Then it died. I put the choke back in and hauled once more, getting a good start. I had to lean way over to shift it into forward gear and that's how I got tossed out of the boat.
Kleinhoffer and Dietrich weren't total losers. While they were clearing the purple spots out of their vision they could buzz me and throw me around with their thousand-horsepower wake. It had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. I had gotten the Zode into forward gear, but I got tangled up with the throttle handle when I was tumbling out, so now the motor was cocked all the way over to one side. It was puttering around in tight little circles, a little faster than I could swim. The Cigarette came around once more and I had to assume that Old Deadeye was using his infrared specs. If it had been calm they would have seen me instantly, but tonight, thank God, it was a little choppy.
The immediate problem was that my throat and nose were full of water and I hated to draw attention to myself by coughing and sneezing it out. So I tucked my head under the surface, blew some of it out and swallowed the rest. Yummy. Then I didn't have any air in my lungs so I had to come up and breathe.
My turn for a break. The Zodiac was spiraling in my direction. I just tried to present a small target, to look like a wave, and to dogpaddle toward it. The Cigarette was tearing back and forth, trying to locate my head with its propellers.
This went on maybe ten minutes. Between trying to breathe, trying to hide, coping with the tsunami wakes of the Cigarette and trying to get closer to the Zodiac, it was hard to keep track of time.
The Zodiac's bow rope brushed over my leg and I grabbed it. That was a nice reminder: if I let it trail behind me, it would get caught in the propeller. What other useful tips had Artemis given me? One thing for damn sure: take it reasonably easy; don't give it full throttle right off the bat or it would just do a backflip and toss me into the Harbor again.
Finally I got the prow of the Zodiac right up in my face, waited for the Cigarette to overshoot me, then threw myself up over the nose and into the boat. That was the theory, anyway. In reality it took a little longer than that so, as I was crawling on my hands and knees back toward the outboard, I looked up and saw the Cigarette cruising by me, slow and methodical, and I saw that Tazer gun pointed in my direction.
The gun didn't make any sound. I didn't even know I was hit until I felt a hot buzzing sensation in the arm of my wetsuit. But that was all I felt.
“You assholes,” I shouted, “it's a rubber suit!”
Artemis would have been proud: I throttled it up slowly, establishing a stable attitude in the water. Then I ripped it open and blew right past the bow of the Cigarette. It was choppy, but not that bad, and I was aiming for Zodiac nirvana here: the boat airborne, just the screw in the water. At that speed, the water might as well be asphalt. The Cigarette slices through it, the Zodiac just skitters - like being dragged down a cobblestone street by forty rabid mustangs.
If I could just make it out of Dorchester Bay and out toward Castle Island Park, I could take dead aim at the heart of downtown. Then I'd cross a small channel, cut past navy territory, and then I'd be passing the ends of the south Boston piers, all in a nice line. The worst part was the first, where I had nothing to protect me, but I'd covered half of it by the time the Cigarette caught up. They came after me dark, running a zigzag search pattern through the fog and, when I was almost to Castle Island Park, they found me.
Then it was raw power versus maneuverability. They tried to cut across my bow and swamp me, but I spun away from them, did a two-hundred-seventy-degree turn, went airborne off their wake, half fell out of the boat and cut in behind them, the water clawing at my right leg. They recovered faster than they wanted to and ended up ahead of me - shades of Buffalo - so I fell back into the Zode, aimed for their asshole, and throttled it up. They headed into a turn - a very fast turn, but slower than me. We turned and turned, me spiraling round right behind them, sticking to the calm spot in the center of their wake. They twisted it the other way, trying to shake me, and I followed them in the other direction until I saw the lights of downtown swinging past. Time to turn the corner. I broke out of the curve and drilled the throttle.
They tried to spin, got slapped around by their own wake for a little, then cranked it up to about twice my speed and came for me like a Sidewinder missile. They were trying the same attack, but this time I knew it. Jived left, spun right, cut directly in front of them, just missed being sliced in two by that samurai sword of a hull, and pulled the same trick: whipped around and cut behind them. They were trying to reverse direction so I blew them off and aimed for the skyscrapers.
The assholes should have realized I'd be wearing rubber. It was an excellent plan, though. Like something I would think up, if I was Laughlin.
ENVIRONMENTALIST DIES IN BIZARRE HIT-AND-RUN
BOATING ACCIDENT
SELF-STYLED MAVERICK WAS CAVALIER ABOUT SAFETY PROCEDURES
I faked them out by sprinting in the direction of the airport, half a mile away, and when they bit, I nipped a hairpin turn and shot past them in the opposite direction, close enough to see the whites of their eyes. That gave me enough room to make it across the navy channel, and they almost lost me again in the fog.