Maya didn’t wait to time the couple. She sidled past the office window, crouched out of sight, then made her way down to the main dock entrance. Finding it locked, she climbed around the barbed wire mounted to the sides of the gate, swinging easily past the barricade.
At the mooring closest to the breakwater, she found what she was hoping for — a well-maintained thirty-two-foot Intrepid sports cruiser with a pair of big Mercury outboard motors. It was low to the water and looked fast, used as a dive boat, judging by the equipment on board — tank racks, plentiful rear deck area and decent electronics. She ducked under the center console and located the ignition wires. After a couple of tries, the engines burbled to life.
She moved carefully around the deck, untying the lines, and within ninety seconds was pulling out of the marina. A yell followed her from the shore, and Maya hastily looked back at the main building. The guard was running towards the gate, his shirt hanging open and one hand holding up his pants, the other gesticulating wildly. She’d hoped that the sound of the engines wouldn’t alert him, but apparently that wasn’t to be the case, which meant she’d need to run flat-out in order to outrun the patrol boats that cruised the channel day and night.
Maya powered the radio on and, once clear of the breakwater, eased the throttles open. The boat leapt forward, eagerly slicing through the gentle rolling swells. She didn’t illuminate the running lamps, preferring to pilot using only the glow of the moon. She could just make out the distant shore of Venezuela, and didn’t think she’d need much else.
A few minutes later, the radio crackled to life, and she heard the alert go out to the police boats. After a brief pause, one responded and gave his location as only two miles east of the marina. She leaned against the wheel and pushed the throttles three-quarters forward and watched as the speed gauge blew through forty knots, the motors roaring like a jet on takeoff. Scanning the instruments, she fiddled with the radar, and after a few flickers, the small screen glowed green. She punched buttons, increasing the range to eight miles. The boats on the water lit up as blips, one of which was moving directly towards her.
She looked over her shoulder and spotted the flashing lights of a patrol boat in the distance off her port side. A quick glance at the radar and an adjustment confirmed she was now hurtling towards Venezuela at roughly forty-three knots. The likelihood was slim that whatever the police boat had under the hood would be able to overtake her. The only real problem she could think of would be if the Venezuelan navy had a ship in the area and sent it to intercept her, or if the police could get a helicopter scrambled in the next twenty minutes — doubtful at such a late hour and with the island on holiday footing.
The radio blared a burst of static, and a deep baritone voice came over the channel.
“Attention. Stolen boat Courvoisier. This is the Trinidad police. We have you on radar. Shut down your engines. Now. Repeat. Shut down your engines. We are armed and will fire if you don’t immediately comply.”
They were probably broadcasting across all channels.
But what were the chances they would shoot? Not very high, she decided. That had probably been a bluff. Besides, at a range of almost a mile and a half, there was little likelihood they would be able to hit anything, even if they had a fifty-caliber machine gun onboard. She knew from experience that their effective range was seventeen hundred yards — about one mile. At two thousand yards, accuracy dropped off. Past that and, while it might still be dangerous at over three thousand yards, there was slim chance of hitting much at night from a moving boat shooting at another fast-moving target — especially in a relatively crowded sea lane.
A metallic voice hailed over the water on the patrol craft’s public address system. She could barely make it out over the engines. It repeated the same message, warning her to stop or they would fire at her. She peered at the radar and saw another blip heading towards her from the northwest, coming from La Retrate. No doubt a second patrol boat. Two miles away.
The radio and loudspeaker message sounded again, and she goosed the throttle more. Forty-four knots. No way would the patrol boats be able to catch up to her at that speed.
The water fifty yards in front of her boiled where a burst of fifty-caliber rounds struck its surface, and she heard the rapid-fire booming of the big gun in the distance.
So much for not shooting. That was a warning shot. But the next one might not be.
The police were no doubt in panic mode as calls reporting the shootings had poured in. On a relatively peaceful island like Trinidad, the unprecedented violence had to have unnerved them.
She slammed the throttles all the way forward, and the speed gauge climbed to fifty knots. The water was nearly flat because the island sheltered the shipping lane so she had no problems, but she knew that could end at any time. She cranked the wheel to starboard and cut west, moving towards a slow-cruising sailboat an eighth of a mile away. She could dodge between the boats and the nearby islands until the gun was completely out of range. At fifty knots, she figured that would take five minutes, tops.
The radio warned that the shots across her bow would not be repeated — the next ones would be aimed directly at her. She reached over and turned the volume down.
The Intrepid streaked past the sailboat, and she adjusted her course again, putting the meandering vessel between her and the first patrol boat. The second one was moving somewhat slower and was farther away, so posed no threat, unlike the one with the trigger-happy shooter aboard.
Up ahead loomed a larger ship — commercial judging by its size. She again cut dangerously close without letting up on speed and saw that it was a private motor yacht, at least a hundred feet long. That would provide even more effective cover.
Now the speedo read fifty-one knots. The engines were redlining, but the temp gauges looked okay, so she kept the throttles firewalled.
There was no more shooting. Her strategy had worked. Cooler heads had prevailed, and the proximity of other craft had acted as a disincentive. Nobody wanted to be the one to blow a bystander’s head off to recover a stolen boat, no matter how excited they were in the heat of the moment.
Watching the blip that represented the patrol boat, she saw that she was pulling steadily away from it and now had almost two and a half miles of distance. She estimated that the pursuit craft was topping out at just under forty knots, which was still very fast, but no match for hers. The second patrol boat appeared to be moving at around thirty-six knots, so either it had a dirty bottom, or different props, or full tanks. Whatever the case, neither would be able to get close enough to pose any further threat. At her current speed, she would be off the Venezuelan coast within no more than ten minutes, and there was a better than good chance that the Trinidad patrol boats would abandon the chase once she was in Venezuelan waters — no one would want an international incident over a stolen pleasure cruiser.
She engaged the autopilot and felt the steering stiffen. The system was intuitive — on and off buttons, with a dial to set direction. Another glance at the radar told her there was now nothing between her and Venezuela, so she moved forward and blew the cuddy cabin lock off with her pistol. Inside, she ferreted around for a few minutes, and then emerged with a dive bag in her hand.
To her surprise, the patrol boat kept coming. Worse, when she panned the radar out to sixteen miles, she saw that a large shape was steaming towards her from Venezuelan territory, approaching from the south. It didn’t look like it would get close in time to stop her, but the water was getting too crowded for her liking, and if it was a navy ship, it could well fire on her from a considerable range with its deck guns, and she’d be a sitting duck.