Page 37 of Clive Cussler Desolation Code

“Who’s likely to be a better boatman,” Kurt said, trying to pump up Joe’s enthusiasm, “you or that angry oaf and Five’s cruel brothers?”

“It’s not my boat-handling skills that I’m worried about,” Joe said. He put his hand on the pull start. “Let’s hope this thing fires up on the first tug.”

Joe gripped the T-handle and drew his hand backward, sharp and fast. The motor fired without a cough and Joe turned the throttle. They accelerated forward and back around, heading out the way they’d come in.

Their pursuers saw them and gave chase, one boat cutting through the middle of the broken freighter, the other going around it. By the time all three boats were back to full speed, they were strung out with a few hundred feet between them.

Joe looked ahead. A half mile up the beach he could see the burning sticks that marked the entrance lane for the new arrival. And coming in from the bay, he could see the big tanker charging for the slot. It ran with a full head of steam, lights blazing, props churning, a six-foot bow wave curling off its nose.

Joe aimed for the rapidly narrowing gap between the bow and the mud.

Someone on the ship must have seen them coming because the horn began blasting a warning into the night. It was painful and overpowering. Five covered his ears, but kept his eyes wide open.

“It’s going to be close,” Joe shouted.

“Head for the mud,” Kurt called out.

Joe understood Kurt’s suggestion, but it sounded like madness. If they hit the mud and got stuck, they would be crushed and killed, and what was left of them would end up buried deep in the gray muck with the asbestos, debris, and scrap for all eternity.

He followed the suggestion anyway, aiming farther in toward the beach.

The tanker came on, blasting its horn continuously. It could neither turn nor slow.

The chase boats kept up the pursuit, with the nearest one right on their tail.

They raced past the line of burning sticks and into the lane. The wall of steel loomed up to the left. The gray mud stood in their way dead ahead, but a surge of water being pushed in front of the ship swept over the mud first.

The small boat tilted as the curling wave raced under them. It came dangerously close to flipping, but Joe navigated the wave like a rafting expert crossing a stretch of dangerous rapids. He maneuvered to the right with the wave’s impact and then up and over it to the left. Coming down the far side of the wave, he sped away from the crossing ship.

The Overseer was in the second boat. From his perspective, Kurt, Joe, and Five simply disappeared. One moment they were there, the next all he could see was the onrushing hull of the huge ship.

Whatever mystery there was to his quarry’s survival, there was no question what happened to the men in the boat closest to them. It was lifted by the bow wave and tossed landward. The men in the boat—his dogs, as he called them—were flung into the air along with it. They landed in a swath of foam on the mud and were instantly steamrolled by the bow of the hundred-thousand-ton ship.

Pulling back, the Overseer watched in morbid fascination as thehuge ship slid up the beach, displacing water, mud, and foam. It stopped with surprising smoothness when its momentum was spent and was soon sitting quietly in the postapocalyptic landscape of the beach.

With the tanker now stationary and the waves dissipating, he faced a choice: go around the stern and continue the chase, or let it end.

He felt certain that the Americans had survived. They’d timed their run to near perfection. They’d gone toward the beach to gain a few extra seconds in what looked like the exact moment of destruction. He guessed they hadn’t miscalculated in the least.

A feeling of respect grudgingly entered his mind. His adversaries were more formidable than he’d given them credit for. All the better, he thought. It would make their ultimate demise more satisfying.

But for now it was time to end the chase. The odds had flipped and no longer justified the risk. Besides, he had the transmitter and whatever secrets the Gray Witch had hidden inside.

On the far side of the tanker, speeding away from the scene, Kurt and Joe kept an eye out for any sign of pursuit. They saw only dark waters and froth churned by the wake of the ship. The cruel brothers were gone, and their leader had given up.

In the center of the boat, appearing bewildered and shocked by everything he’d just experienced, Five sensed the lowered tension. “Are they gone?”

Joe nodded. “Stuck in the mud.”

“Permanently,” Kurt added.

Five seemed pleased. “So, now we go to NUMA?”

Kurt laughed out loud. “Sounds like a great idea.”

Chapter 21

Southern Indian Ocean

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