The American vessel had leapt to starkly impossible speed in what seemed less than a heartbeat. It was no longer slashing through the water like some unnatural plowshare, piling the white furrow of its bow wave to either side. Now it was tearing across the waves, half its sleek, knife-sharp length completely out of the water as it charged straight into the heart of his command.
Hans watched the Outlaw accelerate. Eddie and Larry had told him what Jack Clements had said about the big speedboat’s maximum speed, but Hans hadn’t really believed it. In fact, he’d been privately convinced that they were “putting him on,” as the up-timers were fond of calling it. It just hadn’t seemed possible that a boat could be almost as fast in the water as a Belle was in the air!
Now he knew they hadn’t been “putting him on” at all. Then again, the Outlaw wasn’t being that fast in the water. Even from Hans’ altitude, he could see the way the bows rose up out of the waves, like some shark coming to the surface for its prey.
* * *
The universe was wings of white foam, flying across icy blue water. It was a fiberglass hull, half-airborne and half-afloat. It was engine snarl, the ear-battering impacts of that hull as it smashed across the crests of the Baltic waves, and the roar of wind around the angular barrier of the blast shield.
Eddie Cantrell hung onto the edge of the cabin hatch with his left hand, still managing to watch their target growing through his crude sight, while his right reached for the simple doorbell pushbutton incongruously fastened just below the sight. He hadn’t been prepared for how quickly the range would drop, but at least the Outlaw’s sheer speed had taken the bouncing effect out of the equation. The boat was no longer bouncing—despite the shocks, it was steady as a rock as it hydroplaned toward the Danes.
There was another sound, now. One that cut through even the howling chaos of the Outlaw’s passage like thunder and sent clouds of dirty-white smoke spurting and rolling like fresh banks of fog. Waterspouts rose in white stalagmites as the Danish ships began to fire. But the men behind those guns, however experienced and skilled they might have been otherwise, had no experience at all in estimating the speed of a target like the Outlaw. None of the shots landed anywhere close to the charging speedboat. In fact, Eddie scarcely even noticed them. He was too focused on his sight picture and the plunging range.
It was all happening too quickly. There was no time to stand back and estimate ranges carefully. Besides, at this speed they were going to have to change course quickly . . . unless they wanted to bury the Outlaw in the target of their attack right along with its rockets!
He waited one more fleeting second, then stabbed the bell push with his thumb. A circuit closed. Current flashed suddenly through simple insulated wire to the igniters an ex-high school chemistry teacher had installed in eight eight-inch black-powder rocket motors.
For just an instant, Vadgaard thought the American had blown up.
The entire vessel seemed to disappear in a huge flashing, gushing roar of flame and an enormous burst of smoke. But the illusion of the American’s destruction vanished as swiftly as it had come. The ship itself came charging through the cloud of flame, trailing smoke behind it . . . and eight fiery projectiles screamed ahead of it like dragon’s breath.
Straight at Anthonette.
Chapter 47
The blast deflector worked. Eddie felt as if every hair had been singed off his head, but the shield had protected them from the rockets’ incredible back blast. What no one had expected or allowed for was its disorienting effect. The sudden, blinding fury as eight powerful black-powder rockets ignited as one directly in front of them was indescribable. It didn’t actually hurt them in any way, and if they’d realized it was coming, it probably wouldn’t have had anywhere near the effect it did.
But they hadn’t realized. Larry Wild had never before experienced the explosion of flame and smoke across a thick glass plate barely two feet in front of his eyes, and he would have been more than human not to flinch.