After a while, he had to pull free. “I have to go.”
“Then go,” she said. “And come back. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Do you mean it?”
He looked deeply into her blue eyes. “Nothing in this world can keep me from you. Face it, you’re stuck with me, lady.”
She smiled, then leaned in close and whispered, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he whispered back.
He left her on the beach and joined Josh, who was on one of the piers, staring off at the water. The kid looked scared even from a distance.
“That was sweet,” Danny said through the earbud in Will’s right ear. “Make that goodbye a little bit longer and I was ready to call the Guinness Book of World Records. That, or barf into my binoculars. Either/or.”
“You can see me from the Tower?” Will asked.
“The ACOG’s got four-by-thirty-two magnification. I can see the mole on the back of your neck from here. Want me to shoot it off?”
“Maybe later.”
The Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight — or ACOG — mounted on Danny’s M4A1 was a rifle scope that made the red dot sights they had been using up till now look like kids’ toys. It could shoot targets at a much longer range and with more accuracy, with an optimal distance of 800 meters. At over $1,500 apiece — if you could get one for cheap — the ACOG was a luxury.
Will heard Gaby’s voice in his earbud, cutting in on Danny: “Don’t listen to him, Will. That was very sweet.”
“Kids these days,” Danny said.
When Will reached him, Josh tossed him a key attached to a round fishing float. “You know how to drive a boat, right?”
“Just like driving a car.”
There were five boats still tied along the three piers, but they could only find keys to one of them in the boat shack. Will made a mental note to look for the rest of the keys when they had time.
“What if they’re friendlies?” Josh asked. “The people at the house. Why do we have to go around them?”
“We can’t take the chance. Not now. Not after last night.”
“And everything we need is stored in the garage at the marina?”
“Should be.”
“Should be?” Josh frowned. “What if it’s gone when we get there? What if the people at the house raided the garage and took it?”
“They didn’t.”
“But how can you be sure?”
“Because it’s not valuable to anyone but us.”
The boat was a slightly beat-up Carver that didn’t look like much, but it was in one piece and it ran. It had a one-person seat in the middle and an outboard motor at the back that had worked reasonably well when Will had tried it earlier. They were fortunate Debra kept all the boats in good working shape, with plenty of oil to mix and gasoline stored in the boat shack, along with batteries that were being trickle-charged using the solar panels.
“Get in,” Will said.
Josh climbed gingerly into the docked boat, stumbling a bit as the craft shifted in the water under him.
“Relax,” Will said.
Josh gave him a pursed smile as if to say, “I would if I could,” and continued fumbling his way to the seat in the center.
Will untied the anchor rope and tossed it into the boat, then climbed in. He set up the small trolling motor in the back, connecting it to a reserve battery. The trolling motor looked like a long, skinny paddle with propellers at one end and a small hand-held motor on the other. It was battery-powered, which meant it was slower than the main outboard motor. But it was also quiet, especially when the propellers were under water. The purpose of a trolling motor wasn’t to go fast, it was simply to go while making as few waves and as little noise as possible.
Will put his rifle on the floor and sat down on the bench at the back. He flicked the switch and the trolling motor powered up with a slow whine. When Will dipped the propellers into the water, the whine became a quiet hum that vibrated through the thin fiberglass of the boat. They heard and felt it because they were connected to it.
Will pressed his radio’s PTT. “Can you hear us?”
“Not a peep,” Danny said through his earbud.
“All right, we’re heading out.”
“Vaya con dios. And tell Josh to relax. I can see the kid through the ACOG, and he looks like he’s about to shit a brick. Or a dozen.”
Will looked over at Lara, watching him from the beach. She hadn’t moved from the spot where he had left her a few minutes ago. She waved tentatively, and he waved back.
“I’ll see you when I see you,” Will said. “Watch Lara for me.”
“Okay, but Carly’s already a handful. I’m not sure I can add another hot babe to my harem. But I’ll give it a shot. What are friends for?”
Will maneuvered the Carver from the pier, then turned completely around and aimed it west, away from the marina and the house.
They hadn’t gone very far before Josh glanced back at him. “Is this the fastest this thing can go?”
“It’s a trolling motor, Josh. It’s not meant to go fast. It’s meant to go quietly.”
“Yeah, but this is it?”
“This is it. What’s on your mind?”
He hesitated, then said, “It seems awfully slow, that’s all.”
“You got somewhere else to be?”
“Nah, not really,” Josh said, and turned back around.
Will’s earbud clicked and he heard Danny’s voice again: “Hey, old-timer, you left your turn signal blinking.”
Will smiled.
He looked at the wide-open lake in front of him and for a moment allowed himself to enjoy the picturesque surroundings. There was a slight breeze, but not enough to rock the Carver. Pelicans flew overhead. A big striped fish showed itself a few meters to his right, only to dive back into the water a second later. If Will closed his eyes, he could almost believe there was absolutely nothing wrong with the world.
After a while, Will decided they had gone out far enough and began angling the Carver back toward land. He could see Route 27 in the distance, flat and empty. The inlet connecting the lake to the marina was also visible.
“I didn’t think we would ever turn back around,” Josh said.
“You play a lot of videogames, Josh?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Just a lucky guess.”
They traveled for another long stretch, the trolling motor doing its job, barely creating any ripples in their wake. Will eyed the inlet entrance in the distance, though that wasn’t his destination. The inlet was too close to the house, easily visible, especially from the house’s second floor. He would have preferred to do the work under the cover of night, the way he was trained, but darkness had ceased to be his friend months ago.
Adapt or perish.
Will heard them before he saw the sun glinting off their roofs. They were moving fast down Route 27, which ran parallel to the shoreline.
He reached back and flicked off the trolling motor and said, “Down, Josh.”
Josh looked back, confused. Will lowered himself to the bottom of the boat, making himself small. Josh got the hint and almost leaped to the floor of the Carver as the trucks flashed by on the road.
Will counted one, two…three.
They were moving fast. Too fast.
Fifty miles per hour. At least.
He took it as a good sign when none of the vehicles slowed down, because that would have meant they had spotted the boat adrift in the lake to their left. All three vehicles eventually slowed down before turning into the yard of the two-story house.
Will heard his right ear click, and Danny said, “You see that?”
“Yeah,” Will said.
“I counted three from a distance.”