“ Sections of the cockpit sole, the boat’s floor. Teak, three quarters of an inch thick. I think we might need it up here.”
“ Why?”
“ Shields.”
Broxton nodded, then turned his attention to the boat in front. Sea King had completed her turn and was now headed back toward them. Broxton adjusted the wheel slightly. Turning a bit to the left, mindful of the rocks.
“ My guess is she’ll sail by as close to us as she can get, shooting away as they pass,” Ramsingh said.
Broxton didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes on the boat in front. It looked like she was planning on coming along their left side. His emotions were whirling out of control. She’d been a large part of his life. Still was. He was in love with her. At least he thought he was. He didn’t want anything to happen to her, yet he couldn’t let her get away. He wanted her stopped, but he didn’t want her arrested. It would ruin Warren.
He turned the boat a little more to the left. Ramsingh met his eyes, but didn’t say anything. Sea King was charging toward them, jib billowing, heeled over, slicing through the waves. She turned a little to her right, to avoid the collision course Broxton had put them on, but he turned a little to the left, keeping the boats nose to nose, racing toward each other, like two great animals about to do battle.
She turned again.
Broxton matched it. Once again he was playing chicken, but these weren’t kids on Cherry Avenue. Dani was on that boat and she had more nerve than anyone he’d ever met. If she perceived it as a contest between them, she wouldn’t flinch, she’d hold course and sail that boat right into them and damn the consequences.
He would turn aside, but not till the last minute, not till she was sure he was intent on playing out the game, not till she was bracing for collision, then he’d turn.
“ After I set this up, I’ll set the self-steering gear and we’ll go below,” Ramsingh said. Broxton smiled. The prime minister was laying the hatches across the cockpit seats.
“ We’re not going to hide behind your wooden shields?”
“ Of course not,” Ramsingh said, “but they’re going to think we are.” Then he went below and seconds later returned with a bagged sail. Broxton watched while he propped it under the teak floor covering. Now instead of lying across the two cockpit seats, the floor covering rested on the port seat and on the sail underneath.
“ This way it’ll look like we’re hiding behind, under the wood, and hopefully they’ll shoot where we’re not.” He moved behind the wheel to set the self-steering gear.
“ Don’t set it,” Broxton said. “You go below. I’ve got other plans.”
“ Mr. Broxton,” Ramsingh ordered. “We’re going below.”
“ No, sir,” Broxton said. “I have the helm now. My job is to keep you safe. I’ll be all right.” There was something about the way he said it that made Ramsingh smile.
“ Right, I’ll go below.” The prime minister slipped down the companion way, but kept watch as Broxton kept Gypsy Dancer on a collision course with Sea King.
“ Any minute,” Broxton yelled.
“ What’s going on?” Ramsingh said. From his position looking up and out the companionway he could see Broxton behind the wheel, but not much else.
“ Ramming speed,” Broxton said, as Sea King bore down on them, looming large in his vision, like a hulking monster ready do devour them.
“ Oh, God,” Ramsingh said.
A wave or slight wind shift altered Broxton’s course, but he corrected, keeping his eyes on the vee of the approaching vessel. Sea King was slicing through the water like a sharp razor through soft skin. For a second he thought about playing the game out, but he knew his rival and he couldn’t imagine Dani giving up. He tensed his right hand on the wheel in anticipation of the turn. Then Sea King broke to his left. She was turning. The amazement zapped him like a cardiac arrest. She wasn’t interested in besting him. If she was, she could have held out longer. She didn’t want to take the chance and guess which way Broxton would turn. She wanted them off her left side and there could only be one reason for that. Ram was right. The Texan was in position to shoot at them as they sailed by.
Broxton turned, not away from her as he’d planned, but toward her. He kept them on a collision course. Sea King turned more to his left and he corrected, keeping Gypsy Dancer aimed at the bigger boat’s bow. There was no doubt in his mind who’d lose in a collision. The basic laws of physics favored the larger vessel and he had no desire to test those laws. He moved the wheel slightly to the right when Sea King was only a few yards away.
He heard the skin crawling sound of the two boats scrapping hulls, but he didn’t see the damage they were causing each other, because he was busy scurrying around the wheel. He dove under Ramsingh’s teak floorboard shields as the Texan opened up. The first two shots went wild. The third thunked into the teak. Broxton crouched low, hugging the sail. The fourth ricocheted off a winch. The fifth slammed into the teak, followed by the sixth. Then the screeching, scraping and shooting stopped and they were temporarily out of danger.
“ It’s all right,” Ramsingh said, coming up through the companionway. “They’re behind us and out of range.”
“ Sorry about your floor.” Broxton stood and set the floor hatches on the port cockpit seat.
“ Sod the floor,” Ramsingh said.
“ And your boat. It’s probably pretty scratched up. It sounded like it was coming apart.”
“ You’re alive. They missed. That’s all that counts,” Ramsingh said.
“ You missed,” Dani wailed and Earl almost cringed from the fury in her eyes. He had no problem hearing her above the sound of the flapping main or the choppy sea. But as suddenly as the anger was upon her it seemed to pass. “All right,” she said. “We’ll just have another go at it.”
“ We’re not going to fool them again,” he said.
“ We didn’t fool them last time. Broxton faked me out with his chicken game and he had some kind of cover rigged up to hide behind. It’s not going to be so easy.”
“ What are we going to do now?” Earl asked.
“ What I should have done the first time. We’re going to ram this boat up their ass and sink them.”
“ What about us?”
“ Sea King is a steel boat. Strong and sturdy. Ramsingh’s boat is made of fiberglass. When steel crashes into plastic, plastic loses.”
“ You should have rammed them then.”
“ I thought I said that,” she said, glaring at him. This was one woman he never wanted to cross, he thought. Not ever.
“ Take the wheel,” she ordered, and Earl obeyed. “We’re going to jibe around and finish it.” Earl watched as she looped a turn of the starboard jib sheet around the winch, then she turned back to him. “Just the opposite of what we did before. When I yell, “Jibe ho,” you crank it to the left. Stop your turn when you have the ass end of that boat sighted across the bow. Got it?”
“ Got it,” he answered.
She waited a few seconds, judging distance and speed, Earl thought, then she yelled out, “Jibe ho,” and Earl started spinning the wheel as she slacked the port jib sheet from its winch. Halfway through the hundred and eighty degree turn she started hauling in on the starboard sheet, taking in the line, hand over hand, a demon possessed. Muscles rippled along her bare arms. Sweat glistened on the back of her neck and ran down her naked back. Her hair flew in the wind, and he felt an animal power flow from her. She was like a great jungle cat, everyone else was just prey.
She cleated off the sheet, then ground some more of it in with the winch. “I’ll take the wheel now,” she said, and Earl let her have it. Then she reached over to the engine panel and pushed the ignition button. Earl heard and felt the rumble of the diesel as it started up. “I don’t think we can catch them without the main, but with the help of the engine they won’t have a chance of getting away.”
“ I don’t think that’s a problem,” he said.
“ Why not?”
“ I don’t think they want to get away.”
“ They’re turning around,” Broxton said. He was back at the wheel. Ramsingh had just come back up from
