Free Smoking Gun (Adam Cartwright Trilogy Book 1) by Dennis Debney Page B

be awake and alert. Perhaps it was the subtle ting of a shackle against the mast, or against another shackle, that was also detected by my subconscious. The sound of a foot step or movement on the adjacent jetty would not disturb me, but a subtle change in the movement of the boat would. It was as though ‘Irish Mist’ would be warning me to be alert because someone had come on board.
    In the morning, immediately I awoke I looked around the cabin. It was the first time since clambering onboard some thirty kilometers off shore, forty eight hours earlier, that I had taken the time to fully check if anything was missing. Clearly my assailants had gone to some trouble to ensure that it looked like I had been lost at sea as the result of an accident. My wallet, laptop computer and cell phone had all been placed on board ‘Irish Mist’. They were probably the key items that would be expected to be found on board. Even my provisions had been stowed in lockers and the shopping dockets left on the chart table in clear sight.
    At first I decided that nothing had been taken until I recalled having had my camera with me when I had been about to board ‘Irish Mist’ on Friday evening. After searching everywhere I had to conclude that it had been taken by my assailants. The question then was whether it was just an opportunistic petty crime or a planned act. If it had been planned then I was puzzled as to the purpose of the theft.
    It was annoying to have to replace the camera. It was a robust SLR digital camera that I had owned for several years. But it was easily replaced. Luckily I had lost nothing apart from the camera as I had uploaded all the photographs to the cloud on Friday afternoon. Almost exclusively the photos related to work. I shook my head in frustration. The attack on me was becoming more and more of a mystery.
    Just before seven o’clock I rang the charter flight company to cancel my seat on the Monday morning fly-in fly-out workers plane to the Red Rock Project site. Instead I would catch the ‘mail run’ flight at ten.
    I then rang Brian to let him know that I was back in Cairns. We talked for a while about my missing camera. Both of us suspected that it might be significant but he was as mystified as I was regarding a possible motive for the theft. We could not disregard the possibility that it had been a spur-of-the-moment act of pilfering.
    Prior to driving out to the airport I called in at a downtown photographic shop to buy a replacement camera. The previous one had been satisfactory but I was now able to upgrade to a later model of the same brand. This time I selected one with a wider angle lens and better telephoto capabilities. It was my practice to take frequent photos of work in hand and it was often helpful when writing reports. On a number of occasions, photographs had also helped me to resolve site disputes. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, especially one that is date-stamped.
    The thought had occurred to me that the attack was connected to a site dispute. That being so I wanted to talk to my staff as soon as I got to the project site and check if there were any problems that I was not aware of.
    I had an excellent team. If a problem cropped up they would usually attempt to resolve it themselves and involve me only if they thought it to be necessary. It was a work practice that I encouraged and they knew that I’d back them up if something didn’t work out as planned.
    ***
Red Rock Project Site
    My strategy of seeing if anyone did a double-take when they saw me arrive at work safe and sound did not turn out to be the clever ploy that I had hoped. And it was my own fault. I had figured, wrongly as it turned out, that if I did not fly in to the site as was usual on the early flight it might put the miscreants at their ease. Then, thinking that I was definitely history, when I did arrive it would take them by surprise and they might give themselves away somehow.
    What did