Tom Clancy Commander in Chief by Mark Greaney

Author:Mark Greaney [Greaney, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

42

The Hendley Associates jet touched down on Beef Island in the mid-afternoon, and after the jet cleared customs, John Clark and Adara Sherman climbed into a jeep left for them on the tarmac. Together they drove to a marina in East End Bay in the adjoining island of Tortola. They were met at the dock by a man standing next to a floating dinghy, and after handshakes he handed over a set of keys to Adara.

“Everything you asked for is already stocked and on board. You’re moored at number fifty-three. It’s the 1978 fifty-two-foot Irwin ketch you picked from the rental photos.”

“Excellent,” Adara said, and she tipped the man $200 for his quick work.

The man looked Adara and John over for a second. She was in her mid-thirties and he in his mid-sixties, and John caught the inference by the look—he clearly thought John and Adara were a couple. Clark felt a twinge of anger that this stranger took him for a geezer with a trophy wife or—because Adara wasn’t wearing a ring and Clark was—perhaps the marina employee assumed Clark was taking his girlfriend down to the islands for some frivolity away from his wife back home.

Clark didn’t like it, but he did nothing to dissuade the man’s assumptions. He figured he wasn’t the first rich old philandering bastard renting a sailboat in the marina here.

It was a good cover story.

As John sat at the helm of the dinghy and pulled out into the marina with Adara next to him, he leaned closer to her. “I hope you didn’t have him stock this boat with too many things. With a little luck we’ll only need it for one night.”

“Not too much. There’s enough for a few days, because I thought it might look fishy if we went to all this trouble just for a twenty-four-hour cruise.”

“Good thinking.”

Adara added, “I think that guy back there was rendering judgment on us both.”

Clark nodded. “Yeah, but he sure took our money, didn’t he?”

Adara laughed. “Yes, he did. Maybe I should have dressed differently, played into my cover story a little.” Sherman wore khakis and a white polo. Her short blond hair was pulled back in a small ponytail. She was young and attractive, but hardly the image of a gold digger on a Caribbean vacation with her sugar daddy.

“And maybe I should wear more rings on my fingers and a fat chain around my neck,” Clark said. “I could get some Botox, too.”

Adara laughed at the thought.

They piloted out into a field of mooring balls, most of which had sailboats or catamarans attached to them. Quickly they found mooring ball number 53, and they motored slowly around the white monohull sailboat attached to it.

Clark liked what he saw. It was big enough to be comfortable, but not too big to be difficult to captain. It wasn’t new and flashy. Adara had told him on the plane it was nearly forty years old, but it looked like it had been lovingly maintained.

They tied the dinghy off on a cleat on the Irwin’s gunwale and climbed up onto the deck.

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