Carl Hiaasen - Flush

I stepped to the stern to confront the creaky old Evinrude. The starter cord was a three-foot length of rope that wrapped tightly around the engine's flywheel. A small block of plastic served as a handle on the exposed end of the rope, so you could pull it without shredding your fingers.

Hand-cranking an outboard is harder than starting a lawn mower. Marine engines have more horsepower, so it takes more strength to turn the flywheel. After bracing my heels against the transom of the dinghy, I locked both hands around the grip of the starter cord.

“Do it,” said my sister.

“Keep your fingers crossed.”

I reared back and yanked. The engine shuddered, coughed once, then went silent.

“Crap,” mumbled Abbey.

“Don't worry,” I said, which was ridiculous. Only an idiot wouldn't have been worried.

I shifted my weight slightly and took hold of the rope again.

“Let it happen, cap'n,” said Abbey.

At that instant the dinghy lit up like a movie stage-Luno had found us with his spotlight. Abbey and I shielded our eyes and tried to see where he was. His voice gave us the answer: He was close.

Too close.

“You again!” we heard him snarl. “You two punks! This time you no get away!”

He was standing at the end of the last dock in the marina. Off our port side was the mouth of the basin and, beyond that, open sea. If I could only get Rado's darn engine started, Abbey and I could escape.

Again I tried the starter cord, and again nothing happened but a sad sputter.

“We're drifting toward the dock,” my sister said gloomily.

“I can see that.”

“Should we jump?”

“No, not yet.”

Four, five, six times I pulled the rope with the same depressing result. Meanwhile a breeze was pushing the dinghy steadily toward the dock, where Luno was pacing like a hungry cat. For amusement he would occasionally zap us with the hot beam of his spotlight.

Abbey crouched low in the bow, but I had to keep standing. It was the only way to put enough force into pulling the starter cord.

As we floated closer to the lights, we could make out Luno's gloating expression. His smile was thin and ugly.

Frantically I jerked on the starter cord, and this time the old engine gave an encouraging kick before sputtering out.

Luno crowed, “I get you punks now!”

My sister poked me in the back. “Noah, look! Quick!”

Another figure had joined the bald goon at the end of the dock. I recognized him immediately in that flowered Hawaiian shirt, but just the stink from his cigar would have given him away. It was Dusty Muleman himself.

“I'm outta here,” said Abbey, poised to jump.

“No, wait.” I feverishly resumed hauling on the starter cord, one hard pull after another. Nothing makes you forget how tired you are like pure cold fear. I was working like a robot in high gear.

Then my sister cried, “Noah, duck!”

And ducking would have been a smart move, no doubt about it. Because I turned to see Luno with his meaty right arm extended, aiming a stubby-looking gun at the dinghy. Dusty stood off to the side, blowing lazy rings of blue smoke.

The scene was so unreal, I just froze. It was like watching someone else's nightmare. I felt blank and numb and far away.

“What's the matter with you? Get down!” Abbey yelled.

By now we'd drifted to within fifty feet of the dock, which made us an easy target. Finally an alarm bell went off in my brain and I threw up both arms, shouting, “Don't shoot! We give up!”

Dusty chuckled quietly. Luno was leering like a psycho. He did not lower the gun barrel even one millimeter.

“You kids make bad mistake,” he said. “Now must pay.”

If ever I was going to wet my pants in public, it would have been right then and there.

Yet all I could think about was protecting my sister, so I threw myself on top of her. The landing wasn't so graceful-I banged my chin on the gunwale and nearly capsized us. Wrapping my arms around Abbey, I waited for the explosion of a gunshot.

It never came. A fierce and breathless struggle had broken out on the dock. Peeking over the side of the dinghy, Abbey and I witnessed an amazing sight.

As if dropped from the stars, a third man had materialized under the dock lights-and he was pounding Luno into a sweaty lump of Jell-O. The only sign of Dusty Muleman was the slapping of his designer flip-flops against the ground as he scurried off in terror toward the Coral Queen.

The cheerful tinkle of steel drums now mixed with Luno's odd piggish grunts, the wiry stranger swinging a deck mop with painful accuracy.

In fact, he wasn't a total stranger to me and my sister. We were near enough to see the M-shaped scar on his weathered tan face, and the bright gold coin swinging from the chain around his neck.

“The pirate guy!” Abbey whispered gleefully. “Outrageous!”

“Don't you move,” I told her, and clambered to the stern. I seized the handle of the starter rope and, from a squatting position, yanked with every ounce of muscle I had left.

By some small miracle, the rickety old engine purred to life.

I whipped the dinghy around, aimed it toward the channel, and twisted the throttle wide open. I glanced back just as the mysterious pirate was hurling Luno's stubby gun into the basin. For an old geezer, he had a pretty good arm.

After reaching the open water, I slowed to half speed. Running a boat at night is tricky because you can't see very far or very clearly, and a cheapo flashlight doesn't help much. All kinds of hazardous clutter could be floating in your path-boards, driftwood, coconuts, ropes-and it wouldn't have taken much to wreck the propeller blades on the old Evinrude.

Abbey perched on the bow, watching out for obstacles, while I tried to navigate by the lights of the shoreline: motels, mansions, RV parks, tiki bars. The darkest stretch was Thunder Beach, peaceful and deserted under a yellow moon. An ideal night for a momma turtle to crawl up and lay her eggs, I thought.

The salt air felt good on our faces as we ran against a light chop. Above us hung a glittering spray of stars that stretched all the way to Cuba. I was happier than I'd ever been, and so was Abbey.

“We did it!” she cheered. “We are so hot!”

“ Adios, Captain Muleman!” I shouted with a phony salute.

The hardest part of Operation Royal Flush was over. We'd laid the trap and escaped, though barely. Being chased by Luno wasn't part of the plan, but it didn't spoil anything. For now, Dusty Muleman and his gorillas wouldn't be able to figure out what I'd been doing aboard the Coral Queen, since the only clue had gone down the toilets.

Way, way down the toilets, into the holding tank-the last place they'd ever stick their heads.

Only later would Dusty realize what I'd done, and by then he'd have worse problems-namely the U.S. Coast Guard, which I intended to call first thing in the morning.

But as jazzed as I was, I couldn't forget how close Abbey and I had come to being shot. Shot. It was unbelievable.

Why, I wondered, would Dusty stand there and let Luno take aim at a couple of pint-sized trespassers? We must have really annoyed him, I thought, with all our snooping around.

And what were the odds of being rescued for a second time by the same stranger? Either the old pirate was following us around like some sort of weird guardian angel, or Abbey and I were the luckiest two kids in Florida.

“Hard right!” she called from the bow.

I pushed the tiller, and we skittered past a glistening spear of two-by-four, only inches away. It would have punched a hole in the hull for sure.

“Good eyes,” I called to my sister.

“Thanks. What's that noise?”