipping a lot of gear, Cap'n.' As a station commander, English was entitled to the title, all the more so that he let Portagee run his boat his way. 'Sure as hell he doesn't sleep much.'

'He's going to be with us for a while, on and off, and I want yon to handle it.'

Oreza tapped the chart with a pencil. 'I still say this would be a perfect place to keep watch from, and I know we can trust the guy.'

'The man says no.'

'The man ain't no seaman, Mr English. I don't mind when the guy tells me what to do, but he don't know enough to tell me how to do it.' Oreza circled the spot on the chart.

'I don't like this.'

'You don't have to like it,' the taller man said. He unfolded his pocket knife and slit the heavy paper to reveal a plastic container of white powder. 'A few hours' work and we turn three hundred thousand. Something wrong with that, or am I missin' something?'

'And this is just the start,' the third man said.

'What do we do with the boat?' asked the man with the scruples.

The tall one looked up from what he was doing. 'You get rid of that sail?'

'Yeah.'

'Well, we can stash the boat... but probably smarter to scuttle. Yeah, that's what we'll do.'

'And Angelo?' All three looked over to where the man was lying, unconscious still, and bleeding.

'I guess we scuttle him, too,' the tall one observed without much in the way of emotion. 'Right here ought to be fine.'

'Maybe two weeks, there won't be nothin' left. Lots of critters out there.' The third one waved outside at the tidal wetlands.

'See how easy it is? No boat, no Angelo, no risk, and three hundred thousand bucks. I mean, how much more do you expect, Eddie?'

'His friends still ain't gonna like it.' The comment came more from a contrarian disposition than moral conviction.

'What friends?' Tony asked without looking. 'He ratted, didn't he? How many friends does a rat have?'

Eddie bent to the logic of the situation and walked over to Angelo's unconscious form. The blood was still pumping out of the many abrasions, and the chest was moving slowly as he tried to breathe. It was time to put an end to that. Eddie knew it; he'd merely been trying to delay the inevitable. He pulled a small.22 automatic from his pocket, placed it to the back of Angelo's skull, and fired once. The body spasmed, then went slack. Eddie set his gun aside and dragged the body outside, leaving Henry and his friend to do the important stuff. They'd brought some fish netting, which he wrapped around the body before dumping it in the water behind their small motorboat. A cautious man, Eddie looked around, but there wasn't much danger of intruders here. He motored off until he found a likely spot a few hundred yards off, then stopped and drifted while he lifted a few concrete blocks from the boat and tied them to the netting. Six were enough to sink Angelo about eight feet to the bottom. The water was pretty clear here, and that worried Eddie a little until he saw all the crabs. Angelo would be gone in less than two weeks. It was a great improvement over the way they usually did business, something to remember for the future. Disposing of the little sailboat would be harder. He'd have to find a deeper spot, but he had all day to think about it.

Kelly altered course to starboard to avoid a gaggle of sports craft. The island was visible now, about five miles ahead. Not much to look at, just a low bump on the horizon, not even a tree, but it was his and it was as private as a man could wish. About the only bad news was the miserable TV reception.

Battery Island had a long and undistinguished history. Its current name, more ironic than appropriate, had come in the early nineteenth century, when some enterprising militiaman had decided to place a small gun battery there to guard a narrow spot in the Chesapeake Bay against the British, who were sailing towards Washington, DC, to punish the new nation that had been so ill-advised as to challenge the power of the world's foremost navy. One British squadron commander had taken note of a few harmless puffs of smoke on the island, and, probably with more amusement than malice, had taken one ship within gun range and let loose a few salvos from the long guns on his lower deck. The citizen soldiers manning the battery hadn't needed much encouragement to make a run for their rowboats and bustle to the mainland, and shortly thereafter a landing party of Jack Tars and a few Royal Marines had rowed ashore in a pinnace to drive nails into the touch holes, which was what 'spiking guns' meant. After this brief diversion, the British had continued their leisurely sail up the Patuxent River, from which their army had walked to Washington and back, having forced Dolly Madison to evacuate the White House. The British campaign had next headed to Baltimore, where a somewhat different outcome resulted.

Battery Island, under reluctant federal ownership, became an embarrassing footnote to a singularly useless war. Without so much as a caretaker to look after the earthen emplacements, weeds overtook the island, and so things had remained for nearly a hundred years.

With 1917 came America 's first real foreign war, and America 's navy, suddenly faced with the U-boat menace, needed a sheltered place to test its guns. Battery Island seemed ideal, only a few steaming hours from Norfolk, and so for several months in the fall of that year, 12- and 14-inch battleship rifles had crashed and thundered, blasting nearly a third of the island below mean low water and greatly annoying the migratory birds, who'd long since realized that no hunters ever shot at them from the place. About the only new thing that happened was the scuttling of over a hundred World War I-built cargo ships a few miles to the south, and these, soon overgrown with weeds, rapidly took on the appearance of islands themselves.

A new war and new weapons had brought the sleepy island back to life. The nearby naval air station needed a place for pilots to test weapons. The happy coincidence of the location of Battery Island and the scuttled ships from World War I had made for an instant bombing range. As a result, three massive concrete observation bunkers were built, from which officers could observe TBFs and SB2C bombers practicing runs on targets that looked like ship-shaped islands - and pulverizing quite a few of them until one bomb hung on the rack just long enough to obliterate one of the bunkers, thankfully empty. The site of the destroyed bunker had been cleared in the name of tidiness, and the island converted to a rescue station, from which a crashboat might respond to an aircraft accident. That had required building a concrete quay and boathouse and refurbishment of the two remaining bunkers. All in all, the island had served the local economy, if not the federal budget, well, until the advent of helicopters made crashboats unnecessary, and the island had been declared surplus. And so the island remained unnoticed on a register of unwanted federal property until Kelly had managed to acquire a lease.

Pam leaned back on her blanket as they approached, basting in the warm sun beneath a thick coating of suntan lotion. She didn't have a swimsuit, and wore only a bra and panties. It didn't offend Kelly, but the impropriety of it was vaguely disturbing for no reason that stood up to logical analysis. In any case, his current job was driving his boat. Further contemplation of her body could wait, he told himself about every minute, when his eyes darted that way to make sure she was still there.

He eased the wheel farther to the right to pass well clear of a large fishing yacht. He gave Pam another look. She'd slipped the straps of her bra down off her shoulders for a more even tan. Kelly approved.

The sound startled both of them, rapid short blasts on the fishing boat's diesel horns. Kelly's head scanned all the way around, then centered on the boat that lay two hundred yards to port. It was the only thing close enough to be of concern, and also seemed to be the source of the noise. On the flying bridge a man was waving at him. Kelly turned to port to approach. He took his time bringing Springer alongside. Whoever this guy was, he wasn't much of a boat handler, and when he brought his craft to a halt, twenty feet away, he kept his hand on the throttles.

'What's the problem?' Kelly called over the loud-hailer.

'Lost our props!' a swarthy man hollered back. 'What do we do?'

Row, Kelly almost replied, but that wasn't very neighborly. He brought his boat closer in to survey the situation. It was a medium-sized fishing cruiser, a fairly recent Hatteras. The man on the bridge was about five-eight, fiftyish, and bare-chested except for a mat of dark hair. A woman was also visible, also rather downcast.

'No screws at all?' Kelly asked when they were closer.

'I think we hit a sandbar,' the man explained. 'About half a mile that way.' He pointed to a place Kelly kept clear of.

'Sure enough, there's one that way. I can give you a tow if you want. You have good enough line for it?'

'Yes!' the man replied immediately. He went forward to his rope locker. The woman aboard continued to look embarrassed.

Kelly maneuvered clear for a moment, observing the other 'captain,' a term his mind applied ironically. He couldn't read charts. He didn't know the proper way of attracting another boat's attention. He didn't even know how to call the Coast Guard. All he'd managed to do was buy a Hatteras yacht, and while that spoke well of his judgment, Kelly figured it had more likely come from a smart salesman. But then the man surprised Kelly. He handled his lines with skill and waved Springer in.

Kelly maneuvered his stem in close, then went aft to his well deck to take the towing line, which he secured to the big cleat on the transom. Pam was up and watching now. Kelly hustled back to the fly bridge and coaxed his throttle a crack.

'Get on your radio,' he told the Hatteras owner. 'Leave your rudder amidships till I tell you different. Okay?'

'Got it.'

'Hope so,' Kelly whispered to himself, pushing the throttle levers until the towing line came taut.

'What happened to him?' Pam asked.

'People forget there's a bottom under this water. You hit it hard enough and you break things.' He paused. 'You might want to put some more clothes on.'

Pam giggled and went below. Kelly increased speed carefully to about four knots before starting the turn south. He'd done this all before, and grumbled that if he did it one more time he'd have special stationery printed up for the bills.

Kelly brought Springer alongside very slowly, mindful of the boat he was towing. He scurried off the bridge to drop his fenders, then jumped ashore to tie off a pair of spring lines before heading towards the Hatteras. The owner already had his mooring lines set up, and tossed them to Kelly on the quay while he set his fenders. Hauling the boat in a few feet was a good chance to show his muscles to Pam. It only took five minutes to get her snugged in, after which Kelly did the same with Springer.

'This is yours?'

'Sure enough,' Kelly replied. 'Welcome to my sandbar.'

'Sam Rosen,' the man said, holding his hand out. He'd pulled a shirt on, and while he had a strong grip, Kelly noted that his hands were so soft as to be dainty.

'John Kelly.'

'My wife, Sarah.'

Kelly laughed. 'You must be the navigator.'

Sarah was short, overweight, and her brown eyes wavered between amusement and embarrassment. 'Somebody needs to thank you for your help,' she observed in a New York accent.

'A law of the sea, ma'am. What went wrong?'

'The chart shows six feet where we struck. This boat only takes four! And low tide was five hours ago!' the lady snapped. She wasn't angry at Kelly, but he was the closest target, and her husband had already heard what she thought.

'Sandbar, it's been building there from the storms we had last winter, but my charts show less than that. Besides, it's a soft bottom.'

Pam came up just then, wearing clothing that was nearly respectable, and Kelly realized he didn't know her last name.

'Hi, I'm Pam.'

'Y'all want to freshen up? We have all day to look at the problem.' There was general agreement on that point, and Kelly led them off to his home.

'What the hell is that?' Sam Rosen asked. 'That' was one of the bunkers that had been built in 1943, two thousand square feet, with a roof fully three feet thick. The entire structure was reinforced concrete and was almost as sturdy as it looked. A second, smaller bunker lay beside it.

'This place used to belong to the Navy,' Kelly explained, 'but I lease it now.'

'Nice dock they built for you,' Rosen noted.

'Not bad at all,' Kelly agreed. 'Mind if I ask what you do?'

'Surgeon,' Rosen replied.

'Oh, yeah?' That explained the hands.

'Professor of surgery,' Sarah corrected. 'But he can't drive a boat worth a damn!'

'The goddamned charts were off!' the professor grumbled as Kelly led them inside. 'Didn't you hear?'

'People, that's history now, and lunch and a beer will allow us to consider it in comfort.' Kelly surprised himself with his words. Just then his ears caught a sharp crack coming across the water from somewhere to the south. It was funny how sound carried across the water.

"What was that?' Sam Rosen had sharp ears, too.

'Probably some kid taking a muskrat with his.22,' Kelly judged. 'It's a pretty quiet neighborhood, except for that. In the fall it can get a little noisy around dawn - ducks and geese.'

'I can see the blinds. You hunt?'

'Not anymore,' Kelly replied.

Rosen looked at him with understanding, and Kelly decided to reevaluate him for a second time.

'How long?'

'Long enough. How'd you know?'

'Right after I finished residency, I made it to Iwo and Okinawa. Hospital ship.'

'Hmm, kamikaze time?'

Rosen nodded. 'Yeah, lots of fun. What were you on?'

'Usually my belly,' Kelly answered with a grin.

'UDT? You look like a frogman,' Rosen said. 'I had to fix a few of those.'

'Pretty much the same thing, but dumber.' Kelly dialed the combination lock and pulled the heavy steel door open.

The inside of the bunker surprised the visitors. When Kelly had taken possession of the place, it had been divided into three large, bare rooms by stout concrete walls, but now it looked almost like a house, with painted drywall and rugs. Even the ceiling was covered. The narrow viewslits were the only reminder of what it had once been. The furniture and rugs showed the influence of Patricia, but the current state of semiarray was evidence that only a man lived here now. Everything was neatly arranged, but not as a woman would do things. The Rosens also noted that it was the man of the house who led them to the 'galley' and got things out of the old-fashioned refrigerator box while Pam wandered around a little wide-eyed.

'Nice and cool,' Sarah observed. 'Damp in the winter, I bet.' -

'Not as bad as you think.' Kelly pointed to the radiators around the perimeter of the room. 'Steam heat. This place was built to government specifications. Everything works and everything cost too much.'

'How do you get a place like this?' Sam asked.

'A friend helped me get the lease. Surplus government property.'

'He must be some friend,' Sarah said, admiring the built-in refrigerator.

'Yes, he is.'

Vice Admiral Winslow Holland Maxwell, USN, had his office on the E-Ring of the Pentagon. It was an outside office, allowing him a fine view of Washington - and the demonstrators, he noted angrily to himself. Baby Killers! one placard read. There was even a North Vietnamese flag. The chanting, this Saturday morning, was distorted by the thick window glass. He could hear the cadence but not the words, and the former fighter pilot couldn't decide which was more enraging.

'That isn't good for you, Dutch.'

'Don't I know it!' Maxwell grumbled.

'The freedom to do that is one of the things we defend,' Rear Admiral Casimir Podulski pointed out, not quite making that leap of faith despite his words. It was just a little too much. His son had died over Haiphong in an A-4 strike-fighter. The event had made the papers because of the young aviator's parentage, and fully eleven anonymous telephone calls had come in the following week, some just laughing, some asking his tormented wife where the blotter was supposed to be shipped. 'All those nice, peaceful, sensitive young people.'

'So why are you in such a great mood, Cas?'

'This one goes in the wall safe, Dutch.' Podulski handed over a heavy folder. Its edges were bordered in red-and-white striped tape, and it bore the coded designator boxwood green.

'They're going to let us play with it?' That was a surprise.

'It took me till oh-three-thirty, but yes. Just a few of us, though. We have authorization for a complete feasibility study.' Admiral Podulski settled into a deep leather chair and lit up a cigarette. His face was thinner since the death of his son, but the crystal-blue eyes burned as bright as ever.

'They're going to let us go ahead and do the planning?' Maxwell and Podulski had worked towards that end for several months, never in any real expectation that they'd be allowed to pursue it.

'Who'd ever suspect us?' the Polish-born Admiral asked with an ironic look. 'They want us to keep it off the books.'

'Jim Greer, too?' Dutch asked.

'Best intel guy I know, unless you're hiding one somewhere.'

'?? just started at CIA, I heard last week,' Maxwell warned.

'Good. We need a good spy, and his suit's still blue, last time I checked.'

'We're going to make enemies doing this, lots of 'em.'

Podulski gestured at the window and the noise. He hadn't changed all that much since 1944 and USS Essex. 'With all those a hundred feet away from us, what'll a few more matter?'

'How long have you had the boat?' Kelly asked about halfway through his second beer. Lunch was rudimentary, cold cuts and bread supplemented by bottled beer.

'We bought it last October, but we've only been running it two months,' the doctor admitted. 'But I took the Power Squadron courses, finished top in my class.' He was the sort who finished number one in nearly everything, Kelly figured.

'You're a pretty good line-handler,' he observed, mainly to make the man feel better.

'Surgeons are pretty good with knots, too.'

'You a doc, too, ma'am?' Kelly asked Sarah.

'Pharmacologist. I also teach at Hopkins.'

'How long have you and your wife lived here?' Sam asked, and the conversation ground to an awkward halt.

'Oh, we just met,' Pam told them artlessly. Naturally enough it was Kelly who was the most embarrassed. The two physicians merely accepted the news as a matter of course, but Kelly worried that they'd see him as a man taking advantage of a young girl. The thoughts associated with his behavior seemed to race in circles around the inside of his skull until he realized that no one else seemed to care all that much.

'Let's take a look at that propeller.' Kelly stood. 'Come on.'

Rosen followed him out the door. The heat was building outside, and it was best to get things done quickly. The secondary bunker on the island housed Kelly's workshop. He selected a couple of wrenches and wheeled a portable air compressor towards the door.

Two minutes later he had it sitting next to the doctor's Hatteras and buckled a pair of weight belts around his waist.

'Anything I have to do?' Rosen asked.

Kelly shook his head as he stripped off his shirt. 'Not really. If the compressor quits, I'll know pretty quick, and I'll only be down five feet or so.'

'I've never done that.' Rosen turned his surgeon's eyes to Kelly's torso, spotting three separate scars that a really good surgeon might have been skillful enough to conceal. Then he remembered that a combat surgeon didn't always have the time for cosmetic work.

'I have, here and there,' Kelly told him on the way to the ladder.

'I believe it,' Rosen said quietly to himself.

Four minutes later, by Rosen's watch, Kelly was climbing back up the ladder.

'Found your problem.' He set the remains of both props on the concrete dock.

'God! What did we hit?'

Kelly sat down for a moment to strip off the weights. It was all he could do not to laugh. 'Water, doc, just water.'

'What?'

'Did you have the boat surveyed before you bought it?'

'Sure, the insurance company made me do that. I got the best buy around, he charged me a hundred bucks.'

'Oh, yeah? What deficiencies did he give you?' Kelly stood back up and switched the compressor off.

'Practically nothing. He said there was something wrong with the sinks, and I had a plumber check it, but they were fine. I guess he had to say something for his money, right?'

'Sinks?'

'That's what he told me over the phone. I have the written survey somewhere, but I took the information over the phone.'

'Zincs,' Kelly said, laughing. 'Not sinks.'

'What?' Rosen was angry at not getting the joke.

'What destroyed your props was electrolysis. Galvanic reaction. It's caused by having more than one kind of metal in saltwater, corrodes the metal. All the sandbar did was to scuff them off. They were already wrecked. Didn't the Power Squadron tell you about that?'

'Well, yes, but -'

'But - you just learned something, Doctor Rosen.' Kelly held up the remains of the screw. The metal had the flaked consistency of a soda cracker. 'This used to be bronze.'

'Damn!' The surgeon took the wreckage in his hand and picked off a waferlike fragment.

'The surveyor meant for you to replace the zinc anodes on the strut. What they do is to absorb the galvanic energy. You replace them every couple of years, and that protects the screws and rudder by remote control, like. I don't know all the science of it, but I do know the effects, okay? Your rudder needs replacement, too, but it's not an emergency. Sure as hell, you need two new screws.'

Rosen looked out at the water and swore. 'Idiot.'

Kelly allowed himself a sympathetic laugh. 'Doc, if that's the biggest mistake you make this year, you're a lucky man.'

'So what do I do now?'

'I make a phone call and order you a couple of props. I'll call a guy I know over in Solomons, and he'll have somebody run them down here, probably tomorrow.' Kefly gestured. 'It's not that big a deal, okay? I want to see your charts, too.'

Sure enough, when he checked their dates, they were five years old. 'You need new ones every year, doc.'

'Damn!' Rosen said.

'Helpful hint?' Kelly asked with another smile. 'Don't take it so seriously. Best kind of lesson. It hurts a little but not much. You learn and you get on with it.'

The doctor relaxed, finally, allowing himself a smile. 'I suppose you're right, but Sarah'll never let me forget it.'

'Blame the charts,' Kelly suggested.

'Will you back me up?'

Kelly grinned. 'Men have to stick together at times like this.'

'I think I'm going to like you, Mr Kelly.'

'So where the fuck is she?' Billy demanded.

'How the hell should I know?' Rick replied, equally angry - and fearful of what Henry would say when he got back. Both their eyes turned to the woman in the room.

'You're her friend,' Billy said.

Doris was trembling already, wishing she could run from the room, but there was no safety in that. Her hands were shaking as Billy took the three steps to her, and she flinched but didn't evade the slap that landed her on the floor.

'Bitch. You better tell me what you know!'

'I don't know anything!' she screamed up at him, feeling the burning spot on her face where she'd been hit. She looked over to Rick for sympathy, but saw no emotion at all on his face.

'You know something - and you better tell me right now,' Billy said. He reached down to unbutton her shorts, then removed the belt from his pants. 'Get the rest in here,' he told Rick.

Doris stood without waiting for the order, nude from the waist down, crying silently, her body shaking with sobs for the pain soon to come, afraid even to cower, knowing she couldn't run. There was no safety for her. The other girls came in slowly, not looking in her direction. She'd known that Pam was going to run, but that was all, and her only satisfaction as she heard the belt whistle through the air was that she would reveal nothing that could hurt her friend. As searing'as the pain was, Pam had escaped.