Chapter 1: Premonitions

Babs Meredith never really knew why she woke up in the middle of the night. Certainly, she was normally a heavy sleeper, indeed, was one prone to sleeping late and lazily drowsing in bed. Afterward she often wondered if her dear, departed Harry had somehow spoken to her, thundering an angelic, “Get up!” that night. Not being overly religious, she never quite believed that, but it was as good an explanation as she was ever able to figure out.

Still and all, for some reason she awoke in the middle of the night, coming straight out of a deep sleep and found herself wide awake, and instantly knew that something was wrong. Precisely what, she couldn’t say, but something about the boat wasn’t right. Sitting up carefully, to avoid waking her daughter and granddaughter, she slipped from the side of the king-size bunk and stood at its side. The boat rocked gently in the light swells, and it occurred to her that she should have felt more movement and heard more noise. It was almost as if the boat had stopped.

Silently she crept to the cabin door and gently slipped through into the main cabin. To the side, she heard her grandson snoring softly and padded in her bare feet past him. Something seemed wrong about the look of the cabin in the faint starlight, but precisely what, she couldn’t say. She quietly stole through and went up the stairs to the small deck.

It was deserted. Where had Tim Robling, the mate, gone to? Enough light shone down from the Milky Way to prove that the deck well of the thirty-foot racer was empty, and she was sure that she would have seen him in the main cabin where Jason was still asleep, so he was missing. Where had he gone, and why was the boat stopped? Nervous, she went inside and went to Jason’s bunk, cushions laid out on the lowered dining table.

“Jason, wake up. Jason!” She grabbed a shoulder and started pushing and prodding the teenaged boy awake. “Come on, Jason, get up!”

“Huh? Wha...,” he grumbled, slowly coming alive. “Grandma?” he asked as he sat up, resting on his elbows. “Grandma, it’s the middle of the night! What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, Jason. Where’s Tim?” she asked.

“Huh? Isn’t he driving the boat?” he asked, still half asleep and not noticing the speedboat was adrift. Reaching out, he found the wall switch by his makeshift bed and flipped it. A sharp clicking sound was his only reward and he flipped the switch several times. “What’s going on, Grandma?” he asked, coming awake.

“I don’t know, Jason, but I’m getting nervous. Get up and look around. Where’s the flashlight?”

“Over there, in that drawer,” her grandson said, pointing to the utility drawer at the end of the galley cabinets.

Babs popped the drawer open and felt around in it. “No, it isn’t.” She turned to face him and banged her knee against the seat on the opposite side of the boat from Jason. Looking down, she was astonished to find that the seat cushion was missing. In fact, all the cushions were missing, except for those that Jason had been sleeping on. “Where’s the cushions?” she asked.

Jason looked around wildly. “What in the world is going on?”

“I don’t know, honey, but I don’t like the look of this. Get up and get dressed, then look around up top. I’m getting your sister and mother up.” Jason reached behind him and grabbed his T-shirt and rolled off his bunk. He had gone to sleep in his swim shorts. His grandmother went back to the cabin and began the process of waking the rest of her family.

Both her daughter, Maggie, and her granddaughter, Mary, were dressed for sleep as she was, in a T-shirt and panties. She had never really wondered what they slept in at home and had decided to set an example the first night of their boating vacation. Certainly, she had never slept in these at home. Harry, bless his horny heart, had preferred that she sleep in the buff; even if she did go to bed in frilly lingerie, he would promptly have his way with her, in the process removing it completely. She had been perfectly happy to comply with her libidinous husband, since the most he ever wore were boxer shorts, and she had been just as eager to remove them from him. Still, she had reflected, occasionally she had gone to bed in a T-shirt and panties, but it was invariably on a weekend afternoon, and the T-shirt had always ended up around her neck, while the panties always ended up around her ankles. Since his death, Babs had never gotten into the habit of dressing for sleep.

Entering the cabin, she had tried the light switch to find it useless as well. Giving a hard shove to each of the women in turn, she opened the closet and reached up to the shelf and pulled out a large plastic box labeled ‘Emergency’. She knew what was in it, having heeded her husband’s words of years before. “If you’re in a new place, always look for a way out, and what you have in case things turn to shit!” Harry Meredith had taught her, and she had learned well. As her daughter and granddaughter groaned awake, she opened the kit and pulled out the small but powerful flashlight within. Flicking it on, she shone it full in their faces, blinding them and causing them to sit up and cover their eyes.

“Mom, what the hell are you doing?” cried Maggie. Beside her, Mary muttered imprecations.

“Get up! Something’s wrong. Get dressed, now!” Closing the emergency kit, she took it and the flashlight out and up on deck.

Shining the light around the deck well, she was horrified to see what appeared to be a careful pillaging of their boat. All the seat cushions, useful as emergency flotation devices, were gone, as well as the life jackets that had been mounted on the bulkheads. Every piece of emergency gear had been stripped from the boat, even the inflatable life raft had been taken.

“Here, grandma, shine the light over here.” Jason stood next to the small cockpit, before the wheel and throttle controls. When Babs came over, he took the light from her hands and aimed it at the control panel, at the key ignition. The key had been broken off in the ignition, leaving it unable to be turned on. Worse, as he pointed the light under the panel, he could see brightly colored wiring had been snipped and torn out. The boat was going nowhere.

“Where’s Tim?” asked Babs, looking around wildly.

“Damned if I know. He’s not up front.”

“Can you work the radio?”

“Yeah, I could, if we had one that worked.” He pointed at the console. The radio was still present, but the headset and microphone were missing. “I checked already. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, Jason, I just don’t know.”

Just then, Jason sniffed at the air and a concerned look came to his eyes. “Do you smell gas, grandma?” he asked.

Babs sniffed and detected a strong odor of gasoline from the engine well. “Yeah. Okay, go forward and get a life jacket out of my cabin. Get the girls moving, too.” She pushed her grandson inside, then headed for the bow of the boat. Inside the emergency kit had been a Very gun and some flares.

Captain Jimmy Sorenson lounged in the bridge seat of the motor yacht Bottoms Up, enjoying the smooth purr of the diesels, and taking in the calm night air and whispering rush of the ocean as it slipped under the ship. It was warm and quiet, with just enough starlight to see the horizon. It was a hell of a lot nicer than a winter in northern Minnesota, which was his birthplace. He had shipped out with the Coast Guard when he was seventeen and never looked back. He had risen through the ranks to Master Chief, and even though he hadn’t been an officer, he knew more about sailing than most of the so-called professionals. When he had been thirty-five, his captain had put him in for the Master’s qualifications, to give him a goal to shoot for. More as a lark than for any other reason he had sat for the tests and had been as surprised as anyone when he had passed and been granted papers stating his qualifications as Master, Any Ocean, Any Tonnage. It had been ten years since he had retired after twenty-five years with the Coast Guard, man and boy.