Hell's Bay by James W. Hall Read Free Book Online Page A

seven-day cruise into the wilderness, I had to get the thing up to speed. I was hoping that could be accomplished by replacing yet again one of its micron filters that was clogged with flecks of broken shell, stringy seaweed, and other rank emulsions of the sea.
    The water maker was crucial hardware. Twelve thousand bucks, the size of a small refrigerator. Using a high-pressure pump, it forced seawater through a series of ever finer cylindrical filters, and after cleaning and recleaning the water, the machine finally shot the particle-free water through the main membrane at very high pressure, separating out the salt and funneling the waste back into the ocean. Then the salt-free water passed through two more filters, a charcoal one and finally a UV treatment to kill any residual bacteria. The machine was meant to supply all the needs for the six passengers, four of whom were paying several thousand dollars apiece for the angling adventure and would be expecting freshwater from their shower heads.
    Ever since the houseboat had been delivered in December, Rusty and I had been dealing with dozens of glitches, large and small. Breakdowns in the heat pumps and the 15KW Westerbeke generators, shorts inside the wiring harnesses and more shorts in the anchor windless, and plugs and fuses flickering or just going dark. The sewage processor broke down, too, and now the reverseosmosis water maker was falling far short of delivering the 800 gallons per day the manufacturer promised. The Mothership, as we called her, was one complicated vessel, and I was sure our maiden voyage was about to expose a whole new array of gremlins.
    When I finally snapped the micron filter into its slot, I smoothed its gasket back into the groove. With the socket wrench I tightened the plate and looked up at the sound of a small plane circling overhead.
    It was a bright yellow seaplane with bright aluminum pontoons. A Cessna, single-engine, four-seater. The 185 Sky-wagon, a favorite of Alaskan bush pilots and the barefoot buckaroos who did the run from Key West to the Dry Tortugas three times a day. The Cessna circled overhead then came in for a long smooth landing about two hundred yards east.
    For the last half hour Rusty had been idling nearby, awaiting the plane’s arrival. I watched her scoot across the shallows to meet up with our guests.
    Minutes later she was heading across the light chop toward our vessel. Standing next to Rusty was a tall man with wide shoulders. From a couple of phone conversations with the gentleman, Rusty had learned only that Milligan and his daughter lived upstate on the Gulf coast, that he was an avid fisherman and had found Rusty’s houseboat venture on an Internet search. His personal check in the full amount arrived a few weeks back and cleared just fine, and his reservation was set.
    The other couple who would share the houseboat for the week were arriving later in the day. Shortly after Milligan booked his trip, Rusty got a call from Annette Gordon, a writer for Out There magazine doing a feature on luxury adventure vacations. She was in her late twenties, a New Yorker, and was bringing along one of the magazine’s staff photographers, a guy named Holland Green. Rusty was thrilled. Great free promotion. Annette hadn’t even asked for a reduced rate. She’d done travel writing all over the world: New Zealand, South America, the Seychelles, Tibet. Rusty thought she sounded low-maintenance, the kind who made it her goal to slip into the background.
    As Rusty cut the wheel to dodge a final sandbar, Milligan raised a hand in greeting and I waved back. He looked to be in his middle sixties and just past six feet tall, and even from thirty yards away I could tell he had the shoulders-back, flat-belly physique of a man of high confidence. He wore a red golf shirt that showed off his broad shoulders and the kind of swollen arms I’ve always associated with one who dug a great many postholes as a boy,