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“Tell me where you are taking me.”
“Option three, as I promised, is to sail you to the Albany rail yards. I have a special standing by. Or if you don’t think it’s safe, you can steal a ride on a freight train.”
“How far?”
“At this rate, we’ll make it in two hours.”
Antonio Branco glanced over his shoulder. “Bell is closer.”
“It will be dark soon,” said Culp. “And Isaac Bell does not know this river like I do.”
Isaac Bell’s ice yacht raced up the Hudson River, vibrating sharply, tearing through patches of fresh snow, flopping hard when the runners banged over ice hummocks, and jumping watery cracks where the tide had lifted the ice. She was heavier than Culp’s boat—built of white ash, instead of aluminum, and carrying lead ballasts Bell had strapped to the outsides of her runner plank to hold her down in the squall winds. Using the extra pounds and her oversize sail to advantage, he veered off course to increase velocity on a favorable beam wind, then glided back on course, with her extra weight sustaining momentum.
Bell thought it was strange that an experienced racer like Culp wasn’t using the same tactic when he saw him catching up. If the magnate was trying to lure him into pistol range, he would get his wish.
By the time the speeding yachts had whipped past the lights of Newburgh, Bell had drawn within a hundred yards. He could see Branco and Culp in the cockpit, their faces white blurs as they looked over their shoulders to gauge his progress in the fading light.
Culp changed course abruptly.
Half a second later, Bell saw a horse right in front of him.
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It was a tremendous plow horse, plodding in harness, and it reared in terror as Isaac Bell’s sail bore down on it. Appearing so suddenly, at sixty miles an hour, and seen from a cockpit twelve inches above the ice, it looked as big as Culp’s stuffed grizzly.
Isaac Bell yanked his tiller.
Culp had led him into the middle of an ice harvest. Men and horses were plowing grooves in the ice and cutting it into cakes to be stored for next summer. They had sawed open a wide patch of open water that gleamed black as coal.
Bell’s boat skidded violently. Centrifugal force nearly flicked him out of the cockpit. The boat was sliding sideways, out of control, and headed straight at the black water. Ten feet from it, Bell’s runners bit the ice again, his rudder responded, and he skittered the boat along the edge, dodged another horse and plow, and hurled himself back on course, his eyes locked on the tall white triangle of Daphne’s sail.
Another mile flashed by.
He caught the beam wind again and gained some more. When only forty yards separated the yachts, he locked a leg over the tiller, drew his automatic, braced it with both hands, and waited until the runners were humming steadily over a smooth patch. When he opened fire, he missed, but not by much, and it had the desired effect. Antonio Branco did not even flinch, but J. B. Culp ducked from the slugs whistling past his ears. He lost control and Daphne spun out, whirling in circles and dropping speed. Bell’s boat passed her before he could untangle his leg and steer to a stop.
Culp recovered, caught the wind, and took off like a rocket.
Bell tore after him, closer than before. You’re not as bold as you think you are, thought Bell. He saw Branco hand something to Culp. The next instant, flame lanced as Culp fired the pistol Branco had given him. Lead thudded into Bell’s mast. A bullet whined close to his face.
Daphne’s runners and rudder left the ice and she was suddenly airborne. An instant later, Bell hit what had launched her—a snowdrift ramped up by the wind and frozen solid. His boat flew, soaring high and far. It felt like she would fall backwards, but the lead weights strapped to her runner plank balanced her and she landed back on the ice, upright and racing ahead.
Before she crashed back down again, Bell glimpsed in the distance another ice harvest. They were finishing for the day. The men and horses were near shore, loading the cakes into an icehouse. All that remained where they had worked in the middle of the river was the open cut. Black water stretched the length of a football field.
Bell fired a shot to distract Culp and veered his yacht to build speed. When he had, and was racing parallel to Daphne, he suddenly changed course and drove straight at her. The sight of Bell’s enormous sail suddenly flying at him unnerved J. B. Culp and he reflexively jerked his tiller to steer away before the yachts collided. The violent turn spun his in a circle.
She pinwheeled beyond his command—sliding and spinning on the slick surface—flew off the ice, and slammed into the black water. The impact of the abrupt stop from fifty miles an hour to zero snapped both legs of her double mast. Boom, yard, and sails crashed down on her runner plank, which was sinking quickly and already half submerged.
Isaac Bell skidded his yacht to a halt twenty feet from the abyss and dropped his sail. The masterminds of a national crime organization were his at last. Only drowning could save them from justice.
He ran to the brink with a rope in one hand and his gun in the other.
The sea tide had turned. Receding swiftly downstream in tandem with the Hudson’s powerful current, it seized Daphne’s fallen rigging. The river filled her sail, as if with a watery wind, and dashed the shattered yacht against the solid ice at the edge of the cut.
Branco and Culp battled their way out of the tangle of rigging and canvas and tried to climb off. The current forced her bowsprit under the ice. A stump of her mast caught on the edge. The wreckage hung motionless for a heartbeat, then continued sliding under as it sank.
Isaac Bell threw his rope.
J. B. Culp caught it and clambered onto the ice shelf. Antonio Branco was right behind him, heaving himself toward safety even as the boat slid under. He planted one foot on solid ice, teetered backwards, and caught his balance by grabbing Culp’s coat.
