Hurricane (23 page)

“
We have some problems to work out,” Meiko said.

“
Like Charlene?”

“
That’s the main one.”

“
And her father’s money?”

“
No, Victor doesn’t need her family’s money.”

“
Her father owns the yard,” Julie said.

“
No, it’s Victor’s.”

“
The government leased Victor the land. Charlie Heart put up all the money. It’s his travel lift, his equipment, his company, his yard.”

“
It’s got nothing to do with Charlene. It’s just business,” Meiko said. Julie sensed that she wanted it to be true, but maybe she didn’t quite believe it.

“
Honey, Charlie Heart is the richest man in Trinidad. He owns oil wells, supermarkets and God knows what else. Why do you think he wanted a shipyard?”

“
To make money.” She was clutching the binnacle again, but this time she was looking deep into her mother’s eyes and not at the boat behind them.

“
No.”

“
Then why?”

“
To finance his daughter’s fiancé, the Gulf War hero.”

“
Mom.” Meiko was almost shouting, and Julie knew how she hated to raise her voice.

“
I’m sorry, honey. I don’t want to fight with you.”

“
If that’s the way it is, then how come they’re not married?”

“
Her father wanted her to go to college first, and what Charlie wants, Charlie gets.”

“
That’s not the way Victor tells it. He said that she wasn’t sure, and wanted to wait awhile. He says they’ve grown apart and they don’t love each other anymore.”

“
Does she feel that way too?” Julie asked.

“
He needs some time to work it out. A few months, he said. Maybe three or four.”

“
And what about school?”

“
Mom, this is love.”

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You were going to be a doctor.”

“
I know, but things change.” Her daughter’s words hurt. Meiko was a near genius. Twenty-one and in her second year of medical school. She had so much potential.

“
So what do you want now?”

“
I want to marry Victor and raise his kids,” Meiko said, and Julie struggled to keep calm. She knew how destructive an argument would be, so she turned and looked over her shoulder.

“
It looks like they’ve picked up some speed. Maybe we ought to tighten sail.” She couldn’t hide the tremor in her voice, she could only hope that Meiko mistook it for concern about Snake Eyes and not about Victor.

Meiko followed her mother’s gaze and she tightened sail by bringing in some of the main sheet.

“
Good,” Julie said.

“
Jib, too?” Meiko asked.

“
Couldn’t hurt,” Julie said. But it did. Meiko cranked in the jib and the boat picked up speed. Then a blast like a gunshot ricocheted across the deck and the jib sheets shot away from the snapping jib.

“
Roll it in,” Julie said.

“
Got it,” Meiko yelled to be heard above the popping sound and she started winding on the furling line. She started to tire when it was halfway in, but she kept grinding and Julie recognized the dogged determination in her daughter. She wouldn’t quit turning the winch and she wouldn’t ask for help. It was a personal challenge. When she set her mind to something, she did it. Julie was going to have to tread softly around the subject of Victor Drake. She’d said her piece, now she was going to have to let her daughter work it out for herself.

Once the sail was furled in everything quieted down. They were sailing almost straight up. They weren’t pointing as close to the wind. They’d lost half their speed. And Julie knew they would never make Martinique without the engine. They weren’t going to make it before dark and she was afraid they might not make it at all.

“
What happened?” Meiko asked.

“
The clew blew out.”

“
What’s that?”

“
It’s the round hole at the bottom of the sail that the line is attached to, and I’ll bet that if we examine it we’ll find that it’s been cut or the stitching was undone, something.”

“
Can’t we fix it?”

“
No, the line ripped clean through the sail. It’ll take a sailmaker to repair it.”

Meiko looked at the knot meter, “Four knots and we’re not even on course.” She turned and looked behind. “It looks like they’re closer already. Can we get to Martinique before them?”

“
No.”

“
I wish Victor was here. He’d deal with those guys.” Meiko said, and Julie clenched her fist and held her tongue, because she was beginning to think that Victor might be part of the problem.

“
Take the wheel, honey. I’m going to go below and get the staysail.”

“
What’s that?” Meiko asked.

“
A sail that goes between the jib and main.”

“
We’ll get our speed back?”

“
I hope so,” Julie said, and she went below. Like raising the main, she had never put up the staysail, and although they hadn’t used it on this trip, Dieter and Kurt always sailed with everything out. She’d seen them use it enough to know how to hank it on and haul it up.

She pulled the blue sail bag out from the forward sail locker and dragged it through the boat and back to the cockpit. “Meiko,” she called out. “I’ll push it up and you pull it out.”

“
Okay, Mom.” Meiko left the wheel and pulled the sailbag up from below.

“
All right,” Julie said, coming up the ladder after the sail. “I’ll drag it up and hank it on. When I give you the thumbs up sign, turn into the wind. She glanced back, Snake Eyes did look closer. Then she grabbed onto the sailbag and heaved it across the deck, thankful that the sea had calmed down and that she didn’t have to slide on her butt.

When she reached the inner forestay she pulled the sail out of the bag and clipped it on. Then she clipped on the staysail halyard, steadied herself, and tied the loose jib sheets to the staysail’s clue with two bowlines. Then she clipped the foot to the deck, turned toward Meiko and pointed into the wind. She started hauling as Meiko started turning, thankful that the sail was less than half the size of the main. She had it up by the time Meiko had the boat in the wind. It was full and they were back on course by the time she was back in the cockpit.

“
Okay, let’s see what she’ll do,” Julie said, and they glued their eyes to the knot meter.

“
Seven knots. It’s not fast enough, is it?” Meiko said, and they both turned to look at Snake Eyes in the distance. Her sails we’re still luffing, but she was holding her distance, maybe even gaining some.

“
I was afraid of that,” Julie said. “It’s almost like they knew that clew was going to go. Without the jib we can’t out distance them. At least not on this tack.”

“
What are you saying? Are they going to catch us?”

“
They wouldn’t have a chance if the wind was right.”

“
But is isn’t,” Meiko said.

“
Then we’ll just have to make it right,” Julie said.

“
How?”

Julie looked at the compass, then she turned her face into the wind. She grabbed a breath of the crisp breeze, then turned till her right shoulder was in the wind and she was facing ninety degrees away from it. She extended her arm and pointed. “Go that way.”

“
But that’s away from everything.”

“
No, Puerto Rico is that way.”

“
How far?”

“
I don’t know. Maybe six hundred miles.”

“
Can we do that? Go all that way without stopping?”

“
It’s the last thing they would expect, and it’s something I’m sure they didn’t plan on. It’ll be a perfect beam reach. No more hard on the wind. No more spray in the face. And once we’re sure we’re out of their radar range we can turn back toward the islands. And maybe if we’re lucky the wind will change and start blowing like it’s supposed to.

“
Okay.” Meiko spun the wheel, and in a few seconds they were pointed away from the island of St. Lucia and out toward the Caribbean Sea.

Snake Eyes turned too, but Fallen Angel had the wind and in less than a minute she was up to ten knots. Julie tightened sail and they picked up another knot. An hour later Snake Eyes was a speck in the distance, an hour and a half and she gave up the chase and turned back toward land. Two hours and she was out of sight. Now it was just Julie, Meiko, Fallen Angel and the open sea.

“
Mom, I’ve been thinking,” Meiko said. “Even if they knew that clew was going to blow out, they couldn’t have known about the wind coming out of the northeast. Maybe it was just an accident.”

“
No, I don’t think so. If the wind would have been its usual self and been behind us we would have needed the jib even more. It’s our main downwind sail. No, it wasn’t an accident. Somehow they weakened that clew, like they frayed the furling line and drilled those holes under the rudder and added water to the fuel. I only hope we don’t have any more surprises.”

“
What do you mean, water in the fuel tank?” Meiko asked, eyebrows arching, “You’re not implying Victor had anything to do with any of this, because he’s the one that figured out that the furling line had been tampered with. Remember?”

“
Honey, I didn’t think for a second Victor had anything to do with it,” Julie said. She hated lying to her daughter, but she had no choice. To tell her what she was really thinking would drive a wedge between them, and that was the last thing she wanted to do.

“
Then why didn’t you tell me about the water in the fuel?” Meiko said.

“
I don’t know, there was so much going on, I didn’t think about it.”

“
How’d you get it out, the water?” Meiko asked.

“
I had a mechanic look at it while you guys were over at Palm Island.”

“
But Victor was going to come back with his mechanic,” Meiko said.

“
And he was going to have him fly out the first day we were in Union Island, but he didn’t.” Julie had to fight to keep the testiness out of her voice. For an instant she felt like taking her daughter over her knee, but she bit it back.

“
You didn’t tell Victor that the engine was fixed?”

“
Come on, honey, no matter what you think of him, he’s still a macho white Trini. He can never be wrong, and a woman can never be right. I just wanted to avoid a scene, that’s all.”

“
Victor’s not like that,” Meiko said.

“
Honey, I told you, it’ll take me a while to get used to the idea of you two. Maybe if you had told me earlier about your feelings for each other I wouldn’t have felt that I had to hire a mechanic on my own, and I might have said something about the engine being fixed. But you didn’t and I didn’t, and it’s over. Let’s not make anything out of it. Okay?”

“
Okay,” Meiko said. Julie had a feeling that she’d be hearing more about it later, but at least the subject was closed for now.

They sailed the day away, both lost in their own thoughts. It was the closest they’d been to a fight in years, and neither of them wanted to take a chance of it turning into one. They took two hour shifts at the wheel. When one was on the other napped, and they sailed further and further from land.

But Julie knew it couldn’t go on that way. She was going to have to say something, and she spent the better part of the day formulating her plan of attack. Finally, when the sun hung low in the sky, she began.

“
I’ve been thinking,” she said. “You said that it was going to take Victor three or four months to work everything out between him and Charlene.”

“
Something like that,” Meiko said. Julie couldn’t believe that a daughter of hers could be so naive. The more she thought about it the more she was convinced that Victor was leading her on. He would never abandon Charlene Heart and all of her father’s money. But she couldn’t figure out why he was doing it. There didn’t seem to be anything in it for him, unless of course he really was in love with Meiko. But if that was the case, he’d tell Charlene and her father right now and damn the torpedoes. Of that she was certain, because if there was one thing in all the world that Julie Tanaka understood, it was love.

“
Summer vacation is over in September. Right?”

“
Right,” Meiko said.

“
Well, I’ll make you a deal. You help me get the boat up to St. Martin and safely tucked into the yacht club. Then you go back to school and I’ll fly back to Trinidad and make sure that old Charlie Heart won’t throw a monkey wrench into your future.

“
You can do that?” Meiko said. The smile on her face tore into Julie’s heart. Victor didn’t deserve it.

“
Charlie is a good friend. If anybody can make him see reason, I suppose I can.”

“
Then you could talk to him right away.” Meiko said.

“
No, I can’t. The last thing I want to do is to go to a friend and explain why he should look the other way while my daughter marries his daughter’s fiancé. It is marriage we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“
Yes.”

“
Then it’s Victor’s job, and if he says it’s going to take three or four months, you go back to school in September. That’ll give you a month in the Caribbean. When you go off to the States, I’ll fly back to Trinidad. If Victor can’t work it out I’ll use my wiles on Charlie.”