Blank Slate (A Kyle Jackle Thriller) (11 page)

Teri DeCarlo, the Assistant ME straightened as she noticed their entry and waved them over. Rivera tried to focus his attention on Teri as he avoided looking directly at the badly burned corpse lying on her table. “Teri, as always, you’re looking quite lovely today!”

“Yeah, lovely as always,” muttered Teri. At five-two and one hundred ninety pounds, Teri had long since given up on getting a legitimate compliment from Rivera. “So I can get you guys up to speed and back upstairs to the land of the living, let me give you the short version. The Coast Guard fished out three bodies this morning-well, it’s really more like three and a half bodies. This guy,” she said indicating the severely burned body on her table, “and the one on the other table got a little crispy in the fire and explosion-no way we ID them until we get the results back on DNA and medical records,” said Miller. “We managed to ID the Captain, because he was apparently blown off the flybridge in the initial explosion and avoided most of the fire.”

“That’s three-you said three and a half,” said Rivera.

“Just read the report later-you don’t get to see that one. I know you Rivera-you’ll either pass out or puke in my autopsy room and I’d end up having to write another damn report.”

Teri stepped over to a covered autopsy table and pulled back the cover. The Captain was lying peacefully on his back wearing the soggy remains of a yachty looking Captain’s uniform.

Rivera leaned over to take a closer look. “This guy doesn’t look too bad-no major burns or holes in him that I can see. So, what killed him?”

“Help me turn him and I’ll show you,” said Teri.

They struggled to turn the still waterlogged bulk of the Captain over without rolling him into the floor. Rivera caught his breath after they flopped him over to his stomach. The back of the uniform was shredded in dozens of places where tiny shrapnel had cut through the Captains body.

“What the hell caused this,” Rivera asked as he tried to avoid gagging at the sight.

“I dug out a couple of these out of his wallet when I checked for ID,” said Teri as picked a couple of small fragments our of a specimen tray next to the body.

Miller leaned over to take a closer look at the wounds and shrapnel. “No large pieces of shrapnel like I’d expect from a boat explosion-there would be some fiberglass mixed in here. Besides, this looks like flechettes from an antipersonnel round-an airburst by the looks of the wound pattern.”

“What kind of weapon fires that round?” asked Rivera.

“I have no idea, but we’ll be sure to ask Kyle Jackle when we find him.”

As soon we had reached our waypoint twenty miles offshore, I turned Dolce Vita to a course running due south. My over-riding goal was to thread the needle in between Bahamian, Cuban, and US waters. With a sailboat we couldn’t outrun trouble. Our only hope of avoiding authorities or anyone else looking for us was to stay invisible. The weather seemed to be cooperating so far-the wind was holding steady out of the East at around fifteen knots.

“Tasha, I’m going forward. Would you take the helm?”

“Not a problem. Just be careful-I don’t want to have to come back and pick you up in the middle of the ocean,” she said with a smile.

Sailing this shorthanded, I was taking no chances-I clipped my safety harness into the jackline running from the stem to stern and moved forward. I quickly hoisted the cruising spinnaker still in its bag-once it topped out, I pulled the sock covering it and watched the sail flutter and fill in the breeze. Trimmed the sheets and felt Dolce Vita surging through the water with the swell rolling in on her quarter. On returning to the cockpit, checked the chartplotter again. “That helps a little. We’re making a little over nine knots. Doesn’t sound like much, but we’ll pick up an extra twenty miles today.”

“We’ll be fine. Just enjoy the night and try to stop thinking about it. You were great-seems like it’s not the first time you’ve run into trouble.”

“I was raised around three brothers and had a father in the army,” Tasha said. “I can handle a gun pretty well-used to go on hunting trips with my father when I was younger.”

I was still trying to wrap my head around how that could possibly make her familiar with the operation of an HK-5, but decided to leave it alone for now.

Cruising at night can either be a magical experience or completely terrifying. This was the former-the only sounds were those of the water slipping under our keel and the sound of wind blowing through the rigging. Tasha was asleep, curled up with a blanket and pillow in the corner of the cockpit. I kept the radar alarm set for twenty miles to give us plenty of warning in case there were any commercial ships steaming in the vicinity. By eleven o’clock, the moon was a barely discernible crescent on the horizon and the only visible light was from the instruments. I began to see a faint glow surrounding the bow wave and trailing behind in our wake. I woke Tasha.

“You don’t want to miss this,” I said pointing to the water behind us. “Phosphorescent plankton.” The glow was bright enough that we could actually see each other’s faces illuminated in the light. Suddenly, three dark shapes broke from the water and started trailing a brilliant streamer of phosphorescent water behind them as they rode our bow wave. “Dolphins-a sign of good fortune for mariners,” I said as I held her to my side.

“Good fortune indeed,” she murmured sleepily as she inclined her head and kissed me deeply.

Later, I had a chance to reflect while she slept. She looked beautiful in the soft glow as she slept in the cockpit while I kept an eye on our course. I let her stay there until four o’clock in the morning when I simply couldn’t fight the growing exhaustion any longer.

There is nothing more relaxing than sleeping on a sailboat underway when the wind is on the beam and the seas are calm. I slept until almost six in the morning and only awakened when the motion of the boat suddenly changed. The wind had shifted to the Northeast and I could feel the seas building.

A quick check of the chart plotter. We were approaching an area marked on the chart as Cay Sal Banks. Looking at the navigation notes revealed that it was a large submerged atoll with dozens of low islands barely breaking the surface of the water. I wanted to stay in the Straits of Florida and just skirt the North side of the Banks. Too easy to be trapped sailing into an area I didn’t know anything about and not have an easy exit especially with some heavy weather coming in.

“I’m a little worried about what I see behind us,” I said to Tasha pointing to the building wall of clouds coming from the north. “Why don’t you put a reef in the main-I think we have some nasty weather coming in. Might as well reduce sail before we have to. I’m going forward and dowse the spinnaker before the wind picks up any more.”

“Aye,aye my Captain,” she said with a little flip of her hand as she eased the main and started reefing the sail and securing it to the boom. I clipped back into the jackline and moved forward to drop the spinnaker. Pulled the sock down over the flowing sail and dropped the sail on the deck. Quickly rolled up the sail, stuffed it through the forward hatch and scrambled back to the cockpit holding onto every available grip I could find in the turbulent seas.

Looking at the radar, I could see the angry cells of the storm clouds about fifteen miles away and closing rapidly. At this point, we had still had several hundred feet of water beneath our keel but I was really concerned about what would happen when the deep ocean swells hit the thirty-foot shallows around the Cay Sal Banks. We didn’t have to wait long to find out. Within thirty minutes, the winds had picked up to forty knots and the seas were running ten to twelve feet with the spray blowing horizontally off the tops of the waves creating a blinding mist.

“Tasha, close the hatch on the cabin,” I said gripping the wheel tightly and bracing against the violent pitching motion of the boat. “While you’re at it, you might get an extra safety harness for yourself. They’re in the port locker just forward of the nav station.

A moment later she returned. “Got it. How bad do you think it’s going to be?”

“Looks very nasty for the next thirty minutes, hopefully this will blow over in the next hour or so.”

I focused on keeping the boat powering forward. The massive waves that were coming in from the stern quarter hissed under the hull as they piled up into steep troughs of churning water over the shallows. It looked like the waves were finally beginning to ease when a massive wave rolled in and rolled the port side of the boat into the water. The main sail went under water and as I scrambled desperately trying to ease the tension on the rig, the halyard broke with a thunderous crack. We rolled upright and the sail, no longer secured at the top of the mast by the halyard, dropped onto the deck and in the water in a tangled mess.

“Tasha, take the wheel,” I yelled over the howling of the wind and waves. She moved to the helm and I scrambled forward sliding along the jackline. Standing on top of the cabintop and trying to secure the flailing sail in these conditions was a complete nightmare. I managed to get one sail tie secured around the middle of the boom and then disaster! Dolce Vita had turned sideways to the wind after the sail dropped and I was hit by a wave from the starboard side and washed into the sea. Another wave as large as the first one broke over the deck knocking Dolce Vita on her beam ends until her mast almost touched the water. She quickly rolled upright snatching me in my harness until I smashed against the side of the boat. The harness tightened mercilessly around me as I was towed beside the boat at eight knots gasping for air in the foaming water. My foul weather jacket had bunched around my neck and was slowly choking me as I tried to get a grip on the lifeline to scramble back aboard. I felt Tasha grab me by the back of the harness and pull just as another wave lifted me up the side of the boat. With the last of my strength, I made a desperate grab for the lifeline and flopped back into the cockpit beaten, bruised and much the worse for wear.

Coughing and trying to clear the last of the seawater from my lungs, I managed to choke out, “Thanks, just for that, I’ll cook you dinner tomorrow night.”

“Just for scaring me like that, you’re cooking for the next week,” she said trying in vain to muster a smile.

The storm passed as quickly as it appeared. In the early morning daylight, we surveyed the damage to the boat. “Not as bad as it could have been,” I said after coming back from the bow. “The anchor banged around on deck a little-my fault for not having it secured. The only real problem is we lost the main halyard.”

“Can we fix it?” asked Tasha.

“Sure, if we have enough line for a new one. I can’t remember where I kept all my spares.” That started a search from stem to stern that was finally rewarded when I found a roll of line in the forward sail compartment. I rolled off a little over one hundred feet into a coil and looked with dismay at the top of the sixty-foot mast still pitching from side to side in the heavy swell.

“I think we’ll have to put in behind Cay Sal. It’s one of the larger islands in the area and should give us some shelter from the waves. I hate the idea of climbing a mast when we’re rolling around at sea.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Tasha said. “I’m in no mood to lose you overboard again on this trip.”

Three hours later, we safely anchored in the lee of Cay Sal. “Not exactly a Club Med,” I said looking around at the desolate coral outcropping with it’s scraggly growth of vegetation that looked like it could wash away in the first major storm.

“Actually, I count twenty seven palm trees, a couple of falling down buildings, a broken down tractor, and some rusty fifty five gallon drums,” Tasha said as she stood on the bow and surveyed the landscape. It was desolate, but still beautiful in its remoteness. The sunlight flashed off the rainbow colored sides of the fish as they flashed in and out of the coral heads that were faintly visible in the crystal blue lagoon. This was as far from nowhere as you could get-exactly the kind of place we wanted to stop for repairs.

“Can you give me a hand with these straps,” I asked Tasha as I struggled to remember how to rig the climbing apparatus that would get me up the mast. I clipped the ATN Climber on a spare spinnaker halyard that ran to the top of the mast, slipped my feet in the loops and started up the rope. It went quickly-pushing up the top clip, bending my knees, standing, sliding the bottom clip up and within five minutes I reached the top of the sixty-foot mast.

“Beautiful view-you should come on up,” I yelled to Tanya who was watching intently from down below.

“No thanks,” she said smiling sweetly. “I like it just fine down here. And if it’s not too much trouble, please don’t fall off that damn thing.”

I had secured one end of the new halyard to the harness and after only a couple of attempts was able to run the halyard down inside the mast for Tasha to fish out and secure to the mast. The job almost finished, it was time to inspect the masthead for any other hardware that might need replacing while I was aloft.

My attention was diverted when I saw a vessel arc into sight ten miles away at the very edge of the horizon. After a few minutes, I could make out enough detail to recognize it as a cutter. No way to tell what government it belonged to-technically, I was in Bahamian waters, but the US Coast Guard was known to patrol the area on the lookout for drug smugglers. Hell for that matter, the island is only twenty miles north of Cuba. Could have been anyone.