Tahoe Hijack

by Todd Borg

  The road made a curve, then dropped down close to the water. I strained to see through the darkness across the bay. The Dreamscape pier was near the far point, just down from the town of Crystal Bay. The trees opened up. The boat was still there. There was a light down low on the pier. It blinked on and off. A second time. I realized that the light wasn’t turning on and off. People had moved in front of it.

  I sped up the highway as it climbed up above the lake. The turnoff to the Dreamscape’s parking lot was dark. I found the entrance by feel more than anything else. Took it with too much speed. Slid off the edge of the asphalt. My wheels sunk into soft shoulder. I thought I was stuck. But then rubber caught something firm, and I came back onto the road. I went past the parking lot, heading for the pier. But as I got close and the Dreamscape came back into view, I saw that it wouldn’t work. Although no lights were lit on the boat, it was already moving slowly along the pier, heading out to sea.

  Even if I sprinted, there was no chance I could catch it and jump on.

  I hit the brakes and skidded to a stop. Threw the Jeep into reverse, cranked the wheel, and shot back up to the highway. I turned left again, heading toward the little town of Crystal Bay, trying to remember which road I’d accidentally turned down when I went to the Dreamscape to meet Ford and Teri.

  There it was. I turned off the highway and sped down a narrow ribbon of pavement, got to the bottom of a hill, went right, then left, and pulled into the parking lot near the small beach. I parked and jumped out.

  A quick glance through the trees out to the lake showed nothing but dark water. The Dreamscape couldn’t have gotten that far away in such a short time. Which meant that Nick O’Connell had never turned on the running lights, and he was making an illegal dark run toward the depths. There was a good onshore breeze coming over the water from the southwest. I turned my head a bit so my ears didn’t hear the sound of the wind. Instead I heard from out on the water the rumble of distant diesel engines running hard.

  I let Spot out of the Jeep and dialed Diamond to give him an update. I got his voicemail. I told him to call, hung up and ran to the boat rental where I’d talked to the man who ran Jackie’s Jet Boats. When he was in the beach shack, I’d seen the display board with all the keys hanging on it like earrings.

  The throb of the Dreamscape running through the night came louder than before, the sound riding on the breeze as the big boat headed out of Crystal Bay.

  The racy jet boats were lined up on the beach waiting for a final warm weekend or two when a few off-season tourists might want to have some cold-water fun. There were two sizes of boats, ones designed for two or three people and smaller ones that would only fit one rider.

  I read the number off one of the larger ones and ran over to the little office shack. The door was so rickety that I was able to put a soft shoulder block next to the latch and pop the door open.

  I found a small desk lamp inside and flipped it on. The display board was gone. I looked in the file cabinet. Under the counter. Nothing. He’d taken the keys home with him.

  On the right rear corner of the desk was a note that said, ‘trouble starting, runs rough, needs tune-up.’ Taped to the note was one of the keys.

  On the waterproof key fob was written the registration number. I memorized it in the light. Ran out and found the matching boat. It was one of the small ones. No way could Spot try to ride it with me. Maybe it wouldn’t start, either. But I didn’t have any other options.

  Spot ran around me as I pulled the jet boat down the short stretch of sand and into the water. It bobbed in the waves, its tail end just touching the sand.

  I wondered if the little boat had a bilge that could collect explosive gases. I didn’t see a pump switch. One way to find out.

  I hit the starter. The engine cranked a bit, caught once, then nothing. I cranked it again and again. It didn’t fire. Maybe it was like some car engines, which, in starting mode only, can be cleared of excess gas by opening the throttle all the way.

  I pulled the throttle trigger all the way and cranked the engine. After several revolutions, I let the throttle fall back to idle.

  It coughed, fired, coughed again. I kept cranking and gave it a touch of throttle.

  The engine fired and started, running very rough. It smoothed out a bit as the idle speed increased, then began coughing over and over.

  Maybe if it warmed up a bit…

  I called Spot and trotted back toward the Jeep. Halfway there I realized that he hadn’t come. I turned to look back.

  Spot stood on the beach by the jet boat, unmoving, looking at me. He realized that I was going to leave him in the Jeep.

  I called him again.

  He turned toward the dark lake.

  I thought about it. Spot was nearly always worth the trouble of bringing him. But I couldn’t figure out how to get him on the boat.

  The jet boat coughed, then resumed its idle. I scanned the beach. Saw something that gave me an idea. Probably a ridiculous idea.

  Over at the far end of the line of jet boats, up on the sand, was a small fiberglass dinghy, no doubt used to ferry people out to the boats that were tied to buoys. Coiled at the bottom of the dinghy was a short line that was tied to the bow cleat.

  The little boat was surprisingly heavy. I lifted on the gunwale and dragged the dinghy over to the water next to the jet boat. The bowline was just long enough to tie to one of the recessed brackets at the rear of the jet boat and leave about fifteen feet between the two crafts, enough distance, I hoped, to tow the dinghy without creating instability.

  “Spot. In the boat,” I said, snapping my fingers. I pointed at the dinghy.

  Spot looked at me. He’d experienced my crazy ideas before, several of which had involved boats.

  “Go on. Get in the boat. You didn’t want me to leave you. And there isn’t enough room on the jet boat.”

  He stuck his head into the dinghy, sniffed, took two steps back, looked at me again.

  I went over to the jet boat, pushed it out into the water. As jet boats are designed for day use only, there were no running lights, which suited me fine.

  I repeated my little speech to Spot. He couldn’t understand the specific words. But dogs pick up meaning from the tone of voice. I knew that he understood what I wanted. But I also knew that at some doggy cognition level, he was also wondering whether it was a stupid idea.

  He’d been in a wide variety of small boats and had even ridden on a surfboard. But he’d also nearly succumbed to hypothermia in the icy water of Tahoe. Since then, he’d approached all water rides with skepticism.

  I dragged the dinghy out into the water. It floated near the jet boat. Spot stood on the dry sand, looking at me. In the faint light of a distant parking lot light, I could see his head. He had his pointy ears up and forward. Curiosity. But his brow was wrinkled in deep furrows. Worry. That meant he was getting the message.

  “One more time, boy,” I said, floating the dinghy back to the sand beach. “Get in.” I pointed again. “Hurry up.”

  Spot came over, stared in the boat for a bit, then lifted one front paw and set it in the dinghy. The little boat rocked precariously.

  “Go on.”

  He put his other front paw in. I grabbed the little boat to keep it from capsizing. He jumped his rear legs into the boat, then stood with all four legs spread wide as the dinghy rocked beneath him.

  In the past, I’d tried to teach Spot to hunker down for stability when in a moving vehicle. I could never get him to lie down when on a tippy platform, but he’d learned to sit his rear down and keep his front legs spread wide.

  I got him into position between the two seats of the dinghy, then waded over to the jet boat. I climbed aboard, straddling the seat. The boat had a safety lanyard attached to the ignition kill switch. I slipped it over my wrist. If I fell off, the boat’s engine would stop, and Spot wouldn’t be pulled across the lake without me. I grabbed the handlebar, squeezed the trigger throttle and gave the engine enough
gas to ease forward until the line between the two boats became taut. Then I accelerated slowly, watching in the dark to see if my boat would throw water onto Spot.

  The jet boat coughed and wheezed and hiccupped, but still had enough power to pull the dinghy with no apparent stress. Spray shot out behind me to the sides. I saw Spot shake his head, so I knew that some water was hitting him, but from what little I could see in the dark it seemed more like a strong mist than a drenching soak.

  Spot kept his head forward into the wind just like when he sticks it out the car window. Like all dogs, when it comes to air in the face, Spot lives by the principle that says if a little is good, more must be better.

  Soon, I was going 25 mph, and the jet boat showed no signs that there was any limit to its speed.

  I thought that the boat would easily go fast enough to catch up to the Tahoe Dreamscape even if the Dreamscape was at full throttle. But I didn’t know if the dinghy would track well at that speed without porpoising and throwing Spot out.

  I kept turning around to watch behind as much as I faced forward. The little boat skimmed the water, floating across my wake from left to right and back again in a gentle oscillation. Now and then its bow raised up under the pressure of the wind and Spot’s head would momentarily disappear. But the towline kept the bow from going too high. I’d put Spot in a ridiculous situation. We must have looked like something in a Dr. Seuss book.

  Catching the Dreamscape was complicated by not knowing where it was. With the jet boat roaring, I couldn’t hear the Dreamscape’s big rumbling engines. I scanned the horizon as we raced out into the vast dark void that was Tahoe in the predawn hours. If the dark shape of the Dreamscape came between me and shore lights, I might see it. But large sections of the East Shore were wilderness park and had no lights at all.

  I shifted my course left, toward that shore, thinking that if the Dreamscape was in that direction, I’d have to be close to find it in the night.

  The Dreamscape was a big boat, 100 feet long, with the kind of hull that was designed to cut large ocean waves. It wasn’t a boat meant for velocity. But Ford Georges had bragged about the big diesel power plant and how the Dreamscape could push 19 knots. So I squeezed the jet boat throttle trigger and gradually sped up to 30 mph. Water starts to feel hard beneath a boat hull when you get over 30. The dinghy bounced harder, but Spot stayed in.

  After I’d gone about a mile into the water, I throttled back to idle. The jet boat and dinghy coasted to a near stop. The dinghy floated toward me.

  “Hey, largeness,“ I said, pulling on the line and bringing the dinghy alongside the jet boat. I reached out to give Spot a rough head rub. He was soaked with cold spray.

  He stood his rear legs up, reached a paw out to the gunwale. The dinghy rocked under his shift of weight.

  “Sorry, dude. One rider per boat. You gotta sit back down.”

  I listened to the darkness. The diesel throb of the invisible boat was louder. It came from our port side at about 11:30 on the clock dial, which put it between us and the dark East Shore, just a bit north of the Thunderbird Mansion.

  “Back down,” I said to Spot. “Sit.” He ignored me.

  I pulled his boat forward alongside the jet boat and pushed him back to a sitting position. With a little push on its bow, the dinghy floated back until the towline was again taut.

  As I reached for the handlebars, a tortured woman’s scream ripped across the water from the direction of the unseen yacht. The piercing shriek rose in pitch and volume and became ragged with horror.

  FORTY-NINE

  As Anna’s scream faded into what sounded like a choked death rattle, I ran us back up to our previous speed and then on past until we were flying across the dark water at 40 mph. I put us into a big, leaning curve to the left, aiming for the dark eastern part of the lake.

  There was just a slight breeze, so the chop on the water was light. But even the small waves transmitted jarring shocks into the racing jet boat. Glancing behind, I saw Spot down in his low sit, front paws spread as wide as they can go. The little dinghy bounced alarmingly, occasionally appearing to leave the surface for short moments. I worried that the dinghy might flip over. But if Anna was still alive, if I wanted a chance at saving her…

  My cellphone rang in my pocket. I fished it out, looked at the screen.

  “Diamond,” I shouted.

  “Sí. You wanted something.”

  “Talk loud,” I shouted. “I can barely hear you. I’m heading after the Dreamscape. Nick the Knife is alive. He’s got Anna and he’s taken the Dreamscape.”

  “Street called me about Nick,” he shouted. “You’re going to board the Dreamscape?” Diamond said, his words tiny against the whine of the jet boat.

  “Going to try.”

  “You on a speedboat?” he shouted.

  “One of those small jet boats.”

  “I’ll call Bains. Maybe we can shake loose a chopper.”

  “Never mind that right now,” I yelled. “I’ve got a question.”

  “What?” Diamond shouted back.

  “I want to tell you some names. Portia, Jessica, Viola, Nerissa, Lucentio. What do they mean to you?”

  “Nothing, other than that they’re all names from Shakespeare.”

  “What kind of names?” I yelled back.

  “Just characters. Probably regular names back in sixteen hundred.”

  “What about Kent, Hortensio, Rosalind and Celia? Is there a common aspect to the characters?”

  “I’m no Shakespeare expert.”

  “You are compared to me,” I yelled. “Think.”

  “Nothing in common,” Diamond shouted. “They come from all different plays. King Lear, Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice. Tragedies, comedies, tragi-comedies.”

  “Keep thinking,” I yelled.

  “Sorry. Nothing comes to mind. You think Anna’s still alive?”

  “Maybe. But I need to know about the names.”

  “What can I say, Owen? They’re just names!”

  “Okay, thanks,” I shouted.

  “Wait!” Diamond said.

  “What?”

  “Maybe it’s the disguises,” Diamond yelled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All those characters, what they have in common. They all used disguises so that people would think they are someone else.”

  “Just what I needed. Thanks.” I hung up.

  In another half mile I saw the Dreamscape, its hulking form barely visible against the dark shoreline. No light showed from any of its decks nor from any of its portholes. It looked like a phantom ship. Wherever Nick had Anna on the boat, there was nothing to give away the location.

  The jet boat was going much faster than the yacht. I came around behind the big boat’s stern, gliding up the main wave of its wake at a gradual angle so that we didn’t catch too much air.

  As the jet boat lifted a bit and landed, I swiveled around to watch the dinghy go into the air. For a moment in the darkness I couldn’t see Spot. My gut clenched. The dinghy slammed back down onto the water, much harder than the jet boat. Then I saw Spot, pushed down by the impact, his chest down on the dinghy floor.

  The dinghy didn’t flip. I turned back to focus on the ghost ship roaring through the darkness.

  The center of the Dreamscape’s wake was a broad flat swath of water rough with bubbles from the prop turbulence. The jet boat and dinghy both seemed to skid sideways on the bubbly surface.

  I slowed the jet boat down to 25 as I approached the port corner of the Dreamscape’s stern. Because of the darkness and the roaring spray coming off the yacht, it was hard to tell precisely my closing velocity. I didn’t want to risk crashing into it.

  Hovering just a few yards from the big boat, I tried to figure the best way of boarding the Dreamscape. I could jump onto the big boat as I let go of the throttle. The safety lanyard would pull free, stopping the jet boat. But then Spot would be left adrift in the dinghy. I had to get Spot onto the Drea
mscape first.

  “You’re a dead man, McKenna!” a male voice shouted over the roar of the yacht and jet boat. The same ragged, rough voice I’d heard when I first met the hostage taker at the bow of the Tahoe Dreamscape. Nick the Knife.

  I looked up to see a vague black silhouette against the starlit night sky. He stood at the rear of the upper deck. As he moved, I sensed that his left arm wrapped around a smaller figure, holding the person in front of him.

  Anna.

  Nick raised his right arm up and back. While he held Anna in front of him with his left arm, his body snapped forward as his right arm came down in a fast arc like a pitcher throwing a fast ball.

  I saw no projectile, but his arm motion was focused at me. I jerked the handlebars to the left. The jet boat lurched. I heard a loud crunch of fiberglass behind me.

  I turned around. Just behind the seat was a large javelin sticking through the rear of the jet boat.

  FIFTY

  Adrenaline burned through my system. It was difficult to breathe.

  The javelin stood six feet tall. It gradually leaned backward toward the water, its pointed tip prying up vinyl and padding and fiberglass. I steered back to the right. The motion made the spear flop to the left. It popped out of the seat and fell away into the lake.

  I kept my hand on the throttle and began steering the jet boat back and forth, weaving behind the speeding yacht.

  “You didn’t hear me, McKenna? You’re going to the bottom of the lake just like Kyle did. And when I’m done with the girl, she’s joining you.”

  “Owen!” Anna screamed. “Get out of here while you have a chance. He’ll kill you, Owen. He’s… arrrgh…” her voice was choked off.

  With my left hand, I reached back to the bracket where the dinghy’s towline was tied. I pulled some slack into the line, gave my hand a quick twist to wrap the line around my hand, then undid the slipknot. My hand was now holding all of the drag of the dinghy with Spot in it. The line felt like it was cutting through my hand.

  I forced myself not to look up and instead focus on my task.