Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

They were well past all the spots where they might have been able to run Arrow up onto shore and strand her above high water. They had been heading her down the middle of the channel, intending to drive her onto the mud flats at the top end of the inlet where it might be possible to salvage her later on. Joseph tapped a finger on their current position on the chart, and Danny knew that option was long gone. Arrow wouldn’t even make it halfway. They were currently in over a thousand feet of water in the middle of a steep-sided fjord where the depths carried right up to the steep bluffs that framed the inlet. In some places you could step off the bow of your boat straight onto shore without getting your feet wet and have a hundred feet of water under the keel.

But there were no other choices left now. They had run out of time. Joseph swung the tiller and Arrow made a slow, laborious waterlogged turn and ploughed towards the towering side of the inlet. Danny reached over the stern and grabbed the rope tied to the dugout canoe and pulled the little craft up onto the deck. It was a short lift now. When it floated free they would step into it and leave.

It took twenty minutes and they were still three hundred yards from shore when Arrow went. A long sighing exhalation as the displaced air rushed out past them and then the sound of bubbling waters flooding her as they stepped into the canoe and the boat dropped slowly out from under them. First the bow tilting down and then the stern sloping away and disappearing in eerie silence, the last thing seen her broken masts slanting forward and following Arrow out of sight as she slipped silently to her final resting place beneath the waters with the same grace she’d shown when she sailed above them. One last swirling circular eddy marking the spot, and then it was as though she’d never been.

When she’d disappeared for good, Danny turned away and picked up the crude paddle Joseph had fashioned from the split bowsprit and set to work with a vengeance. He thought it couldn’t be much over six miles, and the wind and tide were still with them. A half hour earlier he was on his last legs, exhausted and spent, but the sinking of Arrow had fuelled a residue of energy and rage that lifted him up and drove him onwards. He bent his head and flexed the paddle and thought of nothing but revenge. Joseph sat in the bow, setting the cadence and keeping the craft straight while Danny supplied the power in long curving strokes, his paddle tracing swirling curlicues in the water as he drove them on.

A half mile across and ahead of them towards the centre of the inlet, running lights showed through the darkness from a big pleasure boat labouring slowly up the inlet on a course parallel to theirs, the engines erratic, the RPMs rising up and falling down, the soft knocking apparent as the sound amplified and came across the water. Engine trouble, Danny guessed, and they were trying to make it to the head of the inlet where the water was shoal enough to drop anchor. He thought they would be lucky to get there, they were barely keeping pace with the canoe.

The dog lay between the two men, his head raised and nose up as he searched the wind for scent. He caught one coming down off the mountain in a katabatic puff of wind and the hairs rose on his back and he growled softly and switched his tail.

Bears, Danny thought as they flew up the inlet.

“Look at the dumb fucks pottering along,” Clint said. “What do they think, they’re invisible?”

“They don’t know we’re expecting them,” Albright said, taking a slug of his whisky and espresso. Mixed together, they wired him like nothing else. Fuck Red Bull. He rolled his neck and flexed his shoulders in anticipation as he loosened up, his eyes bright, a grin stapled to his face.

“They think they’re going to take us by surprise.”

Albright had known about Legalese and the extra crew she’d taken on board since the moment she’d left the dock. He’d never underestimated Clarke and had given one of the dock boys at the club a retainer to keep an eye on Legalese and let him know the minute she left her berth. When the man phoned and told him about Ivery and Rodgers, Albright promised him a bonus. He never doubted for a second that they were coming for him or that they would find him. He was ecstatic. This was Albright’s final gift from the gods, and it was more than he could ever have imagined. A fight to the death in the northern fjord with the snow-capped mountains witnessing the epic final battle? It was Götterdämmerung and he was Siegfried.

It was perfect that he would have a chance to defeat Rodgers, what more could he ask for? The man was a giant, one of Nietzsche’s supermen, and it was Albright’s manifest destiny to destroy him. He knew he could take the big man if his body didn’t let him down. Albright realized now it was everything he had trained for all those hours. He could hardly wait. He was fairly bouncing with anticipation and took another long drink. A tremor shook his hand as he set the glass down and he clamped it tight with the other until it faded. The sooner the better now.

“It’s the fat cop at the wheel,” Travis said. “With this set-up, I think I could take him out from here. No sign of the other two. Must be back in the main cabin.” When he looked through the night scope on the .308 rifle, it made the inside of the wheelhouse as bright