This was exhilarating sailing, and the whole crew was as entranced as their breathless captain, for it was exactly what the cutting-edge machine was designed for. And one of Katapult8’s more wonderful attributes came into play. The hand and foot holes down each surface of the huge wing of her sail designed to allow crewmembers, like Florence, access to the electronics and lights at the very top had a strange effect. When the wind was right, these indentations would begin to make sounds like an Aeolian harp — and the sail would sing. The sail was singing now and the wind was working its magic against it most powerfully. But all of them knew Katapult8 could do better still.
‘Flo,’ bellowed Liberty over the rush of the wind, the hiss of the foam, the thunder of the hulls through the surf and the keening song of the sail, ‘do you think we can risk the J’s?’ On either side of the multihull’s outer hulls were tall walls of black composite, like the sail, that stood perhaps a third as high as it did. Each outrigger boasted a pair of them — with anchor points in-between so that Katapult8’s crew could still swing out on their safety lines and hold her down against the wind. And equally tall, lean blades of rudders stood high behind Liberty’s shoulders. The bottom section of each sidewall curled round into the shape of a capital J. The uprights were robust, thick, made of composite and polymer stronger than steel. The hook sections, equally robust, were the same thickness as the uprights at the after edge, but the leading edges were razor-sharp so that they could — literally — cut through the water at amazing speeds. Each hook bedded into a cavity that made the whole hull perfectly aquadynamic. But the walls were designed to slide down once Katapult8 reached a certain speed. The hook sections on the bottom were so perfectly designed and placed that when this was done the whole multihull rose out of the water and aquaplaned.
With her J hooks deployed, Katapult8 was capable of another ten knots — perhaps more under the right circumstances — controlled by the tall rudders that were designed to lower themselves in unison until only the hooks and slim rudder-blades were in the water and all resistance was effectively gone. So that Katapult8 not only sang like a bird, she flew like one as well. It was a system designed by ‘Doc’ Weary, Flo’s father, and she knew more than any others on Liberty’s crew about what stresses the J hooks and the rudder blades could withstand. ‘Go for it,’ she advised. ‘Let’s see what she can do.’
‘Right!’ ordered Liberty. ‘Get ready to deploy J hooks and rudder blades.’
Five minutes later, Katapult8 was running across the wind at forty knots. Her whole hull was more than a metre clear of the choppy water, balanced perfectly on the pairs of J hooks that seemed merely to kiss the surface as it sped beneath at breathtaking speed. The rudder, too, seemed only just to reach deep enough to keep the whole thing under control. Liberty had never experienced anything like it. She had ridden up on the J hooks before, but always in placid harbours or calm seas. This was the difference between boating on Central Park Lake and rafting the Colorado. She was so overcome that there were tears mixed with the spray whipping into her face. When she called to Florence, who was on the radio, her voice didn’t work at first.
‘F-F-FLO! Call up Maxima on the radio and tell my dad “goodbye”, would you? And tell him and Richard Mariner that we’ll see them in Puerto Banderas this time tomorrow!’
‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ answered Florence.
Ninety minutes after Florence broke contact with Liberty’s father, Katapult8 hit the humpback whale.
SEVENTEEN
The weather got worse between Ensenada and Tijuana. Biddy took the Bell down as low as she dared and loudly considered setting down on at least three occasions. Richard kept quiet — never one to try and outguess the captain of a vessel or the pilot of an aircraft. He craned sideways instead so he could keep the line of highway one in as clear view as possible beneath the worsening downpour and the battering wind. He could see why the bridges might be at risk, though the ones up here seemed to be holding on more successfully than the man at Cielito Lindo airfield had supposed or than the guys at San Quintin had warned. The highway ran as straight as a Roman road through Molino Viejo, Lazaro Gardinas and San Quintin itself, all of which showed as webs of blurry brightness on the ground and as names on Biddy’s rolling locator map. Then, after twenty or so kilometres of occasionally lit highway with precious few vehicles coming or going through the deluge, they arrived over Vicente Guerrero, which looked to be a much larger settlement. But the brightness of the streetlights and the ant-like scurrying of all sorts of vehicles soon made it clear that the warnings from their friends at Cielito Lindo and San Quintin had not been exaggerated after all. The town was built astride a sizeable arroyo. In summer — and most recent winters, Richard supposed — this was little more than a dry valley bridged by a single span. But the arroyo was anything but dry now. Even under the current conditions of darkness, wind and rain, Richard could see the raging torrent that was pouring down from the western slopes of the San Pedro Martir mountains. The centre of the town had been torn away by the violent flow, and where there had been a bridge — as suggested by the disposition of the highway — there was now the kind of cataract that Richard remembered seeing where the Colorado River rushed through the Grand Canyon.
The next town, Camalu, seemed to be faring a little better, but the bridge over the Arroyo Colonet, twenty kliks further north again was down as well, just as the men from San Quintin Airfield had feared. Biddy swooped down over the raging wreck, then followed the roadway inland. Almost immediately the mountains of the Cordillera loomed, their presence mostly subliminal — just a massive threat of deep darkness on Richard’s right. It was an unsettling conjunction of rising ground and falling water, where the north-westerly flow of the saturated air was forced up so violently that it bled its precipitation in great pulses, as though it was a throat passing over a razor blade.
During the next half hour, however, things began to quieten, especially after they eased back towards the coast once more, and by the time the Bell was powering over Ensenada the wind had fallen lighter and the rain was beginning to ease. ‘I think we’re going to make it,’ observed Biddy. ‘Looks like things are easier up here after all.’ Richard didn’t answer, because he agreed. And he suddenly realized that that was worrying. Biddy took them out over All Saints Bay and followed the coastal highway up past San Miguel Bay and Salsipuedes Bay. Within the hour they were over Rosario, immediately to the south-west of Tijuana, then over the western outskirts of Tijuana itself, and suddenly Biddy was negotiating them into US airspace as the bright bustle of the border swept beneath them, looking like a treasure trove of yellow diamonds in the brightness of the downpour. Then San Diego appeared, and in less than an hour they had followed the brightness of the coastal highway along the one hundred and eighty kliks or so that separated San Diego from Long Beach.
‘Made it,’ announced Biddy with enormous satisfaction as she began her short descent into the Island Express landing area.
‘And I can’t thank you enough,’ said Richard. ‘What will you do now?’
‘Drop you off, refuel and fly out to the Greenbaum International helipad up in Glendale. There’s accommodation there. I’ll grab some food and some shut-eye then wait for further orders, as they say.’