Surface Tension - Kling Christine - Страница 42

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XV

When I heard the beeping, I was aware of where I was, and I really had to pee. I’d slept a few hours at the Paradise Hotel just to get away from everyone. The room was spartan and what little was there was tasteless. I’d wolfed down a Whopper with cheese and large order of fries while balancing the food on my lap. Nothing in the room looked clean enough to eat off. In fact, I’d decided to turn the air down and nap on top of the covers. I didn’t want to see what surprises might be on the sheets. The carbohydrate fix had made me even sleepier. I’d set the alarm on my watch for 1:00 A.M., and I was out the moment I was prone.

Now it took all the willpower I could muster to force my body up off that bed and into the bathroom. I sat on the john and wondered if I was a complete lunatic to try to break into a million-dollar yacht tied up to the docks of a United States Coast Guard base. My conclusion: probably. But I didn’t know what else to do at that point. I was certain that everything that had happened during these last four days was connected. Ely and Patty both had been killed because of some secret, and Neal was hiding out because he knew something about it. Men like Hamilton Burns and his clients really valued only money. At the moment, I could use some of it myself, and that was just one reason I was determined to find out if the Top Ten held any of the answers I was looking for.

The motel was quiet and the streets were nearly empty when I pulled out onto the highway. I’d found an old navy blue zip-front hooded sweatshirt balled up in the back of my Jeep, and I pulled it on to cover my bright T-shirt. The dark jean shorts would be okay. I also had a collection of baseball caps under the seat for days when the wind in the Jeep got to be too much. With my hair pulled into a tight ponytail, I chose a dark cap with Sullivan Towing stitched in faded gold across the front. It had once belonged to Red.

It had been a long time since I had last been to John Lloyd Beach State Park. The park was on a long peninsula that formed the southern side of the mouth to the harbor at Port Everglades. This narrow strip of land was really a barrier island that stretched all the way down to South Beach and the Miami Harbor entrance. The ocean flowed on the outside, the Intracoastal on the inside. At the tip of the peninsula, the Coast Guard had their facilities, but you had to pass through the park to get down to their station. The State Parks people manned a security gate there round the clock.

I turned off into the parking lot at Dania Beach and parked in one of the metered spots. The best way to get past the gate would be on foot, going into the brush on either side of the guard station. But then it would be a good two-mile hike down to where the Top Ten was docked. I didn’t think anybody would be on the road through the park at that hour. I grabbed the backpack containing my in-line skates. There was a flashlight under the driver’s seat for emergencies, and I dropped it in the backpack as well.

I pulled my cap down low over my face as I crossed the Whiskey Creek bridge. I was in full view of the ranger station about fifteen hundred yards ahead, but I was guessing that the person on duty either had something to read or some music and he wouldn’t pay much attention to my end of the road. At the bottom of the bridge, I turned off into the forest of tall Australian pines. The thick carpet of pine needles on the forest floor made it easy walking, although the trees didn’t provide much cover. I passed the ranger post about a hundred feet away. I could see the headphones on the young man’s head.

The road took a turn another couple of hundred yards past the guard post, and I sat on a chunk of dead coral on the side of the road and pulled on my skates.

The road through the park was dark and desolate. Pines lined the right side of the road, and on the left, short mangrove seedlings covered the bank before the dark water of the Intracoastal. I skated near the side of the road, ready to jump into the trees if a car approached. The asphalt was rough, and I tried to get into my steady rhythm of side-to-side sweeping strides.

Just across the Intracoastal, the mangroves began to thin out and the bright lights of the busy commercial port lit my way. On one side was the loamy smell of the dark pine woods, while across the water came the noises and machine smells of ships’ engines and generators. Toward the end of the peninsula, the road curved, and through the trees, I could see the lights of the dormitories and buildings at the station.

There were several compounds out on the end of the peninsula that marked the southern half of the entrance to Port Everglades. After I replaced my skates with my sneakers, I checked the whole area over to make sure I was jumping the right fence. The entrance to the Coast Guard station had a closed chain-link gate that operated electronically, but no guard. Not even any barbed wire on top. Up until now, everything I’d been doing had been minor but breaking into a U.S. military installation was a major offense. My pulse was throbbing in my neck as I hooked my fingers through the chain link. It took me several minutes to force myself to make the first step. Once over, I made my way around the perimeter of the compound to where I could see the Top Ten berthed behind a forty-foot cutter.

The gangway was down and no precautions had been taken to keep people from boarding. The Coasties probably didn’t expect anybody to get this far without being challenged.

Stepping onto the deck, my memory flashed back to when I had jumped aboard last Thursday. The same eerie feeling came over me as soon as I stepped aboard. Lots of sailors and fishermen get to thinking their boats have personalities and wills of their own. I’ve always been a skeptic about this, but this ship did feel as though she had lost her soul.

I started at the bow on the lower deck and worked my way aft, jiggling all the doors and windows, trying to find my way in. The police had placed yellow crime scene tape across the doorways, but at this point it was the locks that were most effective at keeping me out. On the stern, I made out a dark shape on the side deck that I hadn’t noticed the last time I was aboard. A black oilcloth tarp covered what looked like some kind of machinery. Yachts of this size and caliber didn’t normally need to have machinery stored out on deck. I pulled off the cover and found what looked like a small engine mounted on top of a pair of tanks. Squatting down below the level of the bulwarks, I clicked on my flashlight and examined the aluminum plate on the side of the red steel tank: Powermate Contractor 5.5 HP, 120 PSI Max. Pressure. It was apparently some kind of gas engine-driven air compressor. Red had installed a small compressor on Gorda that we sometimes used for filling tanks. What was this one for? For filling dive tanks? That didn’t make sense. The Top Ten already had an electric compressor in her engine room below deck. I wondered why on earth Neal had brought it aboard.

I heard a loud scraping noise aft, and I clicked off my flashlight. At first I heard nothing but my own heart pounding and the whistle of the air in my nostrils as I tried to slow down and breathe normally. Then I heard the noises of the port across the turning basin, the beeping of forklifts loading containers onto ships, trucks and tugs moving and working. A pilot boat passed on the channel side, and the Top Ten strained at her dock lines. The aluminum companionway creaked as it rolled on the seawall. When my heart finally slowed to a mere gallop, I stood and peered around the cabin on both sides of the yacht. There was no one there.

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