Swimming to Catalina (29 page)

Dino went over and introduced himself to the beautiful woman, then they all sat down at the table.

Rick handed Stone a set of keys and gave him a
berth number at the Long Beach marina. “It belongs to my ex-brother-in-law,” he said. “It’s a big Boston Whaler with two one-hundred-horsepower outboard engines and a lot of gear.”

“Sounds ideal,” Stone said.

“He wants five hundred for the night.”

Fair enough. Stone peeled off the money.

“I don’t want to know the details, either before or after,” Rick said.

“We will preserve you in your ignorance,” Stone laughed. “Before and after.”

“What, exactly, have you got in mind, Stone?” Dino asked.

“Didn’t you just hear Rick say he doesn’t want to know?”

“Yeah, but…”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Barbara set plates of spinach salad on the table, and the three men began to eat.

“Let’s talk about general strategy,” Rick said. “What’s your plan?”

“Beyond tonight, I don’t have much of a plan,” Stone said. “I’m just trying to shake them up, to let them know that they’re not
entirely
in charge, cost them some money. If I can do that, then maybe they’ll start to make mistakes that we can capitalize on.”

“Won’t they think Calder is behind this?”

“He knows nothing, and he’s a very fine actor, remember? He’ll convince them of his ignorance.”

“What if they hurt the girl?”

“They don’t have any way to relate what I’m doing to Arrington. They’re just having a run of very bad luck, and the only thing they can assign to it is what Dino said to Sturmack on the phone.”

“What did you say, Dino?”

“I said that Stone was getting them from the grave,” Dino grinned.

Rick laughed a lot. “Well, you’re right, they’re certainly having a run of bad luck. They’ve had an expensive motorboat sunk, two of them have been arrested—what next? They must be wondering.”

“I’m not going to keep them in suspense,” Stone said.

Stone and Dino arrived at the Long Beach marina after midnight and found their rented boat. It was painted black, for which Stone was grateful, and it looked very fast indeed. They tossed their gear on board, then Stone handed Dino the duct tape. “Tape over the name of the boat wherever it’s painted on and also the Coast Guard numbers. We don’t want any trouble for Rick’s ex-brother-in-law later.”

Dino went to work while Stone got familiar with the boat and its equipment. He was delighted to find a Garmin GPS unit, which had a color screen that displayed all the land masses and buoys in the area. That would make navigating at night a lot easier. He switched on the VHF radio and tuned it to Channel 16; if the Coast Guard were patrolling the area, he wanted to hear them before they saw him.

He dug out a pair of life jackets from a locker and handed one to Dino. “Better put this on.”

“I spent a lot of time on Sheepshead Bay with my old man in his boat,” Dino said. “I’m a lot more comfortable in boats than in airplanes; I don’t need that.”

“Dino, we’re going to be traveling fast at night; if we hit something and capsize, we need the jackets. Put it on.”

Dino reluctantly got into the life jacket and adjusted it. “Happy now?”

“Not yet, but I’m planning to get a lot happier.” Stone double-checked everything, then started the engines. Dino let go their lines and, keeping the big engines at idle, Stone maneuvered out of the marina. A few minutes later they were on their way at thirty knots. “Keep a sharp lookout,” Stone said. “There are fishing boats out here this time of night towing nets and trawls. We want to give them a wide berth.”

“Right.” Dino said.

It was a lovely night, with many stars, clear of the usual smog. They were making a lot of wind with their speed, and Stone was glad to have the warmth of his weatherproof suit. Catalina loomed ahead.

Contessa
turned out be easy to find. She was the biggest thing in the anchorage by far, and she was wearing a bright anchor light; her bow and stem lights were on, too. Stone throttled back while they were still three hundred yards out and made his way among the moored yachts and empty moorings. Not many people would be sleeping aboard the small boats during the week, and Stone was glad for that. As they approached
Contessa,
she seemed to get bigger and bigger.

“Jesus,” Dino said, “that’s some piece of work, that boat. How much you think it cost to build it?”

“I don’t know—eight, ten million dollars, I would guess. Depends on when she was built. These days, she’d cost a lot more.”

“Okay, you think you can tell me what your plan is now?”

“First I’m going to have to get the crew off.”

“How many?”

“Two, I think.”

“And what the fuck are we going to do with them?”

They were at the stern boarding ladder of the big
yacht now, and Stone pointed up to the deck. “There’s a rubber dinghy up there; I saw it from the air. I’ll toss it down to you. We’ll put them in that and set them adrift; somebody will pick them up after daylight.”

“Okay, whatever you say.”

They cut the engines and tied the Whaler to a teak swimming platform on the stern. Stone stuffed the duct tape and the socket wrench kit into his jacket’s large pockets, climbed up the boarding ladder, and stuck his head above deck; there was no one in sight, but operatic music wafted from somewhere. The rubber dinghy was gone. Stone looked around for another tender, but all he saw were two large speedboats, slung in davits. Maybe somebody had gone ashore; he hoped so.

With his flashlight in one hand and his pistol in the other, Stone started forward toward the bridge. Along the way he looked into every port and window, watching for anyone stirring on the yacht, but he saw no one.

He climbed the stairs to the bridge and peeked in. There was one deckhead light on, and a radio was playing, but no one was in sight. Very slowly, he opened the door and stepped onto the bridge, the pistol out in front of him. There was no sound but the radio.

He carefully opened two doors on the bridge; one led to a stairway below, the other was, apparently, the captain’s cabin. A lamp was on, and the bed was mussed, but not unmade. He poked into the captain’s toilet, and that was empty as well. Surely the crew wouldn’t leave the big yacht entirely untended?

It seemed preposterous, but perhaps there really was no one aboard. He opened the door to the stairway and started slowly down, listening at every step.

Chapter 51

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0
ne flight down, Stone looked into the large saloon and dining room, then into the galley. A light was on in there, and an open jar of mayonnaise with a knife stuck in it sat on a countertop. Looked as though someone had made a sandwich earlier.

Stone went back to the stairs and descended another flight. He could no longer hear the music now; there was only an unearthly silence. Surely the ship’s generators would be running. He bent down and placed a hand on the deck, feeling for vibration. Nothing. The ship must be on battery power. He walked down a hallway, still keeping quiet, and looked into every cabin, switching on a light in each. No one. Good.

Having searched the deck, he walked down another flight of stairs, where he found a door on either side of him. A sign on the one to his right read
CREW QUARTERS.
A sign on the other door read
GUEST QUARTERS.
The crew must be asleep instead of on watch, he thought.

He put the flashlight in his jacket pocket, set down the bag he was carrying, removed the roll of duct tape, opened the door to the crew’s quarters, and listened. Silence. Leaving the bag in the hallway, he checked every cabin and found no one. Bad crew, he thought, ashore drinking when there was an intruder on the yacht in their charge. He went through the other door and checked the guest cabins on that deck, finding them all empty.

Finally, he descended to the lowest deck and went into the engine room, switching on the lights. There were no ports in here, so no one could see the light from shore.

Now he had his work to do. He set down the bag, took out the socket wrench kit, and went to the nearest seacock. The valve was joined to the cooling water pipe by two flanges—one on the seacock and one on the pipe. He closed the seacock, selected the proper socket, and went to work on the six bolts holding the two flanges together. When he was done the two flanges remained stuck together with some sort of sealant, and he couldn’t pull them apart by hand. He’d come back to that.

He went to the seacock for the other engine and repeated the process, then turned to the big ones—the seaboxes. The two six-inch pipes rose vertically from the steel-plated deck, each capped by a steel plate that sealed the top of the pipe. Smaller pipes branched off the sides of the larger one, each with its own seacock. He closed all the valves, found the right socket, and removed the eight bolts securing the sealing plate to the top of the pipe. Water began to leak through the seal, but the plate remained in place. He left it there while he performed the same operation on the other seabox.

“Now,” he said aloud, “I’ve got to find something that will dislodge the sealant on each pipe, and I’m in business.” He looked around and saw a workbench nearby; he walked over to it, opened a closet adjacent to the bench, and found a selection of large tools. He chose a small sledgehammer with a three-foot handle.

He went to the first engine cooling pipe and fetched it several blows with the hammer. Gradually the sealant let go; then he repeated the action with the other engine’s pipe. He dropped the sledgehammer on the deck near the door, then went back to the workbench, found a chisel and a hammer, and went to work on the sealing plate of the starboard seabox. After his first blow, water began to squirt under high pressure; he hit it twice more. The plate flew off, and a six-inch column of water rose from the pipe, striking the deckhead. The noise, echoing off the steel plates, was deafening.

Working quickly now, he chiseled off the plate on the port seabox and another column of water exploded from the pipe. Finally, he opened the seacocks for the port and starboard engines, and he had two more three-inch blasts of water pouring into the engine room.

He stepped back to the door and admired his handiwork. All told, he had the equivalent of a sixteen-inch column of water flowing, under great pressure, from the Pacific Ocean into the big yacht.

Pleased with himself, he went back to the stairs and started up. Then he stopped and remembered. On the other side of the engine room was yet another corridor of guest cabins. Shit. He’d have to check them.

He ran back down the stairs and was greeted by a good two feet of water at the bottom. He waded through the engine room to its other door and into the corridor, checking cabins on both sides. The last cabin on the
port side was locked. He’d have to hurry now, because soon access to the forward stairs would be under water, and unless there was an aft way up, he’d be trapped. Already the angle of the deck told him the yacht was increasingly down by her bows. He was about to turn back when he thought he heard a noise over the roar of incoming water, a kind of thumping. He listened, then walked aft and listened again. It had stopped. He turned to leave, and it started again. He put his ear to the last port cabin, the one that was locked, and was rewarded with a thump. Someone was inside the cabin, and he had no idea where the key was.

He rammed his shoulder and all his weight against the door, but it didn’t budge. He put his back against the opposite side of the corridor, grabbed a handhold above his head, lifted his feet, and kicked with all his might at the lock. Again and again, he kicked, and suddenly the door burst open and water flooded from the corridor into the cabin. The lights were still working, and he hit the switch in the cabin. The lights flashed on, and Stone looked inside, stunned. A woman was lying on a berth, her hands bound with duct tape and her mouth taped as well. Her frightened eyes stared at him. She had been kicking the bulkhead at her feet.

“Arrington!” he shouted. He ran to her and yanked the tape from her mouth.

She made a noise of pain. “Stone! Dear God, how did you get here?”

“Never mind that,” he said, yanking at the tape that bound her wrists, “we’ve got to get out of here; the yacht is sinking!”

The tape came free; he grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the cabin door. Then she stopped with a jerk.

“Wait,” she yelled over the roar of water, “my ankle!”

Stone looked down. He had seen such shackles a thousand times when moving prisoners, but this one was longer. One end closed around her right ankle; the other was attached to a U-bolt in a plate welded to the hull of the yacht. He remembered seeing it on his inspection, and now he knew what it was for. “Who has the key?” he shouted.

“The captain!”

“Oh, shit,” Stone said.

“What?”

“Let me think!” He thought. Dino would have a handcuff key on his key ring, he was sure of that. Almost. But he wouldn’t have time to run up three decks, get the key, then get back down before the lower deck was completely swamped and Arrington had drowned. He’d never make it. He had one other chance, though.

“Wait here,” he shouted, “I’ll be right back!”

“Don’t leave me here!” she screamed, clutching at him.

With difficulty, he pulled her hands away. “I’ve got to get something,” he said, then left her. He waded up the corridor to the engine room door, which stood open. The water here was waist deep now, and it was pouring through the doorway. Stone struggled against the current, using the yacht’s handholds. When he got through the engine room door and across the space, he took a deep breath and went under the water.

The engine room deckhead light was still on, but he could see nothing under the water. He felt along the deck, hoping against hope. Nothing. He came up,
grabbed another few deep breaths, packing oxygen into his lungs, then submerged again.

He wanted the hammer and chisel, but he couldn’t remember where he had dropped them. Probably the rushing water had moved them around anyway. But his hand touched something else, and he grabbed at it, breaking the surface with the sledgehammer in his hands.