Merciless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 1) (11 page)

A quick glance at the screen told her the wind was at nine knots and her forward speed only six. But she knew that once the sun rose and the far shores warmed, the easterly trade wind would increase.

She’d brought the file up with her. Once she reached deeper water, Charity engaged the autopilot only a mile from the tiny anchorage. By the light of a small headlamp, she opened the file and again studied the face of the man she was going to kill. Hussein Seif al Din Asfour was evil and deserved a slower death than her rifle would allow.

In the Gitmo photo, his beard was thin, like that of a much younger man. The barely existent mustache didn’t even connect to the sparse hairs on his cheeks. Below his cruel-looking mouth, there was only a patch in the center, his face bare to mid chin on either side of it. His hair had the typical Gitmo style, buzz cut to a fraction of an inch, receding slightly on the sides of a narrow forehead. Eyes darkly evil looking, with bushy eyebrows.

Flipping the page, she read the reports from eyewitnesses all across northern Afghanistan, who had him killing anyone who stood in his path before his capture. He and his men had tortured, raped, and killed women and little girls with apparent impunity. Everyone in the northern provinces feared him, including the authorities. Everywhere he’d gone, fear preceded his arrival and mourning followed his departure.

Subsequent pages expanded on the atrocities he’d committed, in the cold, analytical prose of government spooks. Charity emotionlessly read each one again, the words echoing in her mind, filling her subconscious with revulsion. Her conscious mind, however, steeled itself with a resolve so strong it buried the other thoughts.

This man must die
, she thought.
Die like the guard in the cave, cold metal ripping through his evil heart.

An hour later, as the
Dancer
approached the edge of the Gulf Stream, Charity disconnected the autopilot and turned due south, hauling the sheets in to gain speed and cross the strong current as quickly as possible.

Wind Dancer
responded, gathering speed, the wind now up to twelve knots, as Charity activated the three winches and brought the sails in close-hauled.
Dancer
surged forward to sixteen knots.

She felt the strong pull of the current, as the bow crossed into the Stream. With the water trying to move the boat east, against the wind, and
Dancer
pointing south, she heeled more sharply, like a draft horse leaning into the harness to pull up a stubborn tree stump.

Dancer
didn’t falter or stumble, but charged ahead as if she wanted to get shed of the bonds the current held on her. The spray from the wind and current-driven waves flew off the port bow and back across the side deck.

Charity stood up, gripping the handles of the antique ship’s wheel with both hands. Salty spray blew against her, dampening her shirt, face, and hair, as
Wind Dancer
cleaved each wave. The exhilaration she felt brought a slight grin to her face as the wind tugged at her clothes and hair.

It only took twenty minutes to cross the narrow current, and Charity relished every minute of it. Finally, she turned back to her original southwesterly heading, reengaging the autopilot. The computer made a slight course correction and adjustment of the sails, bound once more for the Yucatan.

The day wore on. Once the sun rose higher, the wind become steady at fifteen knots.
Dancer
held her course, pushing steadily toward the southwest. The computer constantly made minute changes in the sail arrangement, keeping her speed a steady eight to ten knots.

Charity went below after checking the radar. Moving quickly through the salon, she stripped off her damp, salt-crusted clothes, tossing them on the cabin sole, by the hatch to the forward berth.

After a cold freshwater shower, she stepped out into the companionway and got a clean pair of pants and a shirt from the hanging closet, a bra and panties from a drawer. She rolled them up tightly together and left the roll on the forward berth. Then she took a white bikini out of the drawer and quickly put it on. She wanted to take advantage of the bright morning sunlight. An hour each day under the heat of the tropical sun would darken her already deep tan. With her hair now black, she should be able to pass for a local quite easily.

Back at the helm, Charity pulled her hair straight back from her forehead, securing it high on the back of her head with an elastic band she had on her wrist.

Stretching out on the starboard bench seat, she then read and reread the information in the file again. Every detail of the man’s atrocities against the people of Afghanistan, every crease and pore in the skin of his face, she memorized.

At noon, Charity checked the radar screen and, seeing nothing near her, she went forward along the port deck. Checking equipment and rigging, she unclipped her safety line, moving it to each new section of the rail as she went. The belt was uncomfortable around her bare midsection, but very necessary.

Her uncle had survived hypothermia after a full day in the water when a rogue wave had hit his boat and he’d fallen overboard. He always insisted that a safety line should always be used while moving around above deck on a boat that was underway.

Out here, there’d be almost no chance of rescue, as the computer would continue to sail the boat to Mexico without her, leaving her in the middle of the vast ocean, the nearest land many miles away to the south.
Wind Dancer
was now closer to Cuba than to the United States, the communist country stretching away to the southwest, the coastline roughly paralleling her course, only about fifty miles away…

Reaching the bow, she double-checked the seating of the large Danforth anchor. Satisfied, she paused for a moment, standing on the pitching deck at the forward-most part of the boat, the giant foresail and jib behind her. The bow moved left and right with the wave action, as
Dancer
rode up the back of one small swell after another. A few clouds could be seen far away to the south-southwest, over the western tip of Cuba, but ahead of her, the sky was clear and cobalt blue. Perfect sailing weather.

Back at the helm, she put the Bimini back up, checked the radar screen again, and then went below to make lunch and change clothes. As she was about to climb back up the ladder to the cockpit, the laptop at the nav station pinged an alert for a saved message, and she sat down to open it.

The anonymous sender advised her that recent chatter among known Hezbollah members had mentioned an attack in Texas in less than ten days. The Hezbollah cell mentioned was currently somewhere in Mexico.

Ten days
, she thought, munching on an apple.
Not much time.

If she stopped in Progresso, even for only the night, that meant she’d have only three days after arriving in Alvarado to acquire transportation to the interior and scout out the terrorists’ location, then come up with some way to get close enough to take out the leader and still get back out.

Deleting the message, she created a new one to save in the draft folder.

Please advise with utmost expedience any further chatter involving this attack threat and any update on the group currently camped at the San Martin Tuxtla volcano.

Taking her lunch and three more bottles of water, Charity returned to the helm. She ate slowly, reading the file for at least the sixth time, only occasionally looking forward or checking the radar. The system had an alarm that would warn her of any boat traffic within two miles, plenty of time to disengage the autopilot and take evasive action. It would come in handy during the night, when she’d sleep in hour-long intervals at the helm.

Fourteen hours after leaving the Dry Tortugas, with the sun sinking slowly toward the horizon directly ahead,
Wind Dancer
had covered a hundred and twenty miles of ocean. The sun turned a russet shade of red, bathing the clouds to the south in pastel hues of pink and lavender.

Charity had actually cooked a hot meal an hour earlier. The seas were so calm, she had no trouble broiling a chicken breast with sautéed onions and sliced potatoes. Standing on the ladder to the cockpit, she could see all around the
Dancer
and keep watch on the food as it sizzled. While it wasn’t a four-star meal, she didn’t think it half bad and allowed herself a single bottle of beer afterward. Just to celebrate the end of the day.

The sun, red and enormous, began its daily dance with the sea. At the same time, the moon began to rise behind
Wind Dancer
, presenting its own beautiful shade of red. The two pirouetted together, one setting, the other rising at the same pace, moving in a surreal dance of light that gave greater depth and texture to the water’s surface and
Dancer
herself. Light played across the bow and sails, bathing them in the warmth of a sun and giving everything it touched a strange sort of enigmatic power. The sun itself appeared larger than usual, as if Charity could almost reach out and touch it.

Suddenly, it looked as if the water just reached up and grabbed the huge red disc. Charity gasped lightly as she saw this, her breath catching in her throat, and for a moment it was so beautiful she thought she would cry.

The water continued pulling at the sun, grasping ever upward at the sides, seeming to stretch it horizontally. The sun flattened itself along the horizon, as if resisting the steady pull of the sea.

In just a few minutes, as Charity watched the display in awe, the water’s surface finally reached over the top of the sun, embracing the last of it and pulling it down as a small inverted teardrop, bright orange against the purple sky, escaped its grasp. The teardrop leaped from the sea, hovering just above the horizon for an instant, before it blinked out and darkness fell over the water.

Within a minute, the purple light in the west disappeared and stars twinkled all across the sky, right down to the horizon. Dusk in the open sea was nonexistent. Day turned into night in the blink of an eye.

With the light of the moon behind her, the stars shining everywhere she looked, Charity was again reminded just how small and insignificant one person, even one boat, really is in the vastness of Earth’s ocean. Her eyes adjusted quickly, as the last light from the sun faded and disappeared. By the light of the nearly full moon and the billions of stars reflecting in her eyes, she could easily see for miles out across the empty ocean.

The automatic lighting system turned on the running lights, casting an eerie green-and-red glow on the water on either side of the bow.
Dancer
seemed not to notice the change, but sailed steadfastly onward.

Rising, Charity went below to put the file away and check for an update. With nothing in her draft folder, she went to the hanging closet and put on a sweater against the chilly night air. She also picked up one of the water-resistant pillows from the settee and carried it to the cockpit.

It would now be nearly eleven hours of darkness before the first rays of the sun would snatch the darkness away from night, just as quickly as a lamp being turned on.

Back at the helm, alone with her thoughts, Charity thought about her friends, the members of her team. The people she’d been training with, some of them for over a year. She hoped that one day, the truth about her disappearance would be told. She didn’t know why it mattered, but it was important to her that these people knew why she’d left them.

In particular, she hoped her boss, Deuce Livingston, would be told and that he’d understand. Charity respected his quiet leadership. She knew Andrew would understand. If and when he learned the truth, he’d laugh, and with that deep foghorn voice of his, he’d proclaim that he had known better all along.

Jesse McDermitt, the team’s part-time transporter and close friend of both Deuce and his father before him, would certainly understand. After twenty years in the Marines, he’d gone to the Keys to escape everything. On his wedding day, a year and a half ago, his bride had been kidnapped and murdered by people involved in bringing terrorists into the country. Charity said a silent prayer that life would bring peace to the man.

As the night wore on, Charity became tired. She planned to sleep one hour on and one hour off, from ten to an hour after sunrise. Tomorrow night would be more difficult. She planned to take at least an hour’s nap after lunch, then start her hour-long naps as soon as she started feeling drowsy.

Setting the alarm on her watch to sound in an hour and then repeat every two hours after that, Charity curled up in the corner of the starboard bench, making sure to shorten her safety line and attach it to the eye hook on the side of the console.

Her conscious mind tried to fight sleep. It wasn’t natural for her to sleep while moving. She’d always had trouble doing it in a car with someone else was driving.

She finally convinced herself that there wasn’t anything within the twelve-mile limit of the radar, and it would alert her if another boat was close. Besides, in an hour,
Dancer
would only travel seven or eight miles. Exhausted, she fell asleep.