The Furies (13 page)

“Yeah, perfect.” Ariel turned the wheel again, aiming for the buoy. Then she reached into the pocket of her down coat and pulled out the Glock. “Here, take this. There's nine bullets left.”

She held out the pistol, keeping the muzzle pointed at the floor. John stepped toward her, but he was reluctant to take it. He knew how to handle a Glock—he'd trained with semiautomatics during his brief time in the army, and even before then he'd done some target shooting when he was with the Disciples—but he'd never actually fired a gun in anger. “I have to warn you, I'm not a great shot,” he said as Ariel handed him the pistol. “I don't know if I can hit those speedboats.”

“You don't have to hit them. Just make them back off.”

He stumbled to the back window of the pilothouse, keeping his head low. Glancing at the speedboats, he saw that the Rifleman on the right was busy loading another grenade into his launcher but the one on the left had already hoisted his weapon to his shoulder. So that's where John aimed the Glock. He cocked the pistol and gripped its handle with both hands to keep it steady. Then he took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

The gun bucked in his hands and the bullet didn't go anywhere near the speedboat, but the Rifleman took cover anyway, ducking behind the boat's windscreen. John fired again and the bullet hit the water in front of the boat, which slowed down and fell behind the
Ojibway
. Before he could try a third shot, though, the Rifleman dropped his grenade launcher and picked up his M4. John knew he was outgunned, so he crouched below the window. A moment later the return fire battered the pilothouse.

Some of the bullets zinged inside and ricocheted off the ceiling, but Ariel stayed in the pilot's seat, steering the
Ojibway
toward the buoy. She passed to the left of it, then spun the ship's wheel to the right, turning the ferryboat so sharply it felt like they were going to tip over. This maneuver moved them away from the Rifleman with the M4, but it put the
Ojibway
directly in the path of the other speedboat. John dared a look out the back window and saw the speedboat's pilot change course, steering to the right to stay abreast of the ferry. By this point the Rifleman beside the pilot had reloaded his grenade launcher, and now he pointed the tube at the
Ojibway
's pilothouse. John raised his Glock, but he was too late. The Rifleman had already aimed the RPG and was ready to fire. He had an easy shot.

Then the speedboat's bow suddenly tilted upward. The front of the boat rose high and fast, as if it had been jerked toward heaven by an invisible string. The bow kept climbing until it pointed at the sky and the boat came out of the water completely, its screw propellers spinning in midair. Then the speedboat flipped over and came crashing down, breaking into pieces of fiberglass as it scudded across the lake.

“Mother of Creation!” Ariel shouted. “It worked!”

John stared at the wreckage. Amid the broken sections of the boat's hull, he saw one of the Riflemen floating facedown. “What worked?”

“They hit the shoal, the Goose Island shoal. That's why the buoy's there, to mark the hazard, but they weren't paying attention.”

She kept turning the
Ojibway
to the right, steering the ferryboat in a circle around a patch of dark water. This area looked different from the rest of the lake because there were rocks just below the surface. It was so shallow that several pieces of the wrecked speedboat lay on the rocks and poked out of the water. Another corpse was there too, bloody and twisted. Ariel shook her head at the sight.

Meanwhile, the other speedboat came to a stop just a few yards shy of the buoy. As the pilot turned the boat away from the shoal, the passenger picked up his RPG launcher. John pointed the Glock at him and fired, but this time the Rifleman didn't duck. Unflinching, he propped the launch tube on his shoulder while the bullet streaked into the water nearby. John fired again and again, almost hitting the boat, but the guy calmly aimed his weapon at the
Ojibway,
which was coming around the other side of the shoal and heading straight for him.

John turned to Ariel. “What the hell are you doing?”

“No more running.” Her face was grim. She furrowed her brow and pressed her lips together. “It's time to end this.”

“You're giving him a clear shot!”

In response, she throttled up the engines and the ferryboat leaped forward. Looking through the front window they saw the Rifleman point his grenade launcher at them. John pulled the trigger of his Glock one more time, praying for a miracle, and in the same instant the Rifleman fired his RPG.

The explosion knocked John off his feet. He fell sideways to the steel floor, which thumped and trembled. But he was alive, still alive. He wasn't even bleeding. The grenade hadn't entered the pilothouse. Ariel had thrown off the Rifleman's aim by pointing the
Ojibway
right at him. Instead of blasting them to bits, the grenade had hurtled through the broken windows on the lower deck and exploded there.

Even more remarkable, Ariel still sat in the pilot's chair. Hanging on to the ship's wheel for dear life, she kept the ferryboat on course as it shuddered from the blast. Then John felt another thump from below, a massive jolt accompanied by the sound of breaking fiberglass. The ferry's bow jumped into the air and splashed back down to the water.

John waited a moment for the rocking to subside, then pulled himself to his feet. He looked out the front window of the pilothouse but couldn't find the speedboat. Then he looked out the back window and saw more wreckage floating in the lake. The prow of the
Ojibway
had smashed the speedboat, splitting it in two. The bodies of the Riflemen bobbed in the ferry's wake.

Stunned, he turned back to Ariel, who was still gripping the ship's wheel. Her face was blank now. She didn't look triumphant, not by a long shot. Head bowed, she stared at the floor. Although Sullivan's men were her enemies, they were also her cousins. And she'd just killed four of them.

 

 

The
Ojibway
was still speeding across Lake Huron, but after a few seconds the ferryboat shuddered again. The walls of the pilothouse vibrated and the floor rumbled. Snapping out of her trance, Ariel lifted her head and throttled down the engines, slowing the ferry to a crawl. In the sudden silence, they heard bangs and clanks coming from the lower deck.

She bit her lower lip. “That doesn't sound good. You better get down there and see what's going on.”

John nodded, then left the pilothouse. He walked past the rows of empty seats on the upper deck and headed for the stairs at the boat's stern. Halfway down the steps, he noticed the first signs of damage to the lower deck: gaping windows, charred walls, hard-plastic seats scattered everywhere. As he stepped farther down, he saw the jagged hole in the deck that marked the place where the grenade had exploded. The force of the blast had punched through the rivet joints in the floor, and black oily smoke rose from the gaps between the steel plates. The engine room had clearly been damaged, but John couldn't tell how serious the problem was. He noticed, though, that the ferryboat was listing to one side. They were taking on water.

He raced back to Ariel, who'd turned the boat toward an inlet between two of the small islands off the Upper Peninsula. The
Ojibway
was moving like an old man, making slow, halting progress. “How bad is it?” she asked.

“There's smoke coming from the engines. And I think there's water coming through the hull.”

“But we're not swamped yet, right?”

“No, but the ship's going down. We have to take one of the lifeboats.”

She shook her head. “The lifeboats are too slow. Sullivan has more men out there, on the lake and on the land. And they're communicating by radio, so they know where we are. If we take a lifeboat, they'll catch us before we get to shore.”

“Maybe you didn't hear me. This ferry's going to sink.”

“Well, let's get a little closer to home before that happens, okay?” With a grin, she reached for the control board and pulled up the throttles.

The engines clanked and sputtered, but after a moment the
Ojibway
shot forward. A breeze whipped through the broken windows as they rushed toward the islands, which were thick with trees but had no houses or docks. The inlet between the islands was less than fifty yards wide, but Ariel expertly guided the boat into the channel. John was impressed. “You've done this before?”

“I told you, I know the area. Haven is only ten miles north of here. I've canoed every inch of Les Cheneaux.” She gave him another grin, then pointed at the Glock that lay on the floor of the pilothouse. John had dropped it when the RPG hit the boat. “Can you check the gun's magazine? I want to know how many bullets are left.”

He picked up the pistol and ejected the magazine. It was empty. “Uh, it looks like I shot them all.”

She frowned. “Okay, here's what we'll do. Once we get ashore, we'll go a couple of miles inland to a hiding place I know about. Then we'll wait till nightfall and hike the rest of the way to Haven.”

Although this plan sounded reasonable, John felt uneasy. He tried to think of other options, turning away from the window so he could concentrate. As he stared at the side wall of the pilothouse he noticed a small cabinet with a glass door. Inside the cabinet was an odd-looking pistol with an oversized barrel, colored fire-engine red. He opened the glass door and removed the gun. “Hey, maybe we could use this. It looks like it fires shotgun shells.”

Ariel chuckled. “That's a flare gun. You shoot it in the air if there's an emergency and you want someone to rescue you.”

He felt embarrassed for a moment, but as he stared at the gun he still thought it could be useful. “The shell lights up and burns, right? So you can see it from miles away?”

“I know what you're thinking, but it won't work. A flare gun isn't a good weapon. The flare doesn't move as fast as a bullet, so it just bounces off whatever it hits. The only way it can hurt you is if it gets caught in your clothes and sets them on fire.”

“It's better than nothing.” He tucked the gun in the back of his pants and covered it with the tail of his shirt.

Soon they traversed the inlet and entered a calm bay between the islands and the Upper Peninsula. The shoreline of the U.P. was less than a mile ahead, but the
Ojibway
's engines were coughing and whining now. As they reached the halfway point across the bay, a tremendous bang shook the ferryboat. When John looked out the back window of the pilothouse he saw flames rising from the boat's stern.

“Christ!” he yelled. “We gotta get off this thing!”

“Not yet.” Ariel was grinning again. “We can make it to shore.”

“The boat's on fire!”

“That just makes it interesting. Come on, where's your sense of adventure?”

She was actually enjoying herself. Her eyes shone with pleasure as the engines shrieked and the decks groaned and the wind fanned the flames at the back of the boat, hurling sparks on the water. Another bang rocked the
Ojibway
as Ariel steered the ferry toward a marshy cove. The shore was coming up fast.

John grabbed the edge of the control board, bracing himself for impact. “You're crazy!” he shouted.

“Thank you!” she shouted back at him.

Twenty yards from the cove, Ariel shut down the engines. The
Ojibway
glided into the shallow marsh, splashing silt and water everywhere as the boat's prow dug into the muddy bottom. The deceleration was relatively gentle. The ferry slowed and came to rest among the reeds and cattails, its hull tilting slightly to the left. The boat's stern was no longer burning; the deluge of muddy water had quenched the flames.

John unclenched his fingers from the control board. He didn't know whether he should be relieved or furious. “So was that good for you?”

“The best.” She grinned once more, and for a second he remembered the look she'd given him after they'd rushed into her hotel room in Brooklyn. Then her face turned serious. She let go of the ship's wheel and checked the pockets of her down coat, making sure that her leather-bound notebook was still there. “All right, we better get moving. If the men on the speedboats radioed the other Riflemen, they'll be looking for us along the shoreline. We're going to hike through the woods, so you'll have to carry me.”

He felt a sudden urge to kiss her, but he suppressed it. Instead, he leaned over the pilot's seat and picked her up, slipping one arm under her shoulders and the other under her fractured legs. Then he carried her out of the pilothouse and down the stairs to the lower deck.

The
Ojibway
had wedged itself into the mud at the edge of the marsh, and John was able to slide the ferryboat's gangplank onto a hummock of dry land several feet from the boat. After carrying Ariel to shore, he followed a dirt path that led from the bay to the woods. Just in front of the woods, about thirty yards ahead, was a two-lane state highway that roughly paralleled the shoreline of Lake Huron.

“That's M-134,” Ariel said, pointing at the highway. “We'll cross the road and take the trail through the state forest to—”

Then they heard it, the same deep, guttural rumble they'd heard the day before, back in Chester County, Pennsylvania. To the west, a dozen motorcycles came cruising down M-134. The bikes were Harleys and the riders wore leather boots and black jackets., At the head of the pack was an older, gray-haired man in a bomber jacket. Ariel stiffened in John's arms when she saw him.

“Sullivan,” she whispered.

TEN

The most disturbing thing about Sullivan was that he reminded John of Father Murphy. Although Sullivan wasn't as old as the late priest—he looked like he was about fifty—he had the same body type, tall and broad and muscular. Father Murphy had been famous in Kensington for his feats of strength; he used to impress the neighborhood kids by doing one-handed push-ups, sometimes with a youngster or two sitting on his back, all in an effort to win the kids over and lure them away from the gangs. Judging from the breadth of Sullivan's chest and the thickness of his neck, John guessed he could perform plenty of feats of his own, but his intentions clearly weren't as good. He had small eyes set deep and close together in a hard, weathered face. As he slowed his motorcycle and came to a stop on the highway's shoulder, his lips curled into a smile. His Harley blocked the path to the woods. John and Ariel were trapped between the highway and the bay.