Fallen Out: Jesse McDermitt Series, The Beginning by Wayne Stinnett

the next cove. I had two advantages, stealth with the rebreather, and the fact that with all the lights they had on board, they wouldn’t be able to see anything in the water.
    I held the small light underwater and turned it on, illuminating the dial on a wrist mounted compass for a few seconds. The needle and bezel would glow for a good thirty minutes after that. More than enough time to cover a quarter mile. The secret to swimming underwater at night is knowing how many kicks it takes to cover a known distance. We’d done it so many times in the Corps, it was habit.
    I extended my right arm straight ahead and put my left hand on my right elbow. This put the compass right in front of my face and I started kicking. I was swimming against the wind and waves, so I allowed a foot less per right kick and ten minutes later stopped pretty close to where I’d wanted to. Replacing my snorkel with the second stage of the rebreather, I submerged. I stayed just three feet below the surface and followed the compass toward the trawler. Knowing I was close, I dove deeper to get below their hull and continued a few more feet.
    I could sense the boat above me and chanced the mini-light for a second to get oriented. I’d overshot it a few feet and was under the port side, near the stern. I moved forward to amidships and came up under the hull. The sound of the generator in the engine room toward the stern drowned out just about anything I might hear through the hull. This part of most trawlers would be the crew quarters and I didn’t think they’d be there. Just as I was about to move forward I heard a faint sound and a scrape on the hull. I held my breath and put my ear closer to the hull and heard it again. A muted moan and a sob. I listened for another minute but didn’t hear anything else. I moved forward toward where I guessed the galley would be. I began to hear voices through the hull. Fortunately it was an old wood hull. Sound travels through dense wood pretty good. Moving a few feet further toward the bow, the voices grew louder. I stopped and held my breath again, pushing my ear close to the hull.
    “I’m tellin’ ya, Earl. It was the same guy that was at the bar the other night,” I heard a voice say. “And I’m pretty sure the boat on the left belonged to that blonde you was playing with.”
    A deeper voice responded, “Get the Avon patched and reflated. It’s about 3 miles around this island. We’ll come up from behind ‘em. And put the damn oars in the dinghy.”
    “ Come on Earl,” a third voice said. “We got three women already and them guys got guns, too. Why don’t we wait out the storm and get the hell outa here?”
    “Cause I said so,” Earl bellowed. “That blonde’ll be worth more than all them other three combined. I ain’t passing up a perfect chance to add ten grand to our haul. That third boat might have women aboard, too. Looked like a family type boat. Sides, I doubt they got guns like we got.”
    In the inky darkness I thought to myself, Sex slavers? Three women? Maybe that was what I heard in the crew quarters. I made my way to the propeller and uncoiled the anchor line. I tied it loosely around the propeller shaft, between the through hull seal and the propeller mount and released the rest to drop to the bottom. As soon as they put the boat in gear and started moving the line would get sucked up into the prop and with any luck either bend the shaft or break the mount.
    It’d take them a while to patch their dinghy and reflate it. I had to get back to the others. I checked my dive watch and saw that it was still a good three hours until sunrise. I dove deep and took a reciprocal heading away from the trawler until I was a good hundred feet away. When I surfaced I switched back to my snorkel and looked back once more, before striking out for home.
    Fifteen minutes later, I surfaced at the stern of the Revenge , three startled faces looking down at me and Rusty extending his hand.