The boat emerged into another long channel between fields of saw grass. It was empty in both directions as far as Gabriel could see. Hoyt turned to the right, proceeding at a less breakneck pace now.
They hadn’t gone a hundred yards when, with a roar, the other airboat surged out into the channel behind them.
“Son of a gun!” Hoyt exclaimed. “That fella must have a pretty good man at the tiller to get through those mangroves.” The airboat jumped ahead again as he goosed the motor. He looked back at Gabriel. “Don’t you worry. I know a place where we can lose ’em for sure!”
“You’d better find it fast,” Gabriel said, pointing. A couple of men on Jet Skis had appeared in the channel in front of them and were racing toward the airboat, firing guns as they came.
Chapter 5
At least he had some suitable targets for the Colt now. Gabriel reached behind his back and whipped out the revolver. He leveled it and squeezed off two shots at the man on the right as Hoyt shouted, “Give ’em hell!”
The man Gabriel had targeted went backward off the Jet Ski, which shot into the air as it went out of control. The other man veered away as Gabriel swung the Colt toward him. Gabriel triggered one shot but then held his fire as the man circled and retreated.
“Son of a—” Hoyt exclaimed. Gabriel jerked his head and saw that smoke was coming from the airboat’s motor now. Hoyt shouted, “Bullet must’a nicked an oil line! We can’t keep runnin’ full out like this!”
“Can you fix it?” Gabriel asked.
“Yeah, if folks’ll quit shootin’ at us!”
Gabriel thought for a second. “You ever play chicken?”
“Now you’re talkin’!” Hoyt said as a grin creased his leathery face.
His hands moved with assurance on the controls. The airboat wheeled to the left—to port, Gabriel corrected himself; this was a boat, after all—and kept turning until it was headed straight back at the airboat that had been pursuing them.
“Get behind the seats!” Gabriel called to Hoyt. That meager cover probably wouldn’t stop a high-powered rifle bullet, but it was better than no cover at all.
He had extra bullets in a pocket. He stretched out on his belly on the bottom of the airboat and thumbed fresh rounds into the Colt’s cylinder, loading all six chambers.
The other airboat wasn’t backing off. The two craft leaped at each other, the gap between them closing in a matter of heartbeats as the men at the controls held both throttles wide open.
Gabriel braced his gun hand with the other hand around his wrist and began firing. He felt the wind-rip of a bullet near his head but didn’t hear it because the roar of the airboat’s motor drowned out the slug’s whine.
The rifleman had bellied down, too, to make himself a smaller target. As the airboats roared toward each other, the space between them narrowed to the point that Gabriel could make out the man’s face. It was no surprise that he recognized it.
The rifleman was the ugly bastard who had carried Mariella Montez out of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Who’s gonna blink?” Hoyt called. Black smoke continued to trail behind the motor, but so far it hadn’t missed a beat.
“Better be them,” Gabriel said. The other airboat loomed in front of them, mere feet away. If neither pilot’s nerve broke, this was going to be one hell of a crash.
But then the other airboat suddenly juked to the left as the man at its controls shoved the tiller over. Hoyt’s boat shot past so close that Gabriel almost expected the two vessels to scrape against each other. He twisted his neck to look behind them and saw that the other boat had turned so sharply that it left the water entirely, soaring several feet into the air and tipping to the side. The rifleman and the pilot both had to leap for their lives as the boat went over.
The out-of-control airboat was almost upside down as it slammed into the water with a huge splash and broke apart. The fan was still whirling madly and stirred up the water even more in the second or two before the motor stopped. With all the silvery spray in the air, Gabriel lost sight of the two men.
He said to Hoyt, “Get us out of here and find a quiet place where you can repair that engine.”
“Sure thing. I think I’m gonna have to charge you the whole three hundred, though.”
“We had a deal,” Gabriel said with a grin.
“I charge extra for gettin’ shot at.”
“Fair enough,” Gabriel said.
Hoyt found a shady slough where the thick, overhanging mangrove limbs gave them some concealment in case anybody else came looking for them. While Gabriel swatted at mosquitoes and watched snakes wriggling past in the water, Hoyt repaired the oil line.
When Hoyt was done, he slapped the engine housing and said, “We’re ready to go. You still want to head for the battlefield?”
“That’s right,” Gabriel said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, it seems to me that those fellas with the guns didn’t want you goin’ out there.”
“I don’t let little things like that stop me.”
Hoyt chuckled. “I didn’t really figure you would. Just thought I’d ask.”
It was quiet and peaceful under the mangroves, but Gabriel was glad to get moving again. The wind kept the mosquitoes off and cooled him down some. His shirt was dark with sweat.
About thirty minutes later Hoyt brought the airboat to a stop next to a dock that extended a short distance into the stream they had been following. An asphalt road started at the dock and led off through a thick stand of pines.
“Battlefield’s a couple hundred yards that way,” Hoyt said, pointing up the road. “Want me to come with you?”
“That shouldn’t be necessary,” Gabriel said. He stepped from the boat up to the dock.
“I’ll tinker with this motor some more, then. Make sure the repair job I did will hold up until we get back.”
Gabriel walked along the road until it merged with another road leading from the highway. This was the road the tropical storm had washed out, he assumed. To his left was the battlefield site’s parking area, and just beyond it the visitor center and museum. Behind the visitor center Gabriel could see a long open field bordered by swamp on one side and a pine forest so thick as to almost be impenetrable on the other. That was the battlefield itself, he supposed.
This was a state park, he reminded himself, so it was probably illegal for him to be carrying his Colt. But he figured breaking the law was the lesser of evils when people were out to kill him.
With the road closed and few, if any, tourists arriving by airboat, he knew the visitor center might be closed, in which case the trip out here could well have been for nothing. But he had come this far and wasn’t going to turn back now. He walked on toward the building.
A man pushed open the glass door and stepped out as Gabriel approached. The man was wearing a butternut-colored Confederate army uniform, complete with a campaign cap and brown pack. He carried a long muzzleloading rifle with a bayonet attached to the barrel. With no one in modern dress around other than Gabriel himself, it felt a little like stepping back in time.
Then he heard a ringing noise and the Confederate soldier took a cell phone out of his pocket and answered it. So much for time travel.
By the time Gabriel reached him, the man had finished his conversation and was putting the phone away. He was wearing modern wire-framed glasses, too, Gabriel noted, instead of old-fashioned spectacles. He said, “Sorry, sir, we’re closed today. Most of the staff and volunteers can’t get in because of problems with the road.”
“You’re here,” Gabriel pointed out. “Or have you, ah, been here since the battle?”
The man looked puzzled for a second, then laughed. “You mean the uniform? I’m one of the reenactors here. I was just trying on a new uniform when I saw you walking up the road. Did you come by airboat?”