Bizarrely, the strangers from the yacht have continued to sling the drums over onto their deck, not missing a stroke, completely ignoring the missiles screaming overhead. When there’s twelve drums on board they stop. One man comes back to them. “Here.” A card is put in his hand, the man hops up to the deck of the yacht. It pulls away, all its sails angel-wing white over the mist. Around the southern tip of the island, and gone.

Sandy and Tash are still staring at each other, wordless and bleary-eyed. Here comes another skittering black dot, another crump, another shattering roar. “What are they?” Sandy cries.

“Cruise missiles. Look how fast and low they fly! Here comes another one—”

Skimming black dot. One every couple minutes. Each sonic boom smacks their nerves, makes them jump. Finally Tash stops waiting for them to cease. He checks the drums on the middeck, returns. “I guess we’re the proud owners of twelve drums of aphrodisiac,” he says. BOOM! The mast is quivering in the blasts of air. “Let us get the fuck out of here.”

Chapter 40

40

Late that afternoon they are approaching Dana Point harbor, under the fine rugged bluff of Dana Point. This is where Bob Tompkins asked them to bring the boat. But then Tash spots two Coast Guard cutters, lying off the jetty. They appear, through binoculars, to be stopping boats and boarding them. “Sandy, I don’t think we should try to go in past those two, not with this cargo.”

“I agree. Let’s change course now before it gets too obvious we’re avoiding them.”

They tack and begin a long northwesterly reach to Newport, using the auxiliary engines to gain speed. Sandy will just have to call Tompkins and tell him the goods are elsewhere. Tompkins won’t be overjoyed, but that’s life. No way they can risk a search by the Coast Guard, and it looks like that’s what they’re doing. Could they be searching for Sandy and Tash’s cargo? Sandy doesn’t like to think such obviously paranoid thoughts, but it’s hard to avoid them with what they’ve got aboard.

An hour later Tashi climbs the minimal mast halyards, with some difficulty, for a look north using the binoculars. “Shit,” he says. “Look here, Sandy, let’s cut back toward Reef Point.”

“Why?”

“There’s Coast Guard off Newport too! And they’re stopping boats.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wouldn’t kid you about something like that. There’s a lot of them, in fact, and I think—I think—yeah, a couple of them are coming this way. Making a sweep of the coast, maybe.”

“So, you’re thinking of dropping the stuff off?”

“Right. And we’d better be quick about it—it looks to me like they’re only stopping cats of about our size.”

“Damn! I wonder if they’ve been tipped off?”