Safety first.
He wasn’t sure if the Mako’s owner was blind or if the universe just hated him, but when the Simrad’s LCD screen blinked to life, the brightness setting was maxed out. The screen lit up the cockpit like a searchlight, and Hayes was trying to turn it down when the light caught the attention of one of the men on the tri-deck.
“There, in the water,” he shouted, the blaze of white from the weapon light attached to his submachine gun hitting Hayes in the face, flaring his night vision, leaving him blind and exposed to the peal of gunfire that followed.
5
CEUTA, SPAIN
Hayes was blind and pinned down, the spray of lead from the yacht buzzing over his head like a swarm of angry hornets before slamming into the captain’s chair. The 9-millimeter rounds shredded the seat, filling the cockpit with a confetti of vinyl and bits of insulation.
Hayes slapped the now-useless night-vision goggles up and out of the way and ignored the snap and crack of the rounds past his head. He inched forward, groping in the darkness like a child playing a lethal game of blindman’s bluff, desperate to find the dashboard.
His hand brushed the wheel and Hayes adjusted left, fingers fumbling over the switches and buttons that dotted the control panel.
But where the fuck is the key?
Then he found it and the Mako was alive, her twin Mercury 1350s rumbling like a primeval beast, the vibrations from the engines rolling up Hayes’s spine.
“Oh, hell yes,” he said, shoving the throttles forward.
The Mako leapt from her slip like a stone from a sling, the sudden acceleration sending Hayes tumbling backward, the wheel spinning free as she raced into the night. He scrambled to his feet, knowing he had to get the Mako under control or he’d never make it out of the marina alive.
Keeping his head low, Hayes reached up and grabbed the wheel, a quick glance at the LCD showing the nav computer still trying to sync with the satellites.
As the Mako accelerated, the bow lifted free of the water, and without the aid of the nav computer, Hayes was blind to what lay ahead. His internal compass told him that he was heading north, but as a pilot, he knew better than to trust his instincts in the darkness.
“Looks like I’m going to have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Hayes said, slapping the night vision over his eyes.
Still under fire, he climbed to his feet and grabbed the wheel, ignoring the snap of the bullets over his head. He needed to see what lay ahead, which was impossible with the bow pointing skyward. By adjusting the trim tabs he got the nose down in time to see the pylon sticking out of the water ten feet ahead.
With the Mako’s engines running wide open and the tachometer sweeping toward five thousand RPMs, there was little time to think, so Hayes desperately yanked the wheel hard to the left.
The powerboat sidestepped the obstruction like a running back dodging an open-field tackle, swinging the nose wide, away from the mouth of the marina and toward the massive seawall on the south side.
A second burst of rifle fire buzzed past his head, but Hayes ignored it. His only concern was getting the Mako back on course. He inched the wheel back to port, knowing that at this speed even the slightest miscalculation could be deadly, but the Mako handled like it was on rails, swinging smoothly back on course. Hayes hazarded a quick glance over his shoulder where a second shooter was now engaging him from the aft deck of the yacht. He raised the barrel of his MP5 skyward to compensate for the submachine gun’s limited range.
The bullets fell short and Hayes watched them slap harmlessly in his wake, but any reassurance that came from being out of the shooter’s range evaporated when he saw additional gunmen launching a pair of two-person Jet Skis from the back of the yacht.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
In open water, the Jet Skis’ small engines didn’t stand a chance against the Mako’s twin Mercurys, but to take advantage of the powerboat’s speed, Hayes had to clear the surf zone, get past the six-foot breakers slamming across the mouth of the harbor without being swamped or smashing into the jetties.
The safest choice was to slow down, wait for a lull in the surf, and then use the Mako’s power to get the hell out of Dodge. But Hayes knew from the hissing snap of lead past his head that if he wanted to get out of Ceuta with the same number of holes he’d arrived with, he had to go now.
“Let’s do this,” he said, shoving the throttles to their stops.
The Mako blasted from the marina like a fiberglass bullet, and in the cockpit all Hayes could do was hold it steady, watching as the swell reared up like a white-maned stallion. There was a moment, a split second, when he thought that his luck had changed, that somehow he’d timed it just right and all he had to do was punch the Mako through the back of the wave and go about his business.
Which is exactly what would have happened if the swell had stayed upright, but at the last moment the wave seemed to trip and then it was falling headlong before the Mako, its once-majestic peak now a raging ramp of white water.
One second the powerboat was planing smoothly across the water and in the next instant, it was airborne. Hayes was helpless to do anything but hold on as the Mako soared clear of the waves.
For a moment Hayes was weightless, free of both land and sea. But then gravity took over and he was falling, stomach rushing into his throat as the Mako nosed over, plunging like a lawn dart toward the glassy water below.
Oh, yeah, this is going to hurt.
The Mako hit hard and bounced skyward, skipping across the surface like a stone, the impact slamming Hayes into the wheel.
There was no pain, just a flash of white followed by the copper taste of blood and the flicker of black at the edge of his vision. He tried to get to his feet but the Mako was spinning, its centripetal force pinning him to the bulkhead while the water being sucked into the intakes killed the engines.
Finally, the Mako came to rest, the silence that followed the roar of her twin Mercs deafening as Hayes shook off the blow. He crawled to the front of the boat and tried the key.
The starter clicked but failed to turn over and Hayes adjusted the choke.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he begged. But the Mako was dead in the water.
Hayes was heading aft when the wheeeeem of a small engine stopped him in his tracks.
There is no way.
He followed the sound to its source in time to see the first two-person Jet Ski arcing over a wave, flame already spitting from the muzzle of the machine pistol in the passenger’s hand.
The first burst was short and when Hayes saw the bullets splash harmlessly into the water thirty yards short of the disabled powerboat, he felt a glimmer of hope.
I’ve got time.
He dropped to a knee and reached down for the fuel line, the overwhelming odor of raw gas emanating from the engine scalding his eyes—confirming his worst fears.