“Let's tow her out a little farther,” Dirk whispered, winding the towline over his shoulder and kicking toward the center of the cove. When they were a hundred meters from the shoreline, he tossed the line into the boat and pulled himself over the side, then grabbed Summer's hand and pulled her aboard.
“Not exactly a Fountain offshore powerboat but I guess she'll do,” he said, surveying the interior of the small boat. Spying a pair of oars under the bench seat, he popped the shafts into the side oarlocks and dipped the blades into the water. Facing the stern of the skiff, with Kang's compound illuminated in the background, he pulled heavily on the oars, propelling the small boat swiftly into the center of the cove.
“It's about a mile to the main river channel,” Summer estimated. “Maybe we can find a friendly South Korean naval or Coast Guard vessel on the river.”
“I'd settle for a passing freighter.”
“Sure,” Summer replied. “Just as long as it doesn't have a Kang Enterprises lightning bolt on the funnel.”
Glancing toward the shoreline, Dirk suddenly detected a movement in the distance and squinted to better see across the water. As his eyes focused, he grimaced slightly.
“I'm afraid it's not going to be a freighter offering us the first lift,” he said as his knuckles tightened their grip on the oars.
The dock side guard had grown bored with his magazine and decided to patrol the moored boats once again. A fellow guard stationed on Kang's yacht was from a neighboring province and he loved to harass the man about the lack of attractive women in his home region. Walking toward the dock, he at first failed to take notice of the empty beach, but then tripped as he stepped onto the dock ramp. Grabbing the side rail to steady himself, his eyes fell to the ground nearby, detecting the scarred indentation of a boat that had been dragged across the pebbly beach. Only, the boat was gone.
The embarrassed guard quickly radioed his discovery to the central security post and, in an instant, two heavily armed guards came running from the shadows. After a brief but heated exchange, several flashlights were produced, their yellow beams rapidly waved in a chaotic frenzy about the water, rocks, and sky in a frantic search for the missing skiff. But it was the guard on the stern of Kang's yacht who located the two escapees. Shining a powerful marine spotlight across the water of the cove, he pinpointed the small white boat lurching across the waves.
“Not a good time to be in the limelight,” Summer cursed as the rays of the distant searchlight fell over them. The clattering burst of an assault rifle rattled across the water, accompanied by the whistling of bullets that raced harmlessly over their heads.
“Get down low in the boat,” Dirk commanded his sister as he pulled harder on the oars. “We're out of accurate firing range but they could still get off a lucky shot.”
The small skiff was just midway across the cove and Dirk and Summer would be sitting ducks for a gunman in Kang's speedboat, which could be on them in a matter of seconds. Dirk silently hoped and prayed that nobody would notice the boat's stern line as they rushed to chase after them.
On shore, one of the guards had already jumped into the green speedboat and started the motor. Tongju, awakened by the gunfire, burst out of his cabin on the catamaran and began barking inquiries at one of the guards.
“Take the speedboat. Kill them if you have to,” he hissed.
The two other guards scrambled into the speedboat, one of them casting off the bowline as he jumped aboard. In the rushed moment, none of the men noticed that the stern line was dropped over the outboard side. The pilot saw only that the lines to the dock cleat were free. As the boat drifted clear of the dock, he jammed it into gear and pushed the throttle all the way to its stops.
The green boat surged forward for a split second, then mysteriously stopped dead in its tracks. The engine continued to scream with a whine, churning at high rpm, but the boat sat drifting lazily. The confused pilot pulled back on the throttle, unsure of what was causing the lack of forward motion.
“Idiot!” Tongju screamed from the deck of the catamaran with uncharacteristic emotion. “Your stern line is caught in the propeller. Put someone over the side to cut it free.”
Dirk's handiwork had paid off. Diving under the speedboat, he had tightly wrapped the stern line around the propeller and its exposed shaft, clogging its ability to spin freely. The heavy hand of the pilot on the throttle had only served to wind the line tighter, spinning it up and into the drive shaft coupling in a laborious mess. It would take a diver twenty minutes to cut and yank free the mass of coiled rope embedded in the driveline.
Realizing the speedboat's predicament, Tongju burst into the cabin of the catamaran's pilot.
“Start the engines. Get us under way immediately,” he barked. The groggy pilot, clad in a pair of red silk pajamas, nodded sharply and made his way quickly to the wheelhouse.
Three-quarters of a mile away, Dirk grunted as he pulled another stroke of the oars, his heart pounding fiercely. His shoulder and arm muscles began to burn from the strenuous effort to propel the skiff faster, and even his thigh muscles ached from pushing against the oars. His tired body was telling himself to slow the pace but his mental will pushed to keep rowing with all his strength. They had gained a few precious minutes by sabotaging the speedboat, but Kang's men still had two more boats at their disposal.
In the distance, they could hear the deep muffled exhaust of the catamaran as its engines were started and revved. As Dirk rowed in a controlled rhythm, Summer helped guide him through the inlet they approached at the far end of the cove. Kang's compound and boats suddenly drifted from view as they began threading their way through the S-curved inlet.
“We've got maybe five minutes,” he exhaled between strokes. “You up for another swim?”
“I can't exactly glide through the water like Esther Williams with these,” she said, holding up the two handcuffs that dangled from her wrists, “but I can certainly do without another dose of Kang's hospitality-” She knew better than to ask whether Dirk was up for a strenuous swim. Despite his exhausted state, she knew her brother was like a fish in the water. Growing up in Hawaii, they swam in the warm surf constantly. Dirk excelled at marathon swimming and routinely swam five-mile ocean legs for pleasure.
“If we can make it to the main channel, we may have a chance,” he said.
The inlet grew dark as they made their way past the first bend and the lights of Kang's compound became shielded by the surrounding hills. The otherwise still night was broken only by the faraway sound of the catamaran's four diesel engines, which they could detect were now throttled up. Like a machine himself, Dirk rhythmically tugged at the oars, smoothly dipping the blades in and out of the water in a long, efficient stroke. Summer acted as coxswain, offering subtle course changes to guide them through the channel in the shortest route possible while offering periodic words of encouragement.
“We're coming up on the second bend,” she said. “Pull to your right and we should clear the inlet in another thirty meters.”
Dirk continued his even stroke, easing off the left oar with every third pull to nose the bow into and through the bend. The beating drone of the catamaran's engines grew louder behind them as the speedy boat ripped across the cove. Though his limbs ached, Dirk seemed to grow stronger with the approach of their adversary, propelling the small boat even faster through the flat water.
The ebony darkness softened around them as they rounded the last bend of the inlet and rowed into the expansive breadth of the Han River. Patches of starry lights twinkled across the horizon, shining from small villages scattered along the river and hillsides. The faint lights were the only clue to the river's width, which stretched nearly five miles across to the opposite shore. In the late hour of the night, traffic on the river was almost nonexistent. Several miles downstream sat a handful of small commercial freighters, moored for the night while waiting to traverse the Han to Seoul at first daylight. A brightly illuminated dredge ship was slowly making its way upstream nearly across from Dirk and Summer but was still some four miles away. Upriver, a small vessel with an array of multicolored lights appeared to be moving down the center of the river at a slow pace.