The Detonators Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t, well, he’s ready for that, too.”
    “He broke the law—”
    “What law says you can beat a sick man over the head for unknowingly having a couple of ounces of pot on his boat?”
    “The captain or owner of a vessel is responsible for whatever is found on board.”
    I stared at him unbelievingly. “You must be kidding? You mean that if I invite three friendly couples for a sail on the big yacht I don’t have, the pretty wife I don’t have will have to take the women into one cabin while I take the men into another. And then we’ll strip our guests and examine all their bodily orifices for contraband—my nonexistent wife will have the harder job there, since she’ll have an extra orifice to deal with in each case. And then I’ll slice open the shoulder pads of the men’s jackets while she breaks off the heels of the women’s shoes and does some jacket work herself, not to mention some dress work, to make sure nothing’s hidden there. We’ll rip open any suspicious seams of all their garments. She’ll hack apart the women’s purses and I’ll chop apart the luggage. You never can tell what’s hidden inside a purse or suitcase lining, can you? And then at last I’ll tell our happy, naked guests to haul their ruined belongings to their cabins. Sorry about that, folks; the law says we’re responsible, so we had to make sure. Now, if you can find yourself some clothes that aren’t in rags, you can get dressed and we’ll have a nice drink to the lovely cruise we’re going to have.” I grimaced. “Jesus, Sanderson! I thought drugs were
your
job. Are you going to issue a badge to every boat owner so he can enforce your laws for you while you play golf or go fishing? Talk about passing the buck!”
    Sanderson’s dark face was impassive. “If you’re quite finished with your lecture, Mr. Helm, perhaps you’ll condescend to tell me where you think your colleague really is.”
    I glanced at my watch. “It’s five-thirty in the morning. Doug apparently disappeared around nine last night. Say it took him an hour to reach the boat and get it under way, and another hour to get clear of the harbor, that’s eleven o’clock, right? So we can figure he’s been on course for six and a half hours. What speed does his boat make? There’s not a hell of a lot of wind and he doesn’t have much power, does he? Most sailboats don’t, as I recall.”
    “A two-cylinder Volvo-Penta diesel. A little over twenty horsepower.”
    “Well, you know more about this stuff than I do, but even if he’s really pushing, six knots is about as much as he’s going to get out of that heavy boat even using both power and sail, isn’t it? Six knots times six and a half hours comes out to thirty-nine nautical miles. Oh, I forgot, there’s the Gulf Stream. Two knots of favorable current? Three? Say two and a half, average; I heard somebody use that figure once. Times six and a half, is what?”
    There was a little pause; then Amy Barnett said softly, “Sixteen and a quarter miles. But—”
    I said to Sanderson, “Okay, tell them to look about fifty-five miles up the line.”
    “What line, Mr. Helm?”
    I shook my head irritably. “What’s the big problem? Hell, he made no secret of his plans; he’s been telling everybody about them for years. I told you, he’s heading for Bermuda, only he can’t sail a direct course there because the Bahama Islands are in the way, right? He’s got to get out of the Florida Straits and into the Atlantic before he can settle on his final course. So he’ll figure to pass the northern end of the Bahamas reef by a safe margin before he swings northeast toward Bermuda.”
    “You make it sound very simple, Mr. Helm. However, the fact is that Barnett is a fugitive from justice; he’d hardly adopt such an obvious—”
    I sighed. “Goddamn it, why won’t you
listen
? He doesn’t give a good goddamn about your justice, Mister. This is a government agent just like you, except for being