Clive Cussler (8 page)

The crowd along the shore like around the marina were all shouting encouragement to the two children and dog in the beautiful, shiny mahogany powerboat. Everyone waved and held up signs and cheered them on.

"Everybody ready?" said Casey, his knuckles gripped around the steering wheel.

Lacey could only nod, but Floopy barked joyously.

The official swept the green flag in the air with a great flourish. Casey responded by pushing the pedal to the floor. Hotsy Totsy shot ahead as if fired from a cannon, her propeller whipping the water into froth that swirled in a spreading fan behind her stern. Her bow raised until it was pointing at the horizon as her keel carved through the Sacramento River, which twisted like a snake toward the sea.

Casey's tight grip on the wheel soon loosened until his fingertips lightly touched the rim as Hotsy Totsy dodged the snags that were the contorted remains of tree trunks and branches rising up out of the water, threatening to tear a great gash in her hull if she crashed into one. Through her magical sense, she knew where the shallow water and the underwater snags were hiding and avoided them. Casey simply nodded and now held the wheel gently as Hotsy Totsy swung around the other race boats.

Sandbars had to be circled and passed. Many of the sandbars lifted from the riverbed and couldn't be seen under the water surface until it was too late. With her magical sense Hotsy Totsyskirted the unseen hazards.

"Keep an eye out for rough spots," shouted Lacey. "You can see where the river current churns around shallow water."

The words no sooner came out of her mouth than Boom Boom, now only fifty yards ahead, lurched to a sudden stop as its hull slammed onto a sandbar. As Hotsy Totsy soared past, Casey and Lacey saw the pilot and his copilot leap into the barely submerged silt and struggle to push their powerboat into deeper water.

"Now we're eleventh," said Casey as Hotsy Totsy leaned on the side of her hull as she sped around a sharp curve in the river.

"I judge the next boat to be about thirty seconds ahead," Lacey said, shading her eyes with one hand while staring into the afternoon sun toward the west.

Casey's fingers lightly tapped the rim of the steering wheel as Hotsy Totsy ducked around a tree stump that was floating in the river current. "We'll catch it," he replied, "right after the next bend."

The Sacramento River curled east of town. Thousands of people sat comfortably on blankets and in lawn chairs, having a picnic as they watched the race. As one they all stood when they spotted Hotsy Totsy speeding past and flung their arms in the air as if urging her on.

Roads ran along both banks of the river. Many cars had stopped to watch the boats speed by. The buildings and houses of the city soon dropped behind and the crowds thinned. The land beyond the river- banks became fields planted with what Casey and Lacey, being farm kids, quickly recognized as chilies, beans and cabbage. While Casey focused his attention on speeding around the bends of the river, Lacey looked up and marveled at flights of white pelicans gliding just inches above the water, ignoring the boats zooming past and the thunderous roar of their exhaust.

Floopy yapped at a blue heron that stood on spindly legs, his claws clutched around a branch of a walnut tree that hung over the river. He seemed fascinated by the blur of colors that flashed past.

"Here they come," the Boss declared, peering from his black phantom boat, which was hidden in the reeds.

"They're going awful fast," said the Beard.

"Real fast," added Wrinkle Face.

"Our boat is faster than any in the race," said the Boss with a smug grin.

"The Boss will fix 'em," said Wrinkle Face.

"Yeah, he'll fix 'em," came back the Beard.

"They'll never know what hit them," the Boss muttered in growing fury.

He waited until the twins passed before he jammed his foot down on the pedal, sending the black boat rocketing into the center of the river behind Hotsy Totsy's wake.

Hotsy Totsy was closing on a boat painted white with a lightning-shaped red stripe along its hull. Lacey checked the list of boats and saw that its name was Toot Toot Tootsie. She had slender and graceful lines and was setting a fast pace, rapidly coming up on the boats in front of her. Her pilot turned and saw Hotsy Totsy charging up like a racehorse around the far turn.

Casey backed off the throttle pedal to keep Hotsy Totsy's bow from striking Toot Toot Tootsie's stern. The sudden move saved the twins, their dog and the magical boat from an unforeseen disaster.

In the blink of an eye the phantom black boat shot past in front of them. The Boss misjudged the distance between the two boats just as Casey took his foot off the throttle pedal. Instead, the Boss rammed his boat into the stern of Toot Toot Tootsie. cutting the boat in two just ahead of the engine. Toot Toot Tootsie's bow soared out of the water as the engine with its prop still wildly spinning sank into the depths of the river.

Luckily, the pilot and his copilot were thrown clear and swiftly swam toward the riverbank, where people were wading out into the water to help them ashore.

"Curses!" grumbled the Boss. "I'll get those brats yet." He spun the wheel and cut in front of Hotsy Totsy in another attempt to smash into her.

"Oh no!" Lacey moaned. "It's the Boss and his henchmen."

"Where did they come from?" Casey wondered aloud.

"They must have been hiding off the river waiting to crush us and destroy Hotsy Totsy."

Casey could see that the Beard said something to the Boss, who then began whipping his boat from side to side in an attempt to block the twins and Hotsy Totsy from passing and getting away.

Casey tried to back off the throttle and stay behind the black phantom, but Hotsy Totsy was determined to pass and locked the throttle pedal. She steered to their right to confuse the Boss but suddenly swung around to the left and bounced high in the air as she climbed over the wave caused by the black phantom's wake. Hotsy Totsy smacked down again with a huge splash as she pulled alongside just as both boats entered a tight, narrow bend in the river.

Hotsy Totsy was fighting the black phantom hard. Neither boat gave an inch. Together, Casey and Lacey held their breath. They twisted around the bend hull to hull. Casey was sure he could have reached out and touched the Boss, who was trying to shove them against a dead tree standing out from the shoreline fifty yards ahead. Then, reaching deep within her magical powers,Hotsy Totsy twisted and cut around the turn, tearing through the water while leaning on the side of her hull.

If not for their safety belts and harnesses, Casey and Lacey would surely have been thrown out of the boat. But just as they thought Hotsy Totsy was going to flip upside down, she flattened out and surged ahead, leaving the phantom black boat bouncing in her wake.

Lacey felt numb for a few moments until she regained her poise and confidence. She turned around and saw the Boss shaking his fist at them as he slowly began to fall behind.

"From now on," she lectured Casey, "you pass on a straight stretch of river. No more overtaking on bends."

"Hotsy Totsy is in control," Casey said as they rounded the next bend and set off after two boats about a quarter of a mile in front of their bow. "She won't let us down. The Boss will never catch us now. We're faster."

A short distance ahead a yellow boat and a gray boat were racing side by side, neither giving the other the slightest advantage. As they came closer, Casey could see that their pilots, like others before, were not about to let Hotsy Totsy pass. They were approaching a dock that extended nearly a hundred feet in the river. Small boats were moored along the sides while a crowd of spectators stood on the wooden planks.

Suddenly and without warning, the yellow boat struck a snag that was lurking just beneath the water. The tree's trunk ripped a long hole in the bottom of the boat's hull, and it began to quickly sink as if it was a diving submarine. The pilot and the copilot jumped into the river just before the boat disappeared under the water. They looked unhurt and floated comfortably in their life jackets while waiting to be rescued.

Casey was going to stop and pick up the floating boat racers, but Lacey shouted, "Never mind them! Head for the dock! Hurry!"

Her voice had such a sound of urgency that Casey didn't ask why. He spun the wheel, but Hotsy Totsy sensed something was wrong and had already turned sharply and sped toward the dock. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Boss and his black phantom boat zoom past.

Seconds later, Lacey waved her hands and cried, "Stop here!"

The magical speedboat came to an immediate stop. Then before Casey and Floopy knew what was happening, Lacey unclasped her safety harness and leaped over the side of the boat. She dove under the surface of the water beside the dock and disappeared.

The people on the dock were stunned. They couldn't understand why a boat speeding downriver would all of a sudden race up to the dock while ignoring the men floating in the river.

Lacey was a good swimmer and could hold her breath for a long time. Over a minute passed as excitement grew on the dock when she didn't immediately appear. Then a woman began screaming and pointing into the water.

At first no one knew why she was screaming and acting so crazy. Then Lacey's head appeared, and she lifted her arms out of the water. She was holding a little boy in her hands. Every race spectator had been watching the powerboat sink, and none had noticed the little boy fall off the dock, even his own mother. No one, that is, except Lacey, who just so happened to be looking at the dock when the boy splashed into the river.

The dock was too high for her to hand him to the people above, so she gave him to Casey, who lifted him into Hotsy Totsy and held him upside down as he coughed out the water he had swallowed. When the boy began crying, everyone knew he was all right and sighed happily. Casey stood on the seat of the speedboat and raised the little boy up to his grateful mother on the dock.

"Oh, thank you," she said, tears flowing from her eyes. "Thank you for saving my little boy."

"My sister, Lacey, gets the credit," said Casey honestly as he helped a thoroughly drenched Lacey back into the boat.

"I'm only happy I was lucky enough to see him fall into the river." Lacey told the mother.

"Nice going, sis," Casey said, smiling. "I'm proud of you."

Lacey smiled back and made an attempt to arrange her water-soaked hair.

"You were the only one," Casey said, his voice turning serious. "If it wasn't for you, the little boy would have surely drowned."

Lacey pointed over the windshield. "Look," she said as an official race boat moved toward the men in the water.

One of the yachts used to monitor the race was slowing down to rescue the floating powerboat team in the water. None of the other powerboats or their pilots had stopped to help. They roared around the men in the water as though they didn't exist.

"We've fallen back in the pack," said Casey. "At least six boats have passed us since we stopped."

"The Boss went by too," Lacey said.

Casey nodded. "He didn't dare attack us in front of so many people. He's down the river, waiting to pounce on us again."

"This time we'll be on our guard."

Wasting no more words, Casey turned Hotsy Totsy back toward the center of the river and pushed hard on the throttle pedal. The big Wright aircraft engine howled as it went to full power. The prop dug into the water, lifting the bow, and Hotsy Totsy rocketed back into the race.

Floopy stood with his rear paws on the seat and his front paws on the instrument cowling, his tail wagging wildly as if it was conducting a band. Lacey studied her chart of the river and warned Casey when a sharp bend in the river was coming close. Casey and Floopy kept their eyes ahead, looking for any sign of the black phantom boat hiding in the bushes along the shore.

Although Casey had his hands on the steering helm, it seemed to move without him turning the rudder. Hotsy Totsy was flying down the river, passing one, sometimes two boats on the straight stretches, then curving into a bend at full speed until the edge of the cockpit was only inches above the water. Casey gripped the wheel, but Lacey and Floopy had to hold on for dear life, hoping their seat belts were secure.

Sometimes Hotsy Totsy, ignoring Lacey's pleas, cut around a boat while going through a bend. Swerving with her keel almost out of the water, throwing up a high rooster tail of water behind her stern, she skidded around her competitors as if she was attached to underwater railroad tracks.

The people onshore stood in awe as Hotsy Totsy with the two children and a funny-looking dog with a leather helmet and goggles came and went, the roar of the big V-12 Wright engine booming out of the twin exhaust pipes in the stern like thunder. Vroom, vroom, vroom! The faces on the other race pilots reflected shock, disbelief and finally amazement at the daring antics of the antique boat as it darted past them.

As they hurtled through another turn, Lacey yelled,

"After we pass the bend at the end of the next straight, we'll enter the upper bay."

"Still no sign of the Boss?" Casey shouted back.

"No, but I'm sure we haven't seen the last of him," Lacey said, staring downriver.

The words had no sooner been spoken than the black phantom boat, with the Boss at the helm, shot from behind a big rock and came roaring up the river on a collision course with Hotsy Totsy. The twins had no doubt the Boss would be merciless.

Closer and closer the two boats shot toward the other. Neither slowing. The Boss was pushing the black phantom as fast as it would go. Casey didn't have to hold the pedal down. Hotsy Totsy's great Wright engine was running as fast as it would go. For a few seconds time seemed to slow, and Casey and Lacey thought this might be the end. Floopy stared at the black phantom boat and snarled.

A hundred yards, then fifty. The twins could clearly see the faces of the Boss and his henchmen. Twenty-five yards came and went, and the speeding boats were only fifty feet apart when Hotsy Totsy lifted her bow and soared out of the river and flew over the black phantom boat. The Boss and his henchmen looked skyward, eyes wide, mouths hanging open as the spinning prop whirred by overhead. They watched dumbly as the antique boat bounced back into the water with a massive splash beyond the Boss's boat.