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For the second time in nearly as many days, Pitt was making a wild escape from the Dorsett mine for Moresby Island. The water sped past in a blue-green blur. The bright colors and the Haida designs on the watercraft glittered radiantly in the bright sun. Pitt's senses sharpened at the danger, and his reactions quickened.
From the air the channel between the islands seemed little more than a wide river. But from the surface of the sea, the inviting safety of the trees and rocky hills of Moresby appeared like a speck on the far horizon.
Pitt was awed by the stability of the WetJet's V-hull and the torque of its modified big-bore, long-stroke engine, which drove the craft with a ferocious low snarl through the low swells with hardly a bounce. Fast, agile, the variable-pitch impeller delivered incredible thrust. These were truly machines with muscle. Pitt couldn't know with any certainty, but he estimated he was whipping over the sea at close to sixty knots. It was almost like riding a high-performance motorcycle over water.
He jumped Broadmoor's wake, pulled even until they were hurtling across the water virtually side by side and shouted, "We'll be dead meat if they come after us!"
"Not to worry!" Broadmoor yelled back. "We can outrun their patrol boats!"
Pitt turned and peered over his shoulder at the rapidly receding island. He cursed under his breath as he spotted the remaining Defender helicopter rising above the mound surrounding the mine. In less than a minute it was sweeping across the channel, taking up the chase and following their wakes.
"We can't outrun their helicopter," Pitt informed Broadmoor loudly.
In contrast to a grim-faced Pitt, Mason Broadmoor looked as enthusiastic and bright eyed as a boy warming up for his first track meet. His brown features were flushed with excitement. He stood on the footrests and glanced back at the pursuing aircraft. "The dumb bastards don't stand a chance," he said grinning. "Follow in my wake."
They were rapidly overhauling the homeward-bound fishing fleet, but Broadmoor made a hard turn toward Moresby Island, giving the boats a wide berth. The shore was only a few hundred meters away, and the helicopter had pulled to within a kilometer. Pitt could see waves sluicing and heaving in constant motion as they hurled against the rocks below a shore of steep, jagged cliffs, and he wondered if Broadmoor had a death wish as he aimed his watercraft toward the swirling breakers. Pitt turned his attention from the approaching helicopter and put his faith in the Haida totem carver. He stuck the nose of his watercraft into the rooster tail shooting up behind the front-runner and hung in the foaming wake, as they ran flat out through a cauldron of waves thrashing against a fortress of offshore rocks.
To Pitt it looked as if they were on a direct course toward the wave-hammered cliffs. He gripped the handlebars, braced his feet in the padded footwells and hung on to keep from being pitched off. The rumble of the breakers came like thunderclaps, and all he could see was a gigantic curtain of spray and foam. The image of the Polar Queen, drifting helpless toward the barren rock island in the Antarctic flickered through his mind. But this time, he was aboard a speck in the sea instead of an ocean liner. He plunged on despite a growing certainty that Broadmoor was certifiably insane.
Broadmoor cut around a huge rock. Pitt followed, instantly setting up the turn, shifting his body back and outside to slightly weight the front inside of the hull, then hanging on, the hull biting into the water as he carved the turn in Broadmoor's wake. They rocketed over the crest of a huge roller and smashed down in the trough before ascending on the back of the next one.
The helicopter was almost upon them, but the pilot stared in dumb fascination at the suicidal course set by the two men on the watercraft. Astonished, he failed to line up and fire his twin 7.62 guns. Wary of his own danger, he pulled the aircraft up in a steep vertical climb and swept over the palisades. He banked sharply to come around for another look but the watercraft had already been out of sight for a critical ten seconds. When he circled back over the water, his quarry had vanished.
Some inner instinct told Pitt that in another hundred meters he would be pulped against the unyielding wall rising out of the water and that would be the end of it. The choice was to veer off and take his chances with the firepower from the helicopter, but he remained inflexibly on course. His life was passing in front of him. Then he saw it.
A tiny crevice in the lower face of the cliffs suddenly yawned open like the eye of a needle, no wider than two meters. Broadmoor swept into the narrow opening and was gone.
Pitt grimly followed, swearing that the ends of his handlebars brushed the sides of the entrance, and abruptly found himself in a deep grotto with a high, inverted V-shaped ceiling. Ahead of him, Broadmoor slowed and glided to a stop beside a small rock landing, where he jumped off his machine, tore off his coat and began stuffing it with a bundle of dead kelp that had washed into the grotto. Pitt immediately saw the wisdom of the Indian's scheme. He hit the stop switch on the handlebar and matched Broadmoor's actions.
Once the coats were filled to simulate headless torsos, they were thrown in the water at the entrance to the grotto. Pitt and Broadmoor stood there watching as the dummies were swept back and forth before being carried by the backwash into the maelstrom outside.
"You think that will fool them?" asked Pitt.
"Guaranteed," answered Broadmoor confidentially. "The wall of the cliff slants out, making the opening to the grotto impossible to see from the air." He cocked an ear at the sound of the helicopter outside. "I'll give them another ten minutes before they head back to the mine and tell Dapper John Merchant, if he's regained consciousness, that we bashed our brains out on the rocks."
Broadmoor was prophetic. The sound of the helicopter echoing into the grotto gradually died and faded away. He checked the fuel tanks of the watercraft and nodded comfortably. "If we run at half speed we should have just enough fuel to reach my village."
"I suggest we relax till after sunset," said Pitt. "No -sense in showing our faces in case the pilot of the helicopter has a suspicious disposition. Can you navigate home in the dark?"
"Blindfolded in a straitjacket," Broadmoor said indisputably. "We'll leave at midnight and be in bed by 300 A.M."
For the next several minutes, worn out from the excitement of the hard run across the channel and the near brush with death, they sat in silence, listening to the reverberating roar of the surf outside the grotto.
Finally, Broadmoor reached into a small compartment on his WetJet and retrieved a canvas-covered half-gallon canteen. He pulled out a cork stopper and handed the canteen to Pitt.
"Boysenberry wine. Made it myself."
Pitt took a long swallow and made a strange face. "You mean boysenberry brandy, don't you?"
"I admit that it does have a nice kick." He smiled as Pitt passed back the canteen. "Did you find what you were looking for at the mine?"
"Yes, your engineer led me to the source of the problem."
"I am glad. Then it has all been worth it."
"You paid a high price. You'll not be selling any more fish to the mining company."
"I felt like a whore taking Dorsett money anyway," said Broadmoor with a disgusted expression.
