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With the electrical power on at the helm, he flipped the trim switch down, and this lowered the two outboard motors into the water behind him.
Still, he didn’t have a fast way to turn the engines on without a key, so he found a small wire under the control panel, this one going to the boat’s cabin lighting, and he freed it from its soldering with a hard yank.
He placed this eight-inch coated copper wire in his mouth, and then on his hands and knees he scampered back to the pair of engines at the stern. He ignored the port-side Yamaha and concentrated on the starboard one.
He popped the cowling off, pulling the big plastic shroud off the engine, exposing the mechanics inside, and dropped the cowling onto the deck next to him.
Just then, a round cracked past him on the right and kicked up foamy water ten feet away.
“Keep ’em down, Carrie!”
Zoya returned fire behind him, then shouted, “I think the cops are here. Flashing lights up on the hill.”
“Make that ammo last until the shooters have bigger problems than us.”
He turned on his flashlight and put it in his mouth, then leaned over the stern to the back of the engine. Quickly he found a small black relay box zip-tied to some wires near the starter and pulled it free. Holding it close to his face and inspecting all the wires protruding from it for a moment, he identified a red wire and a purple wire. As with all the other wires, there was a corresponding plug on the other side. He pulled the wire from the control panel out of his mouth and carefully placed one copper end inside to touch the red wire, then bent his cabin lighting wire and slid the other end into the relay box against the purple wire.
The big Yamaha coughed to life.
Over the roar he shouted up to Zoya. “Shoot the bowline!”
“Half a mag left!” she said, and then, “What?”
“You have to shoot the bowline from where you are, otherwise we’re not getting out of here!”
“I’ll try!”
He didn’t want Zoya up on the bow untying the line; she’d be in full view of the assassins and shot dead in an instant, so the only solution remaining was a very precise 9-millimeter round cutting the line in the dim light.
As Court untied the line at the stern, he heard a succession of outgoing gunshots from closer to the bow; Zoya needed four or five rounds to hit the line, but soon enough she shouted back to him.
“Bowline is free! I’m dry.” She was now completely out of ammunition.
The boat began to bob and shift even more than it had been, the waves rocking it forward, closer to the shore, just twenty yards or so away. Court had to get the cowling back on the engine so water wouldn’t short out the wiring, and Zoya was much closer to the helm, so he shouted, “Put the transmission in reverse and give it full power!”
He finished clamping the cowling over the powerhead just as he heard the engine he’d hot-wired rise in pitch and felt the boat surge backwards, out towards the lake.
At the same time, the slow but steady gunfire from the shore stopped abruptly.
Court thought the enemy might be bugging out with the arrival of the police. He put his multitool and his light back into his pocket, and he began moving forward towards the controls, under the roof and halfway up the length of the boat. He could see Zoya kneeling at the helm, a hand on the wheel but trying to stay out of any line of fire, and she was all but gunning the single engine in reverse.
As he advanced on the helm through the open back seating area of the tourist boat, Court felt a slight rocking that was out of rhythm with the wind, and he looked to his right just as a bald-headed and bearded man, soaked to the bone and his tattooed chest bare, kicked himself adroitly over the gunwale less than five feet away.
The man had a long-bladed knife in his teeth; to Court he looked like a pirate.
Court reached for his multitool, the closest weapon to his grasp, but before he could wield it, he had to back away from the charging attacker.
He shouted up to Zoya, but at the same moment she powered up the engine in reverse even more, and her eyes and attention were focused, quite reasonably, on the shoreline.
Court saw the pirate take his knife in his right hand and then slash it forward. Court avoided the swing and then charged, spearing the man in the chest with his shoulder, but there wasn’t a lot to his blow, so his enemy did not fall to the deck. The movement of the tourist boat sent both men stumbling, but even off-balance, Court controlled the knife arm with both his hands, then shifted around, backing into the man and shoving him with his powerful legs.
Court drove backwards again, slamming the attacker against the side of the boat. He heard a grunt of pain, and then the knife fell from the man’s hands and clanked to the deck, which Court originally took as good news.
But when the man broke away, stood up, reached behind his back, and drew an improbably large pistol, Court realized he’d much preferred his chances with the knife.
He could do nothing but try to close the distance. He ducked low and left and charged again, and the gun went off; the round missed Court’s face by inches, but the flash out of the suppressor on the end of the barrel of the massive weapon all but blinded him. Court spun around quickly as he closed even more and came out of his turn at the attacker’s gun hand, grabbing the arm with both hands.
He couldn’t wrench the weapon free; his opponent was at least his equal strengthwise.
