I tried to think of a good reason to argue with him. It didn’t come.
“Gill, you better go in the other boat. One of you will have to drive, while the other takes care of Bennett. Vargas, you’ve got a first aid kit?”
“In the cabin,” he said. “Right on the wall.”
Gill went in and grabbed it, and then climbed over the side ladder to Bennett’s boat.
“You guys go right back home,” I said. “We’ll meet you back there.”
“Be careful,” Gill said.
“Jonathan, you better take Jackie down below, see if you can warm him up.”
“I’ve got some blankets,” Vargas said. “Lower cabinets on the left.”
As soon as Gill was in the other boat, Vargas kicked the throttle all the way forward and headed after Blondie. I sat in the chair next to him, and Leon sat right behind us. The cold air was rushing over me, making me shiver just as hard as Jackie was.
“You better get a blanket, too!” Leon said. “You’re all wet!”
I went into the cabin. Jackie was taking off his wet clothes while Jonathan stood by with the blankets.
“Let me have one of those,” I said.
Jackie grabbed my arm and looked me in the eye.
“You’re a damned fool,” he said.
“I know.”
He kept looking at me. Finally, he smiled. “Good thing.”
I went back out with the blanket wrapped around me and sat next to Vargas.
“You’re bleeding a little bit,” he said.
I touched my cheek and felt the blood.
“Splinters,” I said. “The bullet just missed me.”
Vargas kept the throttle open. Some clouds had rolled in. The wind was whipping the waves up to three feet. We were bouncing hard.
“Why didn’t you call Isabella from the beginning?” I said.
He looked at me.
“I’m not complaining,” I said. “I’m just wondering. Wouldn’t it have made things a lot easier?”
“You don’t just call Isabella on the phone. You certainly don’t ask him questions about other people in the business.”
“I understand,” I said. “Of course, calling him up on the radio…What did you do, call his boat?”
“Yeah, I called his boat.”
“On the open airwaves.”
“Yeah. He actually sounded real friendly on the radio, like I was his best buddy and he was happy to hear from me. That’s not a good sign. Like I said, things weren’t looking too good here. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.”
I looked out at the water. There was no sign of Blondie’s boat.
“How do you know which way he went?”
“Nearest dock for him is Batchawana Bay. I figure that’s where he’s headed.”
“How far is it?”
“From here, maybe an hour, hour and a half,” he said. “Of course, that’s where Isabella’s boat is, too. This could get interesting.”
We rode the waves for another half hour before we finally saw him. Even with the cargo, Vargas’s boat was a lot faster.
“We got him,” he said. “We’ll run him down in about five minutes. Do you want the honors?”
I didn’t know what to say. I looked at Leon. I had shot Blondie’s brother in the heat of the moment. Now, to kill Blondie in cold blood…
I thought about Jackie, his hands tied behind his back, his mouth taped, the gun pressed to his head.
I thought about my father’s cabin, reduced to ashes.
Could I do it?
“Where’s he going?” Vargas said. “He’s turning.”
We watched the boat turn north. Then we saw why.
“Holy fuck,” Vargas said. “It’s Isabella.”
It was hard to tell from a distance, but the boat coming at us had a long hull, and it was kicking up water like a high-performance racing boat.
“We gotta get out of here,” he said. He turned the boat hard, sending everything on the deck sliding from one side to the other. As we sped away, I went to the back rail and watched the big boat turn to intercept Blondie. Even over the sound of the motor, over two miles of open water, we could hear the shooting. Any doubts I may have had about killing Blondie in cold blood were about to be made a moot point.
“I hope Blondie puts up a good fight,” Vargas said. “It might slow them down a little bit.”
“Will they come after us?” I said.
“I wouldn’t bet against it right now.”
“Is he your contact in Canada?” Leon said. “The one you deliver the appliances to?”
Vargas looked at each of us, then back at the water. “Not him directly. But he has a hand in it. I missed the drop yesterday because of the weather, and today I came out to shoot up the Forsythe brothers. It’s not exactly the way he likes his business partners to act.”
Vargas kept pushing the boat at top speed. The waves were up to four feet now. Jonathan poked his head out of the cabin, asked if we could ease up on the bouncing a little bit. The look on my face sent him back into the cabin without another word.
Isabella’s boat was getting closer. It wasn’t going to catch us soon, but it was going to catch us. Vargas didn’t look behind him. He kept the boat going straight. I checked the GPS-we were still two hours from home.
Leon went scrambling across the deck, trying to collect up the rifles. The waves made it look like he was on a trampoline.
“Don’t even bother!” Vargas yelled. “If they catch us, we’re dead. No matter what.”
Leon sat down on the deck and held onto the rail. The sky grew darker, the waves picking up to six feet. It was slowing us down to under twenty knots. We could only hope it was slowing down the boat behind us just as much.
By the time we made it to Whitefish Bay, they had closed the gap to a half mile. I kept waiting for the first bullet.
Then I saw my second beautiful sight of the day. It was a Coast Guard patrol boat, forty feet of nautical authority, in gleaming white with the distinctive orange stripes. There was another boat right next to it.
Bennett.
“We have to dump these weapons!” Leon said. Before we got any closer, Leon and I rounded up the four taped-up rifles, along with my revolver, and slipped them off the back end of the boat. As we did, we could see Isabella’s boat doing a quick U-turn. They were close enough for me to see two men at the rail, looking right at us. They were both dressed in black, with black sunglasses.
“I never thought I’d say this,” Vargas said, “but thank God for the U.S. Coast Guard. If you don’t mind, I’d rather not thank them in person. Those boys can get a little nosy.”
He set a new course to the southwest, tracing a mile-wide circle around the two boats. When the Coast Guard boat finally pulled away and headed for the river, Vargas took us closer to Bennett.
He was nowhere to be seen. It was just Ham and Gill, calmly sitting at the controls, waiting for us to pull up to them. The rough water made it hard to get close.
“What happened?” I said to them. “Where’s Bennett?”
On cue, the cabin door opened. Bennett poked his head out, his forehead wrapped in bandages. “Are they gone?”
“We ran out of gas,” Gill said. “We had to radio the Coast Guard. We were afraid you might miss us coming back in. Bennett went down below so they wouldn’t ask too many questions. As it was, we had to explain this shattered windshield.”
