Kelly altered course to starboard to avoid a gaggle of sports craft. The island was visible now, about five miles ahead. Not much to look at, just a low bump on the horizon, not even a tree, but it was his and it was as private as a man could wish. About the only bad news was the miserable TV reception.
Battery Island had a long and undistinguished history. Its current name, more ironic than appropriate, had come in the early nineteenth century, when some enterprising militiaman had decided to place a small gun battery there to guard a narrow spot in the Chesapeake Bay against the British, who were sailing towards Washington, DC, to punish the new nation that had been so ill-advised as to challenge the power of the world’s foremost navy. One British squadron commander had taken note of a few harmless puffs of smoke on the island, and, probably with more amusement than malice, had taken one ship within gun range and let loose a few salvos from the long guns on his lower deck. The citizen soldiers manning the battery hadn’t needed much encouragement to make a run for their rowboats and bustle to the mainland, and shortly thereafter a landing party of Jack Tars and a few Royal Marines had rowed ashore in a pinnace to drive nails into the touch holes, which was what ‘spiking guns’ meant. After this brief diversion, the British had continued their leisurely sail up the Patuxent River, from which their army had walked to Washington and back, having forced Dolly Madison to evacuate the White House. The British campaign had next headed to Baltimore, where a somewhat different outcome resulted.
Battery Island, under reluctant federal ownership, became an embarrassing footnote to a singularly useless war. Without so much as a caretaker to look after the earthen emplacements, weeds overtook the island, and so things had remained for nearly a hundred years.
With 1917 came America’s first real foreign war, and America’s navy, suddenly faced with the U-boat menace, needed a sheltered place to test its guns. Battery Island seemed ideal, only a few steaming hours from Norfolk, and so for several months in the fall of that year, 12- and 14-inch battleship rifles had crashed and thundered, blasting nearly a third of the island below mean low water and greatly annoying the migratory birds, who’d long since realized that no hunters ever shot at them from the place. About the only new thing that happened was the scuttling of over a hundred World War I-built cargo ships a few miles to the south, and these, soon overgrown with weeds, rapidly took on the appearance of islands themselves.
A new war and new weapons had brought the sleepy island back to life. The nearby naval air station needed a place for pilots to test weapons. The happy coincidence of the location of Battery Island and the scuttled ships from World War I had made for an instant bombing range. As a result, three massive concrete observation bunkers were built, from which officers could observe TBFs and SB2C bombers practicing runs on targets that looked like ship-shaped islands – and pulverizing quite a few of them until one bomb hung on the rack just long enough to obliterate one of the bunkers, thankfully empty. The site of the destroyed bunker had been cleared in the name of tidiness, and the island converted to a rescue station, from which a crashboat might respond to an aircraft accident. That had required building a concrete quay and boathouse and refurbishment of the two remaining bunkers. All in all, the island had served the local economy, if not the federal budget, well, until the advent of helicopters made crashboats unnecessary, and the island had been declared surplus. And so the island remained unnoticed on a register of unwanted federal property until Kelly had managed to acquire a lease.
Pam leaned back on her blanket as they approached, basting in the warm sun beneath a thick coating of suntan lotion. She didn’t have a swimsuit, and wore only a bra and panties. It didn’t offend Kelly, but the impropriety of it was vaguely disturbing for no reason that stood up to logical analysis. In any case, his current job was driving his boat. Further contemplation of her body could wait, he told himself about every minute, when his eyes darted that way to make sure she was still there.
He eased the wheel farther to the right to pass well clear of a large fishing yacht. He gave Pam another look. She’d slipped the straps of her bra down off her shoulders for a more even tan. Kelly approved.
The sound startled both of them, rapid short blasts on the fishing boat’s diesel horns. Kelly’s head scanned all the way around, then centered on the boat that lay two hundred yards to port. It was the only thing close enough to be of concern, and also seemed to be the source of the noise. On the flying bridge a man was waving at him. Kelly turned to port to approach. He took his time bringing Springer alongside. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t much of a boat handler, and when he brought his craft to a halt, twenty feet away, he kept his hand on the throttles.
‘What’s the problem?’ Kelly called over the loud-hailer.
‘Lost our props!’ a swarthy man hollered back. ‘What do we do?’
Row, Kelly almost replied, but that wasn’t very neighborly. He brought his boat closer in to survey the situation. It was a medium-sized fishing cruiser, a fairly recent Hatteras. The man on the bridge was about five-eight, fiftyish, and bare-chested except for a mat of dark hair. A woman was also visible, also rather downcast.
‘No screws at all?’ Kelly asked when they were closer.
‘I think we hit a sandbar,’ the man explained. ‘About half a mile that way.’ He pointed to a place Kelly kept clear of.
‘Sure enough, there’s one that way. I can give you a tow if you want. You have good enough line for it?’
‘Yes!’ the man replied immediately. He went forward to his rope locker. The woman aboard continued to look embarrassed.
Kelly maneuvered clear for a moment, observing the other ‘captain,’ a term his mind applied ironically. He couldn’t read charts. He didn’t know the proper way of attracting another boat’s attention. He didn’t even know how to call the Coast Guard. All he’d managed to do was buy a Hatteras yacht, and while that spoke well of his judgment, Kelly figured it had more likely come from a smart salesman. But then the man surprised Kelly. He handled his lines with skill and waved Springer in.
Kelly maneuvered his stem in close, then went aft to his well deck to take the towing line, which he secured to the big cleat on the transom. Pam was up and watching now. Kelly hustled back to the fly bridge and coaxed his throttle a crack.
‘Get on your radio,’ he told the Hatteras owner. ‘Leave your rudder amidships till I tell you different. Okay?’
‘Got it.’
‘Hope so,’ Kelly whispered to himself, pushing the throttle levers until the towing line came taut.
‘What happened to him?’ Pam asked.
‘People forget there’s a bottom under this water. You hit it hard enough and you break things.’ He paused. ‘You might want to put some more clothes on.’
Pam giggled and went below. Kelly increased speed carefully to about four knots before starting the turn south. He’d done this all before, and grumbled that if he did it one more time he’d have special stationery printed up for the bills.
Kelly brought Springer alongside very slowly, mindful of the boat he was towing. He scurried off the bridge to drop his fenders, then jumped ashore to tie off a pair of spring lines before heading towards the Hatteras. The owner already had his mooring lines set up, and tossed them to Kelly on the quay while he set his fenders. Hauling the boat in a few feet was a good chance to show his muscles to Pam. It only took five minutes to get her snugged in, after which Kelly did the same with Springer.
‘This is yours?’
‘Sure enough,’ Kelly replied. ‘Welcome to my sandbar.’
‘Sam Rosen,’ the man said, holding his hand out. He’d pulled a shirt on, and while he had a strong grip, Kelly noted that his hands were so soft as to be dainty.
‘John Kelly.’
‘My wife, Sarah.’
Kelly laughed. ‘You must be the navigator.’
Sarah was short, overweight, and her brown eyes wavered between amusement and embarrassment. ‘Somebody needs to thank you for your help,’ she observed in a New York accent.
‘A law of the sea, ma’am. What went wrong?’
‘The chart shows six feet where we struck. This boat only takes four! And low tide was five hours ago!’ the lady snapped. She wasn’t angry at Kelly, but he was the closest target, and her husband had already heard what she thought.