“Remember,” he whispered, “on my signal, turn the key and push the throttle.”
Signal. What signal? Her throat was so dry, she couldn’t catch her breath. All she could do was weakly shake her head.
“Lola,” he flipped up the bill of her hat. “Are you hyperventilating again?”
She covered her mouth with her hand and nodded. Good Lord, of all the times to hyperventilate! Lying in the bottom of a drug runner’s boat, while the drunken drug runners themselves partied and shot up the beach with machine guns. She had to turn the key and push the throttle. This was not a good time to pass out! A distressed little squeak escaped from her lips and from behind her fingers.
“Come on, honey,” he whispered, and rubbed her arms. “Relax. You can do this. Just relax. Slow deep breaths through your nose.”
Lola concentrated on the dark outline of his face so close to her. The sound of his calm voice and the scent of sea water on his skin. She felt Baby rest his head on her ankle, and she did her best to push away her fear.
“Feeling better?”
She pulled a slow breath of air into the bottom of her lungs, then moved her hand to her chest. “What’s the signal?” she managed, fighting for a calm she didn’t feel.
“I’ll hold up my hand, and when I want you to turn the key and punch the throttle, I’ll make a fist.”
“Okay, Max.”
“That’s my girl. And remember, whatever you do, keep your head down,” he said, then gave her a quick kiss and crawled over her to the back of the boat.
Keep her head down. Turn the key. Push the throttle. She could do it. Lola rolled onto her stomach and crawled past two big plastic barrels and some sort of crate. She made her way around a small bench seat to the helm. By touch, she found the steering wheel, the key in the ignition, and the throttle.
She raised her head just enough to see over the top of the seat and felt her brow shoot up her muddy forehead. Max’s black outline knelt in the back, propping the barrel of the rifle on one of the three engines. Beyond him, the campfire glowed orange. The three men stood around it, their machine guns leaning against the rubber raft about ten feet from their reach. Their low voices and drunken laughter squeezed the back of her neck; the clammy night air weighed down on her skin like a wet towel. One of the men separated himself from the others and moved to the drunk passed out in the chair. He kicked the man’s foot, then reached down and gave a tug on the rope. The end flew out from beneath the chair, and he looked down at his feet. Slowly, he bent to pick it up, then stared as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Or rather what he wasn’t seeing.
His voice carried over the water as he turned back to the men and held the end of the rope high in the air. “Perro?” he said.
Lola lowered her gaze a fraction to the black outline of Max’s back, willing him to hurry. Baby jumped up on the seat, and without taking her eyes from the beach, she set him back on the floor. One of the men looked out toward the boat, and Lola held her breath. He walked to the edge of the water, and the voices on the beach rose, becoming agitated.
“Come on, Max,” she whispered against the back of the seat. Then, as if he’d heard her, he raised his hand, glanced over his shoulder at her, and closed his fist.
She spun around on the seat, and with shaking hands, found the ignition. Turn key, throttle forward raced though her mind, and that’s exactly what she did.
Nothing happened. She tried again, and this time the engine sputtered and died.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” she whispered. The voices on the beach rose, and she tried again.
Nothing. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the men running toward the raft.
Over the chaos rose Max’s calm voice, “Time to go, honey,” he said.
She turned the key; the engine sputtered and died. The next time she tried, it started with a low rumble and she thrust the throttle as far as it would go. The boat shot forward across the water and her hat flew off her head. She grabbed hold of the steering wheel and held on for dear life. The boat bounded over the waves as the night erupted in a steady brrrap brrrap of machine gun fire. Lola kept her head down and hoped Max was doing the same. She couldn’t see where they were going, but she supposed it didn’t matter, since once away from the beach, the night was so pitch-black she wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway.
Then suddenly an explosion, like the boom of thunder at ground zero, lit up the sky. Lola looked behind her as a huge fireball blew the Dora Mae into the black night. Two more explosions followed, sending burning pieces flying left and right. Against the fire and destruction of the yacht, Max rose. He stood with his feet spread apart and lifted his fists in the air as if he were the heavyweight champion of the world.
Max had spent a lot of his professional life cold and wet. It wasn’t his favorite way to pass an evening, but he was used to it. Lola was not. He found a blanket in the front of the boat and handed it to her.
“Take off your wet clothes,” he advised, and took control of the steering wheel.
The fiery glow from the island faded as Max cut the flashlight and map from his belt loops. Equipped with the latest gadgets and goodies, the boat was everything a drug runner would need in order to find floating barrels of dope in the Atlantic. He sat beside Lola on the bench seat and shone the light next to her face. Her fingers trembled, and she had trouble grasping the buttons. Her lips were blue, and she held her shaking dog close to her chest.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, he brushed her fingers aside and helped her out of the dress. He tossed it in the bottom of the boat. Then he managed to peel the tape from Baby’s muzzle. The dog let out a series of fierce barks as Max dropped the blanket over both Lola and her mutt.
“Hang in there just a bit longer,” he told her, and turned his attention to the Global Positioning System. He flipped on the boat’s running lights and unfolded the map. A grease pencil and a ledger were clipped to the helm, and he used the pencil to mark their coordinates. He wanted to make sure the Coast Guard would know where to find the island and the four stranded drug runners. He didn’t think the explosion of the Dora Mae had killed anyone, just rained a little fire down on them and singed their hair.
Some might have considered blowing up that yacht a bit excessive. Max wasn’t one of them. Even though he doubted the four men were capable of dislodging the Dora Mae and making her operable, he wasn’t willing to leave them any options. And he wasn’t taking any chances that he or Lola had left anything behind that could be traced directly back to them. The Dora Mae had had to die. And damn, but there was very little in this world that could compare to a good explosion.
He turned on the radio and listened for any sort of traffic. He wasn’t surprised when he didn’t hear anything. But just because he didn’t hear other vessels didn’t mean they weren’t out there. He tuned the radio to the Coast Guard channel and reached for the microphone. “What’s your middle name?” he asked, unwilling to announce to the Coast Guard or anyone else that he and Lola were in a stolen go-fast.
Lola’s teeth chattered when she answered, “Faith.”
“Coast Guard Florida Keys Group, Coast Guard Florida Keys Group, this is the vessel Faith. Copy? Over.” He waited a half minute before he repeated. Still, nothing. By the light of the LCD screen, he read their position and determined the storm had blown them ninety nautical miles southeast of the Florida Keys. Sixty miles south of their previous position aboard the Dora Mae.