The Furies (12 page)

At the same time, Ariel ripped off her scarf and sunglasses and drew her own gun. But she didn't aim it at the Rifleman. Instead, she pointed it straight up and fired into the air.

The noise was enormous. The carriage horse reared back on its hind legs, whinnying. Then it fell back on all fours and galloped down the pier toward the Rifleman, its hooves pounding the wooden boards.

The man stopped in his tracks. He raised his Glock and fired at the horse, but the shot went high and hit the carriage's awning. Then the terrified animal charged into him, knocking him to the side. He collapsed on the pier and the carriage's wheels ran over his legs. The horse kept galloping until it neared the crowd of tourists, who'd started running toward Main Street when they'd heard the gunshots. Then the animal pulled up short, frightened by the crowd's noise. Meanwhile, the Rifleman lay facedown on the boards, motionless. He was either dead or unconscious, it was impossible to tell.

Ariel had already put her gun back in the pocket of her down coat. Although everyone on the wharf had heard the shot, John doubted that anyone but him saw her pull the trigger. The panicked White Star Ferry employees fled right past John and Ariel, running away from the
Ojibway
and following the crowd to Main Street. John gazed down the pier and felt a pang of guilt when he saw Captain Dunn dashing toward the island. The poor man was probably scared out of his mind.

Within seconds the wharf was nearly deserted. Then John saw movement on the other wharf, the one with the line of tourists waiting to board the ferryboat going to St. Ignace. Another man in a black leather jacket ran down the pier, shouting into a handheld radio as he headed for Main Street. Two more Riflemen were already on the street, sprinting toward the White Star Ferry's wharf from the other side of town. Worst of all, John saw movement on the lake as well. He glimpsed a pair of sleek, neon-yellow speedboats about a mile to the southeast, racing toward Mackinac Island's harbor. He couldn't see the boats' pilots or passengers, but he was willing to bet they were Riflemen. The guy with the radio must've alerted them.

“More of them are coming,” he said, pointing them out to Ariel. “What do we do?”

For a moment she just stared at the speedboats. Then she twisted around in her wheelchair and focused on the
Ojibway
, now abandoned by the White Star Ferry crew. “I know about hydrojets,” she said. “I think I can pilot her.”

“Wait a second. You're talking about the ferryboat?”

“Just carry me up to the pilothouse, okay? I'll figure it out.”

“This is insane. You can't—”

“If you have a better plan, I'm all ears.”

In seconds they were back at the gangplank. John pushed the wheelchair onto the
Ojibway,
then lifted Ariel out of the chair, and carried her up the stairs to the upper deck. Then they rushed into the pilothouse, a simple room with a big, curved window looking out the front of the boat. A wooden ship's wheel stood in the center of the room, and next to it was a control board with lots of switches and throttles. It looked pretty damn complex, but Ariel wasn't fazed. She pointed at the padded chair behind the ship's wheel. “Set me down,” she ordered.

John lowered her into the chair. “Just one question. Have you ever driven a ferryboat before?”

“No.” She narrowed her eyes and studied the control board. “But I piloted a freighter once. That ship was twice as big as this one.” Leaning forward, she flicked a switch and pulled one of the throttles up. The deck rumbled as the
Ojibway
's engines roared to life. Ariel grinned. “There, that was easy. Now all we have to do is cast off. Go back down to the pier and untie the ropes from the bollards.”

He stared at her while she wiped the old-lady makeup from her face.
What's with this girl? How does she know so much?
The question bothered the hell out of him, but there was no time to think about it. He bolted out of the pilothouse and down the stairs to the gangplank.

The wharf was still deserted but Main Street was in an uproar. The tourists had stampeded away from the White Star Ferry and gathered in hysterical crowds at the north and south ends of the street. John saw no signs of the Mackinac Island police as he dashed across the gangplank. He assumed they were busy trying to control the crowds and hadn't figured out what was going on yet. For the first time he considered the consequences of what he was doing, how much trouble he'd get into if he hijacked the ferryboat. They'd probably throw him into state prison, ten years at the least. But right now he was more worried about Sullivan's men than the cops. He caught a glimpse of the three Riflemen at the Main Street end of the pier, where they'd stopped to regroup. They slowly approached their downed comrade, who'd started moaning and squirming on the dock. The men were cautious because they didn't understand what had happened to their friend, but John knew that any second now they'd go on the attack and rush down the pier. Meanwhile, he could hear the whine of the speedboats approaching the harbor.

John headed for one of the two bollards that the
Ojibway
was fastened to. It was a thick iron post at the edge of the pier, and the ferryboat's rope coiled around it in crisscrossing loops. He found the knotted end of the rope and started to unravel the loops, but it wasn't easy—his fingers grew numb as he tried to untangle the line, which was wet and cold. After struggling for several seconds, he managed to unwind the rope and toss it onto the deck of the ferryboat. But as he ran to the other bollard he knew he was out of time. The three Riflemen had stepped past their injured friend. They chose that moment to sprint down the pier, with their guns raised and pointed straight at John.

The first bullet whistled past his head as he dove for cover behind the bollard. The second hit the thick iron post, which rang with the impact. John fumbled at the coiled rope, but it was no use. The men kept shooting at him as they ran down the pier. Even if he managed to unfasten the line, he'd never make it across the gangplank. He was pinned down.

But John didn't panic. He kept working at the rope, loosening and unwinding it. He knew he wouldn't make it, but maybe Ariel could. He realized at that moment why she'd made such a big impression on him, why he'd sacrificed so much to help her get home. He'd fallen for Ariel because he had nothing else. He had no family anymore, no friends, no job. His life—his
real
life—had ended three years ago, when Ivy died. That's why he could stay so calm with all the bullets buzzing past.

The Riflemen were halfway down the pier by the time he freed the rope. He tossed the line over to the
Ojibway
and yelled,
“Go, Ariel!”
as loud as he could. While he gazed at the boat's upper deck, hoping she'd heard him, one of the Riflemen fired at the pilothouse. The bullet shattered the big, curved window at the front, spraying glass everywhere.

John's stomach lurched. All the strength seemed to drain from his limbs as he stared at the gaping hole where the window had been. Then he heard more gunshots, five of them in quick succession, but these shots came from the pilothouse, not the pier. One of the Riflemen tumbled backward and lay still. The other two stopped running and scrambled for cover, retreating toward the Main Street end of the wharf. Ariel had returned fire. There were no more tourists in the vicinity, so she was free to shoot at Sullivan's men.

And John was free to make a run for it. While the Riflemen retreated, he popped up from behind the bollard and charged toward the
Ojibway
. In no time at all he leaped across the gangplank, reaching the safety of the lower deck just as the bullets started flying again. Ariel must've been watching him from the pilothouse, because an instant later the ferryboat pulled away from the wharf. John retracted the boat's gangplank, manhandling it onto the deck, and then the
Ojibway
set out for the open waters of Lake Huron.

 

 

They headed northeast, with the pair of neon-yellow speedboats about a quarter mile behind them. Ariel throttled up the engines, pushing the pump-jets as far as they could go. John stood in the pilothouse behind Ariel's seat, looking over her shoulder at the control board. The needle on the speedometer pointed at 45 knots. He didn't know how many miles per hour that was, but judging from the way the boat was bouncing on the surface of the lake, he guessed it was pretty fast. The wind and spray blew into the pilothouse through the broken front window, coating their faces with cold droplets.

The speedboats were faster, though. After a few minutes they were less than a hundred yards behind the
Ojibway
, one on the left side of the ferry's wake and the other on the right, both clearly visible through the still-intact window at the back of the pilothouse. They were close enough now that John could see who was inside them. Sitting in each boat were two red-haired Riflemen, a pilot and a passenger, and each of the passengers carried an M4. As John stared at the men, they raised their carbines and aimed at the ferryboat.

In one swift motion he grabbed Ariel by the waist and pulled her off the pilot's chair, covering her body with his as they hit the floor. The bullets crashed through the back window of the pilothouse and shattered the glass, but luckily none of the shards hit them. After a brief pause the Riflemen fired a second barrage that struck the steel wall of the pilothouse below the window. Although some of the bullets dented the metal, they couldn't penetrate the wall. John breathed a sigh of relief. As long as he and Ariel stayed low, they'd be safe. “You okay?” he asked as he slid off her.

She nodded. Sitting up on the floor, she gripped the ship's wheel and straightened out the
Ojibway,
which had skewed to the left. “You'll be my eyes,” she said. “Go take a peek out the front and see if we're still going in the right direction.”

“Uh, it would help if I knew where we're headed.”

“They're called Les Cheneaux, a bunch of small islands off the shoreline of the U.P. I know the area, it's treacherous for boaters. Lots of shoals and shallow spots.”

John crept to the front of the pilothouse and peeked out the gaping window. The wooded shore of the Upper Peninsula stretched across the northern horizon. To the northeast, the shoreline turned jagged, pocked with dozens of islands and inlets. The nearest island was nothing but a long ridge of sand and shrubs. “Yeah, the islands are up ahead. Most of them are still pretty far off, but it looks like the closest one is only a couple of miles away.”

“That's Goose Island. And there should be a shoal in front of it, about—”

Another barrage from one of the M4s hammered the boat. Again, John heard the sound of glass breaking. The noise came from the left side of the boat, probably the windows on the lower deck. “Jesus!” he cried. “Are they trying to hit the engines?”

Ariel shook her head. “The pump-jets are deep within the hull. And so are the gas tanks. Don't worry, the M4s can't hurt us.”

As if in response, the Riflemen fired their carbines yet again. This time the bullets smashed the windows on the right side of the lower deck.

John had a bad feeling about this. He suspected that the Riflemen weren't shooting randomly. Their targeting was too deliberate, always focused on the
Ojibway
's windows. They had a strategy, and he needed to figure it out. Creeping past Ariel, he went to the broken window at the back of the pilothouse and cautiously raised his head. The speedboats were only thirty yards away now, one on each side of the ferry. In the boat on the left, the passenger put down his M4 and reached inside a long black case. The Rifleman seemed to be assembling something, taking pieces out of the case and putting them together. It was probably another weapon, John guessed, but he didn't know for sure until he glanced at the boat on the right. The passenger there had completed the assembly process and propped the weapon on his shoulder. John recognized the thing from TV news programs he'd seen, footage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

“Shit!” He looked over his shoulder at Ariel. “They got RPGs! They're gonna shoot a grenade through the broken windows!”

Her reaction was instantaneous. She spun the ship's wheel, and the
Ojibway
swung to the left. At the same moment, the Rifleman fired his RPG. As John lurched to the side, trying to stay on his feet, he saw the grenade rocketing over the lake, propelled by a long tail of flame. It looked like it was heading straight for him, and it was moving so fast he didn't even have time to duck. But the ferryboat's sudden turn shifted the pilothouse by a few crucial yards, and the grenade sailed past them, arcing over the upper deck. It dove into the lake instead, on the other side of the ferry, and the explosion lifted a plume of water twenty feet into the air.

John stood there, breathless. The boat rocked under his feet as he stared at the plume. He turned to Ariel and saw that she'd climbed back into the pilot's seat. She was jerking the ship's wheel back and forth, performing evasive maneuvers. The
Ojibway
zigzagged as it sped across the lake.

“Are you crazy?” he shouted. “Get down from the chair!”

“I have to see where we're going. I'm looking for a buoy.” She pointed at the broken window at the front of the pilothouse. “Get over there and help me look.”

“They can see you when you're sitting there! And if they can see you, they can shoot you!”

“The RPGs are the bigger problem now. The next one could sink us.” She spun the ship's wheel clockwise, then counter, making the boat tilt like a carnival ride. “Come on, look for the buoy. It's red and black and shaped like a cone.”

John grunted, “Jesus!” in exasperation, but he made his way to the front of the pilothouse. With the boat rocking so violently, it was difficult to see anything at all through the window. He felt dizzy as he stared at the horizon, which skewed up and down with every turn of the ship's wheel. After a few seconds, though, he spotted a flash of color on the gray surface of Lake Huron. The buoy looked like a dunce's cap, red at the tip and black below. “Off to the right!” he shouted, pointing in that direction. “About half a mile away. See it?”