Nick Carter - Hood of Death

They strolled down the dock, exchanged words with Boyd he could not hear, and went aboard the fifty-footer. Nick thought rapidly. This was as good a lead as he was likely to get What to do with it? Get help and check on the cruiser's habits? If everybody thought the Chu Dai crew was so legitimate, they'd probably have that covered. A great idea would be to plant his beeper on the vessel and track it with a copter. He took off his shoes, slipped into the water and swam slightly out and around the cruiser. There were lights on her now, but the engines had not been started. He probed for a crevice into which he could wedge a beeper. Nothing. She was sound and clean.

He swam to the nearest small boat in the marina and cut off a length of three-quarter-inch manila mooring line. He would rather have had nylon, but the manila was solid and did not feel too old. With the line around his waist he went up the dock ladder and silently boarded the cruiser, forward of her cabin windows. He went around to the bay side and peeked in. He saw an empty head, an empty master stateroom, and then came to a porthole of the lounge. The three who had come aboard were sitting calmly, with the air of people waiting for someone or something. The slim Chinese went into the galley and came back with a tray bearing a teapot and cups. Nick grimaced. Opponents who drank booze were always easier to handle.

Sounds from the dock alerted him. Another car had arrived and four people were coming toward the cruiser. He crawled forward. There was no place to hide on the bow. The vessel looked fast and she had trim lines. There was only a low hatch on the foredeck. Nick secured his line to an anchor-bridle cleat with a tight bowline knot and went over the port side into the water. They'd never notice the line unless they used an anchor or tied up on their port side.

The water was warm. He debated whether to swim away in the darkness. He had not planted the beeper. In his soggy clothes and armament he could not swim fast. He had not removed them because stripped he looked like an arsenal and he hadn't wanted to leave all the valuable gear — especially Wilhelmina — on the dark dock.

The engines rumbled. He tested the line thoughtfully, pulled himself up two feet and threw two bowlines on bights — the seaman's bosun's chair. He had done a lot of strange and dangerous things, but this might be too much. Should he go for the copter?

Feet stamped on deck. They were releasing their dock-lines. They didn't believe in warming up their engines much. His mind was made up for him — they were under way.

He swung forward and grabbed the sheer of the bow, worked his rump into the loop of the line and forked his arms and legs along each side of the bow. The cruiser engines were revved up and water pounded his behind. He hitched himself higher as the fast boat roared down the bay. Every time she dipped into a swell, water slammed into his legs like the blows of a rough masseur.

In open way the cruiser's throttle was opened even more. She rammed through the night. Nick felt like a fly straddling the nose of a torpedo. What in hell am I doing here? Unload? The boat's sides and screws would chop him into hamburger.

Every time the boat bounced he was pounded against the bow. He learned to make V-springs of his arms and legs to cushion the blows, but it was a constant battle not to have his teeth knocked out.

He swore. His position was deadly dangerous and, he felt, ridiculous. Here I go! AXE's N3. Roaring down Chesapeake Bay ass backwards!

The cruiser could really travel. Nick wondered what kind of big twins they had in her. Whoever was on the bridge could handle a wheel, even if he failed to warm up engines properly. The boat thundered away from the Patapsco River, holding steady-on to her course. If there had been an amateur at the helm who had let the bow rock from side to side, Nick wasn't sure he could have held on against some of the swells that slammed into him.

Somewhere off Pinehurst they passed a big freighter and when the cruiser crossed the ship's wake Nick realized how an ant would feel trapped in an automatic washing machine. He was dunked and raised on high, banged and buffeted. Water; crashed upward on him with such force that some was forced up his nose, even against his powerful lungs. He choked and gagged, and when he tried to control the water with his breathing, he bounced against the sheer and the wind was knocked out of him again.

He decided he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there was no exit. The blows against his backside as it bucketed against the hard salt water felt as if they might emasculate him. What a decoration — castrated in line of duty! He tried to hoist himself higher but the bouncing, vibrating line threw him down every time he hauled himself up a few inches. They passed the big ship's wake and he could space his breathing again. He wished they'd arrive wherever they were going. He thought, // they go out to sea and there's any weather running, I've had it.

He tried to estimate their position. It seemed as if he had been hammered like a yo-yo into the surf for hours. They must be off the Magothy River by now. He twisted his head to try and see Love Point or Sandy Point or the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. He saw only surging water.

His arms ached. His chest would be black and blue. This was hell on the water. He realized that in another hour he would have to concentrate to stay conscious — and then the roar of the engines died to a comfortable rumble. He swung again with his trunk above the bow wave. Relaxing, he hung in the two bights of line like a drowned otter being hoisted above a trap.

Now what? He brushed his hair from his eyes and twisted his neck. Idling up the bay, riding lights and masthead lights and cabin lamps a paintable picture in the night, came a two-masted schooner. No plywood plaything that, he decided, that's a baby built for the money and the deep sea.

They were bearing to pass the schooner port-to-port red-to-red. He hitched himself around to the starboard rim of the sheer, out of sight. It wasn't easy. The rope, hitched to a port cleat, fought him. The cruiser began to make a slow, tight turn to port In a few moments Nick would be presented to the eyes of those on the larger craft like a roach riding a bakery cake on a rotating window stand.

He whipped out Hugo, reached up the line as high as ht could and waited, watching. The instant the stern of the schooner came in sight he slashed the line with the stiletto's razor edge.

He hit the water and got one solid kick against the moving boat as he swam down and out, sweeping great strokes with his powerful arms, scissoring his legs as he never had before. He called on his magnificent body with straining intensity. Down and out, away from the meat grinder propellers coming toward you — sucking at you — reaching for you.

He cursed his stupidity for wearing clothes even if they had protected him from some of the pounding waves. He fought the weight of his arms and Stuart's devices that were thunder of the engines and the roaring-liquid mumble-rumble of the propellers rammed against his eardrums as if to break them. The water suddenly seemed like glue — holding him, fighting him. He felt an up-pull and an in-pull as the boat's screws reached out for great gulping draughts of water and slavered to take him with the liquid, like an ant sucked down into the grinders of a garbage disposal unit He fought, stabbing at the water with short choppy strokes, using every skill — feathering his hands on the forward lunges, wasting no energy on tail strokes. His loins ached with the power and speed of his kicking.

The pressure changed. The rumble growled past him unseen in the dark depths. Instead of groping for him the underwater currents suddenly tossed him aside, repelling him end over end. The screws were by him!