Burning oil mixed with radiator fluid spewed from the red-hot motor that was nearly drained of fluids. But with an apparent heart of its own, the old Chrysler was not quite ready to give up, offering one last gasp of power.
“Dirk, where are we now?” Sarah asked, unable to see from her spot on the floor. A rackety sound of tires on wood told her they were no longer traveling on the highway.
“We have a boat to catch,” Dirk grimaced. “Hang on tight.”
He could see a man waving his arms wildly at the end of the pier, some fifty yards ahead. Beyond the pier's edge, he could detect a churning in the water from the ferry's propellers as the boat began to pull away from the dock. It was going to be close.
Behind him, the Cadillac lost ground briefly, having nearly missed the turn when Dirk whipped onto the pier. The driver was doggedly' determined to stay on Dirk's tail and accelerated hard, oblivious to the shortening pier and departure of the ferry. The gunman, too, was engrossed with the chase, intent on putting a bullet into the obstinate driver who had somehow avoided his previous blasts.
Dirk also kept his foot down hard on the accelerator, but for a different reason. He held his breath, hoping the Chrysler would hold together for just a few more seconds. Though the end of the pier was now just a few yards away, it seemed to take an eternity to reach it. Meanwhile, the ferry continued to inch farther into the sound.
A pair of boys bound for a fishing excursion at the end of the pier ran scrambling behind a piling as the two cars tore by, their poles sacrificed to the speeding machines when they jumped for cover. To Dirk's surprise, the man at the end of the pier stopped waving and raised the orange-and-white traffic barrier, apparently realizing the futility of trying to stop the barreling mass of Detroit iron that was charging his way. As he roared by, Dirk nodded thanks at Hatala and threw him a jaunty wave. Hatala simply stared back, dumbfounded.
The Chrysler's hefty V-8 engine was now knocking like a pounding sledgehammer, but the old beast hung on and gave Dirk every last ounce of energy it could muster. The big convertible stormed up the ramp at the end of the pier and burst into the air like a cannon shot. Dirk gripped the steering wheel hard and braced for the impact as he watched a forty-foot ribbon of blue water pass beneath the car. Screams filled the air as shocked passengers on the rear of the ferry scrambled to avoid the path of the green monstrosity hurtling through space toward them. The momentum of the car and the angle of the ramp sent the Chrysler sailing through the air in an almost picture- perfect arc before gravity took hold and pulled the nose of the car down fast. But they had cleared the open water and would plunge down onto the ferry.
Just a few feet inboard on the open stern, the Chrysler's front wheels slammed down onto the deck, the tires immediately bursting from the force with a bang. A split second later, the rear wheels dropped down, smashing through a low railing just inches from the stern edge. A section of the handrail kicked up into a wheel well, where it became wedged as the full weight of the car crashed down. It proved to be a lifesaver. Rather than skidding wildly into the rows of cars parked on the auto deck, the wedged railing dug into the wooden deck like an anchor. The massive old car bounded twice, then skidded slowly to a stop just twenty feet from where it struck the deck, lightly smacking the pea green Volkswagen bus.
The black Cadillac did not fare as well. Just a few seconds behind, its driver saw too late that the ferry had left the dock. Too panicked to try to stop, the driver kept his foot down on the accelerator and soared off the pier in tandem with the Chrysler. Only by now, the ferry had moved beyond its path.
With the gunman screaming a bloodcurdling cry, the Cadillac soared gracefully into the sky before nosing hard into the stern of the ferryboat with a thunderous crash. The front bumper kissed the painted letters of the ferryboat's name, Issaquah, just above the waterline before the entire car crumpled like an accordion. A large spray of water flew up as the mangled wreckage of the car plopped into the water and sank to forty feet, carrying its crushed occupants to a watery grave.
In the Chrysler, Dirk shook off the daze of the impact and assessed their injuries. He felt a sprained knee and sore hip on himself as he wiped away a flow of blood from his lower lip, gashed open on the steering wheel. But otherwise all parts seemed to be working. Sarah looked up from the floor in a twisted angle, where she forced a smile through a painful grimace.
“I think my right leg is broken,” she said calmly, “ but otherwise I'm okay.”
Dirk lifted her out of the car and gently set her on the deck as a crowd of passengers crept in to offer assistance. In front of them, a door flung open on the VW bus and out popped its overage hippie driver, complete with ponytail and beer belly half-hidden under a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt. His eyes bulged as he surveyed the scene behind him. Smoke oozed from the smoldering wreckage of the Chrysler, tainting the air with the odor of burned oil and rubber. The car's metal skin was festooned with bullet holes from front to back, while broken glass and shreds of leather upholstery littered the interior. The front tires were splayed out from bursting on impact, while a metal guardrail poked out oddly from one of the rear wheel wells. A deep gash in the deck tailed back from the wreck like some sort of violent bread crumb trail. Dirk smiled weakly at the man as he wandered closer while surveying the scene.
Shaking his head, the old hippie finally quipped, “Far out, man. I sure hope you have insurance.”
It took only a few hours for the authorities to commandeer a nearby work barge and position it off the ferry landing. Its twenty-ton crane easily hoisted the crushed Cadillac from the bottom and dumped it on the greasy deck of the old barge. A paramedic crew carefully extricated the mashed bodies from the vehicle and transferred them to the county morgue. Their cause of death was cited simply as blunt injury from motor vehicle accident.
At NUMA's request, the FBI interceded and opened a federal investigation into the incident. Initial attempts to identify the gunmen came up empty when no forms of ID were found on the bodies, and the Cadillac was discovered to be a stolen rental car. Immigration finally ascertained that the men were Japanese nationals who had entered the country illegally through Canada.
At the Seattle/ King County morgue, the chief coroner shook his head in irritation as yet another investigator arrived to examine the bodies.
“Can't get any work done around here as long as we're holding these so-called Japanese gangsters,” he grumbled to an underling, as yet another pair of Feds left the storage facility.
The assistant medical examiner, an ex-Army doctor who had once been stationed in Seoul for a year, nodded in agreement.
“We might as well install a revolving door on the ice room,” he joked.
“I'll just be happy when the paperwork arrives to release them for transport back to Japan.”
“I hope that's their right home,” the assistant pathologist said, slowly sliding the bodies back into a refrigerated locker. “If you ask me, I still say they look like a couple of Koreans.”
After twelve hours at Sarah's hospital bedside, Dirk finally convinced the doctors at Seattle's Swedish Providence Medical Center to release Sarah the following morning. Though a broken leg didn't normally warrant an overnight stay, the cautious medical staff was concerned about trauma from the accident and kept her there for observation. She was fortunate in that the break to her tibia, or shin-bone, did not require any rods or screws to align. The doctors wrapped her leg in a heavy plaster cast and pumped her full of painkillers, then signed her release.
“Guess I can't take you dancing anytime soon,” Dirk joked as he pushed her out the hospital exit in a wheelchair.
“Not unless you want a black-and-blue foot,” she replied, grimacing at the heavy cast around her lower leg.
Despite insisting that she was well enough to work, Dirk took Sarah home to her stylish apartment in Seattle's Capitol Hill district. Gently assisting her to a leather couch, he propped her broken leg up on a large pillow.
“Afraid I've been called back to Washington,” he said, stroking her silky hair as she adjusted the pillows behind her back. “Have to leave tonight. I'll make sure Sandy checks in on you.”
“I probably won't be able to keep her away,” she grinned. “But what about the sick crew members of the Deep Endeavor? We need to find out if they are all right,” she said, struggling to rise from the couch. The drugs made her feel as if her mind and body were enshrouded in a coat of honey and she fought to remain lucid against the overwhelming desire to sleep.
“Okay,” he said, gently pushing her back down and bringing a portable phone to her. “You get one phone call, then it's lights out for you.”
