“Hold on,” Danny yelled.
Sin scrambled to her knees, held the phone out over the edge of the boat and began to video the scene. The explosion rocked the boat and threw debris everywhere, including on them as the boat raced away from the burning cabin.
Through the ringing in her ears, she heard the sound of oncoming boats. “That will be the dead guy’s ride. Get ready for a fire fight, guys.”
She eyed Troy and wiggled her fingers. “Gun.”
Troy reached behind his back and pulled a .45 caliber Glock from his waistband. Tossing it to her, he pointed. “Our friends have arrived for the barbeque.”
She pulled the slide of the Glock. “Too bad they’re a bit late.”
“I’m going to blind them with a spotlight when they get near,” Danny yelled over the roar of the engine. “When I do, take out the pilot.”
“Roger that,” Sin and Troy said in unison.
As the sound of the oncoming boats grew loader, Sin waited for a visual. From her right, she spotted two boats racing towards them just as dawn broke the horizon. She stayed low, grimaced with each shallow breath, and waited for Danny’s distraction.
She heard incoming fire as bullets peppered the water in front of them. When the first bullet struck the aluminum hull of their boat, Danny turned on the floodlight, blinding the enemy.
She held her pistol in a two-handed grip over the side of the boat, took aim and shot the pilot of the front boat. At the same time, Troy peppered the others in the boat. Danny sprayed bullets from his assault weapon, forcing the second boat to turn and run.
“We can’t let them get away,” she yelled. “Go!”
Danny pushed the control arm of the boat all the way forward. The boat screamed to new speeds as the front end rose out of the water.
As they sped up, so did the boat they were chasing.
“We’re not going to catch them,” she mouthed, the sound of the aircraft engine muffling her voice.
“Hold on,” Danny mouthed back. As soon as the words left his lips, he turned the boat a hard left, leaving the water and ran the boat onto a patch of land. It never slowed down as it mowed down the swamp grasses and vegetation in its way. A few minutes later, Danny turned the boat a hard-right back onto a strip of water. He drove it up and over the bank of the small waterway and cut the engine.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“They’re boats are fast, but they don’t know the swamp. They’ll stick to the water. The beauty of flat-bottom airboats is that they can travel over land. I just cut in front of our friends. You should be able to hear the sound of their boat right about,” Danny held up a finger, “now.”
Where is the gas tank on the boat?”
“Behind the seats, but it’s well protected. You’d have to put multiple bullets in the same hole to penetrate the hull and get to the fuel supply.”
She checked the Glock. “Let’s see how accurate this peashooter is.”
“You can’t be serious.”
One side of her lips rose as she lay down in the prone position with her head and arms over the front of the hull.
“They’ve slowed down,” Danny said as the sound of the oncoming boat lessened. “They think they lost us.”
“Count us down from five when they are about to pass us,” she said.
“Ten-four,” Danny answered.
“Troy, aim for the pilot.”
He nodded.
She waited while the sound of the other boat began to grow louder. “On my mark,” Danny said, “Five, four, three, two, one . . .”
Sin fired the Glock into the hull of the boat just behind the last row of seats while Troy shot the driver of the boat. Danny emptied his gun into the propeller of the engine as a distraction. Sin was having more trouble than she should have hitting the same hole due to her pain with each recoil of the gun as well as shooting a moving target. Gritting her teeth, she drew in as deep a breath as possible and slowly let it out, firing her last four bullets.
The explosion of the airplane fuel lit up the morning sky causing their boat to rock sideways even though it was on dry land. Sin threw herself on top of Pia as shards of metal rained down on them. She felt the weight of Troy’s body on top of hers.
As soon as the toxic rain stopped falling, she looked at Danny and twirled her finger in the air. He responded by turning on the engine and racing towards shore. As soon as everyone was back on board the Cessna and, it was in the air, Sin tapped out a text. “On way. Pia critical. I’m injured. You and Aimee need to meet us at the hangar. No time to transport. Triage there.”
39
Sin was on the phone to Dominic Russo as soon as she finished her text. “We have Pia. Find Dr. O’Rourke and go with her.”
“My Daughter, is she alive?”
“Find the doc and go,” Sin said as she glanced down at Pia. Troy was doing the best he could to administer CPR while Danny flew like a bat out of hell towards Key West.
Thirty minutes later, Deb and Aimee met them at the hangar and started setting up their supplies.
“Did Sin say anything other than giving their condition?” Aimee asked.
“No,” Deb answered, “but if she said she was hurt . . . it must be bad.”
No one spoke as they worked on the medical triage setup. Finished with her duties, Deb went to help Aimee. “What can I do to help, Priestess?”
Aimee was grinding a bowl full of herbs into a fine powder. “I need to make a tincture, but I don’t have any alcohol.”
“I have some in my supplies,” Deb said. Returning with the alcohol, she asked, “Why a tincture? I thought the herbs had to
