He wanted to finish as far ahead of Austin as possible. Ignoring the advice of his veteran throttle man, Hank Smith, Ali pushed his boat to the edge. The giant rooster tail arced high in the air for hundreds of feet, and the twin propellers plowed a wide and double furrowed wake for hundreds more.
“Sorry about that,” Zavala called out. “Caught a wave.”
“Great save. Let’s go for second place.”
Austin pushed the throttles forward, and with a scream of the engines they were off in hot pursuit.
High above the race course the Italian TV cameraman had spotted the dramatic reversal of the lead boats. The chopper swooped out in a wide circle and came back over the flotilla to hover at midchannel. Pozzi wanted a wide shot of the lone boat speeding past the spectators to the turn buoy for the final approach to San Diego. The cameraman glanced at the sea below
to get his bearings and saw wavelets outlining a large, shiny, grayish object mounding at the surface. A trick of the light. No, there was definitely something there. He caught the attention of the pilot and pointed straight down. “What the hell is that?” the pilot said.
Pozzi aimed the camera at the object and zoomed in with the touch of a button.
“It’s a balena,” he said as the object came into focus.
“For God’s sake, speak English.”
“How you say? A whale. ”
“Oh, yeah,” the pilot replied. “You see them migrating. Don’t worry, he’ll dive when he hears the boats.”
“No,” Carlo said with a shake of his head. “I think he’s dead. He’s not moving.”
The pilot put the chopper at a slight angle for a better view. “Hell, you’re right. There’s another one. I’m counting three-no, four. Damn! They’re popping up all over the place.”
He switched to the hailing channel. “Come in, San Diego Coast Guard. This is the TV helicopter over the race course. “Emergency”
A voice crackled over the radio. “Coast Guard station at Cabrillo Point. Go ahead.”
“I’m seeing whales in the race course.”
“Whales?”
“Yeah, maybe a dozen. I think they’re dead.”
“Roger,” the radio man said. “We’ll alert the cutter on scene to check them out.”
“Too late,” the pilot said. “You’ve got to stop the race.”
A tense silence followed. Then: “Roger. We’ll try.”
A moment later in response to a call from the station, the Coast Guard cutter moved from its post at the turn buoy. Orange signal flares blossomed against the blue sky.
Ali saw neither the flares nor the bloated gray carcass floating in his path until it was too late. He yanked the wheel, missed the obstruction by inches, dodged another body, but could not avoid a third. He veered off, yelling at Hank to cut power.
Smith’s fingers flew to the throttle, and the planing hull settled down. The Carpet was still going fifty miles an hour when it hit the carcass. With an explosion of foul air, the body popped like a huge blubbery balloon. The boat careened off on one sponson, Ripped, somersaulted, and miraculously landed right-side up again.
Ali and the throttle man were saved from fractured skulls by their helmets. Working through a black haze, Ali reached for the wheel and tried to turn, but there was no response from the rudder. He called out to the throttle man. Hank was slumped over the throttles.
On the Nepenthe the captain had left the bridge and was down on the deck talking to Gloria Ekhart when the actress leaned over the rail and pointed. “Excuse me, Captain. What’s that gold boat doing?”
The Flying Carpet was wallowing like a punch-drunk boxer trying to find a neutral corner. Then the twin bows came around, and the boat straightened out, gained speed, and assumed a trajectory aimed at the yacht’s midships. The captain waited for the boat to veer off. It kept coming. Alarmed, he calmly excused himself, stepped aside, and whipped a walkie talkie from his belt. His mental computer was calculating how long it would take the gold boat to hit them.
“This is the captain,” he barked into the hand radio. “Get this ship under way!”
“Now, sir? During the race?”
“Are you deaf. Weigh anchor and move this ship out. Now. ”
“Move? Where sir?”
They had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting under way in time, and his helmsman wanted to play twenty questions.
“Forward,” he shouted, close to panic. “Just move it!”
Even as he barked the order the captain knew it was too late. The race boat had already cut the distance in half. He started to herd children to the other side of the yacht. Maybe a few lives would be saved, although he doubted it. The wooden hull would shatter into splinters, fuel would be spilled in a fiery conflagration, and the yacht would go to the bottom within minutes. As the captain grabbed onto a wheelchair with a little girl in it and pushed her across the deck, he yelled at others to do the same. Too frozen by fear to react, Ekhart saw the gold torpedo speeding toward them and instinctively did the only thing she could. She put her arm protectively around her daughter’s thin shoulders and held her tight.
Chapter 2
Austin was not surprised to see Ali’s boat go out of control. Ali was begging for a flip or a hook. It was the nature of the accident that puzzled Austin. The Flying Carpet veered sharply in a sloshing, foamy skid, then, living up to its name, went airborne with one side higher than the other, like a stunt car doing a two-wheeler off a low ramp. The catamaran flew bow-first for several boat lengths, landed with a monumental splash, vanished for a moment, then bobbed to the surface right-side up.
Austin and Zavala had found that a speed just under a hundred miles per hour kept them ahead of the pack but was slow enough to deal with changing water and wind conditions. The sea was a mix of small and moderate waves, some longer than others but most crested with white foam. Not exactly Force 12 on the Beau fort scale but nothing to ignore. They kept a sharp eye out for the sudden buildup of an errant sea that could trip them up again.
Zavala had brought the Red Ink around in a wide, sweeping curve and pointed the bows toward Ali’s boat to see if he needed help. As the boat topped a wave and slid down the other side, Zavala swerved sharply to avoid a gray object longer than the race boat. The boat did a seam-stretching giant slalom run around three more large slate-colored mounds.
“Whales!” Zavala shouted with excitement. “They’re every where.”
Austin reduced their speed by half. They passed another lifeless carcass and a smaller one nearby that could have been a calf. “Gray whales,” he said with wonder. “A whole pod of them.”
“They don’t look healthy,” Zavala said.
“Not healthy for us, either,” Austin said, backing off the throttles. “It’s like a minefield out here.”
Ali’s boat had been slithering aimlessly around in the waves, the propeller chewing at air. The bows rose suddenly, the stern sank, the blades bit hungrily into the water, and the Flying Carpet was off like a jackrabbit spooked by a hunting dog. It accelerated rapidly, quickly coming up on plane, and headed toward the spectator fleet.
“Macho hombre!” Zavala said with admiration. “Bounces off a whale and goes to shake hands with his fans.”
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
