Somebody said something. Wilcox’s head turned quickly one way, then back the other. Obrecki stepped to the side and brought the shotgun down. Both men went down on their faces, dropping from view.
“Looks like a bust, sir,” Ensign O’Neil noted. Wegener took one step into the wheelhouse.
“Radio!” A crewman tossed him a Motorola portable. Wegener listened but didn’t make a call. Whatever his people had just found, he didn’t want to distract them. Obrecki stayed with the two men while Wilcox went inside the yacht. Riley had sure as hell found something. The shotgun was definitely aimed at them, and the tension in the boy’s arms radiated across the water to the cutter. The captain turned to the machine-gunner, whose weapon was still aimed at the yacht.
“Safe that gun!”
“Aye!” the sailor answered at once, and dropped his hands to point it at the sky. The officer next to him winced with embarrassment. Another lesson learned. A few words would accompany it in an hour or two. This had been a mistake with a gun.
Wilcox reappeared a moment later, with Chief Riley behind him. The bosun handed over two pairs of handcuffs to the officer, who bent down to work them. They had to be the only two aboard; Riley bolstered his pistol a moment later, and Obrecki’s shotgun went up to the sky again. Wegener thought he saw the youngster reset the safety. The farm boy knew his guns, all right, had learned to shoot the same way his skipper had. Why had he taken the safety off…? The radio crackled just as Wegener’s mind asked the question.
“Captain, this is Wilcox.” The lieutenant stood to speak, and both men faced each other, a hundred yards apart.
“I’m here.”
“It’s a bad one, sir… sir, there’s blood all over the place. One of ’em was scrubbing the salon down, but – it’s a real mess here, sir.”
“Just the two of them?”
“Affirmative. Only two people aboard. We’ve cuffed ’em both.”
“Check again,” Wegener ordered. Wilcox read the captain’s mind: he stayed with the prisoners and let Chief Riley do the search. The bosun appeared three minutes later, shaking his head. His face looked pale through the binoculars, Wegener saw. What would make Bob Riley go pale?
“Just these two, sir. No ID on them. I don’t think we want to do much of a search, I think-”
“Correct. I’ll send you another man and leave you Obrecki. Can you get the yacht to port?”
“Sure, Captain. We got plenty of fuel.”
“There’s going to be a little blow tonight,” Wegener warned.
“I checked the weather this morning. No sweat, sir.”
“Okay, let me call this one in and get things organized. Stand by.”
“Roger that. Sir, I recommend that you send the TV camera across for a permanent record to back up the stills.”
“Okay, it’ll be over in a few minutes.”
It took half an hour for the Coast Guard base to get the FBI and DEA agreed on things. While they waited for word, the Zodiac took another crewman over with a portable TV camera and tape recorder. One of the boarding party shot off sixty frames with a Polaroid camera, while the TV recorded everything on half-inch tape. The Coast Guardsmen restarted Empire Builder’s engines and headed northwest for Mobile, with the cutter holding station on her portside. It was finally decided that Wilcox and Obrecki could take the yacht back to Mobile, and that a helicopter would pick up the two “yachtsmen” that afternoon – weather permitting. It was a long way to the helicopter base. Panache was supposed to have her own helicopter, but the Coast Guard didn’t have the funding to buy enough. A third seaman was landed on the yacht, and it was time to bring the prisoners back to Panache.
Chief Riley took the prisoners aft. Wegener watched the bosun fairly throw them into the Zodiac. Five minutes later it was hoisted aboard. The yacht headed northwest, and the cutter turned away to continue her patrol. The first man from the boarding party to reach the bridge was the seaman who’d worked the Polaroid. He handed over half a dozen of the color frames.
“The chief collected some stuff for you to look at, Cap’n. It’s worse’n it looks here. Wait till you see the TV tape. It’s already set up for copying.”
Wegener handed the photos back. “Okay – it all goes into the evidence locker. You join up with the others. Have Myers set up a new tape in the VCR, and I want you all to tell the camera what you saw. You know how it goes. Let’s make sure we get it all right.”
“Yes, sir!”
Riley appeared a minute later. Robert Timothy Riley was a man in the traditional pattern of the chief boatswain’s mate. Six-two and over two hundred pounds, he had the hairy arms of a gorilla, the gut of a man who knew his way around a beer can, and the rumbling voice to outscream a winter gale. His oversized right hand grasped a couple of plastic food bags. His face showed that anger was now replacing the shock.
“It’s a fuckin’ slaughterhouse, sir. Like somebody exploded a couple cans of brown paint – ‘cept it ain’t paint. Jesus.” One bag came up. “The little one was cleaning up when we pulled ’em over. There’s a trash can in the saloon with maybe a half dozen cartridge cases. I pulled these two off the rug – just like they taught us, Cap’n. Picked ’em up with my ball-point and shuffled ’em into the baggie. Two guns I left aboard. I bagged them, too. That ain’t the worst of it.”
The next baggie contained a small, framed photograph. It had to be the yacht’s owner and his family. The baggie after that contained a…
“Found it under a table. Rape, too. She must’ve been havin’ her period, but they didn’t let that stop ’em. Maybe just the wife. Maybe the little girl, too. In the galley there’s some butcher knives, all bloodied up. I figure they carved the bodies up and tossed ’em over the side. These four people are shark-shit now.”
“Drugs?”
“Twenty or so keys of white powder stowed in the crew’s quarters. Some marijuana, too, but that just looks like a personal stash.” Riley shrugged. “I didn’t even bother using the test kit, sir. Don’t matter. This is straight piracy and murder. I saw one bullet hole in the deck, a through-and-through. Red, I ain’t seen nothing like this in my whole life. Like something in a movie, but worse.” He let out a long breath. “You have to have been there, sir.”
“What do we know about the prisoners?”
“Nothing. They ain’t done nothing more’n grunt, leastways not when I was around. No ID on them, and I didn’t want to go messing around things looking for passports an’ stuff. Figured I’d leave that for the real cops. The wheelhouse is clean. So’s one of the heads. Mr. Wilcox won’t have much trouble taking her back, and I heard him tell Obrecki and Brown not to touch anything. Plenty of fuel aboard, he can run her at full speed. He’ll have her in Mobile ‘fore midnight if the weather holds off. Nice boat.” Another shrug.
“Bring ’em up here,” Wegener said after a moment.
“Aye aye.” Riley went aft.
Wegener filled his pipe, then had to remember where he’d left his matches. The world had changed while he’d been off doing other things, and Wegener didn’t like it. It was dangerous enough out here. Wind and wave were as deadly an enemy as man needed. The sea was always waiting for her chance. It didn’t matter how good you thought you were; you only had to forget once, just once, that you could never trust her. Wegener was a man who never forgot, and devoted his life to protecting those who had. Remembering that one hazard, and protecting those who forgot, had given him a full and satisfying life. He liked being the guardian angel in the snow-white boat. You were never lost if Red Wegener was around. You always had a chance, a good chance, that he could reach into the wet, stormy grave and pull you out with his bare hands… but sharks were feasting on four people now. Wegener loved the sea for all her moods, but sharks were something to loathe, and the thought that they were now eating people that he might have saved… four people who’d forgotten that not all sharks live in the sea, Wegener told himself. That’s what had changed. Piracy. He shook his head. That’s what you called it on the water. Piracy. Something that Errol Flynn had made movies about in Wegener’s boyhood. Something that had ended two centuries earlier. Piracy and murder, the part that the movies had usually left out. Piracy and murder and rape, each of them a capital offense in the old days…