Flush - Carl Hiaasen [59]
Abbey perched on the bow, watching out for obstacles, while I tried to navigate by the lights of the shoreline: motels, mansions, RV parks, tiki bars. The darkest stretch was Thunder Beach, peaceful and deserted under a yellow moon. An ideal night for a momma turtle to crawl up and lay her eggs, I thought.
The salt air felt good on our faces as we ran against a light chop. Above us hung a glittering spray of stars that stretched all the way to Cuba. I was happier than I’d ever been, and so was Abbey.
“We did it!” she cheered. “We are so hot!”
“Adiós, Captain Muleman!” I shouted with a phony salute.
The hardest part of Operation Royal Flush was over. We’d laid the trap and escaped, though barely. Being chased by Luno wasn’t part of the plan, but it didn’t spoil anything. For now, Dusty Muleman and his gorillas wouldn’t be able to figure out what I’d been doing aboard the Coral Queen, since the only clue had gone down the toilets.
Way, way down the toilets, into the holding tank—the last place they’d ever stick their heads.
Only later would Dusty realize what I’d done, and by then he’d have worse problems—namely the U.S. Coast Guard, which I intended to call first thing in the morning.
But as jazzed as I was, I couldn’t forget how close Abbey and I had come to being shot. Shot. It was unbelievable.
Why, I wondered, would Dusty stand there and let Luno take aim at a couple of pint-sized trespassers? We must have really annoyed him, I thought, with all our snooping around.
And what were the odds of being rescued for a second time by the same stranger? Either the old pirate was following us around like some sort of weird guardian angel, or Abbey and I were the luckiest two kids in Florida.
“Hard right!” she called from the bow.
I pushed the tiller, and we skittered past a glistening spear of two-by-four, only inches away. It would have punched a hole in the hull for sure.
“Good eyes,” I called to my sister.
“Thanks. What’s that noise?”
“Don’t know.”
“Noah, why are you slowing us down?” she shouted.
“I’m not,” I said. “Not on purpose, anyway.”
But the little boat was definitely losing speed. The loud noise that Abbey and I had heard was the outboard engine throwing a piston rod, though we didn’t know that at the time.
The motor conked out with a sickly rattle.
I knew we were in major trouble, but I went through the motions of removing the cowling and fiddling with the spark-plug connections. It didn’t fool Abbey for a second.
“I don’t suppose you brought Dad’s toolbox,” she said.
“Very funny.”
I tried to pull the starter cord, but it wouldn’t budge. The old Evinrude was stone dead.
A heavy, tired silence fell over us. Once again the little boat was at the mercy of the breeze, which was taking us out to sea, toward the Straits of Florida. Obviously our good luck had run out.
“We’re history,” my sister said. “Mom and Dad’ll go postal when they get home and we’re not there.”
The wind was clocking around to the northwest. In summer that usually means bad weather is on the way.
I said, “Better toss the anchor—no, wait a second …”
Too late. My stomach clenched when I heard the splash.
“Let me guess,” Abbey said. “The rope wasn’t tied on, was it?”
“My fault. I should’ve checked.”
“So I just threw our anchor away. How nice.” She sighed in discouragement. “Now what?”
We saw a distant flash of electric blue, which was followed by a slow deep rumble.
“Seven miles. Not good,” Abbey said.
Dad had taught us how to count the seconds between the lightning bolt and thunder—one thousand, two thousand, three thousand—to figure out how many miles away a storm was. Like Abbey, I’d counted seven.
“Maybe it’ll miss us,” she said.
“Yeah.” And maybe someday monkeys will fly helicopters, I thought.
In a few short minutes our mood had plunged from the highest high to the lowest low. The moon slipped behind a rolling gray carpet of clouds, and the freshening gusts smelled