Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

nodded to Danny and went back inside, this time returning with a half-filled bottle of rum. He offered it to Danny who could only stare at him, dumbfounded. Joseph shrugged and took a drink from the bottle and asked Danny if the two-inch trash pump was still on board the troller. Danny, still incapable of speech as his mind grappled with the impossible, nodded. Yes. Joseph told him to go and fetch it then.

Joseph had been lying awake and heard Sinbad’s low growl as the gate latch clicked. He had gone to the open window and saw two men coming into the yard. He quieted the dog and waited. They were each holding something but he couldn’t make out what it was. They split up and the small one approached his window. An arm came through and Joseph saw the glass bottle and then the lighter flared as Sinbad bit down hard and jerked the man inside. He fell onto the bed, the lit bomb beside him, his terrified scream drowned out by an explosion from the rear of the house. Joseph went through the window into the yard followed by Sinbad just as the propane tank went up and the force of the blast knocked him through the fence into the neighbour’s yard. When he regained consciousness some minutes later with Sinbad licking his face, the fire trucks had already arrived. Joseph saw them loading Annie into the ambulance. He decided there was nothing for him to do there, so he and Sinbad left.

“You could have told somebody,” Danny said.

Joseph spoke.

“Apart from Annie,” Danny said.

They sat and talked as the trash pump banged away on the foredeck, a flexing hose leading from it down through the hatch where they’d fastened the end inside a crab pot to serve as a rough primary filter. They’d thrown all the cushions overboard along with much of the debris that was loose and floating around inside the cabin, but there were still jams that required clearing every few minutes. Judging from the tide lines on the cabin walls, there had been over four feet of water inside the boat, and with all the rolling and pitching it had splashed all the way up to the cabin roof. The water was black and rancid and everything inside the boat was coated with grease and oil. It was a complete and total write-off; even the interior wall panelling was broken in spots and stained. Better if Arrow had sunk and spared Jared the wretched sight of her, Danny thought. He refused to consider the possibility that his friend was dead.

Jared wasn’t on board when Joseph had arrived at Arrow eight hours earlier. There were no indications as to whether he had left voluntarily or been taken, and no clues to his present whereabouts. Joseph did, however, have a good notion of where the Blue Harp was. He pointed out the pieces of broken teak furniture caught up in the debris that surrounded them and explained.

The Polynesians on their long ocean passages could detect the presence of an island a thousand miles away by a change in the patterns of waves breaking upon their canoes in open water. Determining the point of origin of broken and drifting pieces of teak furniture in tidal waters with defined currents seemed much more possible. Danny had seen Joseph locate an underwater shelf of rock invisible in storm and spray when all their lives depended upon finding that one precise place in impossible conditions, and he had no problem believing that Joseph could locate the Blue Harp.

His problem lay with Joseph’s unshakeable resolve that they must park the Annie J and take Jared’s crippled sailboat on the hunt. He knew better than to argue though.

Chapter 49

Legalese moved through the water at a leisurely seven-and-a-half knots, the twin Detroit diesels ticking over at the sedate 1600 RPM that Clarke refused to exceed in spite of the complaints of his two passengers. He couldn’t argue excessive fuel costs at the higher speeds, as Ivery’s first action upon leaving the yacht club was to direct him to the fuel docks where they filled the tanks. The bill came to just under five figures, and Thomas paid with one of those black credit cards Clarke had previously assumed were urban legend. Clarke could argue caution, though, and had rattled on about the potential hazards involved in cranking up long-neglected engines to continuous high rates of speed, overheating transmissions, worn shafts, and leaking stern glands, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. As Ivery and Rodgers were even less knowledgeable about matters mechanical they deferred to him, with grumblings.

Clarke didn’t know if his arguments for restraint were completely valid (he’d overheard the stern gland thing at the Queens Own bar), he just needed to slow things down and give himself some time and space to consider the situation. Basically he wanted to feel that he was driving events and not the other way around. Despite his sometimes go-to-hell manner, he was not an impulsive man and was already regretting his decision to start out on this mad venture. The plan — if heading off into the wilderness clueless even deserved that designation — was ridiculous and fraught with uncertainty on its own merits, as well as being filled with personal and professional danger. And that was without considering the dubious pair alongside him. Once he’d allowed those two on board, he might just as well have quit the force and ripped up his pension fund papers.

He didn’t know what had come over him back at the yacht club. In hindsight, he had been unnerved by the incident with the raven and it had clouded his judgment. He was not normally a superstitious man; and while he had a lot of respect for Joseph, the old man was dead, and Clarke seriously doubted his reincarnation as a large black bird. Yet even as he was framing these thoughts, Clarke could not refrain from a surreptitious glance