The Shadow Priest: Omnibus Edition: Two Complete Novels by D.C. Alexander

Author:D.C. Alexander [Alexander, D.C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2017-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

*****

The sun rose higher in the clearing sky, and both the San Juan and Gulf Islands grew on the horizon off his bow. By lunchtime, he was crossing the U.S.-Canada border somewhere between Saturna and Patos islands, shooting for President Channel, and he celebrated his uneventful transition to U.S. waters by drinking a bottle of lukewarm spring water he'd found in the cabin. His course would take him close to Friday Harbor, immensely popular with boaters of every imaginable sort, where he could lose himself among innumerable craft—ferries, barges, sailboats, motor yachts, fishing boats, kayaks. In the unlikely event that his movements were being casually observed by border agents, Coast Guard patrols, or vessel traffic radar operators, and even if someone were pursuing him in earnest, they'd have a hell of a time remotely tracking him through the crowded channels and radar shadows of the San Juan Islands. By the time he came out the other end of the archipelago, he'd be just another unidentified boat of unknown origin and unknown destination, looking as common as anything.

Midway through the islands, the wind began to die. To maintain his speed, he fired up the engine. But ten minutes later, a temperature warning light came on. He checked the gauge and was chagrinned to see that the needle was well into the red. He shut down, giving the engine time to cool, fired it up, and tried again. The temperature again climbed into the red in only a few minutes. He loosed the main and jib sheets, spilling his wind so that he could go below to take a look at the engine compartment. Opening the hatch, he found, in the immaculate and bone dry compartment, what he thought might be a bypass hose. He put a small clamp on it, hoping it would force more water through the engine block. It didn't make any difference. For the next half hour, he went through another three cycles of running the engine for a few minutes, letting it cool, and then running it again. But on the fourth attempt, it refused to start. He was sure he hadn't run in the red long enough for the engine to have seized. Perhaps he'd somehow flooded it. Whatever the case, it wouldn't start, so he limped along under full sail, with an anemic breeze pushing him along at a disappointing two knots. As he passed between islands, his empty stomach groaned for mercy as his nose caught the inviting smell of deep-fried something—maybe crispy fries, maybe cornmeal coated fish fillets, maybe both—drifting across the water from some undoubtedly quaint and welcoming island pub.

As he eventually passed the southern end of San Juan Island itself, heading out into the wide Strait of Juan de Fuca, he eyed the grassy pasturelands behind him and to starboard where, in 1859, the United States and British Empire almost went back to war over a land dispute brought to a head by something as trivial as an American potato farmer's shooting of a trespassing Hudson's Bay Company pig.

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