“Uhhh!” Amy gasped as something struck her back—hard. Whatever it was made a clanking noise as it fell to the deck at her side. She turned to look. The throttle lever—Krogan had broken it off with the boat at full speed. So much for the hope of a safe rescue.
“Oh, no! Oh, no!” he continued, then laughed ferociously. “What do you like better, police boats or Coast Guard boats?” he yelled to Amy, then laughed again.
Amy was no longer physically able to brace herself for impact. She could not even muster the strength to see the faces of the riflemen on the boats they were seconds from hitting. If they were smart they would dive off now and save themselves.
With Shadahd showing no sign of slowing down, the wall of boats scrambled to separate, apparently realizing the bluff they were trying to call was no bluff. Krogan shot through the middle of their small fleet with mocking laughter, leaving them to maneuver and race to catch up. Other smaller and faster police boats had just arrived, running in the same direction just ahead of Krogan; from the choppers it would almost look as though he were chasing them. Amy saw hope in this strategy. If they could sandwich the lobster boat as it caught up to them, then they could conceivably control and subdue it.
The police boat at the far left slowed until it ran even with them, then carefully closed in. The far right police boat did the same. At this rate they would be on him just before he crashed into Liberty Island.
“Oh, no! The whole world is closing in on me,” Krogan yelled. “I’m so scared. Go away! Go away!” Just then, he cranked the steering hard to the right, heading straight for the nearby police boat. The boat tried to respond by turning with him, but didn’t react fast enough. Amy screamed as the starboard bow of the lobster boat slammed into the port bow of the police craft, missing her by inches. The sound of the collision was loud, leaving her badly shaken and in tears. If Krogan was trying to scare her to death, he had nearly succeeded.
The police boat fell back, having been rocked badly from the unequal angle of attack favoring Krogan, then struggled to catch up. Turning to her left, Amy could see the rest of the armada also in chase. She looked upward at the Statue of Liberty. How ironic to be so helplessly enslaved before such a symbol of freedom… and the audience now gathered on the island’s granite shoreline. Amy couldn’t bear to look at them. She looked forward—and froze.
“Miss Freedom.” She silently mouthed the words on the upper hull of the 135-foot tourist ferry. There was an audience there, too, but Amy no longer felt embarrassed. If Krogan had been thinking of a sensational crash to end it all, this was it—a statement only his demon onlookers would understand and applaud.
Unable to control herself, she fought frantically against the tight cords tying her wrists, rubbing and jerking her hands back and forth, moving them no more than a fraction of an inch each time as the rope wore into her flesh. The steel hull she would be crushed into drew closer by the second. The more she struggled, the louder Krogan laughed.
Before them, the ferry had picked up speed in a hopeless attempt to escape. All the increased velocity would accomplish would be to relocate the point of impact from center to rear. Regardless, the lobster boat would plow into the tourist-laden vessel like a guided missile, the end of another small chapter of Krogan’s ongoing existence of terror and the end of Amy’s entire life. Krogan would die with her.
Die… With her?
She was going into an unknown dimension, but he was going into a world as familiar to him as the world he was leaving. More familiar. He probably had friends there. He definitely had friends there. Would she be at his mercy there as well? Their mercy? Engines roared, sirens wailed, helicopters clattered, ships’ horns blared, and water gushed, pounding against her face, yet she could not blot out Krogan’s raucous laughter. In fact, his laughter became all she could hear. Moments before certain death, he was downright excited. Confidently excited. About what? Death? Why? What was next? What did he know that she didn’t? Everything! The possibility of her life extending into another world, another dimension, with Krogan there to greet her, was horrifying.
With eyes tightly shut, Amy stiffened like a wooden beam, every muscle in her body braced. She could no longer struggle; her fate was as inevitable as if she were falling from the sky without a parachute. She could not keep her brain from counting down the seconds to impact. A strange weakness came over her as sound and motion slowed.
“God!” she cried out.
She was silenced by the explosive impact.
55
Yes!” Gavin shouted to Amy, who had turned to see him shaking his fist triumphantly in the air. She was still alive and he was bent on keeping her that way.
The impact of the ocean racer into the side of Shadahd’s bow had thrown Krogan from the steering wheel to the floor, allowing the powerful engines to drive the lobster boat off course, barely missing the rear of the ferry. The top left bow of the racer was badly damaged from the angular slam; loose and shattered pieces of fiberglass flapped in the high wind. Gavin was wet with water—and sweat from seeing Amy nearly crushed before his eyes. Buck was on the floor. Gavin was unsure if he had been knocked there from the impact or if he was praying again. Perhaps both.
Vinny, now a certified mental patient in Gavin’s mind, had assured Gavin they would make it with inches to spare—as if an inch could actually be determined while flying along at seventy miles an hour. He’d been right, though, give or take an inch. His only concern had been whether or not Gavin would still buy the boat if it were damaged. When Gavin assured him he would buy it even if it were completely destroyed, a small, frightening grin had appeared on Vinny’s otherwise intense expression and never left.
Vinny continued to keep pressure on the lobster boat’s bow, pushing it left toward the rear of Liberty Island. Krogan reappeared by the steering wheel, a lone trickle of blood tracing the border of his right eye socket. He no longer wore the smirk he’d had at Giants Stadium—the smirk he’d had only seconds before. Gavin considered that a small victory. He managed a brief smile as they made eye contact, fluttering his fingers in a mocking salute intended to irritate Krogan. He thought Krogan might be more likely to slip up if he was mad.
With a roar, Krogan yanked the wheel to the right, his huge arm muscles rippling. Vinny also turned to maintain his angular advantage. Even though the ocean racer had the speed to catch the lobster boat and the quickness to outmaneuver it, Krogan had the leverage of sheer weight and power on his side.
Gavin looked past Krogan toward Liberty Island. The granite bulkhead surrounding the island did not continue all the way around to the west shore. In one section a cobblestone shoreline had been installed, sloping from the high tide mark to a chain-link fence. On the other side of the fence was lawn, a few trees, and several weather-beaten brick homes, presumably where the park staff lived.
“Run him aground there!” Gavin shouted to Vinny, pointing past Krogan.
“I’m trying! I can’t!”Vinny yelled back, shaking his head, fighting desperately to maintain his position. Suddenly his eyes widened and he spun the steering wheel to the right, banking hard and away from Shadahd. Before Gavin could ask why, there came a deafening blast and the windshield by his head exploded. He winced, the left side of his face stinging from tiny glass projectiles. Vinny dropped to the floor, keeping one hand on the wheel, wanting to put distance between them and the shotgun.
Gavin was emotionally torn. He’d already done the unthinkable in having Vinny chase down Krogan, but how could he ask him to continue after being shot at? The man wasn’t a cop and didn’t even know the truth of what he was up against. Gavin made his decision.
“Stop the boat, Vinny,” Gavin yelled. “Ellis Island is an easy swim from here. You’ll be safe there. I’ve got to go back.” Gavin pulled his gun from his ankle holster and slipped it into his pant waistline for easier access.
With a nod Vinny pulled back on the throttle and made a tight U-turn. Krogan, who had been heading away since the gunshot, w
as now making a wide turn. Oddly, he was still traveling at full speed. Vinny looked glumly at the nearby south shore of Ellis Island, obviously not wild about Gavin’s proposal.
Ellis Island had dramatically changed since the 1800s and early 1900s, when it had been the country’s only immigration bottleneck and later a jail for alien enemies. For the past half a century it has been little more than a deteriorating monument. From the south shore all that could been seen of the once busy facility was a dilapidated three-story building that reminded Gavin of his Long Island elementary school, with its once spectacular, steeply gabled Spanish-tile roof. Now, abandoned for decades, doors hung off hinges and an overgrowth of strangling vines crept up walls and into broken windows. Its greatest value was to the pigeons that lined its ridge and swooped through gaping holes in the roof. It was a home for the homeless, inhabited by ghosts, compliments of the unswimmable currents of the merging Hudson and East Rivers. Only its grand history, holding the promise of future restoration, kept the bulldozers away.
Gavin could not waste time with Vinny’s indecision. Some of the Coast Guard and police boats were closing in again. They had apparently divided around Liberty Island to block off any escape to the south. What they didn’t know was that Krogan had no intention of escaping. He wasn’t trying to live. He was trying to die while causing as much damage as possible. Gavin wished this could have remained between Krogan and himself.
The demon was angrier than Gavin had ever heard mention of in any of Katz’s sessions with Sabah. If Gavin had learned anything about Krogan, it was that he was compelled to attack whatever he was angry at. And Gavin had just made him mad as hell, literally. In one day he and Amy had combined to wreck the football game, destroy the lobster business, and thwart Krogan’s dream of crashing into Miss Freedom. Gavin didn’t have to be psychic to know what Krogan wanted—needed—to do before dying. Could he work that predictability to his advantage?
Just then a shadow moved across the boat. Gavin looked up, expecting to see a chopper filled with Emergency Service Unit troops. He knew they would be on the scene. ESU troops trained for situations like this and taking out Krogan would be easy for them. Their motto was, “When people need help they call the police. When the police need help they call the Emergency Service Unit.” But it wasn’t the ESU that flew overhead. With all that had been happening, Gavin had forgotten about Bill in the ultralight.
“Oh, no,” Vinny said, watching the ultralight fly toward Krogan. He grabbed the radio handset off the dashboard. “Bill! Come in, Bill.”
“Let’s get ’im, Vin.”
“Bill! He’s got a shotgun.”
“I know. I’ve been watching. But he can’t hit what he can’t see. Over and out.”
“What did he mean by that?” Gavin asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m not going to sit here and watch Bill get blown out of the sky like that helicopter we passed,” Vinny said, pushing the throttle.
Relieved that Vinny had made a decision, Gavin grabbed the chrome bar as the boat lunged forward. “You okay, Buck?” he yelled to the preacher, still on the floor. Buck motioned with his right hand that Gavin needn’t worry; with his left hand he held tightly to his precious chest. The man was as mysterious as they came.
Krogan had completed his circle and was coming directly at them, as expected. The sun was in his eyes. Gavin hoped that wasn’t what Bill had meant about not seeing. If so, the ultralight would be downed like a lone mallard flying over a duck blind.
Racing toward Krogan, Gavin saw the shotgun leveled at them out Shadahd’s front window. “Keep your head down,” he yelled. He glanced back to make sure Buck was still on the floor. “Pray for bad aim, Buck.”
Vinny pressed a black spring-loaded switch that read “Trim.”The bow began to rise and a rooster tail of jetting water appeared off the stern. The angular degree-change slowed the racer, but created a shield Krogan immediately tested. A basketball-sized chunk of the high-gloss yellow bow edge exploded, leaving ravaged strands of fiberglass blowing furiously about. The hit was followed immediately by the sound of the gunshot, the slower speed of sound playing catchup with the deadly lead buckshot. Gavin and Vinny ducked as most of the debris careened off Vinny’s windshield.
The ultralight, a robotic bird of prey, swooped toward the charging lobster boat. With Krogan’s shotgun pointed out the window and the gap between them narrowing fast, they looked like two jousting knights.
Another hole blasted into the bow. Gavin cursed, knowing the shotgun was firing just behind Amy, barely missing her head each time. If she survived this she would be shell shocked. And what was Bill doing? Gavin half expected the Statue of Liberty to glance over her shoulder and ask the same question. Krogan was apparently curious enough to allow the ultralight closer. Then again, Bill had mentioned a tense relationship between them. Maybe Krogan was waiting for a point-blank shot.
Gavin could see Bill holding something in his hand. His vest? He was going to throw his vest at Krogan? Gavin was about to question Vinny when, like magic, a huge white sheet appeared below the ultralight, directly in front of the lobster boat. Bill’s emergency ballistic chute!
The ultralight banked away as the lobster boat rode full speed into the fully deployed parachute. The canopy covered the entire front of the boat, including Amy and, most important, Krogan’s windshield.
“Hold on,” Vinny yelled, then hung a sharp U-turn. A moment later the lobster boat was once again a few yards off the port side of the racer, both boats pointed at the shallow bulkhead of Ellis Island. Krogan’s arm appeared out the draped window, reaching, pulling, struggling with the chute. The violent yanking and wrenching of the giant white blindfold pulled harshly against Amy’s head; the contours of her face were defined like a pale mannequin in the tight fabric.
“He’s gonna break her neck,” Gavin yelled.
Vinny turned hard left, slamming Shadahd just below Krogan’s arm, which disappeared behind the blowing cloth.
“If we get much closer I won’t be able to turn away,” Vinny yelled, looking dead ahead at the ghostly shoreline, desperate for immediate instruction.
What was crucial was that the lobster boat be held on course until its grounding was inevitable, while leaving enough time for the quicker, more maneuverable, racer to throttle down and turn away. Though the granite bulkhead ended only about a foot above the water, at almost seventy miles per hour their survival, should they hit it, was anything but certain. The lobster boat, made of steel and twice the size of the racer, would most likely survive intact, skidding to a halt somewhere on the uncut lawn. There, Gavin needed to apprehend Krogan before the approaching armed forces turned him into used ammo storage.
“Pull away,” Gavin was yelling to Vinny when he was struck in the left shoulder by something blunt and hard as a cement block that sent him crashing into Vinny’s dashboard. Without a second to lose, Vinny pulled all the way back on the throttle levers and cranked the steering wheel to the right. The racer broke off from the lobster boat, but for only a few yards. Then it slammed back into Shadahd.
“He’s got us!”Vinny screamed.
Still stunned from the hit, Gavin turned to see Krogan at the side of his boat, gloating with smug triumph. A large, rusted anchor held the side of the racer like a grappling iron, its heavy, corroded chain wrapped around Shadahd’s trap pulley. Gavin immediately grabbed the anchor, but the tension between the boats was way too strong. Krogan laughed tauntingly at the useless attempt.
With no time to jump from the boat without hitting granite shore instead of water, Gavin and Vinny dove for the floor next to Buck. The carpeted deck offered nothing to grab hold of. Gavin clenched his teeth and futilely tried to relax. He was about as flexible as glass when the two boats hit the solid rock. At the point of impact, his face dug into the hard floor. A moment later, he was weightless, flying feet first toward the bow along with everything else not tied down, including Buck and Vinny.
There was instant silence. In
the sudden rush of quiet, Gavin found himself in the racer’s dark, shallow cabin, fists still clenched. As the buzzing in his ears cleared he heard the approaching Coast Guard and police boats cutting through waves, their motors at full tilt. Also drawing near was the whump-whump-whump of helicopter blades and distant horns and sirens.
Amy!
Cat quick, he sprang forward, then just as quickly fell to his knees, grabbing for his side with a wincing cry. Struggling to pull himself from the darkness of the long cabin, he found a jagged piece of wooden decking, ugly enough to slay a vampire, had speared him low in the right side. Frantic to get to Amy, he took a deep breath and ripped it out with a scream. Blood blossomed on his shirt and jeans.
Vinny lay next to him, moaning and moving slowly. To his right, Buck lay motionless, bright blood puddled at his nose. Gavin touched Buck’s neck, searching for a pulse. He was alive.
“Don’t move,” Gavin said to Vinny, who had shakily struggled to his hands and knees.
Amy.
Gavin climbed to his feet, all his weight shifted to his left side. The chute still covered the front of the lobster boat and he could see the shape of Amy’s body still there. There was no movement or sound.
Was Krogan still in the boat or was he already on the run? Gavin craned his neck, hoping to see him. It was possible Krogan was dead, or at least injured or trapped by the crash. Gavin touched his left rear pocket and felt the hard, curved steel of handcuffs taken from the stadium security. The sooner Krogan was wearing them, the better. Every second of unshackled freedom could mean a second more of recovered strength, a category Krogan needed no handicap in.
Amy.
Gavin hurdled the side, landing on his left leg, then both hands. Groaning, he scrambled like a wounded spider to the front of the lobster boat. The bow angling upward; Amy was out of his reach, but the canopy wasn’t. He jumped up, pushing from both legs, punctured muscles and flesh sending shock waves of searing pain as a handful of silky cloth filled his hands. He fell backward, disrobing Shadahd and covering himself. The cloth was too strong to tear, but he fought the feather-light material, folding, compressing, and finally tossing it aside. He looked up again.
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