aboard these monsters, even when there was no hurricane blowing.
“You want to drive?” Yurin said. “Are you serious, man?”
“I just want to putt around. You know, here inside the marina. Get a little feel. Don’t worry about it.”
“You think you can handle this thing? You have some experience with this kind of boat? Any kind of boat?”
“Navy SEAL operations, Team Two. Riverine patrol boats in the Mekong Delta. Three tours.”
The Russian looked at him with different eyes.
“Good enough,” he said, and went around to the dock on the vessel’s port side, loosening the stern, spring, and bow lines. “Climb aboard,” he told Stoke. “I’ll cast you off and jump down.”
Stoke saw that the helm seat had no seat to speak of, only a curved backrest with a narrow bench you parked your butt on. The sides wrapped around you nice and snug, especially snug for him, but okay. He turned on all three of the battery switches, checked the fuel level and oil pressure. All good to go.
She had twin 1800-horsepower Detroit racing engines, and when he turned the key on number one, the response was one sharp
Yurin freed the last line and leaped aboard as Stoke started reversing out of the slip. There was so much power on tap you had to handle the throttles like surgical instruments. Tiny adjustments.
Yurin was strapping himself into the portside seat as Stoke got the big Magnum turned around and headed toward the mouth of the harbor.
“Where the fuck are you going?” Yurin said. “Gale-force winds coming right up the Cut! We’ll get knocked on our asses out there.”
“Relax, Sunshine,” Stoke said, looking over at him. “I think we’ll poke our nose out in the Atlantic. Just get a touch of it, see how she handles the rough stuff.”
Yurin started to say something, thought better of it, and just shook his head. He planted his feet and held on to to the stainless grab handle mounted on the dash in front of him.
“That’s it. Just hold on, Yurin. We’ll be back in your office signing papers before you know it.”
Stoke lined up in dead center of the narrow channel, aiming for a spot midway between the two massive cement breakwaters that enclosed the marina. The entrance was funnel-shaped, with the narrowest part on the seaward side. Beyond the entrance, the Atlantic looked like really convincing special effects, pretty much the way it did in that movie
Stoke eased the throttles forward until he saw the tachs reading 2,500 rpm, mentally preparing himself like a bull rider in the chute.
“Ready?” Stoke said, glancing over at Yurin. They were mid-channel, almost out in open water, about to enter the funnel.
No reply. The copilot was wearing the thousand-yard stare, wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into, if his life was worth a measly million bucks for a plastic play toy.
Stoke suddenly firewalled both throttles, and the boat came screaming out of the water, leaping forward with a thunderous roar of exhaust as the big props grabbed water. The boat went flying through the chute, wide open. At the other end, an oncoming wave was building, rushing toward them. It looked to be a green frothing wall about twenty, thirty feet high, and it was just getting started.
“Watch out!” the Russian screamed.
“Not a problem,” Stoke said calmly in his lip mike.
The Russian’s eyes went wide with terror. His client seemed intent on slamming the Magnum head-on into the oncoming wall of water. They were going to smash it like a bullet to the forehead. Wave had to be forty feet high now. The water was glassy green, so clear you could almost see through it to the other side. The props whined as the sharp prow of the Magnum struck the wave, pierced it, and then Stoke just drove the boat right through the wall, the bow eventually emerging from the other side.
The bow was suspended in midair, the back half of the boat, including the cockpit, was momentarily still inside the wave, and then they were through and pitching forward, the nose dropping and the bottom of Stoke’s stomach falling away as they went screaming down the wall of another big wave, into the trough of a brand-new wave just starting to build.
“Holy fuck,” he heard Yurin say, sputtering. Stoke looked over at his drenched passenger and liked what he saw. Fear.
What was left of the boat’s curved windshield was a mangled piece of chromed frame wrapped around the Russian’s chest, sheets of broken safety glass in his lap and on the deck around his feet.
“Not bad, huh?” Stoke said. “I thought we’d lose a lot more than just the goddamn windshield. Look, we’ve still got the spotlight up on the bow. Now, that’s good construction.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Easy, Yurin. No way to speak to a prospective customer.”
“Go back!” Yurin said. “Turn us around. You’re going to snap this thing in two out here!”
“I’ll go back, but first I’ve got a couple of questions.”
“Questions? About the boat?”
“No. About you.”
“Me? I’ll tell you about me. I’m going to fucking kill you, okay? I’m going to rip your ugly head right off your-”
He was clawing at his safety harness, desperate to get out of his seat and remove Stoke’s head. Stoke looked over at him, smiling.
“Look, just calm down, okay? Let me explain something. Only take a second. You’re an asshole, all right?”
A sudden surge threw both men back in their seats, snapping their heads back. They were angled sharply upward now, Stoke was using the powerful engines to climb the nearly vertical face of another building wave. And keep Yurin firmly planted in his seat.
“What?” Yurin shouted. “What the fuck do you want to know?”
“You’re Black Beret, right? All you security guys at the birthday party. Russian Black Berets?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Just turn around and go back to the marina before you kill both of us!”
“I will, but bear with me a sec. Spend a lot of time in Chechnya, Yurin? Whupping Chechen ass?”
“Never been there.”
Stoke put the wheel hard over to port, and the boat fell off the steep climb and started skidding sideways down the wave. Then the wildly cavitating props caught water, dug in, and she was headed on a better diagonal course down into the trough. Stoke had just enough control for a second to pull the 9mm Glock from inside his foul-weather jacket. Yurin saw the gun, and it seemed to make his already perfect day even more complete.
“Yurin, listen up. Get out of your harness.”
They were in the trough for the moment. Stoke pulled the throttles back to idle and unsnapped his own seat harness. If you planted your feet wide, you could probably stay on them. At least long enough to do what he had to do.
“What?”
“You heard me. Get your ass down on the deck. On your knees, Red Rider. You’ve got three seconds before your brains won’t work so good anymore. One…two…
“Three,” Stoke said. He turned and fired a round about a foot in front of Yurin’s nose.
“Fuck!” Yurin unbuckled the fasteners and slid out of the harness, one hand still clenching the sissy bar, what the Navy called the “oh-shit bar.” They were still moving uneasily along the trough. The Magnum was rocking and rolling, and it wasn’t easy, but the Russian managed to kneel on the deck between the two seats without getting thrown out of the boat.
“Jacket off. Everything off, waist up.”
“Jesus. A fucking giant black homo with a death wish.”
“Now.”
Stoke tapped him gently on top of the head with the pistol butt. Yurin ripped at the zipper on his yellow slicker, somehow managing to get it off. The wind whipped it right out of the cockpit, and it disappeared aft in a cloud of
