Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

The space between the racing boats narrowed to inches. Zavala eased the steering wheel to the right. It was a delicate maneuver. If it were done too sharply, they would hook hulls and possibly flip into the air in a lethal tangle. There was a loud hollow thump and a screech of tortured carbon composite as the hulls came together, then bounced apart. Zavala brought the boat over again and held it firmly in position. The wheel wanted to tear itself out of his hands.

Austin gunned the throttles. The sound of the engines was horrendous. Again the boats crashed. It was like trying to herd a very large and powerful steer. Eventually the Flying Carpet began to yield its forward momentum and angle off to the right. They drifted apart once more. Warmed to the game, Zavala slammed the boats together. The angle increased.

“Haul off, Joe!”

Ali’s boat surged ahead on a track that would miss the yacht’s stern and sped toward the flotilla. Boats scattered like dry leaves in a wind. Austin knew that battering Ali’s boat off-course would send the Red Ink off like a cue ball in a game of billiards. He hadn’t counted on how long it would take to persuade the Carpet to take a hike. Now he and Joe were hurtling toward the moving yacht with only seconds to spare before they struck it. They could see the horrified expressions of the people on deck. The boat was going seventy-five miles an hour. Even if he shut down the engines, he and Zavala would have to be scraped off the wooden sides of the old boat.

“What now?” Zavala yelled.

“Stay on course,” Austin shouted.

Zavala swore softly under his breath. He had every confidence in Austin’s ability to get them out of a tight spot, but sometimes his partner’s actions defied all logic. If Zavala thought the order meant certain suicide, he didn’t show it. His every instinct told him to whip the wheel over and take his chances, but he grimly held their insane course as steadily as if the two-hundred-foot boat that filled his vision like a big white wall were nothing but a mirage. He gritted his teeth and tensed his body in preparation for the impact.

“Duck,” Austin ordered. “Keep your head low. I’m going to stuff it.”

He bent and gunned the engines at full throttle; at the same time he set the trim tabs and ailerons. A stuff was usually something to be avoided. It happens when a boat comes off one wave and burrows into another. The worst type is called a submarine, because that’s what the boat becomes when it goes into a stuff at high speed. Far from avoiding this result, Austin was counting on it happening. He held his breath as the race boat nosed down at a sharp angle, buried its bows in the water, and kept on going, burrowing into the sea like a badger. With the full power of the engines behind it, the Red Ink was transformed from a surface boat into a submersible.

The boat passed under the moving yacht, but not quite deep enough to prevent its canopies from being ripped off. There was a sickening watery crunch. The whirling propellers missed their heads by inches. Then the catamaran passed under the yacht and emerged on the other side. Exploding from the water like a very large and very red flying fish, it came to a halt as the burbling engines stalled out in a cloud of purple smoke.

The boat was built with an interior cage that could resist a herd of overweight elephants. The canopies were more vulnerable. Both Plexiglas covers had been completely ripped off. The cockpits were taking in seas as the boat rocked in the waves.

Zavala coughed out a mouthful of seawater. “You okay?” he asked, a stunned look on his dark, handsome face.

Austin pulled his helmet off to reveal the thick head of platinum, almost white hair. He surveyed the propeller scars on the deck and realized how close they had cut it. “Still among the living,” Austin replied, “but I don’t think the Red Ink was designed to be a convertible.”

Zavala felt the water around his waist. “Time to abandon ship.”

“Consider it an order,” Austin said, loosening his harness. They piled out of the boat into the sea. As part of their certification, racers must pass a dunk test. A cabin cruiser came over and hauled them dripping from the water minutes before the Red Ink went to the bottom.

“What happened to the gold race boat?” Austin asked the cruiser’s owner, a pipe-smoking middle-aged man who had come out of San Diego to watch the race and got more than he bargained for. He pointed off in the distance with the stem of his pipe. “Over there. The guy plowed right through the fleet. Don’t know how he missed hitting the other boats.”

“Mind if we check them out?”

“No problem,” the man said obligingly as he put the wheel over.

Moments later they pulled up alongside the Flying Carpet. The canopies had been pushed back. Austin saw to his relief that the men inside were alive, although blood streamed down Ali’s head where he’d bashed it, and Hank looked as if he were nursing a bad hangover.

Austin called out, “Are you injured?”

“No,” Ali replied, although he didn’t look quite convinced of his own well-being. “What happened?”

“You hit a whale.”

“A what?” When he saw Austin’s serious expression, Ali’s face fell. “Guess we didn’t win,” he said glumly.

“Don’t feel bad,” Austin said. “At least your boat doesn’t lie on the sea floor.”

“Sorry,” Ali said sadly. Then he brightened as a thought hit him. “Then you didn’t win, either.”

“Au contraire,” Austin said. “All four of us won the prize for being the luckiest men alive.”

Ali nodded. “Praise Allah,” he said a second before he passed out.

3

Venezuelan Rain Forest

THE THICK CANOPY of overhanging tree branches blotted out the sun’s rays, making the black water in the still pool seem deeper than it was. Wishing that she hadn’t read that the Venezuelan government was reintroducing man-eating Orinoco crocod