Trojan Odyssey

to have materialized from nowhere.

Giordino was having a difficult time keeping the boat on an even keel. The waves were not high, no more than five feet, but unlike waves generated in one direction by the winds of a storm, these whipped and buffeted the boat from every point of the compass. Another two hundred yards and the water went crazy with uncontrolled violence.

'A mass of mad mud,' Renee spoke, as if gazing at a mirage. 'Pretty soon it will become an island—'

'Sooner than you think,' Giordino yelled, hauling the throttles into reverse. 'Hang on. The bottom has come up beneath us.' The boat yawed, but it was too late. The bow struck the rising muck, throwing everyone forward, and stuck fast. The bow wave died away and the propellers thrashed madly, chopping the mud into an ivory-brown froth as they tried to pull Poco Bonito off the mysterious rise. With the boat imprisoned in the mud, they felt like unproductive spectators.

'Cut the engines,' Pitt ordered Giordino. 'High tide is in another hour. Wait and try then. In the meantime, we'll carry all the heavy material and supplies to the stern of the boat.'

'Do you really think that by moving a few hundred pounds, you can raise the bow enough to slip off the mud pile?' asked Renee doubtfully.

Pitt was already hauling a large coil of rope toward the transom. 'Add another seven hundred pounds of bodies, and who knows? We just might get lucky.'

Though every man and one woman worked as though their lives depended on it, it took the better part of the next hour to stack luggage, food supplies, nonessential equipment and furniture as far back on the stern deck as possible. The fishing nets and traps used to disguise the boat were thrown overboard, along with the bow anchors.

Pitt gazed at the hands on his Doxa watch. 'High tide in thirteen minutes and then the moment of truth.'

'The moment has come sooner than you thought,' said Giordino. 'We have a vessel approaching from the north on radar. And she's coming fast.'

Pitt snatched up the binoculars and peered into the distance. 'Appears to be a yacht.'

Gunn shaded his eyes from the eastern sun and gazed out over the brown crud. 'The same one that attacked us last night?'

'I didn't get a good look at her in the dark through the night glasses. But I think it's safe to say there is little doubt of it being the same vessel. Our friends have tracked us down.'

'No time like the present,' said Giordino, 'to get a head start on the posse.'

Pitt herded everyone to the very edge of the Poco Bonito's transom. Giordino took the helm and looked astern. Making certain they all had a firm grip on the railing, Pitt nodded a signal for reverse full power. The mighty diesels reverberated as Giordino pushed the throttles as far as they could go. The boat slewed and fishtailed, but was stuck fast. The thickness of the brown crud acted as a glue, adhering to the keel of Poco Bonito. Even with the crew and a ton of solid substance crammed against the transom, the forward part of the boat had raised but two inches. Not enough to break loose.

Pitt hoped for a wave to lift the bow, but no waves came. The thick brown substance laid the sea flat as a newspaper. The engines strained and the propellers dug into the muck, but nothing happened. All eyes had turned to the yacht that was approaching at high speed directly toward them.

Now that he saw her clearly in the daylight, Pitt estimated her overall length at one hundred and fifty feet. Unlike the standard white, the mega-yacht was painted lavender, like he'd seen on the Odyssey pickup truck at the dock. A masterpiece of craftsmanship, she was the essence of oceangoing luxury. She carried a twenty-foot powerboat as a tender and a six-passenger helicopter.

She was near enough for him to make out her name in gold letters: EPONA. Below the name, painted across the bulkhead of the second deck, was the same Odyssey logo of a running horse. A flag flying from the communications antenna also flaunted the golden horse on a lavender background.

Pitt observed two crewmen feverishly preparing to lower the tender while several others took up positions on the long forward deck, weapons in hand. None made any attempt at taking cover. They were lulled by the belief that a fishing boat had no bite and took no precautions. The hair on the nape of Pitt's neck rose a fraction as he spotted a pair of the men loading a rocket launcher.

'She's coming straight for us,' muttered Dodge uneasily.

'They don't look like any pirates I ever read about,' Giordino shouted from inside the pilothouse over the roar of the engines. 'They never captured ships from an elegant yacht. Ten will get you twenty, it was stolen.'

'Not stolen,' Pitt retorted. 'It belongs to Odyssey.'

'Is it me, or are they everywhere?'

Pitt turned and called out, 'Renee!'

She was sitting with her back against the transom. 'What is it?'

'Go down in the galley, empty whatever bottles you can find, then fill them with fuel from the tank on the generator motor.'

'Why not fuel from the engines?' asked Dodge.

'Because gas ignites more easily than diesel fuel,' Pitt explained. 'After the bottles are filled, insert a cloth and twist on the top.'

'Molotov cocktails?'

'Precisely.'

Renee no sooner disappeared below than the Epona swung in a wide arc toward them. Coming head-on, she was closing fast. From the new view, Pitt could see that she had the twin hulls of a catamaran. 'If we don't get off this mud pile,' he said irritably, 'we'll have a most exasperating complication.'

'Exasperating complication,' Giordino shot back. 'Is that the best you can do?'

Then to everyone's stunned amazement, Giordino suddenly ran from the pilothouse, scrambled up the ladder to the roof, stood poised for a moment like an Olympic diver and leaped onto the stern deck between Pitt and Gunn.

Call it luck, call it foresight or fate. Giordino's weight and momentum striking the stern deck was the extra inducement it took to jar the boat loose. Sluggishly, inch by inch, the boat slowly slithered off the unyielding muck. Finally, the keel slipped free and the boat leaped astern as if yanked on a big spring.

Creases of mirth crinkled the corner of Pitt's eyes. 'Don't ever let me tell you to diet.'

Giordino flashed a broad smile. 'I won't.'

'Now for our well-rehearsed getaway,' said Pitt. 'Rudi, take the helm and crouch down as far as you can go. Renee, you and Patrick lay low and take cover behind all this junk we've piled on the stern. Al and I will hide under a pile of nets.'

The words were barely out of Pitt's mouth when one of the crewmen of the luxury yacht fired a handheld rocket launcher. The missile soared through the port door of the pilothouse and out the starboard window before impacting with the water fifty yards abeam and exploding.

'Good thing I wasn't in there yet,' said Gunn, trying to act as if he was on a walk in the park.

'See what I mean about crouching down?'

Gunn jumped in the pilothouse and spun the wheel, sending the hull curling away from the muck rising from below the water. But before he could bring the boat up to speed, another rocket smashed through the side of the hull amidships and struck the starboard engine. Miraculously, it failed to explode, but it caused a fire by igniting oil spilling from the shattered engine. Almost as a reflex, Gunn immediately closed the throttle to prevent any broken lines from spraying fuel on the fire.

Dodge took the initiative, dove down the hatch into the engine room and snatched a fire extinguisher mounted on a bulkhead. Pulling the safety pin and squeezing the trigger, he smothered the flames until only a billow of black smoke spiraled through the open hatch.

'Are we taking on water?' Pitt shouted from under the fishnet.

'It's an ungodly mess down here, but the bilge is dry!' Dodge yelled back between coughing fits.

To those on board the pirate yacht, it looked as though the fishing boat was mortally hit, as they watched the column of smoke billowing from inside her hull. Believing her crew dead and too injured to resist, the yacht's captain backed off on his engines, slowed the vessel and drifted across Poco Bonito's, bow.