“Oh my,” Dr. Gloria said.
From behind me came an electrical hum; then the outboard motor belched and fell into a deep rumble. The front of the boat swung toward open water.
I threw up a hand, waving at the antenna, and yelled, “Wait!” The boat continued to turn. I twisted to face the shore. “Ollie! It’s going!”
She was bent over Aaqila’s unmoving body. I yelled again, and Ollie looked at me over her shoulder, only her nose and mouth visible beneath the cap. Was she grimacing? Saying good-bye? I thought, Don’t you dare abandon me now!
Ollie abruptly turned and ran, not toward the water, but along the bank to my left. The current was pushing my boat downstream, toward a spit of land, and Ollie was sprinting toward it. She popped open her coat on the run like Clark Kent and tossed it aside, then tore the cap from her head and sent it spinning across the water. She reached the end of the land and leaped, not diving because the water could not have been very deep, and landed with a splash. The water came up to her knees. She took three slogging steps and then launched into a shallow dive. She was eight or ten meters west of the boat, but I was moving away from the shore.
The motor roared and the boat spun hard to my left. I gripped the sides and yelled at the camera, “Goddamn it! Wait!” The bow was aimed at the dark hulk of land less than a kilometer across the water. That was too close for New York; it had to be Île-Saint-Régis, the island on the Quebec side of the border.
The throttle kicked a notch higher. I pushed off the bench and half leaped, half fell toward the motor. The boat bucked and I fell the rest of the way, nearly impaling myself on the tiller. My forearms came down on the fat skull of the outboard cowling. I gripped the sides of the motor and held on as it vibrated beneath me, the entire mount swiveling as if to throw me off. Icy spray struck my face. Gasoline fumes filled my nostrils.
I’d lost track of Ollie.
Dr. Gloria flew overhead, keeping pace easily. “Remain calm,” she said.
“Fuck you!” I yelled.
Suddenly Ollie broke the surface of the water, two body lengths away, her arms knifing toward me.
“Come on, baby!” I crouched and reached for her, my thighs jammed against the sides. Too much: My weight tipped the boat and I fell forward. I seized the rim and stopped myself, my face inches from the water. The remote-controlled prop swerved to compensate, and suddenly the boat was almost on top of Ollie. Her eyes shone bright in the moonlight. I thrust out an arm, and she latched on. If I hadn’t been wearing a jacket she wouldn’t have been able to get a grip.
The throttle kicked into high then. Ollie’s weight nearly yanked me out of the boat.
Dr. Gloria landed behind me in the boat. “Pull!” she said.
“You think?” I shouted back.
I got my hips below the rim of the boat, then gripped Ollie with both hands. It took all my strength to hold on; I had nothing remaining to pull her in. The boat slewed left, then right, the drag nearly pulling us apart.
The doctor kneeled behind me and put her arms around my waist. “Ready?” she said into my ear. “One! Two!”
Dr. G yanked me backward. I held on, and Ollie popped half out of the water. Before she slipped back she managed to get an elbow over the side. The wake dragged her feet behind her.
“Almost there,” Dr. Gloria said. I reached over Ollie’s back to her belt and heaved. She fell heavily into the bottom of the boat.
Ollie coughed water. Soaking wet, hair plastered to her cheeks, she was tiny.
The ro-boat accelerated, the nose lifted, and we charged toward the border. We were home free.
* * *
The engine deafened us with its two-tone whine and rumble; the hull bounced over invisible waves. I sat with Ollie in the bottom of the boat, my arms around her. She was shivering. Her cheek was a slab of cold meat.
After perhaps a minute, Dr. Gloria said, “We have a problem.”
“You mean now we have one?” I said.
I sat up straighter. The doctor pointed to our left, up the stretch of river that led between l’Île-Saint-Régis and the Quebec mainland. In the distance was a red light crowning a row of white running lights. A big front spotlight raked the water ahead of it. The boat looked to be a long way from us, but distances were tricky at night. “Who the hell?” I said.
“RCMP,” Ollie said without lifting her head. She was trembling, and her voice was strained.
“Looks like somebody heard the gunshots,” Dr. G said.
“Can we outrun them?” I asked aloud. I didn’t know how long it would it take to cross the river, or who was supposed to meet us on the other side. These were only two of the most basic questions I should have asked Ollie back at the marina.
The engine revved, died, then revved again. Dr. Gloria said, “Uh oh.”
The tiller swung toward my head. The boat began to turn.
Ollie said, “Drones.”
“What? The Canadians have drones too?”
“Jamming us.”
“Oh come on,” I said like an angry teenager. I couldn’t see anything above us, or hear any noise but our engine. How big were they? How high up? And how the hell were we supposed to get away from them?
Our boat continued to circle, the engine surging and dragging drunkenly. The lights of the RCMP boat bore down on us.
I grabbed the tiller and tried to push it straight, but it resisted me. Fine. I gripped it with both hands and pulled it toward me like a rower. It didn’t budge—but then something snapped inside the motor. I fell back, my hands still on the tiller. The boat had turned with me.
“I can steer!” I said.
“Throttle?” Ollie asked.
I twisted the rubber grip of the throttle, and it turned easily—but the engine speed didn’t change. Fuck. It was still under remote control.
Ollie pushed herself up onto hands and knees. She reached past me to the antenna, then ran her hand down it until she found something in the dark under the back rim of the boat. She yanked, and the engine died. Her fist held a bundle of wires.
Suddenly I could hear the rumble of the police boat’s engines. “Uh, Ollie?”
Dr. Gloria said, “I really don’t think they should be allowed to call themselves ‘mounted police’ when they’re on boats, do you?”
Ollie’s hands were shaking. She thrust the wires at me and said, “Find two that spark.”
“What? Oh Jesus.” I let go of the throttle and took them from her.
“STOP YOUR ENGINE!” a voice boomed over the water. “ARRÊTEZ VOTRE BATEAU!”
Jerks. We were already spinning in circles.
I held one wire in my left hand, and touched the copper tips of one of the wires on my right. Nothing. I tried another, then another, while the growl of the RCMP boat grew louder behind us. Suddenly two tips sparked and instantly decorated my vision with spots. The engine coughed.
“Those two!” Ollie said. “Go go go!”
White light hit us, creating an instant tableau: me holding a bouquet of wires, Ollie sprawled at my feet, and Dr. Gloria perched on the bow like an eighteenth-century figurehead. Everything outside the boat became black velvet.
I squinted and pressed the wires together. The boat heaved forward. Ollie reached up and grabbed the tiller to hold us straight.
The policeman behind the bullhorn was not happy with this. “ARRÊTEZ! STOP!”
The front of the boat rose as we increased speed. Ollie and I were almost on top of each other at the back of the boat, and Dr. Gloria, balancing on the front lip, did nothing to equalize our weight and bring the nose down. We bounced over the water, barely in control. The motion kept knocking my hands apart, and with each gap between the wires the engine stuttered. Binary throttles, I decided, sucked.