Ali slowed down, but once he saw they were all right, he gunned his engines, throwing caution to the winds. He wanted to finish as far ahead of Austin as possible. Ignoring the advice of his veteran throttle man, Hank Smith, Ali pushed his boat to the edge. The giant rooster tail arced high in the air for hundreds of feet, and the twin propellers plowed a wide and double-furrowed wake for hundreds more.
“Sorry about that,” Zavala called out. “Caught a wave.”
“Great save. Let’s go for second place.”
Austin pushed the throttles forward, and with a scream of the engines they were off in hot pursuit.
• • •
High above the race course the Italian TV cameraman had spotted the dramatic reversal of the lead boats. The chopper swooped out in a wide circle and came back over the flotilla to hover at midchannel. Pozzi wanted a wide shot of the lone boat speeding past the spectators to the turn buoy for the final approach to San Diego. The cameraman glanced at the sea below to get his bearings and saw wavelets outlining a large, shiny, grayish object mounding at the surface. A trick of the light. No, there was definitely something there. He caught the attention of the pilot and pointed straight down.
“What the hell is that?” the pilot said.
Pozzi aimed the camera at the object and zoomed in with the touch of a button.
“It’s a balena,” he said as the object came into focus.
“For God’s sake, speak English.”
“How you say? A whale.”
“Oh, yeah,” the pilot replied. “You see them migrating. Don’t worry, he’ll dive when he hears the boats.”
“No,” Carlo said with a shake of his head. “I think he’s dead. He’s not moving.”
The pilot put the chopper at a slight angle for a better view. “Hell, you’re right. There’s another one. I’m counting three—no, four. Damn! They’re popping up all over the place.”
He switched to the hailing channel. “Come in, San Diego Coast Guard. This is the TV helicopter over the race course. Emergency!”
A voice crackled over the radio. “Coast Guard station at Cabrillo Point. Go ahead.”
“I’m seeing whales in the race course.”
“Whales?”
“Yeah, maybe a dozen. I think they’re dead.”
“Roger,” the radio man said. “We’ll alert the cutter on scene to check them out.”
“Too late,” the pilot said. “You’ve got to stop the race.”
A tense silence followed. Then: “Roger. We’ll try.”
A moment later in response to a call from the station, the Coast Guard cutter moved from its post at the turn buoy. Orange signal flares blossomed against the blue sky.
Ali saw neither the flares nor the bloated gray carcass floating in his path until it was too late. He yanked the wheel, missed the obstruction by inches, dodged another body, but could not avoid a third. He veered off, yelling at Hank to cut power. Smith’s fingers flew to the throttle, and the planing hull settled down. The Carpet was still going fifty miles an hour when it hit the carcass. With an explosion of foul air, the body popped like a huge blubbery balloon. The boat careened off on one sponson, flipped, somersaulted, and miraculously landed right-side up again.
Ali and the throttle man were saved from fractured skulls by their helmets. Working through a black haze, Ali reached for the wheel and tried to turn, but there was no response from the rudder. He called out to the throttle man. Hank was slumped over the throttles.
On the Nepenthe the captain had left the bridge and was down on the deck talking to Gloria Ekhart when the actress leaned over the rail and pointed. “Excuse me, Captain. What’s that gold boat doing?”
The Flying Carpet was wallowing like a punch-drunk boxer trying to find a neutral corner. Then the twin bows came around, and the boat straightened out, gained speed, and assumed a trajectory aimed at the yacht’s midships. The captain waited for the boat to veer off. It kept coming. Alarmed, he calmly excused himself, stepped aside, and whipped a walkie-talkie from his belt. His mental computer was calculating how long it would take the gold boat to hit them.
“This is the captain,” he barked into the hand radio. “Get this ship under way!”
“Now, sir? During the race?”
“Are you deaf? Weigh anchor and move this ship out. Now.”