Austin also thought Ali was taking a bow. Ali's boat streaked across the open water like a gold arrow homing in on a bull's eye. With his eye Austin drew an invisible line on the water, ex tending the Flying Carpet's course until it intersected with a big white boat that was anchored broadside to the race chute. The graceful lines identified the vessel as an old luxury yacht. Austin noted with appreciation how the designers had blended form and function in the wooden hull. He glanced again at Ali's boat. It was moving faster, continuing toward the yacht in an undeviating line.
Why haven't they stopped or turned away?
Austin knew a race boat's hull was tougher than nails, but the rudders and the connecting tie bar were exposed. If the bar had been bent, the rudders could have been locked in place. Well, so what? Even if the steering were locked, all the crew had to do was shut down the engines. And if the throttle man couldn't do it, the racer could use the kill switch activated by an arm cord. The boat had struck the whale a glancing blow, but the impact still would have been severe, even worse when it slammed down onto the water. It would have been like hitting cement. Even with helmets and restraining harnesses, Ali's team
might have been shaken up, at the very least, or, worse, incapacitated. He looked back at the yacht and saw the young faces lining the decks. Good God! Kids. The yacht was full of kids.
There was a flurry of activity on deck. They had seen the on coming race boat. The yacht's anchor was coming out of the water, but the boat would have to sprout wings to avoid a disastrous collision.
'It's going to hit!' Zavala said, more in wonder than in apprehension. Austin's hand seemed to move by itself, the fingertips pushing down on the throttles. Engines roaring, the Red Ink lurched forward as if it were a racehorse stung by a bee. The acceleration caught Zavala by surprise, but he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and pointed the Red Ink at the runaway boat. Their ability to intuit what the other was thinking had saved their skin more than once while carrying out a NUMA assignment. Austin slammed the throttles forward. The catamaran came up on plane and streaked across the open water. They were going twice the speed of the Carpet, coming in at an angle. Interception was only seconds away.
'Keep us parallel and come up alongside,' Austin said. 'When I yell, nudge him to starboard.'
Austin's brain synapses danced with enough electrical energy to light up a city. The Red Ink went up the side of. a wave, flew through the air, and came down with a jaw-jarring splash. The yacht was moving slowly forward. This would give them a slight increase in the margin of error, but not much.
The two boats were almost side by side. Zavala displayed his incredible skill as a pilot, bringing the Red Ink closer despite the waves from the broadening wake. Austin let them overtake the Ca7pet, move past it, then slowly pulled back on the throttles to match the speed of the other boat. They were only yards apart. Austin had slipped into the nether land between intellect and action, pure reflex, his every sense at full alert. The ear-splitting thunder of four powerful engines drowned out attempts at rational thought. He had become one with the Red Ink, his muscles and sinews joined with the steel and Kevlar, as much a part of the boat as the pistons and driveshaft. The boats were out of sync, one up when the other was down. Austin fine-tuned the Red Ink's speed until they were like two dolphins swimming abreast in perfect formation.
Up.
Down.
Up.
'Now!' he yelled.
The space between the racing boats narrowed to inches. Zavala eased the steering wheel to the right. It was a delicate maneuver. If it were done too sharply, they would hook hulls and possibly flip into the air in a lethal tangle. There was a loud hollow thump and a screech of tortured carbon composite as the hulls came together, then bounced apart. Zavala brought the boat over again and held it firmly in position. The wheel wanted to tear itself out of his hands.
Austin gunned the throttles. The sound of the engines was horrendous. Again the boats crashed. It was like trying to herd a very large and powerful steer. Eventually the F~7ing Carpet began to yield its forward momentum and angle off to the right. They drifted apart once more. Warmed to the game, Zavala slammed the boats together. The angle increased.
'Haul off, Joe!' Ali's boat surged ahead on a track that would miss the yacht's stern and sped toward the flotilla. Boats scattered like dry leaves in a wind. Austin knew that battering Ali's boat off course would send the Red Ink off like a cue ball in a game of billiards. He hadn't counted on how long it would take to persuade the Carpet to take a hike. Now he and Joe were hurtling toward the moving yacht with only seconds to spare before they struck it. They could see the horrified expressions of the people on deck. The boat was going seventy-five miles an hour. Even if he shut down the engines, he and Zavala would have to be scraped off the wooden sides of the old boat.
'What now?' Zavala yelled. 'Stay on course,' Austin shouted. Zavala swore softly under his breath. He had every confidence in Austin's ability to get them out of a tight spot, but sometimes his partner's actions defied all logic. If Zavala thought the order meant certain suicide, he didn't show it. His every instinct told him to whip the wheel over and take his chances, but he grimly held their insane course as steadily as if the two-hundred-foot boat that filled his vision like a big white wall were nothing but a mirage. He gritted his teeth and tensed his body in preparation for the impact.
'Duck,' Austin ordered. 'Keep your head low. I'm going to stuff it. '
He bent and gunned the engines at full throttle; at the same time he set the trim tabs and ailerons. A stuff was usually some thing to be avoided. It happens when a boat comes off one wave and burrows into another. The worst type is called a submarine, because that's what the boat becomes when it goes into a stuff at high speed. Far from avoiding this result, Austin was counting on it happening. He held his breath as the race boat nosed down at a sharp angle, buried its bows in the water, and kept on going, burrowing into the sea like a badger. With the full power of the engines behind it, the Red Ink was transformed from a surface boat into a submersible.
The boat passed under the moving yacht, but not quite deep enough to prevent its canopies from being ripped off. There was a sickening watery crunch. The whirling propellers missed their heads by inches. Then the catamaran passed under the yacht and emerged on the other side. Exploding from the water like a very large and very red flying fish, it came to a halt as the burbling engines stalled out in a cloud of purple smoke.
The boat was built with an interior cage that could resist a herd of overweight elephants. The canopies were more vulnerable. Both Plexiglas covers had been completely ripped off. The cockpits were taking in seas as the boat rocked in the waves.
Zavala coughed out a mouthful of seawater. 'You okay?' he asked, a stunned look on his dark, handsome face.
Austin pulled his helmet off to reveal the thick head of platinum, almost white hair. He surveyed the propeller scars on the deck and realized how close they had cut it. 'Still among the living,' Austin replied, 'but I don't think the Red Ink was designed to be a convertible.'
Zavala felt the water around his waist. 'Time to abandon ship.'
'Consider it an order,' Austin said, loosening his harness. They piled out of the boat into the sea. As part of their certification, racers must pass a dunk test. A cabin cruiser came over and hauled them dripping from the water minutes before the Red Ink went to the bottom.
'What happened to the gold race boat?' Austin asked the cruiser's owner, a pipe-smoking middle-aged man who had come out of San Diego to watch the race and got more than he bar gained for. He pointed off in the distance with the stem of his pipe. 'Over there. The guy plowed right through the fleet. Don't know how he missed hitting the other boats.'
'Mind if we check them out?'
'No problem,' the man said obligingly as he put the wheel over.
Moments later they pulled up alongside the F7~7ing Carpet. The canopies had been pushed back. Austin saw to his relief that the men inside were alive, although blood streamed down Ali's head where he'd bashed it, and Hank looked as if he were nursing a bad hangover.
Austin called out, 'Are you injured?'
'No,' Ali replied, although he didn't look quite convinced of his own well-being. 'What happened?'
'You hit a whale.'
'A what?' When he saw Austin's serious expression, Ali's face fell. 'Guess we didn't win,' he said glumly.
'Don't feel bad,' Austin said. 'At least your boat doesn't lie on the sea floor.'
