"Like I was born on one," said Pitt, pulling himself aboard and straddling the seat.
"If we keep the cargo ship between us and the dock, we should be blocked from their line of fire for a good half kilometer."
They punched the starters, the modified engines roared to life, and with Broadmoor less than a meter in the lead, they burst from under the dock as if shot from a cannon. They stuck the noses of their watercraft in a hard turn and sliced around the bows of the cargo ship, using the hull as a shield. The engines accelerated with no hint of hesitation. Pitt never looked back. He hunched over the handlebars and pressed the trigger throttle to its stop, half expecting a hail of gunfire to pepper the water around him at any second. But their getaway was clean, they were far out of range before the rest of John Merchant's security team was alerted.
For the second time in nearly as many days, Pitt was making a wild escape from the Dorsett mine for Moresby Island. The water sped past in a blue-green blur. The bright colors and the Haida designs on the watercraft glittered radiantly in the bright sun. Pitt's senses sharpened at the danger, and his reactions quickened.
From the air the channel between the islands seemed little more than a wide river. But from the surface of the sea, the inviting safety of the trees and rocky hills of Moresby appeared like a speck on the far horizon.
Pitt was awed by the stability of the WetJet's V-hull and the torque of its modified big-bore, long-stroke engine, which drove the craft with a ferocious low snarl through the low swells with hardly a bounce. Fast, agile, the variable-pitch impeller delivered incredible thrust. These were truly machines with muscle. Pitt couldn't know with any certainty, but he estimated he was whipping over the sea at close to sixty knots. It was almost like riding a high-performance motorcycle over water.
He jumped Broadmoor's wake, pulled even until they were hurtling across the water virtually side by side and shouted, "We'll be dead meat if they come after us!"
"Not to worry!" Broadmoor yelled back. "We can outrun their patrol boats!"
Pitt turned and peered over his shoulder at the rapidly receding island. He cursed under his breath as he spotted the remaining Defender helicopter rising above the mound surrounding the mine. In less than a minute it was sweeping across the channel, taking up the chase and following their wakes.
"We can't outrun their helicopter," Pitt informed Broadmoor loudly.
In contrast to a grim-faced Pitt, Mason Broadmoor looked as enthusiastic and bright eyed as a boy warming up for his first track meet. His brown features were flushed with excitement. He stood on the footrests and glanced back at the pursuing aircraft. "The dumb bastards don't stand a chance," he said grinning. "Follow in my wake."
They were rapidly overhauling the homeward-bound fishing fleet, but Broadmoor made a hard turn toward Moresby Island, giving the boats a wide berth. The shore was only a few hundred meters away, and the helicopter had pulled to within a kilometer. Pitt could see waves sluicing and heaving in constant motion as they hurled against the rocks below a shore of steep, jagged cliffs, and he wondered if Broadmoor had a death wish as he aimed his watercraft toward the swirling breakers. Pitt turned his attention from the approaching helicopter and put his faith in the Haida totem carver. He stuck the nose of his watercraft into the rooster tail shooting up behind the front-runner and hung in the foaming wake, as they ran flat out through a cauldron of waves thrashing against a fortress of offshore rocks.
To Pitt it looked as if they were on a direct course toward the wave-hammered cliffs. He gripped the handlebars, braced his feet in the padded footwells and hung on to keep from being pitched off. The rumble of the breakers came like thunderclaps, and all he could see was a gigantic curtain of spray and foam. The image of the Polar Queen, drifting helpless toward the barren rock island in the Antarctic flickered through his mind. But this time, he was aboard a speck in the sea instead of an ocean liner. He plunged on despite a growing certainty that Broadmoor was certifiably insane.
Broadmoor cut around a huge rock. Pitt followed, instantly setting up the turn, shifting his body back and outside to slightly weight the front inside of the hull, then hanging on, the hull biting into the water as he carved the turn in Broadmoor's wake. They rocketed over the crest of a huge roller and smashed down in the trough before ascending on the back of the next one.
The helicopter was almost upon them, but the pilot stared in dumb fascination at the suicidal course set by the two men on the watercraft. Astonished, he failed to line up and fire his twin 7.62 guns. Wary of his own danger, he pulled the aircraft up in a steep vertical climb and swept over the palisades. He banked sharply to come around for another look but the watercraft had already been out of sight for a critical ten seconds. When he circled back over the water, his quarry had vanished.
Some inner instinct told Pitt that in another hundred meters he would be pulped against the unyielding wall rising out of the water and that would be the end of it. The choice was to veer off and take his chances with the firepower from the helicopter, but he remained inflexibly on course. His life was passing in front of him. Then he saw it.
A tiny crevice in the lower face of the cliffs suddenly yawned open like the eye of a needle, no wider than two meters. Broadmoor swept into the narrow opening and was gone.
Pitt grimly followed, swearing that the ends of his handlebars brushed the sides of the entrance, and abruptly found himself in a deep grotto with a high, inverted V-shaped ceiling. Ahead of him, Broadmoor slowed and glided to a stop beside a small rock landing, where he jumped off his machine, tore off his coat and began stuffing it with a bundle of dead kelp that had washed into the grotto. Pitt immediately saw the wisdom of the Indian's scheme. He hit the stop switch on the handlebar and matched Broadmoor's actions.
Once the coats were filled to simulate headless torsos, they were thrown in the water at the entrance to the grotto. Pitt and Broadmoor stood there watching as the dummies were swept back and forth before being carried by the backwash into the maelstrom outside.
"You think that will fool them?" asked Pitt.
"Guaranteed," answered Broadmoor confidentially. "The wall of the cliff slants out, making the opening to the grotto impossible to see from the air." He cocked an ear at the sound of the helicopter outside. "I'll give them another ten minutes before they head back to the mine and tell Dapper John Merchant, if he's regained consciousness, that we bashed our brains out on the rocks."
Broadmoor was prophetic. The sound of the helicopter echoing into the grotto gradually died and faded away. He checked the fuel tanks of the watercraft and nodded comfortably. "If we run at half speed we should have just enough fuel to reach my village."
"I suggest we relax till after sunset," said Pitt. "No -sense in showing our faces in case the pilot of the helicopter has a suspicious disposition. Can you navigate home in the dark?"
"Blindfolded in a straitjacket," Broadmoor said indisputably. "We'll leave at midnight and be in bed by 300 A.M."
For the next several minutes, worn out from the excitement of the hard run across the channel and the near brush with death, they sat in silence, listening to the reverberating roar of the surf outside the grotto.
Finally, Broadmoor reached into a small compartment on his WetJet and retrieved a canvas-covered half-gallon canteen. He pulled out a cork stopper and handed the canteen to Pitt.
"Boysenberry wine. Made it myself."
Pitt took a long swallow and made a strange face. "You mean boysenberry brandy, don't you?"
"I admit that it does have a nice kick." He smiled as Pitt passed back the canteen. "Did you find what you were looking for at the mine?"
"Yes, your engineer led me to the source of the problem."
"I am glad. Then it has all been worth it."
"You paid a high price. You'll not be selling any more fish to the mining company."
"I felt like a whore taking Dorsett money anyway," said Broadmoor with a disgusted expression.
"As a consolati
on, you'll also be interested to learn that Boudicca Dorsett claimed her daddy was going to close down the mine a month from now."
"If it's true, my people will be happy to hear it," said Broadmoor, handing back the canteen. "That calls for another drink."
"I owe you a debt I can't repay," said Pitt quietly. "You took a great risk to help me escape."
"It was worth it to bash Merchant and Crutcher's skulls," Broadmoor laughed. "I've never felt this good before. It is I who must thank you for the opportunity."
Pitt reached out and shook Broadmoor's hand. "I'm going to miss your cheery disposition."
"You're going home?"
"Back to Washington with the information I've gathered."
`You're okay for a mainlander, friend Pitt. If you ever need a second home, you're always welcome in my village."
"You never know," said Pitt warmly. "I just might take you up on that offer someday."
They departed the grotto long after dark as insurance against chance discovery by Dorsett security patrol boats. Broadmoor draped the chain of a small shaded penlight around his neck so that it was hanging on his back.
Fortified by the boysenberry wine, Pitt followed the tiny beam through the surf and around the rocks, amazed at the ease with which Broadmoor navigated in the dark without mishap.
The image of Maeve, forced to work as a spy under the boot of her father, blackmailed by his seizure of her twin sons, made him boil with anger. He also felt a stab in his heart, a feeling that had not coursed through him in years. His emotions stirred with the memories of another woman. Only then did he realize it was possible to feel the same love for two different women from different times, one living, one dead.
Driven and torn by conflicting emotions of love and hate and a determination to stop Arthur Dorsett no matter the cost and consequences, he gripped the handlebars till his knuckles gleamed white under the light from a quarter-moon as he forged through the cataract from Broadmoor's wake.
For most of the afternoon the wind blew steadily out of the northeast. A brisk wind, but not enough to raise more than an occasional whitecap on the swells that topped out at one meter. The wind brought with it a driving rain that fell in sheets, cutting visibility to less than five kilometers and striking the water as if its surface was churned by millions of thrashing herring. To most sailors it was miserable weather. But to British seamen like Captain Ian Briscoe, who spent their early years walking the decks of ships plowing through the damp of the North Sea, this was like old home week.
Unlike his junior officers, who remained out of the gusting spray and stayed dry, Briscoe stood on the bridge wing of his ship as if recharging the blood in his veins, staring out over the bow as if expecting to see a ghost ship that didn't appear on radar. He noted that the mercury was holding steady and the temperature was several degrees above freezing. He felt no discomfort in his oilskins except that caused by the occasional drops of water that snaked their way through the strands of his precisely cut red beard and trickled down his neck.
After a two-week layover in Vancouver, where she participated in a series of naval exercises with ships of the Canadian Navy, Briscoe's command, the Type 42 destroyer HMS Bridlington, was en route home to England via Hong Kong, a stopover for any British naval ship that was sailing across the Pacific.
Although the ninety-nine-year lease had run out and the British Crown Colony was returned to China in 1997, it became a matter of pride to occasionally show the Cross of Saint George and to remind the new owners of who were the founders of the financial Mecca of Asia.
The door to the wheelhouse opened, and the second officer, Lieutenant Samuel Angus, leaned out. "If you can spare a few moments from defying the elements, sir, could you please step inside?"
"Why don't you come out, my boy?" Briscoe roared over the wind. Soft. That's the trouble with you young people. You don't appreciate foul weather."
"Please, Captain," Angus pleaded. "We have an approaching aircraft on radar."
Briscoe walked across the bridge wing and stepped into the wheelhouse. "I see nothing unusual in that.
You might say it's routine. We've had dozens of aircraft fly over the ship."
A helicopter, sir? Over twenty-five hundred kilometers from the American mainland and no military vessels between here and Hawaii."
"The bloody fool must be lost," Briscoe growled. "Signal the pilot and ask if he requires a position fix."
"I took the liberty of contacting him, sir," replied Angus. "He speaks only Russian."
"Who do we have who can understand him?"
"Surgeon Lieutenant Rudolph. He's fluent in Russian."
"Call him up to the bridge."
Three minutes later, a short man with blond hair stepped up to Briscoe, who was sitting in the elevated captain's chair, peering into the rain. "You sent for me, Captain?"
Briscoe nodded curtly. "There's a Russian helicopter muddling about in the storm. Get on the radio and find out why he's flying around an empty sea."
Lieutenant Angus produced a headset, plugged it into a communications console and handed it to Rudolph. "The frequency is set. All you have to do is talk."
Rudolph placed the earphones over his ears and spoke into the tiny microphone. Briscoe and Angus waited patiently while he carried on what seemed a one-way conversation. Finally, he turned to the captain. "The man is terribly upset, almost incoherent. The best I can make of it, is that he's coming from a Russian whaling fleet."
"Then he's only doing his job."
Rudolph shook his head. "He keeps repeating, `they're all dead' and wants to know if we have helicopter landing facilities on the Bridlington. If so, he wants to come aboard."
"Impossible," Briscoe grunted. "Inform him that the Royal Navy does not allow foreign aircraft to land on Her Majesty's ships."
Rudolph repeated the message just as the helicopter's engines became audible and it suddenly materialized out of the falling rain, half a kilometer off the port bow at a height of no more than twenty meters above the sea. "He sounds on the verge of hysteria. He swears that unless you shoot him down, he's going to set down on board."
"Damn!" The oath fairly exploded from Briscoe's lips. "All I need is for some terrorist to blow up my ship."
"Not likely any terrorists are roaming about this part of the ocean," said Angus.
"Yes, yes, and the Cold War's been over for ten years. I know all that."
"For what it's worth," said Rudolph, "I read the pilot as scared out of his wits. I detect no indication of threat in his tone."
Briscoe sat silent for a few moments, then flicked a switch on the ship's intercom. "Radar, are your ears up
"Yes, sir," a voice answered. "Any ships in the area?"
"I read one large vessel and four smaller ones, bearing two-seven-two degrees, distance ninety-five kilometers."
Briscoe broke off and pressed another switch. "Communications?"
"Sir?"
"See if you can raise a fleet of Russian whaling ships ninety-five kilometers due west of us. If you need an interpreter, the ship's doc can translate."
"My thirty-word Russian vocabulary should get me by," the communications officer answered cheerfully.
Briscoe looked at Rudolph. "All right, tell him permission is granted to set down on our landing pad."
Rudolph passed on the word, and they all watched as the helicopter angled in from the starboard beam and began a shallow power-glide approach over the landing pad just forward of the stern in readiness for a hovering descent.
To Briscoe's practiced eyes, the pilot was handling the aircraft erratically, failing to compensate for the brisk wind. "That idiot flies like he's got a nervous disorder," snapped Briscoe. He turned to Angus.
"Reduce speed and order an armed reception committee to greet our visitor." Then as an afterthought. "If he so much as scratches my ship, shoot him."
Angus grinned amiably and winked at Rudolph behind the captain's back as he ordered the helmsman at the ship's
console to reduce speed. There was no insubordination intended in their shared humor.
Briscoe was admired by every man of the crew as a gruff old sea dog who watched over his men and ran a smooth ship. They were wet) aware that few ships in the Royal Navy had a captain who preferred sea duty to promotion to flag rank.
The visitor was a smaller version of the Ka-32 Helix Russian Navy helicopter, which was used for light transport duty and air reconnaissance. This one, used by a fishing fleet for locating whales, looked badly in need of maintenance. Oil streaked from the engine cowlings and the paint on the fuselage was badly chipped and faded.
The British seamen waiting under the protection of steel bulkheads cringed as the helicopter flared out barely three meters above the pitching deck. The pilot sharply decreased his engine rpms too early, and the craft dropped heavily to the deck, bounced drunkenly back into the air and then smacked down hard on its wheels before finally settling like a chastised collie into motionless submission. The pilot shut down his engines, and the rotor blades swung to a stop.
The pilot slid open an entry door and stared up at the Bridlington's huge radar dome before turning his eyes to the five advancing seamen, automatic weapons firmly clutched in their hands. He jumped down to the deck and peered at them curiously before he was taken roughly by the arms and hustled through an open hatch. The seamen escorted him up three decks through a wide companionway before turning into a passageway that led to the officers' wardroom.
The ship's first officer, Lieutenant Commander Roger Avondale, had joined the reception committee and stood off to one side with Lieutenant Angus. Surgeon Lieutenant Rudolph waited at Briscoe's elbow to interpret. He studied the Russian pilot's eyes and read terror numbed by fatigue in the wide pupils.
Briscoe nodded at Rudolph. "Ask him what in hell made him assume he can board a foreign naval vessel any time he chooses."
"You might also inquire as to why he was flying alone," added Avondale. "Not likely he'd scout for whales by himself."