Chapter 8 - The Crossing of the Sound
The Martha Jean didn't look like a rescue vessel. Her hull was covered in red primer and rust, her deck stacked with coil ropes and oil drums, but when David Vance threw the heavy iron throttle forward, her three-hundred-horsepower diesel engine roared to life with a deep, rhythmic vibration that shook the timber floorboards beneath my feet.
I sat in the small, shadowy wheelhouse behind the captain’s seat, the leather briefcase resting between my ankles.
The drizzle had turned into a steady, gray fog that hung low over the water, blinding the skyline of lower Manhattan until only the tops of the highest skyscrapers were visible above the mist like grey teeth sticking out of a cloud.
"We're entering the main river channel now, Miss Brooks," David said, his eyes glued to the old analog radar screen on the wooden dash. He was twenty-eight, with his father's broad shoulders and the same quiet, steady hands. "If we clear the railway bridge at Spuyten Duyvil in twenty minutes, we're home free."
"Are we alone?" I asked, looking back through the salt-crusted rear window toward the harbor mouth.
David leaned closer to the radar screen, his brow furrowing as a tiny, green pulse blipped three times near the outer edge of the three-mile ring.
"Got a fast-mover coming up from the navy yard," David muttered, his hand adjusting the throttle trim. "Small craft. Twin outboard engines. Moving at twenty-five knots despite the fog."
My blood turned to ice. "Can you see a registry marking?"
David picked up a pair of heavy brass binoculars and peered through the mist behind us.
"No registry," he said, his voice suddenly going rigid. "Black hull. No running lights. That’s not harbor patrol, Miss Brooks. That’s a private speed launch."
Thorne’s contractors.
They hadn't just watched the highways—they had monitored the longshoremen's union piers.
"Can we outrun them?" I asked, leaning over his shoulder.
"In a forty-foot tug against a twin-engine launch?" David let out a bitter, short laugh. "Not a chance in hell. They’ll overhaul us before we reach the bridge."
"Then don't try to outrun them," I said, my mind working frantically through the harbor maps I had memorized during the municipal audit. "David, where is the old coal transfer barge that sank off Pier 42?"
David’s eyes flicked to me in surprise. "The Erie Star? She's sitting in twelve feet of water right off the secondary shoals. Her superstructure is still six feet above the water line at low tide."
"Head straight for her," I ordered, my hands gripping the brass rim of the steering wheel beside his. "The launch has a deep fiberglass hull with twin prop drives. If they try to follow us into six feet of water over the coal shoals, they’ll tear their bottom out before they realize where they are."
David looked at me for one second, a slow, fierce smile spreading across his face.
May you like
"Hold on to your teeth, Miss Brooks," he said, slamming the iron throttle all the way forward into the gate.
The Martha Jean surged forward, her heavy bow cutting through the choppy gray water, throwing up two high walls of white spray as we angled sharply toward the dark, jagged outline of the rusted coal barge looming out of the mist like a stranded sea monster.
