“Haul off, Joe!”

Ali's boat surged ahead on a track that would miss the yacht's stern and sped toward the flotilla. Boats scattered like dry leaves in a wind. Austin knew that battering Ali's boat off course would send the Red Ink off like a cue ball in a game of billiards. He hadn't counted on how long it would take to persuade the Carpet to take a hike. Now he and Joe were hurtling toward the moving yacht with only seconds to spare before they struck it. They could see the horrified expressions of the people on deck. The boat was going seventy-five miles an hour. Even if he shut down the engines, he and Zavala would have to be scraped off the wooden sides of the old boat.

“What now?” Zavala yelled.

“Stay on course,” Austin shouted.

Zavala swore softly under his breath. He had every confidence in Austin's ability to get them out of a tight spot, but sometimes his partner's actions defied all logic. If Zavala thought the order meant certain suicide, he didn't show it. His every instinct told him to whip the wheel over and take his chances, but he grimly held their insane course as steadily as if the two-hundred-foot boat that filled his vision like a big white wall were nothing but a mirage. He gritted his teeth and tensed his body in preparation for the impact.

“Duck,” Austin ordered. “Keep your head low. I'm going to stuff it.”

He bent and gunned the engines at full throttle; at the same time he set the trim tabs and ailerons. A stuff was usually some thing to be avoided. It happens when a boat comes off one wave and burrows into another. The worst type is called a submarine, because that's what the boat becomes when it goes into a stuff at high speed. Far from avoiding this result, Austin was counting on it happening. He held his breath as the race boat nosed down at a sharp angle, buried its bows in the water, and kept on going, burrowing into the sea like a badger. With the full power of the engines behind it, the Red Ink was transformed from a surface boat into a submersible.

The boat passed under the moving yacht, but not quite deep enough to prevent its canopies from being ripped off. There was a sickening watery crunch. The whirling propellers missed their heads by inches. Then the catamaran passed under the yacht and emerged on the other side. Exploding from the water like a very large and very red flying fish, it came to a halt as the burbling engines stalled out in a cloud of purple smoke.

The boat was built with an interior cage that could resist a herd of overweight elephants. The canopies were more vulnerable. Both Plexiglas covers had been completely ripped off. The cockpits were taking in seas as the boat rocked in the waves.

Zavala coughed out a mouthful of seawater. “You okay?” he asked, a stunned look on his dark, handsome face.