Patriot games - Tom Clancy [260]
"Commander, do you want me to take the wheel for you?" the Prince asked.
"Okay, Cap'n, come on forward." Robby slid away from the controls as His Highness joined him. "Your course is zero-three-six magnetic. Watch it, it's going to get rough when we're out of the cliff's lee, and there's lots of merchant traffic out there." They could already see four feet of chop building a hundred yards ahead, driven by the gusting winds.
"Right. How do I know when we've arrived at Annapolis?" The Prince settled behind the wheel and started checking out the controls.
"When you see the lights on the Bay Bridges, call me. I know the harbor, I'll take her in."
The Prince nodded agreement. He throttled back to half power as they entered the heavy chop, and kept moving his eyes from the compass to the water. Jackson moved to check his wife.
Sissy waved him away. "You worry about them!"
In another moment they were roller-coastering over four- and five- foot waves. The boat was a nineteen-foot cathedral-hull lake boat of a type favored by local fishermen for her good calm-seas speed and shallow draft. Her blunt nose didn't handle the chop very well. They were taking water over the bow, but the forward snap-on cover was in place, and the windshield deflected most of the water over the side. That water which did get into the back emptied down a self-bailing hole next to the engine box. Ryan had never been in a boat like this, but knew what it was. Its hundred-fifty-horse engine drove an inboard-outdrive transmission whose movable propeller eliminated the need for a rudder. The bottom and sides of the boat were filled with foam for positive flotation. You could fill it with water and it wouldn't sink-but more to the point, the fiberglass and the foam would probably stop the bullets from a submachine gun. Jack checked his fellow passengers again. His wife was ministering to Sissy. The Princess held his daughter. Except for himself, Robby, and the Prince at the wheel, everyone's head was down. He started to relax slightly. They were away, and their fate was back in their own hands. Jack promised himself that this would never change again.
"They're coming after us," Robby said as he fed two rounds into the bottom of the shotgun. " 'Bout three hundred yards back. I saw them in the lightning, but they'll lose us in this rain if we're lucky."
"What would you call the visibility?"
"Except for the lightning"-Robby shrugged- "maybe a hot hundred yards, tops. We're not leaving a wake for them to follow, and they don't know where we're going." He paused. "God, I wish we had a radio! We could get the Coast Guard in on this, or maybe somebody else, and set up a nice little trap for them." Jack sat all the way down, facing aft on the opposite side of the engine box from his friend. He saw that his daughter was asleep in the arms of the Princess. It must be nice to be a kid, he reflected.
"Count your blessings, Commander."
"Bet your ass, boy! I guess I picked a good time to take a leak."
Ryan grunted agreement. "I didn't know you could handle a shotgun."
"Back when I was a kid, the Klan had this little hobby. They'd get boozed up every Tuesday night and burn down a nigger church-just to keep us in line, y'know? Well, one night, the sheetheads decided to burn my pappy's church. We got word-a liquor-store owner called; not all rednecks are assholes. Anyway, Pappy and me were waiting for them. Didn't kill any, but we must have scared them as white as their sheets. I blew the radiator right out of one car." Robby chuckled at the memory. "They never did come back for it. The cops didn't arrest anybody, but that's the last time anybody tried to burn a church in our town, so I guess they learned their lesson." He paused again. When he went on, his voice was more sober. "That's the first time I ever killed a man. Jack. Funny, it doesn't feel like anything, not anything at all."
"It will tomorrow."
Robby looked