Chapter 48
Despite Joe’s quip about bringing something to interview in, he was happily soaking up the sun in full beach mode within thirty minutes of stepping off the plane.
Kurt had arranged a ride to the marina and the rental of a boat.
As they pulled away from shore in a V-hulled boat made for deep sea fishing, Joe was wearing swim trunks, flip-flops, and a faded T-shirt that complemented his quickly darkening tan.
A ragged straw hat he’d bought from a vendor on the side of the road kept the sun out of his eyes, while giving him the look of a local, or perhaps a beachcombing surfer hunting for the perfect wave.
As Kurt drove the boat, Joe studied the shoreline through a set of binoculars. Two hours into their journey, he finally laid eyes on Rand’s palatial estate. It appeared even larger when viewed from the sea.
“What do you think?” Kurt said.
“His air-conditioning bill alone would put me out of business,” Joe said.
They were cruising slowly along the coast about a mile offshore.
As the bay in front of Rand’s place opened up, Joe watched the waves curl in from the south.
They twisted toward the caramel-colored stretch of sand after rounding an extended point in the rocks, and then broke across a low reef, about two hundred feet from the beach.
From there they flattened out, surging forward with far less power until they washed gently up onto the sand.
Joe spotted a man fishing from the rocks.
He had a long pole and a cooler beside him, and a hat like Joe’s.
Closer in, a pair of men worked on the engine compartment of one of the speedboats.
Farther up the beach he spotted an attractive woman lying on the sand under a shade of a palm tree.
Despite her beauty, it was the waves that interested him the most.
“There’s definitely a reef in our way. Looks like there’s a gap we could shoot through to get in, but we’re going to have an audience.”
Kurt stood at the controls in the shade of the Bimini top. He was dressed much like Joe, though instead of a faded T-shirt and straw hat he wore a loose-fitting, long-sleeved linen shirt. It had buttons and a pocket and a casual wrinkled look that went with Kurt’s cargo shorts.
“Pretty sure we’ve been under surveillance since we rounded Delgado Point,” Kurt said, referencing a jutting stretch of land two miles behind them.
“Five will get you ten the guy with the fishing pole hasn’t caught a thing all day.
And the girl on the beach probably has a radio in that tote bag somewhere. ”
Rand was a smuggler ensconced on an out-of-the-way little island, but he didn’t exactly live inconspicuously.
According to Kurt, he made hefty donations to the local constabulary and other government officials.
The kind that allowed for an ostentatious lifestyle.
But there were other things to watch for: competitors, angry customers, not to mention agents of foreign governments who might have a bone to pick with his delivery schedule.
Joe offered some options. “We could race in through the gap and make it obvious, or continue on and come back tonight?”
“Don’t have time to wait for nightfall,” Kurt said. “But check the gap once more. I have a feeling it’s not as open as it looks.”
Joe raised the binoculars again and focused on the one spot where the waves tucked in close and then continued on toward the beach unimpeded.
He stared for a while, focusing and refocusing as the lenses steamed up in the humid environment.
Finally, he saw what Kurt was referring to.
A thick rusty chain had been stretched across the gap.
It was anchored to unseen concrete pylons hidden in the coral.
A miniature version of the “Great Chain” that had been stretched across the Hudson to keep the British ships from sailing upriver during the American Revolution.
“That could be a problem,” Joe admitted. “Don’t want to rip the bottom of the hull out or tear the prop off.”
“Think we can crest it with the surf?”
Joe considered the draft of the boat they’d borrowed, the height of the waves, and the effect of traveling in at high speed, which would lift the boat up, but also make an impact far worse if it occurred. “Fifty-fifty.”
“Good enough for me,” Kurt said.
“What if I’d said thirty-seventy?”
“I’d still try it.”
“Ninety-ten that we crash and get thrown from the boat?”
“That long shot has to hit at some point.” Kurt laughed. “Might as well be now.”
Joe shook his head. He was not surprised. “What if I said I was one hundred percent sure this would end in disaster?”
“I’d figure your math was wrong and try it anyway,” Kurt joked. “Hold on. Here we go.”
Kurt turned the boat away from the beach as he began to pick up speed. Looping around to the south he guided the craft back toward the reef and pushed the throttle up farther. Speed mattered, but hitting the gap with the crest of one of the waves mattered more.
Joe grabbed the gunwale of the boat with one hand and held the straw hat down with the other as Kurt let the engines roar.
The sound caught the attention of the fisherman on the rocks, who dropped his pole and grabbed what looked like a walkie-talkie off the cooler.
The men working on the outboard stopped what they were doing and looked up, but otherwise they didn’t react.
The woman propped herself up on her elbows.
Eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses as she watched them approach.
She was too far away for Joe to detect a smile, but she seemed more curious than afraid.
With Kurt constantly adjusting the throttle, they caught up to the swells and began speeding over them.
A smooth ride up, and then down, and then back up again.
Because of the peculiar way fluids move, the waves actually picked up speed as they entered the narrow gap, surging through, and then spreading out on the other side.
Aiming to hit the gap with a particular swell ahead of him, Kurt pushed the throttle harder.
The twenty-foot Boston Whaler caught up to the back end of the next swell just as it surged into the gap between the corals.
The boat rose up onto the hump, threatened to overshoot the crest, and then settled a bit as Kurt feathered the throttle.
The chain in front of them appeared and then vanished beneath the water as the crest of the wave rode over it. A scraping sound raked across the bottom of the hull, passing behind them as they shot the gap.
They were in, the prop was still attached, the hull seemed intact. Joe marveled once again at Kurt’s luck.
Then a jarring impact almost threw him out of the boat.
They’d hit a second obstacle: a submerged concrete bollard placed in the water to prevent someone from doing what they’d just done.
It punched a hole in the underside of the boat, splintering the fiberglass and throwing the entire craft upward.
Joe was airborne for a brief moment, his hat vanishing in the wind.
He came down on the deck hard enough to bite a chunk out of his lip.
Holding onto the controls, Kurt managed to remain where he was. He yanked the wheel to the right, pushed the power level to full, and caught the energy of the following wave. It pushed them toward the beach.
Hitting the sand, the boat lurched to a stop. Joe slid into the open bow, slamming against a locker that doubled as a front seating area.
Grunting in discomfort and dabbing his bleeding lip, he looked back at Kurt. “At least we didn’t hit a mine,” he muttered.
Kurt was still standing at the pedestal, but was slowly raising his hands.
Joe looked up. The tanned face of the woman on the beach appeared above him. She was even more attractive close up than she’d been from a distance. He smiled at her. There wasn’t much else to do at this point.
“That was impressively stupid,” she said in a South African accent. “It’s not every day you witness such foolishness.”
Joe continued to smile. “All I hear is that you were impressed.”
“American,” she said, shaking her head.
Joe sat up, taking sudden notice of the MP5K machine pistol in her hand. He dialed back the charm offensive and surrendered to reality.
The two men who’d been working on the outboard ran toward them, along with three armed men from the lower level of the big house. They were outnumbered and surrounded.
Joe put his hands up, though he noticed Kurt seemed oddly pleased.
The woman glared at Joe. “Give me one good reason we shouldn’t shoot you right now.”
Joe deferred to Kurt. “Ask him. It was his idea.”
The woman looked Kurt’s way.
With one hand still in the air, Kurt reached slowly toward the breast pocket of his shirt with the other.
He unbuttoned the pocket and removed a double-folded envelope with two fingers.
He handed the envelope carefully to the woman.
“Give this to Rand,” he said. “If he still wants to shoot us after reading it, I won’t even run for it. ”
The woman eyed Kurt suspiciously and rubbed the envelope with her fingers as if trying to determine what was inside.
“Keep your guns on them,” she ordered as she turned toward the house and strode purposefully up the sand bank. “If they do anything foolish, shoot them and dump their bodies out in the sea.”