Sail

Prologue | FAMILY DUNNE ALIVE

One

EASING THROUGH the marina's sapphire-blue water at a leisurely three-knot clip, Captain Stephen Preston took a long pull off his Marlboro Red, casually flicking the ash into the cool island breeze. Then, after waiting for just the perfect moment, he punched the horn of his forty-six-foot Bertram Sport Fisherman until everyone on the dock stopped to look.

Yeah, that's right, boys and girls, take a gander at what Captain Steve reeled in!

It was a quarter past eleven in the morning. His charter, the Bahama Mama, wasn't due back to shore until that afternoon at two, the same time as always.

But today was different.

Fuckin' A it's different, thought Captain Jack, hitting the horn another time. When you spear the biggest, baddest giant bluefin tuna ever seen around the Bahama islands, you're done fishing for the day. Hell, you might as well be done fishing for the year!

'What do you think she's worth?' asked Dillon, the Mama's first mate and Steve's brother. He'd been with the boat for eleven years. Never took a sick day. And rarely ever smiled, before that morning anyway.

'I dunno,' replied Captain Steve, pulling on the rim of a Boston Red Sox cap. 'I'd guess she's worth somewhere between a boatload of money and a shitload.'

Jeffrey continued to smile widely beneath the brim of the tattered green visor he always wore. He knew a tuna this size could fetch upwards of $20,000, cash money, maybe even more if the sushi bidders at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo liked what they saw. And why wouldn't they?

Whatever the amount, he was in line to get a very healthy cut. The captain was good that way, a fair man in every sense.

'Are you sure those bozos signed the contract, Jeff?' Captain Steve asked.

Jeffrey glanced toward the stern at the six-man bachelor party from the island of Manhattan. They'd been drinking since sunrise, when the trip began, and were already so stinking drunk they could barely high-five each other without falling overboard.

'Yeah, they signed the contract, all right,' said Jeffrey with a slow nod. 'Though I doubt they ever read the fine print.'

If they had read the contract carefully, they'd have known that no binge-drinking, sunburned tourists would ever pocket a dime off a giant bluefin tuna. No way, not on the Bahama Mama. One hundred percent of the proceeds went directly to the captain and the crew. Period, end of Big Fish story.

'Well, then,' said Captain Steve, cutting the boat's twin engines as they approached the dock, 'let's go cause a scene.'



Two

SURE ENOUGH, even in the ultra-laid-back Bahamas it took less than a New York minute for a large and curious throng to gather around the fishing boat, the buzz swelling as a forklift carried the humongous tuna toward the marina's official scale. Christ, was that scale even big enough?

Captain Preston beamed, giving a hearty slap to the back of the groom-to-be and announcing that he'd never met a finer bunch of anglers in all his life. 'You guys are the best,' he said. 'And you proved it today.'

'Rather be good than lucky!' one guy shouted back.

Of course, the truth would stay strictly between him and Jeff. These big-city misfits had no clue what they were doing. They couldn't catch a cold, let alone a fish.

Yet here they all were, basking in the relentless click, click, click of digital cameras–the crowd, the excitement, the anticipation of the weigh-in growing bigger by the second.

'Tie her up good!' urged Captain Steve as the tail of the tuna was wrapped with double-braided rope, the strongest on hand.

On the count of three, she was hoisted high into the air. The crowd oohed and ahed appreciatively. This was some fish.

Six hundred...seven hundred...eight hundred pounds!

The arm of the scale shot up like a rocket. When it finally settled at a record-busting 912 pounds, the entire marina let out a tremendous roar, the bachelor-party guys loudest of all.

And that's when it happened.

Plunk!

Something very strange fell out of the tuna's mouth.