Gone (Gone 1)

Sam shoved the throttle of the Whaler into neutral and steered to scrape the left side of the boat into the FAYZ wall.

The Whaler slowed very suddenly.

“Hang on!”

He dropped into a low crouch, kneeling on the wet deck, clutching the wheel with one hand and yanked it to the right, then steadied it. He covered his head with his free arm, shouting to keep his nerve up.

The Boston Whaler slowed.

The speedboat did not.

The tall, dagger-sharp prow ran up over the left half of the Boston Whaler’s stern.

There was a screech of shattered fiberglass. The impact knocked Sam away from the wheel. The back end of the Whaler plunged, and the five of them and the entire boat were suddenly underwater. Sam was yelling into water, yelling and fighting to avoid being sucked up into the propellers that tornadoed the water a millimeter above his head.

The speedboat blocked out the sun, deep red and death white, a knife drawn across the smaller boat. The big twin outboard engines screamed.

But the cigarette boat didn’t entirely crush the smaller boat. Instead, hitting the Whaler at an angle, the cigarette boat went airborne like a stunt car hitting a ramp. It rolled in midair and smashed its topside into the barrier, shattering its windshield and crumpling its railings.

The cigarette boat hit the water hard on its side twenty feet ahead of the Boston Whaler. It landed in a sideways belly flop, plowed so deep, Sam thought it might stay under, but then it wallowed back up like a surfacing submarine and righted itself.

The Whaler had taken a bad beating. The stern was crushed, the railings on the left side were gone, the black-cowled engine was askew but still attached. There was a big divot smashed out of the fiberglass on the bow. Two feet of water sloshed on the deck. The command console was bent forward and to the side so that the steering wheel was askew and the throttle handle was out of its slot and hanging loose. The engine had been swamped and had sputtered out.

But Sam was not hurt.

“Astrid!” he yelled, terrified when he didn’t see her immediately. Little Pete was alone, staring, almost as if this at least had really penetrated his consciousness.

Quinn and Edilio jumped up and leaned over the back. They had spotted Astrid’s slender hand holding the railing. They pulled her aboard, half drowned and bleeding from a gash in her leg.

“Is she okay?”

Edilio nodded, too waterlogged to answer.

Sam turned the key and hoped. The big Mercury motor roared. The throttle was stiff, jammed, but by pushing with all his might he could shift it forward. The crooked wheel still turned.

The cigarette boat was just ahead, stalled. Orc was in the water, yelling in fury. Howard scampered around looking for a life jacket while the driver tried to restart the engines. Unfortunately, the engines did not appear to be damaged.

It was now or never.

With frantic fingers Sam untied the rope from his ankle and took the loose end in his teeth. He jumped into the water and plowed through the few feet of water separating the Whaler from the speedboat.

“He’s swimming over here. His boat is sinking,” the speedboat driver yelled, misunderstanding.

But Howard knew better. “He’s up to something.”

Sam dove down under the water. It had to be now, before the driver got the engines started. If those props started turning it would be too late, and there was a very good chance that Sam would lose his fingers or even a whole hand.

Fighting his own buoyancy, Sam stayed under, peering through the churn, fingers trying to make sense of…there. That was one propeller.

He looped the nylon rope around the rightward prop and twisted it as tight as he could. Then he jetted to his left, blowing out the last of his air so he could stay submerged.

He heard the ignition click, the key being turned over. One twist of the boat driver’s fingers and…

The engine gave a start. Sam pushed back in panic.

Both props jerked and churned. Then the right prop seized and the left spun and stopped.

With the last of his strength Sam wound the rope around the left propeller, kicked off from the stern, and surfaced a few feet away for a quick gasp of air.