Chapter Twenty-Five
Gregoire cut the motor to the boat and let the bow sink into the water, the craft gently bobbing after it stopped. The GPS system showed nothing, just a small red arrow on a screen devoid of fixed points, a line of text across the bottom of the readout telling him that the unit had lost satellite contact. The gyro compass spun aimlessly, momentarily fixing on a point before twisting clockwise or counter-clockwise in search of a fix. He shook his head and then tapped the top of the compass unit with his pointer finger, already certain it would do nothing to correct the compass.
“Really? I’m in the middle of nowhere?” he said softly.
He looked out at the sea and saw nothing but horizon. He pulled the map off the dash, flipped on the red-beam flashlight, and tried to pinpoint his location on the map as best he could given the time and direction he had been traveling. There was no way to know, exactly, without instrumentation. He pulled out a lensatic compass from his kit bag and unfolded it. The pointer stuck for a moment as he leveled it, and then spun slowly counter-clockwise, pausing for a moment before reversing its spin.
He turned his attention to the night sky, located the North Star and twisted the map to orient it. It wasn’t much help, but it was something. There was nothing on the map to head to.
Gregoire drummed his fingers on the dash, dropped the map on the seat and looked out over the water. “Middle of nowhere and nowhere to go.”
Gregoire suddenly grew still. On the horizon, a fog bank was rolling parallel to his course, rising up and curling into the air a few miles off his starboard side. This was impossible. Gregoire rooted around the cockpit of the boat and found the binoculars. He stared through them, adjusting the focus, marveling at the low cloud, watching it move across the sea as if propelled by a strong wind. And then the image of the sloop broke the horizon and silhouetted against the fog bank, its sails fully-rigged and swollen with wind despite being tattered and riddled with rents and holes. Gregoire looked above the binoculars, stared at the shape on the horizon without aid for a moment, made sure his eyes were seeing what his mind told him he was seeing. He looked back through the glasses at the shape of the boat, almost certain he could make out the mottled camouflage pattern on the hull, his mind’s eye telling him this had to be the same boat as the one he’d seen earlier in the day, anchored at the small island from which he’d escaped.
The thought filled him with a sense of urgency, and he began quickly scanning the rest of the sea for signs of the other ship. Nothing. Just a ghostly ship plowing across the surface of the sea at full sail in a bank of fog. He watched for a few moments more as the sloop began pulling away, moving at a speed Gregoire thought too fast for a sailing vessel of such size and age. When it began to disappear over the far horizon in front of him, he turned the ignition on and started the engines. He glanced at the GPS navigation system and the gyro compass, noted neither was working, and then wondered if there was a connection to the sloop. Then the thought struck him: The Bermuda Triangle.
He dropped the binoculars onto the seat and pushed the throttle forward, the boat rising up on the water.
“Somebody knows where they’re going,” Gregoire said, turning the wheel to follow the sloop.