Blue Gold

Up.

Down.

Up.

"Now!" he yelled.

The space between the racing boats narrowed to inches. Zavala eased the steering wheel to the right. It was a delicate maneuver. If it were done too sharply, they would hook hulls and possibly flip into the air in a lethal tangle. There was a loud hollow thump and a screech of tortured carbon composite as the hulls came together, then bounced apart. Zavala brought the boat over again and held it firmly in position. The wheel wanted to tear itself out of his hands.

Austin gu

"Haul off, Joe!" Ali's boat surged ahead on a track that would miss the yacht's stern and sped toward the flotilla. Boats scattered like dry leaves in a wind. Austin knew that battering Ali's boat off course would send the Red Ink off like a cue ball in a game of billiards. He hadn't counted on how long it would take to persuade the Carpet to take a hike. Now he and Joe were hurtling toward the moving yacht with only seconds to spare before they struck it. They could see the horrified expressions of the people on deck. The boat was going seventy-five miles an hour. Even if he shut down the engines, he and Zavala would have to be scraped off the wooden sides of the old boat.

"What now?" Zavala yelled. "Stay on course," Austin shouted. Zavala swore softly under his breath. He had every confidence in Austin's ability to get them out of a tight spot, but sometimes his partner's actions defied all logic. If Zavala thought the order meant certain suicide, he didn't show it. His every instinct told him to whip the wheel over and take his chances, but he grimly held their insane course as steadily as if the two-hundred-foot boat that filled his vision like a big white wall were nothing but a mirage. He gritted his teeth and tensed his body in preparation for the impact.

"Duck," Austin ordered. "Keep your head low. I'm going to stuff it. "

He bent and gu

The boat passed under the moving yacht, but not quite deep enough to prevent its canopies from being ripped off. There was a sickening watery crunch. The whirling propellers missed their heads by inches. Then the catamaran passed under the yacht and emerged on the other side. Exploding from the water like a very large and very red flying fish, it came to a halt as the burbling engines stalled out in a cloud of purple smoke.

The boat was built with an interior cage that could resist a herd of overweight elephants. The canopies were more vulnerable. Both Plexiglas covers had been completely ripped off. The cockpits were taking in seas as the boat rocked in the waves.

Zavala coughed out a mouthful of seawater. "You okay?" he asked, a stu

Austin pulled his helmet off to reveal the thick head of platinum, almost white hair. He surveyed the propeller scars on the deck and realized how close they had cut it. "Still among the living," Austin replied, "but I don't think the Red Ink was designed to be a convertible."

Zavala felt the water around his waist. "Time to abandon ship."

"Consider it an order," Austin said, loosening his harness. They piled out of the boat into the sea. As part of their certification, racers must pass a dunk test. A cabin cruiser came over and hauled them dripping from the water minutes before the Red Ink went to the bottom.

"What happened to the gold race boat?" Austin asked the cruiser's owner, a pipe-smoking middle-aged man who had come out of San Diego to watch the race and got more than he bar gained for. He pointed off in the distance with the stem of his pipe. "Over there. The guy plowed right through the fleet. Don't know how he missed hitting the other boats."

"Mind if we check them out?"

"No problem," the man said obligingly as he put the wheel over.

Moments later they pulled up alongside the F7~7ing Carpet. The canopies had been pushed back. Austin saw to his relief that the men inside were alive, although blood streamed down Ali's head where he'd bashed it, and Hank looked as if he were nursing a bad hangover.

Austin called out, "Are you injured?"

"No," Ali replied, although he didn't look quite convinced of his own well-being. "What happened?"

"You hit a whale."

"A what?" When he saw Austin's serious expression, Ali's face fell. "Guess we didn't win," he said glumly.

"Don't feel bad," Austin said. "At least your boat doesn't lie on the sea floor."

"Sorry," Ali said sadly. Then he brightened as a thought hit him. "Then you didn't win, either."

"Au contraire," Austin said. "All four of us won the prize for being the luckiest men alive."

Ali nodded. "Praise Allah," he said a second before he passed out.

Chapter 3

Venezuelan Rain Forest

The Thick Canopy of overhanging tree branches blotted out the sun's rays, making the black water in the still pool seem deeper than it was. Wishing that she hadn't read that the Venezuelan government was reintroducing man-eating Orinoco crocodiles into the wild, Gamay Morgan Trout jackknifed her lithe body in a surface dive and with strong kicks of her slender legs descended into the Stygian darkness. This must be how a prehistoric animal felt sinking into the ooze at the La Brea tar pits in California, Gamay thought. She flicked on the twin halogen lights attached to her Stingray video camera and swam down to the bottom. As she passed over the spinachy vegetation that rose and fell in the slight current as if dancing to music, something poked her in the buttocks.

She whirled around, almost more indignant than scared, her hand going for the sheath knife at her waist. Inches from her face mask was a long, narrow snout attached to a lumpish pink head with small black eyes. The snout waggled back and forth like a scolding finger. Gamay unclenched her hand from the knife hilt and pushed the snout aside.

"Watch it with that thing!" The sentence streamed out the regulator as a stream of noisy bubbles.

The thin beak opened in a friendly, sharp-toothed circus clown's grin. Then the river dolphin's face rotated so that it was looking at her upside down.

Gamay laughed, the sounds coming out like the gurgles Old Faithful makes before it erupts. Her thumb pressed the valve that allowed air to inflate her buoyancy compensator. Within seconds her head broke the pool's calm surface like a jack-in-the box. She leaned back into her inflated BC, whipped the plastic mouthpiece from between her teeth, and broke into a wide grin.

Paul Trout was sitting in his ten-foot Bombard semi-inflatable boat a few yards away. Doing his job as a dive tender, he had followed the foamy air bursts marking his wife's underwater trail. He was startled to see her emerge from the black water and nonplussed at her mirth. Lips pursed in puzzlement, he lowered his head in a characteristic pose, as if he were peering up over the tops of invisible spectacles.