“Hey,” I tried calling out, not too loud, between panting breaths. “Rusty, hey, over here.” There was still no sign of anyone on board. I wondered if he was below in the bunk.
Surely he couldn’t sleep out here, knowing that Solange and I were ashore with Malheur.
When I reached the fiberglass hull, I banged on it to awaken him, then swam around to the stern to climb aboard. Where the hell was he? I pushed Solange onto the swim platform first, and then I crawled up. When I stood up and started to lift her over the transom onto the apparently deserted boat, I heard the first gunshot.
“Shit. Stay down,” I said as I dragged her the rest of the way into the boat. “Get in the cabin.”
The next bullet entered the water with a pfft noise just off our stern, a fraction of a second before the boom of the shot rang out. I spaced out for a few seconds, staring at it. Solange reached through the cabin doors and put her hand on my leg. I blinked, then slid into the helmsman’s seat and reached for the keys. I gave silent thanks when I found them in the ignition. I turned the key and the engines fired right up, still warm from having made the trip over here.
“Stay here,” I told her as I leaned into the cabin and turned off the anchor light at the panel. Then I stepped up onto the foredeck cabin to retrieve the anchor. I heard two more gunshots from the shore, but thanks to the dark night, none came close.
Maybe I should have waited around for Rusty to return, but with bullets hitting the water all around us, I pitched the little CQR into the foredeck anchor well, ran back to the helm, and shoved the outboards into gear. I tried to picture a chart of South Bimini. The island was roughly rectangular, running about two and a half miles long, east to west. We’d entered a canal on the northwest corner, and I was now on the north coast. The quickest way back to deep water and the straightest shot to Florida was to head west, back to the town and the harbor entrance. I’d also have to pass the canal entrance, and they might be heading out that canal right now in their boat. If I headed away from Alice Town, I would have to go a couple of miles in the opposite direction, and I knew there was very thin water over the coral.
Knowing there was a good chance I’d kill us both if I ripped the bottom of this boat out doing twenty knots, I turned the wheel to head for the faint glow of Alice Town.
We still had roughly half a mile of very shallow water to cover before we would reach the main channel and pass in front of the canal that led to Malheur’s camp. I’d sweat gallons along the way, hoping we had enough depth under the outboards, because on this dark night I couldn’t see a thing.
I motioned for Solange to come closer. She wrapped her arms tightly around my waist and pressed the side of her face against my ribs, staring up at me. She opened her mouth as though to say something, but with the noise of the outboards and the constant jarring of the boat as it pounded across the flats, she closed her mouth again, gritting her teeth in a terrified grimace. Clearly, she did not like small boats, nor did she like the speed we were traveling. “Lifejackets?” I said. “Do you know what they are?”
She answered me with a puzzled look.
I lifted up the driver’s seat and found a big foam lifejacket in there. “Like this. Find a small one for you, okay?” She nodded and turned slowly, making her way back down into the cuddy cabin.
After what seemed like an eternity, we reached the end of the island and the deeper channel. As we made our turn and passed in front of the entrance to Malheur’s canal, I saw the red and green of a pair of running lights far back in the canal. A boat was coming out.
A little nudge to the throttles didn’t do much to change our speed. Rusty’s boat was giving it everything she had, and I just had to hope that it would be enough. I wondered if he was somewhere on the dark island, watching his boat speed off. I was confident he could take care of himself and find his way to the ferry and back to Alice Town, but I was also pretty sure he’d be pissed at my stealing his boat a second time.
Bimini is not a harbor to go in or out of at night without local knowledge or a chart. The channel runs parallel to the island for about half a mile with a sandbar and reef between the channel and the open sea. In places, there was four feet of water over the reef, and I’d have no problem crossing over; in other spots, though, there was only inches over coral heads that on this dark night would be absolutely invisible. Though heat lightning now flashed intermittently on the horizon, and the pregnant-looking clouds overhead appeared about to burst, there was little wind and the surface of the sea in the lee of the island was oily smooth. There were no breakers to show me the end of the reef. I would have to guess.
For some reason, the boat had not followed us out into the channel. I could see their lights behind us, and they were headed across to Alice Town.
Solange came up from the cuddy cabin holding two life jackets. I quickly showed her how to step through the crotch straps, then snapped the front of her jacket.
I slung the larger one onto the deck as I saw a house on the beach off to our left. I knew there were range markers somewhere around that house, but I’d never find them in the dark. I decided it was time to go for it.
“Hold on tight,” I shouted over the roar of the engines, and I swung the wheel.
I braced myself, waiting for the crunch, for the jarring stop that would send me through the windshield, but it didn’t come. We sailed on out into the dark sea.
We had been on a course heading roughly due east for about ten minutes, making a good speed of about twenty knots, when we began to clear the lee of the island. The increase in the wind chop and swell wasn’t all that gradual. I was down in the cabin, digging out Rusty’s binoculars, when the boat became airborne and slammed nose first into a big swell. So much for a quick trip back. I tossed the binoculars out onto the deck and jumped to the helm. After I’d disengaged the autopilot, I lowered our speed and checked the gauges.
“Shit.”
Solange poked her head out the cabin door and looked up at me with alarm.
“Hey, sorry. Just go back and lie down, okay?” There wasn’t any need to make her even more scared. I had no idea what the boat’s fuel tank capacity was, but I was pretty certain that a gauge reading less than a quarter of a tank meant we did not have enough fuel to get back across the Gulf Stream to Florida. That was probably why we had no pursuers—they were at the fuel dock.
Maybe we’d get within VHF range of the coast, and I could call for a tow. There would be a lot of charter and tow-boat captains who would find that highly amusing. I’d probably never live it down, but given that just an hour ago I was wondering if we were going to live at all, I guess it wasn’t so bad.
I made a quick 360-degree check around the horizon. To the north, a nasty squall loomed like a black hole and seemed to suck what little light there was into its dark curtain of rain. I was running without lights, trying to make sure I saw any other boat traffic out here, because they sure as hell weren’t going to see me.
I went below to dig around and see if I could find a chart. The mainland wasn’t all that hard a target to hit, but I was certain we didn’t have enough fuel to get there. I wanted to make sure we were in the most populated shipping lane when the tanks ran dry. Thinking about how this boat with no power would wallow in the swells, I knew we would need to get found pretty damn quick.
When I came out of the cuddy cabin, the air temperature had dropped a good fifteen degrees and the wind was starting to pick up. Ahead, the rain was visible, even on this dark night, and it looked like we were about to drive into a black wall. I checked the autopilot and the fuel gauge. We’d already used half of the fuel we’d had when we left Bimini. I didn’t know how much longer the boat would run, but hopefully, it would run long enough to get through this squall.