“Crap,” Alicia moaned. “I can see where this is going. If I get seasick—” she yelled at the escaping men “—one of you is gonna be shark bait!”
Drake leapt down the steps and hit the sand running. Amari and his acolytes were already in the first speedboat, two of them unwrapping the thick rope that held it in place. Amari sat behind the wheel, looking straight ahead.
Refusing to believe he was being forced to run? Unable to believe it? Pampered. Veiled with untold luxuries. Pretending that he was just nipping to the shops for a pint of milk, millionaire-style?
The engine roared to life. Drake and the team arrived on the dock a few seconds later but the craft was already moving. Of the seven men sitting or standing aboard the speedboat, not a single one glanced back.
Drake shook his head. “Fucking loony toons town, that’s what this is.” He climbed carefully aboard a light blue speedboat, expecting and finding the keys to be in the ignition. “Press start,” he said and the engine roared to life.
Trainers hit the deck at his back and then Mai shouted, “Go,” and Drake pushed hard on the throttle. Water churned from the rear and the prow lifted a little. Bright skies glared down in warning but Drake was safe beneath his shades. Safe, but leaking sweat from every pore. He spun the boat and curved an arc in the water, blasting toward the center of the sea passage and the end of the frond. Was Amari heading out to sea? He hoped not.
“No signs of pursuit.” Hayden had been scanning the whole area. “Or cops, for that matter. Does anyone know what the hell is going on?”
“I could hazard a few guesses,” Mai said, holding on tight as Drake accelerated. “Wealthy parents, bored kid. Somehow develops a fixation. Has the resources to carry it all the way through to its unwise end.”
“Well, he’s clearly not under duress,” Drake shouted as spray flicked at his face. “Or any kind of stress. Hold on!”
The speedboat skipped a small wave, left the water and came crashing down with a bump. Drake hung onto the wheel as he flexed his knees to absorb the impact, and followed the getaway boat as it sped into the distance. At this speed they could clearly see the shape of the fronds to either side as they arced gracefully through the sea, artificial wonders and tributes to the ingenuity of man. Every rear garden led down to a private beach and a small jetty; every jetty held several types of craft.
Amari aimed straight for the center of the passage at first, then began to drift to the north as the frond’s outer edges appeared. Drake whistled as an enormous plot came into view, a mansion half built at the very end of the frond and surrounded by high walls and pre-grown palm trees.
“Now there’s a pad,” he said. “Whaddya say, Alicia? Wanna go halves?”
“Too bloody big. We’d never find each other.”
Mai coughed. “Not to mention… elegant.”
Drake rammed the throttle wide open, ignoring the knife-edge banter and concentrating on closing the gap to Amari. The lead boat hit a bit of chop, slowing it down whilst Drake luckily skimmed across a mirror-flat surface. Still, nobody turned around, all preferring to ignore the fact that they were being pursued. Amari started to pull his craft closer to the coast.
“Is he beaching it?” Beau asked.
Drake kept arrow straight, using every ounce of the speedboat’s power to get closer. The boats were evenly matched. It was Amari’s errant driving that allowed Drake to come to within twenty meters. After that though, the Arab gave the boat all of his attention, staying just out of the shallows and flicking the boat at a fast clip around the end of the frond.
Waves slapped Drake’s hull as he completed the same maneuver, not far enough out to sea for a proper swell, but the deep brine choppy enough to send Alicia both green and white.
On the boats raced, passing across the channel of the next frond and seeing another enormous space being cleared at its end. A three-story structure was already going up here, with the aspect of a hotel.
Amari threw his boat down the next channel. Drake breathed a sigh of relief because he’d already noticed it was the last. Beyond it sat the crescent breakwater and then empty, open sea all the way to Iran.
Now a hard left turn, the boat heeling, the passengers holding on with white knuckles, spray coating them from head to toe. Amari cleared the turn perfectly, much to Drake’s annoyance, but then the man had probably done it a thousand times. He followed the boat as it drifted toward the beach around the final frond and noticed a bridge up ahead; a concrete structure carrying a monorail that spanned the entire waterway.
“Maybe he’ll hit it,” the Yorkshireman said despondently.
“Don’t worry.” Alicia patted him on the shoulder. “He has to stop sometime.”
“Oh, that really helps.”
Gradually, a new structure began to take shape on the right.
“Oh bollocks,” Drake said. “I think I see his intentions.”
They all did, and anxiety set in. Until now, this chase had seemed destined to have only one ending. Amari couldn’t outrun them. But now…
The sprawling Atlantis Hotel rose high and multi-colored, encompassing most of the last frond by itself: thousands of rooms, restaurants, shops and a waterpark. Thousands of people. A million places to hide. If Amari got a head start on them in there, he and his people would be gone.
Drake gave it his all, choosing the slackest water and the widest arch through the bridge. He inched closer. Their quarry was only twenty meters away, still ignoring them. Drake blasted through the bridge just as a monorail passed above; he saw the faces of people staring down through the glass. To all intents and purposes this was a boys’ race — nothing more.
He twisted the wheel hard as he cleared the bridge, skimming the bottom of the craft across a flat surface and closing the gap to under twenty meters. Beau rose to his feet and approached the edge of the boat as if preparing to jump.
Alicia laughed. “Are you serious?”
“No. But I am ready.”
Drake saw they were angling hard toward shore now. Another jetty stuck out just ahead, but Amari ignored it and rammed the speeding boat up the sandy beach. The men inside must have been talking at some point, because they all hung on for dear life and then rose as momentum decreased. Drake went all out, hitting the beach at full speed, taking the jolts and trying to stand even as they plowed practically sideways.
“She’s gonna roll!” Hayden cried.
Luckily, she didn’t. Even so, Beau leapt gracefully from the tipping, sliding craft, landed like a cat, and took off after Amari’s men.
“Hate to say it.” Drake struggled down to the beach. “But that French bastard has skills.”
The way ahead was at best dubious, masked by hundreds of planted trees, meandering walkways and doors leading to different wings of the hotel. A huge pool dominated the center, sun-loungers and tourists arrayed ten deep all around it. Bars, rental huts and coffee shops added to the SPEAR team’s misery, all adding to the potpourri of distractions.
Drake spied Beau disappearing around a bend up ahead. He reached the place just in time to see the Frenchman run into a totally unexpected tree branch to the face. One of the acolytes must have stayed behind to take Beau out. Brave, ballsy, and incredibly naïve.
The Frenchman did stagger, even covered his eyes, but it was the slippery paving — wet from a recent watering — that sent him to the ground. The acolyte ran off. Beau nursed a bruised nose and a twisted ankle.
The team kept up the pace. Knots of tourists slowed them down. Sunlight bounced off the high hotel walls. The team were shocked when they turned a blind corner and ended up facing Amari and his six pals who were waiting just outside a small side entrance to the hotel, every man holding a small handgun.