Clear and present danger - Tom Clancy [9]
The people who ran the drugs were his more immediate concern, but the most immediate of all was a blip on his radar screen.
They were a hundred miles off the Mexican coast, far from home. And the Rhodes was overdue. The owner had called in several days earlier, saying that he was staying out a couple of days extra… but his business partner had found that odd, and called the local Coast Guard office. Further investigation had determined that the owner, a wealthy businessman, rarely went more than three hours offshore. The Rhodes cruised at fifteen knots.
The yacht was sixty-two-feet long, big enough that you'd want a few people to help you sail it… but small enough that real master's papers were not required by law. The big motor-yacht had accommodation for fifteen, plus two crewmen, and was worth a couple of million dollars. The owner, a real-estate developer with his own little empire outside Mobile, was new to the sea, and a cautious sailor. That made him smart, Wegener thought. Too smart to stray this far offshore. He knew his limitations, which was rare in the yachting community, especially the richer segment. He'd gone south two weeks earlier, tracing the coast and making a few stops, but he was late coming back, and he'd missed a business meeting. His partner said that he would not have missed it unnecessarily. A routine air patrol had spotted the yacht the day before, but not tried to contact it. The district commander had decided that something smelled about this one. Panache was the closest cutter and Wegener got the call.
"Sixteen thousand yards. Course zero-seven-one," Chief Oreza reported from the radar plot. "Speed twelve. He ain't heading for Mobile, Cap'n."
"Fog's going to burn off in another hour, maybe hour and a half," Wegener decided. "Let's close in now. Mr. O'Neil, all ahead full. Intercept course, Chief?"
"One-six-five, sir."
"That's your course. If the fog holds, we'll adjust when we get within two or three miles and come up dead astern."
Ensign O'Neil gave the proper rudder orders. Wegener went to the chart table.
"Where do you figure he's headed, Portagee?"
The chief quartermaster projected the course, which appeared to go nowhere in particular. "He's on his most economical speed setting… not any port on the Gulf, I'll bet." The captain picked up a pair of dividers and started walking them across the chart.
"That yacht has bunkerage for…" Wegener frowned. "Let's say he topped off at the last port. He can get to the Bahamas easily enough. Refill there, and then anyplace he wants to go on the East Coast."
"Cowboys," O'Neil opined. "First one in a long time."
"Why do you think that?"
"Sir, if I owned a boat that big, I sure wouldn't run it through fog with no radar. His isn't operating."
"I hope you're wrong, son," the captain said. "How long since the last one, Chief?"
"Five years? Maybe more. I thought that sort of thing was all behind us."
"We'll know in an hour." Wegener turned to look at the fog again. Visibility was under two hundred yards. Next he looked into the hooded radar display. The yacht was the closest target. He thought for a minute, then nipped the set from active to standby. Intelligence reports said that druggies now had ESM gear to detect radar transmissions.
"We'll flip it back on when we get within, oh, say, four miles or so."
"Aye, Cap'n," the youngster nodded.
Wegener settled in his leather chair and extracted the pipe from his shirt. He found himself filling it less and less now, but it was part of an image he'd built. A few minutes later the bridge watch had settled down to normal. In keeping with tradition, the captain came topside to handle two hours of the morning watch - the one with the youngest junior officer of the watch - but O'Neil was a bright young kid and didn't need all that much supervision, at least not with