It was a festive atmosphere and also a good one to get lost in, the congestion increasing by the minute. Most drivers were smart enough to float on either the east or west sides of the river, leaving something of a lane up the middle of the river to allow traffic to move in either direction. But it was closing, the clumps of vessels metastasizing on the north and south sides of the bridge. While it made maneuvering through the channel a slow and tedious process, it also provided camouflage as they moved north.
They approached the historic lift bridge. During some summers, a cruiser of their size might have had to wait for the lift section to open. However, the past winter as well as the summer had been unseasonably dry. Consequently, the water level was down, and Smith cruised easily underneath the steel bridge. Five minutes later, they were able to slowly accelerate as the traffic thinned.
Clear of town, Smith left Dean at the wheel and went back down the companionway to the cabin beneath. Flanagan and Hisle were locked in the bathroom. Monica sat at the small table, counting the bricks of money.
“How does it look?”
“Good,” Monica replied, thumbing through the stacks. “The bills are non-sequential, and it’s all there.” David was taking the bricks and stuffing them into separate smaller nylon shoulder bags.
They had their running money. In a little over an hour they would all be making their way to the Canadian border and toward a new life, leaving Minnesota behind forever.
Smith checked his watch and then took a cell phone out of his pocket. He dialed Burton. Burton answered on the fourth ring. “How are we doing?” the kidnapper asked.
“Fine,” the FBI agent answered quietly. “The police are running around with their heads cut off, frantic that they can’t find their chief and Hisle. It’s almost comical, really. They’re quite sheepish that you made Flanagan and Hisle disappear under their noses as you did.”
“Good,” Smith replied.
“Where are you at?”
“We’ve moved through Stillwater and past most of the traffic clogging that area. We’re clear now heading north to where the St. Croix starts to narrow.”
“How long until you get to your spot?”
“We have about fifteen to twenty minutes before we get there. It’s pretty far north. We have to get past all the campers.”
“And your cargo?”
“Hisle and Flanagan are locked up for now. We had a little fun with them already with more to come soon enough. What of you?”
“I don’t have a fan club, that’s for sure,” Burton answered. “No chief, no Hisle and now, no girls.” Burton replied flatly. “But this was to be expected.”
“You have more than held up your end. I will send you a package in a month or so.” Smith hung up.
“Does that give you an idea of where they are at?” Duffy asked over the radio. He stood next to Burton, who was now cuffed to the metal table in the basement interview room, under the watchful eyes of Double Frank and Paddy.
“Shit. They’re well north of us already,” Mac answered on his radio as he revved the engines on his boat and quickly backed out of his slip from Charlie’s Marina. He pulled out into the sea of boats congregating just north of the Stillwater lift bridge.
“Pat, what’s your position,” Mac asked into the radio.
“We’re flying over Bayport now and the river. The wind is from the west so the pilot thinks we can mask our approach if we come from the east, at least to start.”
“Copy that,” Mac answered as he was breaking free from the clogged area around Stillwater. Lich and the Stillwater police chief were downstairs in the cabin, scrutinizing boat traffic through binoculars. “Dick, what can you see?” Mac asked.
“I’ve got four or five still heading north,” Lich answered. “They’re pretty far in the distance. We need to get up there.”
“I can take care of that,” Mac answered, pushing the throttle down, opening up the horses on the powerful inboard motor. To his left stood Jackie Fornier, a Stillwater cop who changed from her uniform into a tight white T-shirt and pair of khaki shorts. She’d let down her shoulder-length brown hair and looked, for all intents and purposes, like the woman out for a little holiday boat ride — except, of course, for the Glock-17 on the floor between her feet. Next to it was a duffel bag that contained vests, Mac’s Sig-Sauer, extra clips, and two Remington twelve-gauge shotguns.
“You’ll look strange using the hand-held radio,” Fornier said as she handed Mac the earpiece for his radio.
“Thanks,” Mac answered as he put it in and checked it. It was working. Mac put his hand back on the throttle and eased it down just a bit more. His father bought the boat, aptly named Simon Says, nearly twenty years ago at an estate sale for a young couple who died without any family. For years, Mac mockingly called the powerful, white-and-teal-painted craft the Miami Vice boat. It wasn’t a practical boat, it was a cigarette boat. The compartment below the cabin was small and cramped, and the seating area up top seated only six people. But Simon McRyan was not always a practical man. He liked toys and speed. Right now, Mac was glad of it.
Well north of the city, Mac settled in a hundred yards behind a houseboat with five people on the top deck. “How about this one?” Mac asked, pretty much knowing the answer.
“Negative,” Lich yelled. “Nobody fits.”
Mac passed to the left of the houseboat at a moderate speed. He kept a close eye on his depth finder. The St. Croix north of Stillwater has an uneven bottom, and one could easily beach a boat on a sand bar. He had done it once many years ago, paying more attention to the girls in their bikinis on the back bench of the boat rather than to where he was going.
A larger river cruiser was next, up another two hundred yards. As he approached from the starboard side, he could see a man and a woman up top. Mac eased up on the throttle some, trying to get a better view. Burton said that Smith had a large cruiser, although he was short on details. However, the man was short and stocky, almost round with thinning gray hair, which didn’t fit any of the descriptions. The woman was taller and blonde, and when she gazed back in Mac’s direction he saw that she was young and didn’t look anything like Monica Reynolds. The vessel’s name was Bull Market, and Mac suspected that she was either the man’s daughter or trophy wife. In either case, it wasn’t the vessel they were looking for. Mac checked the depth finder and blew on by.
There were two more boats in the distance. The next was a cigarette boat with two large men at the wheel. “Dicky Boy, what do you make of the next one?”
“Maybe. Get me a little closer.”
Mac leaned into the throttle and began to close the gap, but it soon didn’t matter. Their target slowed and turned right into a cluster of cruisers and pontoons beached along a sandy island in the river. The island was full of tents and campers setting off their own fireworks. Brown wouldn’t be going there.
Smith came back up to find no river traffic ahead of them and little traffic behind. A cigarette boat was in the distance, perhaps three or four hundred yards back. Smith put the glasses on them. A man in a golf shirt and baseball cap and a brunette in a tight shirt were cruising north, a couple looking for open water and maybe a secluded place to celebrate.
They were approaching a left turning bend in the river, and Smith turned to check their path. The steel-arched train bridge appeared a half mile in the distance, towering two hundred feet in the air over the river.
“Dean, let me take over, will you,” Smith said. “I’d like to drive the last leg.”