The Raft

  Chapter 31

  “I'll need Gandalf's gun,” Maggie said as she rubbed at her wrists and limped up a steep flight of stairs. In all the ruckus, one of the seamen had stomped on her bare foot.

  “Absolutely not,” Galahad said adamantly.

  “I'll need the pistol, or none of this will work. You can keep the bullets.”

  “What is it with Rafters and their guns?”

  “Do I get the hog leg?”

  “Alright, alright,” Galahad shook his head in resignation. He waved a hand at one of the armed sailors following them, who peeled off. “I hope I'm not going to regret cooperating with you, Ms. Straight.”

  “Now that we're colluding, you can call me Maggie.”

  “Maggie. You're trying to juggle an awful lot of balls at once, are you sure you can handle it?”

  “You'll have to trust me, Special Agent.”

  “And if there's any gunfire, my men will respond...”

  “Just tell them not to shoot unless shot at, and we'll all live to see another day.”

  Maggie hobbled out onto the deck, back into the cold, rainy Puget Sound morning. The fog was thinning and the mass of congregated Raft vessels south of the blockade had grown to an almost uncountable size.

  Ships of all shapes and sizes were turning this way and that, adrift in the current. The people aboard the boats appeared as little black dots from Maggie's high perch, but she was sure each and every pair of eyes would be watching her, waiting for the Soft Cell to pull away from the gargantuan James. Everything rested on her shoulders now, the whole deal. How things played out in the next ten minutes would decide if a dozen people lived or died.

  Maggie groaned. She was still hungover. She'd been smacked around and thrown up against bulkheads. She'd been talking nonstop for the last hour, making up most everything she was saying. She might have outwardly appeared calm and collected, but inside she was a whimpering mess. She wanted to climb aboard the Soft Cell and curl up in her warm bunk, let the day play out as it would.

  But she knew that hiding wasn't even remotely an option. She had a plan – a sort of plan, a fly-by-wire, fill-in-the-big-details-later kind of plan – and she had to stick to it.

  The sailors with their body armor and black rifles escorted Rachael and Maggie to the rope ladder dangling down to the Soft Cell.

  Gandalf's blood still stained the deck. His body was gone, but the red pool mixing with the dripping rain remained where he'd fallen.

  “What do we do with him?” Galahad said, noticing Maggie and Rachael looking down at the pool.

  “You have him in custody, remember? Keep him on ice. Then in a few days or a week, when everything has calmed down, schedule a suitably harrowing prison cell hanging. No one will ask too many questions. I'll make sure of that.”

  “Well, Maggie.” Special Agent Galahad held out a hand. “It's been interesting.”

  Maggie took his hand and shook it. “Thank you.”

  “You know, if any of this blows back,” Galahad kept shaking her hand, long after Maggie tried to pull her hand away, “I'll deny everything. This conversation never happened.”

  “Of course, Special Agent.” Galahad finally let go of Maggie's palm. “I'd expect nothing less.” A seaman in body armor came jogging up to Galahad's shoulder. He held out a ziplock bag containing a large revolver, which Galahad took. He held it out to Maggie, who accepted it. “Thank you, again,” Maggie said and she turned, pulling herself wearily over the gunwale. She started down the rope ladder, holding the ziplock bag in between her teeth.

  “Ms. Bigallo,” Galahad nodded at Rachael. “Our apologies for the inconvenience.” Rachael tried to smile, realizing she was showing her dried, bloody teeth, and followed Maggie over the gunwale.

  They descended slowly, the rope ladder dancing in the breeze. The Soft Cell was waiting at the ladder's bottom, bouncing on the waves. As soon as Maggie's bare toes touched the deck, she collapsed heavily across the roof of the cabin and groaned in pain.

  “Untie the mooring lines, would you?” Maggie asked Rachael. Rachael had only a limited comprehension of what that meant, but she felt the need to help out in any capacity that she could. She found the bow line and unraveled it from the cleat in the side of the larger vessel. She did the same from the stern line. The Soft Cell bobbed slowly away from the mighty Joshua James. Drifting.

  “I can't believe it, it just doesn't seem real,” Rachael said, coiling the mooring lines away as she'd seen Maggie do many times.

  “What's that?” Maggie groaned.

  “Everything. Gandalf's dead. He murdered Meerkat.”

  “Oh, yes...”

  “And now you have to go back and tell everyone... tell Tiger Print...”

  “Yes, as to that...” Maggie rolled off the cabin roof and swung her bare feet down into the cockpit. “Let's keep that between the two of us for now, okay?”

  “What?” Rachael said, confused. “You told Galahad -”

  “I told Galahad whatever I thought he'd believe. If we sail back over there now and start talking a whole hell of a lot of nonsense about Gandalf and Meerkat... well, best just to let that lie for the time being.”

  “But if we go back without Gandalf, people are going to talk.”

  “You're right,” Maggie said, flipping switches on her control panel. The Soft Cell engine came to life and she turned the helm hard over, bringing the prow about. “So, we'd better not sail back.”

  “Then what are we going to do?” Rachael looked back to the mass of the Raft, milling in the fog to the south.

  “Lead by example,” Maggie said, pointing the bow towards the Raft and opening the throttle.

  “Oh, I don't like the sound of that,” Rachael worried.

  “No, neither do I. But if the Rafters see one craft clear the blockade, they'll be apt to follow. It's just a question of who's going to run the blockade first.”

  Maggie kept a southerly course until her electric inboard had brought them almost equidistant from the Joshua James and the Raft. She cut the motor, turned the helm and brought the bow around to the north. Then, still limping, she began to winch down her sails.

  “Lets just hope that Galahad keeps his word. 'Cause if that thing,” Maggie pointed at the 57mm Bofers on the foredeck of the James, “goes off, it'll be lights out for both of us.”

  “Maggie, are you sure about this?”

  “No, not really.”

  Rachael turned and fixed Maggie with an angry look. “Maggie, for once could you lie to me and tell me that you have everything under control?!”

  “Don't worry, Rachael.” Maggie had the mainsail in place and the Soft Cell was catching a good measure of the choppy breeze. “I got this. Just sit back and relax.”

  “Never mind.” Rachael turned back to watch the decks of the Coast Guard ships. “You're a terrible liar.”

  “Yeah, sorry.” Maggie climbed back behind the helm. The Soft Cell was charging forward, Maggie wrestled with the tiller to keep the craft pointed between the two largest ships in the blockade. “Thanks again, Rachael. Thanks again for your help. I'm sorry I got you into all this trouble.”

  “You owe me a trip to the dentist,” Rachael said, flashing a bloody sneer back at Maggie.

  “Send me the bill,” Maggie said, her eyes fixed on the high decks of the two ships that were rapidly approaching. Sailors were charging back and forth, rifle barrels pointing over the sides. There were orders being yelled, lost in the thunder of the wind in the sails. Rachael climbed down from her perch on the deck and slipped down into the relative safety of the companionway. Only her head popped up cautiously, her red hair snapping in the breeze. They were ten yards out now, five, four, three...

  The Soft Cell was cutting through the water at almost a dozen knots as it cleared between the two prows of the giant vessels. No one fired, the massive cannon on the foredeck of the James remained silent. The seamen on the decks of the ships kept their weapons leveled, but they watched as Maggie st
eered her ship deftly through the gap between the blockading boats. The Soft Cell didn't slow, the whole of the Puget Sound was now clear in front of them, but Maggie stole a glance back at the milling Raft.

  “We made it!” Rachael cheered. She leapt up from her hiding place and jumped happily up and down in the tight cockpit. She embraced Maggie, but Maggie wasn't yet celebrating. She was watching the Raft recede behind them, vanishing into the mist of the cold morning.

  As ten yards turned into fifty, and fifty turned into a hundred, Maggie watched the gap between the two large ships. The sight of the Raft was gone, lost in the haze, but the open water between it and the blockade could still be observed.

  “Come on, you idiots, come on...” Maggie egged. She turned, checking her course, then turned back to the stern.

  Then she caught sight of one small dot emerging from the fog.

  “There, there!” Maggie cheered. “One, at least.” As the Soft Cell was pulling away, even the ships of the blockade were beginning to disappear in the gloom. But one ship had definitely pulled away from the flotilla and moved for the line of Coast Guard ships. As Rachael and Maggie watched, the outlines of more craft began to appear in the gray. Larger ships, moving for the blockade. One was most certainly the Kalakala. “They're doing it, they're coming!” Maggie hooted.

  They cheered, jumped with joy and held each other. As they watched, the first sailing dinghy broke through the blockade line, unmolested by the crews aboard the government ships. Craft after craft began to thread through the gaps between the cutters and the motor lifeboats, breaking out onto the open water north of the blockade.

  The weapons of the Coast Guard ships sat silent. As more and more craft made it clear of the deadline, the party across the expanse of the Raft seemed to rapidly reboot. The sound of music echoed off the choppy water, mixing with the sound of laughing, singing Rafters.

  They'd made it, they were through. The Freaky Kon-Tikis lay ahead. The big bad government was behind them. Nothing to do now but celebrate. The smaller ships drifted in and out of the larger ones, as if dancing. With a strong tailwind, there was nothing to do but tie off the tiller and crack open a beer.

  Maggie breathed a large, well deserved sigh of relief. As many of the smaller vessels in the Raft caught up and overtook the Soft Cell, Maggie handed off the helm to Rachael and dropped heavily onto one of the cockpit's benches. She lifted up her sore foot and stretched it out on the bench, leaning back and letting out a groan.

  “You did it!” Rachael congratulated. “You did it, they're all getting through. Kid Galahad kept his word.”

  “Mmm,” Maggie moaned, her eyes closed.

  “What? Mmm? What? I hate that 'Mmm'” Rachael said, keeping both hands on the helm.

  “Well, we still have the catching of Meerkat's murderer to do,” Maggie said dreamily.

  Rachael opened her mouth to speak, but the sight of the envelope Gandalf had left on the control panel held her tongue. She picked up the envelope and felt its weight. There was certainly something heavy inside. She read the messy scrawl on the face of the envelope. “Maggie” it read.

  “I think Gandalf left you a parting gift,” Rachael said, holding out the envelope. Maggie painfully opened her eyes and grunted.

  Seeing the envelope, she quickly shot up erect.