The Saboteurs by Clive Cussler (top 10 best books of all time .TXT) 📗

soon as he was in the driver’s seat, he reversed the boat away from the pier, slipping the nose around with barely enough room. As soon as the bow was clear, he rammed the T-shaped throttle lever to the stops. The burbling engine changed beat in an instant and snarled like a predatory cat, a rooster tail of water thrown up by its prop dousing the people on the dock with spray as thick as custard.

Bell couldn’t hear the crack of the guns over the roar of the runabout’s unmuffled engine, but he saw the gunwale at his elbow partially shredded by bullets. Two holes were punched through the windscreen, leaving a spiderweb of cracks that grew and merged as the sleek craft accelerated into Glorietta Bay. It was only sheer luck that saved him from a bullet to the back of the skull.

Moments later, he estimated their speed at better than twenty knots. Bell felt a measure of relief and finally looked behind him to ask the Senator if he was okay. Densmore was sitting up on the leather bench seat and he looked ruffled and foul-tempered but unhurt. Bell didn’t bother asking. He saw another boat rocket away from the marina at that moment, and while it was far too dark to tell, years of experience told him the three Panamanians had reached their own motor launch.

Bell had unwittingly led himself and the Senator along the gunmen’s own preplanned escape route, and now the pursuit was about to continue across the waters off San Diego.

He swapped out his .45’s magazine, reseating the one with two missing rounds into his shoulder holster. His jacket flapped distractingly around his torso, so he shrugged out of it and stuffed it behind the back of his seat. Densmore clambered into the seat to Bell’s left.

“You are a madman, I tell you,” he shouted over the wind.

“You’re welcome, but don’t thank me yet. They’re chasing us.”

Densmore looked incredulous. “Thank you? You nearly got me killed.”

“You’d be dead right now if it weren’t for me, Senator. They were there to assassinate you.”

He closed his slack-jawed mouth. It was clear that such a thought hadn’t occurred to him. “I, ah . . . Umm . . . I assumed they were after Major Talbot because of his activities in Panama.”

“Talbot’s nothing,” Bell said, checking over his shoulder the gunmen’s progress. They were definitely gaining. “Killing a Senator in his home state would give Viboras Rojas credibility in Panama and, more importantly, gain the interest of foreign powers who aren’t too enthusiastic about the United States controlling something as strategic as a trans-isthmus canal.”

“I hadn’t considered that,” the politician admitted. After a minute or so he asked, “What now?”

They had just swung out of Glorietta Bay and were racing across the calm waters of San Diego Bay proper. The city was a yellow glow against the darkness surrounding them. Overhead, the stars shone bright because the moon was but a mere sliver no bigger than an ironic smile.

Off to their right, the two warships were lit with strings of lights running from bow to stern and up to the tops of their towering radio masts.

Bell looked back. The gunmen were in a wooden cabin cruiser much larger than the runabout he’d commandeered. A spotlight attached to the right of the boat’s cockpit sent out a probing finger of illumination that quickly found the thick, boiling wake of Bell’s craft and soon followed the luminescent path to the runabout. Bell turned away before the light hit his eyes and ruined his night vision. It was painfully clear that he and the Senator wouldn’t be able to outrun them.

“Okay, then,” he muttered to himself. “Out-think them.”

The Panamanians were forty yards back when the machine gunner triggered off a seconds-long blast that stitched the harbor with dozens of tiny geysers. He tried to zero in on the runabout, but his boat was bobbing across the wake. Bell cut some quick zigzags to throw off the gunner’s aim even more.

Densmore had the sense to stay low behind the protection of the big marine engine.

They will get closer, Bell thought grimly, and the shooter will open up at point-blank range and demolish the runabout’s cockpit. He doubted his .45 would yield much by way of results against the sturdy-looking cruiser running them down like a hunting dog.

As if thinking it made it happen, the driver of the pursuing boat halved the distance, and the Lewis gun barked again. This time, the runabout’s fantail came alive with slashing geysers, and several rounds slammed into the transom, some hitting the motor and ricocheting up through the waxed wood of the engine housing.

Bell immediately eased back on the throttle and cranked the wheel hard to the right, using the palm of his hand to spin it faster, and no sooner had they dropped off plane and changed direction, he straightened the rudder and had the engine bellowing at max power once again.

The cabin cruiser’s driver wasted seconds before reacting to Bell’s quick maneuver. He finally cranked his wheel to maintain the chase but hadn’t slowed. The boat canted too far, allowing water to curl over its gunwale and begin filling the large cockpit. In a panic, the driver chopped the throttles to neutral, and the bow dipped and plowed into a creaming wave of its own making. More water flew up and over the windshield, dousing the men with brine.

Bell drove hard for the two white-hulled warships.

A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed what his ears had already told him. There were wisps of gray smoke rising up through the new bullet holes, and more smoke than normal gushed from the exhaust. That last fusillade had hit home. He could hear the change in the engine’s beat. The block wasn’t cracked—the motor would have seized instantly—but something vital had been hit, and the boat was burning through its finite supply of lubricating oil.

There was no way to know how much time they had, but, once the engine died, they were