Black Wind - Cussler Clive - Страница 66
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Three-quarters of a mile away, Dirk grunted as he pulled another stroke of the oars, his heart pounding fiercely. His shoulder and arm muscles began to burn from the strenuous effort to propel the skiff faster, and even his thigh muscles ached from pushing against the oars. His tired body was telling himself to slow the pace but his mental will pushed to keep rowing with all his strength. They had gained a few precious minutes by sabotaging the speedboat, but Kang's men still had two more boats at their disposal.
In the distance, they could hear the deep muffled exhaust of the catamaran as its engines were started and revved. As Dirk rowed in a controlled rhythm, Summer helped guide him through the inlet they approached at the far end of the cove. Kang's compound and boats suddenly drifted from view as they began threading their way through the S-curved inlet.
“We've got maybe five minutes,” he exhaled between strokes. “You up for another swim?”
“I can't exactly glide through the water like Esther Williams with these,” she said, holding up the two handcuffs that dangled from her wrists, “but I can certainly do without another dose of Kang's hospitality-” She knew better than to ask whether Dirk was up for a strenuous swim. Despite his exhausted state, she knew her brother was like a fish in the water. Growing up in Hawaii, they swam in the warm surf constantly. Dirk excelled at marathon swimming and routinely swam five-mile ocean legs for pleasure.
“If we can make it to the main channel, we may have a chance,” he said.
The inlet grew dark as they made their way past the first bend and the lights of Kang's compound became shielded by the surrounding hills. The otherwise still night was broken only by the faraway sound of the catamaran's four diesel engines, which they could detect were now throttled up. Like a machine himself, Dirk rhythmically tugged at the oars, smoothly dipping the blades in and out of the water in a long, efficient stroke. Summer acted as coxswain, offering subtle course changes to guide them through the channel in the shortest route possible while offering periodic words of encouragement.
“We're coming up on the second bend,” she said. “Pull to your right and we should clear the inlet in another thirty meters.”
Dirk continued his even stroke, easing off the left oar with every third pull to nose the bow into and through the bend. The beating drone of the catamaran's engines grew louder behind them as the speedy boat ripped across the cove. Though his limbs ached, Dirk seemed to grow stronger with the approach of their adversary, propelling the small boat even faster through the flat water.
The ebony darkness softened around them as they rounded the last bend of the inlet and rowed into the expansive breadth of the Han River. Patches of starry lights twinkled across the horizon, shining from small villages scattered along the river and hillsides. The faint lights were the only clue to the river's width, which stretched nearly five miles across to the opposite shore. In the late hour of the night, traffic on the river was almost nonexistent. Several miles downstream sat a handful of small commercial freighters, moored for the night while waiting to traverse the Han to Seoul at first daylight. A brightly illuminated dredge ship was slowly making its way upstream nearly across from Dirk and Summer but was still some four miles away. Upriver, a small vessel with an array of multicolored lights appeared to be moving down the center of the river at a slow pace.
“Afraid I don't see any passing water taxis,” Summer said, scanning the dark horizons.
As Dirk tried to row toward the center of the river, he could feel the current pushing them downstream. The river's flow was aided by an outgoing tide that pulled at the remains of the Han River as it dispersed into the dusky waters of the Yellow Sea. He eased off the oars for a moment to survey their options. The dredge ship looked appealing, but they would have to fight the crosscurrent to reach it, which would be near impossible once they took to the water. Peering downriver, he spotted a small cluster of yellow lights on the opposite shore twinkling fuzzily through the damp air.
“Let's try for the village there,” he said, pointing an oar in the direction of the lights, which were about two miles downstream. “If we swim directly across the river, the current should carry us pretty close.” “Whatever entails the least swimming.”
Unbeknownst to both was the fact that the Korean demarcation line ran through this section of the Han River delta. The twinkling lights downriver were not a village at all but a heavily garrisoned North Korean military patrol boat base.
Any further contingency planning was suddenly dashed by the abrupt roar of the high-speed catamaran as it burst out of the inlet. A pair of bright spotlights flared from beside the wheelhouse, sweeping back and forth rapidly across the water. It would be only seconds before one of the beams fell on the small white skiff heading across the river.
“Time to exit stage right,” Dirk said, swinging the boat around so that the bow pointed downstream. Summer quickly slipped over the side followed by Dirk, who hesitated a moment, flinging a pair of life jackets out away from the boat before he rolled into the water.
“Let's angle across and slightly upriver to put as much distance as possible between us and the drifting boat,” he said.
“Right. We'll surface for air at the count of thirty.”
The clatter of machine-gun fire suddenly tore through the night air while a seam like spray of bullets slapped into the water a few yards in front of them. One of the spotlights had found the skiff and a guard opened fire as the catamaran raced toward it.
In unison, Dirk and Summer ducked under the water, kicking down to a depth of four feet before angling into the current. The powerful flow of the river made them feel like they were swimming in place as they inched their way toward mid-river Gaining ground upriver was hopeless as the current overpowered them, but it pushed them downstream at a much slower pace than the drifting skiff.
The deep pulsations of the catamaran's diesel engines resonated through the water and they could feel the boat as it approached the skiff. Counting time with each breaststroke, Dirk hoped that Summer would not get separated from him in the darkness. Swimming at night in the black water, their only indication of direction was the tug of the river's current. As he approached the count of thirty, he eased slowly to the surface, breaking the water with barely a ripple.
Just ten feet away, Summer's face emerged from the water and Dirk could hear her breathing deeply. Glancing briefly at each other, then back toward the skiff, they quickly gulped a deep swallow of fresh air and resubmerged, kicking back into the river current for another count of thirty.
The quick glimpse Dirk made toward the skiff was a reassuring one. Kang's catamaran had barreled in on the skiff from upriver with guns blazing and was now creeping up close to assess the damage. No one on board had bothered to look across the river, assuming that Dirk and Summer were still in the boat. In their brief time in the water, they had already established a separation of nearly a hundred meters from the skiff.
As the catamaran approached the drifting boat, Tongju ordered his gunmen to cease firing. There was no sign of the two escapees, whom Tongju expected to find sprawled dead in the bottom of the bullet-ridden boat. Looking down from the upper deck of the catamaran, Tongju cursed to himself as they pulled alongside and shined a light into the skiff. The small boat was completely empty.
“Search the surrounding water and shoreline,” he ordered crisply. The catamaran circled around the skiff while the spotlights were splayed across the water, all eyes peering intently into the darkness. Suddenly, a gunman on the bow of the catamaran yelled out.
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