Chapter 4 - Flight Across the Shoals
Ethan threw the mooring line onto the deck, shoved Elena and Lily into the cabin below, and leaped behind the helm. He slammed the dual ignition switches; the high-output marine diesels roared to life with a deep, guttural vibration.
"Hold on to something!" Ethan yelled down into the cabin.
He jammed the throttles forward. The boat surged out of the cove, its bow slicing through the dark Atlantic chop just as a volley of automatic gunfire ripped into the water where they had been idling seconds earlier. Bullets pinged off the reinforced fiberglass stern, cracking the marine radar dome.
High on the cliff, the spotlights followed them relentlessly. A fast-attack pursuit craft emerged from the mouth of the neighboring bay, cutting across the water to intercept them before they could reach open sea.
"Ethan, they're flanking us!" Elena yelled, climbing halfway up the companionway, clutching the doorframe.
Ethan checked the nautical charts glowing on the GPS screen. The Maine coastline was notorious for shallow underwater granite ledges known as the Devil's Teeth—treacherous shoals that only experienced local fishermen dared navigate in daylight, let alone in blinding fog.
"They have commercial depth sounders; they won't know the local topography," Ethan said, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. He cut the boat’s exterior navigation lights, plunging them into pitch darkness.
The pursuing vessel gained on them rapidly, a twin-hull interceptor with twin mounted spotlights illuminating the churned white foam behind Ethan's boat.
"Daddy, I'm scared," Lily whimpered from the cabin, clutching Barnaby the dog, who whined softly beside her.
"Keep your head down, Lily!" Ethan shouted back.
He aimed the bow directly toward the jagged silhouettes of the Devil's Teeth. The sonar alarm began to shriek, warning of rapidly decreasing depth: fifteen feet, ten feet, seven feet.
The interceptor followed blindly, accelerating to ram their stern.
At the last possible second, Ethan slammed the port throttle into reverse while pushing the starboard wide open, spinning the vessel in a violent, ninety-degree pivot through a narrow trench between two submerged rocks.
The heavier pursuer couldn't turn in time. With a horrific, grinding screech of tearing metal and fiberglass, the interceptor plowed at forty knots directly onto the submerged granite reef, launching airborne before landing shattered among the rocks.
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Ethan steered into the open Atlantic, but as he checked the GPS, the screen flickered red and rebooted, revealing an automated lock-out sequence overriding his controls from an offshore satellite.
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