I took a swig of Guinness to relax, breathed deep and said, “Hey, I think someone's calling you.”
That brought the skipper awake. He was a gleeful, potato-faced Irishman who'd been lying on a naugahyde bench, dozing through the tail end of a rough thirty-six hours, probably having been called out of a bar in Jersey to make an emergency run to Boston. He ambled over and picked up the mike. “Explorer.”
On the other end, a new voice had taken over. “It's Laughlin. We're coming in,” he said, loud and tense and dominating.
“Dogfuckers!” Debbie called in the background.
Withering disgust passed over the skipper's face; he wasn't in control of his own ship. The world's biggest asshole was running the show. “We're still out here,” he said.
The crewmen turned away from the TV and laughed.
“We have some special cargo to bring on board and we need to do it quickly and quietly,” Laughlin said, “we'll probably need a crane and a net.”
I tried to think of nonviolent ways to torture Laughlin to death.
“I think you guys better go,” Tom said.
“That's okay, I feel kind of sick anyway,” I said.
Bart shrugged, clueless but cooperative. We cleared out. I remembered to turn around at the last minute and check the channel they were using on the CB: Eleven.
On the ladder, I was ready to jump into the water to get there faster. Then I thought about what was being pumped out underneath us. If they were unloading enough poison to kill every bug in the Harbor, it must be incredibly concentrated in the vicinity of the ship. So I took the slow way down; when you're in a hurry, it takes a hell of a long time to descend a rope ladder. But by the time Bart got to the bottom I'd started the motor; by the time Tom had leaned over the rail to wave good-bye to us, we were a hundred feet away, invisible, picking up speed.
Next challenge: picking out the boat where Debbie was being held. The obvious thing was to hang around the Basco Explorer and wait. Then I got to thinking: what if Laughlin changed his mind and decided to dump her in the Harbor? I picked up our walkie-talkie to listen, then realized it didn't even receive channel eleven.
They had to be coming from the mainland. We knew they'd been beaching their boats somewhere along Dorchester Bay. That still left us with a lot of water to cover, but with the fifty-horse motor, this Zodiac absolutely kicked ass. I cranked it up and headed for Southie in a broad zigzag. I told Bart what we were looking for: a Boston Whaler ferrying Debbie and a pack of goons.
The bastards weren't using their running lights; we almost ran right over them. Bart noticed it first and grabbed my arm and then I saw the side of the boat, white fiberglass with a harpoon logo, right in our path. Jerked the motor to one side, came very close to capsizing the Zode, and blew a twenty-foot rooster tail of toxic brine over their transom.
When I brought it around I was expecting them to be blasting out of there, trying to get away from us - make my day, Laughlin - but they were dead in the water, rooting around for flashlights. Bart speared a beam into the Whaler and blinded some goons, but we saw no signs of Debbie. She must have seen us, and jumped out, and now she couldn't call out for help because they'd hear her too. Either that, or her head wasn't above water.
I picked up a flotation cushion and frisbeed it back into her general location, then picked a different place and waved the flashlight. “She's over there!” I shouted, loud enough to be heard, cranked the Zode and headed out into the middle of nowhere. Within seconds I heard them behind me. I brought the Zode around to a stop and aimed the light into the water again as they headed toward us with all the horsepower they had.
When I knew they were going to overshoot, I twitched the throttle again and blew out of their path, spun the boat and returned to where I'd thrown out the cushion.
It was still there, bobbing up and down on the clashing wakes of the boats, and Debbie was clinging to it.
Laughlin didn't have a chance. Debbie only weighed a hundred pounds and we had two scared-shitless men to haul her into the boat. We hardly even had to slow down. Then we were plowing a trench in the murdered Harbor, heading for the lights.
Zodiac
35
BEHIND US WE HEARD the asshole emptying his fat chrome revolver in frustration - kablam kablam kablam.
Debbie was writhing around in Bart's arms. I wanted to take his place pretty badly, but if he took mine at the tiller we'd all be swimming within a couple of seconds. She managed to get her face aimed over the side of the boat and then vomited a couple of times. Probably swallowed some brine when she jumped overboard.
When she rolled over on her back, her wrists glinted, and I realized that Laughlin had handcuffed her. I could feel my balls contract up into my body and then everything went black. It's possible to go into a drunken rage without even being drunk; it's possible to black out on emotion. I just sat there, hunched over like The Thinker, not looking where I was taking us. And I didn't even pay attention to Debbie, which is what I really should have done. This wasn't for her benefit, unfortunately, it was for mine. Thank God the gun was empty, because I was ready to go back, before Laughlin had time to reload, and make the front page of the Herald: FOUR DIE IN HARBOR BLOODBATH.