Nelson DeMille - Plum Island

I nodded. "Yeah…"

Beth said, "And forget the Gut. Nothing less than an ocean liner could get through there in this storm." She added, "If we had more fuel, we could ride this out until the eye passes over." She looked up from the chart and said, "We have no options."

Which may have been true. Tom and Judy once told me that the instinct to sail toward land in a storm was often the wrong thing to do. The coast was treacherous, it was where the breaking waves could pulverize or capsize your boat or drive you into the rocks. It was actually safer to ride out the storm in the open sea as long as you had fuel or sail left. But we didn't even have that option because we had a guy with a rifle and radar on our ass. We had no choice but to press on and see what God and nature had in store for us. I said, "We'll hold course and speed."

She nodded. "Okay. That's about all we can do… What -?"

I looked at her and saw she was staring toward the stern. I looked back, but saw nothing.

She said, "I saw him… I think I saw him." Beth jumped up on the chair and managed to keep her balance for a second before she was pitched off and onto the deck. She scrambled to her feet and shouted, "He's right behind us!"

"Damn it!" I knew now that the son of a bitch definitely had radar. I was glad I hadn't tried to get around him. I said to Beth, "It's not that our luck is so bad, it's that he has radar. He's had a fix on us from the start."

She nodded and said, "No place to run, no place to hide."

"No place to hide for sure, but let's try to run."

I opened the throttles all the way, and we picked up more speed.

Neither of us spoke as the Formula cut heavily through the waves. I estimated we were making about twenty knots, which was about one-third of what this boat could do in a calm sea and without a bilge-and cabinful of seawater. I guessed that the Chris-Craft could do at least twenty knots in this weather, which was why he was able to catch up to us. In fact, Beth said, "John, he's gaining on us."

I looked back and saw the vague outline of Tobin's boat as it crested a huge wave about forty feet behind us. In about five minutes or less, he'd be able to place fairly accurate rifle fire on us, while my.38 and Beth's 9mm pistol were really useless except for the occasional lucky shot. Beth asked me, "How many rounds do you have left?"

"Let's see… the cylinder holds five… I shot four… so, how many bullets does the copper have left in — "

"This is not a fucking joke!"

"I'm trying to lighten the moment."

I heard some four-letter words coming from Ms. Penrose's prim mouth, then she asked me, "Can you get any more speed out of this fucking thing?"

"Maybe. Get something heavy down below and smash that windshield."

She dove down below and came up with a fire extinguisher, which she used to smash the glass out of her windshield. Then she threw the extinguisher overboard.

I said, "At this speed, we're not taking on as much water, and the pumps will lighten the weight a little more every minute, and we'll pick up a little more speed." I added, "Plus we're burning all that heavy fuel."

"I don't need a lesson in physics."

She was angry and that was much better than the quiet resignation I'd seen taking hold earlier. It's good to be pissed off when man and nature conspire to do you in.

Beth made a few more trips below and came back each time with something to toss overboard, including, unfortunately, the beer from the refrigerator. She managed to get a portable TV set up the stairs and over the side. She also threw some clothes and shoes overboard, and it occurred to me that if we lost Freddie, he might see the flotsam and jetsam and conclude that we'd gone under.

We were picking up a little more speed, but the Chris-Craft was gaining on us and there was no escaping the fact that he was going to begin laying down rifle fire very soon. I asked Beth, "How many rounds do you have left?"

"Nine."

"You only had three magazines?"

" Only ? You're running around with a damned five-shot peashooter and not a single extra bullet on you, and you have the nerve — " She suddenly crouched behind the seat and pulled her pistol. She said, "I saw a muzzle flash."

I glanced back and sure enough, there was Fearless Fucking Freddie in his shooting post. The muzzle flashed again. Shooting at one another from storm-tossed boats is easy; hitting anything is difficult, so I wasn't overly concerned yet, but there would be a moment when both boats were hanging on a crest and Tobin had the advantage of the higher perch and the long barrel.

Beth was wisely holding her fire.

I saw the Orient Point Lighthouse directly to my left and much closer than before. I realized I'd been blown north even as I'd kept an easterly heading. I realized, too, there was only one thing left to do, and I did it. I cut the wheel hard left, and the boat headed toward the Gut.

Beth called out, "What are you doing?"

"We're running for the Gut."

"John, we'll drown there!"

"It's either that or Tobin picks us off with his rifle or he rams and sinks us and laughs as he watches us drown." I added, "If we go down in the Gut, maybe he'll go down with us."

She didn't reply.

The storm was coming in from the south, and as soon as I got my bow heading north, the boat picked up some speed. Within a minute, I could see the outline of Plum Island to my right front. To my left front was the Orient Lighthouse. I aimed at a point between the light and the coast of Plum Island, right into Plum Gut.

At first, Tobin followed, but as the waves got worse and as the wind blowing between both bodies of land got supersonic, we lost sight of him, and I guessed that he'd given up the chase. I was pretty sure I knew what he was going to do next and where he was headed. I hoped I'd be alive in fifteen minutes to see if I was right.

We were into the Gut now, smack in the middle of it, between Orient Point to the west and Plum Island to the east, Gardiners Bay to the south, and Long Island Sound to the north. I recalled that Stevens said that a hurricane a few hundred years before had deepened the seafloor here, and I could believe it. I mean, it was like a washing machine with all kinds of stuff being turned up from the seabed — sand, seaweed, wood, junk, and debris of every type. There was no pretense of me controlling the boat any longer. The Formula was nothing more than another piece of flotsam and jetsam now, going with the flow. The boat actually broached, which in plain English means it spun around a few times, and we found ourselves pointing south, east, and west at various times, but the storm kept driving us north into the Sound, which is where I wanted to be.

The idea of trying to get into Plum Island cove was almost laughable now that I saw what a horrendous place this was.

Beth managed to make her way toward me, and she wedged herself into my chair behind me. She wrapped her legs and arms around me as I held on to the wheel for dear life. It was nearly impossible to talk, but she buried her face in my neck, and I could hear her say, "I'm scared."

Scared ? I was terrorized out of my fucking mind. This was easily the worst experience of my life, if you don't count my walk down the aisle to the altar.

The Formula was being tossed around so badly now that I was totally disoriented. There were times when I realized we were literally airborne, and I knew that the boat — which had shown good stability in the water — could actually flip upside down in midair, I think it was only the bilgewater that kept us hull-side down during our launches into the stratosphere.

I'd had the presence of mind to cut the throttles to idle as soon as I saw that the propellers were spending more time in the air than the water. Fuel management is a long-term strategy, and I was in a short-term situation — but, hey, you never know.