Tahoe Ghost Boat (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller) (30 page)

“Yeah,” Gertie said.

“Where do you think the sound is coming from?”

“I don’t know. Maybe behind us?”

“Do you think the sound is moving?” I asked.

“No. Yes. It’s just kind of wavering. It’s doing a soft wa, wa, wa.”

What Gertie said made me uneasy.

“I think the hum is getting louder,” she said.

I remembered that the lady in the cabin across the highway from Craig Gower’s and Ian Lassitor’s houses talked about the ghost boat moaning. Could it be that the ghost boat was out on the lake? I didn’t know what to think of the idea. But if any boat was on the lake, I could use the direction and movement of its sound to get a general sense of where land might be by the simple awareness that a boat can’t go on land. So if a boat noise came from the south and went north – as the eccentric lady described the ghost boat – then I could turn the kayak until the track of the sound was behind us. If I paddled forward, I’d likely hit land. It wasn’t foolproof, and I’d already proven that I was a fool for getting lost at sea.

But what if the boat was swooping in and out near the shoreline? Then I was out of luck.

Now it was obvious that the hum was getting louder. Although I was no marine expert, it sounded to me like an outboard motor. The sound of the boat hitting the waves had a metallic quality to it, like the sound I’d often heard with small aluminum fishing boats.

The wa, wa rise and fall that Gertie mentioned grew in my mind to the regular bounce of a boat going across regular waves. At first, I was skeptical of my guesses. But as the boat grew a bit louder, I started to think that maybe I wasn’t too far from reality.

In a little bit, the sound made a small jump in volume. I tried to guess why. The pitch of the motor hadn’t changed, so there was no rise-and-fall Doppler shift like when a train goes by on the track. Maybe the boat was near shore and it came around a point so that now its sound was in direct line with us. If so, we should be able to see its lights.

I looked in the direction of the sound. There was nothing to see. The sound was now loud enough that there was no doubt about its source. Our kayak sat low in the water. Perhaps the boat’s lights were out of sight behind waves. Or maybe the sound coming over the water was playing tricks, and the boat was actually still miles away. In that case, the curve of the earth could block the lights. Either way, it wouldn’t be long if it kept coming closer.

After another minute, it was obvious that the boat was getting close, but no lights showed. The driver was committing a serious error in piloting his boat without running lights. The eccentric lady said the ghost boat had no lights. I dismissed it. But maybe she was right. When another minute had passed, I made an obvious, but startling, realization. The sound had gotten louder, but the direction of its source hadn’t changed. Simple geometry meant the boat was coming toward us.

We had no lights, either. Two boats striking each other out in the lake was a very unlikely event. But if the other boat did, in fact, have no running lights, and if it were on a collision course with us, I had only its sound to avoid it.

Gertie turned around and looked behind us. It was dark, but there was enough cloud light that I could see the fear in her face.

I started paddling, trying to go left at a 90-degree angle to the course of the incoming boat. I thought about how you can’t outrun a tornado, so you go at right angles to it. We couldn’t outrun any motor boat. But by turning more to the left and paddling fast, we could easily get out of its way.

I stroked hard. The sound of the boat got louder. What was its driver thinking?

I adjusted my course even more to the left. The approaching boat got louder still.

It still sounded like an outboard on a runabout, and the pitch of the engine sound hadn’t changed. But the engine seemed to be running at a much higher throttle setting than I’d earlier thought. The closer the boat got, the more its engine seemed to race. I paddled harder. Left side, right side, left side.

I glanced around behind us. There were still no running lights on the approaching boat. I saw nothing in the darkness. As I turned more to the left, the boat always seemed to be coming from behind us. But we had no running lights, either. And as a human-powered boat, we made no sound.

I started to wonder about the worst scenario. What if Mikhailo or one of his men were out on the lake, trying to kill us?

But there was no way for someone driving a boat in the night to know where we were. It made no sense. We were invisible. Yet we were being chased. Maybe the woman was right. Maybe there was a ghost boat. Maybe it was chasing us.

The boat seemed to roar behind us.

Gertie turned around in her seat again. Her face showed the strain of horror.

I paddled furiously as the boat behind us came closer, its whine like the growl of a night predator chasing down its prey. I turned again. Paddled harder. But no matter what I did, the dark, unseen, ghost boat followed us. By some magic, its captain could see us in the dark.

In a moment, Gertie’s face transformed from concern into a fright mask. She screamed.

The sound behind us multiplied. I jerked my head around to see.

In the dark gray of the last twilight, I saw the shine of an aluminum hull’s bow hit a wave behind us and loft into the air. The boat was a touch to the right of our stern, but it was going to slam down onto our kayak.

I stabbed the right blade of my paddle down into the water and jerked it back through the water with as much power as I had.

Our kayak’s bow lifted and turned left. My effort pushed the stern down into the black water as the kayak arced to the left.

The ghost boat slammed down onto the waves. The left part of its hull hit the right side of our kayak. Gertie gasped. The kayak bounced left. Water rushed into the kayak. The ghost boat’s momentum carried it forward. I strained as I made another paddle stroke with maximum power and speed. We pulled farther to the left. The ghost boat continued forward at high throttle. I turned to watch it go, to see the crazy, idiot skipper. But the boat went into the darkness, and I couldn’t see anything.

Our kayak sloshed with the water we’d taken onboard, but it was still floating. Gertie was crying, and I couldn’t get enough air. I continued paddling into the darkness. I didn’t know which way was land and which way was sea. I just wanted to put distance between us and the boat that nearly destroyed us.

But by my third paddle stroke, a chill permeated my body.

The sound of the ghost boat was changing. It twisted in the night, unseen, but heard. And then it began to get louder.

The boat was coming back to run us down again.

But we were invisible! We were a silent kayak in the darkness!

I was frantic. I couldn’t breathe. The racing motor grew in the night. How could the driver know where we were?! He had no searchlight. Even with an infrared scope, the waves would make it nearly impossible to see us.

Then I had an idea. Maybe it was crazy, but everything about this was crazy.

“Gertie,” I shouted. “Take off your hoodie!”

She turned, horrified at my own craziness.

“Take it off!” I shouted.

“But it’s under your jacket!”

“Take off the jacket. Then take off the hoodie. Throw the hoodie overboard! Hurry!”

She struggled with my jacket. The zipper wouldn’t work.

The ghost boat was coming closer.

The sleeve caught as Gertie tried to pull her arm out. She pulled the jacket over her head, but her hand was still stuck inside the sleeve.

“Pull it off!” I shouted as the ghost boat bore down on us from the side.

Gertie leaned her arm and jacket back behind her seat as if I could help. I grabbed the fabric. Set my paddle down across my lap. Reached for her arm with my other hand. Pulled. Jerked. Gertie cried out. I gritted my teeth and ripped the jacket off her arm.

The ghost boat roared toward us.

I dropped the jacket across my knees and grabbed Gertie’s hoodie at the top of her head. “Lift your arms up!”

She did as told. I pulled the hoodie up and off her. I felt her hair get caught in the fabric.

The ghost boat was almost on us, its engine at full throttle.

I pulled on the hoodie, felt Gertie’s hair tear. She made a small whimper but didn’t scream.

The hoodie came off. I balled it up and threw it over my head behind us. Then I grabbed the paddle and took multiple fast strokes, straining arm and back muscles to make the kayak shoot forward in the water. Left side, right side, left side, right side.

The ghost boat went from loud sound to sudden apparition in the night, bouncing on the waves, slamming shiny aluminum hull against black water as it bore down on us. It was twenty feet away, about to cut us in two, when it veered slightly away, behind us, and missed our stern by inches.

I paddled again, turning away from the ghost boat, trying to get some distance between us. Another boat appeared in the dark. It was motionless, moored to a buoy. Then came another buoy without a boat. We were near a marina of some kind. Or a residential area with boat moorings. I kept paddling. More buoys appeared, all floating quietly in the harsh winter waters waiting for spring when a plethora of boats would be brought out of storage to spend the summer on the lake.

The sound of the ghost boat changed once again, signaling another change in its course as it came around in another high-speed arc. I paddled faster, trying to get away. But this time the boat’s sound didn’t get much louder. Maybe it was still chasing us. Maybe not. I turned to watch and saw a vague movement in the dark as if the ghost boat were circling back toward the hoodie. But its path was interrupted when it hit the moored boat broadside. There was a tremendous screech of ripping metal. Crunching, splintering noises. A miniature meteor streak of sparks flew like fireworks. Then came a small flame, followed by a muffled explosion. A fireball the size of a compact car blinded me as it rose into the sky. Yellow light glowed bright on the side of Gertie’s face. Heat radiation was hot on our skin.

 Flaming debris arced through the night, curved streams of fire trailing gray smoke plumes. The fireball puffed out in a second. There was a ring of fire on the water’s surface as gas and oil burned. Burning debris hissed as the shattered boat hulls sank into the water. Soon, there was only a choppy scatter of flaming detritus. What we could see of the wreckage disappeared beneath the water. Two minutes later, the last of the fires went out.

I never heard the skipper call out. I never saw any other movement. But the collision was forceful enough that whatever ghostly skipper was onboard, he would have either been badly hurt or flung forward into the night.

But maybe there was no skipper at all.

FORTY-THREE

I had no desire to paddle back and no light with which to inspect whatever debris remained. If there was a skipper trying to swim in the freezing water, it didn’t bother me to leave him. He was an attempted murderer. Trying to save him would just give him an opportunity to grab onto our kayak, tip it over, and drown us.

“Here’s my jacket,” I said to Gertie. “You’ll want to put it back on.” She took it and, without unzipping it, pulled it over her head like a huge sweater. It engulfed her, and it took a moment for her to find the neck opening and get her head through it.

“Why did you have me take off my hoodie?” she cried, her voice shaky with fear and trauma.

“I don’t know if I’m right, but the boat that nearly killed us found us in the dark. We should have been invisible, but we weren’t. Your captors made you wear that hoodie. It seemed like it was about keeping your face out of view when they brought you up from Sacramento. But I’m guessing it was also a way to track you in case you got away. It may have had some kind of electronic chip sewn into it.”

Gertie didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then she said, “The hoodie had a drawstring at the hem. The logo tag on the end of the drawstring was thick. Like the key fob for my dad’s car. Could that be it?”

“That’s what I’m thinking, yes.”

“And they could, like, home in on me wherever I was?”

“Yeah. GPS or something. Maybe the boat chasing us was automated.”

She went silent.

I paddled slowly and quietly in case someone on the shore had seen the collision and fire and was looking out toward us. We came upon another empty buoy. From it, I ventured this way and that, my eyes gradually regaining their night vision. The snow increased, making a constant mist of melting flakes on our faces. After a few minutes, I saw a looming presence of darkness more complete than the darkness on the water.

The shore.

I stayed close enough to land to keep sensing the darkness while I paddled north, parallel to the shoreline, staying close to not get lost. Maybe a mile later, I found another group of buoys, all without boats, save one. There was one lonely, dark sailboat, maybe thirty feet long. If we could get inside its cabin and keep it dark, it would be a good, safe place to spend the night.

We faced the stern of the boat as we approached. I could just make out the boat’s name in the dark. Nāmaka. I didn’t know the name, but it was probably something to do with sailing or water.

I pulled up next to the boat’s side. It was a deep-keel design with a high lifeline rail. From down on the water in the kayak, the sailboat’s hull was imposing. I reached up and grabbed one of the stanchions near the stern.

“Gertie, there’s a cable along the top edge of the boat,” I said in a whisper. “Like a really thin railing. Can you grab it?”

“I can’t see it.” Her voice was loud.

“Please talk quietly. Sound carries great distances over water.”

She lifted her arm but didn’t quite have the reach. “I’ll have to stand. Is that okay?” This time she whispered.

“Yeah. I’ll steady the kayak.”

I put one of the paddle blades into the water, ready to react if Gertie made the kayak rock too much. She stood up slowly, leaning one of her hands against the sailboat hull. The kayak was very tippy and it shook, transmitting her shakiness. She reached up and out, her hand sweeping the air. She waved her hand up and down, and her fingers touched the cable. She grabbed onto it.