Impact

33

Back at the wheel of his own boat, Worth cracked a beer and watched the rain running in ever-changing curves down the windows. The girls had been on the island for two hours at least. Must be a big fucking treasure, he thought.

He checked the RG .44 Mag again, the gun he'd used to rob Harrison's Grocery when he was fifteen, holding it up, sighting down the barrel, balancing it in his hand. He'd recently tried to pawn it to get money for crank but no one would take it. Said it was a piece of shit. What did they know? It had worked just fine the other night, and he smiled at the thought of all the frogs he and his uncle had turned into little pink clouds with the gun.

He sighted down the barrel, pretending to aim at a gull bobbing in the water behind the stern rail. He wished he could pot it--it would raise a nice cloud of feathers--but he couldn't risk the noise. "Bang bang," he said. The gull flew away.

He placed the gun on the dashboard, next to four boxes of bullets, a fixed-blade Bowie knife, baling wire, cutters, rope, and duct tape. He didn't think he was going to need the latter, but it was there just in case. He took another swig of beer and listened. Beyond the hiss of the rain it had become silent out there, in the fog, with only the intermittent cry of an invisible gull. He could feel the early stirrings of the crank bugs, but he ignored them. No way could he be high when it came time to pull this off.

He felt the boat move a little, the stern swinging in the freshening breeze. In the past half hour the swells had started to come in, long and low, signaling the approach of weather. He checked his watch. Five o'clock.

It was getting late. With the rising sea he knew they couldn't anchor off Shark Island for the night--too exposed. They'd get the treasure on board and run for the inner islands, probably back to the cove on Otter where they had gone to ground after that business on the admiral's island.

He heard something and listened. Faint voices coming across the water, the rattle of oars in oarlocks. They were rowing back. He could hear them shipping the oars and unloading stuff into the boat, the thump of gear, the clanging of a shovel. Their voices were low, very low. With the coming of the rain the fog had thinned, but visibility was still less than a hundred yards.

Worth gave everything a quick check. All was ready.

He heard the engine on the Marea fire up. It idled for a while as they raised anchor. They were probably messing around with the VHF radio and radar, wondering why they weren't working. If they were smart, they'd have brought a handheld radio and GPS as backup, but his search of the Marea hadn't turned up either one.

The Marea's engine revved and Worth watched the green blob of the boat move on his radar. He glanced at his watch, marked the time. Five-oh-nine.

He reset his radar's range to two miles, turned up the gain, and watched the Marea moving westward, toward the inner islands, just as he expected. When the Marea crossed the one nautical mile line on his radar, Worth started his own engine, hauled anchor, and began following them at a distance. It was a six-mile stretch of open water to reach the shelter of the inner islands and they were cruising at six knots. The sea was getting rougher by the minute.

After about a mile, he slowed. The Marea had stopped. He quickly shut down his own engine and drifted, listening. Nothing. The Marea's engine had definitely quit: it was dead in the water, shrouded in fog, seven miles offshore, communications down.

He restarted his engine and throttled up full, heading straight for the Marea. The image loomed on the radar, getting closer, half a mile, quarter mile, three hundred yards . . .

At a hundred yards he made visual contact, the Marea materializing out of the fog. One of the girls was messing with the VHF radio, the other had the engine hatch open and was peering inside with a flashlight. They both turned and stared at him.

Hello, bitches.

Twenty feet from the Marea he swung his boat ninety degrees to starboard, shifted into neutral, and reversed hard, bringing the boat to a sudden halt. Then he grasped the handle of the RG with both hands, took aim at the two girls, and opened fire.