The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

Ed Tobin triggered a burst of shells. He stopped firing almost instantly.

“Look out, Isaac!”

Bell was already jerking his throttles back.

“Hold on, Dash!” he shouted over his shoulder. “It’s a trap!”

35

THE FISHING BOATS were racing to shore, hauling lines out of the water, dragging something across the channel.

Marion struck before Isaac Bell could disengage his propellers.

Bell braced for a timber-jarring crash and hoped the reinforced bow would take it. Surprisingly, the express cruiser slowed without collision and seemed to hang mid-channel. Instead of a crash in the bow, he heard several loud bangs deep within the boat. His engines screamed, revving wildly, and he realized that Zolner’s men had strung a heavy cargo net across the channel. Its thick strands had fouled his churning propellers. Blades sheared and driveshafts snapped.

The Van Dorn boat was trapped in the middle of the river.

“Thompsons!” Dashwood called coolly. “Get down!”

The night exploded with red jets of fire and flying lead.

Their searchlight went black in a burst of hot glass.

Thank the Lord for armor plate, thought Isaac Bell. And bless Lynch & Harding. She carried two thousand gallons of explosively flammable gasoline, but the speedboat builders had snugged her fuel tanks under the sole, out of the range of bullets storming past.

Their Lewis guns were still useless. Behind the Thompson submachine guns strafing them from both sides of the river were homes with thin wooden walls. Bell yanked from its sheath a .30-06 bolt-action Springfield rifle he had stowed for such a contingency.

Tobin had one in his machine-gun nest.

Dashwood had one in his.

The Thompsons’ muzzle fire made excellent targets, particularly as the two-handled submachine guns were designed to be clutched snug to the torso. Bell fired. A gunman tumbled into the river.

Tobin fired and missed.

Dashwood made up for it, firing twice and dropping two.

The three Van Dorns whirled in unison to shoot the submachine gunners on the opposite bank. Before they could trigger their weapons, the shoot

ing stopped.

Isaac Bell saw why in an instant.

The black boat was coming back.

It stormed downriver, Lewis gun pumping bullets with a continuous rumble. The rapid fire starred Bell’s windshield and clanged off the armor. By now, he knew what to expect of Marat Zolner. He stood up and aimed his rifle. A man on the bow of the speeding boat was about to throw a grenade. James Dashwood shot it out of his hand and it exploded behind the boat.

A second grenade sailed through the air. Isaac Bell and Ed Tobin fired together, and the grenade dropped into the river. Black Bird raced past the Van Dorn boat at fifty knots, thundering toward Biscayne Bay.

“Close,” said Tobin.

“Not close enough,” said Bell, watching the red glare of her exhaust disappear behind a bend in the river. He called to a fisherman, venturing out in his rowboat. “Shooting’s over, friend. Would fifty bucks get us a lift ashore?”

“A hundred.”

“It’s yours.”

On shore, Tobin went looking for a tugboat to tow them to a boatyard for repairs. Bell and Dashwood scoured the riverbank. The ambushers had taken their wounded with them. Bell retrieved a Thompson submachine gun they had dropped. Dashwood found a full box of German stick grenades.